Embracing MESSY Leadership: Transformative Strategies for School Leaders with Rosie Connor

Unlock the secrets of effective educational leadership with Rosie Connor, a renowned author and director of leadership development, as she introduces her revolutionary MESSY leadership model. Discover how Meaning, Making Emotional Connection, Sensing the Future, Seizing Momentum, and Your Presence can reshape your approach to school leadership, creating a dynamic and responsive educational environment. Rosie’s insights, drawn from her book Embracing MESSY Leadership and real-world coaching experience, reveal how navigating the inherent messiness of leadership can lead to profound transformations in schools.

Get ready to challenge conventional thinking and embrace future-focused leadership strategies tailored for educators. Through the playful yet powerful Bop-It approach, learn how asking the right questions can spark innovation and bring creative solutions to life. This episode also offers practical advice on experimenting with new ideas on a small scale, overcoming budget constraints, and effectively managing time with the three Ps framework to seize momentum and drive progress.

Self-awareness is a cornerstone of leadership, and we explore powerful techniques to develop this crucial skill. Drawing on Stephen Covey's "big rocks" analogy and Peter DeWitt's strategies for de-cluttering, we discuss how to prioritize significant tasks and streamline activities. With real-life examples and case studies, gain insights into balancing instructional and transformational leadership, and discover tools to enhance classroom engagement and community involvement. This episode is a treasure trove of actionable tips and frameworks designed to elevate your leadership journey and inspire transformative changes in your school community.
Further information about MESSY leadership can be found via:
https://btsspark.org/en-us/messyleadership

To view our Professional Learning Offerings visit:
https://www.nswppa.org.au/professional-learning

Transcript

Drew: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Season 2 of the Principal Learnings Podcast. If you're a principal or educational leader looking to enhance your skills, this is the place for you, so let's get into it. Let's embark on this learning journey together. Welcome to Professional Learnings for Educational Leaders, the podcast where we dive into the latest insights and strategies to support and empower educational leaders. I'm your host, Drew Janetsky, and today we have a very special episode lined up for you. Our guest is Rosie Connor.

Drew: 0:35

Rosie is an accomplished author and the director behind the innovative book Embracing Messy Leadership. Rosie has over two decades of experience in leadership development. Rosie has been at the forefront of transforming educational leadership practices across the globe. Her work with BTS Spark has provided invaluable coaching to support to more than 20,000, yes, 20,000 leaders worldwide, helping them navigate the complexities and challenges of modern educational environments. In her latest book, Rosie introduces the MESSI leadership model, which stands for meaning, making emotional connection, sensing the future, seizing momentum and your presence. The why. These five key traits and mindsets are essential for effective leadership in our post-pandemic world, and through our conversation we'll explore how these principles can help school leaders create shared visions, build strong relationships, innovate and maintain their presence amidst the ever-changing landscape of education.

Drew: 1:45

Before we dive into our discussion, I'd like to highlight some of the key themes from the book that we touched upon. The first one is the importance of creating a shared vision and engaging with others in collaborative efforts. Other thing that came really strong was building trust and handing difficult conversations through emotional connection. We also discussed the need for innovative thinking to tackle persistent improvement in challenges, as well as embracing proactive leadership and effective time management, and also the development and self-awareness and confidence to overcome personal barriers. Self-awareness and confidence to overcome personal barriers.

Drew: 2:29

Rosie's insights are not just theoretically. They're grounded in the real world experiences and practical strategies that have been proven to work. So, whether you're a seasoned school leader or stepping into this leadership role, this episode is packed with some really valuable takeaways to enhance your leadership journey. Enjoy our conversation with Rosie Connor. So, Rosie, welcome back to our podcast. Great to have you back after our first podcast, which was themed around the book the Four Greatest Coaching Conversations Change Mindset, Shift Attitude and Achieve Extraordinary Results. And today we're going to be talking about messy leadership, and you're the author of Messy Leadership, so you'll be able to talk about your book, the Messy Leadership Model, Rosie, let's start with what inspired the creation of the messy leadership model, and how do you see this transforming school leadership practices as described in your book?

Rosie: 3:52

yeah, thanks, Drew, and it's great to be on the podcast with you. So messy leadership was? It was inspired because we all know, we all understand that the reality of school leadership is really messy we don't need to tell anybody that and of day to day, our coaches work with school leaders in New South Wales and Australia and all over the world to embrace that mess in us, to give themselves a little bit of a break and not try and control it always, but to know how to react to that and go with that. So coaching offers a real opportunity to step back, to pause, to reflect on your practice, to see yourself and to be able to start to imagine how you may want to move things forward with your own practice or with the school that you're leading. You may want to move things forward with your own practice or with the school that you're leading, and that means that over the past 20 years working in New South Wales and other school systems, we have coached 20,000 school leaders and that gives us a real privileged insight, a window into what school leaders on a day-to-day basis are grappling with, are finding tricky, are asking for support from their coaches with. So we wanted to share some of that experience and that expertise in a way that meant that many school leaders at all levels in schools in Australia and elsewhere could benefit from some of the practical tools that our coaches share on a day-to-day basis in coaching sessions, and also to help school leaders realize that they're not the only ones, because there are so many folk out there experiencing some of the same issues day in and day out, and being particularly a school principal can feel like quite a lonely path, whereas if you realize that you're not the only one and nobody's perfect, then that can be really helpful, I think. So I would imagine that if some of your listeners actually do pick up a copy of the book and read it, they will see themselves in some of the stories, some of the case studies.

Rosie: 6:13

So that's really where the book came about. It came about from school leaders coaching sessions. We then developed it with school leaders. We called these Messy Leadership Pioneers, and there were some school leaders in New South Wales as Messy Leadership Pioneers as well as others elsewhere. So in fact the book took us about a year to write, because what happened is that we would write a single chapter, say on M from the MESSY acronym, and then we would share that chapter with MESSY leadership pioneers all over the country and globally who would then try out. They'd read the chapter and try out some of those tools for the month and then they'd give us feedback and we'd rewrite the chapters. So we develop MESSY leadership really with school leaders and of course it's there for school leaders and that's what makes it, I think, really practical manual.

Drew: 7:12

Yeah, it's coming through so strongly, Rosie, in terms of those stories and that journey and the fact what you just said was we worked with the leaders and we wrote the chapters. Then we went back and saw what the impact of that was. You could really sense that as the reader as you work through. I really enjoyed the realness of that, where principals were sharing their vulnerabilities and principals were sharing how they hadn't succeeded or their particular worries, which was really resonated through and for our listeners, I believe they would or principals or educational leaders listening. We all have those thought processes and there's parts in there with self-confidence as well, and working through that with a framework really aligns.

Drew: 8:06

We are still human. However, utilizing these frameworks and the emphasis of what coaching does can actually help us guide us through through the mess. So, so to speak. So many practical takeaways I was going to go into now. Visionary leadership mentioned in the school In the book. It introduces the messy leadership model, which emphasizes meeting making as a key trait. How can school leaders create a shared vision that engages their staff and stakeholders, especially in this complex post-pandemic context?

Rosie: 8:51

That's a good question there, Drew, and we're all aware that the current context there's increasing levels of uncertainty, there's increasing diversity of student populations that you're dealing with and challenges around equity and inclusion so this is demanding a different kind of leadership as school leaders. I think everyone wants to make a difference right. So if you come in to a school as a principal or if you come into a department as a head of department, then you want to add value straight away and the tricky thing is sometimes in knowing how to engage your team, how to engage the community and how to pace the changes. So in the MESSY Leadership book we have a case study of an acting principal called Olivia and she came in and it was pretty obvious to her early on in looking around the school that there were some not so not being particularly well served, the processes developing their individual education plans were getting clogged up and so on. So she straight away wanted to fix things, even as an acting principal, and told everybody what to do and got clear on what was the direction she wanted to head.

Rosie: 10:22

And then a few months down the line, she was having a coaching session with her coach and she was in a really fragile state and the coach was asking her you know what's going on, olivia? And she said look, I knew really early on what needed to happen. And then nothing's happened. And I've suddenly had this realization where it makes me remember this quote from John Maxwell which says that if you're leading and no one's following, you're just taking a walk. And it was a great quote and really honest of her, and you can imagine feeling that, and and all of us have had an olivia moment, I think, where where we realize that we haven't quite got people on board.

Rosie: 11:11

So so what the book does in the meaning making chapter, it gives you some really practical strategies. But how do you, how do you bring people with you? How do you listen to their concerns, listen to their aspirations, bring curiosity into that conversation and model that yourselves, as well as encouraging that amongst your team, so you can get curious with data and insights rather than, rather than defensive and and and prickly. And how can you lift your sights beyond the, the day-to-day and really engage in conversations about what could be possible?

Drew: 11:53

Yeah, yeah, love that quote, Really enjoy that quote where I'm just out for a walk, really, but, as leaders who are listening can relate to those moments and that's what coaching is. And also reflecting upon leadership In the book. We'll move into the emotional connection and well-being, rosie, where in the book it emphasizes emotional connection as a crucial for building trust and strong working relationships. Rosie, what practical strategies can school leaders use to build deeper, more trusting relationships with their staff or handle conversations? That is demonstrated in this book.

Rosie: 12:38

So for us this emotional connection chapter is one of the most important chapters and it it really speaks to the human side of school leadership. It's all meditating the obvious, but schools are full of humans, aren't they? And that creates the mess. And it's also the joy about the job.

Drew: 13:00

An aid of being human is fantastic, but also that emotional connection is so important and how to extract that is emphasized throughout the book.

Rosie: 13:13

Completely, completely. So there's a lot of talk about building trust and how to go about that some very practical strategies, tools like See, hear, speak, which is about really helping the other person feel seen and heard and met at a human level before you engage in deep conversations about what needs to happen or change or whatever. But also what we find is that a lot of school leaders are really concerned to not rock the boat too much and to keep really positive working relationships with everybody at all times, and that can be incredibly difficult and sometimes impossible, because if you're trying to keep everybody happy, then then you end up not sticking to any one path. Sometimes there are compromises at the for the sake of keeping people happy rather than decisions made for the benefit of students. So so we we call this in in coaching lingo the the be nice, be nicer cycle, where everyone ends up at a superficial level, getting on with each other.

Rosie: 14:29

Maybe there are a lot of elephants in the room, maybe some poor performance has not been addressed, maybe some feedback conversations that haven't been held. So we talk about the uncommon sense of messy leadership. One of the uncommon senses is that actually it really helps to have those feedback conversations and even if they feel like difficult conversations, because that helps people to know where you're at, that there are no elephants in the room then, and you can model that by inviting feedback. As a leader, you can start by inviting feedback on yourself and normalizing this feedback culture, and then it feels less threatening if you're giving feedback to somebody else. But for us, the worst thing that you can do is avoid these difficult conversations. That doesn't create emotional connection, quite the opposite.

Drew: 15:28

Okay. So quite the opposite, rosie. That's interesting, interesting. So, as a leader, where the direction it's accepting mediocrity, so to speak, and it's that shift of what is the purpose here, what am I trying to achieve here as a leader? And in the book you emphasize some examples where a leader said finding the shift from a position into, and even if it is into, an acting role, how they found that really challenging, from being alongside with the executive to now I'm actually having to lead and make that shift and also addressing those things of confidentiality, which is so crucial in an example where the leader was aware of things coming out of the leadership team, out of the leadership team.

Drew: 16:25

But they really struggled with that, rosie, in terms of how that was leaked out, and addressing the elephant in the room was really hard for that particular leader in that example. They were really grappling with. Well, how can I tackle that issue of trust? I know there's some mistrust in my leadership team here. Clearly it's been breached and it's out within that. How can I bring that back as a leader? That was some beautiful examples in terms of how that leader came back in and spoke about their values, what their purpose was and frame that. But that's a conversation that cannot happen. Naturally, it happened through in the examples that happened through several sessions of coaching and understanding what their purpose was.

Rosie: 17:16

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, none of these are easy fixes and and it really does help to be engaged in several coaching sessions to really embrace some of these new strategies and try them out and learn from that.

Drew: 17:33

Yeah, the notion of trust. Isn't it Like? When trust is great, it's fantastic, it's that feeling everything is going really well. However, once that trust is broken, the question is, can that be brought back? And in the example there, the principal was able to bring that integrity back into the room and it was almost a sense of relief from a fellow executive saying a sense of relief from a fellow executive saying understand, and we're on your side here and it's great that you've addressed the elephant in the room and then it's following further with how to address that and build that rapport back. Yeah, really practical is what I found through that. Rosie Moving forward. Let's move into sensing the future as another key highlight in your book. How could school leaders think innovatively? They're always thinking innovatively and experiment to tackle the entrenched challenges through this approach.

Rosie: 18:46

So my co-author, melissa Gallagher, has actually written books on design thinking in schools, so there's obviously a body of literature and some very practical guides just on this topic. It's a big one, I think, in terms of freeing yourself up as a leader to start embracing this, sensing the future. There are a few things that are really important. So one is to have the courage to challenge the status quo, to to imagine that we could do differently or better, and and that takes a kind of helicopter, it takes some guts, it takes an attitude of not to settle for second best, I think. Then there's the need to be really curious and to provoke some really creative thinking around solutions on the back of data. So being curious about insights from different stakeholders and really provoking that inquiry is super helpful. We have various mechanisms to do that. In the book we talk about the Bop-It approach. Do you remember Bop-It? It was the kind of children's toy gadgets.

Drew: 20:10

I love that example. It was very clever and how that framework. Please explain to our listeners what that reference is.

Rosie: 20:20

It obviously dates me a little bit, so this must have been 1980s, 1990s. It's just this toy gadget thing that you had different levers and you could pull them and shrink them and turn them and twist them and revolve them and so on. So we have that analogy and it can help sometimes to free up that thinking. We have various provocative questions around. You know, if we're trying to solve this issue with unlimited budget, what would you do? Or with zero budget, how could you still approach it?

Rosie: 20:52

Sometimes in these processes you can use examples like if you were Tinkerbell, how would you solve this problem? So these are all just designed to free up and open up some creative thinking you can then ask questions about okay, so we've come up with some of these strategies. They look a little bit zany what would have to be true to make them work? And that wording, that phrase, what would have to be true can be really helpful. To stay on the positive, because it's so easy to knock down ideas, and often ideas they might be terrible, but there's a 10% of that idea which is a gem. So, asking those questions what would have to be true?

Rosie: 21:39

And then experimenting and prototyping. Sometimes we get so caught in the weeds that we never get out the other side. So it's really important to become action oriented and just give something a go in a small scale, maybe just with one class, maybe just for for 10 weeks, maybe do a learning sprint, um, and then, and then review and evaluate and persevere and then adapt and change and scale. So so those would be just some ideas around. How would you go about sensing the future and supporting your school leadership team or your teachers to do that?

Drew: 22:18

Yeah, I love the Boppet analogy example and also the thinking around budget, which is very a space at the moment that school leaders are grappling with in the New South Wales and more than likely Australian context, with governments having to cut back. Where you talked about well, what if you had an unlimited budget? What would actually change? It's changing that thinking Well, if you'd had no resources, could you still deliver the same outcome? And framing that makes people reflect and think about well, what is possible here? Could I do that and is that actually going to? If I did have an unlimited budget, would it be able to achieve the desired outcome that we would like be able to achieve the desired outcome that we would like? I'm moving to seizing momentum now for progress, which was another theme that came through. Seizing momentum is vital for progress, as you mentioned in your book. What advice do you have for school leaders to be more proactive and to effectively manage their time to embrace new ways of working?

Rosie: 23:31

Well, of course I'm careful to preach too much on this, because we all have Achilles' heels right.

Rosie: 23:39

We talk in the book about the three Ps, which sometimes is a helpful frame for some people when they're thinking about time management, frame for some people when they're thinking about time management. So the three Ps around prioritization, around proactivity, and then the P that's less helpful is procrastination, and probably all of us can relate to at least one of those as areas of strengths or areas of weakness. If you look at some of the ideas that Stephen Covey's put out about that, he's got this lovely analogy of imagine if you had a glass jar and you've got to fit in some big rocks and some small rocks and some tiny little pebbles. How would you go about doing that? And the obvious answer is well, you're going to start by putting in the big rocks, aren't you? Because then, after you've got the big rocks in, then you can put the little pebbles around and the little grits around, and they'll still fit in. And the analogy is about it's important to sometimes to tackle those big things.

Drew: 24:42

Our association is a big Covey comfort for our listeners would really be able to relate to that big rock analogy that you said. It's such a powerful tool and, for those who haven't seen the video, I highly recommend to YouTube that. It's a really classic example of, well, what are your priorities that you're putting in here?

Rosie: 25:06

So I know I'm guilty sometimes of having my to-do list and I like to tick off the easy things and I've got a colleague who I really admire and what he does is he starts the morning and looks at the biggest, trickiest job that he really doesn't want to do, but he knows it's important and he gets that one done first that he really doesn't want to do but he knows it's important and he gets that one done first. It's such a lesson for me I try my best to emulate. I'm not perfect on it. In terms of other strategies, there's some interesting work by Peter DeWitt, who's obviously famous in his work in EdWeek, and he's written a book recently about decluttering and recognizing the need to challenge what we're doing and how we're spending our time, rather than just piling on extra things to do and somehow try to be superhuman and managing it in extra hours afterwards Really questioning what meetings are we having and how regularly, and do I need to be involved in them? What do I do on a weekly basis that I could let go of and delegate, and so on. So this notion of decluttering is an interesting one.

Rosie: 26:21

We did a few bits of research for the book. One of them was a survey that we did in collaboration with APA, the Australian Primary Principles Association. We were surveying principals on how they spend their time. Amongst other things he asked folk to let us know what were the top three things that were taking up their time on a typical week. So just kind of quoting from the book here we have 73% of principals saying performing internal admin tasks is one of those top three that just take up a huge amount of time in the week. But if you compare that to, only 27% of principals said that raising the quality of teaching and learning was one of those three that were the top three time consumers in the week. So that's a bit sobering.

Drew: 27:15

Very much so, and I wouldn't say it's unsurprising. Were you surprised by that finding Rosie?

Rosie: 27:25

No, not at all, not at all, not at all. But it's people being honest and people doing the very best work that they can do. But it's so easy to get tied up in some of those little rocks.

Drew: 27:44

Yeah, and the book extracted the example of a principal grappling with that. How they could actually. They know that they would like, they know the impact of supporting their teachers and being in classrooms, but they needed a framework of how, how can I, what is my purpose in getting into the classroom and then what are the questions I'm going to ask? And through coaching, they were able to unpack that and work through that little tips, such as having their admin staff block out. This time in my calendar, it's a non-negotiable time I. This is the priority that I'm trying to achieve and, over as you go, said before it's. These things aren't instant fixes, but if they're done through habit formation and people watch, and then they could see. And then in that in the example of the book, there was not sure what time period it was. However, the end result was achieved. They were able to get into classrooms and the goal was to improve student learning outcomes and they were able to do that. But that didn't happen via accident.

Rosie: 29:02

No, I mean, that's the advantage of some of these people who are case-studded in the book. They've been accessing coaching and what that coaching has forced them to do in the best possible supportive way is to just slow down and stop for an hour and reflect on what feels most important, that they could do differently, and then, of course, agree how to enact that practically. So think through, in this case, how this school leader was going to go and visit classrooms and do some classroom observations and feedback and then, a month later, come back to your coach to just make sure that you find the time in the month to give it a go so you can reflect on how it went with your coach.

Drew: 30:00

That's the beauty of coaching you get these kind of monthly conversations conversations, that accountable moment of what you committed to previously and what were the actions that you did to help ensure that that accountability is tracked in what you've achieved. And as a result of that example, the whole school and teachers seem to buzz around the fact of the principal is in the classroom, they're supporting and so forth, and people listening going. That's a pipe dream, like I'm so busy. As you go back to the research, 73% quite frightening is in administration. Now, administration is very important. That's an important part of being in a principal, with budgets and timetables and so forth. But even that shift of, say, 5% or 10%, and shifting that 20%, 7% above that figure would be and the results would be amazing.

Drew: 31:04

So, yeah, I see so many advantages and practical examples that for people listening to our podcast suggest reading through those examples to get inspired by the how. Because it's the how, rosie, I think it's an easy fix to say in common conversation we're busy, everyone's busy, always busy. But what is productive? Busy and it goes back to well, what is the purpose? I'm going to shift, if we can, to presence and self-awareness. In the book, messy Leadership highlights the importance of developing your presence for effective leadership. How can school leaders develop greater self-awareness and confidence to overcome personal barriers and lead effectively, so to stop that imposter syndrome which is mentioned as well.

Rosie: 31:59

So the Y, in my point of view, is the most important of M-E-F-S-Y, m-e-c and it's so important that in our MESI programs we actually start with the Y. You'd imagine that in a MESI program you have five sessions on M-E-S-S-Y in coaching or workshops, but actually our MESI programs start with the Y because Y is all about you and your leadership and your confidence, self-awareness, your presence and and it's critical it's. It's been researched over and over again how, how pivotal educational leadership is in a school for the success of those, those students in the school. And what we find as coaches is that self-confidence is a really massive issue and that comes out in a coaching session, because coaching is confidential and it's not with a colleague down the road, it's not with your director of educational leadership, it's with an external, confidential coach where people can actually open up and talk about the truth. So we find that confidence is one of the very top issues that people seek coaching support on, as well as things like difficult conversations and engaging others and stretching and building others' capability and talent. So it's good.

Rosie: 33:28

First of all, it's probably encouraging for those reading the Messy Leadership book to realize that they're not possibly the only ones and that confidence hits education leaders at all levels, so from aspiring or emerging leaders right through new principals, experienced principles and directors of educational leadership Dells. This is a human trait. In the book we talk about mind traps being really critical. So being aware of what negative patterns of self-talk can catch you out we call those mind traps and what you can do to just soften those and get yourself out of a spiral of negative thinking. Maybe you've been triggered by something and you're in a less resourceful state. So we offer some practical tools that our coaches use, that you can also coach yourself through or you can coach colleagues through, to help you self-unhook from that negative spiral of thinking, unhook from the mind traps, and find a bit of a more balanced perspective.

Drew: 34:42

That self-doubt. It's a human trait. It doesn't matter what level people are at. It's a human trait of self-doubt and confidence can spiral down, but it can also spiral up as well, which is, again, part of being human. So, through the book, getting into the MindTrap, or through the mind trap framework, leaders can be coached through whatever mindset they're in and be coached into, let's hope a more positive framework that they could then achieve their goals and aspirations and values because, as I said, they were selected. Go back to what they have.

Drew: 35:31

Someone else has seen them as a leader. So those listening, going if you have that lack of confidence or experiencing that for whatever reason, remember they were chosen to be a leader and lead their school by whether it was a panel, by their director. Someone else saw leadership through them. So other peoples have seen that. So, yeah, some really good messages are coming through and really good frameworks, rosie as well, really practical. I'm going to move to. The book also emphasizes the need for school leaders to address equity and inclusion, which is so important. How can leaders actively work towards eliminating educational inequalities and ensuring equity access to resources for all students?

Rosie: 36:25

What I don't want to do is give a glib answer to this, because this is a deep and important question.

Rosie: 36:33

What I would say is that there are aspects of messy that really speak to this.

Rosie: 36:41

There's a need to build a really sensitive cultural awareness, and some of those tools around emotional connection can help to build those trusting relationships with different cultures in the community.

Rosie: 36:57

There's a need to know yourself, so the why in terms of self-awareness in your presence can help you be more aware of some of the unconscious biases that get in the way of you being an inclusive leader. Then there's a need to have that really strong sense of shared purpose, so what we would call the M the making meaning such that it's really clear in your school community the focus on students and what you're trying to achieve. I remember I was talking to a superintendent in Canada, so a superintendent like an education director responsible for a network of schools, and we're talking about how does he cope with some very tricky politics in the community and how does he make decisions in that context, and he was explaining how. What's really important is to always be been really clear that I've made it in the interests of students, not of particular individual teachers maybe, who have a strong voice or whatever, but it's been made front and center, really clearly in the interests of students and, as of all students, in terms of inclusion.

Drew: 38:32

It goes back to the core values of why. What is your why and what is the decision that you have made as a leader and through understanding your why quoting Sinek, here, simon Sinek is, if you know your why, sinek, here, simon Sinek is, if you know your why you can justify how you have, in this case, you'd utilize your equity funds or spend. Equity is such an interesting yet complex area to explore. Let's move to coaching and mentoring now One of your passions, and I'm really hooked in the coaching space and seeing the impact it has. Coaching and mentoring is highlighted in your book as significant for leadership development, and we've discussed this before, rosie. But what role does coaching and mentoring play in developing effective school leaders and how can schools implement these practices?

Rosie: 39:34

So the first thing I'd say is that coaching and mentoring are often put together, but they're actually really different, they're really distinct and maybe in the education sector that's less understood that distinction. In the education sector, that's less understood that distinction. So mentoring really is there for somebody new coming into a role to be supported by someone more experienced principals, principal mentors who can share their experience, share some expertise, be there for moral support. Now, that's really important, particularly when you're new into a role. But that is different from professional leadership coaching. So people don't realize that coaching is a profession and our coaches have been full-time coaches for a decade or more and that means that they're skilled and trained up and accredited in being able to build your leadership capability, give you some really practical strategies that will help you to address immediate problems but will also build up your leadership practice, widen your toolkit for the future.

Rosie: 40:56

The other differences between coaches and mentors is that mentors tend to be within the system and and that gives them really good understanding of context. But the disadvantage is that you don't want to pull on too much of their time because they're also often busy. They may be leading schools themselves and it's difficult to feel like you're having a totally confidential conversation. If you're talking to somebody who's running the school down the road, you know it's a small system and eventually you'll be looking for promotion somewhere they may be on the interview panel. So it is difficult to be truly vulnerable and to talk about some of these issues around confidence, for example, that we were raising later. That come up again and again in coaching conversations, which maybe haven't come up previously in your career because you've been just a little bit more guarded in what you want to share.

Drew: 41:56

Yeah, absolutely. The confidentiality is such a key component to the piece and also the fact that it's coming from external. You said coming internal could deliver results, such as a mentoring process, but there's also the balance that they're also running schools or they're busy people doing other particular tasks in leadership, so to speak, in the system where, through BTS Spark is their external, they're very experienced, their confidentiality and it also gives that level of accountability that no one else needs to know, which is such an advantage that's coming through clearly.

Rosie: 42:46

Yeah, so your coach is just there, just for you. It's the ultimate in personalized learning and support.

Drew: 42:54

We're moving now to balancing instructional and transformational leadership. That is a mouthful there in itself. Can we just unpack the difference between instructional and transformational leadership? First, Rosie.

Rosie: 43:10

So I believe this is a real false dichotomy because nobody would argue that as a school leader or as a school principal, your role is to raise the quality of teaching and learning and ensure that your children have the best possible experience. So of course that's front and center, top priority. Nobody would debate that and typically that's called instructional leadership. So leading for that, that's instructional leadership. Maybe People kind of typify transformational leadership as, oh, it's about creating a vision and engaging people in that. So that's the human side of leadership and people maybe call that transformational leadership. But you can't have one without the other.

Rosie: 44:04

Sometimes systems have tried to do this by having a relentless focus, say, on improving student attainment in literacy and numeracy.

Rosie: 44:13

So all professional development's just focused on that and very quickly they've realized that you can't achieve that without also helping to build people's capability in working with colleagues and coaching others to adopt new literacy and numeracy strategies. So if you've got any kind of change agenda to improve, then you need to factor in the need to get people on board. They're making meaning and have shared purpose, to engage them and help them, to support them through that and give them feedback on how they're doing. So inevitably you've got all the human sides of the transformational leadership. In the book there's a preface by Patsy Sauberg and he speaks to this and he says there's never been a greater need for creating a shared vision for school improvement than after the pandemic. So this isn't something that was a phase and isn't needed anymore. So we would argue that you need instructional leaders who are great at driving change and bringing people with them in their community, and therefore they need to have transformational leadership and human leadership qualities too.

Drew: 45:32

Yeah, yeah, absolutely Well said in unpacking those two frameworks there, Rosie. They do go hand in hand. So how can school leaders balance these demands and create lasting change?

Rosie: 45:50

and create lasting change. Well, I think this speaks to the need to create that shared vision, so the making meaning, and then be bold enough to have those possibly courageous conversations to really ensure that people are held to account, that everyone's continuously improving their practice and therefore teaching and learning in the school can continue to improve. It speaks to the need to be innovative what we were talking about in terms of the S, the sense in the future and be proactive, which is the seizing momentum, and be able to lead all of that, which is the why. So we've got a framework that does speak to that need and gives you some real practical tools to balance the instructional leadership and the transformational leadership in a sensible number of hours in the day.

Drew: 46:51

Yeah, yeah, absolutely Well said. Look, it's getting so many fantastic reviews. It's well regarded within, well researched, clearly evidence-based For listeners. Considering messy leadership, obviously the author, he is speaking. Where would you guide them through? There's references on the website. Was there any particular starting point that you would say for educational leaders really hooked on this messy leadership concept? Where would you point them towards? Rosie?

Rosie: 47:32

So if listeners are keen and a bit inspired and curious to find out more, then I would really encourage them to pursue that, pursue that interest and invest in themselves. That could be as simple as googling bts spark, messy leadership and and looking at the web page, which has got lots of ideas around how to implement messy leadership. On on the web page you've got links to amazon where you can obviously buy a copy of the book. I'll probably get a cent or two from that. Might be buy me a cup of tea eventually, but what's important there is that what we're trying to do is obviously share these strategies On the websites.

Rosie: 48:18

On the Messy Leadership BTS Spark webpage there's also a toolkit. You can download that for free Because BTS Spark is a not-for-profit. We're just interested in getting some of those ideas out there and practically used in everyday conversations and become more confident, more capable leaders for their school communities. Then I would encourage them to think seriously about accessing some support. That can be through one-on-one coaching, a program or working with school leadership teams through a workshop series or group coaching program. You'll see on the BTS Bar, our Messy Leadership page at the bottom. There are several Messy Leadership programs there and available at not-for-profit prices. Just you can see from the book we've got lots of examples of leaders benefiting from working with a professional leadership coach, and your listeners could be those people too, who have the support they need to grow their leadership practice.

Drew: 49:33

Yeah, yeah, well said, rosie. Really practical and really current research relevant to the post-pandemic world that we are working through and the ethos of non-profit but practical tools that people could explore. Going to BTS Spark, looking at the frameworks, picking up the book, listing and taking away. There are so many practical takeaways in the book that our listeners I'd encourage you to listen to and also really consider coaching in terms of the impact and the research. Going back to the four greatest coaching conversations, where we started our discussion point is it does have impact coaching and how that works through and it's not, as we said in our previous podcast, all light and fluffy. It's based on over 20 000 conversations and a framework and the confidentiality part through our discussion today is really comes through. For me and also, hopefully, our listeners, in terms of that is so, so crucial in terms of sharing what is your struggles and what. How would you like to achieve that? So, rosie Connor, always a pleasure. Thank you for your time.

Rosie: 50:55

Thanks, Drew.