Positively Leading

S1E13 - Leadership Complexities of a Learning Support Coordinator with Jude McIntyre

• Jenny Cole • Season 1 • Episode 13

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In this podcast, we'll be exploring leadership challenges with our guest Judith McIntyre. Jude transitioned from  teacher and middle leader in a primary context to a high school Learning Support Coordinator. In this episode she shares her experiences of trying to juggle the demands of managing a team of Education Assistants, planning for students with a wide variety of needs and the demands of a huge campus.

We discuss how Jude initially struggled in her role and eventually reached out to her line manager for coaching and mentoring support.  

We talk about how coaching and mentoring enabled her to lead a disparate group of Education Assistants from "challenging" into a well functioning team who put the needs of students first.  

Witnessing Jude's professional growth and confidence has been amazing which is why I was so thrilled to have her as my guest.


Did you know there is more? You can access every episode, show notes, links and more via my website Positively Beaming.

Jenny Cole:

Hello and welcome to Positively Leading the Podcast. I'm Jenny, I'm your host and I'm here today with Judith McIntyre, who we're going to call Jude for the purposes of this podcast. Jude's currently working in a public high school in Perth in Western Australia as a learning support coordinator, after years of early childhood, primary and education support teaching. During the course of her career, jude has worked in the country and overseas, where she earned an Ofsted grade of excellent in two learning areas, and she's been nominated on three separate occasions for the National Excellence in Teaching Awards and has made a state finalist. But when Jude is not working, she is camping in her 1976 pink caravan, which I am yet to see. She's water painting, knitting and drinking Prosecco. It's so lovely to have you here, Jude.

Jude McIntyre:

Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here. I sound so much better in that intro than I actually am in real life, so let's just go with that.

Jenny Cole:

Yeah, we'll go with it, but I don't believe it. So, Jude, you're a learning support coordinator for those people who aren't in Western Australia, or for perhaps even those who are. Can you explain what that role entails in a high school for you?

Jude McIntyre:

So largely it's kind of a paperwork support role. So in the sense my job is that I'm basically in control of all of the individual education plans for the college. So we have about 205 students that are diagnosed with a variety of things physical, mental health, autism spectrum disorder, adhd, anxiety lots and lots of kids with different diagnosis and I write, I meet with them, I read all of their diagnostic reports, I meet with their parents, I create the IEP for them that I then distribute to the teachers and I work really closely with the teachers on supporting those children with their particular learning needs. I apply for departmental funding to support them if they are entitled to it. I help with setting up examinations and putting the accommodations in place so that if they need a quiet room or perhaps if they need electronic devices because of visual problems, I organise all of that. I also manage and lead a team of 12 or up to 12 EAs, which has probably been the most challenging part of this role.

Jude McIntyre:

In the past I've had opportunities as a deputy and as a lead teacher to provide support to colleagues, to teaching colleagues, and I think probably that was a little bit easier in the sense that you know you walk the same walk and you talk the same talk and you can provide lots of role modelling. They can come into your classroom and you can go into theirs and you can plan together, whereas the EA role, particularly being a high school because I'd spent so long in, you know, kindy to six, it's quite a different model. So our EAs here work across subject areas that they've built confidence in, so we try not to pin them down to one child. We're trying to increase the children's independence. So that's my role. I do a lot of collaboration with the associate principals, the principal, the program coordinators, which are like deputies of year groups. A lot of talking, a lot of phone calls, a lot of emails a totally different skill set and I didn't think I was ready to come out of the classroom, but this has been. This has refreshed my love for education.

Jenny Cole:

Oh, that's so lovely to hear. You've sort of touched on a whole lot of things that I'm going to draw a bit more out of you. This is even though you've had some leadership roles, deputies, positions, leading a team of education assistants has threw up some challenges, and that's a really polite way of putting it, jenny.

Jenny Cole:

And you went to your line manager and your principal and said help me here, um, which is how we ended up meeting each other. But do you want to just go back a few steps and and talk through what some of those challenges were, when you thought I thought I knew what I was doing with kids with special needs? And now I've got this group of um teacher aides, education assistants and I'm struggling. Talk us through that where to begin.

Jude McIntyre:

So because the timetabling in a high school is I mean, there's 1,400 students here, the timetabling is enormous and the college has decided that the disability resourcing time is attached to the students. So I get all of their timetables, I get all of the. You know, I have a big matrix and I work out for the week where people are going to go and because they're in subject areas it is fraught. There's no, and if someone could please invent it that'd be great. Program or offshoot to sector or CIS where I can automatically program students in EAs and usually there's some complexity with that anyway. So some of the problems with that was the physical fitness of some of the EAs. We're the largest high school campus in the state and we're set on a hill and that's quarter of a kilometre from my office to the top of the hill so you can really get your steps up whether you want to or not, and usually it will be the furthest classroom away from you that you will have to get to. So just the vastness of the site, the physical capability, also the learning area preferences, so having a whole bunch that were particularly good in science and not enough to cover HASS or people that didn't feel confident in HASS an ageing population of EAs as well, um, so there was quite a lot of that dynamic was quite difficult. Also, they had not had any management for a while, so the two people prior to me in the role only had 0.6 and they had teaching loads, um, and then I was given at 0.8 so I had more time. Initially it was full-time the first term here and I'm full-time again, so managing the EAs probably took a lot more energy and time than what I had anticipated, and they had been, because people were time poor and then there was a gap where there was no LSC and they were managing themselves. They were having a really lovely time. So they were going to art and they were with kids they liked and they were swapping, and if the kid wasn't there, they would go back to the EA office and have a cup of tea, you know. So there was a lot of things where things had just become very easy, where things had just become very easy, and I had said to them at the beginning the words that I later on ate was that I would never have a problem with them if they were putting the students first. But actually there were a lot more things that we're doing that I had a problem with, and so I needed to add and make that a list rather than just a declaration. So even just the way they were moving around classrooms and providing assistance.

Jude McIntyre:

So, coming from a primary perspective, your EAs always, regardless of you know who they are, what their skill set is. They're hands on, whether they want to be or not, because children will approach them and insist on help, whereas teenagers are a very different kettle of fish and a lot of them don't want to be othered. They don't want to be seen as having help. They don't want to be seen as having help. So there were a few of the EAs that had gotten into the habit of parking themselves at the back of a classroom with their laptop, facing away from the students and not sort of helping at all. The instruction was that if they didn't want to work with the one-on-one the child was a bit resistant they could spread their love around the room, but that wasn't happening. People weren't getting to classes on time.

Jude McIntyre:

It just really needed new direction and tightening up and it needed to be brought in line with what EAs were doing in the department. So we had blow-ups. We had people shouting at each other. We had tantrums in the EA office, we had factions people getting shirty because they thought their timetable wasn't as good as other people's. There were people that really couldn't do the role anymore and that other people had avoided having difficult conversations with and, as a people pleaser and well-known coward, I was not really relishing the thought of stepping into that role, and it got to the point where, you know, it was like pistols.

Jude McIntyre:

At dawn there was always someone at my door, they were dobbing on each other and I started to have fortnightly meetings and I put meeting norms in place and we're working on a document about what we thought being an EA at our school looked like. But it was just falling apart at the seams and I didn't want to deal with them. The less attention I paid them, the worse they got. I knew I had to do something. I went to my principal and my line manager and I said I don't have the skillset I need for this. Six-year-olds are much easier to bribe because you can always call their parents. So I said I need a mentor. I need someone that can help me. I don't know what I'm doing. I'd started to lose confidence because it just seemed to like snowball. And so my boss said, you know what? You could get in touch with Jenny Cole. She's pretty good at these things and honestly, that day I Googled Jenny, I got in touch straight away. We had a phone call conversation. I went and groveled for the finances and fortunately the Minister for Education had been out that day and we had hit it off and had a great conversation. So my line managers were in a position to really say yes to me and so I made sure that all the finances to get some of that lead.

Jude McIntyre:

You know that mentoring from Jenny was in place and I feel like it was just the moments of clarity in Jenny's assistance. Like I had said I need to spend. I knew I needed to spend more time with them and I was like I'm going to spend an hour a week with each of them. And then Jenny was like, well, how are you going to do job? And I was like, okay, maybe an hour is too's too much. Half an hour, I'll do 20 minutes a zone, I'll get three. And then so Jenny came up with this solution of walkthroughs and how I could avoid, you know, the sort of personal conversations. Oh, can I have a minute with you, jude. Oh yeah, come and see me at recess.

Jude McIntyre:

So all of those skills that Jenny had picked up in the role she passed on, all those absolute nuggets of gold, and the minute I started applying them and just having a bit more clarity about how my support was going to look, things started to improve. Also, like the elephants in the room were addressed, we had a particular member of staff who really had stopped being able to do her job, which was very sad because I believe that of a time that she was excellent, but because of health and aging operations, different things that had happened I was getting to the point where I timetabling her as well was becoming very difficult and in a conversation I had just, in passing, mentioned her name to Jenny and Jenny was like let's circle back to that or something along those lines. And so we unpacked, basically, that there was a person within that team who was ineffective with the kids, who was no longer able to provide our students the support that they needed and what I needed to do to tackle that needed and what I needed to do to tackle that. And that was a real learning curve because, again, people pleaser I don't like upsetting people. I felt like I worked hard at being everyone's favourite teacher and it was very difficult not to be everyone's favourite LSC. And so I spoke to Jenny. I got advice. I rang employee support. I spoke to my line managers and we referred that member to the occupational physician with the department. They then protested, they didn't agree and got the union involved and there was all sorts of argy-bargy. But finally we had a session each at the district office with the crow and all the other boss people and they backed my decision to refer her.

Jude McIntyre:

Now, in hindsight, one of the things I didn't do as well but Jenny has again given me lots of great advice on this is the follow-ups to little conversations. So I'd had lots of anecdotal conversations where teachers would say can you not timetable that person in my room? They refuse to work with groups. Can you not put that person in my room because they said they don't know how to do the maths kids? Can you not put me with her? She just grouches at me all the time. I feel like I'm in trouble. So I'd had all of these anecdotal conversations but I had not emailed a confirmation. So my paper trail. It was great.

Jude McIntyre:

As far as getting her medical certificates.

Jude McIntyre:

It was great as far as my meeting minutes went, but when it came to having the backup with students, teachers, other EAs who had had had a lot to say about her, I hadn't then emailed and said, just to follow on from our conversation is this what you mean? And then having conversations with that person and saying I'm just wondering what's going on in such and such a classroom that you're not prepared to take a group or that you don't have the confidence? Can we, can we get you some PD, or is there something that you're struggling with? Can I help with that that? So that was like a, I guess, just a kind of not knowing the system and not having done this before. So those are the sorts of things I've tightened right up on so I don't have incidental conversations as such anymore.

Jude McIntyre:

When it's about something important like timetabling, taking leave, things like that, I will CC them back just to capture what we were talking about today. Blah, blah, blah. I'm CCing in the MCS so that she can follow up for you, or I'm CCing in such and such because I need their guidance on this or we need their approval, or whatever. So those are the sorts of skills because I had a little paper book. I was writing it all in, and that's no good to anybody, apparently, because I wasn't addressing it.

Jenny Cole:

I'm just going to interrupt you there, because it was a very complicated and complex situation that you found yourself in Good people who'd just been unmanaged for a long time and had been getting away with murder, and then you're the person trying to rein them in. So you're the person they push against, plus somebody who, as you said, was obviously once very good but for a variety of reasons, was no longer coping. And I actually think that and I've said this to you before you had some really good processes in place but you weren't seeing. It's a bit like having badly behaved children in your class. You don't see the progress as quickly as you do with a class that's probably more on task.

Jenny Cole:

However, you had 99.9% of it, but I think when we first met, you got to that point where you were sort of overwhelmed and it seemed like the thing that you could change straight away was that need to be a people pleaser. That's something that you've said a couple of times. I was such a people pleaser and when you're trying to please everyone, you please nobody. Do you still consider yourself a people pleaser?

Jude McIntyre:

No, and I'm actually really unapologetic about it. I think I'm finding my power and I've carried it home too. So people there aren't happy either. No, I actually would think my first priority always will and always has been the children and what's in the best thing for the kids. But secondly, within the department's framework, there are policies and frameworks and procedures that you can fall back on as a leader and you can say you know this isn't happening, this is the expectation of the department.

Jude McIntyre:

But I actually needed you to talk to. I needed my time with Jenny to get my thoughts in a line because at the time I was so overwhelmed and I was like the sky is falling and I didn't know. It was so vast, I didn't know where to start or how to tackle it and everyone here was incredibly busy. You know everyone in their job is is rushed off their feet and while they had great advice, I just really needed that time to unpack what I needed to do and just talking about it helped me prioritize. Oh, that's the bigger problem, that's what I need to address, and having that person who is non-judgmental I mean, jenny, you know a little bit about our site, you've been out here prior, but not enough that you know you can like, oh, she's a total twat, let's not, you know. But you knew enough about the players that you could say this is an option for you or it's been a problem for a while, and also just that step back. So you know like people would be like such and such, and it's great.

Jude McIntyre:

She came on camp with us in 2015 and she saved the day and blah, blah, blah, and so everyone had their sort of relationships riding on it. So I really needed that objective. This is what needs to happen. This is where to start, and even just having that those hours with you that clarified my thoughts and helped me get back on track, because the week can get away from you and situations can get away from you and things can escalate so quickly and I think the size you know, going from a primary to high school, the size here of the site can really it's like trying to turn the titanic sometimes, but also it's like a tidal wave. You know you're drifting off into the ocean before you've even realized the wave hit you. So having that time to clarify what was going on, get my ideas together and have a forward plan and not burn myself out with what I thought were solutions that really weren't practical. I was just knowing I needed to throw something at it, so I just threw something at it.

Jenny Cole:

What are some of the practical things that you've tried, particularly around time or task management? Talked a little bit about people management, but what are some of the practical small steps that you've taken to manage your time? So?

Jude McIntyre:

one of the things I loved was that I didn't have to have an open door policy, because I thought all good leaders had an open door policy. But what actually had happened there was the dobbing and the running to my door and that my time was not as precious. So I started to close my door and I emailed all of the EAs and I said to them I'm really busy at the moment. I've got a whole bunch of new IEPs to write. This is happening. That's happening. If you need to see me desperately, please make an appointment or see me during your break times, otherwise I'll see you during walkthroughs, which was the other absolute gem. So the knocking on my door stopped. There was a few that tried and I said to them I just reiterated can you make an appointment? I'm so sorry I don't have time for this chat today. Please make the appointment. And what it did was help them see that really they weren't coming to me for anything they needed expert advice on. They were just kind of dobbing and a bit of stirring and stuff going on.

Jude McIntyre:

The second thing the walkthroughs were great because I'd pick a zone and I would put you know a list of five EAs that I wanted to see within that hour and quite often they're sort of in blocks together because of the way timetabling runs, and I would just breeze in, say hello, check out who the kids were in the room and you I think you said it was, um, I can't remember exactly, but it was like taking the temperature or getting the feel for who was doing what, and so what I actually realized from that those little bursts where they don't know I'm coming, but I sort of walk through, pop in, was I noticed who our EAs were that were modifying the work for the kids, who were working one-on-one or in groups with students who was in the room, because sometimes they weren't there, and that was a little bit of a surprise to me. The ones that the teachers valued, that the teachers would say you know such and such and I are going to walk the room and we're going to see blah, blah, blah the ones that were part of the team and then the ones that were just absenting themselves through popping off to the toilet in the middle of the lesson, taking 25 minutes to get from house down to the bathroom and back. So that was a brilliant strategy. It's done in a zone.

Jude McIntyre:

I've got evidence on five staff. I've done observations of kids briefly, as I've gone through that, I can, you know, go back and revisit my IP or send a sector message to a parent and say this is working so well. I'm so proud of blah. I saw him today and he completed all his tasks so it gave me so much information. I love a walkthrough and I that was one of the the big takeaways.

Jenny Cole:

I loved what else there would have been a spin-off too that the teachers saw you and saw that you were caring about the kids and their teaching and, and you know, did the teachers check in with you. Now a bit more absolutely I had been.

Jude McIntyre:

I had been wandering into the learning areas when they had their. You know, there's a chunk in a high school I didn't know this because I wasn't high school but usually there's an afternoon or a morning in the week where most of the staff are in the office, or they have a morning tea a particular day in their faculty office, so I had been popping in and ingratiating myself on, you know, mars Bar, monday or whatever. So what actually happened, though, was it was a good memory jogger, so I would walk into these classrooms to do walkthroughs and I would get chewed. Why are you here? I just wanted you to ask about such and such, because they're really disengaged, they're refusing to do their work, blah, blah, blah, and so I could give quick on the spot advice. Or I could say let's make a time. When's your dot time? When do you want to get together? I won't take your whole dot time, because no teacher ever wants to lose their whole dot time. So I'd say let's do 15 minutes fast and furious, let's go through your kids' IEPs in this classroom and let's find all the commonalities so that you can reduce your strategies and you can work on more targeted practice. So that was really good.

Jude McIntyre:

Also, the kids. So I don't think the kids have worked out what I do. So one of them it was actually really funny. One of them I was walking through a classroom doing walkthrough and he said, hey, miss, what is it you actually do here? And I said, well, I'm kind of like the Grand Banshee. I kind of know everything that's going on, like, for instance, I know that you've taken up parkour on a Tuesday afternoon, which blew his little tiny mind and um because I also put their special interests on their IEP. So it was, I was really cheating. So the kids actually saw me around a bit more, which was good too, because I had felt that was something I had missed. I was, I felt, a bit disconnected from the kids, so that was good. I got to know some of the nice children, not just the ones that are always down the student services or kids with plans.

Jenny Cole:

And it's so nice because, I mean, it's obvious to everybody, you're a real people person, but a lot of your role is around you know forms and numbers and IEPs and funding and all of those sorts of things. Getting out into classrooms must be, it must feel really good, and you said to me once um, I want a lot of juice for my squeeze. Can you tell me what that means in terms of being a teacher or an education assistant, particularly when we're working with kids who struggle with literacy and numeracy?

Jude McIntyre:

so one of the things I've always been really passionate about I had a level three mental teacher when I was on ATP a million years ago back in 1999. And one of the things he said was we've only got them for six hours a day and if you take out dot and you take out lunch times, we barely have them. So every minute has to count and it really stayed with me. So I like to get a lot of juice when I am here. I don't want to sit and chat. Well, I do want to sit and chat with my colleagues because I'm that kind of a girl, but when I'm here, if I'm in a classroom, every minute counts. It is planned to the minute. I'm a little bit of a control freak. That might come through in this conversation as well. I want to make a difference to them and I want to have the highest impact I can while I have them, and I realise that time is short. For instance, this year I've got a class and it's an intensive reading Instead of going to Japanese. I've got a group of 12 kids with dyslexia. They're all my kids. They've all got IEPs. So I want to make every minute of that hour I have with them count. I want every minute I have with the EAs to count. I want what I say to be taken on board. I want them when they're in a classroom, not sitting at the back checking their email. I want to see them helping our kids. These are kids that are already behind the eight ball. I said to the kids the other day. I said to them you know reading's, weightlifting it. It's really hard work. You're trying to lift the bar over your head. The difficulty is because you're dyslexia or you have a reading issue. Someone's greased your bar, so getting it over your head is harder for you than it is for anyone else. So to make it easier, I'm going to pre-teach you your vocab for science and HASS and all those other areas, and I feel like that about everybody here. Like one of the Scottish parents, one of the biggest compliments you can get in our house is you're a grafter, that you work damn hard, and so I think that's what I want.

Jude McIntyre:

I want as much juice. I don't want to be giving it a tiny wee squeeze and get a trickle. I want all the pressure on that lemon. I want to get as much juice as I can. Every minute of their learning time counts. We have them for such a short time. I think about my own children as well and the times you know, they've come home from school we got to watch a video and we got to do this and you know it's maybe been week seven and I'm like my teacher, how I'm like starting to twitch a little bit like why aren't you still in the core of what you should be doing? Like I expect a lot of myself in my time here and I guess I expect a lot of that of my students as well as the EAs and my colleagues. Is, you know, like when you're in my room, it's a privilege to get this much juice, so drink up.

Jenny Cole:

I love it and I know that one of the things that you've been doing with your EA team is setting those norms and expectations, and then you've collaboratively developed a document about what it means to be an education assistant in, you know, in your school, and, and that's about raising expectations and also making it clear that what people are doing is that having an impact? Yet yes, 100, 100%.

Jude McIntyre:

So it was really good because we had a couple of new EAs that came in and they came from schools that ran a tight ship. They had really clear expectations. They were managed, observed, rewarded you know, not rewarded. They were told when they were doing a great job. There were clear expectations and there was none of that. Here.

Jude McIntyre:

People were kind of making things up and I felt like you know, sometimes if you're a gardener to the tomatoes, you need to put the stake there for them to grip on to so they know the right way. They don't just flop onto the ground, let the ants eat the tomatoes. So I feel like that document has given everyone a level playing field. Here are the expectations of your role. This is what we want from you as far as communicating with each other. You will not shout at each other or you will come and have a conversation with me about the code of conduct. You will treat everyone with respect and kindness, whether you like them or not, because this is a place of business. So really clarifying that.

Jude McIntyre:

Also, we had some very experienced EAs that had been here a long time that felt they were in like managerial positions and just bringing them back to no, I am, this is, this is our document, this is what guides us. And if you fall foul of that, then you speak to me. Um, which is really difficult for me because, like I said, those conversations I resent having to have them. I feel like why can't you just do your job, you know? But the whole process of writing that, where they wrote it together, was great. They came up with the ideas and we started to interrogate those. We had you out, jenny, which was really useful because you did that whole triangle of what was it? The?

Jenny Cole:

drama triangle.

Jude McIntyre:

Yeah, I'm going to take you home and get you to do that with my girls. So the drama triangle and, above and below the line, just being really clear about what is a business-like conversation, what isn't. And you were worth your weight in gold in those conversations. Because we have a couple that just kept questioning it and will come and say to me I think it's belittling that we've created a document called how we EA at such and such a school and I, after your advice, I said what about? It is belittling Because it's all come from your colleagues and yourself. What don't you like, what can't you do on here, what don't you agree with?

Jude McIntyre:

And then there was a lot of sort of bluster because it was all really reasonable beyond time to class, collaborate with colleagues on the same students, talk to the teacher, greet the children positively, greet staff positively. You know it was nothing on. There was above and beyond, nothing was asking extra of them. I wasn't saying go home and plan an extra unit for this kid, or there was nothing like that. It was it. It wasn't about workload, probably. It was about the way we work and the way we interact with each other yeah and it gives you that.

Jude McIntyre:

And your advice again, which I loved, was that when you start doing those walkthroughs, follow up with a bit of an email and say I love that. I saw you doing our how we EA. Blah, blah, blah, blah. You did this and you did that. And really coming back to that document and having that as our guiding principles, which was really useful, I feel like that's tightened up a lot of the behavior. And certainly the ones that were willing to change did it straight away. They took a lot of ownership of that. But again, it was those change management speed bump people that were the trickier ones to get around. But because everyone talks about it now, it's harder to ignore.

Jenny Cole:

Yes, and I love the fact that you turned it into a way that we are successful.

Jenny Cole:

We are successful here if we do X, y and Z and then reward and recognize people who are doing what it says, rather than this is a big stick and we're going to hit you with it if you're late to class or if you're this or if you're that, so it's because people want to know how do I belong, how do I, how am I successful, how do I fit in here, even a team that's been together for a long time because, as you said, they've just they just became a bit maverick. But I particularly like your analogy about the steak and the tomato. You know, you can grow a perfectly good tomato, but it's much better if you steak it, but then everyone's growing in the same direction and producing good fruit. Fabulous analogy, for sure.

Jude McIntyre:

Just quickly, if you had your time again, or if you had to give some advice to someone who was new in a leadership role, anything that you would tell them to do, well, I'm going to sound like you're paying me, but I'd say, get a hold of a great mentor like Jenny Cole, because I feel like you know, like I had lots of those. Why didn't I do this months ago? Or, wow, this is so polished. And if we'd done this right from the start of the year? And had I known so? I've always been a quick learner and I think I just jumped into the job and so, because I didn't have this sort of skill set, sort of found myself floundering and I wish I'd called earlier, like I wish I'd said I need a mentor earlier. Even just going through the process it's like the referral to the OCF is listening to the leaders and what they had to say about it. When we do this process, we do it really gently. When we do this, we apologise because we know it's going to feel bad and blah, blah, blah and it's going to be hard to hear and listen to. All the leaders take away their gems. But I think if you can't have a Jenny Cole, dedicate an hour, try and get your line manager on board, make it part of your performance management, be insistent about it and have that time where you really clarify what you need to do and you unpick the problems and don't drown.

Jude McIntyre:

Because I felt like I was really drowning and I'd I'd come out and I'd kind of, you know, I'd find one of my really good colleagues and I'd be like those bloody EAs are at it again and he would say, oh, they're the worst. No one wants to. You know, we'd console each other but then it wasn't solutions based, made me feel good for about three minutes and then I still had to deal with the problem. So I think, carve out that time. You deserve a mentor, you deserve to learn to be a better leader, and a better leader isn't always someone that everybody likes. But what I can feel when I go home is that if the department were to have a chat with me, if someone from the department said, tell me about your job and what you've been doing, I could genuinely say to them I do the parts of my job that I love and the parts that I don't love to the best of my ability. So I think probably there's job satisfaction in that. There's a lot of satisfaction in doing things the right way.

Jenny Cole:

Well, you should be very satisfied. It's an enormous job, and managing people and processes because that's you know, two big parts of your job is really complex, and I always admired you one for your openness and honesty.

Jenny Cole:

And your willingness to improve and to grow, and that's exactly what this podcast is all about. So, jude, thank you very much for joining us today on Positively Leading. If there's anything that Jude has said in the podcast episode that needs a link to it, I will put it in the show notes. If there's something in this episode that you really loved, please make sure that you rate and review and follow us so that you can hear us again next week.