Having taken on more line management duties this year I have been thinking about the quality of the line management meetings and how they serve to develop leaders. Our approach to leadership at Bristol Brunel strives for Leader – Leader relationships (David Marquet) and, as such, relies on the person being line managed to use language such as “I intend to …. Because…” rather than “ Can I do….”. A link to David Marquet’s TED talk “How Great Leaders Serve Others” is below:

The GROW model has been used successfully to improve colleagues teaching through coaching, our Assistant Principal Gemma Williams spent some time telling me about how the coaching model she used works. A summary is below:

I found this list of simple questions to be particularly useful during coaching sessions:

Goal

What do you want to achieve?

What is important to you right now?

What areas do you want to work on?

Describe your preferred future for this area.

What do you want to achieve as a result?

Reality

Where are you now in relation to your goal?

On a scale of 1 -10 where are you?

What progress have you made so far?

What is working well right now?

Options

What are your options?

How have you tacked this/ a similar situation before?

What could you do differently?

Who do you know who has encountered a similar situation?

Give me 5 options

If anything was possible what would you do?

What else?

Will

Which options work best for you?

What actions will you take?

When are you going to start?

Who will help you?

How will you know you have been successful?

It is early days yet in terms of me using this model in Line Management meetings, however, I believe strongly that this will provide my colleagues with a few key outcomes:

–          A clarity of thought process for both of us when discussing challenges, building capacity to solve problems and move to action.

–          Reducing my automatic response to try and solve problems for people.

–          Explore more rigorously together all possible options before moving to action.

–          A commitment to clear actions based on an analysis of the most appropriate solution.

–          Ownership of the change and improvement journey.

I look forward to seeing and feeling the impact of this approach to line management meetings.

Jon Jones

@jonericjones

Vice Principal

#neverstoplearning

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