#LeadLAP Post 3 - Rapport

Earning Trust as a Leader
"As a leader, every action you take (or don't take), every interaction you have, every decision you make or leave unmade, every expression on your face, the tone in your voice, or the body language you convey - everything about you - either earns or erodes trust".

When I read this quote - I almost feel the pressure! That is because it is so true - in our leadership roles every interaction matters.

I wrote a post entitled Serendipity - Every Interaction Matters  earlier this year. Rather than rewrite this - I have linked it above.

How do I earn that much needed trust from our staff and school community? 

I try to remember that every interaction matters and I try to make every interaction matter.

How do you earn that much needed trust?

How Do You Feed Your Passion?

Beth Houf and Shelley Burgess, in their book Lead Like a Pirate, share their passion for using their influence as leaders to inspire other leaders, adult learners, and teachers to do incredible work. (pg 6)

This is a passion I share - I want to be the leader that inspires other leaders, adult learners, teachers and students to do incredible work. Please note I say I want to be this leader - I am in no way saying I am that leader YET - it is something I am striving to be.  One of the things that can help me be this leader is to share my passions, both professional and personal.

In order to share your passions you need to be clear about what they are - writing this blog post has made me reflect on this and as always things become a little clearer.

I am passionate about many things in education however inspiring our crew at St Francis to do incredible work is on the top of my list.

One thing that has become very clear to me over the last few years is that leaders need to "feed" their passions as well as provide for their crew. We have to remember to cater for our our professional learning in the process - for me this means sourcing my own professional development, reading articles, books, blog posts, discussing current issues or thinking with colleagues and staying abreast of current thinking and innovations. 

It means I need to be connected. I have been growing my own Personal Learning Network (PLN) using Twitter since 2013 however there are many other ways you can do this too. Building a network does take time but the benefits are amazing. 

Initially I just lurked on Twitter and read tweets other people were tweeting. Once you find educators who are tweeting and sending links about subjects you are interested it you follow them, and this opens you up to more and more people. After awhile I became more brave - I could see the benefits already as I had been exposed to the thinking of so many people. This is when I was challenged into actually moving from being a consumer of content into being a creator - the next step.

I started writing blog posts and sharing them within a safe circle of people. I have participated in an iMooc's book study based on The Innovators Mindset written by George Couros. This book study was hosted by the author and each week he invited many other authors to share their thoughts on live feed. It was a privilege to share in this free professional development.

I have participated in a Blog Hop based on the same book. This was a chance for people to read about what other people were thinking about the same topic and comment on each other's blog posts just as we are doing in the Lead Like a Pirate Blog Hop.

Lately I have also been involved in a face to face Book Club - discussing "Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning". We meet once a fortnight and discuss a chapter and talk about how we can use this learning in our settings. This has been great for growing the knowledge of our crew around Project Based Learning. All our talking is leading to a much deeper understanding in this area.

Being connected means I can feed my passion but also share my passion easily with our crew. I am constantly sharing new links that have been shared with me from my PLN. This constant sharing sparks constant conversation around our new learning - some online and some face to face. All of the conversation helping us move towards our goal of moving from Good to Great.

How do you feed and share your passions?

Working Together to Make Our Schools Amazing

Being connected is a passion of mine.

For a long time I have been using Twitter and blogging to dip into the world of social media that connects educators all over the world. Establishing a Personal Learning Network exponentially increases your audience for professional dialogue and this is just what we need to challenge our thinking and move us out of our comfort zones. 

I am always blown away about the amazing sharing that goes online. 

Two years ago in conjunction the CPPA offered three online different options for principals and senior leaders to opt into so that we could explore the power of being connected. Paul Sibson ran a twitter challenge, there were Google Apps For Education workshops and I introduced quadblogging.

Starting small with only 12 people opting in and then at least four of these dropping out we ventured into unknown territory and over two terms our small group blogged about teaching, learning and leadership.  You can read more about this concept in this blog post written in 2015.

Quadblogging meant that other school leaders were taking the time to comment on my posts and I was taking time to comment on theirs.

The benefits of blogging are many however the main benefits I found were:
- blogging helps me clarify my thoughts
- authentic audience (my personal learning network) can challenge me to think at a deeper level 

Since the quadblogging exercise I have seen many other opportunities to participate in online. OSSEMOOC is a community of educators from Ontario and on their MOOC (Massive Open Online Community) they provide their school leaders many opportunities to connect. They study books on blog hops, debate topics on voxer chats, provide each other support through many different forms.

We would love to have a community that we can connect on a little closer to home so after talking to the organisers of the OSSEMOOC and connecting with other educators we are stepping out of our comfort zone and setting up our first blog hop.

Watch this space for how to get connected and join in the conversations around leadership and learning. Let's work together to make our schools amazing.