“Ping……..ping” - developing a leadership sonar?
Sep 3rd, 2007 by Don Ledingham
It was during a conversation this afternoon about how leaders communicate with colleagues that I used a completely throwaway remark about “pinging” and listening.
What I meant by this was that we need to engage with our colleagues if we are to really understand the impact that our strategies are having.
However, on saying the words the picture came to me of a leader needing to find ways of establishing where they and their organisation “actually” are - as opposed to where they “think” they are.
The metaphor of a sonar was perhaps influenced by my weekend experience on the Alba Explorer, where no skipper would dream of sailing without having an understanding about the depth of water they are navigating. In days gone by this would be done by dropping a line and measuring the depth - in the modern era it’s done by emitting a sound and listening to the echo to judge the terrain below.
And so it occurred to me that perhaps the effective leader needs to be sending out lots of different soundings and then listening carefully to the echoes which come back - and altering course accordingly.
Pinging is, of course, something bloggers do when the create a link to each other, just to let each other know that they’re there, talking about them, and that a ‘collision of ideas’ might be worth having. That said, better collisions than on the boat…
To use a tenuously related analogy, we seem to have just passed like ships in the night. You must have have been within about 30 ft of my classroom this afternoon, I wonder if you glimpsed me sharing my learning intentions?
Ewan - I hadn’t made that connection
Stewart - I won’t be visiting any NQTs until after the October break. I enjoyed time in the school this afternoon - how do you think people are reacting to my visits?
Most people I’ve spoken to about it are pretty positive. People are always going to be affected in different ways and to different extents but that you are coming in and talking to the teachers and the pupils makes it an experience that is much more welcome that if you were to arrive, silently observe, then leave.