It’s fair to say that exercise is not my strong suit - the repetitive nature of the work quickly bores my ADHD-leaning brain.  Not that I don’t appreciated it’s value, especially on the brain. My frame was that I was pretty active already, why exercise. But Covid-19 gave me an opportunity. With travel and workshop delivery on pause, I like all of us, I had loads more time. So I began a journey of evolving from walking to running, because I felt I should.

I have to say, that at first, I loathed the effort. In spite of being active, I was still breathless quickly as soon as I tried to jog. The grind and the repetition soon fell away as I discovered a tool, then a process to help me. Nothing earth-shattering - I simply found that walking and jogging to a music beat actually did some of the hard work for me. I progressed to tolerating the exercise, and found that I was pondering more significant goals.  

With my growing confidence and belief, I began to combine some tools (including a high intensity interval training app) that began to stretch my progress. In my mind, I have become a runner, and I have very much moved into liking the exercise. I’m also loving the correlated loss of migraines - I’ve had very few headaches and no migraine since I started this ‘experiment’, when before, I had daily headaches and weekly migraines.. Now I’m even thinking ‘beyond’ and considering some fun runs, when they return.

What I am describing for you is a growth from loathing toloving, from because to beyond. This experience of mine has been framing a metaphor for me. For some time, with the middle leadership programs I have run over the years, I have been observing middle leaders move along this continuum, mostly from left to right.

Lately, I’ve been hearing from and of middle leaders sliding back down the impact curve.

Middle leadership is just as tough as the game at the top, maybe even harder. Middle leadership is where strategy and tactic are implemented, and it need not be said that this has been extra difficult over the past few months.

I’m seeing this stretch happening for Teacher Leaders - leaders of teaching teams - especially. Not only do Teacher Leaders have to, themselves, adapt to a whole raft of new conditions and demanded skillsets, they have to lead the required agility and new competencies for their team. I’m hearing that middle leaders in education face a slew of challenges:

• Leading in very uncertain times

• Implementing a growing list of tactics and strategies from senior leadership

• Managing and leading new digital pedagogies

• Exploring and crafting effective learning for students who are at home

• Maintaining student social and emotional needs and wellbeing

• Ensuring staff welfare and wellbeing

• Navigating recruitment with unimaginable constraints

• Maintaining processes of preparing for inspections

• Feeling ‘forgotten’ and isolated in stretch between their team members and senior leaders

My personal running story calls out four zones in the model above, from drowning, to surviving, coping and thriving. My feel is that many middle leaders have moved back down to the left on this model.  The new world that has been thrust upon has pushed some leaders down and back to the left. This change has rapidly demanded a range of new skills, if nothing else. For some, if not many, this resulted in moving from loving the role to liking it, from liking it to coping, or worse, to having heads underwater.

The table below is one way of designing your leadership development up the into leadership impact, regardless of your leadership experience. Find where you are, then build a development plan around the phase you are in.

For those who are searching for both a learning design and a learning community that builds your leadership capabilities, I am running a facilitated conversation on the challenges and learning needs of teachers who lead a team. Thursday June 11, 4pm Singapore time - register here: https://bit.ly/LTTAsia

I’m interested in knowing - if you are a teacher leader, what are the new challenges that you are facing?

Want to use the graphics for discussion tools in your team? Download the model and the table for your reference.