Empathy has been on my mind for some time. Lots of conversation and research has only confirmed its complexity.

One aspect of this complexity is the different form that empathy can take. While I am still very much a student of empathy, I am seeing three levels or depths of empathy emerge:
Cognitive Empathy - characterised by "I say"
Emotive Empathy - "I feel"
Active Empathy - "I take action"

Do you have a habitual way of dealing with those less-than-easy people in your team? This could be a problem for you, and here's how.
I position empathy as the foundation for any leadership.
When I ask people "what is empathy" the most common answers are "understanding the other person's feelings" or "walking in their shoes". Both are inadequate.

So you walk into a team as a new middle leader or manager. In the team is an older, more experienced but unsuccessful candidate for your new role. What do you do?

One early test for any new middle leader is dealing with the difficult team member. As a new teacher leader, how can you prepare? Most teams have one or more of these 'archetypes' - clearly you will have to minimize their negative impact on the team…

The stages are clear: a complete club in drowning mode, a leadership that takes action, a coach that works on himself, development of team through culture, and systems that leverage all of the previous. Moreover, the coach was developing himself ahead of the other changes - it is hard to lead such improvement when you are at the same level of development as ‘the troops’.

It strikes me that middle leaders in schools have more of these binary tensions to deal with than they realise.

• People who lead me - People who I lead

• Getting a lot of stuff done - Doing things well

• Operational demands - Improvement demands

• Managing unwanted behaviours (in my team) - Being liked

• Wanting to say what needs to be said (especially to parents) - Remaining professional

• Learning a heap of new stuff (especially this year) - Leading others on a heap of new stuff

I know that there are more, and I’m really interested in hearing, if you are a teacher leader, what your binary tensions are.

So you might have seen my model earlier in the week showing the path from Drowning to Thriving. Here's the thing: you might be in a zone or phase long or short term. Regardless, the map below shows you one way forward. Moreover, you cannot effectively lead a team, or people in your team, unless you are on the same 'level' or above. When you are 'in a better place', you can help your team, or individuals using the same pathway. I'm going to explore this, and a few associated concepts, in an online discussion (definitely not another webinar). I'm holding the space for a conversation with and between teacher leaders. I'll share one or two useful models as thinking triggers with the idea of creating a path forward for you. I'd love you to join me, or maybe pass this onto a teacher leader you know. Registration: https://bit.ly/LTTAsia (11 June, 4-5pm).

Transformation involving people can often be seen as a growth from loathing to loving, from because to beyond. 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 from right to left.

Alan November, education technology guru, said a number of years ago: “I think this is an interesting time of trying to figure out what are the questions”. He was not, of course, referring to COVID19, yet this quote seems even more relevant in today’s context. This statement helped him position two key questions for education:

• Who owns the learning? [Teacher or student?]

• Who works harder? [Teacher or student?]