5 min read

Armidale Principals and Secretaries participate in challenging workshop.

If you were challenged with the following questions about your practice as a principal, how would you respond?

1. Where is the coach of a major sporting team during the game? Where are you when the teaching (the game in this scenario) is happening?
2. Is your office a place of storage and technical work, or is it a place of collaboration and effectiveness?
3. Is your secretary being used to their full potential, or are you doing work they could be doing and making their job harder with interruptions?

For many principals, being challenged to clean out their office, delegate responsibility and do nothing but talk and manage requests would be very confronting. Recently the principals from the Armidale Diocese (NSW) were confronted with these challenges as they attended The Breakthrough Coach professional development (more information can be found later in this publication). Director of Schools - Chris Smyth called it an ‘educated risk’ sending 24 principals and their secretaries to the course, as he knew the content might not be for everyone. It challenged the principals to rethink the way they work in order to gain a better work life balance, improve student results and lower behaviour issues. Let’s face it, that sounds too good to be true and more like a late night infomercial than an educational professional development. In order to make these changes, the principals were given the key messages of changing their physical office structure, maximising the use of their secretaries or personal assistants, and managing requests of staff and other key stakeholders. Personally I like to have my thoughts challenged and found the course to be a timely reminder of my own current practises that I wanted to change.

I had already criticised myself for not being in the classes as much as I wanted to be. I was guilty of having the two computer screens, messy desk, filing cabinets and an office not designed for collaboration. The first thing I took from the course was that it was time to make my office into a conference space and do a clean out of all of the working spaces in the school’s office block. Luckily, I have a supportive leadership team that assisted me in re-arranging all of the work spaces as well as the dreaded ‘decluttering’ of the entire office block. These changes intrigued some staff and some found it quite challenging to say the least. I was amazed at the questions of concern I received. ‘Where will you sit?’ ‘where is your desk?’ ‘where is your stuff?’ were just a few. I responded that I will sit where I am working. Maybe at the back of a classroom, in the Library, in someone else's office. Wherever I was needed would be where I sat.  I think some were worried about me not having my own space, but for me, it is still my space if I choose or need to as I can still close the door for privacy or confidentiality, I just needed a space for collaboration more than I needed my ‘own desk’. I stressed that I do not need to be tied to a desk to do the everyday emails or paperwork we all have to do as part of our roles. The fact they were more worried about me ‘giving up my desk’ than I was humoured me greatly. Once we got past the ‘where will you sit’ conundrum, many have commented that the space formerly known as my office has a ‘get to work’ and ‘efficiency’ feel to it and a great space to meet in. For me I am drawn to the collaboration and professional conversations that can more easily happen in this space with the changes that we made.

The next change was to have a daily meeting with my secretary where we manage my calendar and appointments more effectively and delegate any correspondence, that can be, to her. These meetings, while short in time, are very powerful in keeping projects and actions moving and making sure things are being addressed regularly. This system works because I have a fantastic and efficient administration staff who have felt empowered by the change to the requests of them. Let’s face it, when they have more control over my calendar and can tell me what to do and where to go, of course they are going to love this system. They are also current and former parents of the school, so the benefit of me being in class with the students and teachers more often is a great motivator for them to make the system work as they see the value in doing so. We schedule everything we can from professional reading time to allocated time to check emails and create tasks and actions from those emails. If there are any interruptions due to behaviour or unforeseen distractions, they amend the calendar item to later that day or the next day so nothing is left incomplete. This slight mindshift has meant that despite being at my laptop or iPad less, my productivity and meeting the required deadlines is still efficient. Some feared it would mean I am doing more emails and paperwork after hours which has not been the case.  I am still working similar hours; still completing the tasks required and spending more time collaborating and being ‘present’ in the classes.

I am realistic enough to know that this course and ideals may not suit everybody or work in everyone's context. While at first the course is confronting, I have found it beneficial and want to learn more as it suits my leadership style and personality and suits my current context. By implementing the changes from this course I am experiencing less time on managerial tasks and more time being the instructional leader I want to be.

Michael's office after the course!