How can you align your leadership development program with your board of trustees?

Leadership in a school system starts with the governance team. They should know what leadership looks like, sounds like and feels like in the schools. Calibration around leadership means there is coherence and shared accountability. When rolling out leadership development and professional learning strategy; don't forget your board! They are the lead learners too!

Aligning a leadership development program with the board of trustees involves strategic collaboration. Begin by clearly defining organizational goals and understanding the board's vision for leadership. Engage trustees in program development, seeking their input on desired leadership traits and skills. Incorporate the organization's strategic priorities into the program to ensure alignment with board expectations. Establish regular communication channels to update the board on program progress and gather feedback. Leverage the expertise of trustees by inviting them as guest speakers or mentors in the leadership program. Foster a sense of ownership and commitment by involving trustees in program evaluations and adjustments.

And make sure that they get the mission, vision and values that are the foundation of the culture and LD strategy Get their involvement in defining and communicating them

In my view, Alignment of Vision Mission & Values of the organization is the key. A leadership program is evolved from these three. Leadership itself needs a lot of flexibility within the objective. Designing a program based on continuous evaluation, consistent feedback received and provided, discussion related to the feedback and correction of the pathway if needed with the board, organic leadership development & measurement system designed taking leaders along -ultimately the leaders are the ones !!!!! Involvement of each stake holder makes the leaders win.

Maintaining strategic direction and responding to the demands of 'now' is a constant concern for trustees. Reviewing is vital to staying relevant, but so too is allowing for flexibility as policies evolve and goals are stretched. Accountability and shared responsibility will work in harmony when priorities are genuinely aligned, and those who deliver are brought in to contribute to the construction of policies and procedures.

You might find me monotonous but it's worth using your vision/mission statements to consider what your leadership team needs to realise your vision. Make a summary of what you consider you are doing well, what you can easily change to do better, what you might need help with, and what you can't quite see how you are going to do it. Then you need to find people with great experience but who are humble enough to admit they don't know but will help find answers - and discuss your summary with them. If you find such people they will come up with all sorts of good suggestions about how you might find ways to improve, get rained or coached and tackle those impossible things. If you're lucky you might find such people among your board members!

Aligning your leadership development plan depends on where the expertise lies with what needs to be developed. That’s why it is crucial for a board and leadership team to identify and agree on where that expertise lies within the team but also understand that experts can and should be questioned. In my ‘industry’ – education – it is vital that the question surrounding the vision of education is made clear from the start – then the community of support – marketing, finance, HR, etc surrounds that. There is little point in a transformative or progressive leader preparing a plan for a board full of reactionaries who won’t grasp the meaning let alone vision of it and vice versa. Unfortunately, this mismatch has been my experience too often.

It might be depressing after my previous entry to actually recount what I witnessed in three institutions. I hope it helps others to avoid the same. Imagine being at the top of your game and having a supportive learning community of section/ department leaders. You are implementing globally recognised progressive programmes. Imagine creating a development plan for the educators and suggestions for what's needed from support department heads (basically to be part of a community as well as being part of a business). Imagine then that your board consisting of experts from finance, marketing, engineering, etc, tear up your plans, discard the programmes and implement their plans based on what they learnt about education from being at school.

C level sponsors start with board communications Their endorsement goes far Reminders of stats on value of managers and that50% people leave managers not companies

When board and leadership are in synch, have reviewed and agreed on their vision and identified with openness and humility on where lay the areas of expertise within the team, then a useful and indeed powerful development plan can be made and executed. If, as I have seen, through this process, trust, communication and collaboration are developed, then it is a matter of course that learning takes place all round. I am reminded of my interpretation of Senge’s aspects of a learning organisation – Trust, effective communication and collaboration lead to a shared vision which generates professional capital which leads to a resourcefulness that is shared between members in a professional community. It's achievable but level your egos behind.

How can you improve levels of trust between you and your board? How can they? Are they ready to see the need? How can communication be more effective? How can collaboration improve towards a truly shared vision in which each understands their role towards its realisation? How can understanding this increase professional and community capital? How can we exploit ourselves as resources for each other? Easy, if you relax, be compassionate and are determined to make it work together.

As an experienced supervisor, I recognize the importance of aligning my leadership development program with the vision and values of my esteemed board of trustees. Together, we forge a harmonious partnership, where our shared commitment to excellence and growth propels our Academy forward. By aligning my leadership development efforts, I try to cultivate a culture of purpose, collaboration, and collective success, empowering my team to rise and flourish in service of our shared mission.

The key word here is 'align'. Clearly there is a vision, a mission and a set of strategic objectives. For a focused board, all of these are usually sacrosanct. They would like to invest their time, bandwidth and resources in everything that brings the org closer to these objectives. Everything else will probably not deserve their immediate attention. If you had to align a program and get it approved - understand the need, direction from the board, and build a program that responds to that.