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9. Pride over humility The ‘proud professional’ might experience an angry student swearing at them. The mind state of this persona interprets the misbehavior as a personal attack, and responds strongly from the Red Zone.  Often, this sort of teacher will seek punishment and retribution applied from middle or senior school leadership. In other words, [...]

8. Playing favourites It is easy, as a teacher (and as a parent or leader), to socially and emotionally reward those who meet your expectations and conditions. It is also just as easy to be socially and emotionally distant from those who don’t. This is a form of conditional respect (do as you are told [...]

Sibson Consulting in conjunction with WorldAtWork publish reports on the global state of Performance Management.  We have developed our approach based on what works in one of the most complex environments – schools – and the strengths of our approach match exactly what are regarded as the top three challenges in this area, and that [...]

7. Being disorganized in your behaviour management Consider the recent major floods in Queensland and Brisbane (Australia).  In terms of the response from authorities and government, three key phases were apparent: preparation, the flooding itself and the recovery. In each of these phases observation, communication and action were present, providing clarity and autonomy in particular. [...]

6. Ignoring the brain Not knowing much about the brain and how learning is expressed in the brain is very much like trying to navigate without understanding your map. We’ve been educating systematically now since the early 1800s, yet only in recent years has the call to understand the brain, as it learns, gathered any [...]

Last week I talked about listening moving to the centre of our understanding about what matters to people for them to develop fully and effectively.  The two most superficial levels at which we listen (downloading and attentive listening) limit our ability to learn very severely.  In downloading we simply hear what confirms our own views [...]

5. Judgement and Assumption Your brain is particularly ‘wired’ to present you with what you are expecting to see. It is wired for assumption: If you are about to buy a brand new red BMW, it is amazing how many red BMWs you see. When you label students, when you give them what you think [...]

4. Playing the approval game – being best buddies with the students A common pitfall of the young and the new to teaching is to play the approval game. The behaviour that emerges with this need for approval is often over-friendliness to the students, wanting to appear to be ‘one of them’. The mistaken strategy [...]

Image by Getty Images via @daylife As it is the new academic year in Australia I have been busy over the last week setting up two schools for full implementations of our upgrade to their performance management systems over the coming year. Both sets of interventions have been exciting and energising as gradually people have [...]

Are you a leader of some sort? Perhaps a middle manager, a school principal or even a CEO… Thing is, most of you are leaders: if you are a parent or a teacher you are a leader. The key question for you is do you lead from a position of expertise? Do you think or [...]