The Success Zone

Image via Wikipedia Having a coach who is also your line manager brings particular benefits, both to the manager as well as to the member of staff. The purpose of having the coach is to help the member of staff gain clarity and commitment to a set of goals and the actions required to achieve [...]

Image via Wikipedia I talked about goal setting last week and that there are two sequential steps to ending up with clarity and commitment around a course of action to take to achieve a goal.  The first step is based around starting as widely as possible in reviewing what goals you might choose and then [...]

Image by randihausken via Flickr Given the time of year, setting of goals is a topical subject.  One abiding problem with New Year resolutions is that they very often don’t go much further than the end of the festive season.  The same goes for many goals that are set within an organisational context … and [...]

Image by Roland Urbanek via Flickr Performance management has five major steps.  First, the development of an over-riding purpose, the values that underpin the purpose, the standards of behaviour that express the values and a strategy to achieve the purpose with annual implementation plans. Second, the selection and recruitment of new staff in line with [...]

Image via Wikipedia Last week I finished off with talking about the shift that is needed to help people work smarter rather than simply longer/harder.  This shift is underpinned by two things – a different emphasis on, or form of, feedback and different leadership behaviours. One of the major insights that we have had over [...]

Image via Wikipedia Some weeks ago now I talked about feedback in various forms.  I should now like to be a bit more systematic in looking at these.  Essentially there are four forms of feedback that are helpful: “If I know what I am trying to do because I have clear, over-riding goals then knowing [...]

Image via Wikipedia Last week I talked about the three elements to getting teachers learning in the classroom, focusing on the second and third.  First, the teacher recognises that they have something to learn and this recognition has real clarity attached to it.  Second, the teacher has a genuine opportunity to learn in the classroom [...]

Image by seanP via Flickr I find that discussing the education aspects of performance development and appraisal brings a sharper focus on the issue so I will continue in this vein for a few more posts. From last week, the big question was how to get a teacher into the classroom in learning mode (i.e. [...]

Image via Wikipedia I would like to finish the discussion about how teachers accumulate their 10,000 hours of experience. Currently, the majority of teachers operate in the classroom in the “red zone” which allows only lower order (mechanical or routine) learning to take place.  They do this because they feel they need to be hyper-alert [...]

Image via Wikipedia Back in 2001 I interviewed an experienced teacher in a High School in Sydney, a school at the time in a relatively low socio-economic catchment.  This teacher was on the point of retirement – she looked 45 years old but was actually 60 – and was recognised by the school as an [...]