The Success Zone

The Success Zone has just released its 2012 Educational Leadership program that integrates one-on-one development with leadership team development, mentoring and coaching. Based on the principles in the Success Zone book, and congruent with leading brain-based practice as outlined in John Medina’s Brain Rules, this exciting new program takes school senior leadership teams from good [...]

Ken Robinson is one of a growing number of champions for a new education. With elegance, he exposes how much we don't know about what we don't know. This ten minute animated extract is succinct, disturbing (for the system of education that we are trying to maintain) and very thought-provoking. What observations and thoughts are [...]

  As David Rock writes in Your Brain At Work, mindfulness has long had association with spirituality, even religion. Ask someone to describe mindfulness, and if they can, they’ll often make reference to things like meditation, Buddhism, prayer or perhaps being one with nature. Whilst all these involve, even promote mindfulness, they are not, themselves, [...]

Recently I wrote of the 5 hallmarks of a great listener. In summary, these were: Quiet mind listening Full observational attention on the speaker Listening for the speaker, not for you Absence of agenda, assumption, advice and judgment High self awareness Perhaps not surprisingly, great listeners are quite rare in our current world. Try counting [...]

So you think you are a great listener? Test yourself against these five traits and see how well you do. Give yourself a rating from 1 to 5 on each trait (1 is rarely or poorly expressed, 5 is habitually and permanently a part of the way you listen). 1. Quiet mind listening Great listeners [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

This is the third in a series of 10 posts on common behaviour management mistakes. If you can’t wait for all ten, and you want this as a single article, add your email address and name to the box at the right and I’ll shoot you through a full copy. 3. “I am the expert… [...]