It doesn’t matter how long you have been in this teaching and learning game, new is new and exciting, empowering but scary. So… as a Faculty leader I need to embrace the excitement, facilitate the empowerment and mitigate the fear. For each new and existing member of my team, their will be an important professional relationship that will need nurturing. Each one will be different but for each I believe there will be two key common dimensions:
1. the professional – curriculum, pedagogy, politics AND
2. the pastoral – trust, empathy, care
As a leader I will need to be mindful of these elements – and no doubt others – as I engage with my colleagues both collectively and individually. In fact, these things will be important considerations in all the teams I work in, not just the Faculty one I’m designated as leader of!
This then is my 2016 challenge to myself. I know it will take experience, patience, restraint and thought- not necessarily easy to implement in all situations but important attributes to cultivate nonetheless. Some might refer to this as wise and knowledgeable leadership. In his work exploring models of mentoring and leadership, Dave Burton of Potential Development offers this definition of eldership and identifies 3 key ways in which it may enhance productive working relationships:
“Eldership is the capacity to be with a person (or situation)
in a way which catalyses or supports their (or its) development”
So where might the skills of eldership be beneficial?
• In a leadership context the qualities of eldership could enable the leader to maintain
a positive outlook and convey that to staff in tough or challenging situations
• In a mentoring context the qualities could help a mentor bring a new perspective to a
problem
• And in a consulting context the qualities could for example underpin a collaborative
approach to planning in a way which does justice to the client’s real goals.
In short eldership can bring other perspectives, other paradigms and other wisdom to a
person or situation in a way that encourages change or progress.© Copyright Potential Development Ltd 2014
I think this concept of “eldership” could be valuable for me in my leadership/mentoring/coaching/managing work this year: navigating school politics, facilitating positive development in pedagogy and curriculum, building the trust needed to collaborate in successful problem solving and/or innovation, bringing perspective to care, support and even advocacy of others and on it goes. Let the journey continue….
