Formative Assessment Task
Leadership behaviours
Holding others to account
Effective school leaders will hold others to account, including creating levels of accountability within the school – ensuring all understand their roles, responsibilities, standards required and accountabilities. They distribute leadership and delegate effectively, demanding high performance through making expectations clear, with the best interests of pupils and schools in mind.
Integrity
Effective leaders act with honesty, transparency and always in the interests of the school and its pupils. They are able to gain the respect of others by acting in line with their own values, as well as making decisions or choices with the best interests of education and pupils in mind.
Resilience
Effective leaders remain courageous and positive in challenging, adverse or uncertain circumstances. They are able to respond appropriately, manage uncertainty and bounce back even in the most trying of situations.
Leading by example
Effective leaders consistently demonstrate and communicate their vision, passion and commitment. They lead by example, have high levels of professional credibility and demonstrate total commitment to school improvement through their own leadership behaviours.
Self-awareness
Effective leaders will know themselves and their teams, continually reflect on their own and others’ practices, and understand how best to approach difficult or sensitive issues. They are aware of their personal strengths and areas for future growth and understand how their own behaviour impacts on others.
Critical incident analysis
Critical incident analysis is a leadership tool that is used frequently in health and social care settings; its application in educational contexts is less developed although some teacher training establishments use the tool to help trainee teachers to reflect upon their pedagogical practice. A critical incident may be defined as:
“an event that made you stop and think. It may have made you question an aspect of your approach. It is an incident that has had an impact on your leadership, either positive (e.g., staff go the extra mile) or negative (e.g., hostile response from a parent(s)).”1
A major benefit of using a critical incident analysis tool is that it provides a structured approach for reflecting upon your application of your leadership skills in an actual situation, rather than reflecting on them through the completion of a diagnostic tool, which may pose similar questions but is abstracted from actual events. For this task you should work through the steps below.
For the task below, which has been adapted from Brookfield’s model (ibid.), you should choose a ‘critical incident’ which had at least the first element from the list below:
It was challenging to you because of the nature of the feedback you had to give, and/or the individual(s) you were feeding back to.
It was critical to the establishment of the culture of the whole organisation, or that part of the organisation that you lead/led.
It caused you to reflect deeply on the effectiveness of your leadership skills and/or the appropriateness of your leadership style.
Note: Please ensure that any information provided here, or in communications with your leadership coach, is anonymised and that individuals cannot be identified.
Task: critical incident analysis
For this task you should:
1. Complete the critical incident analysis proforma below.
2. Use your responses to the proforma questions to write a 400-word (maximum) report titled ‘Leadership behaviours and ethical practice – areas for development’. In writing your report, you should use the following sub-headings:
Key features of the critical incident
Significant leadership behaviours and/or ethical practices exhibited (positive and negative)
Key professional learning from the incident
My further development, e.g., leadership skills you need to develop
When you have completed your report, upload it in Canvas to your leadership performance coach within the timeframe identified.
1 Adapted from Brookfield, S. (1990). Durham Centre for Academic Development: Critical Incident Analysis - Durham University
Critical incident analysis review
Comments/Observations
What?
Describe a critical incident that involved giving difficult feedback to a colleague(s). At this stage note down the facts, i.e., what happened, what you did, how you felt.
The important thing is to choose an incident that had significance for you. It will be an incident that made you reflect on what you did, how you behaved, what you said, the impact you had on others, the impact on yourself, and possibly rethink your future leadership behaviours. It may be an incident that involved a dilemma(s).
Why?
Why have you chosen this incident?
Why do you regard it as a ‘critical incident’?
What consequences might/did follow if the incident was not managed effectively?
Analysis
On balance, did the incident leave you feeling positive about yourself and your actions or dissatisfied?
If positive, what leadership behaviours did you display?
What was their positive impact on you, others, the organisation?
If dissatisfied, what did you do that has caused you to
feel this way? Note down any behaviours, things you said, things you didn’t do, etc., that you were dissatisfied with.
What was the impact of your actions on you, others, the organisation?
Moving forward
Most critical events are one-offs, but their impact stays with us. Depending upon the nature of the event, we may revisit it, and further analyse it, on future occasions.
Effective leaders revisit critical events as part of their personal and professional development and use the outcomes from their reflections/analysis to:
Consolidate specific leadership behaviours they demonstrated in the incident because they proved to be successful and worthy of repetition.
AND/OR
Change specific leadership behaviours and/or review their ethical practices, in order to develop and enhance their professional practice.
Briefly describe how your future behaviours have been, or will be, influenced by this critical incident. You could do this by providing examples of:
Consolidation
Leadership behaviours you repeated, or will repeat, because they had proved to be effective. If so, did you or will you further refine and develop these leadership behaviours, and in what way?
AND/OR
Change
New leadership behaviours you adopted, or plan to adopt, because previous behaviours had not led to the desired outcome. If so, what were/will be the changed/new leadership behaviours? How successful have they been?
Can you give an example(s) of these behaviours in practice?