Janine Stratford on Leading for Tomorrow, Today

Janine Stratford coaches school leaders who were strong classroom teachers before being handed responsibility for leading adults, a shift she describes as a change of identity rather than a matter of new skills. She talks through the Leadership Blueprint behind Leading for Tomorrow, Today, the ten minutes of thinking she asks of leaders in week six of a term, and the two sections that did not make the final manuscript.

Leading for Tomorrow, Today is aimed squarely at school leaders who are stuck in daily tasks and constant firefighting. For an assistant principal or head of department reading it in week six of a term, what does the book actually ask them to do differently on a Tuesday afternoon?

I would ask them to pause long enough to lift their eyes from what is right in front of them and ask themselves a few important questions: What am I doing that only I can do? What am I holding onto that someone else needs the opportunity to lead? Is what I’m doing today taking us where we need to go? That might sound unrealistic in week six of a term, but it does not require a free afternoon. It might mean taking ten minutes to make sure the work they are doing matters and is moving the team they lead in the right direction.

The book asks leaders to think about the value they bring. If you spend every Tuesday afternoon solving the next problem for everyone, you may be extremely helpful, but you may also be stopping others from growing. So, a different choice might be to have a coaching conversation, clarify a priority or make one decision that helps others move forward. That is leadership work too.

You have logged thousands of coaching hours with educators before writing any of this down. What did you understand about educational leadership only once you had to put it on the page for a reader you would never meet?

In a coaching conversation, I can respond to the person in front of me. I can ask another question, notice what they are finding difficult to say or help them connect two ideas. On the page, I had to make those connections clear for a leader I might never meet.

Writing made me look more closely at what sits underneath the challenges leaders bring to coaching. A difficult conversation, an overloaded calendar or a team that seems resistant to change can look like separate problems. But I kept coming back to questions about purpose, alignment and the value a leader is there to provide.

I also became more conscious that a useful idea has to survive contact with a busy school day. A reader needs to be able to do something with it. That pushed me to make the Leadership Blueprint practical: to help leaders recognise where they are, make clearer choices and see whether those choices are making a difference.

A theme that runs through your work is that brilliant classroom practitioners get tapped on the shoulder and are suddenly expected to lead adults. How did writing the book sharpen your explanation of why that leap trips so many capable teachers up?

Schools often recognise an excellent teacher and assume that excellence will naturally translate into leading a team. The person may be highly capable, deeply committed and respected by colleagues. But it is a different job. They are now responsible not only for their own practice, but for helping other adults do their best work. They are well versed for their work in the classroom and feel competent and capable. They enter their leadership role with little training, feeling far less confident and without the mindset needed to lead the adults around them.

Writing the book helped me explain that this is an identity shift, not just a matter of learning a few new skills. The habits that made someone a successful classroom practitioner can even get in the way. They may step in and fix everything because they know how to do it well, when their greater contribution is to build someone else’s capacity. They may focus on their own workload when their role now asks them to see the team’s priorities and the wider direction of the school.

I think we sometimes underestimate how much support that shift requires. Giving someone a title does not mean they have worked out how to lead.

Was there a belief you went into the manuscript holding that you came out the other side having revised, or a section you had to cut because it did not survive being written out in full?

One thing I kept coming back to as I wrote was whether I was asking too much of leaders who are already stretched. It is easy to say that leaders need to think beyond the urgent work of today. It is much harder to show what that looks like when they are dealing with everything a school day can bring.

So I had to be careful about the advice I was giving. I did not want the book to suggest that purposeful leadership requires a perfect plan or a large block of uninterrupted time. It can begin with noticing where your attention is going, what your role calls for and which conversation or decision would help people move in the right direction.

Writing made me bring the ideas back to things leaders can actually do. If I could not picture someone using an idea at school, I needed to work on it again. I wanted the book to be practical and easy to read.

The book is all about strategy - working smarter with the time, energy and resources you have to do the work that matters and drives the team forward. People often confuse office politics with being strategic, so I originally wrote about that, with the aim of clearing up the confusion. I obviously hadn't done the greatest job as my reviewers suggested I take it out. So that section didn't make the cut. I also, at one point, wrote a big section about poor leaders and their impact on culture. Then I realised it was just a rant from a whole lot of stuff that I needed to let out, my own emotional release. It was a beautiful piece of writing that will probably never see the light of day, but I felt a lot better from writing it.

Now that the book is out in the world and people are quoting your ideas back to you, what are early readers latching onto that you did not expect, and what are they skating past that you wish they would sit with?

What interests me is when a reader finds words for something they have been experiencing but have not quite been able to explain. The idea of leadership brand can do that. It prompts people to think about how others experience their leadership through everyday decisions and interactions, whether or not they have given it much thought themselves. Educational leaders don't see themselves as having a brand and that it needs to be intentionally crafted. I am receiving a lot of thanks from readers for making this aspect of their leadership more obvious to them.

The other part I am hearing about from readers is the importance of bringing people with you through any change starting from the WHY behind the change. I have taken Simon Sinek's Golden Circle Model and related it to education and help educators understand that in our industry there is not just one WHY, there are two - one for the students and the other for the educator. As educators we too often forget the WHY for the educator and they must be able to see the benefit of their work and effort to be intrinsically motivated to do the great work needed to bring about the change.

The part I would love readers to spend more time with is the Recognise section inside the Leadership Blueprint model. Before rushing to the next initiative, leaders need to understand where they are and the value they are there to provide. What is working? Where are they making a difference? What is getting in the way? And what does the school need from them now?

I know the temptation is to move straight to action. But if we skip those questions, we can put a great deal of energy into the wrong things.

Australian and New Zealand schools are not short of leadership advice, much of it imported from corporate settings. What is it about this moment in education that made you want a blueprint written specifically for school leaders, and what would you tell a colleague who is sitting on a book of their own and has not started?

School leaders are being asked to deal with what is happening today while also preparing their people and schools for what comes next. Many are capable and committed, but there is rarely a quiet moment to step back and ask, “What am I trying to build here?” That tension is what led me to write Leading for Tomorrow, Today.

Schools are complex human communities. Their leaders need ideas that take account of relationships, educational purpose and the responsibility they carry for both people and learning. I wanted to offer something practical, drawn from my years working in schools and coaching school leaders. The Leadership Blueprint gave me a way to bring those ideas together through Brand, Recognise, Align, Nurture and Demonstrate.

To a colleague who is sitting on a book, I would say: start with the question you keep hearing and the idea you keep returning to. You will not have every chapter sorted out when you begin. I certainly didn't. Just write. Don't throw anything away. If you don't like it, put it in a different file. Writing helps you find out what you really think.

Also, you don't have to write the book in any order. I wrote it from the introduction to the final chapter, but I think for my next book, I will start where I feel strongest and go from there. And the good thing for you reading this is to know that for me, the first book didn't hurt that much, as I am thinking of writing another. Just write.

Leading for Tomorrow, Today is available from Booktopia, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Janine's website or AMBA Press.

You can find Janine at coachingfocus.com.au and connect on LinkedIn.