The Essential Qualities of Leadership in Education: A Conversation with Louise Green

 Louise Green, is an acclaimed solution-focused coach, Middle Leadership Imperative & Covey facilitator,   and recipient of the prestigious NSW Primary Principals Association Life Membership award. Her journey through the educational landscape is nothing short of inspiring – but it's her insights into the qualities essential for leadership that truly capture the essence of her wisdom. We tap into those insights and take you through the development of the Middle Leadership Imperative, a course meticulously designed under the expertise of seasoned principals to resonate with today's assistant principals and middle leaders.

The second half of our conversation digs deeper into Louise's role as a mentor and the profound influence she's had in her roles across NSW Public Schools. An unwavering advocate for nurturing leadership skills in young leaders, Louise shares her passion and experiences that have significantly contributed to her mentorship approach. We'll also unravel the structure of the Middle Leadership Imperative course, discussing its evolution to cater to the participants' needs. Get ready to be inspired by Louise's leadership philosophy and learn more about the key course elements that have shaped countless successful leaders.

Links and References:

To view our Professional Learning Offerings, visit:
https://www.nswppa.org.au/professional-learning

To view our latest offerings, visit: https://www.nswppa.org.au/catalogue

Chapters

• 0:00 Professional Learning for Educational Leaders
• 12:48 Inspiring Educational Leadership and Mentorship

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What keeps you inspired, louise, and motivated to contribute to the field of educational leadership?

Speaker 2: 0:06

Working with these young leaders is absolutely outstanding. They are so keen to learn. They are out in an environment where they don't have this opportunity, and when they're here, they take full advantage of it, and it's fabulous to work with young people who are just so enthusiastic about learning to be good leaders.

Speaker 1: 0:27

Welcome to today's podcast. Great to have your company everyone. Well, it's great pleasure that our special guest today is Louise Green. Louise Green has recently been the recipient of the NSW Primary Principles Association Life Membership a very prestigious award. Louise consistently demonstrates a deep commitment to supporting colleagues and developing future leaders on behalf of NSW Public Schools through the NSW Primary Principles Association. Louise is an accredited solution focus coach. She's also accredited as a Covey facilitator through Speed of Trust, as well as our new offering Multiplies. She's also a facilitator of the very well received Middle Leadership Imperative and in today's podcast we unpack that work that she is facilitating through the NSW Primary Principles Association. So let's enjoy Louise Green. Louise Green, welcome to our podcast. Our aim is to inform our listeners about the professional learning offerings through the NSW Primary Principles Association. Louise, can you tell us about your professional learning journey and what led you to where you are today and, I guess, what inspired you to work in education?

Speaker 2: 2:02

Thanks, drew. Look, I believe that when I was a young teacher that I needed to make sure that what I was doing, my practice was, you know, right on the ball, and I needed to make sure I was doing the right job for kids. I had an opportunity to relieve in an executive position and found that my impact on kids was greater because I had impact on other leaders and other teachers and I noticed that that allowed me to develop my own leadership skills and to do a lot of self-reflection. And as I moved along that journey in different contexts, I believed that in order to have the maximum impact on students and to improve student outcomes, I had the best opportunity to do that as a principal. So I actively worked at that through coaching and self-reflection.

Speaker 1: 2:47

Yeah. So, with your extensive experience of Louise in the various roles across NSW Public School, what motivated you to support the development of as a principal to other principals and other educational leaders?

Speaker 2: 3:03

I've had some fabulous role models, and one in particular was a principal who really believed in the fact that, as a principal in NSW, we had an obligation not just a duty but an obligation to commit to what was left behind us and to leave something behind in our careers. That was significant, and I saw that as an opportunity to empower young leaders with the skills and abilities to become good principals. And so that lead led me into that lifelong journey of leadership and to practice some of the skills I had, and the more I practiced and rehearsed and read and implemented skills, the more I realised the impact I was having.

Speaker 1: 3:49

Yeah. So they really believed in you and they could see the leadership qualities you had and you felt that is, you felt really good about that and the implementation they were giving to you and as a moral compass, so to speak, you then could see that in your role when you became a principal.

Speaker 2: 4:07

Absolutely Almost like the pay it forward month yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:10

Yeah, absolutely so, is it, Louise? As a mentor and a coach in your role. What are some of the key qualities and skills you look for in aspiring leaders?

Speaker 2: 4:21

That ability to be open to learning, that ability to be open to feedback, but also have that ability to self-reflect and set your own journey. So, with the support of myself and other colleagues, how do you do that? And you look for people who are open to that learning, people who are more than happy, young leaders who have come in and say they're like sponges. How do I do this? What do I do? What can you teach me about that? And that led me into that designing programs around aspiring leaders and middle leadership, because my belief about middle leadership is that the AP role and the middle leader role is the most challenging in the school.

Speaker 1: 5:03

With the most challenging, would you say, in the system.

Speaker 2: 5:06

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 5:07

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:07

Yeah, pushed and pulled.

Speaker 1: 5:09

All the time? Yeah, and you are. We'll go to that. You are a facilitator for the middle leadership imperative. What are some of the key elements that empowers our, that the course offers in empowering our middle leaders?

Speaker 2: 5:22

Well, number one, I think we really reflect on good quality research. We open their eyes, in some cases, to researchers who have can offer them that learning. We also were very strategic in developing streams so we kept a theme. So we've got three streams that run through those four days, and one's about middle leading itself and the difference between leading and managing and how you manage that in your role. The middle stream is about collaborative professionalism, about trust, all those things strategies that you need to have as a middle leader and understand what they really mean. And then in the afternoon, those last sessions, we focus on putting some of those ideas into action and giving them practice at doing it.

Speaker 1: 6:12

Yeah, so currently in that process as a table facilitator with the architecture and the design around the program. What led it to being? Was there a thinking around it being a four day program? Can you just give us some background to the thinking around what that, the development of the course and how it came to the four days?

Speaker 2: 6:36

We didn't believe that under that we could offer that high quality professional learning unless we did that. And it was developed by two highly experienced principals, corinna Robertson and Larissa Marigar, and they started to develop it, and then other principals myself, margaret Charlton, ryan Shepherd we started to come in and we all started to work on it together and I think that's such a strength of this program because we're offering schools things that have been developed by public school principals.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Thank, you Fit for purpose.

Speaker 2: 7:13

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 7:15

And is the course over a period of? Has it changed and adapted to the current trends and needs that assistant principals and our middle leaders need?

Speaker 2: 7:25

What we've done with the program is it's almost like building the plane as you fly. We've started off with a core set of learning and then, as we went along in looking at the feedback and looking how people interacted, we've sort of changed it slightly, but it's always been around how we could impact on the people who are in the room and how they responded to it. We've got to a point now where we think I think we reference up to eight or nine researchers during the program, which is great, they can walk away with people they can read more about and we also decided that we needed to have really good activities that they could actually engage in to practice what they were doing.

Speaker 1: 8:08

Yeah, so it's a really practical course Absolutely To support our current middle leaders and aspiring.

Speaker 2: 8:18

Well, probably, yeah, maybe if they're in relieving capacities, but not more than that. I would say yeah, but what I would say is that we've designed it so that it really has a long impact and people can take away things, but they don't have to. So you don't have to go back to school in that busy role you are in middle leadership and do anything other than reflect.

Speaker 1: 8:41

So no action research project. You have to do some case studies, analysis and all of those things no.

Speaker 2: 8:49

Well, sli offers that wonderful opportunity, and they have a quality program too that is different to ours. So we believed as principals that middle leaders are just so busy anyway.

Speaker 1: 9:01

I was going to go there. In terms of, that is what we are asked through the association. There's some fantastic work that the SLI are offering. The question is, what's the difference with I'm not sure if you can answer this, louise. What is the difference with the middle leadership imperative, to say, other middle leadership courses that are offered through the school leadership institute?

Speaker 2: 9:25

Look, sli offers fabulous learning it really does and some of their online resources are outstanding and I would highly recommend everybody to look at those and use them as reference. Their middle leadership program is very different to ours in that there's some action research in it. It's quite different, and they have guest speakers and that sort of thing. We don't do that. Ours is quite different specifically because we knew that we needed to get people actually engaged in the process without any additional onus on them.

Speaker 1: 10:02

I really enjoy the face-to-face component of this as well and, as a facilitator, you can see the reactions and in my role, I see and you do as well the evaluations are really fantastic in terms of, and so authentic with, the feedback. So it must be a great thrill to see that feedback that you, as a facilitator, as well as other facilitators, are doing when getting that feedback and saying, yes, this is actually hitting the mark here.

Speaker 2: 10:32

Yeah, it's fantastic and it sort of reinforces that the work we've done has been worthwhile. I think that people know when they leave those four days is that the people who have been presenting to them are dead set, have been principals, have been middle leaders. We can talk from the ground up and we share our funny little stories and some of our experiences, and that's important.

Speaker 1: 10:56

Absolutely. It comes from a place of authenticity, which is it really resonates with the participants we're going to move Louise to. There's an avalanche of professional learning for leaders at the moment. There's so many opportunities out there. How is what's the difference with the middle leadership imperative different to other courses and what are the key takeaways for participants?

Speaker 2: 11:22

They're very different in that, like I said, it's not been designed by professional organisations. It hasn't been designed by the SLI, who are in some ways constrained by the department expectations of their work. It's been designed by principals, for principals and middle leaders, and that you can tell when you interact in the group. That is very different. Plus, we really follow the idea that you need to be engaged in quality research. So we've done a lot of that work, particularly Corinna and Larissa, who've done a lot of work on that research. We know the good quality that's there and we can expose our middle leaders to that.

Speaker 1: 12:03

Yeah, it's coming from what I've seen. Is it coming from the research and evidence indicates and shows, which you can't or you can challenge, but it comes from that place. It's been proven in other sectors and it's been proven throughout the through the research, so to speak.

Speaker 2: 12:23

Well, as you'll see it over the four days, no matter what researcher we use, those same things apply. So it's really confirming for people that when we talk about trust, all the researchers talk about trust.

Speaker 1: 12:35

It has been a common theme.

Speaker 2: 12:37

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:37

Getting trust right and making sure you keep trust within your team seems to be a common theme that comes through so moving. You are a facilitator in other aspects, including speed of trust. After retiring as a principal, you continue to be involved in mentoring, facilitating and delivering courses such as speed of trust. What keeps you inspired, louise, and motivated to contribute to the field of educational leadership?

Speaker 2: 13:08

Working with these young leaders is absolutely outstanding. They are so keen to learn. They are out in an environment where they don't have this opportunity, and when they're here, they take full advantage of it, and it's fabulous to work with young people who are just so enthusiastic about learning to be good leaders that it gives us confidence that we're leaving behind when we finally finish a system that has good quality leaders within it.

Speaker 1: 13:34

Yeah, it goes back to that paying forward that you mentioned about you having such a fantastic role model and leader and paying that forward to others. Louise Green, everyone, thank you for your time, Thank you.