What makes a good teacher...or clinician? Anything in this for managers?

I heard John Hattie at the weekend - National Interest, ABC Radio National

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/nationalinterest/stories/2010/2956088.htm

Anyone who grew up in the UK knows that judging a service by the quality of the building is dangerous... having received great health and educational experiences in Victorian buildings (they just don't fall down)... and indifferent ones in modern premises... yet with decent infrastructure can the best teacher or clinician be even better?

Staying on the subject of buildings, I know of an incredible GP surgery that has recently been built and the reactions of staff working in it... they previously had to camp in a series of demountables waiting for their new building to be completed... did the quality of the care they provided change according to the environment... NO! Do they all feel more content and proud of their new workplace... YES!

Moving on to what makes a good teacher... John Hattie's views reminded me of Atul Gawande's 'Bell Curve' see the New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/12/06/041206fa_fact?currentPage=all

I believe there are lessons both in what John Hattie had to say and Atul Gawande describes for us all. What can managers learn from this...? What distinguishes a good manager from an excellent one? The domains of education and health have long had an array of performance measures (albeit of disputable merit)... however listen to what John Hattie has to say about tests and their results... listen to what Atul Gawand has to say about a clinician's attention to teat results...

Think of the good manager and the excellent manager... constantly reflecting on the impact they have... constantly reviewing performance data, budgets HR metrics and acting accordingly... There has to be something we can learn.

Just one thought at a time...

"We shall not cease from exploration" T.S. Eliot

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."

T.S. Eliot - 'Little Gidding' (1942)

I'm reading Stephen Green's book, Good Value at the moment and this quote from T.S. Eliot resonated. Whilst I have only read the first two chapters of the book so far, I feel there are a couple of quotes sharing...

"To lead a complete human life we must in another sense too accept that our end is on our beginning, tat we will find our purpose in our roots, and that our beginning is in our end, that we will find our roots in our purpose. A large part of our quest as humans is to explore what we can come to accept as our 'home' in the profoundest sense, for that is where we will discover our true spiritual purpose."

Green (2009, p.18)

Green also refers to Teilhard de Chardin and says "Connectedness and individualism...are increasing everywhere. This is not just a phenomenon of commerce and economics: it is something far more profound, which reaches deep into the roots of human self-definition."

Green (2009, p.44)

I was reminded of Ubuntu... and Desmond Tutu's quotation "...my humanity is caught up and inextricably bound in yours..."

We are individuals, yet we are connected and part of a greater whole...

It's been a while...

...and it has since I was last here. I am amazed by people who have the speed of thought a capacity to keep up with these things AND have a life off-line!

The thoughts continue to flow and since April I had the opportunity to spend a day with Marshall Goldsmith... now there's an interesting chap!

Pearls left with me more than a month later...

1. the person who makes the decision is the one with the power to make the decision
2. goal obsession leads us to do what at best can be described as really daft things... at worst totally destructive
3. use small amounts of money to motivate large change
4. ask, listen, think, thank... follow-up... the power of feedforward
5. the value of a ritual of asking daily questions

...amongst others, however these are current headlines for me.

I've also been a little surprised by some of my contributions/achievements and small wins over the last couple of months and the danger of under-estimating my impact on and contribution to others work and development. This has probably been encapsulated in something Mark Holden from Matrix Global said at a forum yesterday... that there is something 'sacred' in the mentoring relationship... years later we can be surprised by someone who lets us know the impact we have had on them... and we may not remember the person or the interaction...

When people ask for support and/or advice, the trust they place in the person they ask is HUGE... never forget this.

It also brings to the forefront of my mind my personal view on leadership... to inspire others to achieve beyond their expectations... and in doing so, hold sacred the consequences of the relationship.

"Do many people understand you...

... when you talk about these things?" A question that was asked of me today as I was told I was capable of high levels of abstract thinking and was in fact a 22nd century thinker...

No wonder I have difficulty communicating my thoughts... I thought it was because I was a bit dim and my verbal communication skills had gone to pot...

But seriously, I wonder how many of us find ourselves in the position of having a mind filled with ideas, hopes and dreams, and struggling to find someone who can share our train of thought...

Discussion papers...and thoughts unfinished...

I was reading a document presented to me as a discussion paper today... I am not sure what the writer intended, however this reader perceives it to be something of a mind dump or brainstorm, rather than a considered piece of writing...

Anyway, this coupled with my delayed readings on existentialism and supervision of social workers... kitchen renovations and a sick daughter who is more than 3 hours by plane away... leads to lots of cluttered thoughts...

So... one thought at a time...

1. The feedback on the paper will take more time than I was expecting... sigh
2. My daughter is doing everything she can to get well
3. The trades-people are all booked for the kitchen... be patient!
4. I really want to read the other stuff as this will be GOOD...

As I continue my journey in and around the topic of existentialism, I came across an article titled Existential Approaches to Action Research (Allan Feldman) http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~afeldman/ActionResearchPapers/Feldmaninpress.PDF and was interested by the thoughts at the very beginning... and the notion of 'doing' without 'being'. Finally I have a personal appreciation of the term 'authentic leadership'... doing AND being... well for me anyway.

The other line that really got me was that in order to change - in the articles context, for teachers to change, they have to change their way of being a teacher... I am in the background still working on a model of leadership practice supervision... and all these readings are starting to consolidate and clarify what have till now been feelings and suspicions... you can't 'do' the job of being a managerial leader, you also have to 'be' the managerial leader... and in order to change what you do, you need to change your way of being... I reckon I already knew this, I just hadn't described it in this way...

But then, this also needs to link into levels of awareness and readiness to change our ways of being... maybe my role is not so much to develop the supervision program, rather to raise awareness of the different ways of not just 'doing' but also 'being a managerial leader...

This is where the blog comes in...more disconnected thoughts that will hopefully become clearer as I explore them further...

That's all for now...

...just to get me started

Today was like most days - it had a beginning, a middle and an end... well the work bit did anyway... the real day is not yet over...

I have often wondered what prompts people to start blogging and have read odds and ends about the narcissistic aspects of such activity... however I really do have (at times) an overly cluttered mind and a variety of sideline interests... cooking... arm chair philosophy... social networking... Harvard Business blogs and an assortment of other business feeds... which usually lead me into 'random' book purchases and more ideas and thinking... and trying to connect what seem to be otherwise disconnected thoughts as a result of this presents some interesting challenges...

My all time favourite quote is one from Schopenhauer;

"Thus the task in not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees."

This probably sums up why I fill my mind with all this 'stuff', as I remain certain that at some point, in some Dumbledore 'pensieve-type' way, they will settle, connect and a clarity will emerge.

So that's it... for today at least...