Trust Matters In Changing Times

Joining a Steiner Waldorf school from a big mainstream multi-academy trust proved to be a challenging and exciting leap in my school leadership career.

Until recently Steiner Waldorf schools hadn’t had a conventional leadership model but in 2019 there was effectively a recognition that modern schools can’t run in that way any longer and that a proper leadership structure was needed.

Since September 2021 I’ve been in post as school lead – the equivalent of headteacher – at Elmfield Rudolf Steiner School in Stourbridge, an independent school educating 210 pupils aged 3 to 17. This has been my favourite job of my career so far. The Steiner Waldorf model is absolutely focused on the learning needs of individual pupils rather than the data. It’s very holistic and very focused on outside learning. For me it has all these wonderful aspects of education that have been drained away from too many areas of mainstream schooling.

While it was clear that change was needed my first months in the post were a challenging time for me. I don’t have a Steiner Waldorf background but in order to make the necessary changes to ensure that the school was effectively led, that it complied with Ofsted requirements, and that finances were on track while preserving everything that makes the school great – I needed to build trust.

I enrolled on Best Practice Network’s Level 7 Senior Leadership Apprenticeship Programme with NPQEL in the first few months of my role and the programme has given me some important insights and guidance that have really helped me in my leadership journey. One is the importance of the role of credibility and integrity in creating that trust.

Building new leadership

The very first thing I had to do after arriving at the school was establish a leadership team that could work together and that would trust me. I didn’t do this straight away. Instead I spent a month at the beginning just getting to know people, going into lessons and talking to colleagues and trying to identify people I could work with who had appropriate credibility within the school. It was only then that I began to establish a senior leadership team made up of six colleagues, most of whom had Steiner Waldorf backgrounds and Steiner Waldorf credibility but were actually open to seeing that we needed to make some changes.

One of the big messages I wanted to send to colleagues was that I wasn’t someone who was coming in to subject them to change that they had no control over. I made it clear we were going to make these changes together as a group. As part of this approach the chair of college, who represents the body of Steiner Waldorf trained teachers, became part of the SLT and we agreed to share an office so everyone could see that we were very much working together for the good of the school.

It is common for leaders going into new environments to be met with uncertainty and sometimes distrust, especially if that leader has an agenda for significant change. Your instinct can be to surround yourself with people who will support you and make you feel better about yourself. I felt it was important to resist that instinct because it would ultimately fail. I have read about schools where new leaders surrounded themselves with acolytes which created a split between two power bases that wouldn’t and couldn’t work together.

For me it was important to effectively embrace the antipathy and thrash things out. It helped that we all agreed on one fundamental principle: that keeping the school open was better than the school being closed.

A lack of curriculum oversight was one of the criticisms picked up in the 2019 Ofsted inspections of Steiner Waldorf schools so our other priority was to create an entirely new middle leadership model. We had to make sure we found the right people that would get on board with that and do it in a way that would bring other people onside.

This is easier said than done when you consider that the teacher is king at Steiner Waldorf schools. Classes stay with the same teacher from Class 1 for the next eight years. The teacher will deliver most of the lessons – some specialist lessons will be provided by other teachers – but effectively the only person parents or children need to relate to is the one class teacher. On reflection, the idea of introducing a history subject lead that would tell that teacher what the history curriculum looked like was quite the power grab.

My approach here was to create a ‘big tent’ of middle leaders that included colleagues with a range of perspectives and experience. Rather than picking people with mainstream backgrounds who agreed with me we assembled a middle leadership team made up of the most appropriate people, many with Steiner Waldorf experience as well as other colleagues with mainstream backgrounds.

The education manager, who was an experienced Steiner Waldorf educationalist, was put in charge of assembling the team of subject leads who then went on to lead curriculum meetings to develop what is an entirely credible curriculum.

Transparency and communication

Transparency is a must. Colleagues must understand why we are doing what we are doing. It might be absolutely obvious to us why we’re going to do something, but we need to make it clear to everybody why that’s going to happen so there is no room for confusion.

We had to take a different approach at Elmfield to ensure that class teachers didn’t remain in their own individual silos. We worked very hard on making sure that every decision we planned to make was well trailed in advance, and that there were opportunities for our staff to talk face to face and read draft papers. From the start I have had a policy of keeping my door open at all times. Me and my leadership colleagues visit every class regularly so that anyone can feel they can ask us about anything. This ensures they don’t feel that decisions are made behind closed doors.

Making difficult decisions

We’ve had to make some difficult decisions to ensure that pupil numbers increase, which we are now beginning to see. One of those difficult decisions was to increase the number of teacher contact hours from 26 to 28, and we had to let go a couple of members of staff to be able to pay for that change. My approach with this and any difficult decision was to avoid sugar coating anything. We were absolutely honest and upfront and made it clear that if we couldn’t do X and Y then the outcome would be Z and then explain why that will be the outcome. I think as a result our colleagues have embraced the idea that things aren’t being done to them, they’re being done with them.

It helps to ensure that colleagues are involved in the creation of strategies from the beginning. We did the school development plan together as a group, for example. We sat down in a room and talked about the things that bothered us and where we wanted to take the school. Every single word in the current school development plan is a colleague’s word. And we’re keeping staff updated with progress against development plans at the end of each term so they can see that we’re on track.

Consistency and quick wins

Consistency is another important ingredient in building trust and credibility. There is an almost 50/50 split of Steiner Waldorf trained teachers and people with mainstream backgrounds. All of our colleagues know that no matter who comes to me or the SLT with a problem, comment or suggestion they will get a consistent response. No one will be favoured over another.

It was important to achieve some quick wins early on. School cleaning was one area. Before we’d had just two cleaners and the levels of cleanliness weren’t where they should be, so we brought in another cleaning company with a team of six people and the difference was noticeable almost immediately.

The power of leadership learning

With the Level 7 Senior Leaders Apprenticeship there is this wealth of information about how modern businesses are run. For me getting these types of perspectives are particularly appropriate to the modern day school leader because we are running organisations that are incredibly complex.

I’ve learned a lot from the programme about the nature of problems and realised that it’s okay to have complex problems. Sometimes in schools the drive is to resolve things quite simplistically, to paper over the cracks and say that we need this to work for this year and that will be fine. What I found fascinating about the apprenticeship was just acknowledging that some issues are really complicated and it’s okay to have a complicated solution that needs lots of brains thinking about it in order to be able to work our way through it.

Paul Merrell is school lead at Elmfield Rudolf Steiner School in Stourbridge and is participating in Best Practice Network’s Level 7 Senior Leadership Apprenticeship Programme with NPQEL. More details are available at https://www.bestpracticenet.co.uk/leader-apprenticeship-NPQ

PANEL

13 behaviours that build trust

Learning resources from leadership company FranklinCovey feature throughout Best Practice Network’s Senior Leadership Apprenticeship Programmes with NPQEL/NPQH.

Here, their experts share the 13 behaviours you should practice to begin the process of building trust within your team:

1. Talk straight. Are you honest? Do you tell the truth?
2. Demonstrate respect. Do you genuinely care about the people around you?
3. Create transparency. Do you tell the truth in a way people can verify for themselves?
4. Right wrongs. Do you apologize quickly? Do you make restitution where possible?
5. Show loyalty. Do you give credit to others? Do you badmouth people behind their backs?
6. Deliver results. Do you get the right things done?
7. Get better. Are you a constant learner?
8. Confront reality. Do you address the tough stuff directly?
9. Clarify expectations. Do you write them down? Do you discuss them? Do you violate them?
10. Practice accountability. Do you take responsibility for results, good and bad?
11. Listen first. Do you assume that you know what others think and feel without listening?
12. Keep commitments. Do you attempt to spin your way out of a commitment you’ve broken?
13. Extend trust. Do you trust others based on the situation, the risk, and credibility of the people involved err on the side of trust?

https://www.franklincovey.co.uk/apprenticeship-partnerships/

www.bestpracticenet.co.uk/leader-apprenticeship-NPQ