Kitabı oku: «The Making of Us», sayfa 5

CHAPTER 3
November
Headship – opening up the path on which the next generation will travel

The second half of the autumn term began for me with the annual residential conference for head teachers. Roller cases packed, determined headmistresses would set off to different parts of the country: I have compared the Bayliss & Harding bathroom products in Buxton and Brighton, Bristol and Birmingham. Imagine 200 headmistresses confined for three days to an air-conditioned hotel – the brisk competence, the curbing of instincts to say ‘shush!’ and take control, the sidelong glances at each other’s outfits. And what was going on in the schools they were supposed to be running? I wished my senior management team an enjoyable few days and caught the train, knowing they would appreciate the freedom – after all, why develop people’s leadership skills if you’re not going to trust them? I just had to promise not to come back with too many bright ideas for them to listen to patiently – a sudden whim to do away with bells, perhaps, or a scheme to buy a field-study centre in north Wales …

As I picture myself on that train journey, slanting November rain spattering the windows, the image of a certain familiar and bespectacled headmistress from the 1970s reappears, smiling quizzically before me. She is the headmistress of Sunny Hill, the romantically and improbably named Desirée Fawcus Cumberlege, my headmistress: Dizzy. Born in India in 1919, a cross between Maggie Smith and Joyce Grenfell, she would tiptoe along the polished parquet corridors of Sunny Hill in fully fashioned stockings and kitten heels, dizzily occupying some higher realm, her academic gown, worn over pastel tweeds, floating out behind her like sails. Her hair was always disciplined into a silvery permanent wave and her winged glasses, sitting at a slight tilt, gave her a faintly surprised look. Like many of her generation she appeared to live entirely for her work: there was no Mr Cumberlege, though we invented for her a tragic past and a dark, dashing officer fiancé, who had (ah! poor Dizzy!) been lost over the Channel in the war. He may even have existed – we embellished him regardless and the lonely life we supposed her to have led since. A distant figure, Dizzy rarely spoke to us except to address her pupils in assembly: ‘Let me make it clear, girls: there are to be no more non-regulation shoes seen, otherwise we will all wear sensible, lace-up “Rosamund”!’ But I do remember one thrilling afternoon when my friend Avril and I were invited to go with her to tea at the house of an elderly former pupil. It was for me an unconscious lesson in leadership that I would remember years later.

The invitation arose because of my bossiness. It was the summer term and we had been asked as pupils to make recommendations for the award of the Radford Award, bestowed annually on a pupil in our form who had shown the most public-spirited attitude during the school year. A benefactor nowadays would know better than to lay themselves open to the risks of litigation inherent in this gesture, but in those days it was genuinely thought that the girls could simply exercise their good judgement and choose appropriately – such simple times we lived in then. When success fell on the most popular girl in our class, admired for her smooth brown hair, permanent golden tan and exotic elephant-hair bracelets bought at home in Kenya, I felt it right to make a democratic stand and insist that, the next year, proper criteria were drawn up to ensure that this was not merely a popularity vote. No doubt I was motivated largely by envy at not being chosen myself, but Miss Cumberlege (she had met girls before who wanted to advise her on how to run the school) brightly suggested we should put this idea to Miss Radford, our benefactor, who duly invited us to tea in her garden.

Accompanied by Avril, a compact, hockey-playing girl with a straight black fringe sitting above an equally straight nose, I waited on the appointed afternoon outside a dark wooden hut we knew to be Miss Cumberlege’s garage. Neither of us had ever seen what was inside the garage, suspecting it to contain agile spiders and perhaps a broken-down lawnmower, but when the headmistress arrived, dressed for the occasion in a silk headscarf and looking very slightly like a primmer Grace Kelly, the doors opened to reveal the back of a very clean, pale blue Ford Anglia. This remarkably slim car with its upturned tail lights reminiscent of its owner’s glasses was clearly Miss Cumberlege’s prized possession, neatly parked in the tiny garage like a model in its matchwood box.

Avril and I waited. Miss Cumberlege squeezed herself behind the wheel and backed expertly out. We climbed in and were soon bowling down the Somerset lanes, the huge cow parsley stems in the summer hedgerows parting as we passed, like the palm trees on Thunderbirds Tracy Island. We felt free as air. I have no recollection now of the outcome of our conversation with Miss Radford, though the old lady seemed delighted at this impromptu tea party with young visitors from her dimly remembered school. Sitting in the wild country garden with its gnarled apple trees, where lazy wasps knocked against our glasses of homemade lemonade, she served us large slices of seed cake, and ever since I have associated the taste of caraway with grandmotherly baking and with being on your best behaviour with older people. For us, the adventure lay in the fact that, contrary to our belief, Miss Cumberlege was actually a real person: she did not cease to exist when outside the school gates. Perhaps when the term ended, she got into the Ford Anglia and went far away from Sunny Hill to a home somewhere, where there was another small garage and a mantelpiece with a silver-framed photograph of a darkly handsome man. Who knew? It was from this afternoon adventure that I understood long afterwards the importance of taking the challenges and opinions of young people seriously, being seen to do so, and giving them time. I was satisfied aged twelve that I had been listened to and my point considered carefully. I don’t remember what happened subsequently about the awarding of the cup – somehow it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

A creature far removed from us in age, dress sense and attitudes, Dizzy was not a figure who had a major impact on our lives at the time; besides, we saw too little of her. How I should love to be able to sit over teacups and ask her about her job, and her life, now that I’ve spent over twenty years treading in her unlikely footsteps. How much of her world and mine would be similar? How much has irrevocably changed?

A little light was shed on this question while I was casting around one Friday afternoon for assembly material. I opened a slim book of essays left on a shelf by my predecessor, called, with studied decorum, The Headmistress Speaks. Originally published in 1937, with contributors as redoubtable as Mary G. Clarke, head of Manchester High School, and Edith Ironside, head of Sunderland High, the words called up for me the spirit and tone of Dizzy herself. But some sounded strangely modern. It was a shock that Ethel Strudwick, for example, appointed High Mistress of St Paul’s in 1927, could write with candour and empathy: ‘School has come to mean something very much warmer, closer and more home-like than it was in earlier days, and the relation between teacher and taught is friendlier, freer and more natural.’[1] I don’t know whether Miss Strudwick embodied this freedom or warmth herself: her portrait hanging in the Great Hall rather suggests not. The aspiration is striking, however, in its informality and recognition of the importance of relationships based not entirely on authority. And Miss Clarke of Manchester, writing about the life of a head, says simply: ‘For the headmistress herself, there is also the personal problem of reconciling the claims of an exacting and unleisured profession, with her own functions and development as a woman.’[2]

Headship still is exacting and unleisured – some might say remorseless. But these two women acknowledge that for all that, the quality of humanity is absolutely central: both in being able to create a sense of community for those within the school, as well as at the same time paying attention to your own identity and growth as a person, so that you bring to the job, and preserve within it, an authentic humanity of your own – expressed in your distinct character and personality. Their words remind me that inside every headmistress – and headmaster – under the sometimes heavy mantle of authority, there is a living person following a unique path of development, separate from, yet inextricably connected to, that professional persona.

There are a thousand ways to think about headship and as many ways of doing it well as there are heads. The wisest know they are not good at everything and gather around themselves colleagues who complement, rather than replicate, their particular skills. It is this human dimension which I have found the most rewarding and the most challenging aspect of the job, and which made the prescient words of Miss Clark and Miss Strudwick resonate with me.

When you join a new school as the head, it’s a bit like boarding a moving train. Nothing stops for you: clambering on, you haul up your suitcase, steady your balance and, moving up through the carriages as best you can, find your way to the driver’s seat. Meanwhile the life of the school and its journey into the future continue and you must learn about them and how you want to steer the train while it hurtles along. You may be the one steering, but you can’t achieve much unless you bring everyone along with you – and that means building effective relationships.

Settling in involves watching and listening. Especially you have to understand the mood and climate of the staff and to find out what they are used to. It takes time to work out the exact shape of the hole your predecessor left. In my first week at St Paul’s, I would wander into the staff common room at morning break – usually a rather pressured fifteen minutes where everyone is jostling to get a quick coffee or catch a colleague before going off to teach their next lesson. One particular morning, as I was spooning instant coffee into a mug emblazoned with the slogan ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’, the head of science came up to me and said, ‘Nice to see you in here. We don’t normally see the high mistress in the staffroom.’ A small point perhaps, but this gave me a hint about the relationship my predecessor had had with her colleagues and therefore what they might be expecting. My style would be more informal – they were sensing that – and while they didn’t altogether mind, they might take time to get used to it. Similarly, when it came to my first heads of department meeting, the director of studies explained that normally those attending the meeting would assemble and then the high mistress would be collected from her office and escorted to join them. Grateful for the heads-up, I suggested a less ceremonial approach, choosing to be in the room first rather than last, so I could catch one or two people before the meeting and help things begin with the idea that we were coming together to think and confer, rather than that I was arriving to preside. So, by gradual steps, I established my own way of doing things and we adapted to one another in a natural and unforced way.

Small details like this accumulate and are the start of making relationships, winning the trust and confidence of the staff. They are a group, so you engage with them both en masse and also as a collection of individuals. Before taking up my post, I took the advice of a wise former head and learned the names of everyone on the staff from a set of photographs. So much more reassuring to be able to address people by name at once and start forging a working alliance from day one, minimising the sense that because you are a newcomer everyone has to start at the beginning for you. Then there is navigating the uncharted waters of the staffroom. There, a unique dynamic prevails, with professional and friendship groupings a new head needs to assimilate and read, listening, observing, absorbing. Here will be laid out the lines of loyalty and tension that may come to the surface at times of crisis or controversy: the more you know and understand of people’s personalities, priorities and preferences, the more you are able to anticipate and manage reactions in the moment. And because the staffroom or common room is where people relax, it’s not just words but also body language that can be revealing: the small group who always sit together lounging on a particular sofa, swiftly dispatching the Times crossword and sharing familiar humour; the science teacher who checks his pigeonhole meticulously but never sits down and rarely speaks to anyone; those two modern linguists sympathising with one another over mugs of tea in the far corner … If you have an interest in people, reading all of this is not only fascinating but an absolutely necessary part of forging a team: the staff gradually get to see, know and accept you, and you develop a fuller understanding of them.

Getting to know people and recognising their talents are amongst the most important and underrated aspects of good leadership, laying the foundation for those around you to feel happy in their work. To enjoy what they do, people need to be in balance: with their capability stretched enough to feel stimulated but not so overstretched that they are always stressed. When we talk to young people about their future careers, we often encourage them to ‘look for the hobby in the job’ – to find the thing that is so natural to them, that they enjoy so much, it doesn’t feel like work at all. As workplaces, schools are highly reliant on achieving this because so much is done within the now old-fashioned-sounding concept of ‘goodwill’ – doing things that you are not strictly being paid for because you are well disposed towards the institution, feel well rewarded and are willing to give your time without counting it too closely. You might be taking a group of students to the theatre in the evening, or accompanying a camping expedition over a weekend, or even taking a school party to Rome in the Easter holidays; it’s all part of the job and you give up your own time to do it normally without extra pay. Most teachers’ contracts still enshrine this idea, referring to ‘any other duties that the head teacher may deem reasonable’, leaving open the exact number of hours you will actually work or the exact nature of your duties during those hours. Anathema no doubt to professionals who charge their time in six-minute units, this is all about the traditional give and take of schools, and what helps them feel more like communities than corporations. While it’s one thing to contract people to work in this way, it’s another thing to cause them to do it with genuine willingness and enjoyment. For this to happen, the overall culture of the community has to be a happy positive one where teachers feel valued and appreciated and where there is a high degree of job satisfaction. But with life in a school so very busy, with always a sense of urgency and more to do than there is strictly time for, how do you bring this about? There is no quick, obvious solution here because ethos and culture have to be worked at constantly, but part of the answer lies in getting the balance right between treating people as individuals while building a sense of corporate spirit.

Because I can now hear her words echoing through mine, I must now introduce Gillian Stamp. Gillian has been easily the most important influence in my development as a leader; she is now a dear friend and was, for the second half of my headship at St Paul’s, my revered and trusted mentor. Without Gillian, with her long experience of working with leaders in many sectors across the world through BIOSS, the foundation of which she is a director, few of the ways I now think about leadership would have become so clear to me. The philosophy behind BIOSS (the Brunel Institute of Organisation and Social Studies) is simply that for long-term sustainability, all organisations, whatever their nature, need to design themselves to make the most of what is best in human character while minimising those impulses which are destructive. And this is not just so that we contribute to human happiness and flourishing, but so that organisations can succeed. Where there is a lack of motivation because people feel anxious, frustrated or undervalued, an organisation may be profitable in the short term, but over time, cannot achieve its purpose. In a nutshell, to quote BIOSS: ‘In an organisation that induces confidence and respect, people work together in ways that strengthen bonds of mutual trust and fairness, enhance imagination and innovation, and ensure competence; thus the organisation achieves its purposes and contributes to the wider society.’[3]

I would often arrive at Gillian’s quiet house having rushed from meetings, feeling overwhelmed by the multiplicity of challenges and unsure how to seek her help. Our conversations, which invariably clarified my thinking, would almost always revolve around some aspect of developing human capability – making the most of the constructive aspects of human nature – as the key to achieving success in whatever matter it was I was facing at the time. When we talked about working with individual colleagues, she would remind me of the adage: ‘How can I know what I think until I see what I say,’ helping me see that people often don’t need advice so much as space to bring what they already know to the surface of their minds. This is what I often found myself doing while sitting in Gillian’s peaceful sitting room, with its seascapes on the walls and with her still, serene presence framed against the light from her garden, offering encouraging prompts.

Unsurprisingly, given that focus on developing human capability, one of the great pleasures of headship for me has been derived from time spent with individual colleagues, helping them think through their work, their aptitudes and their ambitions. I wasn’t so much advising them, more just actively listening, perhaps offering a few prompts of my own, as the person thought aloud about what they enjoyed and what they wanted to do – talking about the obstacles and then talking them away. Often much was tangentially revealed about what drove that individual, what made them happy, what bothered them. Sometimes the person would leave my room with newly focussed ambition; sometimes it was a matter of giving themselves permission not to chase the conventional promotion route that they thought they ought to want, and instead think about a lateral route that was much more suited to them: the head of department, for instance, who recognised that they did not enjoy management and wanted to devote themselves instead to teaching and research. Over time, I came to know many colleagues well in this way.

Building a happy, collegiate staff team also means speaking with the staff as a group, painting in words a picture of the school that you are making together using the more expansive, public voice rather than the understated private one. This is when the leader is out in front, casting their light, creating unity and a clear sense of shared purpose. Those leaders called ‘inspirational’ are at their best at these moments, though not all occasions for leading one-on-many have to be formal. For example, we would hold a short staff briefing each Friday morning, which became something of a ritual marking the end of the week. It had a practical purpose: the timely sharing of information and the all-important thanking of individuals, but it was also an opportunity to bring the working week to a close together with everyone in Friday mood.

There was something of the comic serial about these briefings which left people feeling well disposed having enjoyed the repartee. Visitors would often be surprised by the relaxed friendliness and shared dry amusement or mutual teasing that was the norm. Much can be achieved through humour, if it comes naturally; every common room has its own style – another thing to listen for and become a part of as the community moulds itself to you. And as well as the capacity for ready laughter, modelling simple good manners and a considerate attitude is a vital habit heads must develop. Thanking people for what they do genuinely and often is always appreciated and while the private word is important, public acknowledgement matters too. It’s hard to overstate the importance of catching people doing things right and showing appreciation – a much better use of time than catching people doing things wrong because, quite often, it leads to the things which are not so good going away or solving themselves. Of course there are sometimes difficult, even shocking messages to convey. But regardless of the circumstances, the leader must herself exude a relentless positivity and optimism, to carry the community in hope and confidence into the future, whatever the challenges. Everyone looks to that person to paint a picture of how things will be, to tell the story, and for each person to know their role in that. This is how you build commitment and enthusiasm for what the team will do together, energising everyone to throw themselves into it wholeheartedly. Fortunately, in a school full of young people looking to the future, optimism normally comes easily.

But there is more to leadership than just keeping everyone happy, though that is absorbing enough. However collegiate, listening and consultative a culture you have, a leader must be able to make decisions, sometimes difficult ones: a strong community is one that feels energised but also secure. A vacillating leader makes people nervous and is not respected, however good they are at consulting and listening to all sides. However flat the management structure, there will be times when, standing alone on the mountain top, visible to others sheltering below, the leader chooses the path forward out of the difficult terrain. How can you both be decisive and at the same time take people with you? Consultation is important, even if people tend only to value (even remember) that they were consulted when they get the outcome they want. When the decision goes against them, they tend to forget that they were asked what they thought and ‘senior management stitch-up’ mutters its way around the building.