Hosted by our leading education lawyer and accredited executive coach Nick MacKenzie, #EdInfluence features interviews with influential leaders from across the sector and beyond to explore the human side of leadership.
In his inimitable style, Nick unearths the secrets of good leadership from his guests.
Trusted by thousands of education providers across the country, Browne Jacobson is an award winning national law firm helping clients and partner organisations shape and influence education policy.
This special edition of #EdInfluence was recorded at the ASCL annual conference 2023, where Nick was able to hear from a range of sector leaders, who shared their varying approaches and perspectives on leadership.
Interviewees include:
Pepe Di'lasio - ASCL Past President & Head of Wales High School
Liz Anderson, CEO of Djanogly Learning Trust
Steve Rollett - Deputy Chief Executive of the Confederation of School Trusts (CST)
Leora Cruddas CBE, Chief Executive of the Confederation of School Trusts (CST)
Carl Ward - ASCL Past President & CEO of City Learning Trust
Let us know what you think of this episode - drop us a message and connect via LinkedIn.
Nick MacKenzie - sector leading lawyer for Browne Jacobson
We are here recording this special edition of the Edinfluence Podcast at the Association of School and College Leaders Annual Conference in Birmingham. Where over the two days of the conference were chatting to people we bump into to get their thoughts and insights into all things leadership. I'm Peppi Di'lasio, head teacher of Wales High School in South Yorkshire, and I'm also immediate past president of ASCL. What brings you 80% of your joy as a leader? Oh, definitely working with young people. the best part of my job is spending time with students, seeing how, they can grow up the stories they can tell, the days in which you can learn so much for them, and how you can influence their lives and help shape them for the better, Best advice given to you as a leader? enjoy every single day and make the most of what is the greatest job in the world. Being a headteacher is just a fantastic career and certainly something that I I've enjoyed for over 10 years now. What advice would you give to a learning leader? I would say to immerse yourself in your role, to do what you find passionate and to, make sure you learn from the very best people around you and soak up all you can from those people that you, that you work alongside and, and gain from their experience. So we heard from Barones Sue Campbell earlier today, and she, she shared with conference that leadership is not just what you do in the here and now, it's about legacy. What do you want your legacy to be? And I'm thinking particularly in your school role, but as immediate past president. So, I, I'm incredibly lucky in my school role because we were selected last year to be part of the schools rebuilding programme. So we are building a brand new school at, at Wales in Rotherham, and I see that as being part of my legacy for our community, for young people, for generations to come in that part of the world. As immediate past president, I'm really proud of everything that we've done here at Council and at Conference to make our, EDI agenda so much more about being inclusive and being welcomed to everybody. And you get a sense of that from the warmth of the Conference this year and the fact there's so many people here. It's our biggest ever conference, but we're looking forward to making sure that grows even more so next year in Liverpool. And favorite leadership characteristic of a successful leader? Oh, well, I'm also a big fan of Arsenal Football Club, and so, Arsene Wenger is someone that I, I look up to a great deal. His resilience and his determination to only accept the very best for the club and for for the community of Arsenal is something that I certainly hold dear and close to my heart. Hi, I'm Liz Anderson. I'm the CEO at Djanogly Learning Trust in East Midlands. What brings you 80% of your joy as a leader? Seeing people empowered through actions I've taken to give them the confidence, the skills, the knowledge to really shine. And what's the best advice you've ever been given as a leader? The job is never finished. And just to sometimes allow yourself to just stop so that you're not completely driven. To just stop and instead of always looking forwards to stop and sometimes look backwards as a real reflection to empower yourself about the journey you've walked already to help inform the journey you're about to walk. And what's advice you'd give to a learning leader? Never stop learning yourself. Never think you know it all because you never, ever do. And biggest strategic leadership challenge for you in the medium term? For me personally, I'm handing over my baby, having been at the birth of my trust, I'm moving on to other exciting things and I'm handing it, got to hand it over to somebody else, and I'm trying in the next six months to get everything out of my head and into some kind of form that I can hand over that to somebody else. So we've just heard leadership is not just what you do in the here and now, it's about legacy. What do you want your legacy to be? I feel with the help of the incredible team around me, we've built a trust that it is absolutely based on values and everybody who comes to any of our schools feels that, and that's what I want. That's what I want my legacy to be, that I was, that people, not what I've done, but people say she always stood up for those more vulnerable than herself. Who has inspired you as a leader? My dad. I know that sounds really corny, but, you know, he, he was a classic disadvantaged kid, first one to go to university and he smashed it. He went to Cambridge on a scholarship from, living as a, in a little tenant farming family in, in Cheshire and he just, always just followed what he believed was right. Favorite leadership characteristic of a successful leader? Mutual respect. Hi, I'm Steve Rollett, Deputy Chief Executive at the Confederation of School Trusts. What brings you 80% of your joy as a leader, Steve? I think probably the thing that brings me a lot of job satisfaction is, problem solving. And by that, what I really mean I think is, like the intellectual challenge of being a leader. Often, you know, you are responsible for finding solutions often to quite complex problems and thinking through the different options, what's pros and cons of different things, strategies you might take, and sort of bringing a team with you. That for, to me, especially when it works, feels, feels really successful and, really important. Best advice I've been given as a leader. Probably, I know it's an, it's an old cliche, but that, that advice about pick your battles. I don't, I suppose I don't mean literally battles, but particularly in the line of work that I do, when you are representing, members, you've got to think really carefully about where you are going to deploy your resource and your energy. You know, what are the really big issues that you've got to deal with. and there's quite, quite a lot of strategy around that sometimes obviously dealing with the stuff in front of you now, but, but also thinking, about what's, what's coming down the road ahead And what advice would you give to a learning leader? Yeah. I think probably just, I know this sounds really quite glibe but, think a lot. I guess again, leadership, a huge part of leadership is problem solving. We often have a gut instinct, and that can be right. Oftentimes our gut instinct, we know, can be a really, a really important resource for us to draw on. Also, it can provide blind spots for us. So sometimes it's really important to challenge those blind spots. And if there's something that you don't know or indeed something you feel super confident about, actually reading, speaking to people, challenging your thinking on that issue can be a really effective way of testing what you, what you think you might do in a particular area, and developing your view of that issue. So yeah, I would definitely think just challenge yourself always to be thinking, is there more I can know about this issue before I set a strategy in place? And favourite leadership characteristic of an effective leader? I think it's about humanity. Which encompasses a load of things. I think probably empathy is part of that, being able to work on a team and so on. But just someone who's got a deep sense of humanity just feels to me massively important because a leader is only a leader because they've got people they're leading, right? Therefore you've, you've, you've got to be able to relate to those people. I think you've got to be able to understand what makes them tick, got to be able to get the best out of them, and you've got to be able to help them find, I talked about that 80% joy earlier. You've gotta be able to help them find that 80% joy in their work. S o yeah, for me it's humanity. Loera Cruddas Chief Executive of the Confederation of School Trusts. What's the best advice you were ever given as a leader? That was a piece of advice I was given, recently by a very senior person in the education world who I won't name, but we were talking about how we manage workload, at this level of seniority in which we, we operate. And she said to me the, the test that she applies to herself is, put yourself where only you can be. Now I'm still not very good at that, but I think about it a lot in terms of where, where can I make the most impact and where do why I need to be, where only I can be, but there are other places where, you know, some others can be who would probably make a better impact than me. And advice you'd give to a learning leader? Keep your balance. I think would be the advice I would give to a learning leader. And I think, I think leadership can be, all consuming, and it can, it can take up all of who you are and you want to bring your whole self to leadership, that's really important. But that notion of keeping, keeping your balance, and I'm not even sure I mean work life balance, I mean keeping a balance and perspective. Making sure that you are looking after yourself while you look after others. So, so that ideal balance feels very important. Who has inspired you as a leader? So I'm, I'm, I'm going to say Nelson Mandela and I know that can sound a little bit trite, but, he was, not being not just the president of South Africa, but a, a world leader. And I was born in South Africa and lived through the period of apartheid and what emerged with Nelson Mandela, who's this leader who could just bring together different communities from, you know, a very broken place. And it was an absolute privilege to, to live in South Africa at the time and see how he did that. Carl Ward, Chief Executive City of Learning Trust and Stoke in Trent Staffordshire and Chair of the Foundation for Education Development. What brings you 80% of your joy as a leader? Making a difference for children and communities, especially over the last three or four years. It has become absolutely obvious what our role has been during the pandemic and the cost of living crisis. And it's been harder and harder, but making a difference and a systematic difference for children and young people across my academies from that perspective. But that will be the trust perspective, I suppose, from the Foundation for Education Development is making sure that difference has longevity over time. And you know, we have long termism in the things that we do that really makes the difference for children and young people and communities and families. If we're consistent over a period of time, we have really good schools that span the generations As a leader. Carl, how do you balance the short term getting things done with that long term vision? I think you've got to be true to community yourself and what you do. What goes on with the political education bit and, and, and, and the, the way that the country operates and what it needs is one thing. And if you are new to leadership, you can be taken in by jerks from left to right back to centre. Whereas if you've been in leadership in schools and colleges and academies for a long period of time, you stick to what you know works and what is true and what will work over a period of time. That is consistently harder if we don't have consistency in education policy, over time because you can't then deliver consistency in education practice. That's one of the things of course the FED is looking to support with, with that long-term approach to education policy and practice and bringing the two together. But you've got to stick to your truth in what you know that will work in your school or group of schools. That's the most important thing. I think the best advice that I've ever been given is you constantly review what you're doing and you keep aware of what you're doing and you keep two boxes mentally, one box of all the really great way of doing things that you can consistently practice again and another box of things that you've done that haven't worked that well, but you don't forget them. So you don't continue to repeat an error that you might have made. None of us are perfect. What's the phrase? You know, we're going to fail all of us at something and that's fine. Okay. Because you learn from your failures, you keep your box failures there and you learn from them. You don't forget them as much as you keep your box of great things that you've done and you think, I'm gonna do that again. So we heard earlier in the conference from, from Baroness Sue Campbell, that leadership is not just what you do in the here and now, it's about legacy. What do you want your legacy to be? And I'm, I'm thinking Carl, particularly as a past president of ASCL and the, the work you're doing in your Trust and the FED, what do you want your legacy to be? So when I was president of ASCL, my theme for the year was, the country needs a long-term plan for education. By long term. I, I mean longer than five years of the typical political cycle. It's not to say the politics in education isn't important, but there is lots more to education other than politics and policy. So I, I think I've got two elements of legacy one might say. So obviously, my presidential year in ASCL led on to the foundation, of creating the Foundation for Education Development. That, that you really champions that long-term approach in education. And, and I'd like to think that my legacy over time with that will be that governments, will bring in elements of what, what that FED work is going to do. Because it's the only way we're going to solve our big problems in education, society, in the economy by providing a long term approach to education, which is the driving factor behind all economies in society, educating our children and young people and educating our adults as well at the same time. And I suppose in many ways that's, that's mirrored in the work that I do in my trust. Consistency over time, a legacy there is to ensure that children, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds have a great deal over time. And we can only do that with consistency. We can only do that with working on things to develop them over time. Because my aim in my trust is to be world class. That's a big aim and it's not that easy to do. We can only do it with consistency over time, knowing your standard, deliver those things. And it takes decades to do something like that. So I suppose, you know, my legacy in both, both trust and, and and, and the FED in terms of my presidential year is one of the same. Consistency over time, ensuring that we have a long term approach to solve our long-term problems. So bring this edition of Ed Influence to close. Wanted to leave you with a question to reflect on. Earlier in one of the sessions with Baroness Sue Campbell, Director of Women's Football at the FA, she told the conference that leadership is not just what you do in the hear and now, it's about legacy. What do you want your legacy to be she asked us. And this left me with the question of what's the mission that connects your leadership roles?
