Leadership at all levels starts with the vision
Excellent leadership is vital in education, but how do you find and nurture the best leaders? Bridgend College Principal and CEO Simon Pirotte gives his tips
We all know of organisations that suffer from being over managed and under-led. A good organisation will have leaders in all roles at all levels – it’s all about distributed leadership, not just at the top of the organisation.
It’s also important to have people who want to do things that align with the organisation’s vision where we want all learners and staff to “be all that they can be.”
And we really mean that at Bridgend College. We’re trying to move away from a heavy emphasis on management to a heavy emphasis on leadership.
Recruiting people with behaviours and values aligned to what we’re trying to achieve as an organisation is the first step. If you get lots of people operating in that way, then everything becomes that much easier.
People want to be inspired and people want to be led by people who have ideas and values they believe in, as opposed to doing things out of duty.
So, to have truly great leadership at all levels it all starts with the vision.
When we’re recruiting for a management position, we should use the old HR adage of “recruiting for attitude and training for skill”. It’s easy to say, but when I’ve looked in the past at the questions we’ve asked at recruitment stage they tend to have a heavy emphasis on experience, which tends to disadvantage people who have a great attitude and a passion for taking themselves and the organisation forward.
We’re now looking at the college’s recruitment practice around attitudes and behaviours because I know that when we throw challenges at people with a great attitude in a supportive environment, they can develop and grow. Furthermore, I would always choose a candidate with good leadership potential regardless of their experience in an education setting.
I really believe that if you have empathy and that education skill set within your team it’s not always essential to have that direct experience.
Measuring the effect of good leadership is also crucial. Of course, all organisations should be measuring themselves against key performance indicators, but also against what I would describe as the “temperature” of an organisation. You can walk into an organisation and sense if it is well-led or not.
Our enrolment process at Bridgend College this year was a fitting example of this. It was a busy time but there was a definite feeling of many different teams from across the college working together and responding to a collective desire to give our students a positive experience during the process.
Staff surveys are also a useful way of gauging how well leadership is working.
As a leader in my organisation it’s also important that I coach, mentor and develop others as leaders. The teacher in me likes to see people progressing, even if that means moving to a different organisation, if that’s right for their development.
I also develop my own skills with continuous training, speaking to different people, listening to inspirational entrepreneurs and ultimately speaking to our students who are some of the most inspiring and tenacious achievers I know. Listening is often an underestimated skill of the leader and the answer is often in the room already. It’s also important that people speak their mind, stand up and be counted and aren’t afraid to do so.
Of course, there will always be hurdles in leadership, and finance in the FE sector is always a challenge. It’s easy to “fix” the finances, but the real challenge comes when you want to improve quality and experience at the same time. It’s something we are continuously trying to do.
Ultimately, I do have high expectations of both myself as a leader and the leaders in the organisation. Authenticity, listening, high challenge/high support and continuing to make life better for our learners in an area where there are pockets of high social deprivation is the driving force behind our vision.
Simon Pirotte is Principal and CEO of Bridgend College, an award-winning provider of further education and training. The college was praised by Estyn for its inspiring leadership and the college is the highest ranked UK FE College in the Times 100 Best not for profit companies