Above: The dots show the spread of personality traits across 20 young leaders in Islay High School. These differences explain a little of why no two people ever seem to see a task in the same way!
Last Thursday I had an incredible day in Islay High as a guest of the S6 “student leadership” group. Never a school to do things the traditional way, Islay has had its sixth-year students adopt leadership roles around the school. They help with general supervision of younger learners as well as running events and initiatives for the school. The school has taken the view that a body of useful talent such as this group constitutes, need to be nurtured and trained in leadership itself. The group have been involved in a number of leadership training events. I was with them on Thursday to explore “team building” theory and to help them in thinking about their own teamwork as a Student Leadership team.
I covered personality, talent and current theories of talent management. We went on to explore the 9 team traits while specifically applying this to their own team. As we worked through these team-development basics, I was struck by how easily they grasped and explored the concepts that we associate strongly with the world of adult work and adult teams. Likewise, I was amazed by how absolutely similar the challenges that their team faced in terms of their own team-growth were to those of adult teams I have worked with. Their team was facing the challenge of having different team members with vastly different personalities and talents in the same way that adult teams do. They understand the issues, and have planned some actions that will improve team communication while helping people with different styles to work together with less friction. They were a joy to work with; humorous and insightful, and to reiterate, just like the adult groups I work with.
So I’m left with two thoughts percolating as a result of my Islay High Visit:
1. Senior learners in schools can enjoy leadership learning and will be much better prepared for the world of work whatever they aspire to do.
2. We are not doing nearly enough to equip young people with leadership and management knowledge in most schools.
Perhaps schools themselves don’t have a body of knowledge about leadership and team development. Perhaps the new gold standard of the Scottish Qualification for Headship is concentrated on too few people in a school, and those who are learning are unlikely to have the time to cascade their learning to others including interested student groups?
There is a newly announced SQA leadership qualification which might be a vehicle to carry us into this area for young people, staff and senior leaders. The modern world will be easier to navigate for those who understand how teams work together and fix problems together regardless of whether you aspire to lead such teams or work in them.