Being Organised

I’ve recently just taken up a new post as a senior leader — Assistant Principal in charge of Teaching and Learning. This is my second bite at the SLT cherry, and I’m determined that this experience will go a lot better than it did the first time around.

One of the areas I want to make improvements is around how I organise myself. When you’re a mainscale teacher or a head of department, a lot of your time is organised for you by virtue of the large timetable that you’re inevitably teaching. Even when you’re not teaching, you have a large volume of marking or planning to do that sits around those lessons.

As a senior leader, your timetable is a lot lighter, but of course that doesn’t mean you aren’t extremely busy. However, you have that responsibility of organising that extra time most effectively to ensure that you can get the many jobs on your to-do list done. Unless you create some effective systems to do that, you are going to start dropping the ball somewhere, and that can have some potentially awkward consequences.

The further grenade, of course, as exemplified in the now ubiquitous SLT interview ‘in tray’ task, is that stuff will just crop up during the day you hadn’t planned for, laying waste to your best laid plans. For example, on Friday afternoon a random walk of the corridor ended with me having to do an emergency cover, detonating my plans to conduct some lesson visits as I try to see each teacher in the school at least twice before the end of the academic year!

My first go round on SLT, I did not feel I ever really got to grips with a system for organising myself. I’d always been pretty good at keeping to deadlines and getting things done without need for a system in my previous roles, so didn’t really take this aspect of the role as seriously as I should have done (probably some youthful arrogance in there as well, I’d suggest). But this meant I’d make mistakes like book a meeting at the same time as I had an On Call slot, for example. Ultimately, not good enough. This time around, I’m clear I’ve got to be much more on top of this aspect of my ‘game’.

These are some of the things I’m trying to do to make sure my levels of self-organisation are as strong as they can be:

· I’ve created a Trello account to start listing my jobs that I’ve got to do with deadlines. This is helping me to think through the stages of a task.

· I’ve started creating a weekly self-agenda, just mapping out my week so I know where I’m meant to be at any one time, so I can work out what time I have left over to get my various jobs done.

· I’ve been consulting the whole school calendar to make sure I know what meetings are on, in advance.

· I’ve got my timetable clocked into my Calendar on my phone, and I try to upload my various meeting slots, such as line management, into those as well.

· I pester the SLT WhatsApp group with annoying questions like ‘Can I check what meetings are on this week’ to make sure I’ve read the calendar properly.

· Using reminders on my phone when I want to chase up something a couple of weeks down the line.

· Making sure I’ve confirmed key deadlines with the right people, so we both have clarity over the timescales we’re working to.

The key point here is that I want my organisation to lead to preparation. For example, I know I’ve got a Line Management meeting with the Head of English on Wednesday, so I can start thinking about what I want to discuss and get that sent out to him by the end of Monday so I’ve given him some advance notice and so I can feel prepared to make that time as useful as possible for both parties.

I know there’s been discussion in the past about the most tiring roles in a school, or whether being on SLT is more demanding than being a mainscale teacher teaching a 5 period day? Now, clearly, they’re BOTH highly demanding. I find the 5 period day physically very tiring, especially if I’ve got big classes or challenging classes. SLT, however, is extremely cognitively demanding. There are so many balls to juggle at any one time, and keeping your eye on all of them is very draining, as is rationalising that lots of your job won’t get done on any one day, as is switching modes from one task to another to another fairly rapidly! In addition, as SLT you’ve got to ‘set the weather’, so keeping a positive external demeanour, trying to mask your stresses and strains from everyone else. Giving the impression of composure is, I think, really important, even if you’re not waving but drowning on the inside.

I’m not saying it’s anything revolutionary, and I’m sure there is A LOT more I could do. But organising yourself properly definitely one of the most underrated aspects of leadership. I’d be very interested to hear on twitter what other leaders do to keep themselves on top of their agendas!