Transcript: Leadership talking – Nigel Howard
Leadership challenges
Largely I think we are talking about cultural change in TAFE, moving from a publicly funded mentality to a more competitive, demand driven organisation. We are going to be competing for funding across Australia and states. You can't achieve that cultural change without the appropriate leadership, and the appropriate style of leadership to bring people along, to get people involved in decision making, so that they own the change. Without that ownership you don't get change. You can't impose change; it's not sustainable in the longer term.
I think the biggest challenges for this change are really getting people involved. We need to identify the barriers to the change and getting people involved in that identification and then getting people involved in the solutions to the change. Again, bringing people along with that change, they need to develop those solutions in a team environment. We need to take risks, we need to make decisions, we need to review along the way. So all these are challenges, but they are all elements that can drive the change as well. We need to improve over time, and review is part of that, obviously constant review, constant improvement. We need to make it empowering for the staff; interesting. They need to see that what they are doing is a change for the better in the long term. That is a big challenge. We need to be realistic about it.
Initially I think the approach has to be a consistent approach from the top to the bottom. So even in the teaching sections, we need to again know the organisational goals and promote those constructively to all of the staff. We need to gain the trust of the staff within a section, so the Head teacher's role there is critical. We need to get all the stakeholders in a teaching section involved, again, in those decision-making processes at the teaching level, because that is our basic customer front. If we don't change there, we are not going to change all the way up the line or down the line, doesn’t matter. We need to communicate openly and share information. There are a lot of blockages about information sharing in TAFE, and particularly when you get down to levels of part time teachers, or even full time teachers; often Head teachers can become a bit of a blockage. So they need to recognise that and develop strategies to overcome it.
The other thing I think, when we are promoting this change, we need to also promote what’s in it for the individual, because unless people can relate to these sorts of changes, and how it’s going to directly impact on them, quite often they push it aside and they don't consider this is not about me, it's about a big organisation and not an individual. That is not the case; it's the individuals who make the change, either as an individual or part of a team. So I think that promotion of what’s in it for me, how is it going to make it better for me and the students and our customers, and all those sorts of things — related to teaching – it’s going to be difficult to get that change through. So relate it back to the individual.
Transformational leadership
Transformational leaders I think have a genuine interest in the goals of the organisation. Quite often they are involved in setting those goals, they believe in what they are doing. So in my case: public education. A lot of people in TAFE are passionate about public education, so you don't have to motivate people in that sort of area. But I think good transformational leaders have empathy with their staff, with students, they have emotional intelligence, they are consistent in their decision-making processes, and they respect the different views of individuals within their teams. They are inclusive; they use common sense which a lot of people don't seem to when they get into management for some reason. So, as I said, most staff in TAFE are committed to public vocational education and training. So setting and measuring goals that are directly related to those sorts of things in vocational education and training will bring people along naturally.
Those goals can be related to things like retention rates, enrolment numbers, student satisfaction, staff satisfaction, all of those sorts of things directly relate to what interests and enthuses the staff, so if you’ve got those sorts of goals, you will bring them along. So that’s, transformational leaders will use those sorts of things to get that change through.
I think the elements of a good lesson often demonstrate good leadership qualities, as I just spoke about, transformational leaders have empathy and (are) consistent and inclusive. Those sorts of things come through in a good lesson also. You have got to respect the students in the class, you have got to respect their opinions, you have got to be inclusive with students in the class, and it's exactly the same in management. You use common sense in the classroom, again, use those same skills as a manager. I think the difficulty a lot of teachers and Head teachers have is transferring those skills into the management role and into the context of managing staff, as opposed to managing learning. So if we can do some work in that area I think we will get a lot of gains as well.
TAFE is a government bureaucracy, it's a large organisation. It has the same sorts of rules and regulations that most large organisations have. Transformational leaders have to navigate their way through a lot of these rules, regulations, delegations — all those sorts of things. One of the difficulties that people have when they are moving up from say a teacher or Head teacher into a management role is being aware of all of these sorts of rules and regulations and how to navigate through them, as I said. What we have to make sure of is when we are developing our leaders, they don't get put off by those barriers, that again, we use these roadblocks as a way of bringing people together. So we get teams together who identify roadblocks and they come up with solutions on how to navigate through those roadblocks and how to overcome the challenges.
Of course you have got to maintain appropriate processes and policies but there are ways these that these roadblocks can be broken down. The process of doing that is a good way to bring people along and a good way to involve them in the change processes.
Collaborative thinking
There are a lot of challenges about implementing a collaborative approach. We are all under pressure to make decisions quickly. Often, there are a lot of political imperatives that come into it, and often the easy option is to make a decision as an individual and then try and impose that decision onto your team members. Now. while that might be a short term solution that achieves that short term goal, quite often that will develop into long term problems.
The best approach is a collaborative approach; to have a team approach and to get people involved. To do that you have got to be transparent as a manager, you’ve got to be, you’ve got to share information, again, you’ve got to trust team members, you’ve got to show them respect and respect what their opinions are, even if you don't agree with them. They have got to be given the opportunity to air those in an environment where they are not going to feel they are going to be picked on or blamed for — all those sorts of things. You have got to give constructive and honest feedback to people, so when they do come up with ideas, have the opportunity where they can get feedback about why it wouldn't work or why it would work, or how we can change it slightly so it fits in the context of what we are trying to achieve. Again common sense comes through. Don't forget to celebrate when you do things well. Don't be risk averse; allow for mistakes. Don't blame; blame kills innovation.
Think long term don't think short term when you are trying to get decisions made — I guess is what I'm trying to get across. In the long term you will get much better results.
The changes that are desired in TAFE to ensure we are competitive and responsive to customer changes and customer demands — which is becoming more and more prevalent throughout society in all areas, and rightly so, customers know what they want now and demand what they want — and for us to become customer focused, the changes that have got to come through won't happen unless we go through this collaborative process. We need to identify the areas required to change. We need to get people involved in coming up with solutions to these requirements. Otherwise we are not going to move forward, we are going to get left behind, we are not going to be competitive and we are not going to be customer focused.
Staff have to feel they’re involved in the journey in this change, and that they are part of the team, and that during the journey that they are achieving their goals. So again that review process, during this management (of) change is critical. You need to collaborate about those goals and the changes to the goals, because they will need to be changed as we go along the journey. So it's keeping staff engaged throughout the process is critical.
Personal development
Personal efficacy I think is critical in leadership. That constant review of the individual and how you, as a manager, are performing; and being able to review from your own personal goals is critical because basically if you can't manage yourself it's very difficult to manage other people and other teams. It sets an example. You have got to be modelling good management behaviour, and good modelling management of yourself. People like to see that. If they see you are an effective manager of yourself, that translates into good management of other people, hopefully, and usually does.
Managers need to be, and leaders in particular, need to be confident about what they are trying to achieve for themselves, and they need to have the confidence to set challenging goals for themselves, which again translates into setting challenging and meaningful goals for teams and then the teams will do the same thing. They will model that behaviour, they’ll know that we don't just set goals, and while achievable, they are not challenging the team. So it's all about that modelling behaviour I think and effective review of how you are going as a leader, again translates into that model behaviour for the teams as well.
There needs to be constant improvement as a manager. The only way you can do that is, as I said, set challenging goals, review how you are going, change those goals, up those goals all the time; see that constant improvement, model that behaviour for your team.
The sort of goals you would be setting as a manager need to be reflected in the organisation goals. So if the organisation is trying to move forward into becoming more competitive, more customer focused for instance, the goals you set for yourself as a manager need to reflect those sorts of skill development areas.
Self review
When you are doing that self-assessment as a manager it goes back to the goals you have set originally. You need to have set realistic and meaningful goals for yourself and they need to be measurable. So the indicators would be that you have got those measurable goals with meaningful targets, with timeframes, and the review process goes back to those at the set times to see where you are at.
So if we are trying to become more competitive, trying to compete through tendering processes for funds for instance, I might identify that as an area I need development in as a manager: that I'm not very skilled at those sort of areas, tendering processes, the legal ramifications behind some of these, the legislative requirements. So I might set some goals for myself to get myself up to speed in legislative areas that relate to that tendering process as a government organisation, as an RTO. So I would set the goals then to review where am I at currently in this area, and then set some goals about achieving higher levels of understanding and competence in those sorts of areas.
While it would be hard to measure those, you would need to get some concrete measures in place. So in the review process I would look at how I was achieving those competencies in that tendering process. Quite often here you might bring in some experts to look at how you are going along, or talk to your peers even. Because quite often it's difficult to measure how you are going as an individual when you are not skilled in those sorts of areas. So bring in some experts, talk to your peers and move along that journey that way.
Change
We are talking about huge cultural changes that need to happen through industry and obviously TAFE as part of that. So the vocational education and training sector is going through huge changes at the moment and, like other organisations, cultural change is very difficult. Appropriate leadership styles and appropriate leaders are critical to making those changes and I think that unless we develop our leaders appropriately we are going to stumble along the way, and we don't have that opportunity to be able to stumble. We don't have the time; it's a highly competitive market, and becoming more competitive. Unless we achieve these changes quickly and appropriately and sustainably by getting people involved — the staff I'm talking about in particular there — we are going to fail along the way.
I believe it is achievable. I believe the staff do have the skills. They’re keen to get involved and I don't see that we are going to fail. I believe we are going to achieve it, TAFE is responsive, it is quick on its feet and we’ll get there. We will continue to be the vocational educational training leader in Australia.