Best Practice

Present, curious, courageous: Leadership by conversation

Management is about tasks while leadership is about people and our relationships with them – relationships which hinge on our conversations. Robbie Burns reflects on leadership as conversation
Image: Adobe Stock

To what extent do you view your leadership as a conversation? When the development plans, the evaluations, the observations, the governor reports, and the book scrutinies settle down for the day; when there is no supply teacher to find; when that safeguarding issue is finally resolved, this is a question we should consider carefully.

I view leadership primarily as relational. Management, although integral, is about goal-setting, events, tasks, doing things in a certain way. 

Leadership, whatever else we have to say about it, is less about things and more about people. Leadership is about the relationships we have and our ability to influence others towards a common purpose.

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