Dave Scott – Middle School Principal – Kristin School dscott@kristin.school.nz

The vision for the Kristin Adaptive Leaders Programme is to develop adaptive leaders of learning to inspire and encourage all students to thrive, prosper and apply learning in an ever changing environment. Kristin’s strengths are in producing happy, healthy, well-rounded students who are prepared to make a positive difference, contribute to the community and live fulfilling lives. This has been achieved through developing strong, meaningful relationships through quality care and support. To ensure this continues and evolves, staff need to be constantly learning, upskilling and adapting to the ever changing environment they find themselves in. They need to be adaptive, agile and have the capacity to evolve and change with the times and the needs of the Kristin environment and its strategic aims.

Kristin School prides itself on describing itself as a future ready institution. So how do we future-proof our greatest asset – our staff? What does tomorrow look like for Kristin and indeed the education sector as a whole? No one really knows but Kristin’s future hinges on its investment in developing high performing and talented staff.

My research when designing the ALP showed that there were five crucial steps to factor in when thinking about talent management and future proofing.

Create Alignment: a commitment to succession planning starts at the top and engages every stakeholder in the organisation. To that end the ALP is available to ALL Kristin staff teaching, non-teaching and support staff – we encourage all staff to think about their development and how they can contribute to making our school a better place for everyone

Determine Key Positions: the long-term health of Kristin and indeed any school is dependent upon building “ready now” backups for all key roles, not
just focusing on a few positions at the very top. Again when looking at the development of this programme it was clear that as an organization we needed to ensure that we had quality backups for all positions and especially those with people management responsibilities, the so called ‘middle leadership’ positions – we wanted staff to realise and understand that world class professional learning was available right here

Assess the Current Strength of the Bench: A question I asked in development was do adaptive, aspiring leaders at Kristin possess the knowledge, skills and values expected of the next generation of leaders? The ALP Programme directly assesses their productivity, accountability and leadership potential in a number of ways which I will elaborate on as we go through this presentation.

Build Leadership Capacity: A key goal of the ALP was to drive personal and leadership effectiveness and create leadership consistency and integration across the entire organization by addressing key leadership behaviors at individual, team and senior levels.

Measure and Manage Progress: track who is where and which position they are being groomed for by monitoring the progress of all succession plans. Identify gaps in terms of who is ready for top positions now and make the necessary adjustments to the process.

The Kristin Aspiring Leaders Programme (ALP) is an intensive leadership development opportunity for any staff member wanting to adapt, grow and develop in their leadership capacity. The aim of the ALP is to ensure Kristin is future ready, and to build leadership capacity among staff to ensure staff feel valued and supported in their career pathways and leadership aspirations, regardless of their position, experience or area of work – the programme is open to teaching and non-teaching staff alike. Grounded in experiential learning concepts, participants will engage in a variety of hands-on and reflective experiences in order to support their desire to improve upon their leadership skills and ability to adapt and grow in an ever changing environment..

Features of the programme

The Leadership Circle 360 Profile

One Note Portfolio – one stop shop for all aspects of the programme and serves as reflective evidence of the journey throughout the year

www.21cskillslab.com This year we have linked with 21 Cskills Lab an organization co-founded by a Kristin parent – 3 workshops in Auckland and a project – nice synergy with the ALP and an opportunity to network and develop links with other schools

21 C Skills Lab - Evolving leadership skills and focusing on a project that is based on their own school context – feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive

Collaboration - Leadership mentors from a range of other ISNZ schools and independent schools in Australia

In the past 3 years we have had mentor volunteers from these schools

Optional online courses – utilizing what is already out there – no need to create things yourself

School based and external workshops – leveraging from community contacts and looking outside education sector

Enough from me lets hear from participants

Dave Scott dscott@kristin.school.nz Mobile: 021400703