Leading a mentally healthy community

Debbie Yates

Hello everyone and welcome today to the Leadership Masterclass ‘Leading a mentally healthy community’. My name is Debbie Yates and I'm the Be You National Manager in the Early Childhood Australia team. I'm here today to help facilitate this session which will be led by Dr Pam Ryan and I have the great pleasure of getting to introduce you today, Pam. So, Dr Pam Ryan is an educator with leadership experience in both public and private sectors in Australia and also internationally. Pam provides consultancy to government, to schools and to business organisations. She was Industry Professor for Learning and Education at the UTS Institute of Sustainable Futures from 2017 to 2019. From 2010 to 2014 Pam was Director of Education for a Hong Kong based foundation of twenty-one international schools. Prior to this, she spent seven years as a school education director in the New South Wales government system and also ten years as a secondary school principal.

The subject of Pam’s doctoral research was the nature of leadership dysfunction, how it impacts on individuals and schools or workplaces and what that can tell us about thinking differently about leadership. Pam’s also published four books on educational leadership, so very busy. We’re very privileged and thankful to have you with us today.

Today is also an interactive workshop, which is a bit different to some of the other sessions across our Be You Virtual Conference. You'll have the opportunity at various points throughout the session today to actually join breakout rooms. During these times your video and your microphones will be enabled and you’ll have an opportunity to connect and share with others attending. We really encourage you to use these opportunities to learn with and from each other about the content that we're sharing today.

I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation who are the Traditional Custodians of the Land I'm joining from today. I also acknowledge that as a virtual event we have people joining from many Lands and I encourage you to share your own Acknowledgement including the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which you're joining from in the discussion chat box today.

Now over to Pam to begin our session today.

Dr Pam Ryan

Fantastic and thanks so much Debbie and it's an absolute privilege and a pleasure to be working with the Be You team once again. I have occasionally in the past had that privilege and I really value and admire the, the work that they do and the, the way that helped shape our community and, and support our community. So fantastic, thanks, thanks Deb.

I want to start with this, this notion of a circle of trust then, for two reasons: one because this is a trusting environment even though it's a virtual environment and we’re from all over on different Lands. We're coming together today, we're coming together to talk specifically about leadership but that's within an environment of trust, and at various stages throughout the session we may be talking to each other about things that are quite personal or environments that, that are personal so, so we will have a circle of trust in terms of confidentiality.

But there's also this lovely notion of trust that's about how leadership operates and there's a quote here from Paulo Freire who was a Brazilian philosopher and I first read him in my university days actually, which were quite some time ago. But the notion here, is it reflects the kind of way we're going to talk about leadership and think about leadership in the session. And that is that it's an interactive kind of process, it's not all about the leader. In fact, the trust of the people in leaders reflects the confidence leaders have in people. So really like that notion of how Paulo has been able to reflect a systemic notion of leadership that we're going to talk about today.

So, the learning design, this slide is not seeming to work here, gentlemen. So, we have - just trying to wait for our technicians, we have a little bit of a glitch I think, with our moving on to our next slide. Here we go.

So, the notion of learning here is that when we construct any kind of educational opportunity we have behind it a learning design way of thinking, a way of moving, and so in this workshop today we're going to move from learning about leadership, talking about leadership. We're going to then look at learning through how we learn through leadership experience. We can learn from things that happen to us to the catalytic kind of notion of leadership and learning, and, and importantly in terms of leadership about learning to change, learning in order to make a difference through our leadership. So, it's like learning for action.

So, as we, as we go through the session it's kind of constructed around those four different elements: to learn to talk about leadership, to just talk about experiences of leadership. So, then the catalytic notion of leadership, and ultimately what are we going to do, going about our own leadership as well. That's how we move today.

Throughout the session, we're going to have our Be You learning curators which Deb’s going to tell you all about.

Debbie Yates

Yes, so we're going to have a few people supporting this session today. We're going to have Robin Kane who's from our Be You headspace team, and she is going to be in the chat and being able to support conversations in that chat space. And we’re also going to have Sara and Maree who are two of our Be You from ECA Early Childhood Australia team, and they're going to come on screen with us sometimes as well and join us for conversations. And they're actually going to be able to link some of what Pam is talking with us today about the way Be You talks about leadership and how that supports mental health and wellbeing in our learning communities. So, it'd be great to be able to have them to support our conversations today as well.

Dr Pam Ryan

So, let's then talk in terms of that learning design. Let's talk about leadership so the notion here is, is about the knowledge and understanding that we have of leadership and you already would have through your, regardless of where you are in your particular leadership journey. You'd already have lots of experiences and you’d already have actually, a default wave operating and some of you may have surfaced that, and be conscious of that and, and understand very much your own leadership style. And others of you might be at the beginning of the, the journey and so you're kind of exploring it and finding out about who you are as a leader and what leadership means to you.

Obviously, there are lots of different constructs of leadership. So, leadership is actually a social construct. We, we develop our understandings of leadership often by watching other people by the modelling that we see, good and not so good leadership that we will see. Perhaps we're doing reading about it. Perhaps many of you are studying in the area of leadership. So, so we build over time, we build a construct of leadership in our minds. We see political leaders, for example, and their adding to our understanding and the knowledge that, that we have about leadership because that then influences the way the way we want to lead or tend to lead anyway.

So the notion is that leadership’s a social construct. Clearly it's not a concrete thing, it's something that we build in our, in our minds and our way of thinking. And society also over time, values different kinds of leaders, in different styles of leadership and that plays out in how the world evolves I guess.

So we got a little, you’ve got a workbook that our team will have put a link to, in there, in the chat. So there's a workbook there and in the workbook there's an opportunity if you'd like to find that and open that. There's an opportunity to kind of fill out this little polarity chart I suppose. So I want you to think of two polls. These are real people I want you to think about. Someone that a leader, two leaders, someone that you would really emulate, someone that you admire the way they do things, is what you think a leader should do. And I want you to think of the converse of that: so a leader and again, a real person. We're not going to say who they are clearly, but a real person that you just really don't admire. They might be in your work context; they might be in the wider environment; they might be just people you’ve worked with in the past. So it's up to you to decide who those couple or, those two people are and then in that little chart just jot in what you think are the characteristics, what is it that you do and alternatively don't, admire in those respective people. And just kind of jot those down. We'll just take a couple of minutes - don't, don't labour over them. Two minutes to go yep, this person bang bang, bang, bang, this is what I think about them. The other person is what I think of them and then we're going to use this to kind of continue to, to build when we, when we come together. Just have a moment to jot away.

Debbie Yates

I think it could be really helpful to think quite broadly about leadership when you're thinking about this too. So really thinking we often do go to a workplace when we think of a leadership but if you’re thinking about someone within your local community that you might really be considering, like you said political leaders, is often another place we go but you can think of a leader within your own family perhaps or particular social circles. Thinking quite broadly about leadership when you're doing this can be really helpful I think too.

Dr Pam Ryan

Yes, excellent we’ll take a little moment here just to kind of jot away and then we're going to move into Breakout rooms in a moment so I’ll explain that as well and I’ve got a someone saying they can access the workbook, fantastic!

Hope people who are joining aren’t saying there's nothing happening there. I’m sure there's lots happening there behind the scenes.

Debbie Yates

Certainly lots of thoughts that come to mind for myself when I think about leadership; about the things that I'm kind of go, yes, that's something I’d like to model or I've been trying to put into practice for myself.

Dr Pam Ryan

…and associated with people know. If for example you can't find the workbook and I think we've got a couple of folk who maybe can't. Just use what's on the screen to guide you so you’re thinking of someone you'd like to emulate and someone that, that you don't want to.

Now, I'm going to assume you're kind of done that pretty, pretty pithily. And so what you’ve done there has kind of shaped in a way, or started to shape your thinking about leadership because you're already surfacing: these are the things that, that I value and then there's the things that I don't. So, this is the kind of leader I want to be, this is the kind of leader I don't want to be. You’ve already got in your minds a construct about what leadership should be, which is where you're going with what you would want to emulate yourself.

Where we’re going to go now is into our Breakout rooms. Actually, because what I’d like you to do together is have the, these Breakout Rooms will be the same people each time because what we want you to do is to build that circle of trust and that relationship together and talk about leadership. Because the assumption here is that you all have knowledge and experience regardless of where you sit in your leadership journey.

So come together in the Breakout rooms that will be formed in a moment and you will come up with together, kind of just collaboratively as, as best you can, and work it out and lead yourself through that process. With what, what's your, what's the construct of leadership that you might agree on. How would you describe it you know, what's, what's your conception of leadership within that group of people and then we'll come back together and I think we've got about 4 minutes or so Deb, I think to have that conversation and then come back and, and talk together.

So I'll ask our great technical team to send us into these Breakout rooms. Introduce yourselves, start the conversation that will continue several times through the session and, and then we'll come back and talk about what's happening with this leadership.

I think we've got people coming back in or have all come back in now and I hope that was a nice introduction to some of the people in the group. I think we’ve got probably over 500 people so that's lovely too, to make some new friends across the airwaves. So what I’d like you to do, if you wouldn't mind, is someone from, from the group just type in what your construct was or you could even type in your personal one so we just get a sense of what's, what are the notions of leadership that that people are coming with. And I wonder whether there were some similar notions or whether there were some quite different views for people would be, would be an interesting one.

The construct I guess that well, I put in the workbook too, a whole range of different traditional conceptions of, of leadership that that you can refer to if you would like to about servant leadership and virtual leadership and authoritarian leadership and a whole range of other constructs that people have.

The construct I’d like to share with you, I guess from my research and thinking and working in the field for a long time, is that that notion in the table I had of complexity leadership. And it's not complexity in the sense of complicated but complexity as in interdependent and interconnected and the way things sort of link together so it's complex. As I see leadership as complex, highly relational, so it's all about the way people relate to each other and relate to the environment as well.

It's contextual so it does matter where you are and, and place and space is a part of leadership and, and how we lead, but importantly leadership is also co-constructed. So, it's not just you coming in as a leader and saying well, I'm going to lead this way. This is, this is the way things happen. People, the people in Freire’s construct enable leaders to act in a certain way. So, you co-construct leadership whether you mean to or not and obviously leadership is about influence. It's an influence process, it's how we influence change and, and make that, that difference and ultimately and really importantly and in any sphere, but especially in the educational sphere, it's focused on shared ethical purpose. And that's that shared purpose that, that's what as a leader you’re trying to build: that notion of shared purpose.

So it's, it's certainly not this notion of leadership that, that I would have and espouse and I think that was implicit in Freire’s work but it's much more this notion of leadership that leadership’s is kind of fuzzy but it's a revolving around itself and it's got lots of different links and interconnections working through it. So that’s a construct that I'd like to share with you and suggest is a better representation of the complex nature of leadership.

And so it's, it's essentially for those, I'm sure many of you, already have a systems understanding; an understanding of systems thinking which is about the interdependence of things; about the interconnection of things and it's this kind of leadership that is a generative notion of leadership. You’re generating ideas and, and you’re generating innovation and you’re kind of continuing to grow and to build and to change because the world does anyway. It's not as if you cannot, you can't stand still and you can't make things the way you are although indeed we probably know leaders who, who try to do that. But if we talking about that mentally healthy and safe kind of environment that leaders help build then this is the kind of notion of leadership that we we're talking about.

I've got a little graphic there and it’s that notion of being driven by ethical purpose. It's the systems notion of leadership: that leadership happens at multiple interacting, intersecting levels. There's the micro level. I guess it's where we sit personally: our personal values, our, what decisions are being made at that local level. A kind of way the self-care that, that we have in the way we look after each other and not only self-care but self-aware of our impact as leaders and the professional kinds of actions that we're taking.

So, the micro-level is that kind of nitty gritty level and it can scale this model, can scale in multiple different ways. And the middle level, that meso level, is kind of the interface between the overarching systemic leadership, the macro level and the meso level is kind of the link between the two. That's where we're modelling professionally and we've got networks set up and there’s the healthy group norm, the way we do things around here is a healthy kind of way. Our policies are being implemented, they just don’t exist. People are actually implementing these policies and then at that macro level there are policies; there are clear accountabilities. There is decisive action taking place. There are support systems when, when people need those. And the wonderful thing about Be You is it's a support system that happens at the macro level to be there for people.

So, the notion of systemic, interdependent, generative kind of leadership are big words but they're about the fact that all these levels of leadership need to operate together to interact together and if we had something fall over, for example, decision-making is poor or someone loses sight of their personal values and we don't have effective policy at the top. Then the whole system, the notion is the system can, can break down.

So, the kind of leadership we’re talking about here, again getting back to Freire, is that interactive, interdependent kind of system where it's not about the leader out the front, it's very much about our leadership together and, and how we make leadership happen as a construct.

That's kind of our first notion of leadership, just sort of surfacing those things and I'm imagining there were some interesting constructs that came through the chat line as well. We’ll hear from our team in a little while about those.

So now it's learning through leadership through, through looking at experiences of leadership and I've got a little a little case study for you. I think it's probably from about 2017 and you may recognise some of these faces. The Australian Cricket Team at this time went to South Africa and there was an instance there where there were some tampering with the ball in order to make it deviate in particular ways and to give some advantage to the Australian team. And this I think was a great shame at the time and much talked about and lots of newspaper articles.

Debbie Yates

And I think even for those who don't follow cricket all of a sudden you know a whole lot more about cricket and the cricket ball than they ever did before.

Dr Pam Ryan

Indeed! So, you can see those words reiterated in the paper: their shame, shame, shame so this, this whole notion of leadership and what happened to that group of people. There are multiple players in this leadership system. There was the captain of the team who was very upset later that this was found and he lost his role etc. There was the vice-captain of the team, who, who knows the actual story, but you know this suggestion was that it was his clever idea. There was the young man who was new to the team who put sandpaper down his trousers, which must have been awfully unsettling. Then there was the coach who had sort of a strong kind of Australian approach and then there was the Cricket Australia, which was encouraging the team to say you need to be winners, guys, at all costs. Then there was the Australian public I guess, who is cheering them on and wanting them to win and there was the International Cricket Board because lots of other countries were doing a similar thing though perhaps not with sandpaper.

So, there was this whole kind of scene of shame and dysfunction essentially. So, my question to you, and we're going to do this through, like a little poll, is in that scenario where does the leadership responsibility lie in your view. Is it with the captain who presumably walked past the situation?  Is it with the person who conceived the, the situation, had the good idea, the brainwave to do it? Is it the guy with the sandpaper who actually did do that? Is it the coach, those various people that I've mentioned there? Is it Cricket Australia? Is it, you know, the International Cricket Commission?

What I want you to do is to, or was it something else? So, we’ve got a little poll there and we're just going to ask you to give us a sense from your point of view as where does the responsibility lie for that dysfunction? That was an unhealthy culture, an unhealthy leadership culture.

Debbie Yates

And you do wonder like, was this a ‘moment in time’ episode or had this been building for a period of time? Have there been a number of other elements that grew over time to mean that this was actually possible? That something actually was suggested and could happen or was it a random event that the level of frustration, or you know, like you said, desire to win. It’s an interesting scenario to unpack.

Dr Pam Ryan

It’s a fabulous example and we've got we've got something, a lot of people are seeing, they've got the, you should have I think on-screen the results as they're coming through on the poll, and the Captain is seen to be needing to take significant responsibility. Interestingly not so much the conceiver or the perpetrator, the person who did it. Cricket Australia is seen to have a bit of a, but people are saying ‘other’ as well. I wonder if in the chat.

 

 

 

Debbie Yates

In the chat, I think people were hoping there’d be an option of ‘all of the above’ because I think that's perhaps what the ‘other’ is reflecting is that some people are really considering that perhaps all played a part in moving to this particular scenario with this outcome.

Dr Pam Ryan

Absolutely. So, if you've got a view on that pop it, pop those in the chat. I can see that we have in there ‘everyone’ someone's put in there, ‘everyone’ and I guess it absolutely it, it comes to this notion of, I’ll go back to that in a moment, and it comes to this notion of leadership being systemic because my view too is that everyone bears responsibility. I guess the question didn't say prime responsibility so you know maybe you could think someone had prime responsibility, but in terms of the leadership role the captain couldn't, you know, he might not have walked past the situation and that would have been averted. The conceiver might not have had the idea in the first place, which would, would have been a better idea. The perpetrator yes, again, even though he was new he could have said, I'm affirming my self-leadership and I'm not going to do that. The coach etc.

So there, any point any one of those, and if you think about that notion of the of the system being interactive and all levels of the system being accountable. Then in fact leadership responsibility lies throughout the system which is kind of optimistic as well because it means that if you see something, leadership dysfunction, you do personally have a role to play even if you may feel powerless. That young man could have said no and he didn't.

So pop back into our breakout rooms and have this conversation thinking of leadership as systemic, as this interactive interdependent generative kind of notion of leadership.  What has been your experience of healthy or unhealthy workplaces and the role of leadership in those workplaces? And we’ll have that conversation for a period of time, a few minutes and again there's no right or wrong answers. Can we go back to our circle of trust and just say that you’re obviously not disclosing names and people and then so on where it's confidential but if things are disclosed we're also being respectful in the group. So that's the double-edged sword of leadership good and bad.

So, we can spend some time now in Breakout rooms. Our magic guys are going to send us into rooms again and we've got some time to do that. You'll get a warning I'm sure at a point when we’re going to opt out of those rooms and, and talk, about leadership as a system. Does that resonate, but particularly in the notion of healthy and unhealthy workplaces and how leaders contribute or make that help make that happen.

So, I think we should have people coming back into the main room now just about. And as far as it happens, just to let you know that the original intent was to have you continue in the same room so the conversation could continue as well. But just for technical reasons that plan changed so you will meet some new people as we go through the Breakout rooms again.

But what we're going to do now: so hopefully that was an interesting conversation and you get did get to talk through examples of that systemic notion of leadership and perhaps share some, some of those experiences and again we're continuing to learn about what happens in leadership when it is seen systemically.

So, I'm going to pass over to Deb and to Sara and Maree, the fabulous Be You team and because we want to keep connecting things. It's this whole notion of interdependence so we're going to connect back to Be You and the fabulous things that you have for us.

Debbie Yates

Great, thank you Pam and I guess one of the things we are trying to do today is to link this notion of leadership and how we consider that, in our Be You spaces. And I think for me, listening to some of the elements you were saying earlier, that meso level was actually the part that really jumped out at me when I was thinking about systems and support and how that sits around us at that meso level and also the development of healthy group norms which is something we talked a lot about. So, I'm wondering from Sara and Maree's perspective if there was any particular elements from the conversation so far today or what you've been seeing in chat that you're thinking relates to the work that we do in our Be You landscape.

Sara Richardson

…lots of things. I was making connections and thinking about Rebecca and one of the things when you were talking about micro, meso, macro levels and Rebecca was talking about self-care and self-aware so that’s been, that’s the conversation we’ve had. Today with Rebecca, talking about boundaries and those kinds of things, which I can take responsibility for myself as a leader. Otherwise, you do some training and great! And I think Rebecca was asked that question towards the end. I think that’s really important, but then to make a mentally healthy workplace you have to have those other layers and you can’t just do that, you have to do other things as well.

So, I think that whole…it’s one of the things we talk a lot about in Be You – and Maree, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts, but it’s the notion it has to be the one person driving this. If you’re going to do this in your service then leadership is critical to success by having it become part of who you are and what you do. Otherwise you do some training and then, great! Who’s responsible – that was the other thing when we were doing that cricket analogy. Who is responsible? Actually everybody. You have to plan for it and you have to put some things in place at all those different levels.

Maree Kirkwood

I was thinking, what stood out for me straightaway is that leadership is not always positional but it's the behaviours that we can see other people emulating. I guess what I was thinking about was what about our resources that we recently brought out. The Beyond Self-care, the Educator Wellbeing Guide, and when we’re talking about those layers of the system, I’m thinking about the six layers that we’re talking about in the Wellbeing Guide, and how they really relate to that: those systems and the layers, meso, micro and macro that Pam’s been talking about here. The guide that Be You has put forward really focusses on three, on some of those layers but also acknowledging that the wider systemic issues that influence and impact on leaders and workplace wellbeing as well.

Sara Richardson

It’s interesting you say that, Maree, as well. It’s important to Be You too. There’s advocacy at a system wide level. I think we talked about that on Day 1 and that’s part of the process as well to create a mentally healthy community – all of those things.

Maree Kirkwood

Especially when we’re talking about the shared responsibility. You spoke about that just previously, Sara. About too often we’re seeing this responsibility for leading this change and enhancing our workplaces to be more mentally healthy, falling into the lap of one person and it really is that collective responsibility to support that.

Sara Richardson

And just to finish up, a couple of things that came through in the chat. When we were talking about some of the qualities of leaders that has to be a significant approach, which you raised before. That notion of shared leadership recognising strengths. Can’t remember who it was talked about appreciative inquiry. Think it was … on Day 1, mentioning appreciative inquiry. Really drawing on the leadership strengths, you have in your team, which can include members from your community: children and young people, families who you are connected to in the community, and it really doesn’t have to be, can’t be just the one person, sort of building who’s got that positional leadership role.

Debbie Yates

Thank you both so much for your reflections and we look forward to touching base with you again a little bit later in the session. Back over to Pam now to bring us into the next session, next part of our session.

Dr Pam Ryan

Thanks Deb, and, and obviously those resources are really important ones and accessible for people to, to reach. So, we're moving into the third movement of our session you'll be pleased to know, the second half of the session.

And we're looking, we’re talking and thinking about learning from the notion of experiences happening, things happen to us, there are catalysts that deepen our learning and make us really perhaps even change our ways of thinking and being. And when I was doing some leadership research before this, it looks a little bit busy on the screen I'm sure but is also in those workbooks for those who been able to access that. But the notion when I was doing some research on that leadership dysfunction on when leadership is not going well. There are a whole lot of ideas emerge from that about this interactivity of, of leadership, and it came down to this notion of Vicious and Virtuous Circles. So it's where things, there are feedback loops that kind of work together and reinforce things for the, for the positive or things for the negative.

On the left-hand side and so that, the image that's on screen there: that the top half are both of the red and the green figuring is about what happens within the individual, within the self, within the person. And then that the lower part of the graphic is about what's happening in the external environment because when we're trying to build a healthy kind of leadership environment what's happening at that, at that personal micro level is important as well as what's happening more broadly.

So maybe thinking for the for the moment yourself, how you're currently leading in whatever, you know, way you are leading at the moment. How you’re currently leading to strengthen Vicious and this is or hopefully not strengthening Vicious but to weaken the Vicious and strengthen the Virtuous Circles.

So let’s just kind of take the notion to start with that, that certain things feed off each other and internally if we're self-doubting, if our values are conflicted; if we're not sure whether we believe in the way things are being done here; we're not sure that the values of the, of the organisation support, know we're support. If we can't reconcile what's happening; if our creativity is curved we, we can't do the things that we want to be doing, doesn't, doesn't make sense to us; feeling psychologically or physically compromised in some way. And I certainly interviewed and researched people who were physically as well as psychologically damaged through certain leadership dysfunction. And then there’s the external environment: what's happening there? There are certain factors that builder sense of, of the vicious circle and not being able to get out of something. So a clash of values again, that somethings happening: relationships are breaking down; maybe there's mobbing happening where people are kind of targeting and bullying other people. Or people are being excluded, professionally excluded and, and this kind of builds this contagion or systemically, there aren’t the policies there or nepotism is happening.

So, so this is whole notion of a vicious circle and it mediates and builds and, and strengthens itself unless we’re doing this and that's mitigating against that in our approach to leadership both internally, our own self leadership, and externally. So how are we building that, how are we affirming that our values are our values and we're going to believe them and keep to those values like that young man sadly didn't in the cricket team. That we’re going to look after ourselves, you know that we're going to make healthy lifestyle choices and we're going to set those boundaries we heard about in that last session. And, and we have a sense of our identity and we can assert that identity even, we can be creative in that identity. So, maintaining all at that in our sense of self and then externally there is values compatibility and so that that leads to our own strengthening as well.

And there's personal support: you know, I go out to family, I go to friends, I have networks, collegial support as well. The system itself is, is efficacious, and there are good policies and people know their roles and they know what to do and they know how to be doing that. So those things mitigate against the notion of unhealthy leadership communities around healthy workplaces.

So, so that notion of Virtuous and, and Vicious Circles. But I guess the reflective question is, to you: what are you currently doing as a leader or in the way you, whatever you're leadership role is, to kind of strengthen that virtuous side of things and maybe both, by doing that, weakening the Vicious Circles as well.

Debbie Yates

I do like the way you’ve worded that question because it's how are you currently leading to strengthen virtuous or weaken vicious circles, which is really showing that it’s everyone's responsibility to, to do this work. But yes, we might have a leadership role which might sit with a title with other elements within our workplace or our communities but actually, that element of self-efficacy like we all can be leading to strengthen a Virtuous or weaken a Vicious Circle.

Dr Pam Ryan

Yes, I mean you could apply this to a, to yourself as you're saying. At a personal level, what am I doing in the internal environment what am I doing in the external, in my external environment. But it could also be organisationally. An organisation can be looking at itself: where are our values as an organisation, and then how is that scaled up? So yes, internally and externally.

So that the notion of those, and that was interesting, as that all came out of talking to people and understanding the leadership dysfunction actually came as a consequence of these reinforcing circles of behaviours. And I guess that led to this model of leadership that that came out of that process and it's this this idea that leadership has these five different dimensions and the dimensions actually map to those different levels so the macro generative leadership is kind of like that macro level. And what are we doing at the, the macro level to make sure that ideas and people flourish as a consequence of our leadership and that's, that's our influence. That within that environment they are empowering relationships and people feel empowered; they have autonomy; they have a sense of, of self and the value of what they do and they’re recognised for that within the, by leaders and by themselves.

That there's also a sense of personal agency you know: I can do this I, I have at the personal level, I'm okay with this within the organisation and my own leadership. And, and those three things that you know that's kind of like the, the macro and the meso and the micro in a sense, but that all happens within a growthful environment, within a context that nurtures and looks after people and people can grow and ultimately people can learn. And the consequence of good, good leadership is that people learn and the not just people, but the system learns like schools can learn. And your workplaces can learn organically as well and organisationally as well. So that's kind of the notion of that, that came through all those conversations I had with people.

And there was sitting behind that as well, as all the interviews and so on I did, was a survey and I've put that in the little workbook if anyone wants to, to use that you're very welcome and I put the scoring thing in there as, scoring sheet in there as well so you could use it.

But I guess what I'm suggesting here is, how do you know what your leadership is like? How do you know what's happening in your, in your environment, in your workplace environment? You know what, what data you are drawing on to understand what's happening because a lot of the time leadership that’s unhealthy, is actually oblivious to the fact that it is. So, some leaders don’t really know what's happening in their leadership.  So how are you gathering that information? Where are you getting that intelligence from? So, I'm suggesting things like this, for example, are a way to assess that and that, the all of the 30 items there, they all map to those dimensions that I showed you before. There is more detail on that at the back of your book as well. I'm not trying to push it particularly.

But just a cautionary note on data that those, those five dimensions of generative influence and empowering relationships and personal agency and so on. And this is a live example. I was working with a secondary school executive actually and the senior leaders are the blue graph and the spider graph and the internal, the middle leaders, and if you look at that, essentially, they're kind of believing the same thing about the healthy, healthy healthfullness of their, of their, their environment in which they were working in. So that's that's a pretty good, good kind of result to say those people are pretty satisfied with how things are. Particularly in in sense of their, their agency. Interestingly the senior leaders think things are better than the middle leaders do and that probably gets to your point before about the meso level. But also importantly if you then, because what I did then, I disaggregated, you know, the averages and looked at all the individual responses. So what you see there is that there are very different understandings of what's happening in an environment from the one that, that the kind of overview graphic might show you.  So when you do deal in data, I guess this is a cautionary note, that you are really digging that little bit deeper and understanding what's happening. So I think we've got some people who are very confident that that's a healthy kind of workplace and we've got some people who think very differently about that. Yes, so how do you know, how do you tell?

Debbie Yates

It really opens up some conversations around perhaps some people feeling maybe not included or what's the, what's the diversity in the makeup of our workplace and are there some cultural elements here? It really opens up an opportunity to explore and, and look at things bit more deeper.

Dr Pam Ryan

And interestingly the person in the middle obviously, who’s absolutely nameless, but the senior leader, the Principal, had a very different view about who that person would be and I didn't disclose that. That was the case, right. Yes, yes, so how do you know what you know, and what are you going to do about it? So there's that's our kind of, just notion of things that can happen for us but we need to, we need to know, we need to understand what was the catalyst for change.

But lastly and really most important section is going to learn, is learning about leadership as a change; making a difference through our leadership, making that, having that positive influence and and as a consequence of our being in the leadership construct.

So when I do a little bit about coaching conversations, now I'm sure many of you are coaches or have been coached or understand these concepts. So I’ll just give you a kind of high-level notion because we are going to return to our Breakout rooms and, and have a bit of a, if there are some willing folk within the, the group to, to have a coaching conversation and to think about how that helps us understand our leadership.

So, so when you're having a coaching conversation obviously it's about through those critical three notions within the, the middle of the little graphic there. It's about trust and we keep coming back to this notion of trusting leadership. It's about trust, it's about affirming what, what's good for people what's what they’re, what they're doing well, what their understandings are. But it's also challenging them because you're trying to move through coaching. You're trying to move people through a different way of, of thinking and perhaps to act. So it's about reflecting and planning and then ultimately acting and then reflecting again.

When you’re listening as a coach, I guess you’re listening for these different levels.  There are different levels of listening. You're kind of listening to the factual things: what are they saying that's, that's factual, but what are their feelings as well. What's coming through about the way they're feeling about things. But what do they want to do? What are their intentions? So you’re listening for intentions but you're also listening for filters and assumptions and, I can't do this or I don't know that or it's hopeless because, those sorts of filters, or I'm really good, could be a filter as well. They don't actually see their blind spots. So, what's coming through as you're having the conversation. And so the coaching flow goes through that notion. Just observe what's, what's happening, what’s the person saying, then tapping into their feelings and getting a sense of well, what's going on for them emotionally about this? So okay you're feeling that emotionally, but then, let's analyse this, let's get to the nub of this a little bit further. What do you want to do? This is about leadership as action and, and so what we want to do and then what will you do as a consequence of that?

So that the topic of the conversation is this: Learning for a commitment to act in leading work-related health and wellbeing. So we’re going to move you into the Breakout space again.  I'm going to ask that two people within the group are prepared to have that coaching conversation where one is a coach and one’s a coachee and the others will act as an observer but, but an observer that's actively thinking about their own, as it's almost as if they're responding internally to the, to the coaching questions. I have put in the workbooks a prompt that you could use but it's not meant to be an interview, it's not an interview schedule, they’re just prompts about how you might have such a conversation.

But the point is, and thinking for those who are the observers, what's your commitment now, to act in leading work-related health and wellbeing? And it's regardless because we've talked about leadership as systemic, regardless and the place you within your organisation, within your workplace. What's your commitment to act in showing leadership? So that's the coaching conversation and so what I’ll ask is that again where you'll be magically transported to conversations. Again, it'll be different people don't forget again, so we’ll then see what comes of that.

Yes, okay, so I think we're welcoming people back and I hope we found two brave volunteers to, to do that process. Again it's, it's not a casual conversation, would obviously take it a lot more time than that, but it's a way to get a sense of how we do the coaching and how important it is if we're looking to, to build leadership. And it's just a way of perhaps thinking, helping us think through, ourselves, about her own leadership and where we're heading with that. So thank you, thank you for doing it. I think there might have been a few folk who had some some breakout room problems so I’m sorry for that and hopefully we're back on, on task now.

And it's really now over to our Be You learning curators, so I'll hand over to Deb.

Debbie Yates

Thank you very much, Pam. We've had Robin obviously helping in the chat today, so thank you, Robyn for that, as well I'm hoping you’ll be sharing some Insights as well throughout today. And now I'm just like to bring Sara and Maree back in to see if there's any other insights you've gained from looking at the chat today and any other connections to Be You. We've got about two minutes for any quick highlights you'd like to share with us.

Sara Richardson

Two minutes?

Debbie Yates

Two minutes. Not your strong point, Sara, I know.

Sara Richardson

I know. I was thinking, I had a question: So leading mental health and wellbeing in your organisation. What kind of leadership does that require, is the thing I’ve been thinking about. So that’s what I kind of want to take away with me, I guess. It’s not what you asked me, about Be You, but what role do I play? This is what has made me think about it, because to create a mentally healthy workplace and Be You has fantastic resources to support you doing that. We put the guide in the chat. The Action Team, having an Action Team so you’re not just doing it by yourself. The Action Team Handbooks are very good. Then checking in with your Consultant. Chat about it and explore, practice, and make some plans.

Debbie Yates

Maree, anything from your side?

Maree Kirkwood

Just really quickly, what Pam presented today is a reminder of the complexity of the inter-relationships of leadership and leading and that we never ever find an endpoint with it: there is always room for growth for ourselves to ensure and support our workplaces.

Debbie Yates

Thanks Maree, and I could see some real crossover points too, I think, when you were talking about the Vicious and Virtuous Circles. I was really reflecting on one of the things we talk about quite a lot within Be You is about risk and protective factors and thinking about them from a personal perspective. We talk about them for children and young people, but like you're saying you were thinking about it from that organisational level I think could be really valuable. As well, that one of the protective factors we want to build as an organisation. I think that could be really helpful. Do you want to take us to our last slide today?

Dr Pam Ryan

I will take us to our last slide.

Debbie Yates

Thank you for facilitating the session today and supporting us to explore and reflect on what it means to lead a mentally healthy community. I think I've really learnt a lot from sitting alongside you today. I hope all of our attendees have today as well.

Thank you also to Sara and Maree and Robin for joining us throughout and for all of you have also been brave enough to be part of this interactive session. We encourage you to continue to engage with Be You and connect with our team. And on behalf of myself and Pam I’d like to say thanks for attending today. There'll be a really short break before the next session starts so please take this time to stretch, move, grab a drink, whatever helps you move on to the next part of the day, and we’ll hope to see you online again for the next session shortly.

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