Leading from the middle

As a middle leader, how do you lead change across the school without alienating other staff?

In my experience, the best way to lead change is to lead from the front. Whatever it is you want other staff to take on board, you need to do it first. If you can embed something in your classroom, then you can support your team to embed it in theirs. Your team can then support you to spread the idea throughout the school.

Team up with another department - perhaps one that has a similar demographic of staff or similar development needs. Once they have mastered the change you are trying to bring about, they can support another department. If you ripple out the support on 3 or 6 week blocks then before long you have spread the idea to whole school and every department is involved.

Students then recognise the consistency of approach across the school which will make implementation that much easier as the students will draw on their prior knowledge of how to complete a reflection task, for instance, because they did something similar in their Science lesson with Mrs Smith.

Change can be very daunting for some people and so, sometimes, the boiling-a-frog approach can be kinder to them.