Over the past few months Leader-Connect have been doing quite a bit of work to support leadership development for senior teachers. This includes selling more than 60 hardback copies of Neil Jurd’s Leadership Book to various schools and trusts.
Our work in education goes back several years, starting with some coaching work in Oldham, that developed into an online leadership development course for head teachers in Oldham which involved several of the Leader-Connect faculty including Paul Jones, Jackie Cormell and Paul Randall. That course was very successful and received great reviews.
More recently Leader-Connect founder Neil Jurd OBE has been very involved with the schools work, starting a few weeks ago with a leadership talk to the board and senior leaders of Bright Futures Trust in Manchester – this was a just a 45-minute keynote address where Neil explained the 5 simple things you need to know to improve your leadership; these apply in any line of work and you’ll get a get understanding of Neil’s ideas if you watch this short video Leadership Basics.
Then Neil was off to provide a whole day of leadership and team development inspiration for Abingdon Learning Trust in Oxfordshire. At this event Neil was the key note speaker at the start of the day – with more than 260 staff attending this talk in which he explained the basic things leaders in schools need to know and do, and he also talked about the challenges of leading and building teams in large organisations, the friction that comes with organisational growth. With educational trusts being incentivised to achieve efficiencies through growth, this is a very real issue for leaders in schools and educational trusts – as organisations grow, tensions and inefficiencies emerge, and it takes conscious leadership to overcome these hurdles to excellence.
Neil then went on to run a number of very popular small group masterclasses working with Headteachers, other senior teachers and leaders in the support functions such as catering and HR. Abingdon Learning Trust also signed up more than 30 senior staff to the Leader-Connect online learning platform, and bought 38 hardback copies of The leadership Book which they plan to give to staff at the start of term in September.
Then, on 31 Jul 25, Neil spent the day with the headteacher of a school in Cumbria, giving him an intense masterclass in leadership. This headteacher was incredibly enthusiastic, but had reached headship very fast as a result of several of his predecessors leaving in short succession, and he has had very little leadership training to prepare him for the role. That said he was a perfect student, and Neil and the headteacher spent the day looking at key theory in The Leadership Book, then taking short walks around the grounds to discuss how to implement the theory.
One output from the day was the Head creating a very inspiring ‘Clear and Compelling Purpose’ statement which he will reveal to his staff on inset day. He also bought 20 hardback copies of The leadership Book to give to senior staff, and he is signed up to the Leader-Connect platform so he can use that to encourage and develop leadership throughout his senior staff. If you would like to work with Leader-Connect to develop leadership in your school of educational trust, please get in touch with us here.
