The Uncommon Sense of MESSY Leadership: Why striving to be the ‘perfect school leader’ may not be helping you

We know that principals are leading in increasingly complex and uncertain environments and needing to draw on adaptive leadership expertise and collaborative approaches.

 It’s time to relook and reassess what an effective leader is in today‘s world and to outline the steps to get there. This interactive presentation does both and backs it with the research, findings, and stories from school leaders, all outlined in the ASCD publication ‘The uncommon sense of MESSY leadership’.

 The BTS Spark team pursued worldwide research analyzing over 6,000 of its coaching conversations with school leaders to identify their key challenges and development needs. The MESSY leadership model originated from pure data on school leaders’ needs and was further co-developed with dozens of school leaders around the world trialling MESSY leadership tools. It is truly a school leadership model developed from, with and for school leaders.

 Coaching data offers an exceptional window into the reality faced by school leaders, the key issues they face and their foremost development needs. I will share the top nine challenges that school leaders are grappling with and seeking coaching support on – highlighting the ‘human side of school leadership’ as the most challenging.

 School leaders are finding that they need to change their approach. I will reveal the ‘uncommon sense of MESSY leadership’ – turning on its head old doctrine on what ‘effective school leadership’ entails. School leaders need to be adaptive, collaborative, emotionally intelligent and future focused. This is embodied in the MESSY acronym:

 M = Meaning Making

E = Emotional Connection

S = Sensing the Future

S = Seizing Momentum

Y = Your Presence

 I will share some practical evidence-based tools and conversation scaffolds that school leaders can incorporate into their everyday leadership practice as they free themselves up to embrace the wonderful ‘messiness’ of school leadership.