I have spent my summer reading management books, such as Good to Great, Linchpins, Multipliers, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Here’s a selection of their recommendations:
- Lead with questions, let others come to the important conclusions first, and give your own wisdom sparingly.
- Have a core belief, and a key aim, and inspire your team with a lofty goal and high expectations
- Create a team that can fix problems and improve itself without you.
- Encourage your team to be creative and improve itself, to try new things all the time, relish mistakes as opportunities to learn and encourage people to take risks.
I don’t really believe that a teacher does all of these things. We impose our rules and our logic for using them. We value correctness and punish errors. Our system tells them to acheive their target grade in order to pass the exam (hardly inspiring stuff). We make our students rely on our own marking and on our help, and we tell them how we want them to learn.
Is there a better way?