uLead Podcast

In this episode we speak with Rosie Connor who will be delivering a breakout session at uLead 2024. She introduces herself, shares what she will be speaking about at uLead 2024, and talks about what she hopes participants will gain from this session.
For more information on uLead, visit the uLead website.
For more information on the Council for School Leadership, please visit our website.
For more information on BTS Spark and Rosie Connor you can:
Visit the BTS Spark Website
Follow her on LinkedIn
Follow BTS Spark on X

What is uLead Podcast?

The uLead Podcast, brought to you by the Council for School Leadership of the Alberta Teachers' Association.

uLead Preview w/Rosie Connor Transcript
Attendees
Corey Haley, Rosie Connor - BTS Spark
Transcript
This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it was created.
Corey Haley: Rosie Connor, thanks so much for taking a little bit of time to speak to me today. We are very excited to have you joining us at you lead coming up in April. How are you today? That's yes,…
Rosie Connor - BTS Spark: Very well. Thank you could speak to you Corey.
Corey Haley: it's great. I said, we are really excited to have you upward in the lead up and I know that the energy and the excitement is building and what I think is we'll start off with what are you tell us and tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and also a little bit about BTS spark the organization that you work for.
Rosie Connor - BTS Spark: Yeah, thanks Corey. So I'm really looking forward to you lead. I'm going to be flying in from Australia and I've been working in educational leadership right about 25 years. So actually started working on the Tony Blair educational reforms in the UK. I've been working in Australia on the national principal standard for all School principles, but over the last decade my work's been AS Global director of BTS Spark And at BCS spark we support.
Rosie Connor - BTS Spark: School Leaders with professional leadership coaching. So what we have done over the years is we've supported over 20,000 school principals assistant principals Vice principals and leaders are all levels in schools to really unlock their leadership potential and bring out the best of themselves as leaders every day in their schools. so from my point of view, this is the best job in the world because leading schools is such a critical activity is such such a life purpose and our job really is to support leaders to do their very best work in schools.
Corey Haley: The outstanding now at you lead you have so many topics that you could speak about I think but thinking about April and that you lead. what is it that you're going to share and what will be the topic of your presentation there?
Rosie Connor - BTS Spark: So we're going to be talking about messy leadership. And let me unpack that a little bit. So we've been doing some research from our coaching conversations and coaching of course is very special place because it's confidential on and therefore School leaders are really able to open up and talk about what really matters to them. What's their finding challenging? What would really help to step their leadership up to the next? Level and from our research. We identify some really key themes.
Rosie Connor - BTS Spark: We encapsulated this in the model called messy leadership and we started just exploring this topic with school leaders. We were kind of avalanche by the response. There's something in the notion of messy that really resonates with school leaders, they do their doctorate or they do their principal preparation program and then they go into school and into the new role and they realize just how messy it is leading schools. So the messy model first of all, it encapsulates that and a lot of the mess in US is to do with the complexity of The Human Side of school leadership. So it says about how do I engage all the different stakeholders? How do I give positive feedback to staff so they can continually improve and create that culture of feedback and continuous Improvement in my school.
Rosie Connor - BTS Spark: How do I create shared purpose that is really meaningful? So everyone in my school gets up and looks forward to coming to school and collaborating and learning from and with each other.
Rosie Connor - BTS Spark: So These are the big questions and what's I'm planning to do in the you leads presentation. It's just start to unpack them. We've brought a book out. It's coming out in May through ascd could embracing massive leadership. So, of course in an hour-long presentation, you can only get a glimpse of the different tools and strategies that we share in messy leadership, but the nevertheless we think it'll be really interesting and certainly the stories that we can tell from having coached School leaders. And then of course then anonymizing those stories they really will resonate with a lot of people at your lead, I think
Corey Haley: Absolutely. we think so too and that brings us to this last kind of questions. So, as the participants from your session are heading back to their schools. What are you really hoping the impact of your session will be what do you hope to take away from your presentation?
00:05:00
Rosie Connor - BTS Spark: So, of course, we're a coaching organization. So what we're about is supporting people in the day-to-day business of schools to be able to take on some new leadership approaches try out new strategies. So what we can offer in our presentation is some very practical strategies that's have been Up with school leaders. We've tried them over and over again with school leaders globally and lots of different School contacts. And we're excited to share some of those at you lead. So what we're offering really is a very practical session where you can take away some tools that you can Implement straight away scaffolds for coaching conversations or development conversations feedback conversations. You can have in your school to really help you with the day-to-day messing us of school leadership.
Corey Haley: Amazing that sounds really practical but also a new way of thinking about those supportive conversations. And so we are so looking forward to having you and having everyone out in April for you lead and thank you so much again for taking a little bit of time out today and speaking to us.
Rosie Connor - BTS Spark: Looking forward to the session. Thanks, Corey.
Meeting ended after 00:06:26 👋