This article was first published in Leadership Ed, Issue 13, Term 4, 2020 under the title, Performance feedback: how school leaders can harness the challenge and opportunity.
As senior leaders in schools, we are often tasked with delivering feedback to our colleagues. More often than not, from the deputy’s desk, we are required to provide feedback to staff on aspects of their performance, either as a result of an observation of conduct or professional practice not being met, or stemming from a student or parent complaint that we have received.
There is little joy in being the bearer of difficult news.
It isn’t always about staff underperformance, of course. We also have the privilege of sharing the positive feedback we receive from members of our school community, about how impressed a parent is with the way in which a teacher managed a sensitive situation, or how a teacher went above and beyond in support of a student, or simply sharing a heartfelt expression of gratitude for the work that our teachers do each day.
It is likely to be less often that we are the recipients of feedback about our own performance from those with whom we work. However, given our place as the lead learners within our schools, there is significant power in actively inviting feedback from our students, our colleagues and our community. It is our willingness to embrace and act upon this feedback which keeps us moving forward on a path of ongoing personal and professional improvement.
In electronic music, feedback is defined rather differently than in learning and leadership. Feedback, in a musical context, is the “sudden… unpleasant noise produced by an amplifier when sound it produces is put back into it”. This might seem an unrelated concept, but for leaders engaging in ongoing professional growth it rings true; for feedback is a two-way street trafficked with the continuing hubbub of a stream of regular outputs and inputs.
In an organisational context, feedback can be defined as “a process in which learners make sense of information about their performance and use it to enhance the quality of [their] work” (Henderson, et. al., 2018). Though Henderson’s report, Feedback for Learning: Closing the Assessment Loop, focuses on feedback for student learners, the insights are equally relevant for those leading the learning in our schools. In light of this definition of feedback in learning, how might we, as leaders, create opportunities to receive information about where we are doing well and where we are not to enhance the quality of our work performance?
Professor Geoff Southward OBE, in his foreword to The Leadership Challenge (2008), reinforces the role of leadership in contributing to “organisational learning”. The notion of the learning organisation has flourished in business and management circles for thirty years, since the work of Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline (1990). A learning organisation possesses a culture in which all members are “skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying [their] behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights” (Garvin, 2014).
Garvin explains that these new insights may come from an array of sources, through both formal and informal means, both invited and unexpected. “Whatever their source”, Garvin writes, “these ideas are the trigger for organizational improvement. But they cannot by themselves create a learning organization. Without accompanying changes in the way that work gets done, only the potential for improvement exists”. It is the act of receiving and responding to these inputs which, according to Southward, influences the “core business of the school: that is teaching and learning”, and moves us from simply having the potential to improve towards realising that potential.
Southward explains that it is the practices of school leaders – how their leadership is “exercised and transacted” – that defines each leader’s success in their role. It stands to reason, then, that it is these practices on which we leaders should seek input from those who are best placed to provide that input, those with whom we interact each day.
Providing opportunities for feedback is an active endeavour. It requires acts of intentional vulnerability and interpersonal engagement with others, beyond the operational and transactional realms which can so often dominate the deputy’s day-to-day experience. It requires a continuing willingness to remain open to the insights of others, and to acknowledge that we can always be better. It also requires a commitment to move from one-off conversations and impersonal feedback surveys, towards having interactive, authentic feedback processes for leaders, embedded into the organisational fabric of the school.
Through modelling the level of receptivity to feedback that we also desire from our staff, we not only create an environment in which all members are partners in a shared, lifelong learning journey, but we also establish a culture in which we are accountable to each other for the quality of our professional and interpersonal practices.
Our feedback culture must be a non-negotiable. The approach we take to feedback must be flexible to staff needs, but strong enough to provide a clear and firm line on the value we place on feedback within our organisational culture. Feedback should be a key pillar that supports who we are as an organisation.
As leaders, it is inevitable that providing feedback to others will always be a core part of our leadership role. As lead learners, though, it is essential that we view receiving feedback from others as equally fundamental. How willing are we to receive the difficult truths that may be uncovered when we create the space to invite feedback in? How willing are we to give ear to the sudden, unpleasant noise that the insights of others may provide?
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References
Garvin, David A. (1993). “Building a Learning Organization.” Harvard Business Review, July-August, 1993. hbr.org/1993/07/building-a-learning-organization.
Henderson, M., Boud, D., Molloy, E., Dawson P., Phillips, M., Ryan, T., Mahoney, P. (2018). Feedback for Learning: Closing the Assessment Loop – Final Report. Canberra: Australian Government Department of Education and Training.
Mulford, Bill (2008). The Leadership Challenge: Improving Learning in Schools. Sydney: ACER. research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=aer.
Senge, Peter M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline. New York: Doubleday.
Adam Majsay 