After the first session...

From the first session it surprised me how everyone in the room was at different starting points in developing their leadership skills. Some were at the beginning of the ladder, some were in the middle and some had a lot of insight and experience in demonstrating leadership skills and were almost at the top.

Firstly, I expected to gain from this session a knowledge from others as all the individuals in the room had a range of experiences with regards to leadership. Secondly, I expected to capture an understanding of what exactly leadership skills were and how to improve on these and thirdly, to motivate and support others in acquiring leadership skills.

I concluded that some of the characteristics a good leader needs to have are that they are a good team player, problem solver, strategy thinker, confident and that they use encouraging words in order to build an individual's self esteem. They need to be empathetic of others and know the members of their team and their strengths and weaknesses. They need to be approachable and assertive but fair, inspiring and be able to lead by example.

In order to become an efficient leader you need to display an emotional intelligence and consider the wellbeing of your team and be supportive. You need to be able to motivate people to develop new ideas and open opportunities for others in order for them develop new skills. You should conduct learning walks on members of staff and be able to put strategies in place in order for the individual to build on weaknesses that you encountered.

When reflecting on my learning style I found that I am balanced with accommodating and converging styles but need to improve on diverging and assimilating styles of learning. Therefore, with regards to a diverging style I need to be more in tune with people's feelings, be sensitive to values, listen with an open mind, gather information and imagine the implications of ambiguous situations. With respect to the assimilating style I need to organise information, test theories and ideas with others, analyse data and design experiments. I also concluded that I tend to learn by doing which is an  'Active Experimentation' style and I need to strengthen my concrete, reflection and abstract conceptualization styles and need to improve on my planning, taking in consideration other alternatives and to incorporate others peoples feelings into solving problems.

A potential idea for my project would be to raise high grade attainment in A2 Biology. In order to do this I have started to encourage students who did not acquire their MEG of a B or an A to attend a resit session and support sessions in order to gain a B or an A in their summative assessments. I have also been rigorous with use of exam style questions in lessons and as homework. I have encouraged students to work on a set of targets from their assessment and submit as evidence.