Leadership Dialogues

Designed to provide stimulus materials for school leaders to support their personal development, Leadership Dialogues encourages personal reflection, dialogue with a coach or mentor and conversations in leadership teams. It includes short think pieces, case studies, diagnostic reviews, selected quotations on a particular theme and questions for discussion and reflection. The book is a valuable and practical resource for leadership teams. Much of the content is included on a free CD-ROM of printable resources. Education Resources Awards finalist - Best Educational Book 2016.

Leadership Dilaogues has been added as a core text to our MA Education course as part of my School Based Leadership & Management module. The book is an useful tool to use with existing school leaders to consider the dialogue surrounding school improvement and is excellent for them to consider the ways in which effective dialogue can be maximised.Jenny Fogarty, Senior Lecturer, Department of Education, London South Bank University, aLeadership Dialogues' - having only just started to read sections of the book, I am already excited about the possibilities it provides for engaging leadership at all levels in the school. As a relatively new head, I am acutely aware of the need to dedicate time for both myself and my leadership team to quality thought and dialogue. This is inevitably an ongoing challenge and I already feel hugely optimistic that this book will be an effective way of enabling me to incorporate strategy for thought into our meetings cycle. The structure and format of the book makes the principles which are explored hugely accessible and the key messages conveyed are thought provoking and have potential to enable profound change. An ongoing focus for my school is increasing capacity (we are currently expanding and will grow to 7 forms of entry over the next 4 years). As a result of this, development and retention of middle leaders is paramount. I am in the process of planning a leadership programme for the most promising teachers from this tier of our leadership structure and intend to use focuses from aLeadership Dialogues' at strategic points throughout the course.Anna Mackenzie, Head of School, Hillyfield Academy, An excellent book full of practical advice to train leaders on how to handle all aspects of running a school. The training advice is well thought out and is very practical for a variety of purposes. Each of the topics is handled in a user friendly way and this makes it very appealing.Nadia Touba, John and Dave have written a book that provides a wealth of material for school leaders to get their teeth into...to chew over for themselves and digest the arguments and counter arguments. The text is refreshingly full of experience and insight about how to run a school successfully, not to a formula or defined model, but to the needs of the school community. It is a book that offers reader the chance to find their own starting point based on the circumstances particular to their own school situation.Mick Waters, Author of 'Thinking Allowed on Schooling' and Professor of Education, Wolverhampton University , Leadership Dialogues has been an invaluable resource to me as a new school leader, leading significant change in my own school in the current changing educational context. Its instant appeal is the way in which leaders can dive right in to the relevant piece of work they want to develop or take a longer approach and cover several sections as part of ongoing CPD. It's easy to use. The CD-ROM provides all the additional resources to put either of these approaches immediately into action. In my own school I have used it with great effect in both contexts. It proved extremely valuable for me in settling in as a leader of an already outstanding senior team, charting out a new course of direction. As a result, we were able to refocus on further improving teaching and learning and developing leadership capacity across the school. It worked similarly well in developing specific aspects of any colleague''s performance. For example, I recently used the section ''Challenging Conversations'' to enable a support staff leader to ''grasp the nettle'' with a difficult member of staff. The resource not only unveils sound insight from the wealth of experience provided by the authors, but backs this up with relevant research. It would be difficult to put a figure on how much a leadership team would need to spend on individual CPD of this calibre to gain this amount of impact; one thing I am sure of, it would be a lot more than the price of the book! Richard Cahill, Head Teacher, Heathfield Academy

John West-Burnham was an independent writer, teacher and consultant in education leadership. He is the author, co-author and editor of many books including Rethinking Educational Leadership and Understanding Leadership and has worked in 27 countries. He was a director of three academy trusts and a trustee of two educational charities, as well as an Honorary Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Worcester. Dave Harris worked for over 20 years in school leadership, including 12 as a school principal across both primary and secondary phases. During this time he developed a reputation for innovative thinking and practice. Since retiring from working in schools he now puts his ideas into practice as Managing Director of Independent Thinking Ltd.