The Power of the Collective

We often think of hindsight as a rather unfortunate thing, something that brings wisdom after the event, always a little late, a nagging ‘I told you so’ with a sense of, “if only we knew beforehand, we could have avoided that…”

Sometimes, however, it illuminates a situation with a sense of possibility, a lightbulb moment that sparks surprise and excitement at the sheer serendipity of the accidental genius of the whole situation.

That moment of enlightenment occurred to us during the Summer of 2018, when we were midway through our very first FED Applied session with our Headteachers. Here we were with a group of over 70 leaders representing over 40 different schools all working on a common goal – to raise the bar on their own leadership and that of their entire staff teams so they could create the best possible learning opportunities for the children in their schools.

We were about to work collectively on a whole-trust, whole-partnership programme underpinned by a longitudinal study to systematically examine the impact of this approach to a range of factors – the final research report is due for publication January 2020 – the results are powerful.

The investment of time and energy to create trust between Teaching School Headteachers and across our schools, nurturing relationships, facilitating and encouraging collaboration, sharing experiences and learning together had resulted in the perfect conditions for the FEDApplied programme.

Our very deliberate approach to collective learning and development, intended as a means to forge powerful connections between like-minded professionals had resulted in an incredible collective, a community in its purest sense all working together for a greater good, celebrating one another’s successes and supporting each other through challenges.

By the time we came to launch FED Applied, we had a ready-made cohort who knew and trusted their colleagues, they felt comfortable sharing their inner thoughts, vulnerabilities in an open and honest way so they could explore their leadership at a much deeper level.