The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) worked with Stuart Rimmer, CEO of East Coast College Group, to curate a group of leaders from across the sector to explore in a conversation key aspect of wellbeing and the challenges this brings in leadership.
Listen to the full meeting via the podcast.
During a 90-minute roundtable, the group explored key themes and shared helpful insights into wellbeing including:
This session was recorded for anyone to listen to and take away effective practice and engage with the reflective debate. Below is a synopsis of the key points coming from the roundtable discussion. The meeting took place on Friday 22 January 2021 at 10am via Zoom. It was chaired by Stuart Rimmer with representation from the following leaders:
Ali Hadawai
Anthony Harmer
Barbara van der Eecken
Caroline Lewis
Chris Webb
Dawn Hall
Palvinder Singh
Sam Parrett
Also in attendance were Claire Gibbs, Executive Assistant at East Coast College, Janet Clarke, the ETF's Head of Leadership at the ETF, and Teresa Carroll, the ETF's National Head of Inclusion.
Introduction
The meeting discussed concepts of leadership and wellbeing, how we manage and develop wellbeing strategies within our organisations, and the implications of our thinking around wellbeing especially in this current time.
Teresa welcomed those present, stating that mental health and wellbeing prior to Covid-19 was becoming a topic much more openly discussed understanding that it is an issue not only for teachers but also the learners across the FE sector.
A survey carried out by the ETF in February 2019 highlighted how stress was dependent upon who their line manager was, whether there was autonomy and trust in their role, and more importantly who was leading the organisation, and if they led by example — these themes were all discussed during this meeting.
The discussion explored and developed some key themes as output to take forward into policy and strategy development:
The group gave responses and reflections exploring self-leadership as follows:
The group gave responses linked to wellbeing strategy development but also the leadership within wellbeing strategy as follows:
The group gave the responses as follows:
The group gave the responses as follow: