Sometimes – all too frequently, truth be told – I find myself navigating through some pretty swampy terrain as a school leader. The path isn’t always clear.
When I get really stuck, I have a few mental tricks.
One of the most useful of these is to switch to game-playing mode. In game-playing mode, the goal is to win. So, I start by asking myself what does winning look like?. Asking this really focuses my mind on where it is I want to get to.
Thinking about what winning looks like helps me focus on what is really important. For example, when considering difficult problems to do with student conduct, winning looks like students learning to behave better by being able to self-regulate. It is easy in making decisions about behaviour to be derailed from winning the game by short-term goals such as winning this stage of the game. Being more punitive is a tempting move when confronted with persistent poor behaviour, and this can be a credible strategy, but it can also be a distractor from a smarter strategy that will bring home the win.
Once we know what winning looks like, we can imagine a range of strategies and scenarios and estimate the likelihood that each will lead to success. A chess analogy might help us imagine this. In chess, we can adopt a broad strategy such as ‘dominate the centre of the board’, or ‘win on pieces’. We can then map out scenarios for how we may progress this strategy. Good chess players ‘see’ these possible futures as they have sophisticated mental models of how games play out. Similarly, expert school leaders will develop this ability in a range of educational problem spheres.
Strategic game-play may mean that some moves on their own appear illogical. Why would we sacrifice a pawn if we don’t need to? However, we know what winning looks like and we have a probabilistic instinct for getting there. The moves can only be judged on whether they take us towards the win.
Gamifying the problem also makes sense in complex situations as we cannot anticipate fully the effect of our decisions. Instead, we adopt a mindset of move and countermove. An adaptive mindset helps us navigate volatile, unpredictable and uncontrollable situations. Improving teaching quality is one such scenario. All sorts of unintended consequences arise when you start poking this bear. That’s okay! Know what winning looks like, adopt a strategy, then be prepared to flex. Moves and countermoves.
Game-play is an expert approach. A more novice leader relies on handrails for specific decisions. What does the policy say? What am I allowed to do? What can I get away with? What will people think of this? What is the quick fix? More expert leaders know that whilst rules tell them what they can do, they can’t tell them what they should do. Expert leaders play within the rules, but also play the rules to get them the win.
Some caveats. Games involve winners and losers. But our goal as leaders is not to beat other people but to beat the odds. In terms of people, we want win-win outcomes wherever possible. Indeed, to loop back to the start, we might want to ask what winning looks like for the various stakeholders. Often, we can’t win on every front, and trade-offs are inevitable. I suggest that front and centre should be the students, whom, after all, we are playing the game for.
We must also recognise that winning is not always possible. School leaders will sometimes be faced with ‘least worst option’ decisions. Even so, adopting a game-playing approach may help us lose gracefully and mitigate loss.
If you are coaching other leaders, or find yourself in a discussion where no-one can agree a way forward, throw in that question: what does winning look like? Then sit back and let the games begin.
And may the odds be ever in your favour.
Matthew Evans 