What comes to mind when you think of Belgium?\u00a0 Chocolates, waffles, or beer? Maybe Brussels sprouts.\u00a0 For someone, like myself, who has worked in SE Asia most of my career, Belgium seems like a far off exotic place where trains arrive on time, the streets are clean, and it gets cold enough to wear a sweater.\u00a0 After my talk with Kevin Bartlett, Head of School at the International School of Brussels, it might be more accurate to think of leadership, at least in international schools.\u00a0 While most schools realize that leadership consists of more than the three or four people that occupy the front offices, in my experience, not many schools do anything to develop the school\u2019s less public leaders.\u00a0 Recognizing this gap in development Kevin and his team at ISB, have pushed for common training and leadership development for the many various leaders in the school.<\/p>\n
Developing leaders is valued so highly that they\u2019ve even incorporated it into their strategic goals.\u00a0 Goal number two reads, \u201cAll of our outstanding teachers are motivated, retained and developed. Middle-level leaders are fully effective in leading towards the ISB vision.\u00a0 The school has re-designed its leadership and career development system, and now provides full leadership training for all faculty team leaders and mentors. \u00a0Job expectations and compensation have been re-structured to reflect the greater emphasis on the importance of faculty leadership and mentoring.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 If this seems like a big goal, it’s because it is, but I was lucky enough to hear from Mr. Bartlett about how this is being acted out, as well as what has helped in his own development and inspiration as a leader.<\/p>\n (If not specifically quoted, Mr. Bartlett\u2019s responses to these questions have been paraphrased)<\/p>\n When and why did you decide to step into leadership?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI was never planning on becoming anything other than a football player or rock [star], but for me it was just the right opportunity at the time.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n I think like most leaders, what pulled me in was the opportunity to create change.\u00a0 \u201cIf you\u2019re one of those people who like to analyze systems and see ways they can be [implemented], or think they see ways to improve them\u2026if you keep saying things like that, eventually you say, \u2018oh screw it,\u2019 I\u2019ll have a go at it and do it myself.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Much of my career has been asking the question, \u2018why do we do it that way, and is it effective?\u2019\u00a0 \u201c[I think] the greatest [leaders] are the ones who stand up and want to fix a problem that no one else realizes is a problem.\u00a0 I think a lot of people end up [stepping into leadership] because they can see\u2026how things can be better.\u201d\u00a0 Then once you\u2019ve created a solution \u201cit\u2019s important [to take the time] to analyze whether it works.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>What\u2019s been most fundamental in your development as a leader?<\/strong><\/p>\n Like many, I think my career has developed and evolved from one place to another.\u00a0 It\u2019s really been a number of \u201cslow hunches.\u201d\u00a0 \u201c[First] I got a philosophy degree, but it didn\u2019t seem to have any use at the time.\u00a0 Then I was failing at everything until I was a student teacher at a very progressive school in London.\u201d\u00a0 As time went by all the various piece of my experience have come to fit together nicely.\u00a0 Of course it always seems to make more sense in hindsight, but was less clear as it was happening.<\/em><\/p>\n An additional part of my development has come from \u201cthirty years of fairly intense thinking\u2026a lot of what we do [as school leaders] is to think about our work\u2026As Bill Gerritz [Head at IS Bangkok] would say, \u2019it\u2019s all about the learning\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 A focus on learning has been a really important shift in my thinking and what I always push at Brussels.\u00a0 It seems so basic, yet so many schools seem to have no intentional understanding of what is effective learning. \u201c[If you asked a group of educators to] remain standing if you believe that your purpose is to improve learning, everyone stands.\u00a0 Then if you ask if your institution has developed a clear common definition of learning that drives every single thing your organization does, everybody sits down.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n What specific set of skills do you bring your position at ISB?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cMy natural inclination is to see patterns, and try to make them reality.\u201d\u00a0 I think I have the ability of taking things that don\u2019t necessarily work and making them better.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>I\u2019m naturally philosophical and very introverted but that doesn\u2019t always work well for a school leader so my learned skill, \u201cis to be more proactive at approaching people\u2026and learning how to talk to more kinds of people.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n As stated in your second strategic goal, ISB has worked to develop it\u2019s mid-level leadership, how and why did you decide to do this?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201c[We realized that] t<\/em>he engine room of change is not through the senior leadership [at the school], but through the next level of leadership (department heads, etc).\u201d\u00a0 Once we realized this \u201cI said here\u2019s an idea, [how about] we train everybody\u2026[because] I think it would be better if we\u2019re trained and used the same language.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe developed the leadership skills around simple ideas, [for instance the difference between management and leadership]\u2026\u201dAfterward, one of my colleagues came to me and said, \u2018I just realized I\u2019ve been doing 20 years of managing and no leading\u2019\u2026 \u201cOf course recognizing that we need to do both, but knowing there is a difference between the two.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n As for the compensation, we realized that \u201cteachers are not extrinsically motivated\u2026so we mandated the course.\u00a0 We can\u2019t have some people who have been trained and speak a common language and other\u2019s who don\u2019t.\u00a0 So [we said] here\u2019s the deal, you have to come back permanently a week before everybody else\u2026we\u2019ll double your stipend and we\u2019ll pay for your PTC training.\u201d \u00a0We also compensate our teacher-leaders, not on performance pay, but for participating in the training programs.\u00a0 The great thing is that are teachers didn\u2019t complain about it at all, instead they said \u2018yeah, that seems to make a lot of sense.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n What inspires the work you do at Brussels?<\/strong><\/p>\n Our mission states, everyone included, everyone challenged, and everyone successful.\u00a0 Now I know that in many schools the mission statements can be pretty pointless or serve no real value, but at ISB we\u2019ve tried to keep it really simple and line all of our actions up against it.\u00a0 <\/em>As an example we have very competitive sports teams that result in less people competing on varsity teams, so we revamped different sports we offered so that more people can be included.\u00a0 It gives every child the opportunity to participate<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cOne of my favorite sayings is, have a clear sense of purpose that gives rise to complex intelligent behaviors, not complicated rules and regulations that give rise to stupid, simplistic behaviors.\u201d\u00a0 Obviously are mission is easy to say but to accomplish takes a whole lifetime..<\/em><\/p>\n What\u2019s your greatest priority when choosing teachers or administrators for ISB?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIntelligence\u2026[we want to] hire smart people, that\u2019s what we look for, more than experience and more then qualifications, although we value both, especially experience\u2026[Also] people who care as much about learning as we do and who are smart and quick learners.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Does location work against you in Brussels?\u00a0 Do you feel like your missing out on a certain kind of teacher (maybe they can\u2019t afford Europe)?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have that much turnover, so we\u2019re never looking for that many teachers.\u00a0 Honestly what tends to happen is we have a lot of teachers who say\u2026\u2019we\u2019ve done are research, we\u2019re only looking at two schools\u2026and we\u2019ll stay where we are unless we are offered a position at one of those schools.\u201d\u00a0 I think because of the tax situation here and the weather, we\u2019ve set out to attract teachers here that see what we\u2019re doing and know they want to be a part of it.\u00a0 \u201cWe get the kind of people who want to grow and learn and are pretty obsessive about the business [of education].\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n What advice do you have for the next generation of international administrators?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWhen you have a spare moment go and sit under a tree and ask yourself these two questions, \u2018why lead, and would anybody want to be led by me?\u2019\u00a0 When you have satisfactory answers you\u2019re probably ready for the job.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI think people need to know for themselves why they lead. \u00a0For me the fun is having the idea and having the power to make it happen…but if you\u2019re not a guy who wants to make things better or doesn\u2019t like the challenge to live up to that, then it\u2019s really not the right job for you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHave at least one other passion apart from the job\u2026it also leads to the transfer of good ideas across disciplines.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What comes to mind when you think of Belgium?\u00a0 Chocolates, waffles, or beer? Maybe Brussels sprouts.\u00a0 For someone, like myself, who has worked in SE Asia most of my career, Belgium seems like a far off exotic place where trains arrive on time, the streets are clean, and it gets cold enough to wear a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-leadership-project"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/bartlett-brussels.jpg?fit=900%2C220","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5BJbv-g5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}