Most schools pour resources into developing brilliant teachers and then promote those same people into management roles with almost no preparation for what comes next. This episode centres on a genuinely exciting initiative: Management Mastery, an in-house leadership development programme created by Poppy Nobes, Head of Professional Development at Aldridge Education. Poppy built the programme after recognising a gap that formal qualifications like NPQs simply can't fill; the operational, contextual, and deeply practical side of managing people in your specific organisation. From handling difficult conversations to structuring communication channels, Management Mastery is designed to make the implicit explicit.
You'll hear how Poppy and her team started by working backwards from the problems they were actually seeing in their workforce, grievances, repeated sick leave, unsupported staff, and designed a programme around the skills leaders needed to prevent them. Shane and Poppy discuss why practice-based professional development is just as vital for managers as it is for classroom teachers, the power of a shared language (including the \"balcony and dance floor\" concept that keeps coming up in their cohort), and why being geographically spread across ten schools from Brighton to Durham makes community-building all the more essential. If you've ever wondered whether your organisation has quietly assumed that leadership development is covered, this conversation will make you think again.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
Teach First Golden Thread Courses
Episode Partners:
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