About this episode

Shane and Chris reflect on key themes from recent episodes, discussing leadership, professional development, and the challenges of training effectiveness.

Shane and Chris are back for this month's Education Leaders Live, recording from Shanghai and Newcastle respectively, to unpack some of the biggest themes from recent episodes. The conversation kicks off with the backstory behind Education Leaders itself. How it started as a hobby podcast called Travel Ed, what redundancy taught Shane about building a business, and why the "build it and they shall come" approach is terrible advice for anyone thinking about going independent. From there, they get into Dr Chris Baker's brilliant work on poor proxies for leadership. What does it actually look like to lead well? Is visibility the same as effectiveness? And why did a child once assume Chris Baker was the new headmaster based entirely on his trench coat? They also dig into the CPD problem. Shane shares results from a LinkedIn survey where only 1 out of roughly 100 school leaders said external workshops had genuine impact. That leads to a proper debate about where responsibility sits when training doesn't stick, and what providers should be doing differently. Plus: the guilt of not looking busy, why teachers have the rolliest eyes of any profession, Chris's story about Rob Coe walking…

People in this episode

Host: Shane Leaning

Guest: Chris Baker

Topics covered

• leadership
• professional development
• education
• business
• independence
• training effectiveness

Keywords

• leadership
• professional development
• education podcast
• training
• business
• independence
• LinkedIn survey
• visibility
• effectiveness

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Education Leaders, Travel Ed, LinkedIn

Books & works: Poor Proxies for Leadership, Parent-Driven School Storytelling

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