Harnessing Leadership to create a movement to strengthen accountability and champion reform of education systems in Africa

• In Event: The Just Society: Collective impact -Bringing Children Furthest behind closer to enjoying the Right to Education in a changing world

Proposal

During the celebration summit of the group leadership coaching for the Regional Education Learning Initiative leadership teams, there was a citation of the famous quote that, “Leadership is an inside job”. This paper is an attempt to share how strengthening leadership through a coaching program that emphasis self-discovery, peer support and understanding inner self led to improved performance and reduced friction in a very diverse group of network leaders in one of the countries where the Regional Education Learning Initiative (RELI Africa) operates. The program used the team coaching approach for the purpose of building a team that is committed and engaging in achieving collective goals. The engagement into the program was informed by the need to strengthen the leadership team to lead as a collective and build the skills to turn the country leadership team into a more engaged, vibrant, result driven and cohesive leadership and membership.

The first part involved personal and collective engagement in observation exercises /daily practices. These were self-observation exercises that enabled participants to become intimately aware of their ‘Current Way of Being’ in the team coaching topic, what it enables and what it limits. Through this awareness, the team was able to start shifting automatic, habitual way of seeing and behaving in the topic. The practices were designed to develop the new muscles the team needed to live in alignment with the ‘New Way of Being’ in the coaching topic. These practices were structured and sequenced to progressively support reaching the team’s developmental objectives as identified from the beginning of the program. For this to work, team members were encouraged to allot time for practices and journaling and sometimes asked to repeat a practice. Meeting with the coach were scheduled every 2-3 weeks until the program was complete. Program ran for eight (8) sessions after the inception.

The immediate outcomes of the programme are fascinating and reflections from the members of the leadership team demonstrates how the investing in self-discovery and taking small steps to improve inner self helps to improve leadership abilities of everyone involved in the coaching program. The key outcomes of the program are:
Increased Individual awareness: In the leadership team members have come aware of who they are as individuals and how it affects the way they show up in their roles as leaders.

Team cohesiveness (connectedness): Understanding oneself has led to understanding each other among the team and strengthening the bond and the spirit of caring for one another. Open communication has increased, and the team members can intentionally commit to what they can do and what they cannot commit to do.
Practices and rituals: Showing up has been embraced as the practice that will change the way everyone lead, and it is already giving positive results in engaging the membership in the network.

The implementation of this program was through virtual meeting platforms which demonstrates the extent to which technology play a vital role in improving capacities of leadership to champion reforms in the education systems.

Author

• Gaudence Kapinga, Regional Education Learning Initiative, Africa (RELI Africa)