Behavioural Modelling
(The first of the two core methodologies behind Principal Conversations)
Behavioural Modelling is a powerful methodology for enhancing human performance. Scientific research within the last two decades has dramatically increased our understanding of the human brain, our central nervous system, and human behaviour. By combining these discoveries with practical methods for understanding and mapping the behavioural aspects of a person's psychology, the field of Behavioural Modelling offers exciting possibilities for applications in all situations where human performance is at the centre.
And this includes the abilities and performance of any leadership team in any school, Your school...and your leadership team.
So what is Behavioural Modelling, and why is it causing such interest and excitement in areas such as business, government, sports and now schools? In Behavioural Modelling, one of the things we do is we look at forms of human expertise, the challenge is that all forms of human expertise occur via processes that happen outside of the awareness of the expert. We are modelling the "how to think" versus the "what to do". It is not about what they think they do, since what they actually do is not often what they think they do ... it's built up over years of experience. There's a lot of intuition, use of heuristics, general rules of thumb that they use to figure out as they go, occurring in fractions of a second outside their awareness.
Our job as modellers is to go in and find out what's occurring in their neurology that gives them the competence that even they can't articulate.
If you simply ask an effective leader 'how do you do what you do', they'll often tell you 'what' they do or did. it's not the same thing.
When a leader is really able to be effective we ask what is occurring in their neurology about how they perceive and relate to their circumstances, what do they say to themselves, what kind of images do they have in their head, how do they handle stresses, even outside of their awareness, that they can't even articulate?
As modellers, a part of our job is to find ways to put language to that in such a way that we can replicate those abilities in other people.
Therefore, Behavioural Modelling does not start with an existing leadership theory and tries to apply it to schools. Instead, it starts with real Principals, Assistant Principals and Leadership Teams working in today's conditions and who are producing real results in their schools.
So now when people watch these DVD's, when another senior group from a school is seeing this, its not just what the other Principal did or what the other school did, its about how they have to think, how they have to respond, how they have to change some of their lines of questioning, how do they use their own language and narrative to make meanings of events differently than everybody else and given that, now what conversation do you want to have in your school, with your team about how to think, how to understand your situation, how to relate to it and respond to it differently?
Please proceed to Strategic Conversation, the second of the core methodologies behind Principal Conversations.
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