Does the DOS do it for you?

Stop! Right there.

This is not a post about staff-room titillation. (Sorry!)

No, this is about a different kind of pull – that of motivation and inspiration.

Because, whether you like it or not, when you become a DOS, you become a leader (don’t you?), and one of the jobs of a leader is to motivate and inspire others.

Carrots

In ELT this is inevitably a pretty tricky thing to do. You’re up against it from the off.

Firstly, before becoming the DOS, you were probably ‘just’ a teacher. Used to inspiring your students on a daily basis, of course!…but your colleagues, your peers? – that’s a different matter.

And since becoming DOS, you’ve probably had little or no ‘leadership‘ training. In Jenny Johnson’s 2009 survey of ELT Managers & Management Training, it was found that in fact a majority of the 135 respondents had received some kind of pre-service training: “…36% had had a handover period, 33% had had a mentor, 17% had done a management training course and 13% had attended sessions or workshops. However, 35% had not had any training before they started [the role].” I had a 4 week handover period but spent most of that time getting to grips with the nuts and bolts of the job, like planning and timetabling, and ordering books! I don’t recall covering the bit about ‘how to become an inspirational leader’ in that time!

And secondly, what about the people you have to motivate and inspire? Many are in the game for a multitude of reasons:

• A vocational desire to help students learn to communicate in English? – yes, probably 😉
• Keeping the wolf from the door while other pursuits are pursued (acting, music, writing, film-making, studying)? – also a fair bet. (If our teachers’ true vocational dreams lie elsewhere, can we really motivate and inspire them?)
• Money? In ELT? No, let’s face it – money isn’t one of them.
• And nor is promotion – where is the career ladder in ELT I hear you scream?! (there is one by the way, it’s just not very well defined). But anyway, who has ever been inspired by money or promotion?!

So, it can be a tough one.

I thought it would be interesting to see what inspired other people, and I was chatting with some non-ELT friends the other day, and asked what it was that inspired them in their jobs and how they inspired others. The lawyer said that for him and his team, they simply had to realise they were offering a professional service which was highly paid for by their clients and that should be enough to motivate them; the PR exec said it was ‘more about do than say’; the Social Worker said the NHS was also a service but there wasn’t any boss who inspired her, it all came down to her own self-motivation to help others; the Merchandiser said it was her company’s values which inspired her (the Number One Value being the ‘happiness of the employees’!); and the Fashion designer said it was all about the character of her boss – ‘she is amazing, brilliant strategic insight and decisiveness. I want to be like her!’

My friends’ comments seem to chime with those expressed by the ELT practitioners who took part in a recent #ELTchat on Motivating Teachers, summarised here. Namely, that we can be motivated (and de-motivated) by many different things.

So, back to my role as DOS and what I can do, because I definitely have a part to play. Here are some thoughts on motivating and inspiring my team*:

Deal with what Herzberg calls the ‘hygiene factors’:

• Pay – we’re a long way off from being on a par with the highest earners in society, but fight for competitive pay for your teachers
• Security – keep a tight ship and make sure everyone has enough work
• Conditions – do your best to keep the facilities comfortable and provide the right tools for the job
• Keep the admin to a minimum, and try to ensure it can be simply and efficiently done
• Get out of the way – avoid prescriptive measures and let the teachers get on with expressing their individual teaching flair
• Morale – know your teachers, listen to them, build up a good rapport, go out for a drink with them, be happy to make a fool of yourself  (get on the mic at the summer karaoke party 🙂 )

And then focus on the ‘motivating factors’

• Vary the work by giving teachers different kinds of courses to teach
• Challenge them with new levels, new courses
• Give teachers autonomy – create space within the syllabus for choice of materials and resources, for creativity
• Recognise and ‘reward’ those who go the extra mile
• And provide plenty of opportunities for growth – a framework and conditions for professional development which I have described here and here

Cake

And then the inspirational icing on the cake

• Practice what you preach – one of my goals is to create and maintain a learning culture at the school, and one way I promote this is by regularly sharing my learning with the team
• Create a shared vision – whatever the goals are for the school, for the team, for each individual teacher, find ways to build a sense of engagement in that vision
• Know your stuff – read, tweet, blog, attend webinars & conferences, and keep up with the latest thinking
• Be innovative – use the latest tech tools in your meetings, or workshops, and once again be a model for others
• Set compelling goals – tap into the the deep seated desire of all teachers (even those whose dreams lie elsewhere) to do their best to contribute to their learners’ ongoing progress and achievement
• Be inspired – find what it is that inspires you, and you’ll find it easier to inspire others…

So, if you are a teacher reading this, what do you think? Does your DOS do it for you? What is it about them that inspires you?

And if you are a DOS, stop for a moment; take a deep breath; shut your eyes and with your tongue firmly in your cheek, allow yourself to dream that this song is for you.

The famous song about Directors of Studies: ‘Nobody DOS it better‘ 😉

*disclaimer: this is what I attempt to achieve..but do I? – hey, you gotta try!