WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BUILD BRILLIANT?

It has been another great year working in Sheffield, Nottingham and Guernsey and whatever happens next we must continue to tell and share our stories; success stories, learning stories, stories about developing understanding, stories about real people and real places.
I have worked with some great people in great places and seen so much success over the years, so much learning about what it takes to build brilliant. And perhaps strangely these are not the stories of a group of superheroes but the actions of thousands of ordinary people whose combined passion, determination, grit, courage, energy and hard work day in and day out has made that difference. So much human endeavour resulting in so many powerful messages about what works and importantly what doesn't. Over the years, we have developed a toolkit of techniques, tips and strategies which can build brilliant learning in brilliant learning places to achieve extraordinary results. These are the lessons I've learnt:

• be driven by a mission with values and beliefs that focused on fairness, inclusion and equity,
• be relentlessly positive and optimistic and yet realistic,
• constantly search for excellence to share, network and learn from,
• constantly search for talented people to learn from,
• have high expectations of everyone,
• develop cooperative and collaborative approaches,
• develop and support communities of interest,
• be open, honest and genuine about successes and failures,
• learn from everything you do,
• be flexible, responsive and adaptable,
• listen to those you work with and those you serve.

Chris