Dixons Academies Trust | Professional Growth Conversations for all…
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Dixons Academies Trust

Professional Growth Conversations for all staff at Dixons Academies

Posted 21st November 2022 by Judith Kidd

At Dixons, we are determined to create a healthy organisation where each of us has agency and self-determination and is a valued part of Team Dixons. The first commitment from our newly-named Dixons Centre of Growth to all our staff supports this by marshalling professional knowledge around coaching as a powerful tool for self and team improvement. Drawing on what we know about the impact and implementation of coaching, the Centre for Growth is supporting the introduction of coaching for all staff at Dixons. All Team Dixons will engage in regular coaching to support and sustain professional growth and continually improve individual performance. Our commitment to coaching supports our operating model of aligned autonomy so that we can transform our ability to be highly responsive, to remove blockages and enable talent to flourish.

Our new agile approach to professional growth has four pillars:

  • continuous learning
  • frequent coaching check-ins,
  • building trust, and
  • connection to our Trust community

This new approach to professional growth is about supporting everyone to keep getting better through a continuous cycle of positive interactions.

These interactions require trusted two-way human connections; coaches are consistent, sustaining support. Our coaching is based on caring personally, interacting with humility and respect, but not avoiding challenge. Interactions involve:

  • coaching and collaboration between line manager/coach and colleague, mapping professional growth pathways and improving performance with small moves
  • observing and highlighting the right behaviours, values and attitudes immediately
  • building community and belonging

We have made a commitment to support everyone in Dixons to grow, as coach and colleague; coaching is a dynamic part of our deliberately crafted organisational culture. We use instructional coaching as our default coaching mode for teachers to continue to thrive and we tailor our coaching according to the needs of each member of Team Dixons. We firmly believe that our new approach to professional growth will be transformational.