Sparking Innovation and Excitement to Become a Leading Educator in the 21st Century
A bespoke leadership journey empowers senior educators, fostering innovation and a growth culture.
Source: Ngee Ann Polytechnic
Story
How might we help long-serving educators rediscover their passion for teaching and innovate their approaches?
With a legacy spanning over six decades, Ngee Ann Polytechnic stands as a pillar of higher education in Singapore. Many educators in Ngee Ann have given more than two decades of service to educate generations of students.
The Awaken Group came in to enhance the leadership development strategy of 300 senior educators with these guiding questions:
How might we help senior educators sharpen their personal leadership vision and cultivate a positive mindset to fuel their ongoing professional development?
How might we equip senior educators with innovative toolkits, such as human-centered design, to rethink their teaching methods and drive optimal student outcomes?
How might we create a meaningful platform to engage senior educators, providing a safe space for constructive feedback and foster a greater sense of purpose?
Source: Ngee Ann Polytechnic
Approach
We helped educators rediscover their purpose and passion for teaching with empathy, experimentation, and innovation
Uncovering ‘Un-met’ Needs: Engaging in deep-dive conversations with senior leaders, educators and students, we focused on ‘extreme’ users e.g., ‘problem’ students. From these findings, we developed hypotheses.
Designing an Intervention that Cultivates Leadership and Innovation: Using insights from the conversations, we custom-designed an Inspire21 program for 300 senior educators and leaders over the course of 1.5 years to gain awareness on their self-leadership, introduce design thinking, and provide an engagement platform with senior leaders.
Refreshing Purpose: The positive feedback from Inspire21 motivated the principal to revitalize the leadership team’s purpose. Our team customized a 6-month leadership journey incorporating StrengthsFinder, workshops, and coaching, to equip 40 senior leaders to navigate challenges, create action plans, and lead authentically.
Impact
We catalyzed a movement of purposeful, innovative teaching among senior educators in Ngee Ann Poly
Beyond consistently high satisfaction ratings (averaging ~4.5/5 across 20 runs of Inspire 21), the program sparked profound shifts in mindsets and tangible outcomes:
Cultural Transformation: “As part of the leadership development strategy, we catalyzed a culture of celebrating small wins and positivity among leaders and educators which cascaded to other educators and students.” – Senior Educator
Leadership Evolution: “We also shifted leadership mindsets to move beyond operational efficiency to human-centered, effective leadership mindsets that is educator and student focused.” – Senior Educator
Innovation Unleashed: Our intervention also sparked a culture of experimentation and risk-taking. Several prototypes, conceived during the 3.5-day Inspire21 programs, were further nurtured and developed by Ngee Ann Poly’s educators and leaders.
“Really grateful to Awaken Group for being willing to journey alongside us, for listening and co-creating this so earnestly to meet us where we are. Thank you! All of you on the team are so wonderful to work with.” – Senior Leadership Program Participant
Source: Ngee Ann Polytechnic
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