Learning From a Walking Guide

Leadership, Personal Growth, Professional Learning

The summer holidays have been a time to relax and rejuvenate. One of the things my wife and I like to do is to travel to new places. Besides taking a break from our daily routines we get the opportunity to see and learn new things. 

I wasn’t much of a historian when I was younger however, when we visit a new country and settle in, we like to do walking tours, particularly when staying in the old part of a city. Walking tours give opportunity to learn the history, to understand how ‘things’ have come about. From architecture to cuisine influences to the infusion of cultural practices, the tour guides offer connected stories as we meander through the streets. 

It is curious to see the walking tour guides in action. The stitching of history and stories leading to current practice resonates with my view of leading schools. School leaders need to be able to tell the schools story, particularly when walking parents around the school or inducting new staff into the school family.

Here are five things I’ve learned from these tour guides this summer that resonate with school leadership:

  1. Know your history. Guides build their walking tour on the history of the place. At the start of the walk, usually after a brief “where are you from” session, the guide introduces what the tour will entail and begins with providing the participants with a brief history. This strategy outline the foundations, the vision and offers insight into how the country/city came to be. 
  2. Understand the external influences and their impact on the institution.  Throughout the tour, the guide explains why things are the way they are! How the architecture was influenced by conquerors; or the infiltration of culinary delights from neighbouring countries; or even improvements in city defence mechanisms .
  3. Forward planning. The guides are very intentional about their tour routes. They are well planned and each stop builds upon the previous and the ensuing story leads on to the next stop.
  4. Building Relationships: Tour guides rely on tips after the tour for their income. Although the tours last between 2-3 hours, the guides try to connect with each participant as they walk from stop to stop. Building a personal relationship was a key strategy to not only learn more about them but also to determine if they were enjoying the tour. The view is that happy tourists are more likely to tip at the end. If the participant was not happy they would try and change their presentation to help gain the admiration of the participant. 
  5. Reiterating learning throughout the tour. As the guide moved from place to place there was explanation (and connection) of where each place slotted into the big picture. They do this by using phrases like:
    1. Do you remember when we stopped at….
    2. When we were discussing the invasion of…..
    3. See how these roads connect the …….

A tour guide that exudes enthusiasm and is able to tell a great story, transports the participants and helps them visualise the actuality of the story.

I wonder how schools would evolve if principals were more like walking tour guides….
