Upcoming Webinars - Summer 2025
Leadership webinars for our school, college and trust leader alumni
Join us for these free webinars to gain fresh insights, useful tips, and actionable strategies on some hot leadership topics and challenges
We are delighted to offer an ongoing webinar series with our expert leadership coaches and other guests. See below for a summary of upcoming sessions and to book your place. We will then send you a calendar invite with the Zoom link and a reminder nearer the time. Our webinars are intended to provide practical tips and strategies and most of our speakers and facilitators will invite you to join in the conversation and to reflect on your own experience and the insights shared in the context of your own leadership. Some will also offer opportunities to practise key tools and approaches with your peers in breakout rooms, so please come along prepared to participate. You'll find bios of the webinar speakers and facilitators at the bottom of the page.
Topics are drawn from the leadership challenges that we know school, college and trust leaders often find tricky. If there's a particular theme you would like us to cover in a future session, please feel free to email us with your request. And if you'd like us to deliver a similar webinar for staff in your school or trust, please email Denise Barrows
Do check back regularly for new webinars. If you'd like to invite a colleague to a particular session, please email us their details and we'll send them an invite directly.
3.00 p.m. Tuesday 6 May 2025 Influence and Leadership
Much of what you will need to achieve as a school, college or trust leader, will come down to your ability to influence without resorting to your positional authority. Whilst you may be able to issue a directive and expect that, in the main, your staff will comply, many of your stakeholders, including parents, governors/trustees and your peer leaders in your trust or system will require a very different approach to gain their buy-in. In this interactive 90 minute webinar we will explore the nature and inter-personal dynamics of influence and what it takes to embrace influence as a key part of your leadership toolkit.
We will cover:
- The mindset of a great influencer and how this unlocks new ways to find the best way forward and bring others with you
- Common influencing styles and how you can maximise your personal effectiveness as an influencer
- The barriers that can prevent an influencing conversation from moving forward and the transitions and leadership practices needed to break through these and make progress towards a shared solution
Tuesday 6 May
3:00 p.m.
to 4:30 p.m.
Influence and Leadership Reserve your slot
Sign up below to attend this webinar.
4.00 p.m. Thursday 22 May 2025 The Multiplier Effect:
How the best leaders amplify the capability of those around them
We’ve all had experience with two dramatically different types of leaders. The first type can't help but drain intelligence, energy, and capability from the people around them, often because they need to be the smartest person in the room. These leaders are the accidental diminishers of others' ideas, energy, talent and commitment. On the other side of the spectrum are leaders who amplify the intelligence and the capabilities of the people around them. When these leaders walk into a room, light bulbs go on over people's heads; ideas flow and problems get solved. These are the leaders who inspire their staff to stretch themselves and surpass expectations. These are the Multipliers. With an imperative to achieve more with less, our education system needs Multipliers now more than ever. What could you accomplish in your school, college or trust if you could harness and amplify all the energy and intelligence around you?
In this engaging and interactive webinar, Alyssa Gallagher, Director of BTS Spark in the US and Multipliers expert, will:
- share the research behind Multipliers and illustrate the resoundingly positive and productive effect these Multiplier leaders have on those around them
- introduce the five disciplines that distinguish Multipliers from Diminishers
- share practical tips for leading as a Multiplier, including how these leaders attract and develop talent, as well as harness new ideas and energy to drive innovation.
Thursday 22 May
4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
The Multiplier Effect Reserve your slot
Sign up below to attend this webinar.
10:30 a.m. Monday 9 June 2025 Compelling Communication
Storytelling is an often unrecognised and undervalued leadership capability. Whilst we all know that communication is core to building trust, inspiring our teams and driving change, few of us spend time cultivating our storytelling skills. Yet telling stories is one of the best ways of connecting with, engaging and motivating others and whether we realise it or not, all of us have a treasure trove of unpolished story gems that we can turn into captivating stories.
In this 90 minute webinar we will:
- Help you to recognise the powerful stories behind your experiences
- Share a simple framework and a story structure to help you craft a narrative that will resonate with your audience and inspire engagement and action.
- Give you a headstart on replacing a boring slide with a story for your next meeting!
Monday 9 June
10:30 a.m.
to 12:00 p.m.
Compelling Communication
Reserve your slot
Sign up below to attend this webinar
1:30 p.m. Wednesday 2 July Flexing your Leadership Style
As a leader, it’s easy to rely on the tried-and-trusted approaches that have become part of our natural style and ways of working with colleagues. Yes, just as students in the classroom will benefit from differentiation of teaching strategies to best meet their needs, so too will your staff and colleagues benefit if you can adapt your preferred style to best meet their needs or the needs of the situation. In this 90-minute webinar we will explore four distinct leadership and coaching styles – examining the key characteristics and benefits of each, and how to determine which is the most helpful approach for particular individuals and situations.
The session will enable you to:
- Identify your preferred or natural leadership / coaching style
- Understand the pros and cons of each approach and the impact of these on your team members
- Know when to flex your approach to better meet the needs of the individual or situation
- Learn practical tips for broadening your approach to unlock the potential of your team.
Wednesday 2 July
1:30 p.m.
to 3:00 p.m.
Flexing your leadership style Reserve your slot
Sign up below to attend this webinar.
Our webinar speakers and facilitators
Jo Lally, Leadership Coach and Facilitator
Jo has a wealth of experience as a leadership consultant, coach and facilitator, working across both corporate and education sectors. For BTS Spark she regularly supports trust leaders and their teams, and delivers webinars and workshops on a huge range of topics including powerful conversations, trust and collaboration, leadership presence, coaching skills, focus and prioritisation, feedback, and visioning and strategic execution, to name a few. Jo is a highly personable and engaging facilitator who mixes natural high energy with the ability to slow down and enable genuine connection and curiosity amongst participants, whilst bringing key concepts to life and eliciting important new insights.
Alyssa Gallagher, Head of BTS Spark US (West/Central)
Alyssa is an experienced leader across both education and business sectors. She spent twenty years in the public education sector, as a teacher, school principal and District Assistant Superintendent. Under Alyssa’s guidance, Los Altos School District became a nationally recognised leader in educational innovation. She also led the first ever Khan Academy pilot in classrooms, scaling the practice across the entire school district. Alyssa then spent five years as the Director of Global Leadership for the Wiseman Group, working with both educators and business professionals to build Multiplier mindsets and improve their leadership capabilities. Alyssa is an accomplished speaker, facilitator and author, most recently co-authoring our BTS Spark book on MESSY Leadership.
Denise Barrows, Head of BTS Spark UK
Denise is an experienced leader with a strong track record of leading far-reaching education, social impact and leadership initiatives, grants programmes and organisations. Prior to joining BTS Spark, Denise worked for ten years as Head of Education for two national grant-making bodies, leading a number of innovative philanthropic initiatives and grants programmes, and as a consultant and advisor to grant-making foundations. Her career prior to that included roles as Director of a national youth development charity, as founding Director of an education-business partnership which provided a range of careers, work-related learning and enterprise programmes for schools and colleges in the London Borough of Hackney, and as Assistant Director for Bristol Education Action Zone.
