How middle managers can maintain curiosity in practice

By now you will have a clearer sense of how you might want to develop your professional curiosity. This section sets out practical ways to help you adopt a curious approach to understanding yourself, your team, and the context in which you work. This will support you in maintaining curiosity as a middle manager, ensuring alignment with:

your values
effective relationship-building
advocacy for the best interests of children and families

These are separated into suggestions that will benefit you, your team, and your engagement with wider stakeholders.

Which activities do you believe would be most beneficial for you, people you supervise, and your service? Choose one from each section to experiment with.

Thinking about yourself

Aligning leadership with core values: a reflective exercise

Take some time to reflect on your key values, such as integrity, transparency, and fairness. Write down examples of recent leadership decisions that aligned with these values. Also, consider times when you felt conflicted and think about how your decisions might have affected others.

Use this reflection to assess whether your everyday leadership matches your core values. Based on what you discover, adjust your approach moving forward.

Establish informal feedback sessions for senior leaders

Set up informal feedback sessions with other senior leaders to discuss leadership challenges. Meet with trusted colleagues to share feedback on recent decisions, leadership dilemmas, or areas for personal growth. Request honest feedback about how you’ve handled specific situations. Use their input to refine your leadership approach.

Thinking about your team

Group case discussion: understanding bias

In a group supervision session, present a case and have each member identify any biases or assumptions they notice in their initial assessment. Encourage them to ask each other questions such as, "What is influencing your interpretation of this behaviour?" or "How might the family's background affect our perception of their needs?"

Scenario-based learning: what if?

Create a scenario based on a real case but change key details. For example, "What if the father had a different cultural background?" or "What if the child disclosed additional information?" Ask supervisees to discuss how these changes would affect their approach and decision-making process.

Thinking about the wider system

Diversity and inclusion book club

Select book chapters or articles focused on different aspects of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) for the supervision team to read. After reading, hold discussions where supervisees share their main observations and how they apply to their practice. Use questions like, "How did this reading challenge your existing beliefs?" or "What new questions did it raise for you about your work with families from a particular background?"

Systems mapping workshop with an equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) focus

Plan a workshop in which you and your team to create a mind map of the organisation. The map should explore how equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) principles connect to the wider organisational system. Include links between teams, external partners, policies, and community influences that shape EDI initiatives.

You can use these discussion questions to support the conversation:

what unseen influences on diversity and inclusion affect decision-making?
how do our practices affect diverse stakeholders, and how do their needs shape our actions?
where are we unintentionally contributing to inequality or slowing EDI progress?

Over to you

Now that you’ve reviewed these activities, choose one from each section that you would like to experiment with.

You can use the 4C leadership capability framework action plan to detail when and where you’ll try these out and reflect on their effect over time.

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The resources have been developed by Frontline in collaboration with DfE.
Published: 30 January 2025
Last updated: 30 January 2025

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