Having conflict is stressful.  Acutely.But not having conflict is also stressful.  Chronically. However one of these has the opportunity to end the stress.  Having the difficult conversation, tackling the issue, whilst stressful in itself, if done well can free you of the stress altogether. And what’s more is that it takes the stress off the […]

I first met head teacher Lisa at one of the Successful Difficult Conversations training days I run and she later booked me for the next stage of the course ‘Flexing your Leadership Style’ which I ran with her leadership team. During the course of the day, we talked about issues that were ‘bubbling’ away in […]

Conflict is a daily part of life as a leader; sometimes it’s big, sometimes it’s small, usually it lands on us, but if you want be the best leader you can be, and create the best school culture you can, then you need to look for conflict. I don’t mean you go ‘spoiling for a […]

This infographic was crafted with love by Officevibe, the employee survey software for teams that want to create a better company.

Does this sound familiar? Does every year seem to pan out, roughly, as follows? If so there is a very good reason. September; it’s a new academic year and it started fairly well, the children are generally eager to please, staff are refreshed and ready to go, classrooms are tidy, books are new and the […]

As a head teacher your staff team are your class, apply the same principles and you will do well.  However leading children is different to adults. When I work with school leaders, they often tell me about the issues they have with some members of staff:  some will be about performance, some about behaviour.  Very […]

On International Literacy day this is my tribute to the late, great and utterly fabulous Roald Dahl for his day, 13th September 2015 Hansel and Gretel were hard to like kidsDining on chocolate, waffles and ribsStuffing their faces and eating all dayWatching TV over going to playThey had as much charm as a smelly old […]