Making the most of the holidays

Take time to rest, recharge, and do something that brings you joy—you deserve it! Here are three ways to truly make the most of your break:

Do you do this at least twice a year?

Ok, that’s half way through the school year! It goes by fast doesn’t it? And soon you will be focused on next year. The chess board of who goes where will be out. You’ll try to please everyone and maybe you will, but if not that’s because it’s a tough task to do. So here’s a tool that can help you make those staffing moves for next year better.

75% of school leaders don’t have…

75% of school leaders don’t have at least 2 hours to think. You might be thinking, 2 hours! Where am I going to find two hours just for thinking?! That would be amazing (and a luxury). But as a leader, thinking is a critical part of our roles.

How can you work as hard, but get better results?

I think you and I can agree that: All schools are working hard. No school is ‘coasting’ (I hated that phrase!). Having walked into hundreds of schools I’ve never found a school that isn’t hard working and committed to their children and community, regardless of results or inspection outcome. But what is fascinating is what […]

Do you believe it’s possible to have an even better school AND great well-being?

Do you like meeting headteachers that make the impossible happen? Because they are speaking at our conference, Outstanding Against the Odds

A simple way to know how high performing your team is

I spent over a decade visiting schools that recently achieved outstanding ratings, even in tough contexts, to understand what they did differently to move from good to great. It wasn’t their curriculum, which was solid. It wasn’t their behaviour management, which was excellent. It wasn’t their team’s happiness or well-being, which was great. All of these things were in place. What really set them apart was their people—they created high-performing teams [...]

Only 9% of school teams have high followership

This week, let’s look at leadership. Because a key job of leadership is to get everyone on board. To help them be great followers. I don’t mean passive ‘do what I say’ followers. I mean committed to the level you are, problem solving followers. But as leaders we often miss one of the most important ways we can do this. We don’t give them a vision that inspires them [...]

New school initiative this year? You need to know this…

Welcome back! A shiny new school year! I hope you had a great break, and have come back rested and recharged to work your magic, to give your communities’ children great education. And at the start of the year I bet you’ve got some great new initiatives in mind. Something that […]

I didn’t explain this last week. Let’s correct that now.

Last week I shared the inspiring story of Jo and the team at Clockhouse and their journey to outstanding. In that story I mention the cultural eco-system. What on earth is the ‘cultural eco-system’? It has 3 elements: Vision Values Strategy And they are critical to creating a high-performing, outstanding, team. […]

The shift from a good school to a great school is people

Jo had a problem that a lot of headteachers will be familiar with. She had a good team, who worked hard and were mostly fully onboard with her goal of delivering excellence to all her children (though some of them ‘didn’t get it’, most did). They didn’t have the easiest of contexts, being a large […]

Category: Team culture

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