Is well-being a challenge right now? You’re not alone. Here’s a tool to help.

Last week I asked ‘how are you?’.

Thank you for all of your replies.

One theme stood out: well-being.

Your team’s.

And your own.

And it’s a theme that has been around for a while, but it certainly seems more pronounced than ever.

So here’s a nice activity (which lends itself to a staff meeting or INSET).

1. Ask your team, as individuals, to use a scale, 1 – 10 (1 is low, 10 high).
2. For the score of ‘10’, this needs defining, so write down a list of what makes great well-being.
3. Remember this is individual, not a group exercise, because good well-being means different things for everyone.
4. Next, ask them to score where they are, on average right now. Again, this is individual.
5. Whatever that score is, get them to list why it is as high as that. Yes, you read that correctly, ‘as high’ as that. That’s important.
6. Then ask them to write, under the next score, what would move it up to there. Ask them to list what they can do to move it up to that next score.
7. Then ask what score they would like it to be and to continue that previous step to get to that score.
8. Now get them to go over what they have written and indicate:
   1. What can be changed (for example the cost of living increases might not)
   2. What they can change themselves
   3. What they need the schools help to change

From there you can go into a number of places:

• Find themes and workshop solutions in those 3 groupings
• collect the scores as a baseline

And I’m not saying it’s about shifting all the responsibility onto your team.

If there are things that can be done by you and the wider school that will help and they are possible, then do them.

But it’s important that we all do what we can, ourselves, to support our well-being and own it, because we have the biggest influence on our own well-being.

This is a great activity to do before the summer holidays, because it’s such an important time for rest and recharge for you and your teams.

I hope this helps.

I know you’ll have lots of ideas about how you can use this so make it work for you and your team.

As a first step, why not do this with just yourself?

I’d love to hear how this helps.