Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get. – W.P. Kinsella
Leadership
Outlining vision and leading strategy
Not even reliably wrong
On more than a handful of occasions I have asked the DfE and Ofsted to discuss the effectiveness of annual performance reviews. Both parties are unremarkably quiet on the matter. Now, after reading Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio article “How Gender Bias Corrupts Performance …
Investigations and grievances
Here is the important disclaimer – this is not a guide and should most certainly not be regarded as an authoritative statement of the law. This post is about the dark and gritty side of leadership ad the importance of …
More hamster wheel than spinning plates
What does it say about my leadership that following the start of the new headship post, it has taken me three weeks before I’ve been out to set aside time to write my first post? (That is not to say that …
SEF checker
Four weeks into the 2016 academic year and the leadership team were finalising amendments to the Self-evaluation framework (SEF). Various senior colleagues had written their leadership contributions with the final draft being knitted together. At the time, I wrote these notes and saved …
Influence more powerful than authority
Influence is not authority. Authority is not leadership. Leadership does not guarantee influence. Though we often use these terms interchangeably, I am confident they are separate entities. These reflections were prompted by three unrelated, serendipitous “nudges” this week and knowledge of that …
Summer read #1
Distributed Leadership in Schools – A Practical Guide for Learning and Improvement – John A. DeFlaminis, Mustafa Abdul-Jabbar and Eric Yoak was the first summer read. Billed as a guide to the best practices and lessons learned in designing and implementing distributed leadership to …
Hard truths
Leading is most certainly an uneven path. Tonight I heard Sam Alladyce and others) outline his readiness for the National job. “Hardened,” was the adjective predetermined and delivered to the sharp toothed journalists. New school leaders such as myself are …