The Headship Lens with Nadia - The Myth of the Resilient Headteacher

The Myth of the Resilient Headteacher

I am writing this from me bed today. I have injured my rotator cuff in my right shoulder. According to my GP, this is ‘common in women my age’. Well it hurts. I have been soldering through since December if I’m honest, but this morning, finally I attended an appointment which is long overdue and have had a steroid injection. I am currently typing one- handed and it painfully slow… My right arm is numb.

I got to this point by ignoring the pain, pushing through and ‘being resilient’. We all know though, that this often means that when you do finally tackle it, it is a bigger thing to face. So ignoring health alarms is not brave and bold and brilliant. It is in fact inefficient. Today I will need to rest my arm and cannot work. I cannot clean me house this weekend, I am unable to hold the dog lead (or walk very far according to the post procedure guidelines). So you see, I have not helped myself by ignoring pain and hoping for the best.

My headteacher clients often tell me they just keep going when they see warning signs – I did the same as a headteacher. I believe this is because we have glamorised, idealised the resilient headteacher. It suits the system but not our health. And arguably its not great leadership either.

Is the leader who carries the pressure, solves all the problems all the time and pushes through, no matter what, truly resilient?

Through my work as a headteacher coach I see very clearly that resilience so often becomes isolation in headship. Resilience is normalised and praised even,  but is usually framed as You should handle stress without showing it. Over time, this can lead headteachers to internalise problems rather than share their challenges.

In my view, the most agile school leaders don’t try to carry everything themselves. Nor do they ignore warning signs (especially when it comes to their own health). This sounds impossible when you know what headship is like but it really is not. The secret is in building strong teams, sharing leadership (the guilt is pointless) and building support around you

Leading a school should never be about coping alone.

I’m going to put on Netflix now and write off my day and possibly my weekend but I do so knowing that I still have lots to learn myself about the value of sharing burden, listening to my body and building capacity by NOT being resilient!