I have always been interested in educational leadership, ever since I first moved to a pastoral leadership role, internally promoted in my first school, and then on… Read more “Leadership – what is it all about?”

We use the phrase ‘open door policy’ fairly glibly these days. Many leaders want to be visible, approachable, accessible, and certainly not remote.  This is all good,… Read more “Leaders: think about your ‘open door’ policy”

Recently, my eldest brother read my book: Making the leap – Moving from deputy to head. He is far outside my target audience – now retired, he… Read more “Defending your choices – or being defensive?”

In the 22 March 2019 edition of tes, I was interested to read a piece by primary head Nicola Forster entitled ‘Vacating the middle ground’.  In the… Read more “The power of Middle Leaders”

I’ve kept a diary since 1972, in which I record what happens each day, and how I feel about it.  I’ve always found the experience of writing… Read more “Mid-way through your career – how do you sustain yourself?”

This post is based on an after-dinner speech I gave at the Ambition School Leadership all-women NPQH final residential at Loughborough University on Friday 1st March 2019. … Read more “Making the leap to headship – the possibility of joy”

Friday 1st March 2019 was a very interesting day for me.  I travelled to London to speak at a conference on headship and diversity, ‘Breaking the Mould’,… Read more “Headship and diversity”

In my last blog post I wrote about tidiness, and about how imposing order and systems might make both your personal and your professional life calmer and… Read more “Managing email”

Confession: I am a tidy person. Reading Emma Kell’s recent piece on tidiness in tes, the link Adrian Bethune included in a Twitter comment about Emma’s article,… Read more “How tidy are you?”