Leading by example has always come naturally to me and as someone who has grown up around sports teams I have had plenty of role-models who have influenced me as a leader.
Sport lends itself well to developing the leadership skills of young people and it is really obvious to me when I look back at my sporting experiences how I subconsciously became a leader during my formative years.
Since then I have had a fantastic range of opportunities and training to further develop and refine my leadership skills and now as a headteacher these are put to the test on a daily basis in a high-pressure, high-stakes environment.
I’ve learnt a huge amount since becoming a headteacher and with each term that passes I feel that my range of experiences expand and I become a stronger and more confident school leader. The past two years in particular have been significant learning curves for me, especially with regard to my awareness and application of leadership theories in my work as a headteacher.
However, I have had recent cause to reflect on how some of my more innate leadership characteristics have evolved over time.
Throughout my university years and during my early 20s I spent my summers working for my father in various steel works around the UK doing some of the most physical and back-breaking work you could imagine.
With the benefit of hindsight, age and wisdom I now look back at these wonderful 12-hour shifts, which would leave me physically broken and covered in grease and dirt and I understand that this was where I learned some of my most valuable lessons.
First, it taught me to respect the opportunities I had at university. Working with a group of guys who had not been academically “successful” and who had fallen into an industry that was not enjoyable or rewarding, I quickly realised that I had to make the most of the education I was fortunate enough to be receiving.
It focused my mind on what I needed to achieve in my degree and beyond. It also provided me with the opportunity to work closely with the one person who I had the most respect in the world for. I always knew my dad worked hard but it wasn’t until I witnessed his work ethic at first hand that I really understood his influence as a leader.
He commands a huge amount of respect from the men who work with him for a number of reasons. First, and most crucially, he describes his employees as people who work with him and not for him. Linked to this he never asks them to do something he is not prepared to do himself.
He also ensures he is the first one on site, the last one to leave and he works harder than anyone else on the team, despite him being 20 years older than most of them. I remember watching him work and being in awe of his relentless pursuit of achieving the goals of the project and being incredibly impressed with his work ethic, especially given that he doesn’t particularly enjoy his job.
His message to me was that I needed to work hard at my education so I could pursue a career I was passionate about. He said: “Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
This resonated with me and really made me reflect on my approach to life and since then I have done my utmost to ensure I have taken these values and principles with me throughout my career in education.
But what has this got to do with being a headteacher? It is important to me because I sometimes have to ask my staff to go the extra mile for the benefit of our students and I have to visibly demonstrate that I am prepared to do this myself.
It means that it is important to me for staff to see me rolling my sleeves up when I need to; picking up litter, supervising canteens at lunch time, being at the school gates at the start and end of the day etc. Ultimately for me it is about being an authentic leader – you have to walk the walk as well as talk the talk and as a headteacher this is incredibly important.
- SecEd’s headteacher diarist is in his second year of headship at a comprehensive school in the Midlands.