Features

Work matters: Leadership - Believe in your staff

Management
Managers need to think about their expectations of staff and give them the time and the tools they need to blossom, says Sarah Presswood, manager of George Perkins Day Nursery in Birmingham.

Recent discussions with a fellow EYP about the challenges of leading an early years setting left us both feeling as though sometimes you can be stretched to the limit, trying to achieve the impossible!

This is hard if you have a philosophy of wanting everyone to 'be the best that they can be'. This perfectionist mentality is not always a healthy one and recently I was advised to accept that sometimes, 'good enough' is just that. But how do you reconcile that with wanting to give the children in your care the best start in life?

I started to think about being a leader - you can be a manager without being a leader. Being a leader doesn't mean doing everyone's job for them or prescribing exactly how they will do their job; it is about guiding them to the point where you want them to be. We all need to reflect on our roles and practice. We evaluate and reflect on activities we do with the children; why not reflect more on our own development?

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