The art of balance: survival skills for school leaders

Key takeaways

• Start with clear priorities: Use your school’s vision and development plan as a guide. Keep your focus on what truly matters, or you’ll just react to whatever crops up.
• Don’t get distracted: Politely delay less urgent requests, balancing the needs of others with your priorities. Stay respectful but firm.
• Manage your stress: Everyone has worries, no matter their role. Invest in mental health training for staff to better support themselves and each other.
• Know your strengths: Be self-aware. Recognise when to delegate tasks and let your team shine. Resist the urge to control everything.
• Practice self-care: Live out the work-life balance advice you give others. Set non-work hours, find hobbies, and take care of your wellbeing.

Listen to the recording (21 minutes) or read an edited version below. 

Josephine Smith is headteacher of Kesteven & Sleaford High School, part of the Robert Carre Trust. You can also listen to the first part of this conversation, where Jo shares advice on navigating the unexpected. 

Know your priorities

One of the best skills that a school leader can have is the skill of being able to prioritise whatever it is that you need to do.

I always start my working week with my trusty notebook with my list of things to talk about in staff briefing, which we have on Monday morning, but actually that also helps me look ahead to the working week, or maybe the next two weeks, and create my list of priorities.

If I don't do that, it's so easy to just be sucked into the hurly burly of school life. The job is never done, and you can end your working day at whatever time you choose to end it, because there are always things to do. 

Recognising that there are going to be things that you have to do that day, that week, that term, and there are things that you really ought to do, and there are things you'd like to do, but aren't necessarily going to get to, is really important.

Start with your school vision. What are you really trying to achieve? Draw yourself and your senior team back to those core purposes, those core values, the things that you've recorded in your vision and value statement and then translated into your school development plan.

Keep pulling yourself back to those priorities. Otherwise, you’ll be in the  ‘Whac-A-Mole’ school of educational leadership, responding to the first person at your door and the person that sent you those emails. 

Be ready to not always respond to the knock at your door, or the person standing at the front of your queue. Have the appropriate language ready so you can talk to people in a way that recognises their important thing as your important thing too – but can we deal with it in an hour’s time, or tomorrow? 

Be gentle, kind, respectful, professional, and acknowledge other people's priorities – at the same time as being confident in what is and isn’t important at this particular moment. 

If you’ve started from a point of clarity about your priorities for the year, recognised that you're not going to solve everything for all people, and that you have limited resources to do those things well, and on the other hand you have a genuine passion and idealism about what you'd like to achieve – then you’ve got a balance from which everything else can come. 

Look ahead

Once you’ve identified priorities, you can start translating those into calendars, schedules and lists in your notebook. 

Think about creating a shape for your schedules. For example, I know that in a week’s time in my senior leadership meeting, it’s important that we think about the content of the upcoming subject leaders meeting and we set the agenda. I've given myself and my colleagues enough space to recognise it’s coming up, think about what needs to be on that agenda, and have time to go away and reflect about whether those are the right things.

So the quality of experience for the subject leaders in that meeting is going to be really positive, and it will fit with our priorities for the year. 

That's just timing and scheduling – but those things that can be so lost in the hurly burly of day to day school leadership.

As a leader, make sure you carve out time and space to look ahead and plan the various practical steps that need taking in order to make those key events or schedule points run as effectively as possible. 

Manage your stress 

There's a tendency for us to think that the more accountable you are in a school organisation, the more stressful that job must be. But recently I had a lovely conversation that really stopped me in my tracks. 

It was with our midday supervisor. She’s a super lady, has done her job for over 30 years, and takes it really seriously. We were changing the queuing system for lunchtime; we’d spent time talking about it, and we’d communicated plans to everyone. But she said to me, ‘I’ve had a completely sleepless night, Jo. I know the plans are in place and I understand what the plans are, but I'm really hoping that it works well.’

I'd given very little attention to thinking about that plan, but for Mrs. Harris, that had caused her a sleepless night. She felt accountable ownership of that lunchtime queuing system in school. It really made me think that whatever your place in the organisation, there are things that you worry about.

So whether you're a headteacher or a lunchtime supervisor, it's really important that you have all the tools to keep yourself well and safe.

How does that work in practice? There are several of us in school, across all parts of the organisational structure, who are mental health first aid trained. We have done that in order for staff to be able to use and share tools and strategies to respond to somebody who is experiencing poor mental health, or just feeling stressed that day. 

That's worked really well, not just because they feel trained to be able to support others, but actually that training has helped them think about triggers for them, and what keeps them mentally well and fit. That's one thing that we have invested in as a school and has really paid dividends.

There's lots of talk about work life balance, and I feel a responsibility as a school leader not just to give that lip service, but to really live that. 

We need to be strategic, creative and open-minded about what genuinely helps people find a balance in their worlds. Encourage a cognitive awareness of what one's stress container looks like, and what are the taps to release that stress. 

Know thyself

And if you’re a leader of an organisation, then the first thing is really knowing and understanding yourself.

When we appoint senior leaders, we undertake psychometric testing as part of the recruitment process. We always share the findings when that person is appointed with us, because the reports are often penny dropping moments for staff. ‘Oh yes, I see myself in that, I identify with that.’

There are definitely characteristics that can be both blessings and curses for me in my day to day life. Knowing yourself, how your personality, character or leadership style can work well in some situations and an obstacle in others, is valuable self-awareness. Once you have that, you can recognise when things aren’t working, or you shouldn’t hit send on that email. We're not always good at everything all the time.

Build a team around you. Know which team member might be better, more successful or more tactful in a certain situation. Especially as a new leader you can feel the accountability weighing heavily, but give yourself that permission to delegate, entrust or empower others to do things that you aren’t best placed to. 

As headteachers we tend to like to control things! Resist that urge and temptation.

Practise what you preach

Then there are the obvious things that we read about all the time. I am conscientious about how healthily I eat during the school term, because I know that that will have an impact on my energy levels. Every term I make a commitment to myself that my exercise regime is going to be regular, and that’s a hard thing to stick to, but it’s important. 

Know the things that really help you manage your wellbeing. In the last few years, I’ve discovered a real enjoyment of paddleboarding. And when people ask, why paddleboarding, I say: You can't answer emails on a paddleboard.

Find something that takes you out of yourself or out of your normal thought processes. It might be playing music, singing in a choir, being part of a sports team. It’s so important not to let those things go. 

We're really good at preaching to our staff and telling them that they need to find space to do things. But we really need to practise what we preach.

When I was first in teaching, the best advice that somebody gave me was around deciding on the times of the week when you aren't going to work. So, whether that's Friday evening, Saturday and/or Sunday, find what works for you and your family situation, set those parameters and stick to them. 

I've been interested to follow what’s happening in some other countries around laws to protect employees from emailing out of office working hours. But I send, receive and respond to emails at a time that suits me. I respect that it isn't necessarily the time that will work for you. So feel free, please, to reply at a point that works for you. 

I’m not convinced that enshrining the notion that nobody should email after 5.30pm actually works. Some working parents want to leave at 3.30pm, spend time with their kids, and then start working again at 7pm, for example. It's not one size fits all. Different people need different things. 

One of the things that comes out in my psychometric tests is that I’m very balanced. Sometimes I think that's really dull. It sounds very unexciting to be a balanced person! 

But so much of what you do in schools is about interaction with people, whether that’s young people, parents, other stakeholders, governors or staff. And you’re not going to be liked by everybody. 

But, a balanced response, approaching people with warmth, generosity, giving attention and listening – these things are important, along with avoiding the extremes of emotional reaction. The people that I have found it most difficult to work for are those where I think I'm not going to be able to predict how they're going to react. 

When you’re visible to people around the school, be conscious of how you’re presenting yourself. Even if you’ve had a manic start to the day or your brain is pondering a problem, be the figurehead. Smile, be open, and look happy to be there. 

A good listen 

Podcasts have become one of my most time-efficient ways to keep up-to-date. I can listen to them driving to and from work, while I'm exercising, or cooking in my kitchen. 

The High Performance podcast is one I’d particularly recommend. It's a podcast where people that are leaders or successful in their field, whether they're sports people, politicians or actors, talk about everything from their leadership style to the leadership challenges that they faced.