Break point

Driving along the motorway I started to feel the wave of bone aching physical tiredness and mind numbing emotional exhaustion crash against my senses. It is almost the end of another academic year and although I regularly hear people tell me that I'm a really resilient leader - there are moments when I need to delve into my leadership survival toolkit.

I've learnt to notice how I feel to help me be this resilient professional in the relentless, yet wonderful career of school leadership. Compassion and empathy at this time of year are exactly what we need to lead exhausted colleagues to the summer holidays. It is easy to be kind to others and counter intuitive to share that compassion with ourselves. Our own emotional battery needs time to restore itself and it's exactly at this time of year when we can't be emotionally there for others if we start to feel ourselves being pulled down by a crashing wave of emotional exhaustion. 

You will recognise the emotional roller coaster that appears at the end of the year. Going from one meeting, where you are dealing with lots of sadness, anger and pain from a colleague that you are there to support to putting on a joyously positive persona to greet new students and staff. All of this is cyclic and can be planned for. Be good to yourself and plan in little things. 

My leadership survival toolkit is now well refined with a menu of things that as a young teacher I would have never have thought of planning and now it is the very planning that is part of my school routine. 

Managing the swell before there is a breaking point. 

Last week I bought a bunch of peonies as I knew they would take a week to blossom into gloriously fragrant blooms to greet me in the evening after whatever had happened in work. Smells can be uplifting and my resilient leadership toolkit is full of seasonal picks. In fact, if my home didn't smell of a specific Christmas candle fragrance I don't think I would be as balanced in the mayhem of the school festive season.

As hard as it is when leading there are times when we really cannot hold on to the emotional wake that we are left with after critical moments in our working day. Noticing the emotional thoughts and letting go is really hard but it does mean that the next day we are more refreshed and able to access the rational part of our brain instead of being triggered into an emotionally overloaded response. Spending time training to be a qualified mindfulness teacher has helped my own resilience. Noticing the rising swell of emotions and tiredness is a skill that can be honed. 

My career part one was one where I easily moved through with a curriculum / teaching and learning focus. It was only when I started to consider pastoral roles that I realised that mental fitness was something I needed to find out much more about. Emotional fatigue, compassion fatigue and mental health are all phrases we hear regularly in a negative way, instead of simply as early warning signs. We hear less of mental wealth, mental strength and mental fitness. When physical fitness appears on your personal to do list then joining a gym may be something to consider but mental fitness takes the same dedication if you work in a pastoral leadership role. The ebb and flow of underlying mental health needs is something that pastoral leaders are more than aware of. Looking after personal mental fitness is something that school leaders are increasingly recognising as an area to focus on. Mental resilience is now on a parallel with physical resilience to make it through an academic year.

So part two of my teaching career opened the door to pastoral leadership. In this new realm of educational leadership the mental fitness of students, staff and self come crashing into sight every day. When I trained to be a Thrive Practitioner we often talked about when a child is in distress and needs to borrow an adult's rational brain. Simply sitting quietly beside a child in those moments, like joy does with sadness in the movie Inside Out, is helpful in that particular moment. As a leader there are times when we too need to have someone acknowledge and validate our emotional responses to the leadership situation we are working through or have just survived. Validation can simply be reflecting back how the person seems. A simple task of sitting and holding the silence is something that many in the teaching profession are great at with children. Silence can be compassionate leadership and simply holding a psychologically safe space can mean so much to someone in a moment of need. Peer support of each other helps keep us all in this high octane career. 

Every time I hear someone being described as resilient leader I often wonder where the resilience has come from. Often when you get to know really good pastoral leaders there has been a key learning point in their careers, where out of necessity they have had to drag themselves to a place of survival and as a result have become stronger. These go to pastoral leaders don't have a magical quality of resilience or mental strength, however they have added a vast array of coping strategies to their leadership toolkit. Many will have a trusted team of adults they can rely upon to have confidential talks to either within or outside of their organisation, former colleagues they know - who know them well, people in their organisation within a position of trust and increasingly sourcing coaches to help them work through particular issues they are stuck with.

Over the past few years pastoral leaders have been hit with wave after wave of emotional needs from the communities they serve. Before reaching breaking point and ending up washed up, exhausted from holding the needs of others - figuring out a personal toolkit of what works to surf the crest of the wave is critical. 

My motorway realisation that I had surfed a huge wave of need recently led me to the decision that I had to take notice and dip into my resilient leader toolkit. Thankfully I am a planner and have started to focus my thoughts to holiday beaches - a different ebb and flow is imminent. Whatever has happened in the past makes us stronger and moving forwards with the things we have learnt makes us even stronger.  

When Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands he started to form his Theory of Evolution. He theorised that different species of finch had evolved on different islands, their distinctive beaks being an adaptation to distinct natural habitats or environmental niches.

When I visit the islands this summer, hopefully, I plan on reflecting on how my leadership has adapted this year. We are all products of different islands (school contexts) and our leadership can be adapted dependent on what the environment requires (leadership role). In the end we are all teachers and leaders but we bring with us distinctive skill sets that have been honed by our natural habitat (our current school setting and role).

If you are finding yourself on the crest of a wave, ready to reach break point - remember you can learn from it and next time you will be able to surf such a high wave - maybe even have fun from the exhilaration and enjoyment that comes from being a school leader.