I recently read 'How Successful Head Teachers Survive and Thrive' by Professor Tim Brighouse. It's available here. It's a really interesting read about the key tasks of being a headteacher and ways to manage the job.
Seven ways to hold on to your sanity when all around you are losing theirs:
- Manage your diary
- Build 'down time' into your diary so that you can choose what you do in this time.
- Make sure that every half term you spend some time off site to go and talk with another friend or acquintance doing a similar job.
- Find allies
- Have a 7-10 year service
- Then take some time out before returning with a fresh pair of eyes, or consider moving on to another headship.
- Stop doing one of your regular tasks for a term to allow someone else to do them. Keep our of their hair and review things once at half term and then at the end of term.
- Remember to be the 'Jack' or 'Jill' of all trades and master of none
- You need to be the utility player, who can fill in to do a leadership task in an emergency and you need to grow that capacity in others. Being the 'expert' can be very disabling for others and exhausting for yourself.
- Become an expert 'driller' and a lepidopterist
- Drill right down on a particular issue that will allow you to see the whole operation of the school from a different vantage point. When you do you can find the things which cause irritation and loss of energy, both for you and others.
- Spot the small things that make a disproportionate difference - 'high leverage and low effort practices'. The drilling down process exposes the reverse.
- Collect hyacinths
- The explanation for this comes from a short poem:
And of thine earthly store have left
Two loaves, sell one and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed the soul."
- Successful heads avoid stress and burn-out in themselves and their staff by being keenly aware of their hyacinths and ensuring they have enough of them.
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