This is a scene that we’ve traditionally seen occasionally at Christmas, yet it’s becoming a feature of our daily life familiar in the current crisis.  It might easily be dismissed as evidence of greed or selfishness.  I think of it more as a symptom of fear. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that if you have an empty cupboard and a family to feed, you’re going to do all you can to fulfil your responsibility to keep them safe. I wonder, though, if it goes deeper. Being isolated has given me an opportunity to think about what’s driving our need to panic-buy.

I have found myself trying to understand what many have called ‘selfish’ from a different perspective. Richard Barrett’s 7 levels of human consciousness model helps. He uses it in his book Liberating the Corporate Soul to demonstrate the connection between our consciousness and our values. It works for individuals as well as for organisations.

You might recognise the lower levels if you know Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Richard has taken Maslow’s model as a foundation. He categorises needs in this way:

• Basic: something that is important to get, have or have more of, in order to feel safe, happy and comfortable in your existing physical and social environment

and

• Growth needs: something you would like to have in order to feel a sense of internal alignment—at ease or at peace with yourself—and a sense of meaning, by making a positive contribution in your world.

The basic needs are at levels 1-4; the growth needs, 5-7.

Barrett identifies the different levels as being either part of the survival self (driven by fear: levels 1-3) or part of the soul self (driven by love: levels 5-7).  Level 4 is about transformation, when we let go of fears of not having enough or not being enough, and concentrate on what makes us feel whole.  When our survival needs (physical, emotional and psychological) are not met, we unconsciously act out of fear.

Acting out of fear almost certainly accounts for some of the panic buying that appears to have become a feature in places recently. We have repeatedly been given the message that there is enough, and yet not everyone hears it.  I wonder whether fears surrounding our physical survival needs, such as not having enough food (or toilet rolls – really?) are more easily triggered when we also fear that our emotional needs are not met.

Human babies rely on their parents for their survival. They communicate their survival needs (food, warmth, comfort, shelter) by crying. Who hasn’t sat up at night with a crying baby wondering what s/he needs when we’ve tried all the obvious things? If my needs as a baby were consistently misinterpreted or ignored during such a crucial period in brain development, my brain becomes wired for rejection and worthlessness. In adulthood I am less likely to feel protected and loved; my relationships suffer and I fear I’m not good enough (and who doesn’t, once in a while?); to quote Brené Brown, at these times, we fear we’re not worthy of love and belonging.

Barrett maintains that we need to pay attention to all levels of consciousness; gaps in the lower levels may get in the way of our achieving the higher levels.  According to Barrett, if we lose consciousness or ignore of our own needs and focus solely on the higher levels of meeting the common good, when adversity strikes we ‘descend into fear and react with I-based behaviours’  (Barrett, 2010:138).  This holds good for both our physical and our emotional/psychological needs. The fear of not having enough is closely aligned with the fear of not being enough and vice versa. When we live with an unconscious fear of not being enough, perhaps our judgement concerning when we have enough (food, material goods etc) becomes clouded.

Levels 5 and 6 are where we are called to operate in the current crisis. We want meaning and purpose (which is why meaningful work is so important to us) and we are driven to make a difference.  But this needs not to be at the expense of being conscious of our own survival needs.

In this period of social distancing and self-isolation, maybe we could find a moment to understand ourselves a little better, in order to build firm foundations for connecting with others and building the social capital that will take us beyond the current crisis and into a new way of being.

References

Barrett, R.(1998) Liberating the Corporate Soul. Woburn, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann

Helpful resources

Brown, B. (2010) The Gifts of Imperfection. Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden

ARVE Error: Mode: lazyload not available (ARVE Pro not active?), switching to normal mode

The post Having enough first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.

Sunday evening sees this twitter activity

Sustaining resilience is all about developing helpful habits.

Monday morning: I’m pretty well prepared for my trip to a conference in Manchester.  All I have to do is to pack my suitcase and organise lunch.  I unplug my phone from its charger and turn it on.  The usual Samsung message appears, followed by ..

Nothing

Zero

Nada

Hmm.  What’s happening here?  I’m conscious of the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach. With limited success I’m trying hard to breathe deeply to turn on the parasympathetic nervous system which tells my body that I really don’t need to panic.

An hour later: I’m scrabbling through the drawer, trying to find my previous phone. After a bit of origami, I manage to adapt my current sim so that it fits the slot on my old phone.  Hooray! Panic subsiding, I start to use my phone.  Then I remember why I ditched it in the first place: the touch screen no longer works.

Two hours later: Time is ticking by. What else can I try?  I find an old phone, the original sim and the charger.  The charger is working: I’ll soon be in touch with the world again. The world has other ideas: ‘Sim not registered’ says the message. I need to finish packing. I have to acknowledge that I’m going to have to travel to an unknown city without my usual mobile map, and remain disconnected from family and colleagues for three-and-a-half days.

Once I realise this I become calmer.  I email a colleague I’m meant to be meeting during the week and tell him I won’t be able to text my arrival time; email others who might need to get in touch and tell them it’s email or nothing. When I reach the hotel, I realise I have no idea how to work the alarm on my ancient analogue clock.  Thankfully, the hotel has a wake up service. I leave the upmarket hotel in Manchester. My next commitment requires a move to Stoke-on-Trent where the hotel doesn’t have a phone, let alone a wake-up service. Driven by necessity, I work out how to set my alarm.

On Friday, back home, I pick up a new phone. Phew; back in touch. But wait: the universe has one further lesson for me.  At the weekend I’m visiting my mother, who has managed her 95 years without ever connecting to wifi. My mobile data isn’t working.  It’s surprisingly liberating to leave my phone in my room rather than my back pocket, where I’m tempted to check it in an idle moment.  When smoking in public places was common, many people would light up because it gave them something to do with their hands.  I have a sneaking feeling that mobiles have taken over this function.

At the conference I attended in Manchester, a headteacher spoke about her student ‘digital ambassadors’ instituting a 3-day phone fast for students, which staff voluntarily joined. They’re now working on an ‘on/off campaign’ to encourage students to ask themselves ‘do I really need my mobile phone on at the moment?’ This is a question I will be asking myself in future. It’s 6.57 a.m. and my phone is off.  I’ll turn it on when I start work today, and turn it off as a signal that I’m finishing.  I’ve been through the first 3 stages of the 4 As and resolved to take ACTION.  With the help of those who wish to join me in the #phonefastchallenge, I hope to be able to ADHERE to my new habit and benefit from switching off from work when I can, adding focus to tasks not interrupted by bleeps and pings which tell me someone is paying me attention.

Join me?

The post Too many emails? Can’t switch off? Time for a #phonefast first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.

Why had I not seen until that moment, that the social ineptitude was merely an extreme version of what most of us carry with us – a survival strategy?  Survival strategies come in many forms – some of them more obvious than others.  When we see engagement in self-destructive activity (over-eating or drinking, reliance on drugs) they are fairly easy to spot.   The truth is, any of us can engage in unconscious survival strategies. Exercise, work, diet, adherence to ritual, tidiness, being well organised – any of these,  can be used to keep us save from whatever we fear.

The survival strategies I am talking about are those which we unconsciously adopt to allow us to function in the world.  In Eleanor’s case, we see her tendency to judge others in order to verify that it is they who are out of step rather than herself; her fierce protection of her own way of life as ‘a self-contained entity’; her drinking to dull the pain of reality, her own self-judgement: the voice of her inner critic.

We know that Eleanor Oliphant was a model student.  While I might, if I met her, think that she has autism, I would not guess at her dark past, hinted at long before it is ever revealed.  Her well-honed survival strategies have allowed her to function in the world while keeping the memory of her own traumatic past well hidden.

Professor Franz Ruppert points to the impact of our earliest experiences on our behaviour as adults.  When I say ‘early’ I mean from conception onwards.  He identifies trauma as ‘a discrepancy between threatening situational factors and the individual’s coping capacities, that is associated with feelings of helplessness and the lack of any protection, thus creating a permanent instability of the self concept and the perception of the world.’  To flourish, a baby needs food, warmth, love, connection.  He cannot serve his own needs so experiences the lack of nurture as life-threatening trauma. If he is to survive he has to find a way to live with the trauma without constantly feeling it.  What the infant does is what many of us do when experiencing something uncomfortable, we dissociate from the experience.  The baby’s brain is not sufficiently formed for him consciously to dissociate, however.  The only way to survive the traumatic experience is to split off from the traumatised part and keep it hidden.

Spoiler alert: this reveals the ending of the book

Eleanor has suffered significant trauma, probably even before the fire.  From what we know of her mother, it appears that she was not attentive or encouraging.  Eleanor’s survival strategies, outlined above, have not only kept her traumatised self hidden, but also diminished her healthy self – the self which is ready to engage with the world from a position of strength and knowing herself as an autonomous being able to respond to her own needs. When she reaches rock bottom and subsequently engages in therapy, she is gradually able to allow some of her traumatised self to emerge so that memories become integrated and there is no more need for some of the survival strategies.  She is able to operate more autonomously, not limited by the ‘rules’ she has unconsciously given herself.

Her journey is one which many of us might make – to a greater or lesser extent.  From the very beginning of life, we may unconsciously develop survival strategies which allow us to function in our environment – even in the womb, where the mother’s anxiety – signalled by increased cortisol which is passed via the placenta to the baby – becomes the baby’s anxiety.  The baby cannot escape from the heightened anxiety, so he dissociates from it, keeping it hidden, allowing less access to his healthy self.  His brain develops on hyper-alert for he has learned that his environment is threatening.  (For more on this concept, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtt-62U9XYs. The film is available for hire)

This is no doubt what Belinda Harris[1] refers to when she calls for school leaders to have ‘deep inner awareness’  (p5).  She points to the importance of self-awareness, but goes beyond the ‘recognising our own feelings’ to describe a deep self-knowledge which involves embracing not just those aspects of our personality that are culturally acceptable, but also

‘The more neglected aspects of self, such as the vulnerable self that is hidden behind learned defences and the shadow self (Jung and von Franz, 1964) that is often denied until it erupts in protest at times of stress to damage self and others’ (Harris, 2007: 51)

Keeping  our trauma hidden so that we can function saps energy: energy that could more helpfully be used in supporting our resilience and wellbeing.  When we recognise our survival strategies for what they are, we see we have a choice concerning whether we continue to live in their shadow, or come out into the sunshine and be the free and autonomous person we were intended to be.  It is a lifetime’s work, but surely one worth engaging in if we are to be able to give of our best as leaders.

[1] Harris, B. (2007) Supporting the Emotional Work of School Leaders. London, UK: Paul Chapman

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It makes sense and it’s sort of what we always knew, but how many of us are actually conscious of our body language, minute by minute, particularly if we’re feeling vulnerable, fearful of a difficult conversation, for example?   Fear is a powerful emotion and powerful emotions reduce our ability to think rationally.  Therefore we need to develop the habit of noticing what and how our bodies are communicating, and consciously choosing to arrange our bodies to communicate the emotion that will support us to achieve the outcome we seek.

Now here’s the really mind-blowing bit  …  think how much time we spend interacting with screens of one sort or another.  Sit in a waiting room or on a tube and notice how many people are bent (head/eyes down, elbows in, shoulders forward) over a mobile phone.  Could this have an impact on our assertiveness? wondered Amy.  So with social psychologist Maarten Bos she did the experiment, testing individuals’ assertiveness after 5 minutes  interacting with electronic devices with screens of different sizes.  You can read the detail in chapter 8.  The findings upheld her hypothesis. While 94% of desktop users took the initiative to seek out the experimenter who was (deliberately) late returning to the room to pay them,  only 50% of those using smartphones did so.  The smaller the device, the longer they were prepared to wait.

Now think teenagers, mobile phones and cyber bullying, and imagine what impact it has to read a bullying message when in a powerless pose.  Could this knowledge about body language and assertiveness help victims of cyber bullying?  If confidence supports learning, what could be the impact of pupils counteracting the unconsciously powerless pose associated with texting, with the powerful and assertive pose of, for example, the victory-V raised-arm shape that (according to Amy Cuddy) is universal across all cultures, as a sign of success.

As I delve further into Amy’s research I am reflecting on a comment by the headteacher of Bemrose state school in Derby who was partnered with the head of Warminster independent school in the TV programme School Swap: The Class Divide. She noticed ‘The calm leisurely way the young people are strolling around the grounds …  they’ve already got that Oxford walk of relaxed nonchalance’.

A quick google search suggests awards for deportment are a thing of the past (at least in this country).  What difference might it make to our students’ attainment if, instead of testing and re-testing until they get the right answers, we focused on helping them to choose supportive body language  instead?

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It works like this

• when you pay attention to your own wellbeing,  you have more energy,
• when you have more energy, you’re more able to take control,
• when you take control, you’re more able to make decisions which balance your short AND long term needs; that includes taking care of your wellbeing .. which has a positive impact on your levels of energy etc …

I prefer the original New Economics Foundation’s  (nef)  ‘give’ to the idea of ‘volunteer’.  We can all give to others.  I struggle with the word ‘volunteer’ because it sounds very structured and many of us haven’t the space for giving to others in this more structured way.

In case you missed it, here it is again.  Full details are on the nef website

Connect There is strong evidence that feeling close to and valued by other people is a basic need for functioning well in the world’

Be Active Regular exercise is related to lower rates of depression and anxiety and can help to counter age-related cognitive decline

Take Notice Savouring the moment can help to affirm your priorities and value the present rather than living in the past or the future

Keep Learning Remaining curious and interested in new things enhances your sense of purpose

Give Individuals who are interested in helping others are statistically more likely to describe themselves as happy

However, there’s something missing.  What NEF doesn’t talk about is the importance of sleep.  During the past 3 months or so, I’ve come to realise that without the right amount of sleep we’re unlikely to be able to sustain our practice.

On a whim, I bought a ticket to the ResearchEd conference in London last year.  I’d never been to one and didn’t know what to expect.  I heard some great speakers among whom was Penny Lewis talking about sleep.  I bought her book as a result.  It’s a great insight into what happens to the brain while we sleep – and by implication, what happens when we don’t.

Sleep is restorative. Well, who didn’t know that?  But do we pay enough attention to its importance?  In the words of Brene Brown, do we get up in the morning feeling we haven’t had enough sleep and go to bed at night thinking we haven’t got enough done?  As I became more tired last term, my resolve to continue my 5-a-day pledges weakened.  Developing new habits like 5-a-day means overwriting old ones, but a bit like when you re-save something on your computer, the old version doesn’t go away, it’s just hidden.

When I’m tired it was easy to slip back into unhelpful habits:

Connect: less connection with others (as an introvert, I get my energy from being alone);

Be active: more reasons not to go to the gym (dark mornings telling me it’s night time; warm bed telling me I hadn’t had enough sleep);

Take notice: what I  notice when I’m tired is that I lose things more easily. (Okay, that’s also an age thing, I know).  Memory suffers through lack of sleep, and through lack of the right type of sleep.   I waste time looking for things I put down without paying attention,  and I forget things so I have to check and double-check. Thanks to the course on mindfulness, I do still practise mindful walking, or notice the early blossom on the magnolia tree in the churchyard, but structured reflection time has fallen victim to a sense of being ‘too busy’;

Keep learning: sleep reinforces memory, a crucial function in learning new skills;

Give: I have to confess that some of the tiredness was brought on by additional pressures of my voluntary role.   Giving to others is important, and teachers do it all the time; but when it is at the expense of acting in our own best interests, we need to stop and review things.

So

S L E E P

is my first priority.  We achieve nothing if we don’t take control of our own agenda, and we need to do that in order to get enough sleep …

In my mind 5-a-day should be followed by no. 6:  ensuring the right amount of sleep

So here’s my +1 which will help me to achieve my 5-a-day

• Turn off my computer (yes really, turn it off) by a specific time each evening.  Blue light from screens tells my brain it’s time to be awake
• Turn off my mobile likewise, so I’m not tempted to check emails even though my computer is off
• Have a specific regular time by which I want to be in bed and congratulate myself when I achieve it
• Know that sometimes it’s okay to go to the gym in the evening (yes, that was a surprising revelation to me: that I could actually change my habit of visiting first thing or not at all)
• Don’t drink alcohol or caffeine in the evenings – especially important if I’m going to work the next day
• Every day, congratulate myself when I achieve these things.  Sleep reinforces emotional memories.  If I don’t ‘take notice’ when I’m achieving success (albeit on a limited scale) how will I know I’m making progress?  We all need positive feedback.  In leadership sometimes we have to give it to ourselves.

The post #Teacher5aday: the missing ingredient first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.

At the primary school where I’m chair of governors we are planning to recruit a new headteacher.  As you might expect, governors started by clarifying where we want to take the school in the future.  With thanks to my friend and ex-colleague Jim Laing  who prompted this question, I asked: what is the greatest threat to society today?  There were many, so I asked ‘which of those can we address in school?’ I suspect, given long enough, we would have been able to tick them off one by one.  We talked about self-worth, relationships and respect, breakdown of faith, amongst other things.  We might have added critical faculty, confidence,  love of learning, commitment to values and values-based education.  As governors, we have the privilege and the responsibility of setting the strategic direction of the school. If we fulfil our role effectively, what matters to the school will matter to the children.  We talk about primary schools having a role in putting in place the foundations.  Do we know what happens when our children arrive in and leave secondary school?  Not enough, is my answer.  Governors could and should be asking that question.  As the national education agenda demands that we work more closely with other schools, we have the potential to grow that influence: we could work with other primary and secondary schools, so that children have a consistent message from the age of two to 18.

As is often pointed out, we have the children for a very short time, so we need also to work with parents and families.  More importantly, though ‘No-one spends longer with children than they spend with themselves’ was a chance remark by a friend, which has stayed with me.  The new national standards of excellence for headteachers   describe governors as ‘guardians of the nation’s schools’.  By implication then, we are guardians of the nation’s education.  As a board of governors, have you a corporate view of what education is for?

In every school there will be a different balance between the focus on academic results and the pressure to achieve them.  It’s relatively easy for me: it’s not my job on the line if our academic results are not where we expect them to be.  In holding our headteacher to account, perhaps we should also be holding ourselves to account for the impact we are having, not just on this generation of staff and students, but on their children, and their children’s children.

Last month I visited York Minster.  It took 250 years to build. Perhaps those who laid the foundation-stones feared that their work would be in vain. They could not know what their legacy would be.   All we can know today is that over five or six generations the vision was strong enough to overcome all the barriers they faced so that – despite the more recent challenges  – the building still stands.   If we as governors embrace the opportunity to shape a society based on acceptance of difference, perhaps not in my lifetime, nor in my children’s, nor possibly in their children’s, but before the end of time, love will overcome fear.

The post Terror in Paris: what can schools do? first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.

Dear Vicki Davis (aka The CoolCatTeacher)

I’ve only just found your blog If I’m such a great teacher, why do I want to quit?   I’m sorry to be slow.  It took a long time to cross the pond.  I will now join the 100,000 followers.  I heard your cry and I want to tell you – like lots of your followers:  I’ve listened.   You and they know you’re not alone.  In fact, feeling as you were last April might even be normal.

Just because it’s normal, doesn’t mean it’s how it should be.

I don’t teach in a school.  I work with teachers – and more often school leaders. Sometimes standing on the touch-line allows me to see more of the game.  What I see is that schools are full of people who invest not just time and energy in teaching, they invest themselves, too.  They may not be perfectionists (and if they are, they will certainly be heading for burnout) but they live in a world where nothing is ever enough.  Scarcity breeds fear.   Fear gets in the way of becoming our best selves.  Helping someone else to realise their potential at the expense of your own is a poor choice, and when society demands that of us we need to say ‘no’.

I’ve just read your 12 Choices to help you step back from burnout.  It’s great.   Keep choosing to do the things that help you to stay healthy. But I want to say when we are exhausted, we lose the power to choose.  When we’re exhausted, we have no energy.  We need as much energy to stop doing something as we do to start.  So if we have no energy, and no power to choose – no ability to be our own advocate – we’re likely to get stuck on automatic pilot when actually, maybe what we need to do is to land the plane and take a short vacation.  Maybe you don’t need to quit.  What would happen if you pulled into a layby and thought about yourself?  What would happen if, instead of focusing so hard on helping others, you focused on helping yourself when you need it?

Then we get on to core beliefs …  How does this sit with your core beliefs and values?  How far do you value your own intrinsic worth – not your worth because you can be helpful to others, but the wonder that is you, body mind and spirit?  How often do you say to yourself ‘Today, I am enough’?

The term has just started.  You’re feeling resilient.  You know things will look different  by the time everyone gets to Christmas. Like runners in a marathon, you have to get through to the finish.  Why not make a pact with someone now?  When they see you hitting that wall which runners hit, get them to promise to ask you ‘are you sure you want to push through this?  Maybe your body is trying to tell you something’.  If your calling is to look after others, then put the oxygen mask on yourself before the plane spirals out of control.

Yours with great respect

Julia

PS Thanks for inspiring me to write this blog.

The post To CoolCatTeacher – and anyone else trying to balance doing their best with being their best first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.

Not only are we ‘crazy busy’ as Kevin Kruse says, we’re also bombarded with advice concerning how to combat the ‘crazy’ bit.    One writer after another provides us with top tips to conquer the things that cause us stress.  Often we read and nod, knowing that the advice makes sense.  We may even try it out for a few days, but after a while ‘crazy busy’ takes over and we continue pretty much as we always have.  Why?  Why do we continue to ignore what seems at first glance to be good advice, making our lives more difficult than they might be?

The truth is,  following simple advice is really difficult.

a)      The advice is issued to ‘everyman’ whereas in fact each of us is different and has to find what suits us

b)      If we want to change habits it takes commitment, support and time – in that order.  And it’s much easier to commit if you’re part of a community working to achieve similar outcomes.  If that were not the case organisations like weightwatchers wouldn’t need to exist.

So before taking on board 5 simple strategies, or 10 top tips, or 7 simple steps, ‘take a moment’ (that in itself will be hard for some of us) and decide whether any of them could work for you.  Don’t set yourself up to fail.  Identify what you want to work on, and be aware of your motivation to change.  It may be logical to have only one piece of paper on your desk at a time, but if that’s not the way you usually work, what will you have to give up in order to achieve it and how is your current habit meeting your needs?  Do you want to work this way because ‘it’s the right thing to do’ (who says?) or because you really believe it will add value to your way of working and perhaps allow you to feel more in control of your work.   You need to engage with your goal emotionally as well as intellectually.   How will things be different when you’ve established your new habit?  What will be the rewards, and what will you have to give up?  Is your new commitment to get some exercise every day?  What could get in the way?  Where are you going to find the extra time?  And don’t forget, taking exercise requires energy, so the first step might be to ensure you get enough sleep.  Take some time to track back to understand yourself and how you might hijack yourself.

Take one step at a time, keep checking your progress, celebrate your successes (by which I mean notice, and congratulate yourself) and share your goal with someone else who has your best interests at heart and can help you to stay motivated.  Most of all, accept that it will take time, proper encouragement, and self-compassion.

The post It isn’t easy to follow simple advice first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.

So we agreed, and suddenly, here we are, in the City of a Thousand Welcomes. How could I have known it would be so special?

I’d never been to Dublin and we agreed to spend a couple of extra days so that we could enjoy the city. After only a small panic the night before the 8.30 Aer Aran flight (the UK is apparently part of Eire as far as luggage restrictions go) we escaped conspiratorially in the early morning, before the world was awake. I didn’t know my friend is phobic about flying, so I hadn’t realised quite what I was asking. With the help of modern science (the toy plane that really flew and the Diazapan) and my almost non-stop whittering, we reached Dublin without mishap in time for late breakfast.

And here we are. Dublin. The home of so much culture. The air shuttle coach from Dublin airport sets us down right outside Trinity College, which will be our home for the next 4 days. As we walk through the gate in the morning a glittering sea of tourists is ebbing and flowing through the entrance. A friendly Irish voice invites us to join the tour of the College, including the book of Kells, hardly practical while dragging suitcases, but an exciting prospect for later in the week.

At the accommodation office the young man (surely a student ?) seems genuinely pleased to be able to tell us that our rooms are clean so we can check in. He hands us the check-in pack and explains … He listens carefully to our questions and though he can’t immediately tell us the best place to get a late breakfast, he promises to continue to give it consideration as he guides us through the paved and cobbled courtyards to house 49. He’s as good as his word ‘Bewleys’ he says. ‘That’s a good place to go for breakfast. It’s just down the road in Grafton Street. You can’t miss it.’ And he gives us directions. ‘What’s the conference about?’ he asks with genuine interest. ‘It’s the European Mentoring and Coaching Council conference’, says my companion. ‘And it’s a research conference – so about research surrounding mentoring and coaching’. ‘That sounds interesting’ he says – as though he means it. ‘We hope so. At least we’re running a session so we hope that will be’. ‘What’s it on?’ he asks politely. ‘Developing emotional resilience for leadership’ I answer, wondering if that sounds far too pompous. ‘Within education’ adds my friend. He continues to ponder. ‘It’s about how leaders manage to remain resilient even when things get tough’, I volunteer. Negotiating the downward steps in front of us, still showing the way ‘so what would be an example of that?’ ‘Well,’ I explain, ‘supposing you had to make half your workforce redundant for financial reasons and they’d worked with you for a long time and been very loyal to you – that would be a hard thing to do. It would test your emotional resilience.’ We continue walking in the sunshine. There’s a long pause and I wonder whether he’s decided it’s not worth engaging in conversation further. But no – ‘whose decision would that be?’ he asks. ‘Ultimately the leader of the organisation’. He seems a bit puzzled. Maybe inexperience suggests to him that leaders can opt out of what makes them uncomfortable. Then ‘what do you need to do, then, to be emotionally resilient?’ ‘The first step is to look after yourself’, I say. ‘That’s a view I keep hearing’, he says ‘But it’s not quite that simple’, I add. And it’s not.

But that’s for tomorrow. Today, we are enjoying the city. Excellent coffee and scones at Bewleys, a fascinating gracious building with tea dance décor, sculptures (we learn) by the owner and sweeping wooden staircase to tables upstairs. Someone has recommended the open top bus tour. They were right. City Tours hop-on hop-off bus does us proud. Sitting high up in the sunshine listening to the commentary (also available on headphones) we are drawn to the heart of the city. I begin to understand how it inspired so many artists. Passing the top of Gresham Street, slight traffic delay allows us time to see the large crowd which has gathered to watch a fire-eater on stilts. Alongside and across the River Liffey, through Georgian Dublin, where my eyes are drawn to a sign for the Little Museum of Dublin. We resolve to do the whole tour and then decide where we will take time to walk. The buildings are jaw-droppingly beautiful. How, in our ignorance, could we have imagined that the Post Office, home of the Easter uprising of 1916, was such a monument to neo-classical architecture?

We decide to walk through the Georgian quarter and seek out the museum which caught our eye on the tour. It’s not as straightforward as we imagined. It’s hard to keep in your head the route of a bus tour in an unfamiliar city. We know the approximate area, but even the off-duty drivers of the bus tours are stumped as we move from one group to another, asking for directions. Finally, one checks out the bus route and makes a suggestion. It leads us to our destiny – in more ways than one. We arrive at The Little Museum of Dublin in St Stephen’s Green with only 30 minutes to closing time. Today – Wednesday afternoon – it’s free to enter. It is the place we have been unconsciously searching for since we arrived. As we follow Ireland’s history it draws us up the stairs where our attention is arrested by the gentle music of the Irish lilt: ‘My mother always said I could talk for Ireland, and now I’m doing it!’ From a back room we hear a commentary .. ‘do come and join us’ says Trevor, interrupting his oration to the group of 15 or so visitors. ‘Does anyone know who this is?’ he says, pointing to a photograph. ‘Charlie Haughey’ responds a voice. ‘And for the benefit of our visitors, would you like to tell us who Charlie Haughey was?’…

Photographs and artefacts, contributed by the people of Dublin, connect us with Sinead O’Connor, the Lockhards, (you’ll have to visit to find out their story) and the journey from colonialism to independence. My companion picks out a picture of the Irish writer Colm Tóibín and my education continues. Upstairs, we are treated to an exhibition of photographs by Brendan Walsh capturing the heart of the city. One that haunts me is the black-and-white image of a group of pre-pubescent boys seeking an adrenalin rush, leaping from one narrow ledge of a high building to another. Some wait their turn; some have already made it. One is caught in mid-flight, arms outstretched, hands straining for the opposite ledge, caught in a moment in time perhaps symbolic of Ireland’s own struggle to move from colonialism to independence. Will he make it or plunge to his death? I leave feeling anxious about the boy, praying that he did indeed reach his destination.

Tomorrow the conference gets underway. We will focus again on sharing the research into emotional resilience for school leadership. I remember the conversation with the young man who took us to our rooms at Trinity College. ‘It’s important to look after your own wellbeing, and connect with what feels nourishing and meaningful’ I’ve said. First step? You could hardly do better than to book a trip to Dublin with a good friend.

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I’d travelled for close-on 3 hours by now, making a conscious decision to take the walk from my house to the railway station slowly, noticing the bright blue sky and wispy clouds – a breathe of Spring and new life. The service was due to start at 1.00 and I judged that I had time for a coffee in the Comfy Pew before joining the mourners. There were many of them, but Gloucester Cathedral is huge and they would undoubtedly have prepared for a crowd.

I take a seat at the window, thinking I might see someone I know as they pass. The magnetic force is strengthening as more and more and more people pass: youngsters in green and gold; young men in suits; girls in short skirts, their long hair flowing, chatting animatedly: our hope for the future; Larry’s hope for the future. Older women, couples, colleagues in dark suits and ties, families. A mother pauses to adjust her daughter’s uniform. The Comfy Pew is filling up. I’m drawn to engage in conversation with others who are obviously going to the funeral. When I do, everyone has a tale to tell of how Larry touched their lives and the lives of others they knew.

12.20pm now, and I’m wondering whether I was hasty in thinking that seating in the cathedral won’t be a problem, as I join a queue waiting to enter. There are already 1000 inside, we’re told. I meet a priest who has travelled from the Suffolk coast, who knew Larry when he was a deputy in Norfolk, 30 years before. A former science teacher who trained at Larry’s school shares her story, her broad smile stiffening occasionally as she struggles to control her emotion.

When I finally reach the cathedral there are already people standing in almost every available space. The only free seats have ‘reserved’ on the block. Someone points out to me that a seat is available. Like a driver finding the last parking space, I make a dash for it without checking whether anyone else has also identified it as theirs. then feel slightly embarrassed by my haste; only after I am seated do I look round and justify my privilege by my age in comparison to that of others sitting round me.

Thirty minutes now until the service is due to start and I discover that my neighbour is someone I have often spoken to on the telephone. She has worked closely with Larry for over twenty years. ‘He would have been amazed by this’ she tells me ‘He was always so humble. He didn’t know the impact he had on others’. I know this to be true. Ten minutes before the service, and the murmur of voices is hushed by the school choir’s rendition of the Taize chorus ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ The rise and fall of the harmony seems to lift our friend gently to the Lord as the solo flute accompaniment announces his arrival at the gate of heaven.

The mood changes as the service starts. Somehow, it seems, those waiting outside the cathedral have managed to squeeze in, despite literally thousands arriving before them. The funeral procession arrives to the joyous sounds of ‘Shine Jesus, shine!’, accompanied by the band: saxophone and drums give their all. Though there must be many who, like me, struggle to keep emotion from their voices, I can also hear the commitment described later in the service by the chair of governors, who refers to a recent occasion when Year 7s encouraged each other at a rugby tournament: ‘Come on; let’s do it for Larry’.

‘Doing it for Larry’ was a result of the loyalty and commitment he inspired. I had the great privilege of working with him on his first and several subsequent programmes when facilitating the national Leadership Programme for Serving Headteachers. His passionate commitment to young people inspired me and those we worked with. He managed to combine joy, fun and laughter with a relentless drive for the best possible outcomes for students. We kept in touch, and it was typical of him that he agreed to be an interviewee for some research I was conducting recently. When I emailed to double check he was still up for it, I had the response ‘I am looking forward to it as I hope to discover more of my deficiencies’. False modesty? I don’t think so. He had a great capacity for sending himself up, even when the effects of his cancer treatment turned him into ‘a gargoyle’ as he put it to me once, commenting that it was an appropriate challenge to his vanity.

When we met he talked about the school focusing on ‘the dignity and respect of all people’ and the need for integrity in the organisation. He is the only headteacher I’ve ever heard speak of students being ‘prepared to work with us to achieve their potential’. A much more common notion is that the school works with the students. Larry knew that the school needed to gain students’ respect and never took that for granted. If a relentless drive for higher achievement did not first embrace the principle of ‘dignity and respect of all people’ he wasn’t interested.

At his funeral, his son’s moving tribute included the comment that the school ‘was never about him’. He had a high profile locally and nationally, and no doubt some people thought this was driven by a need to be noticed. He didn’t mind if people disliked him because of that; he knew it wasn’t true. His only concern was to gain the best education for all; he was so clear about his purpose, that it over-rode any concern to be popular. The only concern he expressed to me was that his making himself unpopular might have a negative impact on the school.

Possibly the last time we met, which was before his successor at St Peter’s was announced, we talked about how the school community would cope when he retired. He had already indicated that what he would miss most was being with the ‘young people’ as he always referred to them (with the accent on ‘young’) and seeing talent flourish. I suggested that the whole community would need to go through a time of mourning his departure – aware, even as I spoke – of the prophetic parallel which I was stirring. He had never made a secret of his illness. ‘Oh’, he said ’they’ll miss me for a few weeks, but they’ll soon forget me’. I persisted. ‘It’ll be hard enough for a new head coming in’ I said ‘without people feeling they’re not allowed to be real about how they’re feeling’.

As I write this, I wonder whether the unprecedented display of support, emotion and thanksgiving that was evident at Gloucester cathedral last Friday could have happened in the same way if the school had already had a new head. Perhaps, just perhaps, his decision to remain head of St Peter’s to the end allowed his death to be a gift to the school, just as his life has been.

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