‘Think of  a reservoir high in the mountains of central Wales.  At one end of the long submerged valley is a dam with the technology to control the flow of the water.  The rest of the lake is the most evocative and powerful combination of natural features – rock, trees and water  …  All around the lake are small rivers and streams flowing down from the surrounding hills.  In many ways I see this scene as a metaphor for the inner-life of transformational leaders.

Each working day school leaders have to draw on their personal reservoir – on some days a steady flow will suffice, on other days the floodgates have to be open as energy, compassion, creativity, optimism, courage and hope are called on.  The deeper the reservoir, the more can be given, but eventually even the deepest reservoir will begin to run low.  A period of drought can transform a rich reserve into something arid and barren, incapable of nurturing and sustaining growth … ‘
from Rethinking Educational Leadership, West-Burnham, 2009

I was working with a headteacher.  ‘My resilience is low’ she said.  ‘I know I haven’t been looking after myself as well as I should, but there’s just been so much on’.  I have worked with this headteacher regularly over the past year.  At the heart of all she does are the needs of her pupils and staff.  Perhaps that’s part of the difficulty: they’re in her heart rather than in her head.  We have talked about her taking time out – and to be fair, she has put aside some time to work with her coach (not myself).  In many cases, though, time out of school has been with like-minded colleagues, most of whom ‘know’ that at this stage of the term, it’s ‘normal’  to be flat on the floor with almost no energy to get through the last 2 weeks.  What a year it’s been: at least 2 Ofsted frameworks; changes to the National Curriculum; the sudden and unexpected introduction of free school meals for children in Key Stage 1 (and who saw that one coming?); changes to the special educational needs code of practice; changes to assessment; reduction in staffing in other agencies leading to increased pressure on schools; and increased pressure on school budgets with more to come.   The pressure inevitably builds on the headteacher, particularly in primary schools, where the head may be the only person not in front of a class.

For possibly the past 5 years, at this time of year, headteachers I’ve spoken to have said ‘I’ve never known a year like it; it’s just been so full on’.  How many of them, I wonder, have increased their investment in themselves?

Last week, at the University of Worcester Festival of Leadership Learning we listened to Floyd Woodrow talk about elite leadership.  Given the audience where ‘elite’ often means ‘privileged’ and ‘better resourced’ I wondered how everyone would react.  What I took from his explanation of the term, however, is that we can all work to reach elite status, given  motivation, drive and practice.  The elite perform exceptionally because they practise.   Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers tells a similar story.  Those at the top of their game, whether in the field of sport, music, or battle: all practice.  Gladwell talks about practising for 10,000 hours. Leaders are no different.  Floyd talked about training your mind: drilling it, to prepare for the unexpected.    If you want to move from the transactional to the transformational as a leader, you need to be prepared to invest in yourself.

Headteachers have it tough.  High accountability, high profile, working in a system that expects them to fix society, where (as we discussed afterwards) if you get it wrong, you can quickly forfeit your career.  Floyd held the attention of 50 headteachers for 2 hours.  In the world he referred to, it isn’t just your career you forfeit if you get it wrong, it’s your life – and potentially that of many others.  It doesn’t get tougher than that.

He talked a lot about building resilience.  In a small group conversation afterwards we confronted the reality of what that means.  It means practice.  Practice is what builds new neural pathways; it’s what moves us from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence.

When I was asked to run a 2-hour session which would result in headteachers recognising when they are stressed and doing something about it, I politely (I hope) pointed out that it takes more than 2 hours to effect behavioural change.  You cannot build resilience with the ‘sheep-dip’ approach.  It takes time, commitment and practice.   Next term I shall be working with a headteacher and his senior leaders on developing emotional resilience for school leadership.  It’s a year-long programme.  As a leader of learning, he recognises that embedding learning takes time.  As leaders, we need to listen and attend to our own needs.  The alternative is to project them on to others so that we can take care of them, and risk infantilising our colleagues, and exhausting ourselves at the same time.

I challenge you to finish next school year with something in reserve.  To do that, you need to plan and practise.  Do something each week which will support your resilience.  Resilience is intensely personal.  Only you know for sure what supports and undermines your resilience, so do more of the former and less of the latter.  If only it were that simple…  You have to be prepared to invest in yourself.  More about that anon.  For now, consider some of these behaviours that might help you in building resilience.

The post Topping up your resilience reservoir 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.

The post The Delights of Dublin – city of a thousand welcomes first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.