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The toxic leadership cycle - why do we continue to create poor leaders?

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What does it take to be a leader?  We can all answer it. We have all been to conferences and training sessions where trainers and delegates alike reel off the values and skills and actions needed to be a ‘good’ leader. Think of the best leader you’ve ever worked for.  Seriously, do it now and say their name out loud. They embody all of those values, don’t they? Similarly we all know the traits of a bad leader too. We can probably even name them too.  So why do we still hear of toxic schools with toxic leadership? Leaders who feel they need to micromanage, who blame rather than take responsibility and who lack long-term vision.  Why are we still creating poor leaders if the elements to make a good one are universally agreed? The problem is that poor leaders are already in leadership roles, we see them behaving in a certain way and we mimic it because we feel that’s the way it should be done. That’s what you have to do when you’re a leader. That’s the way to get the role. They aren’t all
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Interviews in schools - the worst of “we’ve always done it that way”

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Anyone who has been for an interview or two for a school based post will know that the process is broken.   Whether the role is for a member of support staff, a class teacher or one with leadership responsibilities, they almost all follow the same steps: Work with children; Answer some questions that have been found via a Google search the day before the interview process begins; Some in-tray task and a list of the worst things that could ever go wrong, all happening on one day for you to prioritise (more prominent if you’re going for a leadership role) Some other crazy task that you’ll never come across in your role.  But what do we actually want from our successful candidate? I’d argue that the only one that’s remotely pertinent is working with children, although what can you actually get from a 20-30 minute observation of a ‘lesson’, especially now it’s widely agreed that one-off observations should not be used anywhere in school? It’s time for us to change and design interview task
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8 lessons learnt when moving into a new leadership role…

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In January 2022, I moved into my first Headship. This wasn’t under the usual circumstances, but as a secondment. Whilst it definitely had its positives - I got to ‘try out the school before I committed’ and not many people get to do that - it also came with a bunch of significant challenges.  I didn’t know whether I’d be staying more than my initial 2 terms and neither did the staff, I’ll talk about the challenges of this in another post. Below are some of the things that I learnt when going into that new role and a few things to consider when moving in the future: 1. Decide on the type of leader you want to be - We’ll start off with the hardest one. Decide the type of leader you want to be and make sure that you follow through on it.  Think of all of the best (and worst) leaders that you’ve ever followed. What do they all have in common? What skills, values and attributes do you want to be known for?  You have an opportunity to ‘reinvent’ yourself with little baggage and a whole lot o
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Before you read any of these blogs…

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HONESTY ALERT! If you’ve somehow found yourself here, I feel I owe you honesty right from the get go. Every blog you read in this site is for me. I don’t care too much about whether you agree or disagree, whether you think my views should be locked away in a dungeon or shouted from a rooftop.  If I wanted that, I’d post more often on Twitter ( robhollingswor7 , by the way 😉). That’s the place to meet those self-righteous enough to tell you you’re always wrong or subscribing to views that are “so last week”. So this is my version of keeping a journal. I want the opportunity to write down my thoughts so that I can come back to make sense of them, organise them into something that will help me and those I lead. If that works for you, stick around. You’re going to get blogs about leadership and how it is impacted by human relationships more that anything else; about mistakes that I’ve made and the lessons learnt along the way; about how understanding psychology and biology will help your
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