Resilience has never been more important in school leadership than it is now. Julia explores what supports resilience in school leadership, what undermines it, and provides research evidence of how resilience can be proactively developed over time. It's too important to leave to chance.

1. Building Emotional Resilience for
School Leadership
Is it Counter-Cultural?
Julia Steward
www.chrysalisleadershipdevelopment.com
Workshop for the
British Educational Leadership, Management and
Administration Society (Belmas) Conference 2015

2. Where my
journey
started –
the
conspiracy
of silence:
it’s not okay
to feel
vulnerable
in
leadership

3. 1st appearance as
requirement for headship

4. How to build emotional resilience?

5. Initial research
Survey – 135 schools, 49 responses
Time in headship:
1-3 years: 41%
4-9 years: 49%
10+ years: 10%
61% first headship
20% second headship
Remainder 3+

6. Agreed it was ‘very important’

7. What contributes to your emotional
resilience?
All respondents: top 3
1. the support of family
and friends
2. time spent with pupils
3. evidence of having
made a positive difference
3. conversations with
colleagues in school

12. There is
nothing
either good
or bad, but
thinking
makes it so
Peter Church [CC BY-SA 2.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via
Wikimedia Commons

13. The internal story

14. Interviewees’ definitions of emotional
resilience

15. If we can choose nothing else, we can choose how we see things

16. www.valuescentre.com 16
7-levels of human consciousness
Know and
Understand
Physiological
Safety
Love & Belonging
Self-esteem

17. Ever 6
Academies
Progress 8
British values
Safeguarding
Radicalisation
SEND reforms
Closing the gap
Teaching schools
Child mental health
Changes to admissions
School to school support
New national curriculum
Assessment without levels
Changes to GCSE, A & AS levels
Universal free school meals in KS1
Same funding for increased numbers
Fine parents for taking pupils out of school
Tackle obesity through sport & healthy eating
Tackle climate change through eco schools aware
Teach tolerance while being intolerant of intolerance
Changes to leaving age for compulsory education and training
Early language deprivation: more nurseries and better qualified staff
Distractions from
looking after self in
school leadership

18. Are we in
danger of
killing the
geese
charged
with
laying the
golden
eggs?

19. Is it possible to build emotional
resilience in preparation for
school leadership?

20. Building & Sustaining Resilience for School
Leadership/
Training for the Tough Times
• 12 leaders in same school
• 6 sessions over academic year
• 3x3 diagnostics – vitality, stress, resilience
• Learning log
• Combine theory & practice
• Set intentions

21. What I knew already
Both …. And …
Paying attention to wellbeing improves
resilience
School leaders don’t prioritise their own
needs: they’re busy looking after others
Resilience is strengthened by experience
coupled with reflection and learning
School leaders find it difficult to carve
out time to reflect
Resilience is strengthened when we
know we’ve made a positive difference
Most school leaders celebrate others’ or
the school’s success and don’t credit
their own contribution
Resilience dips when we feel out of
control in a situation we believe we
should be able to control
Schools leaders are held accountable for
societal issues over which they have no
control

22. Programme Content
• Theory into practice
• Physical wellbeing
• The neuroscience that connects physical and
emotional wellbeing
• Interrogate habits of thinking & behaviour
• Increased self-awareness/self-management
• Peer support
• Coaching

23. Vitality Stress Resilience

27. Conclusion: it IS possible to grow resilience proactively