Leadership is the key contributor to organisational change and improvement. Therefore, more needs to be done to develop and support leadership that is of consistently high quality. How do we support educational leaders to grow and develop? While there is no silver bullet for successfully developing leaders, there are key actions to be taken which will increase the chance of success.

Leadership is a complex, difficult, frustrating journey, but it is also exciting, fulfilling, gives meaning to life and is needed right now. This post explores some of the characteristics that Lesley believes leaders need for 2022 and beyond.

What a journey! What a privilege! All of it!

Lesley Murrihy reflects as she finishes forty years in schools including 21 years in principalship and nearly eleven years as the foundation principal of Amesbury School. She raises a glass to the many wonderful students, staff, trustees and mentors/coaches she has encountered over the years.

In a world that is unkind, marked by divisiveness and rampant inequality, inequity and violence, including in education, we need a new way forward. Lesley Murrihy shares why she thinks 2022 might be the year of the soul.

How do you lead when you are not working in a leadership position? Lesley Murrihy shares what she discovered about leadership while on secondment over 2021.

But education’s coming of age, as it does for every person’s graduation to adulthood, will require us to take responsibility for what happened in the past and what happens in education going forward. We need to stop blaming others because when we do so, we are effectively saying that we have no power. We disempower ourselves.

We do need to take a critical stance to the nature of the future we promote and we cannot just let it happen. The new normal must not be a “thing” – a way we “do” education - but it must be a continually unfolding, evolving and emerging new way of thinking and being. We need a clearly articulated vision and purpose for education to shape our “new normal” – not just any “new normal” will do!

In this, the final post in this series, I wish to stress how important it is for leaders to be their authentic selves, and as a part of that, ensure they do what they love – do what brings them joy; and, perhaps, the most important strategy of all, ensure they are involved in continual cycles of growth and development.

Coaching others is service oriented - it provides an opportunity to connect with people on a deeper level and to help meet their needs. There is little more satisfying than contributing to the growth and development of people in your organization and seeing them achieve their personal and professional goals.

Feeling out of control, or of being controlled by circumstances and the dictates of the urgent and meaningless, and of not being able to be the leader we want to be, contribute to the loneliness of leadership. I have found that taking time to focus on my moral purpose and to take actions to enlarge it, is incredibly productive and uplifting.

The right coach and mentor (someone you have chosen) to whom you feel safe disclosing your full self is an absolute necessity for leaders at every stage of their leadership journey. I cannot more strongly recommend this strategy to you to assist with the loneliness of leadership.

Finally, all of this contributes to feelings of powerlessness. As a teacher, middle leader and even as a deputy principal, you felt productive and purposeful and that you had the power to make a difference. Now, you are not sure that anything you do really matters.

Little research has been done on the loneliness of leaders, but what has been done suggests that a high percentage of leaders do experience loneliness and that leaders feel more lonely than employees. So what is it that contributes to the loneliness of leadership and feelings of disconnection?

School leaders often stand on very tricky ground. Their role requires them to advocate for students, for parental rights and expectations, for teachers and support staff …There are many times in a school leader’s life, when all or a number of these competing advocacy roles come into conflict with each other over a particular issue ….

When we think of it this way, we focus on the huge joy of seeing our teachers grow and develop as people, as professionals and as leaders; and the school is also well served. There is little better!

“I remember one teacher talking to me excitedly about finding that he now had that brief moment of time in which he could adjust his initial reaction from giving advice (as he was wont to do) to asking a reflective question. In the next breath he said, “I am beginning to feel like a leader” ….Hence, my view that, “Your growth and development is your leadership” but also, “Your leadership is growth and development”.

We all have strengths that can also be our weaknesses. As Steve Jobs said, “Strengths and weaknesses are often two sides of the same coin.” In this post Lesley talks about her own strengths and weaknesses to illustrate what assists the process of integrating them into a positive, cohesive professional and personal life.

“In this Blog, I do not want to “make myself small” … But neither do I want to present myself as the hero of my own story. Rather, I hope I present myself as human - one whose life is marked by both success and failure, one whose knowledge is only ever partial.” Read more as Lesley discusses her disclaimer.

This is the first of a series of posts in which Lesley will share her journey as she begins a year’s leave from her role as principal of Amesbury School to explore and make increasing sense of her experiences of 19 years of school leadership. In this post, Lesley shares her belief that the growth and development of staff is the most important focus of a principal’s work.