Trust, Respect & Wellbeing: Lessons from a School Leader (8)

Daniella Lang is the Headteacher at Brimsdown Primary School in Enfield, in this series of 8 posts she will be sharing her insights on how to support the school community remotely.

As a school leader, you are continually reviewing things and coming up with new ideas to move your school forward. It is important to create a vision for the future and your greatest resource for getting this right is your instincts. During these unprecedented times, this could not be truer. Leaders have had to adapt to setting up online learning and changing different school procedure to meet current needs.

One of the most commonly shared bits of professional advice is ‘go with your gut’ but this can be a challenging system to implement for some. Also, the moment you face hard times, you will probably receive a million ideas and solutions from other people. Often, they share them as you ask for them, or just because they want to help you. But it is important that you stop, breath and have an honest look inside yourself so you can do what you feel you need to do next. So why is trusting your gut so powerful? Because your gut has been logging information for as long as you’ve been alive and never do people say, ‘I regret going with my gut’. When acting on instinct we need to be flexible though too.

We spend our workdays generally in our outer world, interacting with colleagues and our school community, and we don’t always have enough time in our inner world where we can reflect on our experiences and listen to what our gut might have to say. It is important that we give ourselves time and space. So, for example, after a meeting that calls for a decision, give yourself space to reflect on this. Sometimes I do this by taking a walk the long way to the toilets where I can then hide briefly alone or walking outside to the shops. Spending time alone, even just a few minutes gives you the listening time you need.​