Winning hearts and minds as a new headteacher

I’ve been reading posts online this week from leaders who have just taken their first steps into headship, and it’s caused me to reflect on my own first weeks and months in a headteacher role nearly 15 years ago.

One moment came clearly into view. I was fortunate to be part of a new heads group in my LA (sadly I don’t think they’re all that common these days). We attended a workshop together and the first activity was to bring a photo that showed something you felt proud of from your first few weeks. I can remember finding it really difficult to come up with something. I’d had my head down, sleeves rolled up, tackling the big issues I’d inherited with pupil behaviour as well as teaching and learning. When a colleague showed a picture of the hanging baskets she’d installed outside the school, I didn’t say anything, but I felt a mixture of scorn and envy. I was thinking ‘How on earth did you manage that?’ and also a bit of ‘Was that really the most important thing for the first few weeks?’ I often drove past that school on my way home from work, and each time I saw those hanging baskets I was presented with a challenge to the way I was approaching my headship and a wave of self-doubt.

It took a while for me to appreciate what my colleague in that school was trying to achieve with the baskets. At the end of my first year (a real ‘baptism of fire’), I was gifted a book, ‘Ahead of the Class’ by Marie Stubbs. It’s an account of her taking on the headship of a very tough school. I collapsed onto a sunbed in Rhodes in the first week of the summer holidays, and read it enthusiastically - it reflected a lot of what I had just experienced.

It helped me to see that taking on a new school is as much about winning hearts and minds and creating a sense of optimism as rolling your sleeves up and working hard. Marie Stubbs describes how she transformed the look of the school in advance of her first day there. I recognised that I had underestimated the importance of looking at things from different perspectives and thinking carefully about what different stakeholders would need in order to believe in me and buy in to the changes I knew we needed to make.

I’m not beating myself up here. I had a tough job to do, and I was close to breaking point several times during that year. Putting up a few hanging baskets would not have made a big difference! There was a lot of underperformance, and safety needed to be established before we could fully develop the curriculum and the quality of teaching and learning. But I do often wonder these days how things might have been different if I had had the support of a leadership coach or supervisor.

I must say that I was very grateful for the support I did have: a peer heads group who were very kind and generous, a mentor head who gave me systems and models that I could replicate and use and a school improvement advisor who sympathised with my challenges and did her best to help, even though her background was from a very different context.

The bit that was missing was that external person, with no axe to grind, who could hold space for the difficult stuff without judgement and help me to look at things from different angles: ‘holding the mirror up’, as we often describe it in coaching. Stepping up out of the trenches and horizon-scanning more frequently, would have been really helpful, and might have meant that the role was less damaging to my mental and physical health. It might also have meant that I could begin to look at the ‘comparisonitis’ that was quite destructive to me, and start to make more sense of it, adding in a clearer, more proportionate view of my own strengths, values and areas to develop.

That’s a service I’ve provided to several new heads over the last few years as a coach and supervisor. I firmly believe that, while mentoring is certainly useful, you don’t have to model yourself on another leader as a new head. You can gradually choose the style and behaviours that work best for you in your context. Having a partner who helps you to see more makes that rational choosing possible.

What’s more, I advocate sustainable leadership. When you have your ‘head down and sleeves rolled up’ there have to be moments of respite, where you can catch your breath and refill your cup, as well as doing a bit of strategic thinking and making sure you’re on the right path.

Headteacher supervision is a good way to achieve all this. I offer regular 1:1 sessions for heads, carried out via video call, where live issues can be discussed and there can be a bit of ‘offloading’ and decompressing from difficult events. It’s a non-judgemental space that nurtures leadership growth and development as well as wellbeing. My own background in headship ensures that there is knowledge of the relevant standards, frameworks and territory of the sector underpinning the discussions we have. If you’d like to find out more, take a look at my

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To conclude, if you’re just completing your first days and weeks as a head, remember to take a deep breath now and again and look after yourself. If you’re in it for the long haul, try and look at it as more of a marathon than a sprint. Good luck with the important work you’re doing!