In Essential Pieces: Jigsaw of a successful school (2006), the late Sir Tim Brighouse argued that the most successful school leaders had three qualities in common: energy, enthusiasm, and hope.
To this excellent list I always add “kindness”, because in my estimation the best school leaders care about their colleagues’ health and – dare I say it – happiness as much as they care about vision and strategy.
The best school leaders show an interest in every aspect of their school, visiting classrooms and speaking to staff as often as possible. They walk the floor at breaks and lunch to remind class teachers they are not alone.
The best school leaders exude positivity, especially when communicating their school’s values, and when reminding staff of past success as well as future promise. They have an intellectual curiosity, and lead by example as great practitioners and people who love to learn.
They display boundless optimism and resilience in the face of setbacks and stay calm during moments of crisis; and, whenever they falter, they pick themselves up, dust themselves down, and keep moving forwards with determination and resolve.
They routinely recognise and reward staff and pupil achievements, and these celebrations act as inspiring stories of success which give oxygen to the good and virtuous and starve negative thoughts of air, muffling the naysayers and nit-pickers.
The best school leaders give quality time to people and are protective of staff, showing empathy, respecting people’s privacy; they set as their default position a genuine belief that everyone wishes to do well and will try their best, rather than assuming the worst.
And, above all, the best school leaders are human and, thus, fallible. We should not look to leaders for perfection or expect it of ourselves because, where we ostensibly find it, it may mask duplicity or inaction.
Instead, we should look for humanity, for people who are prone to making mistakes from time to time because they are willing to take risks, to try new things, and to challenge the status quo. What sets these people out from the ineffectual is their willingness to admit their mistakes and their ability to learn from them.
You are thinking: so far so theoretical – but what does this look like in practice? How can we primary school leaders support our staff and create a culture of collaboration and kindness? Well, here are five tips.
1, Use emotional intelligence to manage conflict
When confronted with difficult people or situations, it is common to try to avoid conflict or deny that conflict exists. We may wait until conflict goes away or we may try to change the subject.
It is also common, when accepting that conflict exists, to react emotionally, to become aggressive, abusive, or even hysterical. It is common, too, to find someone else to blame for conflict, to make excuses or let someone else deal with it. But avoiding or denying conflict will only exacerbate the situation and make us look like weak leaders.
In dealing with conflict, we need to remember that it is not – or is rarely – a one-off occurrence that has emerged out of a clear blue sky and will dissipate just as quickly.
Rather, conflict builds over time and this “road to breakdown” is characterised by a desire for one person to change the other, or by one person blaming the other.
However, as school leaders deal with conflict in the workplace, we should remember that trying to change someone rarely results in change. Change is more likely to come about from understanding. Wanting to change someone implies there is something wrong with that person and, naturally, this only leads to them becoming defensive and argumentative. Seeking to understand, however, suggests the other person’s point of view is valid and reasonable. This is the approach that creates collaboration and mutual problem-solving.
What’s more, as school leaders, we should remember that trying to blame someone is reactive and looks to the past to discern who was right and who was wrong. A better approach if our goal is a resolution that allows us to move forwards is to focus on the future and on how the situation can be resolved.
This is the difference between arguing who left the stable door open and going out to try find the horse. One approach is reactive, futile, and damaging; the other is proactive and solution-focused.
To prevent or resolve workplace conflict, therefore, we need to start with the self, control our emotions and remain professional. We need to soul-search and develop a sense of emotional intelligence – which is commonly defined as the ability to understand ourselves and other people. This comprises the ability to manage and express our emotions, and respond to other people’s emotions, in ways that are productive.
Emotional intelligence allows us to model the sorts of behavioural responses we expect to see from others. If we don’t model desired behaviours, we cannot expect others to mirror them and to behave more appropriately.
We also need to be aware of colleagues’ emotional states and deploy appropriate and measured responses in a calm and considered way in what can be highly charged emotional situations.
2, Foster a sense of collaboration over competition
Being a member of the teaching profession – like any profession – means taking collective responsibility and this requires a culture of collaboration as opposed to one of competition. As such, although as school leaders we should not eradicate individuality, we should try to eliminate individualism – habitual or enforced patterns of working alone.
Accordingly, we should make sure that the staffroom is the beating heart of our school – busy with staff sharing and listening, offloading, and laughing. We should avoid staff working in silos or, worse, alone in their classrooms.
We should also make sure that the canteen and corridors are calm, friendly places – respected and kept clean by everyone. We should foster an ethos in which people are polite, greeting others with a smile, and in which the atmosphere is always purposeful, focused on learning and teaching. We should work hard to avoid having no-go areas where misbehaviour goes unchallenged because there is no leadership from the top. And we should avoid the belief that behaviour is a teacher’s responsibility and that, if they can’t manage it, they alone are to blame. We might also:
- Have clear job descriptions and person specifications which are followed.
- Consult as much as possible and on as many issues as possible, ensuring every voice is heard and respected.
3, Create a no-blame culture
In his 2015 book Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed says that the most successful organisations in the world – he uses the example of aviation – show a willingness and tenacity to investigate the lessons that often exist when we fail, but which we rarely exploit.
A no-blame culture, Syed argues, is about creating systems and cultures that enable organisations to learn from errors, rather than being threatened by them.
We can create such a culture in our schools by cultivating the belief that just because someone has made a mistake that doesn’t mean we should forget the important contribution the same colleague makes every day. In fact, in such situations, we should recognise that staff need to feel supported and trusted to learn from their mistake and move on.
When things are going well, meanwhile, we should be generous with our praise and recognition. After all, deliberate practice – which we teachers tell our pupils is a vital part of the learning process – is all about harnessing the benefits of learning from failure while reducing its cost. And yet we can only learn from failure if there is an openness to admit to mistakes.
If staff feel threatened by owning up to errors, they are less likely to do so and that rich seam of intelligence will be lost to us, and we’ll keep on making the same mistakes over and again.
Only if we operate a no-blame culture will colleagues willingly admit when they get it wrong and then we can work together to get it right next time. We should therefore create a culture in which teachers are encouraged to honestly self-reflect.
4, Help colleagues develop intrinsic motivation
In his 2009 book Drive, Daniel Pink argues that intrinsic motivation is three-fold:
- Autonomy: The desire to direct our own lives.
- Mastery: The urge to get better and better at something that matters.
- Purpose: The yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.
As such, we should ensure our colleagues have autonomy, mastery, and purpose – the ability and opportunity to write their own story. In practice, this might involve providing internal progression opportunities including into advanced practitioner roles and associate senior leader positions. We might also:
- Ensure there is a safe space for staff to get together and talk without fear or favour.
- Provide free refreshments for staff.
- Provide healthcare for staff, including flu vaccines.
- Plan regular staff social events.
- Be flexible when it comes to affording staff access to family events.
- Make sure staff get the time back from extra-curricular activities.
5, Protect staff workload and wellbeing
Supporting staff is about protecting work/life balance and wellbeing but, in so doing, we should consider the nature of the work our staff are expected to complete and not solely the volume of it, because the key to improving workload is to focus teachers’ time on what matters most and on what will have the biggest impact on pupil outcomes.
If teachers know that what they are being asked to do is important and will help their pupils, they are likely to feel motivated to do it and not regard it as a burden. If they regard a task as purely fulfilling management purposes, however, they will begrudge doing it and regard it as a distraction from their core purpose which, in turn, will lead to feelings of being burdened and stressed.
To improve teacher wellbeing, we might also consider improving working conditions including by offering flexible working and part-time contracts – but offering such opportunities without addressing fundamental issues around teacher workload is unlikely to have a significant impact. We might also:
- Ensure teachers are given more than the statutory 10% of PPA time, as well as offer all staff with additional responsibilities protected leadership time.
- Ensure meetings are kept short and productive, are only called when essential, and stick to an agreed agenda.
- Ensure school policies and procedures are workable and fair, and not overly bureaucratic.
- Operate clear communications protocols including for the use of email to help achieve a work/life balance.
- Matt Bromley is CEO of Bee and chair of the Building Equity in Education Campaign. He is an education journalist, author, and advisor with 25 years in teaching and leadership including as a headteacher and principal. He remains a practising teacher. Visit http://bee-online.uk
Headteacher Update Spring Term Edition 2025
This article first appeared in Headteacher Update's Spring Term Edition 2025. This edition was sent free of charge to UK primary schools in January 2025. A free-to-download digital edition is also available via www.headteacher-update.com/content/downloads
Further information & resources
- Brighouse: Essential Pieces: Jigsaw of a successful school, RM, 2006.