Best Practice

Sharpening the leadership saw: Habits to form for continual renewal

Senior leadership Leadership/school profiles
With primary school leaders working 58 hours a week on average, it is vital that you consider carefully how you are ‘renewing’ yourself on a regular basis if you are to avoid burn-out. Robbie Burns offers some ideas
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A compelling analogy from Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (2013) introduces the idea of sharpening the saw as an important habit of our working lives.

Suppose you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree.

  • “What are you doing?”
  • “Can’t you see? I’m sawing down this tree.”
  • “You look exhausted! How long have you been at it?”
  • “Over five hours and I’m beat! This is hard work.”
  • “Well why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen the saw? I’m sure it would go a lot faster.”
  • “I don’t have time to sharpen the saw. I’m too busy sawing.”

What makes everything we do as leaders possible is our ability to maintain and keep developing our greatest asset to our schools: ourselves.

If we burn-out, if we are exhausted, if we are worn through and utterly spent each and every day of each and every term, we are no good for our teams, we are no good for our students, we are no good for our governors or our parents.

In our lives, we must ensure we take the time to sharpen the saw, renew ourselves on a regular, routine basis, building habits so that we are able to stay the course and not burn-out entirely.

But this is very difficult to do in the busy-ness of school life. In the latest wave of research commission by the Department for Education on teacher and leader workload, senior leaders in primary schools reported working almost 58-hour weeks, that is almost 12 hours a day Monday to Friday (DfE, 2024).

The thought of “renewing oneself” or “sharpening the saw” seems like more work after a week that was already too busy.

Yet it is this principle, from Covey’s celebrated book that I think is most pertinent to senior leaders in schools because of the types of people that we are.

The work we engage in is servant-oriented in nature; it is work that stems from our hearts, our passions and our desires to see every student and staff member in our care achieve their full potential.

We are not “knowledge-workers” – we are workers who do everything from our hearts. This can be exhausting. In the meantime, if we are honest, we forget ourselves and the need to keep sharpening, developing and growing ourselves to make sure that we also can achieve our full potential.

 

An important distinction

Modern lifestyle bloggers or television personalities might call sharpening the saw “self-care” but that would not get at the core of what Covey is talking about. This one of his habits is about committing time and energy to balanced renewal and reflection in all aspects of yourself:

  • Physical: Stress management, exercise, nutrition.
  • Mental: Reading, visualising, planning and writing.
  • Social and emotional: Relationships.
  • Spiritual: Value clarification, commitment, study.

So first, this habit is about renewal rather than care. The next important distinction to make is that what is often assumed about “sharpening the saw” as a habit of our lives is that it is done when we are not at work – it is something we do in our own time.

I have increasingly come to disagree with this claim. Although I feel that “sharpening the saw” as a habit of life will generally mostly take place out of school hours, I often find that our best work can be done when we commit to this principle during work hours for ourselves and for our teams.

It can be something done in our professional and personal lives. But here let’s look at some practical ways this can be done while in school.

 

Sharpening the saw: Physical

  • Laps: Walk round the building a few times, purposefully. Choose something that you are going to think about. A question of some kind that can help you build knowledge of school life while you walk.
  • Do duties: Stay on your feet and get outside on duty.
  • Stand rather than sit: I worked for a headteacher who spent time at a standing desk for part of his day. He would transition at different points throughout the day, depending on his mood and how his body was feeling.
  • Diet: Think carefully about what you eat each day while at work and don’t overdo the caffeine. Set yourself a limit.

 

Sharpening the saw: Mental

  • Read alone: Keeping up-to-date with policies and reports from government or Ofsted can be tough. Why not schedule a short period of time every week to read something. Make a folder, physically or electronically, of things to read. This will mean that over time you keep up with a range of changes in short bursts and will not feel overwhelmed by having to read a huge range of things in one go.
  • Read with your team: Finding things to read with your team and running short reflections at the beginning of your meetings can be an important way to help you all regain focus, perspective and clarity on the issues you might be about to discuss.
  • Talk: Think of some questions you can all ask as a leadership team to colleagues. Discuss them when you next come together as a team. What did you find out? What did you learn about your school?
  • Observe: Choose small things that aren’t directly related to the quality of teaching to observe and then discuss with your team. Or improve knowledge of something you might not normally observe. For example, the amount of praise teachers give, the body language of staff, transitions, lunchtime behaviour, home-time routines, or student conversations during lunch.
  • Visits: It is important to get out and visit other schools on a regular basis. Select three schools you will go and visit in the academic year and consider the focus you will go with. Ensure that you build time into your leaders’ schedules so they can do the same.

 

Sharpening the saw: Spiritual 

  • Refine school values: Does your school have “values” of some kind? How well embedded are they? Listen to staff, students, and the community about the impact of these and whether they are supporting the overall development of young people and enriching their education.
  • Teach character: Have you got a character education programme? What impact does it have? Are students really growing because of it? How can your assembly programme align to this and your wider values as a school.
  • Learn from religious wisdom: Every school has to teach RE by law. You might see RE as just another subject, but there is so much that can be learned from world religions to enrich our lives. It is important that we share this with our students in a progressively sequenced way so that they can learn and grow beyond simply their academic learning.

 

In our personal lives

Of course, we can also work on these areas out of school. For example, when it comes to the spiritual elements have you thought about your own values for your life?

This is an integral part of being a leader. Whether these stem from religious or philosophical convictions, it is critical that you are able to find words to express the person that you are – your non-negotiable notions of what is good, what is right, and what is meaningful is what will sustain you during tough times. Carve-out time to think this through.

Elsewhere, you might keep a journal where you can reflect on this. It is too easy to spend time in our heads as leaders machinating over difficult issues and emotions among our staff teams, but we needn’t be like this.

Often writing it down and processing it effectively can relieve pressure for us so that we are able to focus on the most important things – and stay focused.

When it comes to the mental domain out of school, we might prepare a book list for the year and work through it slowly. Set yourself a reading goal and enjoy a range of different genres and topics. Carve-out time each week to build a routine to “escape” in this way.

Or commit to having a mentor or coach who you can talk to about your role and the issues you are facing in a safe and non-threatening way. And engage in things other than school life. Have fun – make things, draw things, do things that are different to school and teaching and leadership.

 

Final thoughts

I have made a range of simple suggestions of activities that you can engage in throughout your working day and in your personal life to support you to be able to commit time and energy to regular renewal.

It is important that you carefully consider how you are “renewing” yourself as a leader on a regular basis in each of the categories above.

Without a focus on this, there is a risk of burn-out, a risk of health issues and a chance you won’t be looking after the greatest asset – you, your passion, and your desire to lead your school so that all can achieve their full potential.

 

Further information & resources