#OneWord2018: Thrive

The Hopeful Headteacher

Picking one word to signpost and frame your year ahead is an interesting process. I have done it for a few years now, along with the annual Nurture blogs to review & reflect.

#oneword15 – Courage

I made some big decisions. I resigned. I paused. I took stock. I decompressed. I dug deep to prepare to make a big leap.

#oneword16 – Connect

I leant in to my preference for outward-facing leadership. I connected with interesting people. I initiated some interesting collaborations. I was coached. I coached others. I explored my values. I recalibrate. I secured a big new role.

#oneword17 – Change

I made a leap of faith. I leant in. I moved areas, trusts and roles. I began a new chapter.

#oneword18

The shortlist:

Consolidate – I need to embed & consolidate the changes I have introduced in both my personal & professional life.

Nurture – I need…

View original post 431 more words

Nurturing Hearts & Minds: #cultureofwellbeingDGinset

Gallery

The Hopeful Headteacher

Nurturing Hearts and Minds is our mission statement at Aureus School.

I have read a lot about mission statements in the last few years and how meaningless they have become. Equally I remember going to #TMLondon a few years ago and a teacher starting her career from QK presented on the legacy of her school’s mission statement. She showed us a picture of her year group at a girls’ school, she talked us through where they all were, they were all doing servant leadership roles, from nursing to teaching, to social working to coaching. She then showed us her mission statement, which was in Latin, the translation = to serve others. This really resonated with me in how subtly powerful and compelling this values frame was for the school community.

I reflected. Could I remember the mission statement of the school I went to, of the 4 schools I have…

View original post 1,176 more words

#Nurture1718: Seeds of Hope

The Hopeful Headteacher

Keziah encourages us each year to review our year & reflect on our achievements before setting our intentions for the next year. This is my 3rd nurture blog.

2015/16 – was all about seeking change as I had just resigned from my DHT role. I was re-evaluating & seeking my next steps. I needed to decompress to re-calibrate.

2016/17 – was all about seeing that change through, reestablishing myself & re-framing. Re-discovering my authentic self & being guided by my values. When I sit down and think  about it, it has been a mega year, a pivotal one for my career in fact. I did a TED talk!! It has been a big year for #womened too – we were nominated for Best Network in the National Diversity Awards!

2017/18 – will be a year of embedding, letting all of the changes in my professional & personal life settle & for…

View original post 802 more words

Ethical & Principled Leadership: Vision, Values, Voice & Virtue

The Hopeful Headteacher

I have been thinking, reflecting and discussing leadership a lot over the last few years. I have reflected on the leader I have become, the leader that I thought I would become and the future leaders who I want to develop and shape, staff and students alike. I have never liked labels nor boxes. I have always sat between ideologies and arguments, drawing on the aspects that resonate and disregarding the components that I am not aligned with.

I am not a conformist. I am a collaborator. I am not a game player. I do what is right, even when it makes me unpopular, and when it is challenging.  It has frustrated me over the years that I have worked with those who are territorial and do not appreciate the need for collaborative partnership and system leadership. It has frustrated me that I have worked with those who have focused on the outcomes, competing with each…

View original post 975 more words

Values-led Leadership: Moving from Surviving to Thriving

Gallery

The Hopeful Headteacher

It has been a busy week! I have been to 4 edu-events this week: Ambition School Leadership graduation/ celebration for Teaching Leaders; DFE Diversity and Equalities Roundtable; Diverse Leaders ‘Seizing Opportunities’ day and #SRock18. Each event has connected me with fabulous new educators, made me think and deepened my vision and values for education. I am knackered from the travelling but it has been a great week so I am still buzzing!

On Tuesday night I keynoted for a cohort of Middle Leaders on my values-led leadership journey. On Saturday I ran a workshop at #SRocks18 for a group of educators on the same theme and expanded the experiences I shared by building in reflection and discussion points on how to be a values-led educator.

These are the tips I shared at the end of the session – the things I wish I had known earlier in my career, the…

View original post 1,412 more words

Authentic Leadership: Relationships Matter

Gallery

The Hopeful Headteacher

I have been reflecting a lot on relationships recently and how they make or break a team and hold the space for a school’s culture and ethos to grow, learn and flourish.

Relationships in any team matter. Relationships in a school are the cogs that make the culture work. Relationships when you are values-led are even more under the spotlight of scrutiny. When relationships are strained the ethos could be shaken. It is the culture that holds the team together, the values that create the space to reflect, to discuss and to stay pointing in the same direction. Our team have started the Fierce Conversations training model, we are taking steps to connect and collaborate in a coaching culture where we communicate and challenge in a constructive and collegiate way.

Growing a team from scratch is intense: it takes a great deal of investment to establish new relationships; it takes…

View original post 2,918 more words

Bhaskaracharya’s Law of Gravity : Discovered 1200 Years before Newton!

Magnificent Maharashtra

India is considered as a traditional country but the world is unaware of our contributions to this modern world. Our theories were used as a base for many concepts such as weather forecast, astronomy, astrology, aviation etc. India has developed some of the best mathematicians the world has ever seen. Many of these geniuses were not given credit for their work.

An exhibition was held to spread awareness on India’s rich scientific heritage. The exhibition coordinator, Ashish Manjramkar stated

 “Very few of us know that speed of light was known to Indians in Vedic period. A shloka says that the speed of light is 2202 yojana per half nimish.  Yojana is a unit of distance which equals to 9.06 miles and half a nimish (nimishardha) is one tenth of a second. The figure is very close to the modern measurement of speed of light.” – Article Res

When we talk…

View original post 646 more words

Are you a Role Model?

Lead Today

Well, are you? The short answer, especially if you’re a leader or even just someone in a leadership position, is yes.

Your people watch you. No one is born with the knowledge of what it takes to succeed so they must learn it. They learn some of it by listening, some by reading, but mostly they learn from watching. If you are their leader or the person who is above them in a leadership position then it’s you they are watching. You MUST be their model of successful behavior!

So you absolutely are a role model. The only question is, do you model behavior that leads to success or do you model behavior that leads to something else.

You can tell your people what to do and they may do it. You can show them and they will likely do it, or you can tell them and show them. If…

View original post 251 more words

How to Build Meaningful Relationships

Lead Today

That?s kind of a big title for this little post. It might make a better title for a book because there are many things that go into building meaningful human relationships. For the purposes of this post however we?re going to look at four ideas that can make a positive difference in your relationships.

I make no distinction between business and personal relationships. When you?re good at building relationships you understand that there are more similarities than there are differences in those two types of relationships.

If you want strong, healthy and meaningful relationships with other people you first need a strong healthy relationship with yourself. You will need to understand the vast difference between loving yourself (very healthy) and being in love with yourself. (not so healthy)

The best builders of relationships, especially long-term relationships, are comfortable with themselves. They know what they know and even more important they…

View original post 440 more words

3 Steps to Opt-Out of The Rat Race and Achieve Lasting Fulfillment

Leading with Trust

So how are you doing with that New Year’s resolution? What’s that you say? You can’t even remember your resolution? If you’re like me, the rat race of life has taken over and you’ve been focused on other things. We aren’t alone. Surveys show that a few days into a new year 22% of people have already broken their resolution, 11% have abandoned them altogether, and only 8% will keep their resolution all year.

It seems as though the rat race wins every time, yet we keep coming back for more. In fact, we seem addicted to the constant pursuit of self-optimization. Notice I didn’t say self-improvement. Our culture has moved beyond the old-school simplicity of improving ourselves through ways like reading a book, taking a class, or developing self-awareness. Instead, we opt for the high-tech version of self-optimization of hacking our way to improved productivity, the monitoring of every…

View original post 575 more words