LIVE | December Reflections

Hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to Education Leaders Live with me, Shailene, and my brilliant co-host, Chris Scora. Chris, how are you doing? I'm good, great to be here, Christmas week, starting to feel a little bit of relaxation creeping in.

Are you? Yeah. Are you feeling Christmassy? Have you had any Christmas parties yet?

No, no, well, I had a Christmas party on mine, on my own Coru podcast with Kaylee, with Christmas hats. Go on, first lesson of the day, how do you create a virtual Christmas hat, and why aren't you wearing one now? Well, it was done in Google Meet, and you've got a filter where you can just drop a hat on your head of your choice. Kaylee opted for the unicorn headdress, and I went for the standard party hat.

I didn't want to wear my Christmas shirt today, but I was worried that it would play havoc with the kind of background filter, and I would start disappearing, and you'd get part of my cough. Well, we were losing your head last time, weren't we, Chris? It's nice to have your whole body in the podcast today. I really appreciate that.

Well, I've got my Christmas jumper on, which is a very old Christmas jumper that we bought maybe nearly 10 years ago now, down in Grand Jo at some point, and it's kind of all kind of fallen to bits, actually. I was saying to Emma, I really need a new Christmas jumper, so maybe she's listening now, and maybe she'll buy me one for Christmas. Is Emma our listener, is she? I think Emma is the only listener.

Well, actually, I can confirm, we are live on LinkedIn, we are live on YouTube, we are live at educationleaders.live, and we do have listeners on all platforms today, so welcome, welcome, welcome. It is wonderful to have you here. We've already received a chat message.

Yep, it's Emma. She's here with us, so there you go. Our singular listener on Riverside. Well, I hope so.

So we have got a brilliant live session today because it's been quite a month, although we're usually run education leaders live at the last Thursday of every month, but this is obviously the second to last because there's a big event in the calendar next week, and we'll all be kind of celebrating and resting for Christmas, which means we've only got a few episodes to review. So for those who are tuning in new, whether you're joining in with us live or you're catching up on the bonus episode on the podcast, this episode is meant to be a companion to the education leaders pod. And the idea is that me and Chris, Chris is brilliant thinker alongside me and listens to all the podcasts, is that we can talk about some of the podcasts and get some ideas of how it's landed, what things we're reflecting on. But ideally, what we'd like this to be is more than a conversation between me and Chris, but a conversation with you, the listener as well.

What's landing with you? What are you reacting to? What did you agree with? What did you disagree with?

That would be great. Like, tell us kind of what you're thinking. I think Chris has got some hot takes today then. So he might lead us through that.

So if you're on LinkedIn, say hello in the comments below the video. We'll pick them up as we go through and we'll bring your comments in, bring your questions in. The same if you're on YouTube, Education Leaders Live. All of those comments will come to us.

So it'd be really, really great to have you with us. So we've had three episodes. So let me give you a bit of a run through. So at the start of the month, I did a solo episode.

So I do these every other week is a little solo episode with a leadership tip. And this one at the start of the month was how to think long term when everything's on fire, which was really thinking about the idea that we can feel like we have to firefight so much as leaders. But how do you keep your eyes on the road? How do you keep focused on that long term strategy when everything feels like a whirlwind around you?

There's a few ideas raised in that episode. Then last week had an incredible conversation with Yael Kass, who really got us into the idea of ethical school leadership and had some really strong ideas around some areas of how schools can be led differently, which I think we can all jump into in a moment. And then this week, the episode was a bit of a personal reflection from me on how to build leadership trust. And in that episode, I shared an example from my past where I think I lost trust in someone and they lost trust in me.

But also, I share some strategies of how you might go about building trust, especially if you wanted to build it quickly. So three episodes this week. Chris, I'm going to just throw it over to you. Where do you want to start this week?

What's been on your mind? That's a tricky one. I think we'll maybe start with Dr. Yael Kass, that episode.

Because honestly, I listened to this and I listened to it twice. And I still didn't know what I thought at the end of those two sessions. I kind of came and went in terms of, yes, I'm on board with this. Actually, no, I'm definitely not on board with that.

And it really made me think and reflect. And I think you described it at the beginning, that it was one of your more challenging episodes as well. So presumably, you experienced something similar in that. Yeah.

I think any conversation around kind of compliance is always challenging. But there was a lot in there of Yael's kind of deeply knowledgeable and comes from actually an organizational development background before coming into the education world. So it's coming from this, from a different anger, which I thought is really interesting. Someone who's been outside of education, worked on organizational development and then comes in and goes, hang on a sec, what's happening here?

Is this normal practice? Because schools can often operate differently. And I guess the question is, do they operate differently because they are different and should? Or do they operate differently because we're just not in line with the kind of best practices?

You know, I find it fascinating about schools, okay? That as teachers and education professionals, we spend an inordinate amount of time and energy getting the best out of kids in our classroom. And we learn to deal with their personalities, their frailties, their vulnerabilities. And we learn to build those relationships of trust and all of those kinds of things.

And successful schools are really, really good at that. And then we come to managing our own people within the adults strata of the school. And we don't apply the same principles quite as well very often. We don't apply those same ideas.

I listened to this. And before I started listening, I got a little bit nervous already, which suggested it was going to be quite a challenging and interesting one. I'm always worried about systemizing stuff because I think that can often... You end up with something like contract creep, whereby systemizing something ultimately becomes a tool for control, even if it's not intended that way.

And it heads towards standardization. And I think that the really strong schools that I see and that I work with are those that are maybe comfortable with a little bit of diversity, a little bit of academic pluralism perhaps, different styles working in different settings, that sort of thing. So I was a little bit nervous when I started to sort of think about this idea of systemizing stuff. But I also recognize that teachers kind of like frameworks and they like a degree of certainty, partly because they're busy and maybe they don't always have the time for creativity.

So it was quite an interesting one for me. Go. Because a link to that, I'm really curious on your opinion because this is where I'm still torn a little bit. And it is on the role of HR in schools.

Now, when I was speaking with Yael, and she so eloquently just described this idea that in her view, HR should be more responsible in schools for the duties HR would normally be responsible for in a company such as training and development and these kind of things. And her argument was that we overwhelm our principals by not delegating enough in schools to HR. And I've also, I've heard that from other organizations as well. I remember attending a webinar a couple of years ago, there's a little organization called Leading Your International School and they were talking about HR and the importance of HR and that we should allow HR managers to do more.

But I felt torn because in my experience, I was like, yikes, thinking about my HR, they were so removed from my job, I didn't want them anywhere near my professional learning. I wanted that to be with educators. I don't know. So there's this tension.

I wonder where that lands with you. Okay. I mean, the concept of lifting some of that load, that administrative load and so forth away from principals or other people, I think is fine in principal. And I think in a business setting, it's maybe a little bit easier to pull off.

For that to work, they've got to have credibility with the people that they're working with. And I think that there's maybe a little bit of a credibility gap in a lot of schools between bringing HR in to do those kind of things and so on. And I wonder how you bridge that gap. I think for anything like that to work, you need to bridge that gap.

I've actually got something scribbled down on this very point. And I think it's often about the journey to leadership within schools and it's very much about how we view that process. Often the journey to leadership is built around compliance and administration rather than necessarily leadership per se. I've watched that and I've watched it in my own career as well.

And I've sort of questioned as to how we do that. And I think that if we're to build in real real leadership, we could farm out some of those administrative tasks to those places, but it needs to be a way of bridging that gap. And I wonder if maybe our focus within schools has gravitated towards compliance and administration because that's what we get measured on very often. That's the tangible that can be seen.

That's the box that can be ticked, that idea that you get what you measure within the accountability frameworks that we operate. And I just wonder if there's a better way. I've got scribbled down here, big asterisks, root and branch reform of schools. And I sort of, yeah, I love the idea of what was talked about in this thing.

And I like the idea of lifting some of that load off principles. But like you, you're torn and you're not even involved in it now. So imagine what it feels like if you're a teacher or a head of department and someone says to you, we're bringing an HR to do X, Y and Z. Exactly.

Well, I think so. I mean, I'm intrigued. Like listeners, if you've been at experience in the business world, we'd love to hear from you. So send a comment in or if you're listening on the catch up, send a little email because I'm really curious at why it is different in the business world.

So my understanding is in the business world, the corporate world and other industries, HR would be very responsible for the lot more of the hiring process. Whereas in schools, you tend to find that HR do some of the administration and very little of the actual filtering, like that's done a lot of the time by leadership teams in schools. And then professional learning is very little in international schools, especially that's done by HR. Whereas I assume learning and development is a typical, that is quite a typical HR function.

For me, like learning and development though, I get the idea of saving principals and leaders time, but at the same time, surely the best people to help you with your learning are going to be the people who share the same knowledge bank as you with other educators rather than HR professionals. And maybe the reason it's evolved in our sector to be run by educators is because we're in the business of learning. So we feel like actually we're kind of well equipped to manage our own perhaps. Yeah. And I think within that, you know,

jokingly sort of suggested that your heckles might go up. I think that would be a fair and reasonable reaction if someone is trying to develop you or further your knowledge when they have not walked in your shoes or traveled your journey. Or face the challenges that you've had. It's very difficult to be credible in that role unless you've actually lived it yourself, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally. Well, Chris, any other reflections on that, or shall we kind of move on to one of our other, the two solo episodes for this week? Yeah, a couple of things if I may actually. Yeah, go for it.

There was the discussion about sort of hidden power structures and things in schools and that kind of remit, that idea of kind of clarifying a purpose and really sort of drilling down into making roles really clear. And again, that troubled me a little bit from the perspective that I think one of the great strengths of schools are their creativity and their ability of teachers to pick up multiple tasks and carry some of that weight and bring something to the party that meets the very diverse needs of kids in your care. And I think the role of a teacher is driven by the very diverse needs of those kids. I kind of worried a little bit about that kind of standardization, that narrowing or clarifying of role that might give us administrative comfort as teachers or as schools, but might actually take away from us meeting the needs of the kids by virtue.

Well, that's not my job, that's someone else's remit. You know, if a kid approaches you, irrespective of whether it's your remit or not, they've vested that trust in you for that particular purpose. And perhaps that idea of pinning down our roles really tightly is not something that I was overly comfortable with because I think the strength of schools and teachers is in that ability to relate to others. Yeah, it's been no surprise that I'm quite aligned with you there as well, Chris.

And I think there's some wonderful work I'm looking on my shelf right now because I have a book and I'm not going to be able to find it today because for anyone who's... I wonder if I can make it so you can see this here. But for anyone who's looking at my shelves, my wife has very helpfully come in and colour, organized my books by colour. And now I can't bloody find anything, but it looks fantastic.

I'm told I just have to get used to the system and it will be fine. Anyway, the reason I'm telling you this is because there is a brilliant book called by Laurie Cohen about schools as ecosystems. And I think it speaks a lot to kind of what we're talking about there, about when you view a school as an ecosystem, a simple, compliant style culture can never work in that. In the same way as trying to raise...

to tend to your garden in your home through a compliance methodology, you're going to struggle with that because everything interacts with each other. Yeah, and I think the idea that we need to legislate for everything that we do in schools is unrealistic. I think that perhaps the alternative approach might be to start to value the diversity and complexity of things that we do carry as teachers and recognize that actually there's a lot of stuff that can't be measured, that can't be written down, that just kind of exist that we're doing. And I think that we probably need to recognize that a little bit better than we do.

I don't think that the sort of pinning job roles and systemizing things is necessarily the response that I would advocate. So we've got a great community joining in. We've got Judy Anne Green, who's joining us. Really glad to see you here.

Judy says, Ian says, thanks for this session. I've been pondering this. Do we fail to nurture and support teachers because we don't truly value them? Or is it a matter of time constraints, limited resources, or not seeing teachers, that particular teacher at the moment, as vital assets?

Great question. What are you thinking there, Chris? Okay, well, funnily enough, I think that whole concept of a teacher's responsibility, a teacher's sort of autonomy in what they do is key to this. And I think that we probably, if you've got a question, a relatively serious question, as a teacher, you'd probably refer it up the ladder.

Not for advice, but for permission. And I think that very often we don't empower our teachers. We have quite a high accountability model, quite an extreme type of accountability model, and that sort of filters through. And I think that perhaps the route or the way to get to lightening the load for principals, but maintaining that diversity that we mentioned before, that kind of complex role that we carry, is to maybe trust our teachers and empower them to make those choices.

And rather than requiring them to seek permission for something, have a relationship where they see you as an advisor or a counselor and they can come and talk to you about something as a leader, but they still have the authority and the role to make decisions and choices. Yeah. Again, that's from the idea world in my shed at the bottom of my garden. Well, back to the shed.

Well, what you speak to, I think there's some brilliant work by Frederick Lalloo on this, on reinventing organizations and how you invent them in a way that is less hierarchical. And that the idea is not to just like a free-for-all, but actually it's to think about what your agreed structures of operational structures, and then allowing people to work within them, and which I think can be helpful. Welcome Laura as well. Laura, no, Laura has just said, what is the name of that book regarding schools of ecosystems?

I'm going to find it. I think it's white. Feel free to fill times, Chris. Okay.

Yeah. I'm trying to think of something there to fill the time with. I put you on the spot. Yeah.

You need wait no longer. I found it. This is the book. It's called Integrating Educator Wellbeing, Growth and Evaluation for Foundations for Learning.

And you can see that it's a picture of a terrarium. And if you want to know a little bit more about that, on the podcast I spoke with the author, which quite handy, one of my absolute favorite, favorite episodes. And you will just need to go on to the Education Leaders Podcast Archive, and you will find an episode called An Ecological Approach to Wellbeing. And it is a local approach to Wellbeing.

It kind of brings back the degree of optimism, you know, and quite often we get a little bit ground down by the system and the admin and things like that. And it just kind of flags up what we're doing it all for. Absolutely. Well, Chris, on that, I wonder, we didn't plan to talk, but I know why you know a bit about this episode, because you've been writing about it recently.

Yes. I wonder if we should tease out what we're up to at the minute. Yeah, go on. I did notice you mentioned it online the other day, and I was like, oh, I was worried about that when I put that out, but I wasn't good enough to edit it out, I'm afraid.

No, I'm well up for this. So why don't you kind of lead us in? What are we up to that you might know about Laurie Coen's episode in quite a bit of detail? Okay.

Well, Shane's actually responsible for me giving up gainful employment last summer. And we've talked about doing a book for some time, about the podcast, where we sort of run a commentary on the podcast. And it's a little bit where this live session has come out of as well. And the book essentially, it's been a lifetime dream of mine to write something along these lines.

And Shane and I have had a little bit of a meeting of minds on this. And basically, we've got a little bit of a commentary running on the podcasts, expressing our opinions around that, critiquing some of the ideas, celebrating other aspects of it. And yeah, it's a very, very exciting project. And it was this that it was the option to do this that actually gave me the courage to make the jump from gainful employment into core education, talk to you about this at the Festival of Ed.

And then I also bumped into Sebastian Folks, the author of Birdsong, at the same event. And it was a really small session, because he was a late addition to the whole thing, the agenda. And it was a tiny session, and he was an inspiring man. I came home from that festival, decided I wanted to be an author, and I resigned from my job, and then told my wife afterwards.

She was divided. Well, I'm really excited about this. And this, for me, when you spoke to me and said, you know, we talked about these ideas and the idea of bringing what is now nearly 150 episodes with some incredible leaders from around the world and some really interesting reflections, there are so many stories and worthwhile learning from that. I'm just delighted to have you, and you're such a brilliant writer as well, to weave that together into a narrative with the secret Cristogora sauce to really shed light on your thoughts on this and what your thoughts are and how these all link.

I'm just really delighted to have this together. Yeah, me too. And, you know, it's great to be piggybacking on your success with Change Start here and things like that as well. This really is a lifetime ambition for me, and I figure if I don't do it now, I'm never going to get the chance again.

So I'm really glad that you like what I've written so far. I just hope that the wider public and the publishing houses conquer. Absolutely. It's early days, early days at the minute.

We've got some good stuff together. And expect to hear more about the book about education leaders in 2026, where I'm sure things will progress at a good pace. Thank you ever so much for everyone. If you're tuning in live or you're tuning in on the recording, it's great to have you here.

Thanks. Great to have you here, Julianne, Laura. Laura, you are so welcome. And please do check out that podcast with Laurie.

I think the fact you're asking, you are going to love everyone I've spoke to who listens to that episode has just been like, my goodness, that was brilliant. Bringing back some optimism. Yes, exactly. So, Chris, tell me, where should we move next?

We've got two more episodes that came out. This, and I'll let you pick, because otherwise it makes me look like a big Ed, because they were both solo episodes from me. Okay. Well, let's go to the trust one.

The building trust. This week's episode. Yeah, this week's. And the whole thing about sort of competence and character and those kinds of things.

I've got to say that in this, Shane, I listen to your story, and I recognize that sinking feeling that you probably suffered when you realized that the trust had been breached and that perhaps you had broken a protocol. Yes, yeah. Here's my take on it. I think that in the schools, we have a little bit of a duty to be honest and open.

And I'm not sure that you did anything wrong in that. I think to highlight those kind of concerns around professionalism for whatever reason. We're entirely legitimate, particularly because you'd been asked the subsequent sort of breach of that. Well, that's a more questionable area.

It's a bit of a gray area for me. And I wonder if, would I prefer someone just to be straight with me and tell me the truth about that or not? And I wonder if in a professional environment, particularly a school where you're carrying the responsibility of looking after children, we have a bit of a duty that supersedes any personal relationships or any niceties to kind of call stuff out or at least be honest about it. Yeah.

I just kind of wonder that. That said, several people, many people have suggested that I'm too honest for my own good on occasions and maybe that's why I work for myself these days. Well, it's funny you say that. So for anyone listening who hasn't listened into that episode, I won't go through the big, but it was a big story where I essentially felt like I'd broken someone else's trust because they'd told me something and I passed that on to my leader but then it ended up getting back to them.

And yeah, it's interesting because, you know, I felt horrible in this situation and you know, still doesn't sit with me right. Because yeah, I did wonder like, how else could that have happened? Now you're right in a way, as a leader, this person was going for an interview. So did I have a responsibility when asked by my leader on my professional view?

I had a responsibility to share it. Like you say, there's an importance. You're working with children. Like this is, you know, there's no more important job.

So I guess I'm left thinking, not was it the right thing to share it, which it probably was, should I have been more explicit when I was being around this that this could be shared in the future? Or did I have a responsibility to that person to say, to say, hey, this is how I'm not feeling comfortable with the way you're speaking now. And it puts me in a position as a leader in the school that I may, you know, I don't know. I don't know.

This is really difficult. Well, I've got that very question written down in front of me here. And it's about how do you manage upwards with that? How do you actually say, well, okay, I'm happy to answer your questions, but I'd rather this wasn't shared.

Should that knowledge, should that information be shared or not? It's a really, really tricky thing. And that managing upwards is an area of real challenge. Do you speak truth to power?

I suppose, ultimately. And in my experience, that quite often doesn't end that well. Well, yeah. Well, there is that, there is that too.

I don't know. It's a, yeah, a real, a real tricky, a real tricky that one, that bit, that one. How did you feel like, I mean, apart from the story, like, you know, I shared some ideas around how to build trust, such as sharing your thinking process transparently with staff or admitting when you don't know, but committing to find out or explaining your decisions, even if they're unpopular. I don't know how that landed with you, Chris.

I really like this. And there's, there's that idea that, that's hardwired into us as teachers, where these come into the, into the post as a teacher and we're supposed to be the subject expert for a start. So we're supposed to know all about our subject. That kind of then builds through our psychology.

As we move up the ladder, we quite often get promoted on the basis of our competency, rather than necessarily our character. You know, the things that we can demonstrate, those administrative processes, the boxes that we've picked, the projects that we've completed and results on the back of that. So when we arrive in a position of leadership, particularly when we're new to it, might be a little bit nervous about showing that vulnerability in the same way that as a teacher, you might be nervous about showing that vulnerability to your class. But actually for me, it's one of the most powerful things that you can do to recognize your own fallibility, your own gaps as it were.

And I think it leaves people with very limited space to criticize you and pick fault with you if you are open about that vulnerability. And I really liked that idea. And I think that when we got into this episode, that distinction between competence and character fascinated me because for me, and I think possibly you and I are well aligned on this, education is a values driven. It's a character driven industry, business, task, job, role, vocation.

But I think that we drive towards competence because we can measure that. That's what's measured. That's what gets seen. That's easy to tick the box.

It's part of our compliance processes and things like that. And characters are a much harder thing to get your head round. And assess and understand. And I think that perhaps the competence is the easy win whereas character and trust that goes with that is maybe a little trickier to work with.

I love the idea of just being vulnerable and being honest with people. But like I say, I've been criticized for being too honest in the past. But interestingly enough, from a leadership perspective, when I took on my first leadership role, the hardest thing I found was to get people to be straight with me, to tell me what they really thought. And you're kind of trying to second guess them.

And I wonder if that openness is something that we need to think about how we build into our leadership. It's that classic. Lots of people have different opinions on this and I understand why. And I think it's probably because our different personalities suit different things.

You'll have had leaders who say things like, I don't socialize with my staff because I'm a leader. I can't, you know, that's a problem. And for them, that works. And I've seen good leaders who do that.

But I've also seen good leaders who are best friends with some of their staff. And for them, that works. I've seen the opposite as well. I've seen some leaders who are totally removed and should be a bit closer and some leaders who are on friendship terms that stop them from being able to fulfill their duties.

So, yeah, it's tricky. It's really interesting listening to you here, though. If you're a teacher and you said, I'm teaching the lesson because this works for me, that's an obvious problem because you'd be teaching the lesson to meet the needs of the kids in front of you. It's not about what works for the leader per se.

It's about what works for their team, really. And the leader's got to be the malleable person in the middle and they've kind of got to work that out. And that's a really tricky thing. And I think that when you've got that concept of being the expert in the field, et cetera, that can make that step quite difficult.

Whereas if you're open to vulnerability and you're open to dialogue, it can make it a little bit easier to do that. Yeah. There's a balance. There's a balance, I think, like anything as well.

It's so tricky. Like, you know, we can't all be Kia Starmer about this and like, you know, totally, you know, in many people's minds devoid of any personality. I'm wondering how many eye rules we're getting at this very point. Exactly.

But I mean, you know, like on the opposite, we don't want the Boris Johnsons either. Like, you know, it's really between how much can you be a visionary out there leader who is kind of just driven and seems to have, and how much can you just be a servant leader who doesn't seem to have their own personality or feeling? Like, I feel like they're both leadership muscles. You have to be able to humbly, humbly move between.

I saw leadership journey is part of that process and maybe we don't give enough autonomy further down that journey. I know a lot of people who've been very good, successful deputy heads and then they've stepped into the headship role and it's not really worked for them. There's one particular one in my history who was universally known as the arch administrator because that was their safe space. That was where they found comfort and they weren't comfortable inspiring people, bringing them on board, making their team feel good.

Quite the opposite. And that's not to denigrate the expertise that the person in question had. It's just their expertise was administrative and wasn't leadership. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a tricky one. There's no easy answers here. No, no, there isn't. You've got lots of different personalities in any given mix in trying to manage that dynamic and it's really interesting.

There are friends of mine that have taken that top job and it's fascinating listening to the sort of off the record conversations as they move into that position and take those things on and find those challenges and maybe make those mistakes. Quite often they would never admit mistakes outside of privacy of a friendship. Yeah, it's funny that. Do you know I was speaking with someone the other day and reflecting on mistakes and that funny thing that happens where when you're at the time most people are just really reluctant to make their mistakes, but for some reason when people have made it successful like 20 years later, all they talk about is the mistakes they made when they were younger and you go, hmm, that's interesting.

You never really talked about them at the time, did you? Yeah, absolutely. We're very judgemental and there's quite a psychology in that. But I think part of my history, I used to be a skydiver in my younger days but there's no such thing as a silly question and when you did make a mistake the mistake went in the accident report and you had to sit down and chew over it as to what had gone wrong.

And yeah, it's an important thing to be able to address that openly but not be fearful of the consequences that go with that. Again, not quite sure how you would achieve that. Well, that's the thing. And again, I'm looking at my, I'm going to try and look at my bookshelf again and find what I need but there is a book.

Just for the record, colour is not the way to organise your books and if Emma is listening... Emma is going to... She used to like me, didn't she? Yeah, you won't be invited round for dinner again, Chris.

We'll be not serving you purple rice. I've got loads of leadership books next to me and what's interesting is a lot that talks about that high level leadership and I think a lot of people looking for that answer, you know, you're looking for that kind of cure. You know, maybe it's Simon Sinek, for example. Start with Y, which, you know, everyone's got.

You know, we all love this but it's actually, it's not a very good leadership handbook at all because it can give you principles that you can think about but it's not like you can't just lead in the Simon Sinek way and you can't just lead in this way and that way because I think they're high level and you have to develop your leadership muscles to become the leader who you are because it's going to fit naturally to your style and to your personality. But I do think, like, and one thing we're working on together at the minute with Coru, which is on the education leaders intensive. So we've got a cohort in January and then we've got a great partnership that's going to take us through into the new year. But the idea of, instead of trying to work on those high level things, what if we just master some fundamentals and see if that helps a leader to unlock some of those wider leadership capabilities and to feel that they can lead and answer those big leadership questions because they've got a bit of cognitive space to do so. At the minute, that's kind of

where I'm sitting as there's a potential for us to think about. Well, while we're on that, it's great to still see, we've still got quite a few people joining in with us online and thank you so much Laura for sharing as well who's reposted to say what a fabulous way to start my day joining Shane Leaning and Chris for their live podcast. Thank you. Truly authentic and inspiring session.

Thank you both for your recommendations. Very much looking forward to checking them out. Laura, it is an absolute honor to have you join us this afternoon, this morning, wherever you are in the world. Yeah, where are you Laura?

Love to know. Yes, yeah, please let us know. Let us know where you are. This is what this live session is about.

We've got the podcast, but this is about bringing you in. We also, Emma is on the line, and she says, Chris, I adore you. But if you heard the list of asks I had organizing that bloody bookshelf, as far as I'm concerned, if you don't know the color of your book, you haven't looked closely enough at it. Well, there we go, some scope for self-reflection here at Coro Education.

Thank you Emma, appreciate it. I shall be looking at my bookshelf this afternoon next week. We'll get rid of that virtual background and I want to see the bookshelf, the bookshelf arranged neatly. Chris, before we kind of finish up, we also had one other episode, didn't we?

Yeah. This month, and it was towards the beginning, the idea that, you know, your budget's been slashed, or three teachers have resigned, and parents are complaining about the new timetable, and then someone's asking you about that five-year strategic plan, and you just feel like, uh-oh, I haven't had time for this. Yeah. What do you think, Kim?

You know, this really resonated with me, and I remember, even as a young teacher, sort of trying to get to grips with all of the different requirements on any given day, and quite often you'd come in on a Monday, and you were still busy planning the previous week for what you were trying to do the last week. So that whole tension between long-term planning and the sort of everyday is a perennial challenge that teachers will, I think, will always face. And the theme that came out of this for me is, we mentioned it a little bit earlier, it's that idea of academic pluralism, and I think that very often in schools, we systemize staff, we have very high levels of accountability, not huge levels of autonomy in terms of the big decisions and things like that, and I wonder if perhaps one of the roots to being able to get on the front foot is to accept a little bit of diversity in the school, to perhaps parcel out some of that autonomy and develop those attitudes and values, and accept that maybe your way is not necessarily the only way, or the framework is not necessarily the best way in some circumstances, and then kind of trust in the people that you employ at the front line, if you like. I'm reminded of that idea that those important decisions often do get referred up for authority, rather than for advice. You might

seek permission of your leader to make a particular call on something, rather than necessarily having the chance to sit down and just thrash something out and find that leadership. And again, it goes to that idea of the root to leadership. We tend to be quite administrative. My take on that is that I think that pressure will always exist, and I think the only way to deal with it really is to engage the wider team in carrying some of those decisions, if you like. I loved

your three anchors. I really did. The non-negotiables thing, for me this would be around values, rather than necessarily specific red lines. I'd want people to be working to those values, if you like, and those concepts. I did wonder about your

monthly review. I'm struggling for time, so I'm going to do another monthly review. I struggle for time, and I recognize that too. I think that that risks making people feel a little more anxious, but I recognize the necessity of it too.

I'm all on board with your anchors. I loved it. But I think if you're able to build in some of the sharing, and some of the openness, that removes that lonely feeling as well, because quite often the anxiety is built from that kind of it's all on me. I think that if you can move away from that, the pressure feels a little better. I think that there's

scope to do that in school. I'm horrified at the idea that but not surprised by the 75 percent of change fails. Yeah. Well that was, how do we change that? How do we make that

better? Well the only real way to make that better is to engage a wider team, I think. Yeah, I agree. It's what me and Ephraim talked about in our book, Change Starts Here, about community-led change.

It's so important. But I was hoping in this episode to kind of say to empathize with leaders, to say, hey, it is really difficult when you're feeling like so much is going on around you to think about strategy, and that's okay. And actually, from my experience, I have to bookend my weeks very methodically, and I've done so for many years now. And I do that by firstly, starting my week by showing on the screen here, by making my little bullet journal and my lists, so I can actually figure out what is it exactly.

Figure out what is it that you want to do, like anyone who doesn't work in that way, like I feel like how are you keeping on top? But secondly, by finishing my weeks with those reflections, or with those anchors, that actually say, okay good, good shame, you've done X, Y, and Z. I even still do this today, even though I'm working adjacent to schools and working with schools from the outside in, I've still got to think of my organisation, and my strategy, and I can get obsessed with the day-to-days of running a business, with the accounting, with the kind of social promotion, all this kind of stuff, which is all fun and games, but you can have weeks go by and your strategy disappears, and I feel like the best chance I have of coming back to that strategy is if I actively put in non-negotiable time, where I have to think about it, and even if, even if it's just five minutes, like even just five minutes to say, I am protecting just five minutes this week, where I have to go back and look at my strategy and go how have I moved towards that, and if I haven't this week, what could I do, what small thing could I do to make a move towards that, so that I don't get to the end of the year thinking I've barely achieved anything, but at the very least, five minutes a week, I'm pushing slowly towards that goal, and I think in the episode I mentioned it was inspired a lot by my former leader, Stacey Wallace, who I owe a debt of gratitude for, who used to describe, and I know she borrowed it from somewhere else in the business world, the idea of a whirlwind, you know, just constantly pulling us off the path, and she kept telling us, saying to us, look, we're living in this whirlwind and we're going to get pulled off, don't, you know, we can't, we have to accept that, you can't stay on the path as a leader, you're going to get pulled off. The key is, how do you reorientate yourself, and how do you keep bringing yourself back to the path?

That's the key, and that needs something explicit, certainly in my experience. For sure, and one of the things that I've done this year, that's worked quite well for me, is simply keeping the number of tabs on my laptop at the minimum, just what I'm working on at that particular time, I've got slots in my day for my emails, and slots in my day where it's email-free, because the danger is that it's not that you necessarily start down the road of dealing with it directly, but in your head, it starts to eat up a little bit of your headspace, if it's there and you start to think about it, I'm a perennial overthinker anyway, and I find it hard to close my mind off if something pops through, so I kind of prevent access if you like, and I just channel my mind down a particular route, otherwise you sort of get broken ideas. So with the writing, for us for example, I need a clear day with no distractions. I'd love to write through the week, but actually Saturdays work for me because I've got nothing else on, I don't feel the commercial pressure to be doing stuff, and I can just sit there and have kind of clarity of thought, the books are open, the notes are there, and I can get on and write stuff, and I find it hard to do that through the week because of the distractions.

Yeah, I totally get that, it's actually one of the reasons why I'm not in the camp of schools dictating when and when where teachers can email each other. I just, I feel like don't do that, like if a teacher is at their best after they've put their kids to bed, and that's when they want to kind of crack on with their planning, and they can send their emails off, do that. But just don't make it clear that you are not expected to check emails outside. I know that can be a bit challenging because people say well you've still got an internal pressure, but I do feel like that different people have different ways of working.

Yeah, and you know, that's that risk that I mentioned before. When you start the systemised stuff, you get that contract creep, and it heads towards, it can even inadvertently turn into a form of control that doesn't work for some people, and that concept of systemic pluralism that I mentioned earlier is accepting that others work in different ways, in the same way that you would look at your class as a classroom teacher, and accept that Bob will respond to X, Y, and Z, but Martha has not got a hope of addressing it in that way, so I need to address Martha in a slightly different fashion. I need to meet her where she is, and maybe if we brought that principle to bear in our sort of working with our colleagues and things, we might see some progress. Absolutely, and this is Education Leaders sponsored by Academic Pluralism today, I think that's Chris's favourite phrase, that's the flavour of the month, I love it, I love it. There's probably an

algorithm that's going to flag up on LinkedIn at some point, isn't there? Your favourite word is 2025. Exactly, exactly. Well, Chris, we're coming towards the end, we have had some lovely people join us, including Julianne, who's just mentioned to say such a lovely conversation, it was really, really lovely to have you here, Julianne, it was lovely to have Laura here, how wonderful, Laura actually did reply and say you are in Ireland and taught in the UK for a number of years, that is awesome, Laura, and we also have got Emma joining us, and actually putting up questions saying, given it's the last episode before Christmas, what Christmas wish would you have for educators or the future of leadership in education? No small question

there, or if you could wish anyone in the pod, onto the pod in 2026, who would it be and why? In terms of what I would wish for any educator, clearly following the conversation we've had earlier, I'd wish them for their bookshelves to be colour coordinated, that would be my wish to go out there and cross all schools globally. Imagine that, the revolution of school libraries, by colour. No Dewey Decimals anymore.

Absolutely, happy days. In terms of education, I think educators need a rest over Christmas, I think switch your computers off, kick back, try not to think about pedagogy, try to just take time and, you know, a bit of self care, and I think perhaps self care is something that we're not that great at in the educational world. Because we care about our work, we probably push ourselves too hard, and I think that's probably the thing that I would wish for everyone for this holiday. In as your guest, who would be your are you allowed to say that?

So, I mean, well, I have got some amazing guests lined up, including someone who, can I say it, can I say it? Just my absolute hero, not in the education world, but the wider world, like massive, massive, massive name who is coming on the podcast in the summer. But I kind of don't, I'm not going to say it, I'm not going to say it, because there's a hero. But it has got me thinking, who else could come on the podcast? So I'm

thinking big, like I would absolutely love, do you know who I would love on a podcast? And I need to reach out to him. Here's a guy called Adam Grant, do you know him? Adam Grant is an organisational psychologist, and he is absolute, like literally, I want to be Adam Grant, he is the person who I want to be in life, and he runs a brilliant podcast called Work Life where he talks about literally the psychology of work, and it is wonderful, anyone interested, like he just speaks and he's like best friends with Brené Brown and Simon Sinek and those kind of people, like they're all like really, really close. So

that's it, you know, 2026 Adam Grant, I might start having to online stalk him, unfortunately he's got hundreds and hundreds of thousands of followers and gets thousands of likes every day, so it's difficult to get through. But if anyone listening knows someone who knows Adam Grant, yeah, please make a connection. Who would you like, who would see interviewed? Who would I like to see interviewed?

That's a tricky one, that. I'd get Lucy Crianon. Yes, that's a really good point. Lucy, you must be listening.

Lucy, I have to reach her. Why haven't I? I've read her book probably three times now, and each time I sort of, it's different. I see different layers, it's sort of different, I have different reflections to it.

Lucy is, yeah, she's wonderful. I'm a big fan of Lucy and I work with her. She's got a lovely manner about her as well. There's something really nice about the way she speaks with people that sort of set you at ease.

So yeah, I would pitch for Lucy Crian if you're listening, Lucy, definitely. Yeah, absolutely. And just to kind of tease people into the new year, please stay tuned. We've got, next week on the podcast, we've got Tamara Ewell-Proctor, amazing from New Zealand, joining us while she is here.

She is working for the UWC Movement, United World College Movement, and has done some incredible research on change cultures. She's going to be on the pod next week, which is going to be amazing, but coming up, we have also got some incredible people, including the brilliant Dr. James Manion on Making Change Stick. We've got Jett Walper, who is actually revolutionising the way we integrate our different systems in schools.

I've got Jean Tavanati, Meg Lee, Patrice Bain from the US coming up. We've got Chris Baker, we've got Simon Prober, Poppy Knobes, we've got Andrew, the incredible Andrew Watson, who I just received his book in the mail from the US called The Goldilocks Map. My goodness, we have got some incredible people coming up. If you're listening, if you're new to the pod, go find it.

Wherever you're listening to a podcast, Education Leaders, you'll find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, tune in and then join us. Join me and Chris at the end of every month, we get together last Thursday of every month to do what we just did now, to have a informal reflection, to bring in your ideas, to think, talk about those big questions in education and the colours of books on our shelves. Chris, this has been indeed. And Chris, this has been such a pleasure today.

Thank you so much for this. And thank you for this collaboration for this year and the years ahead as well. Yeah, looking forward to 2026, exciting times. Yeah, we've got a lot planned. That brings

us straight onto the hour, so we will finish there, but if you're joining us on live, thank you for being here. It's been awesome to have you with us. If you're joining on the podcast on a bonus episode, equally brilliant. But come and join us later.

Go onto LinkedIn, go onto YouTube, you can set a reminder last Thursday of every month at 6pm Shanghai time. That's where you are right, Chris, in the UK. And we will be here chatting live through all good things, education leadership. But Chris, all it leaves me to say is a very Merry Christmas to you and yours, and I hope you have a wonderful New Year too.

Yeah, all the best my friends. See you in the new year. Alright, take care everyone. Goodbye.