How Can Our Leaders Thrive and Flourish In These Uncertain Times?

How have you arrived in a position where you are focusing your work with schools and educational leaders on the practice of mindfulness?

I have always been a mindfulness practitioner and have had a practice of meditation for decades, it has been the one thing that has kept me sane over the period of 40 years of teaching and school leadership but especially through the pandemic, it has become even more important.

I had always been very shy about it; I didn’t share it publicly until two or three years ago and now more prominently during the pandemic. I have always integrated approaches to stress reduction, calmness and balance into my leadership development work, I have always encouraged leaders to get in touch with their ‘inner life’ in order to cultivate a sense of presence and balance amongst the very turbulent and complex world of school leadership. However, I didn't overtly speakabout the specific practice and benefits of mindfulness for leaders. Four years ago I took the plunge and embarked on a year long teacher training course at the Oxford University Mindfulness Centre and that has gave me the skills and confidence I needed to share it more intentionally with school leaders.

Why were you shy about your practice?

As a leader I felt I projected a sense of confidence and of being in control  but inwardly I had a strong inner critic, and was plagued by self doubt . I was driven by busyness, in fact I think I was addicted to it – and at the same time I loved my work, but felt my leadership, as a result of being so outwardly busy, was becoming superficial.  But I felt that I hid this inner work – afraid that if I exposed it my shell would crack, I was defending my outer self from my inner work. I thought people would think of it as weird. That was 10 / 15 years ago now and things are very different. Now, working on our inner selves is seen as acceptable, as a sign of strength not weakness.

I love Steve Munby’s book – Imperfect Leadership. It has opened up a conversation, and given us a language where we can talk about being a leader who ‘ doesn't know everything’.

I see this work as the art of ‘ cultivating leadership presence’ which is what I am working on now with KYRA. We are exploring how we can be truly present, aware both outwardly and inwardly of what is happening, knowing what triggers us, knowing the barriers we erect through the assumptions we make, the fears we hold and our deepest worries about  not being able to do our jobs well enough.

Many Headteachers and leaders have what is called imposter syndrome, it is part of being human, believing that everyone thinks I am better than I am. Until recently we did not talk about this and as I have been more open in this work, I am so heartened by how school leaders are open too.  But it’s not all ‘doom and gloom’. Doing this work opens us up to the whole hearted and joyous nature of school leadership too. Many leaders tell me its like ‘ coming home’ to why they decided to do this job in the first place.

Many of our school leaders have welcomed the opportunity to access your sessions, some engaged because they thought they needed something, but were not sure if mindfulness was it, and then some felt it was not for them.

Why is taking the time now for mindfulness, using what is precious time to focus upon themselves as individuals important for leaders when they are so busy and consumed by demands within their role?

This Pandemic experience is in itself a leadership development opportunity. A chance to understand ourselves better. How are we staying present, balanced and fully aware in the midst of huge turbulence? How are we managing our emotions? Not hiding them, but working with them because when we don’t, we can become overwhelmed, experience anxiety, suffer exhausted from the constant feeling that we have lost our ground and we need to get back control. When we feel like this then we can find ourselves very quickly reacting to the next request, email or issue, from a place of anxiety, not wisdom. We can lose that sense of ourselves as experienced and wise leaders and start to question it.

For leaders it can be difficult to give themselves permission for the sort of time and space needed to do this work. They are often uncomfortable pausing, and looking inward. Working  on themselves is low down their list of priorities. But this is not selfish or egotistical work, this is ethical work. We do this work, yes for ourselves, but also for others so we can be more present, showing up at our best during the times we are most needed. Even more importantly, we know how to renew and sustain our leadership and not just ‘get through ‘ this Pandemic but even thrive and flourish during and after it.

Another reason leaders may find it hard to engage in this, which I can connect with, is that when things are hard, I used to believe I could think and work myself out of it, I could use my knowledge and skills to strategize out of it, and if I let go of this cognitive approach to my leadership – what’s left?  When the world feels out of control and at times of great turbulence and uncertainty, it is human nature to retreat into busyness, it is protective armour we put around ourselves, it makes us feel we have some semblance of control in a world out of control. But this leads to burn out, and exhaustion. I worry how many leaders, as a result of this last year are thinking of leaving the profession –  drained and exhausted.

What does it mean for leaders in our schools to cultivate mindful practice?

The first thing we practice is cultivating stillness. We learn the art of the pause. We allow our bodies to be still and we  find the  centre of balance in our body. This brings us down from all the chatter that is going on in our heads and around us. We begin to realise, that everything is tense and tight, and to release it. We begin to notice our very noisy minds and the tendency they have to distract us from being present and focused.

We realise, as I did when I first starting this practice, just how much time we spend living in our heads, and therefore not fully present at all. When we are living in our heads we are almost always living in the past or the future, either ruminating on the past or planning for and often worrying about a future that has not yet happened. So in our work together we cultivate being wholly present and fully focused on the ‘now’. The word ‘mindfulness’ can put some people off, and so we talk about the practice of ‘training our attention’, so it is in line with our intention. We start to see what distracts us – how our mind tugs us away from where we really intend to be – which is after all, here and now.

The cultivation of these practices create new habits of mind, to be more present, not just during this pandemic but to be wholly with and fully awake to the complex world in which we live, lead and teach.

Looking forward, beyond the immediate impact of the pandemic, do you think there will be shift for schools and teams to engage more in this practice? We already see mental health and wellbeing taking a greater priority, but how do we urge leaders to continue to utilise these practices beyond this period of crisis?

I have brought this to the foreground of my work, because for many years I have worked in leadership development, and it is clear we know so much about developing leaders and improving schools.  Yet still, something gets in the way of using the skills and knowledge we already have to lead our teams, and improve our schools. From the work I do, I have come to see that we get in our way -  our self-doubt, our inner critic, our mental chatter, our busyness can keep us ‘ playing small’, and it doesn't have to be this way.

Wellbeing can be a turn on or a turn off phrase. We might wonder - if I have to care and look after myself, what is wrong with me?.  This isn’t remedial work. I think of these leadership practices as creating space for us to thrive and flourish and importantly to model this for our colleagues and children.

This current situation is an amazing opportunity to teach wellbeing to children. To model ‘this is how we are when we are grieving, this is how we are when we are sad, this is how resilient we are and what that feels like, this is how we listen to each other, this is how we stay calm when we are frightened, this is how we can still be happy even when we don't like what’s happening’. What an amazing life lesson to be able to model this, But we can only do this if we can cultivate it for ourselves.

I am working with education leaders both nationally and internationally, and the interest in mindfulness is growing as people experience its’ benefits, and there is an growing interest to find out more. But as a system, it can’t be a bolt on, attending to our wellbeing is an integral part of culture. As we move towards coming out of this particular period, cultivating mindful and attentive leadership is not a remedial activity, a response to something that has gone wrong, it is about thriving and flourishing, so it can’t become just a strategy, it is a way of being.

I am interested to see how mindfulness can be embedded into school culture and systems in the future, so they can be more compassionate, more resilient, and more wholehearted. I am happy to chat to anyone who feels the same!

A leader said to me almost a year ago now ‘ I want my school to be a place fit to house the human spirit’. Surely we all want that? Surely that is worth cultivating?