1. Coaching for the Soul
Connecting School Improvement with what matters most in School Leadership

2. What are your reasons for being here today?
What could jeopardize your reasons for being here today?

3. What it means to be a school leader today
Overview
What it means to be a school leader today
The inner and outer work of school leadership
Re-connecting with what matters most

4. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A SCHOOL LEADER TODAY
Visit the quotes around the room and stand next to the one that resonates with you the most

5. What does it mean to be a school leader today?

6. School Leadership Today
“ What emerges is a picture of school leaders who must staff schools, meet pupils’ needs, attend to staff personal and professional problems, keep open lines of communication to parents and the community and, of course, handle a the paperwork, all within the constraints of time and energy”
Stoll and Fink: Changing our Schools

7. THE INNER AND OUTER WORLDS OF SCHOOL LEADERSHIP

8. Above and Below the Water Line
What is it that others see of you that enables them to make ‘judgements’ about your own levels of effectiveness as leader? [top of the iceberg]
What is it that they don’t see that impacts on what is above?

9. Bringing Alignment
The efforts that are necessary to achieve effective school leadership [ that which is visible to others] to a large extent remain hidden
The hidden part of the iceberg stand figuratively for the inside world of the leader and how s/he manages it in order to achieve excellence for self and others

10. Bringing Alignment
The higher levels are not an indication of whether one is able to maintain/sustain effective leadership
It is the lower levels of the iceberg that drive the higher levels

11. The Cost
What is the cost to self if the concerns of the inner world are left unaddressed?

12. The ‘Norm’!?
Up until that moment my ability to grandstand had meant that I had been able to hide my true feelings from myself as well as others. I was caught in the Sacrifice Syndrome with no apparent way out. In an attempt to find solace, I turned to the counsellor who worked with some of the most vulnerable children in our school. I just needed someone to talk to, someone who did not require anything of me, someone who would listen to me and not judge, someone who could create a space for me just to be myself, not Viv Grant, the head teacher. Just me.

13. The Reality!

14. Re-connecting with what matters most

15. The Challenge?

16. The Sacrifice Syndrome

17. Vulnerability “ Uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure”
Facing up to:
Self doubt
Hurt
Fears

18. Reconnecting with our own humanity
Fear
Loneliness
Vulnerability

19. What needs to be understood..
“ “ A school leader’s vocational vitality, or capacity to be vital, present and deeply connected …. is not a fixed, inedible condition, but a state that ebbs and flows with the context and challenges of the leadership life”
[Intrator & Kunzman, 2006]

20. School Leadership is …

21. Therefore, we must attend to …
Deepening Self-Understanding
Developing Emotional Resources
Sustaining a sense of vocation and purpose
Bringing congruity to original ideals and current realities

22. A Question
“How can we nurture teachers and school leaders for the long haul & stop putting subsistence strategies ahead of deeper needs?” The Centre for Courage and Renewal

23. How Often Do You Ask Yourself…. Questions that really matter?
Why am I here serving this school community?
What is headship like for me when I am my best self? [how do you feel? How do you ‘show up?’ how do others respond?]
When I am emotionally resilient what does this look like? How do you feel?

24. ‘To Listen’

25. Reflection: Being the Coachee
LISTENING
How did it feel to be listened to?
What were you thinking?
SUMMARISING
How did it feel when what you said was summarised and said back to you?
What were you thinking?
QUESTIONING
How did it feel when you were asked a question?

26. Listening can enable you to ...
Refill your emotional, mental and spiritual reservoirs
Embrace and develop new mechanisms for coping with the challenges of school leadership
Identify what courage feels and looks like for you
Time which will enable them to:
Stop, pause and reflect
Refill their emotional, mental and spiritual reservoirs
Embrace and develop new mechanisms for coping with the challenges of school leadership
Strengthen their inner foundations
Re-align themselves with all things, both personal and professional, that are of the greatest importance to them.

27. Reclaiming Who You Are
“Remembering ourselves and our power can lead to revolution, but it requires more than recalling a few facts. Remembering involves putting ourselves back together, recovering identity and integrity, reclaiming the wholeness of our lives” [Parker J Palmer – The Courage to Teach]

28. What would this look like for you?

29. Self Care is Never A Selfish Act …