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Last week, I joined a Trust leadership team on their away day as they reflected on how far they had come, both as a Trust and as a team, while preparing for the next stage of their growth.

I began the day as a participant, sitting in on the CEO’s opening session as she explored the journey from psychological safety towards relational safety. For the second part of the day, we swapped roles. She became a participant and I facilitated the team, building on the foundations she had established.

Our focus was collective accountability.

As Trusts grow and evolve, so too must the relationships, behaviours and ways of working within their leadership teams. What worked when an organisation was smaller may not be sufficient for its next stage of development.

Growth requires leaders to think beyond their individual roles, schools and priorities, and to consider what it genuinely means to lead collectively.

Using Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle as a starting point, we explored three questions:

• Why do we need increased accountability across the Trust?
• How do we develop a culture of high challenge and low threat to build collective accountability?
• What does a high-performing Trust leadership team actually look like?

These questions led us into a deeper conversation about trust, relationships, challenge and our shared responsibility for results.

 

From psychological safety to relational safety

Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety provides an important foundation for understanding effective teams. Psychological safety describes a shared belief that it is safe to take interpersonal risks, including asking questions, raising concerns, acknowledging mistakes and offering ideas without fear of negative consequences. Importantly, psychological safety is not about being comfortable all of the time, nor is it about avoiding disagreement.

This distinction matters.

Sometimes psychological safety can be misunderstood as creating a culture in which everybody feels comfortable, everybody agrees and difficult conversations are avoided.

But safety and comfort are not the same thing.

In high-performing teams, safety creates the conditions in which discomfort can be navigated constructively. It enables people to disagree, challenge, question, admit mistakes and hold one another accountable without fearing that doing so will damage their relationships or their standing within the team.

This is where I think we need to move from thinking solely about psychological safety towards considering relational safety.

• Do I trust the relationship enough to disagree with you?
• Can I challenge your thinking without damaging our connection?
• Can I tell you that something is not working?
• Can I receive difficult feedback without interpreting it as a personal attack?
• Can we experience disagreement and still know that we belong?

Explicit contracting can help teams to establish these expectations. Rather than assuming everybody understands how challenge, disagreement and feedback will work, teams can consciously agree how they want to work together.

Relational safety does not remove challenge. It makes constructive challenge possible.

 

Building consciousness, confidence and competence

As we explored collective accountability, I invited the leaders to consider three dimensions of their leadership development:

• Consciousness: Are we sufficiently aware of how our behaviours create, strengthen or undermine trust and psychological safety?
• Confidence: Are we willing to hold ourselves and others accountable when expectations are not being met?
• Competence: Do we have the skills and language to navigate courageous conversations, increase challenge and resolve conflict constructively?

We need all three.

Awareness without action does not change culture. Confidence without competence can result in challenge being delivered poorly. Competence without the confidence to use it means the conversations that need to happen remain unspoken.

Collective accountability therefore requires more than an organisational structure, performance framework or set of expectations. It requires leaders who are conscious of their impact, confident enough to address what needs addressing and competent enough to do so relationally.

 

From dysfunction to high performance

Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team gave us another lens through which to explore this.

His model identifies five interconnected dysfunctions: an absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results.

Crucially, the model is sequential. Without trust, constructive conflict becomes difficult. Without productive conflict, commitment can become superficial. Without genuine commitment, accountability becomes harder. And without accountability, collective results suffer.

We reframed these dysfunctions as five commitments of a high-performing team:

• Trust: We feel psychologically safe and have a strong sense of belonging.
• Constructive conflict: We know we can speak up, share our views and challenge the status quo.
• Commitment: We understand our role and how we contribute to the bigger picture.
• Accountability: We hold ourselves and others accountable for fulfilling our responsibilities.
• Results: We are high-performing and have collective impact.

The important word here is collective.

Because there is a difference between having a group of successful leaders and having a successful leadership team.

 

Responsibility is not the same as accountability

One of our reflections centred on the distinction between responsibility and accountability.

Responsibility asks: What am I expected to do?

Accountability goes further: Did I do it? What was the impact? What happens if I do not? Who else is affected by my actions or inaction?

The space between expectation and execution is where an accountability gap can emerge:

• We may have agreed the action.
• We may know who owns it.
• We may even have established the deadline.

But what happens when it does not happen?

• Do we notice?
• Do we ask?
• Do we challenge?
• Do we follow through?
• Or do we quietly adjust around it?

Accountability is not simply about allocating responsibilities. It is about creating a culture in which our commitments to one another matter.

 

Relational capital is necessary, but it is not enough

Strong relationships matter enormously.

Trust enables people to share knowledge and admit mistakes. Communication allows teams to surface issues and resolve them more quickly. Support encourages colleagues to step in and offer additional capacity when pressure rises.

This relational capital creates important foundations for teamwork. But strong relationships alone do not create high performance.

High-performing teams combine strong relationships with clear expectations, shared goals, appropriate expertise, effective communication and continuous accountability.

In fact, there can sometimes be a tension here. When relationships are strong, leaders may become reluctant to challenge one another because they do not want to jeopardise those relationships. We tell ourselves that we are being kind. We give another chance. We compensate for a missed deadline. We quietly pick something up ourselves.

Over time, however, avoiding challenge can undermine the very trust we are trying to protect. Missed commitments affect other people. Inconsistent follow-through creates additional work. Resentment can grow. Expectations become blurred. What initially felt relational can ultimately become corrosive.

Strong relationships should not protect us from accountability. They should enable us to practise accountability well.

 

Recognising our accountability traps

We identified some common traps:

• avoiding difficult conversations;
• allowing inconsistent follow-through;
• prioritising the needs of an individual school over collective Trust goals;
• assuming everybody interprets expectations in the same way.

These behaviours can be particularly difficult to notice because they may not initially feel problematic:

• Avoiding a difficult conversation can feel compassionate.
• Giving somebody more time can feel supportive.
• Prioritising our own school can feel responsible.
• Assuming shared understanding can feel efficient.
• But the cumulative impact can be significant.

This raises an important question for Trust leadership teams: How do we move from individual responsibility to collective accountability?

From ‘my’ to ‘our’.

Part of this shift is structural. But much of it is cultural. And culture is revealed through language.

We explored what might happen if we consciously changed some of the language we use:

• My school → Our Trust
• My priorities → Our priorities
• My deadlines → Our commitments
• My impact → Our results

This is not about diminishing the identity, autonomy or context of individual schools. Nor does collective leadership mean that every school needs exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. It means recognising our interdependence.

It means adopting the mindset: When one school succeeds, we all succeed.

And equally: When one school struggles, we all have a responsibility.

The question shifts from “Is that my responsibility?” towards “What is my contribution to our collective success?”

That is a significant cultural shift.

 

Accountability requires courageous conversations

Of course, collective accountability is easy to describe and much harder to practise. Because ultimately, accountability happens through conversations.

Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations invites us to consider the relationship between the quality of our conversations and the quality of our relationships. The conversations we avoid do not simply disappear. The issue remains, often becoming harder to address as time passes.

This is where courageous conversations become a leadership competence rather than an optional interpersonal skill.

Kim Scott’s Radical Candor framework offers another useful lens. Scott describes Radical Candor as combining two behaviours: caring personally and challenging directly.

When leaders care but fail to challenge, Scott describes this as “ruinous empathy”. When they challenge without demonstrating care, it becomes “obnoxious aggression”.

When neither is present, she describes “manipulative insincerity”. Radical Candor exists when care and challenge are both present.

For leadership teams, this offers an important provocation.

What if holding somebody accountable is not evidence that the relationship is weak?

What if our willingness to challenge respectfully is evidence that the relationship is strong enough to hold it?

Imagine that a colleague repeatedly misses key deadlines. Their actions are now affecting workflow, increasing pressure on colleagues and beginning to erode trust:

• Ruinous empathy might lead us to keep making allowances.
• Obnoxious aggression might result in public criticism, blame or frustration.
• Manipulative insincerity might mean saying nothing to them while discussing the problem with everybody else.
• Radical Candor requires something different: naming the issue clearly, explaining its impact, listening to understand what is happening and agreeing what needs to change.

Care and challenge are not competing leadership behaviours. We need both.

 

High challenge, low threat

This brings us back to the culture we create:

• High-performing teams do not eliminate challenge. They create the relational conditions in which challenge can happen productively.
• High challenge without relational safety can create defensiveness, fear and withdrawal.
• High relational safety without sufficient challenge can create comfort, avoidance and stagnation.

The goal is high challenge and low threat. People need to know that they can be questioned without being diminished, corrected without being humiliated and held accountable without their belonging being withdrawn.

This is where belonging and accountability intersect:

• Belonging cannot mean lowering expectations.
• Psychological safety cannot mean avoiding difficult conversations.
• Care cannot mean allowing behaviours that negatively affect everybody else.

In healthy cultures, relationships are strong enough to withstand challenge.

 

From a group of leaders to a leadership team

Towards the end of the session, we returned to the question of what collective accountability might look and feel like across the Trust.

We considered:

• How do we currently work together?
• How do we want to evolve how we work together moving forwards?
• Where have we experienced healthy accountability, and what did it look and feel like?
• Where do we currently avoid challenge?
• What behaviours demonstrate that we are acting as one Trust rather than as individual schools?
• What does accountability feel like when relationships are strong?

These are not questions that can be answered once on an away day and then filed away. They require ongoing attention because collective leadership is a practice.

It is demonstrated in meetings, conversations, decisions, deadlines and moments of disagreement. It is visible in whether we challenge or remain silent. It is revealed in whether we protect our own priorities or consider the collective. It is tested when things do not go according to plan.

We finished by inviting each leader to identify:

• one behaviour they would stop;
• one behaviour they would start;
• one contribution they would make to strengthen Trust-wide collaboration.

Because ultimately, culture changes through behaviour.

And perhaps the most powerful question for any Trust leadership team is this:

• If an observer watched your team for two days, would they describe you as a group of excellent school leaders, or as an excellent Trust leadership team?

The distinction matters. As Trusts grow, collective accountability cannot be an aspiration. It needs to become part of how leaders think, speak, behave and work together:

• From my to our.
• From responsibility to accountability.
• From relational safety to courageous challenge.
• From individual impact to collective results.
• That is how we shape intention into impact.

 

References and resources

Amy Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Kim Scott, Radical Candor

Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations

Simon Sinek, Start With Why

Mary Myatt, High Challenge, Low Threat

Center for Creative Leadership, resources on psychological safety and accountability

The Belonging Effect, Courageous Conversations Toolkit

Sometimes, at the end of the day, I sit down with my husband and say:

“I made three people cry today.”

Inevitably, he makes a joke about either my dreadfully cruel personality, personal body odour or how I bore them all to tears at home too.

But, of course, those aren’t the real reasons those people were crying (I hope!!). Instead, it’s usually one of the following:

• The frustration of the parent who is sick of fighting the system and feels that no one is helping them.
• The overwhelm of the SENCO who feels like they are spinning a million plates and making no impact (of course they are, but it’s not always easy to see).
• The embarrassment of the teacher who was observed struggling to meet the wide range of need in their class.

And in all those cases, the reason the often-bottled tears have finally been shed is because someone has taken the time to show them some empathy.To see their very real pain, acknowledge it, name it and tell them it’s OK to feel it.

By showing empathy in my role, I’ve prevented complaints, I’ve prevented resignations and, once or twice, I’ve prevented open warfare being declared in the classroom.

I am utterly convinced of the power of empathy. I’m convinced that it is essential in all leadership, but definitely in SEND leadership.

Empathy helps us understand what the daily lives of children with additional needs might be like, build trust with families, create safe cultures in teams and lead change without losing sight of the people it will impact.

But there is a question that has been increasingly bothering me:

How can we, as leaders, share in so much pain without suffering ourselves?

Empathy is not the same as sympathy. And neither is the same as compassion.

For me, empathy is about seeking to understand another person’s experience and emotional reality. Sympathy is feeling concern for someone. Compassion takes us one step further: recognising suffering and wanting to do something to ease it.

In SEND leadership, we need all three.

But they come with a cost.

It takes a huge amount of strength and skill to be empathetic as a leader: to recognise that those you lead are struggling but still hold them to account; to show understanding without rescuing; to challenge without humiliating; and to listen without promising.

The cost of this on a leader can be immense.

Women are more empathetic, right?

Most of the SEND leaders in Excalibur and nationally are women. (19/20 in Excalibur and 94% nationally – National Senco Workforce Survey 2020)

That’s because women are more empathetic, right?

There is evidence that women and girls score higher, on average, on some measures of emotional intelligence and emotion recognition. A major 2026 meta-analysis examined 1,279 articles, 1,428 samples and more than 609,000 participants across 76 countries. It found average female advantages in several emotional abilities, particularly other-focused abilities such as recognising and understanding emotion (Putting assumptions to the test: A meta-analytic review of gender differences in emotional intelligence and specific emotion abilities – PubMed).

That matters.

Because saying “women are more empathetic” is quite different from saying “women may, on average, demonstrate strengths in some emotional abilities.”

But neither conclusion tells us that women should therefore be responsible for managing the feelings of everyone around them.

And yet research consistently finds that women are stereotyped as being more emotional and communal than men.

In leadership, this creates a problematic double bind.

• We are expected to care… but not too much.
• We are expected to be warm… but also authoritative.
• We are expected to listen… but also to make the decision.
• We are expected to understand everyone’s perspective… but still to hold people accountable.

Women leaders can be penalised for displaying emotions associated with dominance, such as anger, but can also be penalised for appearing too soft and cuddly to be taken seriously as leaders (Leading with their hearts? How gender stereotypes of emotion lead to biased evaluations of female leaders | Institute of Coaching)

Research for the Department for Education found that female teachers were more likely than male teachers to leave teaching while of working age. And when women did leave, they were more likely than men to move into teaching assistant roles or lower-paid occupations, while men were more likely to move into professional and managerial roles outside education (What teachers do next after leaving and the implications for pay-setting).

So perhaps the question isn’t “Are women better at caring?”

Perhaps it is:
What happens when a profession becomes increasingly dependent on the people who are culturally expected to care?

From empathetic individuals to an empathetic system

If empathy is a strength of SEND leadership, but women are disproportionately expected to provide emotional labour, how do we keep the strength without paying the personal cost?

I think part of the answer lies in how we think about SEND leadership itself.

We are going through a national shift in how we think about SEND and inclusion. Leadership is increasingly understood as something that must be distributed across all leaders and stakeholders within the education system, rather than sitting with the SENCO or a single inclusion leader.

I think the same needs to be true of empathy.

If we recognise that SEND leadership requires empathy, but a school or Trust depends on a few exceptionally empathetic people to hold everything together, we haven’t created a distributed, empathetic SEND system.

We’ve created a system that relies on particular individuals to absorb its emotional load.

And even the best of these individuals won’t last long.

The SENCO shouldn’t be the only person who knows how to listen to a distressed parent. The inclusion leader shouldn’t be the only person who can have a difficult conversation about need. The headteacher shouldn’t be the only person holding the emotional temperature of the school. And the woman who has become everyone’s safe pair of hands shouldn’t have to be the emotional shock absorber for the whole organisation.

We need cultures where empathy is distributed. Where every leader understands that listening is part of leadership. Where difficult conversations are approached with dignity. Where staff can say, “I’m struggling,” without being seen as incapable. Where families don’t have to reach crisis point before someone listens. Where challenge and compassion can coexist. And where the people leading inclusion are given the same care, support and psychological safety that we expect them to create for everyone else.

Because empathy shouldn’t depend on whether the person in front of you happens to be an unusually caring woman. It should be how we lead.

Perhaps the real ambition isn’t to make women better at carrying the emotional weight of SEND. Perhaps it is to build a system where no one has to carry it alone.

As I step into 2026, the word guiding me is Energy.

This year ahead is not about doing more or moving faster. It is about becoming more intentional with how I generate, give, and protect my energy – and trusting that what I energise will grow.

Energy is my responsibility. How I use it shapes my work, my relationships, my wellbeing, and ultimately, the life I’m creating.

 

How I Will Get Energy

In 2026, I will cultivate energy through alignment, not urgency.

I get energy from clarity – knowing what matters and letting that guide my choices. I will seek energy in movement that feels supportive, in time outdoors, in creativity without pressure, and in quiet moments that allow ideas to surface.

I will choose fewer distractions and deeper focus, trusting that simplicity fuels sustainable energy. Rest, reflection, and space won’t be afterthoughts; they will be sources.

 

How I Will Give Energy

The energy I give this year will be intentional and purposeful.

I will give energy through presence – listening fully, contributing thoughtfully, and showing up where my values are shared. I will invest my energy in work that creates meaning, in people who inspire growth, and in conversations that move things forward.

I release the idea that my worth is tied to constant availability. Instead, I will give my best energy where it can make the greatest impact.

 

How I Will Manage My Energy

Managing energy will be a daily practice in 2026.

I will pay attention to what drains me and respond sooner, not later. Boundaries will be acts of care, not limitation.

Rest will be proactive, not earned.

When my energy is low, I will not treat it as failure – I will treat it as information. Energy management is how I stay present, creative, and resilient over the long term.

 

The Intention for the Year Ahead

Energy is not about intensity. It is about sustainability.
In 2026, I intend to:

• Protect my energy as a valuable resource
• Invest it where it aligns with purpose
• Let go of what consistently drains me
• Build momentum without burnout

Energy is my word for 2026.

This is the year I choose where my energy goes – and allow what truly matters to grow.

When I think about my own leadership journey, it was a straight line until I made choices to step sideways and to step away from the ladder. There have been moments of doubt, growth, and joy – and through it all, three words capture the essence of what it means to me to lead as a woman: Being, Becoming, and Belonging.

 

Being: Leading from Authenticity

Early in my career, I remember seeing people trying to “act the part” of a leader. As an observer I watched how others spoke, how they carried themselves, and I selected the bits I wanted to emulate and also the bits I wanted to reject.

Seeking role models, I looked outwards and started noticing women like Jacinda Ardern, who led New Zealand with empathy and authenticity. She showed the world that strength and compassion could sit side by side – that you do not need to harden yourself to lead effectively.

And I think of Brené Brown, whose work on vulnerability has shifted how we think about courage in leadership. She reminds us that being open, honest, and real is not a weakness but the foundation of trust.

Being is about embracing who we already are, rather than contorting ourselves to match someone else’s definition of leadership. My own shift came when I realised it was impossible for me to fit myself into someone else’s predefined mold and that I had to in fact create my own template for leadership.

 

Becoming: The Evolution of Leadership

Of course, being authentic does not mean that we stop growing and developing. Leadership is a continual unfolding. I have stumbled, failed, and sometimes second-guessed myself along the way. But those moments shaped me more than the successes ever did. When I share my stories of struggling and navigating adversity I always get a better reception than when I share the successes.

I think of Indra Nooyi, who often spoke of balancing her ambition at PepsiCo with humility and care for her people. She did not arrive in the CEO chair fully formed – she became the leader she was through risk, resilience, and reinvention.

And Sheryl Sandberg, with her call to women to “lean in,” sparked a global conversation about confidence, ambition, and claiming space in leadership. Her message was not about perfection, but about stretching, trying, and daring to step forward, even in the face of uncertainty.

Becoming is about embracing the messy middle – knowing that every challenge and setback is shaping us into stronger, wiser leaders. In my own journey, I have learned that courage often looks like saying yes before you feel ready, and resilience is built in the moments when things do not go as planned.

 

Belonging: Creating Space for Others

But leadership is not only about me – or you – it is about what we create for others.

I think about Ursula Burns, the first Black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company. She did not just break barriers for herself; she actively created space for others through mentorship and advocacy. That kind of leadership reminds me that success is not about being the only one at the table – it is about making sure you are not the last.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) embodies this too. As one of the youngest women ever elected to the U.S. Congress, she did not walk into a space that was designed for her – but she reshaped it through authenticity, courage, and unapologetic representation. AOC often speaks about how true progress comes when diverse voices have not just presence but influence. She shows us that belonging is not about assimilation; it is about redefining the culture so everyone’s voice matters.

In my own roles, I have felt the power of belonging most when I have mentored younger women, invited quieter voices into the conversation, or shared openly about my own challenges. Those moments reminded me that leadership is bigger than personal achievement – it is about creating cultures where others feel seen, heard, and valued.

 

Final Reflections

Being… Becoming… Belonging… These are not just stages we move through – they are dimensions of leadership that weave together:

• To be is to lead authentically.
• To become is to embrace the growth, the stretch and the learning.
• To belong is to create space where others can thrive too.

I often think of Michelle Obama, who titled her memoir Becoming to capture the truth that leadership – and life – is never about arriving at a fixed destination. It is about continuously unfolding into who we are meant to be, while staying rooted in authenticity and connected to community.

Her story reminds us that being, becoming, and belonging are inseparable. To be is to stand in our truth. To become is to honor the journey of growth. To belong is to ensure others can walk beside us.

For me, these three words have become both a mirror and a compass. And I believe when women lead with all three, we do not just change what leadership looks like – we change what leadership feels like for everyone.

Courageous conversations are discussions that may involve sensitive or uncomfortable topics, requiring honesty and vulnerability. They are often about addressing difficult issues, building trust, and fostering understanding. Successfully navigating these conversations can strengthen relationships and lead to positive change. Avoiding them can lead to relationships either flatlining or breaking down.

 

Why do we need to have Courageous Conversations?

Courageous Conversations should underpin how we lead, how we hold others to account and we create a culture of transparency so people know where they stand.

We use the 3 Cs to frame all of our training on this theme to build:

• Consciousness in being aware of and in nurturing psychological safety
• Confidence in modelling openness and in embracing vulnerability
• Competence in holding people to account and in handling the ‘emotional wake’

We already have muscle memory to activate and draw from as we have been trained to have safeguarding conversations – they are not easy to facilitate but we know we have to have them – the more we do them, the more skilled we become at initiating them.

As we learn more, and practise, having Courageous Conversations we will move from being unconsciously incompetent to consciously incompetent, we will become consciously competent over time and eventually we will become unconsciously competent. The key thing to keep doing is reflecting on our competence levels and exploring which ones go well and why, alongside which ones are less effective so we can unpack and learn from each interaction.

 

What is a ‘Courageous Conversation’?

In Courageous Conversations, whether in the context of performance appraisal, mentoring, or coaching, individuals are encouraged to express their views openly and truthfully, rather than defensively or with the purpose of laying blame. Integral to Courageous Conversations is an openness to learn.

Typical examples of Courageous Conversations include handling conflict, confronting a colleague, expressing an unpopular idea on a team, asking for a favour, saying no to a request for a favour, asking for a raise, or trying to have a conversation with someone who is avoiding you.

 

What are the benefits of having Courageous Conversations?

• We understand others’ perspectives
• We broaden our diversity and inclusion awareness and understanding
• We gain understanding of intent and impact
• We address biases and non-inclusive behaviors
• We become more open to and receptive of feedback
• We model the culture we want at our organisation
• We commit to having more effective, productive and collaborative conversations up, down and across organisational levels
• We build transferable skills you can use inside and outside of the workplace

 

Why can we find Courageous Conversations difficult?

A Courageous Conversation is one that is often difficult to have but necessary, and when done effectively, can have a dramatic impact on how we lead ourselves, the team or the organisation. It requires us to step out of our comfort zone to discuss a topic that might well cause an emotional response.

To leave our comfort zone, we have to enter our fear zone before we get to our learning and growth zones, so it sometimes feels easier to retreat and stay where we are, avoiding them. However, while often avoided, these Courageous Conversations can be instrumental in building an inclusive workplace.

 

How do we create psychological safety to enable courageous conversation?

We need to reflect on how we create a psychologically safe learning environment for our learners. There are things we naturally do whenever we meet a new group of pupils to co-create and agree our classroom protocols. This social contract holds everyone to account for their behaviour.

We then need to get curious as to why we do not do this with our colleagues. Anyone who line-manages an individual or a team, anyone who holds space for others, would benefit from spending some time co-creating the expectations of how we will show up for each other and to articulate what we are all committing to.

 

Which models are useful for building our Courageous Conversations toolkit?

There are 3 models we use in our training that we introduce participants to:

• The Radical Candor framework from Kim Scott
• The Fierce Conversation framework from Susan Scott
• The Courageous Conversation compass from Glenn Singleton

 

How do we build a script for Courageous Conversations?

Beware of over-preparing what you want to say and it becoming contrived and stilted as this will sound inauthentic and not land well with your conversation partner. Instead consider some sentence starters or curious questions to practise building into your dialogue:

• Do we need to talk?
• Can we address the elephant in the room?
• What’s going on for you?
• What’s your perspective?
• Do we need to/ can we have a fierce conversation?

In Daring to Lead, Brene Brown calls it ‘Rumble Language’ and here are some of her suggestions:

• The story I make up…
• I’m curious about…
• Tell me more…
• That’s not my experience…
• I’m wondering…
• Help me understand…
• Walk me through that…
• What’s your passion around this…
• Tell me why this doesn’t fit/ work for you…

We need to see Courageous Conversations as a testament to our culture. When people feel safe, they are more open to feedback. When we balance caring with challenging we receive feedback in a constructive way. When we commit to Courageous Conversations our relationships flourish and our culture is enhanced as we all feel more valued and more empowered.

 

Signposting

• Check out our Courageous Conversations toolkit.
• Check out our Courageous Conversations training.
• Check out our Courageous Conversations programme.

Building Bridges was one of the core themes from our 2024 Leadership Summit for Women Leaders in Education in the UAE region. This theme resonated with us all as organisers as we exist in an increasingly fragmented society and we work in a system that can sometimes feel very divided.

I reflected on our other theme of Breaking Barriers here. For me the two ideas are intrinsically linked – we need to simultaneously break down the barriers that inhibit us whilst building the bridges that enable and empower us.

I can remember hearing Dr Jill Berry talk about leadership journeys years ago about building the bridge as we walk it – sometimes the path is not there, or it is not clear, so we need to move forward and have faith that it will appear.

So how do we build bridges within our team, within our organisations and within our communities?

Collaboration and partnerships have been central to my journey as a leader. I like joined-up thinking and I thrive when I am working in spaces that are coherent and cohesive. I like to build and sustain relationships that are in service of all parties involved.

Here are 5 things I have done to build bridges between different people and ideas:

• Social contracting – as a coach I always contract with my clients, but this has not been something I have experienced regularly from my own line managers and team leaders. I built it into how I led individuals and teams so that we had an explicit agreement about how we were going to show up and hold each other accountable.
• Partnership mapping – as a school leader I was frustrated when I was contacted by multiple people from one organisation so we created a tracker to confirm who was going to hold each relationship with key partners, this gave my SLT ownership over these relationships and reduced the amount of comms going both ways.
• Community mapping – as a DHT I was responsible for key relationships in our community when it came to feeder schools and community groups, and as I progressed to HT this was extended to faith groups. I am a visual person so I found that a physical map that I colour-coded kept me intentional about existing relationships and the ones we needed to establish and nurture.
• Strategic networking – as a strategic leader the partnership mapping and community mapping activities then feed into me being strategic about who we are connecting with. I believe that we need to regularly audit who we are collaborating with and identify gaps, then actively close them. When I have relocated and transitioned between roles/ employers I have spent time working out who I need in my network, I have built the virtual bridges before I have arrived in the physical space.
• Strategic thinking – as a DEIB trainer, we explore the concept of ‘groupthink’ and how we need to create the conditions for healthy and productive cognitive dissonance. We need to build bridges between different ways of thinking and communicating. I support leaders and their teams in considering this for their own team dynamics, but I am also thinking about it for my work as a leadership development consultant, coach and trainer, and in our work as DEIB trainers. We need to build bridges to create alignment to ensure we have a shared vision and a collective commitment, but we also need space for challenge as we do it.

My final thought around building bridges takes me to reflecting on burning bridges. Sometimes collaborations, partnerships and relationships need to end as they are no longer serving us but how do we do this in a clean way? We need closure and a firm boundary, but we also need to be able to coexist without disharmony.

Engaged, Inspired, and Empowered

This blog is inspired by our recent presentation at the Women in Education Leadership (WELN) Summit, which took place on the 28th of September at the beautiful Hartland International School in Dubai. It was here that we had the privilege of meeting extraordinary women in leadership—women who go the extra mile to empower, motivate, and make a lasting impact. Their stories, much like ours, were rooted in passion, perseverance, and the unwavering belief in the power of mentorship and leadership. The feedback from our session was overwhelmingly positive, with attendees sharing how much they appreciated the harmony and passion we brought to our story. This synergy, they said, created an environment of deep engagement, inspiration, and meaningful growth.

 

The Power of Hidden Mentorship and Coaching

The core of our journey revolves around the power of mutual support. Throughout our careers, we’ve learned that true growth comes from lifting each other up. In moments when one had the skill, the other had the will; and at other times, we balanced pushing and pulling, creating a dynamic of collaboration that has led to both personal and professional growth. This partnership allowed us to face challenges head-on, overcoming barriers through a combination of will and skill coupled with a longlasting friendship.

Throughout our journey, we have consistently used the powerful approach our CEO, Dr. Osama Obeidat, calls “Hidden Mentorship and Coaching”. This involved not only empowering ourselves but fostering the growth of others by quietly supporting and uplifting our teams. By practicing empathetic leadership, we aimed to empower our colleagues and managers to cascade this model of leadership, adapting to the unique needs of individuals. Our approach combined empathy with strategy, allowing for personalized development and empowerment that matched the specific needs of each team member in an environment where others feel valued, motivated, and inspired to achieve their full potential.

 

Empowering Through Every Stage of Leadership

Our leadership journey has been marked by continuous growth, reflection, and empowerment at every stage through a dynamic process of learning and evolving. Inspired by visionary leadership guiding the Queen Rania Teacher Academy (QRTA), we embraced a model of empowerment that cascaded throughout the organization. This approach fostered a powerful culture rooted in shared growth and mutual support, establishing a unique DNA that continues to shape QRTA’s identity today. A culture that encourages open communication, trust, and collaboration.

 

Key Strategies for Positive Leadership

Leading with heart, mind, and soul, always strives to create an atmosphere of trust, respect, and empathy. By adopting Kim Cameron’s “Practicing Positive Leadership,” teams foster:

• Positive Relationships: Encouraging trust and respect within the team to create a supportive environment.
• Positive Communication: Promoting open, meaningful dialogue that inspires and nurtures creativity and growth.
• Positive Work Environment: Ensuring gratitude, kindness, and compassion are embedded in our workplace culture.
• Positive Meaning: Helping others find purpose in their contributions and feel that they are a vital part of the collective success.
• Focusing on creating leadership models that flourish in a positive environment.

 

Breaking Barriers with Strategic Tools

Empowering others also requires equipping them with the right tools. Strategies like the Eisenhower Prioritization Matrix helps teams not only focus on what truly matters but also distinguish between what is urgent and what is not, and what is important and what is not. By providing them with these practical tools for time management, we fostered a clearer sense of priority, ensuring that their efforts were streamlined toward impactful tasks. This approach creates an efficient and balanced work climate, fostering a clear sense of priority and ensuring that efforts are streamlined toward impactful tasks.

 

Continuous Reflection and Growth

The practice of continuous self-reflection is essential to leadership. By embracing the philosophy that self-awareness leads to better leadership, we not only grow personally but encourage others to engage in their own reflective practices. At QRTA, we actively work to inspire a culture of ongoing growth, ensuring that teams always look for ways to improve, learn, and expand their horizons.

 

A Call to Action: Sharing Stories and Building Bridges

As part of our growth, we encourage others to engage in storytelling and shared experiences. Through “Story Circle” activities, we create connections by sharing transformative moments of mentoring and coaching, reflecting on the qualities that make these experiences impactful. These discussions allow us all to foster a collaborative spirit and a network of support that extends beyond individual achievements.

 

Final Thoughts: The Journey Continues

Our journey of leadership, mentorship, and empowerment is ongoing. We remain committed to uplifting others, fostering positive work climates, and ensuring that every individual has the opportunity to succeed.

We believe that everyone has the potential to succeed and that by empowering each other through positive leadership and continuous learning, we can create a brighter future for education.

Breaking Barriers was one of the themes from our recent Leadership Summit for Women Leaders in Education in the UAE region. There were two key takeaway messages for me from the opening and closing keynote inputs that have me mulling more on this theme:

• “Progress is not parity!” (Fiona Cottam quoting McKinsey data).
• “When you break the glass ceiling, you will need to step through the broken glass!” (Professor Yusra Mouzughi in her 10 reflections on her leadership journey).

I have gone down some rabbit holes revisiting the data and reviewing what has been published and reported on these themes and here is a summary of my findings and thoughts…

The Women in the Workplace Report 2024 – 10th Anniversary by McKinsey and LeanIn.

The key takeaways from this year’s report:

1. Companies still have important work to do – companies have made real progress, but the culture of work is lagging behind, but a rise in inclusion training is not leading to employee action.
2. Women’s experiences have by and large not improved – women’s day-to-day experiences largely mirror those of a decade ago and women experience a multitude of competence-based microaggressions.
3. Women and men see progress differently – men are more optimistic about progress for women – at work and at home but women continue to say they shoulder more housework.

The Center for Creative Leadership published this white paper on Overcoming Barriers to Women’s Leadership and Unlocking the Power of Diversity by Sophia Zhao.

The report identities different push and pull factors for women leaders:

• Pull factors are internally driven – the limitations women place on themselves, pulling them away from leadership roles or actions.
• Push factors are externally driven – the limitations placed on women by others in their network, their organization, and the society or culture.

Women Rising, the Unseen Barriers, is an article published in the Harvard Business Review by Herminia Ibarra, Robin J. Ely and Deborah M. Kolb.

The three actions they suggest to support women’s access to leadership positions are:

1. Educate women and men about second-generation gender bias
2. Create safe “identity workspaces” to support transitions to bigger roles
3. Anchor women’s development efforts in a sense of leadership purpose rather than in how women are perceived.

There is also a great podcast here from Deloiitte entitled: Are women rewriting the rules?

Breaking Barriers was one of our themes as all of the co-organisers agreed that we wanted the impact of the leadership summit to be that it would inspire and empower women leading in education to challenge the systemic, structural and societal barriers that inhibit progress for women leaders personally and professionally, individually and collectively.

Here are my reflections:

• Breaking the Mould – we know that traditional leadership moulds have been designed by men. How can we dismantle the leadership mould that has been created for us and create a new one for a different style of leadership? How can we support women in defining their leadership identity and not shapeshifting into a leadership style that feels inauthentic to who they are?
• The Glass Ceiling – we know it exists but where does it sit in our organisation? Are leaders and line managers aware it is there and how are the mentoring, coaching and sponsoring female talent to break through it?
• The Internal Glass Ceiling – we know that women may suffer from limiting beliefs. Whilst we smash through the external ceilings how we can support our existing and aspiring women leaders to break through their own mindset barriers that might be inhibiting their progress?
• The Concrete Ceiling – we should all be aware of the impact that intersectionality has on women of colour. How are specifically supporting and investing in women with intersectional identities? How are we challenging the biases and microaggressions they are experiencing in our workplaces?
• The Pay Gap – we know that education has a significant gender pay gap and also a huge BME pay gap. What are we doing to review equity of pay for our educational leaders? How are we benchmarking ourselves internally and externally to ensure there is parity in payment for the same role within our school, our group of schools and across the system?
• The Motherhood Gap – we know that there is a double bind for women who are also mothers. We should also know that women in their 30s with children are a vulnerable group in our sector with high attrition rates. So how are we creating family-friendly policies and workplace cultures?
• The Flexible Working Gap – we also know that flexible working contracts make a massive difference to a woman’s ability to lead. How are we reviewing our working conditions and our employment contracts to use flexible working as both a recruitment and a retention tool?

Just a few of my thoughts and challenges regarding the barriers that need to be broken in our sector to enable women to fulfill their leadership potential and thrive in their leadership roles.

Five years post headship and five years into working for myself and running my own business the language being used about what I do, and the language I use about myself is changing.

‘Entrepreneur’ is a new label for me:

noun
a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.

But I think I like it and can own it!

I have had lots of conversations in the last few months about what I do, how I got started and how it is going. People are genuinely curious and on the most part very supportive of my new-ish venture.

When I re-framed myself from being a teacher/ headteacher I had a lot of coaching and did a lot of reflection on how I was going to start referring to myself. My succinct introduction is currently that I am a Leadership Development Consultant, Coach and Trainer. Parallel to that I am the Co-Founder and Director of Diverse Educators.

I do not often include the fact that I am a small business owner, that I own a Limited Company, that I am a Company Director. And I am reflecting on why that is. My current stance is that in education business is often a dirty word and feels at odds with the moral imperative and servant leadership that brings many of us into the profession. We do it for love, not money.

I think this is one of the tensions that emerged from the academisation roll out and how academies/ MATs are perceived compared to maintained schools and localities. The criticism is often that academies are too corporate and they are run as business not schools, but the reality is that a school is a business, with a budget, with KPIs and the most impactful ones I have worked in have been well-oiled machines where the business serves all of the community, all of the stakeholders.

With the current climate in education we are seeing a mass exodus of teachers and leaders. I support so many Headteachers who are burnt out and who are planning their exit strategy. I also connect with many middle and senior leaders who have started a side hustle to supplement their salary, to keep their flame lit with where their passion is or who are thinking longer term about working part-time or having more of a portfolio career. The ones that worry me are the teachers who have only been in the school system for a few years who are planning to leave already.

I didn’t come into teaching to leave, to have a second career. I worked hard and progressed for twenty years, but I became disillusioned with some of my employers. I left headship to influence the system and contribute to the profession from a different angle as I felt handcuffed in what I could say and do.

I didn’t co-found #WomenEd and #DiverseEd to make a career and get paid for what I had done as a volunteer for nearly a decade. But as I explored my Ikigai I realised that I could get paid for what I enjoyed, what I cared about and what I was good at so I moved from doing coaching, mentoring and women in leadership training for free on a Saturday, to being paid to do it Monday-Friday. I thought initially #DiverseEd would continue as a side hustle, a passion project, a voluntary contribution but my network had other ideas!

So I guess I became an educational entrepreneur by default instead of my intent. I came through the backdoor, or the side door not the front door, into my new career chapter. And to be honest I have been working it out, making it up, as I go for the last five years!

There are two conversations in my past that still stay with me and get replayed a lot as reminders:

Conversation 1:

My ex once commented on how hard I worked, how many hours I did, and he could not get his head around the fact that as I worked harder and did longer hours that I did not get paid more. In his corporate world he would have received bonuses and been paid over time for going above and beyond for his employer.

Conversation 2:

On my first day of trading, my first day of working for myself, a friend and mentor rang me up to gift me some wisdom from her own journey. She told me to remember that moving forwards I was a “business woman doing education, not an educator doing business”. Thank you Diana Osagie for this nugget, it is a helpful reminder I go back to regularly.

Both conversations continue to guide me, to remind me and to hold me to account.

Being brought up by two self-employed parents, I didn’t perhaps appreciate the exposure I got to thinking about the world of work as a small business owner. For two decades I worked for others, I had a boss, I had a paycheck, but I was often unfulfilled and frustrated.

Perhaps the freelancing, independent, business owner chapter was always my path. I just needed to realise and embrace it.

Who holds the pen to your story is a question Diana Osagie always asks our participants as they are welcomed into the Academy of Women Leadership. I am one of Diana’s ‘veterans’ (as she fondly calls us) and I have been part of her training/ coaching team since she launched the virtual training space for women leaders a few years ago, during lockdown. In the last 12 months she has also begun to offer in-person retreats – Mandy Tucker and I deliver workshops at them for her. Mandy does a session on vision boarding and manifesting the future, whilst I do a session on narrative storytelling and processing the past to understand the present.

This weekend we held our second AWL retreat and we brought together another 50 women for the day, this time near Watford. It was great to reconnect with people I already knew or who I had met before – some had rebooked because they had enjoyed the first one so much! I also got to meet in person for the first time some of the people I have coached online for a while and some of the people I chat to regularly on virtual platforms but have never met. Then there were all of the new women to meet as well. It was a day full of connection, community building, compassion and courage.

Diana opened the event with her normal energy. She is a formidable force to be reckoned with and she lives her brand of being and building courageous leaders, but this time she also shared some deep vulnerable moments in her journey to model to the room that we all face adversity and navigate obstacles, she emphasised that it is how we learn from these experiences and how we bounce forwards that really matters. She reminded everyone not to try and do leadership alone, but that a strong support network is what guides you and supports you to stay on track. This resonates with me as my tribe have been there for me, through thick and thin!

In my session we started with the Simon Sinek ‘Golden Circle’ as I invited everyone to reconnect with their core purpose for doing their role, for being a leader and for joining their sector. We reflected on the power of storytelling to build connections, to develop empathy and to process our learning. We explored the difference between the story that we tell ourselves, the story that we tell others and the story that others tell about us and we reflected on how aligned they all are.

I introduced them to the Resilient Leaders Elements framework and asked them to consider if they lead with What I Do or with Who I Am. We explored the conditioning we have received about what is affirmed and what is valued in our journeys and in our identities. I then moved them into some of the #IamRemarkable territory of considering what makes them unique and asked them to consider if they are leveraging their USP enough to differentiate themselves from the crowd. After all – who wants to be a pigeon when you can be a flamingo?

We then unpacked our relationship with success and considered what was driving us and how we were creating our criteria for a successful career and a successful life. We reflected on the reality check of non-linear or squiggly careers versus the ladder that is sold to us, we discussed the gaps in our CVs and the impact time out of our careers has on our narrative but also on our confidence. We sat with the reality of the leadership journeys that men experience versus women and that white colleagues experience versus people of colour.

We closed with an activity where we created our own lifelines and captured the milestones in our personal and professional journeys that have defined us. We considered how to reclaim the narrative and reframe the story that we tell ourselves and each other, that shape the stories that others tell about us. I asked everyone to consider if they had updated their story since they had joined their current workplace. Some had worked in the same place for 5, or 10 years, some had had multiple maternity leaves, most had changed significantly in this time period but the story that defined them was the old version – we considered what the 2.0 or 3.0 version of the story needed to include. We reflected on the venn diagram of our authentic selves and how to create more alignment about who we are as leaders at home, in our communities and in our workplaces.

We finished by gifting 3 words to the buddy we had been working with. The acknowledgement of seeing the essence of each other in broad daylight, on a weekend, without the armour of work makeup, work uniform and work heels. As always this surfaced a lot of emotion as we were validated by people who had started the day with us as strangers, but who left the day with us as friends and cheerleaders of who we were, who we are and who we are becoming.

If this resonates with you and you have not yet engaged with Diana, AWL nor attended a retreat with us then you can find out more here – we would love to see you in June. It is a privilege to be part of the AWL team, a pleasure to connect with so many brilliant women leaders and an honour to be a small part of your leadership journeys.