1st Edition
Finding and Sustaining your School Leadership Voice Values, Motivations, and Touchstones
Acknowledgements
Prologue – A Book of Provocations, Metaphors and Hope
Why this Book at this Time?
What to Expect
The Structure
Who This Is For
Introduction
‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’
Fast Track or Long Haul?
Roots
Chapter 1 - Finding your touchstone
What lasts and what fades?
What keeps us going
Your Touchstone
Finding your touchstone
My story:
Summary
Moving Forward with Purpose
Coming next
Chapter 2 – Being the Best Version of You
The Imitation Game
Learning from the best…and the worst
Harnessing the RAS
What wise colleagues taught me
Who tells you the truth?
The beliefs that hold us back
Finding your best self
Summary
Final Reflection
Coming Next
Growth
Chapter 3 – Something out of Nothing: Leading without waiting for permission
Where do you naturally lean?
Manager or Leader?
The BIG problem for schools today
The Downward Escalator of Education
The Leadership Loop
1. Find the gap
2. Let it drain
3. Create Rapport
Creating rapid rapport – 10 Top Tips
1. Be present and visible
2. Listen like a leader
3. Know names and use them thoughtfully
4. Build micro-moments of connection
5. Find and foster common purpose
6. Be genuinely curious about others
7. Share your humanity
8. Recognise and validate
9. Hold boundaries with warmth
10. Follow through and follow up
4. Travelling together
5. The Pre-Mortem
6. Selling the dream
7. Living the dream
Summary
Final Reflection: Leading with Purpose
Coming Next
Chapter 4 – Making the knocks, knock you forward
The danger of overload
Aspiring to fail?
The importance of failure
Coping with internal criticism - Hold things lightly
Treat all criticism critically.
Judging by intention, not outcome
Summary
A Few Final Questions to Consider:
Coming Next
Chapter 5 – Crossing the Rubicon: Stepping into leadership before you feel ready
How leadership tends to develop in schools
An accidental career
When students do not easily find belonging
Crossing the Rubicon
Have you the relevant experience…yet?
Do you have the time…yet?
Are you ready for the responsibility…yet?
Are you ready for the separation…yet?
Are you ready to take your position in the ‘Lowerarchy’…yet?
The best job in the world
Square pegs and round holes
Final Thoughts: The Point of No Return?
Coming Next
Chapter 6 – Choose and Build Your Team
Lessons in Leadership
1 – Seeking Inspiration
2 - Wing Warping: Stability through Influence
3. One Propeller or More? – Power Through Team Design
4. Counter-Rotating Propellers – Balance Through Challenge
5. Curved Flight – Navigating Through Subtle Leadership
Do as I do, not as I say
Doing it another way
Summary
Coming Next
Flourishing
Chapter 7 – Leading for Growth: Practical Strategies to use now!
The Prime Directive
Putting the horses before the cart
How would you feel?
Cultivating a positive school culture for the growth of capacity
Choosing your culture
Coaching culture
The Coaching Top Ten
1. Open questioning – aka being ‘bloody awkward’
2. Provocations
3. Aspirational Positing
4. The Premortem – See Chapter 3
5. Speaking last
6. Creating Cognitive Flexibility
7. Rotating roles
8 - Improvisation
9 - Emotional modelling
10. Metacognition
Final Thoughts: Leadership as Cultivation, Not Control
Coming Next
Chapter 8 – Redefining Education in the 21st century
The Match of the century
Education in the 21st Century
A community school or a school in the community
Fall apart, or pull together?
Full System Reset
Final Thoughts
Coming Next
Chapter 9 – Leading Well: Creating Space for Others to Lead
Constrained by our past or ready to grow?
The best paid midday supervisors in the country?
Setting an example
The Tools for leadership
Think and Act
Literature
Coaching
Visits
Training courses
Space and Time
Time
Space
Demonstrate and Articulate
Final thoughts
Coming Next
Chapter 10 – Planned Anonymity: Building your leadership legacy
Stargazing – a message to new entrants to the profession
Cultural coherence
Planned anonymity
Final thoughts - Legacy
Bibliography
Further Recommended Reading
Index
Biography
Chris Tooley is Principal of The Netherhall School and Oakes College in Cambridge, UK. He is an educational leader, author and speaker known for championing relational practice, organisational culture and leadership development, with a particular focus on creating inclusive schools where young people and staff flourish together.
‘This is a timely and urgent contribution to the debate about the nature of education in England and, in particular, the type of school that we need now if we are to address the disengagement that too many children and young people have for the value and experience of learning. Drawing upon his experience of leading a school on its journey of transformation and illustrated throughout with practical advice, Chris has provided a roadmap to successfully building a relational culture where high academic standards go hand in hand with care, compassion and belonging. It is a must read for any school and trust leader.’
Jonathan Culpin, CEO of Anglian Learning and Chair of the Cambs CEO Forum
'This book takes us on a journey of authentic and passionate inclusive leadership. It is an educational autobiography, a leadership manual, a dispeller of myths and a practical guide to running an inclusive school - something that needs to be highly commended. Chris writes with a passion for inclusion and relational practice but underpins this with his knowledge of neuroscience - ever the biologist. What we can see in this book is that genuine inclusion in education is within our gift and is achievable. This is a book about leadership courage and not compliance. It is a welcome break from the well established and recognised behaviourist approaches to running schools, and a commitment to the often damned restorative and relational practice. Chris shows us that it can be done. This is not a book about an ideology, it is a book about a successful and thriving inclusive school. A must read.'
Dave Whitaker, MAT Chief Education Officer and author of The Kindness Principle
