35 years in education and nearly 18 years as a Head have taught me about the vital importance of having a group of fellow travellers for support, challenge and friendship.
I became very familiar with the word ‘fellowship’ growing up. My father, as Secretary of the Baptist church in which I was raised, would give the same notice each week inviting the congregation to enjoy ‘fellowship over a cup of tea’ after each service; and I became a member of the Young People’s Fellowship when I was sufficiently old…much of which seemed to involve drinking Fanta in the coffee bar and playing table football. The word thus had a meaning akin to ‘chatting’ or ‘socialising’ in my experience.
It wasn’t until several years of being a Head had passed before I really began to understand the richness of real fellowship and how important it can be: something rather more akin to its meaning in Lord of the Rings than I associated with the tepid cups of tea and lurid fizzy drinks of my youth.
I have come to believe that finding and nurturing fellowship is a crucial part of the journey of leadership. Seeking out and spending good time with the only people who can really, properly understand the challenges, paradoxes and public exposure of the role one plays as a Head Teacher has proved an absolute necessity for me.
It’s something that I prioritise too.
I’ll try to make the most of the times that are set aside for getting together with good colleagues…not seeing it as an imposition on the ‘real work’ or snatching a few hours and rushing back to the tyranny of the everyday decision making and the worries that brings. It’s categorically not a self indulgence nor a temporary dereliction of duty, in my opinion: it’s crucial to my well-being as a leader and the health of the institution that I lead that I make the most of the time that opportunities for fellowship bring.
As I write, I am spending the first of two occasions this school year in the company of the group that gives me most support, care and stimulation: the Heads and Deputies of the other Quaker schools in the UK and Ireland. Being able to take each other’s minds on all the challenges of being a school Head, borrow each other’s best ideas and try out your own in a group that understands what it is to run a school with this particular, unusual ethos is really important. There’s an honesty rather than a professional oneupmanship about the support offered, and the shoulders offered to (sometimes almost literally) cry on are both broad and comfortable!
To know that you are not -and don’t have to do it- on your own is really important to me, and I truly value the times I spend with my colleagues, several of whom have become good friends over the past six years. It’s a mutual thing also: being able to ask them if they’re OK and offer support, insight and sympathy is at least as important a part of fellowship as seeking it oneself.
In lockdowns in particular regular evening on-line gatherings proved really important, as we shared our fears, ignorance and occasional good ideas from our sofas with red wine or whiskey in hand; although the joy of resuming face to face meetings was very real. Sadly, other groups to which I belong have increasingly eschewed face to face meetings, replacing them with Zoom gatherings that prove efficient for doing business and swiftly releasing us back to our day jobs but pretty useless as opportunities for effective support and beneficial relationship building.
And it’s not all about sitting round talking shop either. We try to walk together and go out to eat together wherever possible, finding ways of lifting our spirits in nature and with good food. I see neither as an indulgence, whatever it might look like to those looking on.
This experience would lead me to suggest to all leaders not to try to stand alone, but to make the most of opportunities for fellowship that can gain and offer necessary support. For some that will mean actively putting together a peer group of like minded colleagues, should such a group does not exist through some existing professional association. My brother has done exactly that over many years as a CEO in the charitable sector, and it has been crucial for him and his fellows at times.
Leading, particularly in the type of public, exposed role a Head Teacher has to play, can be tough and occasionally really bruising. It can also be isolating if one is not careful. Very few of us can do it on our own. That’s why I am so grateful throughout my career to have found peers who prop me up, make me laugh, don’t take me too seriously and send me back to daily work in good spirits.
I wish the same for all those reading this.