What has March 2020 taught me about leadership? Part 5 - Protecting your Mental Health as a Leader

This is Part 5 in a short 5 part series of reflective blogs about what coronavirus has revealed about my leadership. You can click on any of the hyperlinks below to read the previous posts.

I’ll post each one separately so they’re not too long:

• Clear communication is everything

• Striking the balance between being prepared and pre-emptive

• Stand up for your values – you need them more now than ever

• Times of crisis – you reap the culture you’ve sown

• Protecting your mental health as a Headteacher

I originally drafted all 5 posts in early April, but have been somewhat delayed in posting this last one! However, with the impending Boris announcement and the very real fears we have of a second wave, I think sadly this will continue to be very relevant...

Fellow head Emma Turner (@Emma_Turner75) wrote an excellent piece in TES in November 2019 about the privilege and burden of leadership. In it, she used the analogy of rocks. Every interaction with a school leader either leaves a fabulous, joyous gem or a heavy rock to carry:

An educational psychologist colleague of mine had a different analogy. She talked about your headspace as being like a bank account: some interactions ‘credit’, and some interactions ‘debit’, your account. If you have too many ‘debit’ interactions you can end up in the red. At this point, you need to identify what do you need to do to ‘top yourself’ back up. Sometimes, for me, that’s meant working from home for a day. Because being at home has reduced my availability to have interactions that might put me further into the red. A pause day is all that is needed to make my account feel healthy (and black!) again!

I want to stress that I don’t underestimate that it is a privilege that staff confide in me during the darkest and most stressful times of their lives. I haven’t been a headteacher for very long and sometimes it blows my mind the intimate and intense information that I carry or ‘hold’ for my staff.

And until March 2020, I always felt capable of doing so. I’ve kept the packet of tissues handy in my office, pulled up a chair and had the capacity to listen, absorb and hold the painful details of my colleagues’ lives. I’ve bolstered this capacity through relying on my own support networks: other SLT colleagues, my coach, mentor and also a twitter group of headteachers from around the country who I consider dear friends, and yet we’ve never met - although we hope to change that post COVID-19.

However, near the start of the Easter holidays, about 8pm one evening I realised that I did not have this capacity right now…Not for corona related news. It was too damaging to my own mental health to hear emotions and details about how other people and their families were faring with the unpredictable beast that is corona. I had to ask my friends not to just ‘bomb’ updates into Whatsapp groups about the daily statistics or Boris going into intensive care. I had to strictly ration how and when I engaged with the news and social media. And I had to directly, kindly ask a colleague to reduce the level of detail and information they were giving me.

Now, I’m lucky (see the culture described in Part 4) because when I had this chat with my colleague, they immediately understood. No animosity, no resentment just two humans connecting as I said, ‘I know I’m your headteacher, but right now I need to be a human first so please don’t share this level of detail with me’

Why did I suddenly run out of capacity?

The challenge that corona presents us is that we are all experiencing the exact same crisis and the exact same time. And this is the problem. This is why I suddenly don’t have capacity to ‘hold’ this for my staff team. Because, I can’t distance myself from this situation because I am personally experiencing the anxiety and terror also.

I really do consider the openness with which staff approach me a real honour. I hope that these temporary lines/boundaries that I’m putting in place (temporarily) won’t damage it however, if I take ownership of explaining WHY I’m changing the ‘rules of engagement’ for the moment, I trust my brilliant staff will back me up, as they always do.

Whilst I’m temporarily tagging out as part of that support network (for corona virus stuff) in the short term, I’m reminding colleagues to utilise their own personal networks and also providing the numbers for the employee assistance phonelines that we subscribe to as an organisation. It doesn’t feel like much, but it’s all I can do right now.

So, COVID-19 has taught me that I don’t have infinitely broad shoulders and that in this time of crisis, I do need to take active steps to protect my own mental health too – we’re all human after all.