Educative Leadership - Prioritising Learning, Getting Comfortable with Uncertainty and Privileging Relationships - Reflections for Leaders in Education

The reality of leadership in education has become increasingly relentless, vast and dynamic and is largely dominated and constrained by high-stakes accountability regimes. The challenge of juggling all this with the complexity of meeting the needs of all staff whilst also moving the school or setting forward towards a shared vision, which aims to meet the needs of all learners, is not to be underestimated. To do this successfully leaders need to be comfortable creating environments which expect and encourage free and frank discussion between staff and in which everyone feels supported to adopt an orientation to practice that focuses on ‘what is really going on’ and ‘how can we do this better?’ This chapter explores the features of the environment that leaders need to create and the approaches they need to foster to support both the individual growth and adaptive expertise of their teams. These are essential in building relationships and supporting staff wellbeing – fundamental to a school’s success. This chapter aims to support leaders in considering how they might reflect on their practice and the adjustments they might make to become more comfortable with uncertainty in a way that can support whole school improvement.