Looking After Your Own Wellbeing (as Well as Everyone Else’s)

Heads and senior leaders spend their days holding everyone else's worries, and there's rarely anywhere to put their own. It's hard to say you're struggling when the whole school is looking to you.

The habits that help are small, and they come from a drama therapist who gives monthly one-to-one supervision to dozens of headteachers. Book time with yourself in the diary and guard it like any meeting, even if it's five minutes with the door shut and a cup of tea. Draw 'what's on your plate' to see what's weighing heaviest. Get outside: some of her heads now turn up for supervision in walking boots and say 'I need the hill today'.

And if you'd rather not do it alone, set up peer support with a colleague, using a simple structure that means both of you are properly listened to and nobody overshares.