School leadership in 2020 is more challenging than any other time in living memory. We explore how school leaders can protect their wellbeing and build a thriving school culture in a time of crisis.

Sonia Gill is a qualified teacher who has taught all ages from 4 to 16. She’s also had a successful career in business, having been selected onto the prestigious John Lewis leadership programme.

Sonia founded her company Headsup in 2011 where she and her team have been supporting schools to become genuinely outstanding. The schools they support are four times more likely to gain or maintain their outstanding judgement.

She’s the author of two Number 1 ranked books, ‘Journey to Outstanding’ and ‘Successful Difficult Conversations in school’. We focus on leadership in this episode, and explore:

• What is ‘school culture’?
• How to create a healthy culture in your school and how this affects wellbeing at all levels in the school.
• Setting and managing your personal boundaries, to reduce the risk of burnout.
• The difference between ‘equity’ and ‘fairness’ and how this simple framework can help you make better decisions, more quickly as a leader.
• How to use your school vision and values to inform decision making.
• What Sonia has learned working with so many school leaders over lockdown, that can help support you going forward.
• Ideas to help you look after yourself and your wellbeing as a school leader.
• And much more!

You can connect with Sonia:

On Twitter

Her website is ukheadsup.com

Sign up for her daily emails to support school leaders through the pandemic and more.

Her books are:

Journey to Outstanding Successful
Difficult Conversations in school