Helen Wright

Author's posts

Dusting down and revamping your Board Strategic Plan – 3 easy steps

I wonder … how relevant is your current Board Strategic Plan? You may, of course, have a sparkling, succinct, highly relevant Strategic Plan, which has adapted to the challenges of the last year, and which sets out clearly your goals for the next few years, as well a roadmap and timetable for how you are …

Continue reading

In praise of low self-esteem …

I am currently adding another tool to my executive leadership coaching toolbox by training to deliver the Thomas International TEIQue test, which measures traits underpinning emotional intelligence. As with all psychometric tests, this test uses a series of questions to capture insights into ourselves, which we can use to articulate and understand ourselves; in many …

Continue reading

“Diversity is not an absolute”

I have had such fun this past week! Genuinely! My kind of fun, just to be clear, involves engaging in uplifting dialogue with potential change-makers, with a view to making the world a better place; when I do, in whatever format this is, I come away energised, determined, positive, optimistic … what is not to …

Continue reading

#betterboards course for International School Board members – starting next week!

Next week – the week beginning 25 January – Matthew Savage and I will release the first of 8 lessons in the LSC Education #betterboards course designed to help International School Board members focus in on what is really important in International School governance. Joining details will be popping into participants’ mailboxes over the next …

Continue reading

Chessboard thinking? Web thinking? A ‘both/and’ question in navigating the world of relationships.

One of my interesting Christmas holiday reads this year was Anne-Marie Slaughter’s ‘The Chessboard and the Web’; part thesis, part memoir (it is peppered with references to her academic career, and to her time as director of policy planning at the US State Department), it prompted me to think about how we can teach (or, …

Continue reading

Governance and the art of the possible

I think about governance every day – not surprising, really, given the Boards I chair or am involved with – and my reflections have been heightened recently, as, together with Matthew Savage, I have been putting the final touches to our 5 week flexible online course for international school Board members, #betterboards, which is launching …

Continue reading

‘The stark and penetrable reality of diversity and inclusion …’

… is that they are not “nice to haves”.’ So writes Michael Bertolino from EY in a recent Forbes article about leadership in organisations, which you can read here. He lays out convincingly why this is the case, he refers to research which proves it, and he summarises succinctly what companies can do to become …

Continue reading

Blessed be the tech makers

One of the great delights in my working life is working with other professionals, to achieve more together than we could as individuals. Besides, with the right people it is enormous fun, as was precisely the case last Thursday, when the lovely Matthew Savage and I co-presented a session for school leaders at an education …

Continue reading

Really owning your leadership voice!!

I love the image of a woman with a megaphone in Louise Penrice’s introduction to her leadership course for women in education, which she is running through LSC Education, starting in early November. I chuckled when I first saw the picture, because it rings so true for so many female leaders – sometimes they really …

Continue reading

Schools as places of the ‘now’ … and of the community

What a wonderful pleasure it was last week to speak at the Independent Schools of the Year Award 2020, to announce the finalists, and then to introduce my fellow judges as they revealed the winners! It was a really joyful occasion – all online of course, but with exploding stars and thunderous applause. A really …

Continue reading