Category: success

Opening the wardrobe door

One of the aspects of my coaching of senior leaders that many coachees report that they find particularly helpful is the identification (and subsequent challenge) of their assumptions. We all hold many assumptions – in fact we have to hold these, in order to function, because imagine how life would descend quickly into paralysis if …

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“You wouldn’t be such a good coach if everything had always gone right for you”

Sitting in the warm sun outside a café in North Parade in Oxford on Friday afternoon last week, sipping tea with a friend and colleague in education, and reflecting on how we had both come to be where we were, we ruminated upon the imperative that exists to ensure that leaders in education have their …

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Looking out for our turtles

Browsing Twitter on Sunday morning, ahead of the COBIS conference, I came across a video of a turtle struggling on its back. I can’t find the original source, or I would credit it, but seeing the number of views of the video clip, I think there is a fair chance that you have seen the …

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Happy New Year!

At the dawn of 2022, let us commit to making it a year of hope! In doing so, I wanted to reflect back on my experience in late 2021, when I was lucky enough to visit the vast learning emporium that is Expo 2020 Dubai. Delayed for a year because of the pandemic, but nonetheless …

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How to leave school again … and again … and again …

I have been reflecting a lot recently on what it means to leave school – that moment of transition from being a school student to not being a school student, leaving behind 13+ years of formal schooling mandated by the state, and facing up to a future of possibilities, choices and responsibilities. These reflections have …

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The Pattern Seekers – insights into how different brain structures have saved humanity

If you are looking for a well-referenced, very readable and intriguing but satisfying book which explores why difference in human brains is of value in our development as human beings, then you should read ‘The Pattern Seekers’, by Simon Baron Cohen. It was recommended to me by a very good friend a couple of months …

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The importance of discipline in a successful life

I spent a glorious hour last week tuning into a live talk with the author Alexander McCall Smith, hosted by the Caledonian Club in London, but of course all on Zoom (which made it much more accessible, if less social). Anyway, he was, as ever, a delightful speaker – entertaining, modest, self-deprecating, intelligent, with a …

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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 …

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A tale of root ginger, hope and determination

Once Upon A Time, roughly 9 weeks ago, when everyone in the UK was instructed to stay at home, there was a mini (but nonetheless confronting) crisis in Edinburgh, when root ginger for purchase was nowhere to be found. ‘Sorry, not available’ were the words stamped across online orders, and even kind neighbours who ventured …

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How the coronavirus is propelling us into the future of education

This is a guest blog written by Dr. Lijuan Du, Vice-Principal and Co-Principal Elect of Dalton School Hong Kong – which, in common with all Hong Kong Schools, is currently closed – with a call to us all to use the current crisis to focus deeply on what education actually means. An outbreak of pneumonia …

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