The Challenges of Climbing Mountains and the Similarities to School Leadership.
Much like my adventure into these mountains, school leadership often faces its own set of challenges when moving from intent to impact. Our aim this weekend was to reach the top of these peaks - we didn’t make it as indicated by the discarded hiking boot!
There were several reasons for this:
➡ We got distracted in the morning by other commitments and set off later than planned.
➡ The journey to this point took more out of us than we thought and we were pretty exhausted.
➡ Although it has been a very warm October, we misjudged how cold it would be leaving our warmest gear at home. Sleeping high would have meant for a pretty uncomfortable night!
➡ We had other commitments the next day meaning that we had to be finished by a certain time and couldn’t risk the walk taking longer.
All of this made me think about the difficulties in moving from intent to impact with school leadership.
As a school leader, I had a clear idea and was passionate about the destination - the impact I wanted for the students.
But moving from intent to impact through the complex school environment was a challenge. There are competing demands and unexpected priorities and the energy it takes to create shifts and meaningful steps towards goals is considerable.
We were mindful of how we viewed this setback, being self-compassionate in our response (see last week’s blog for tips on this), focusing on the enjoyment of the trip whilst also thinking about the valuable learning we gained. We will return to these mountains again with thicker sleeping bags and extra layers!
If you are struggling to move from intent to impact on an important school initiative then here are a few questions to consider:
Reconnect with the meaning behind what you are trying to achieve - what is important about it and what are your best hopes for this initiative/change?
Who can support you with this? - This may be a collaboration or it may just be having a conversation where you reflect with someone on the changes you are trying to make.
What are you finding most challenging about moving from intent to impact? And then in follow-up to this, how can you mitigate against that?
Look at your to-do list for the week - what can you let go of in order to make time for shifting from intent to impact
If you would like support moving from intent to impact as a school leader, then get in touch for a free discovery call.
