Helping headteacher thrive in role
When you are operating at your best, you achieve more and feel happier. You are able to accomplish the extraordinary for you team, your pupils and your school.
Leadership 90: I know first-hand from my clients that investing 90 minutes in regular coaching, with a focus on operating at your best, can have an incredibly positive impact on you personally as a leader and on your school. Leadership 90 is executive coaching designed to be similar to having both a personal trainer and a mindfulness space, ensuring that the twin oars of well-being and performance are both intentionally cultivated. It provides the means by which incremental improvement can be made and excellence can be sustained.
You are a unique leader, operating in unique circumstances and that's why you need a personalised approach to operating at your best.
The importance of your role as a headteacher means that an investment in your effectiveness is an investment in the strength and sustainability of the entire school community.
Coaching does not exist to fix weak leadership. The Leadership 90 programme is about helping capable, well-trained leaders to continually grow and develop.
You are unique, and operating in unique circumstances. The Leadership 90 programme helps you to identify and work on points of leverage, providing incremental and meaningful change that is specific for your context.
The sand is always shifting, and coaching can help you unpack the here and now, gaining perspective on situational leadership, processing emotions, and standing back to see clearly. You don't need to walk the leadership path alone.
Effort doesn't equal impact. Coaching focuses on helping you to sharpen your leadership skills and supports you to harness leadership theory in a practical way. You can test out new ways of thinking in a safe environment, sandbox new ways of acting, map out a series of steps. Many of the leaders I work with find this super helpful for transitioning into new ways of working.
A narrative approach provides non-linear coaching which is ideal for leaders tackling complex issues at an executive level.
A key component is setting goals and identifying measurable indicators that act as a 'north star' ensuring that coaching isn't all talk, but leads to impact. This process is sophisticated, because what the leader needs to make progress is complex and multifaceted. We are talking deep level here, not easy surface work.
As a coach, I provide honest feedback, and help you to track developments. Objective reflection helps to reveal blind spots, address unhelpful thinking, spot behavioural patterns.
The Leadership 90 programme supports different types of thinking, e.g. decision making, analysis, reflection, creative thinking, problem solving, visioning. You have a partner to provide frameworks, questions, scaffold extended thinking, offer alternative perspectives. Leaders comment on my strong listening skills and my ability to circle back to points aiding you to achieve deeper and new ways of thinking.
Next level you - be a better leader tomorrow than you are today. High performing leaders are dynamic, not static, and they know that the demands and challenges they face as a leader are contextual and ever changing. They see that an investment in being able to operate at their best is worth every penny. Leadership 90 is about being and staying in tip top leadership condition.
Personal and Team Effectiveness
Being a headteacher is incredibly rewarding but even under normal operating circumstances it can feel like riding a roller coaster, with twists, turns and new challenges around every corner, testing every aspect of your leadership.
In addition, school success depends on having a strong group of people around you to help you achieve your goals and vision. Extend support to your senior leaders by offering them coaching, and build in bespoke training to grow professional knowledge and fill skills gaps, helping everyone operate at their best.
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I provide coaching to help you and your team thrive.
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I deliver bespoke training programmes to create the strong workforce you need.
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I facilitate thinking sessions which enables you and your team to problem solve and plan for a great future.
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I support schools in creating a culture in which everyone is empowered to thrive.
Let’s unlock what’s possible — together. Book a free consultation today.
Call, email or book online
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Why the demands of being a headteacher require high levels of professional support
Headteachers carry the demanding responsibility of providing an excellent educational experience for pupils. They have an extremely wide remit, often operate outside their comfort zone, tackle challenging problems that are multi-faceted and not easy to resolve, are set ambitious key performance indicators, face external scrutiny (governors, Ofsted, parents, community, results tables) within a system that experiences regular national policy shifts, and all whist copying with limited resources and financial strain.
With small leadership teams, Headteachers are often pulled from strategic priorities into daily operational issues and face many competing demands on their time. This constant pressure makes sustained high performance difficult; without effective support and strong personal resilience, many risk burnout, underperformance, or ultimately leaving the profession.
Despite their visibility, headteachers can experience profound professional isolation. Confidentiality, concern about transferring stress to colleagues, and fear of losing respect both for themselves and their school can prevent them from speaking openly about difficulties. As a result, many carry significant emotional and professional burdens alone while being expected to lead with confidence and clarity.
Over 1,600 heads left for a job outside the state sector in 2023-24. In 2010-11, the figure stood at 438. (Schools Week, 2025).
Many ‘overwhelmed’ headteachers leave role within five years. Some 30 per cent of primary heads and 38 per cent of secondary leaders under 50 are leaving their posts within five years, analysis by the NAHT shows (TES, Nov 2025).
"Three in ten teachers and leaders said they were considering leaving the state-funded school sector in the next 12 months." DfE Schools White Paper 2026.
"People focused companies are four times more likely to outperform peers." McKinsey study 2023
Mental Health
Coaching is very beneficial for the mental health of leaders, helping leaders continue to perform in a demanding role and find joy in school leadership. Coaching provides a safe space to process emotions and analyse situations. With many years of school improvement experience, headteachers tell me in coaching sessions that they feel heard and understood.
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Research on coaching as a solution
Research shows that coaching can be effective in supporting leaders with the challenges of headship.
Given the significant impact the HT has on pupil outcomes, an investment in coaching can provide an excellent return on investment (Darling-Hammond et al., 2022).
It supports leaders to be more strategic and aids planning, results in leaders being less reactionary, surfaces assumptions and enables leaders to deepen their understanding of complex issues, improves confidence and communication, and supports leadership because it is 'job-embedded' (Collins et al., 2025).
Coaching has distinctive strengths as a form of professional development, among which are a focus on setting and achieving bespoke goals, increasing leader's self awareness, engaging in quality reflection, and has been shown to enhance relational awareness, and bring about improvements in adaptability, resilience and problem solving. (Boon, 2022; van Nieuwerburgh et al., 2020).
What can be won
won: clarity, synergy, focus, insight, identify patterns, make connections, unpack complex issues, feel heard and understood, see from new perspectives, problem solving, understand yourself better as a leader, learn to learn into strengths, step back to make better use of emotional intelligence, improved articulation of what you need from others, action plan, try out new ways of thinking, sandboxing of new ways of working, idea generation, feeling lighter, emotional relief, professional growth, sharper leadership skills, better use of time.
Happy Headteachers operating at their best are more likely to lead successful teams, have happy staff, gain great results and not burn out.
what can be lost
lost: lack of focus, diffused efforts, trudging through treacle, not achieving goals, limited progress, stressful relationships, increases in difficult conversations, pressure to improve, negative external judgements, not feeling fulfilled or sense of job well-done, poor flow state.
Avoid working extremely long hours for little gain. As leaders, we can get in our own way of achieving success, falling into patterns of behaviours and actions that do not bring about the results we were aiming for. In addition, high levels of mental stress leads to lower operating effectiveness. Reflective, analytical work on a regular basis can help to restore your emotional balance and improve effectiveness by ensuring you are not leading with blinkers on.
1. School improvement: 15+ years of school improvement experience ensures that conversations can be deep, meaningful and set against a shared understanding of the national context. Headteachers feel heard and that sessions are meaningful.
“...for me it was the biggest driver for school improvement.”
2. Experience: Having worked with many leaders across different schools, I have a profound understanding of the common challenges school leaders face.
“Vicky’s level of expertise, her level of reality, and her level of practicality sets her apart from other school improvement professionals.”
3. Knowledge base: Leaders appreciate my wide knowledge base, ensuring in coaching that the right questions, frameworks, and models are utilised, enabling there to be purposeful reflection, analytical thinking and supporting leaders to see clearly a way forward.
4. Relationships: The relationship between the coach and coachee is paramount. Leaders tend to feel able to share without holding back.
“Vicky is warm and engaging and I felt comfortable right from the start. A safe space for discussion. A really positive climate in which anything could be shared.”
5. Skilled practitioner: ILM Executive Coaching and Mentoring Level 7. A variety of leadership qualifications.
“I can’t tell you how much I have personally and professionally grown from my leadership coaching with Vicky. I cannot think of any other CPD that has had such an impact on me and as a result for my organisation.”
My style of coaching sits under the positive psychology umbrella and is influenced by narrative coaching making it an effective style for working at a non-linear level with headteachers.
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Think you don't have anything to work on in coaching?
Some leaders know exactly what they want to work on in coaching. For others, an exploration of the current experience of being a headteacher enables us to work together to identify the most high-leverage aspects with a view to operating at your best.
Still not sure... these are some of the areas that other leaders have chosen to work on in coaching (often pulling strands from across multiple 'topic' areas) because people and leadership are complex and multi-faceted which is why it is useful to work with a coach.
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Analysing where you are now.
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Learning to understand yourself as a leader.
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Leaning into your strengths.
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Managing your drivers, defaults and tolerance levels.
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Understanding your frustrations and harnessing insights.
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Professional relationships and team dynamics.
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Envisaging the future for you, your team and your school.
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Balancing strategic with operational.
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Learning how to pivot to new behaviours and actions.
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Applying leadership theory to 'sharpening the saw'.
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Crossing thresholds and sustaining change.
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Processing emotions and using the internal data.
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Unpacking complex problems, considering the variables and gaining clarity.
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Considering how you influence school culture.
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Resetting focus - keeping on track with goals.
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Resetting your leadership identity.
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Standing back far enough to employ emotional intelligence effectively.
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Testing out new ideas and sandboxing new ways of working.
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Theories around happiness at work and achieving personal happiness, particularly considering how being a leader fits into the wider picture of your happiness.
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Balancing intentionality with a reactionary stance.
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Creating the conditions in which other people can thrive.
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Communicating what you want.
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Follow-up, follow through, accountability, challenge, 100% ness.
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Accountability and delegation.
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Managing performance.
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Gaining insights from others – your relationship with feedback.
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Change management.
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Achieving performance management objectives.
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Yorkshire and England
The majority of coaching is provided via video link, so you can be based anywhere in the UK. Bespoke training and team coaching is usually face-to-face, which is particularly preferable if you are based in Yorkshire or within 90 miles of Scarborough.
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