' Too often as leaders, we seek to simply equip people to do their job better. To be more efficient and more effective. We tend to bypass the heart, our deepest place of conviction, commitment, passion, purpose, identity and life. However, if we can engage the heart, we unlock the most powerful part of a person. You see, our most valuable asset is not our skills, abilities, gifts or experience.
It’s our heart.’

David McLean; Integrity Coaching

I offer something a little different for you this week.

This weeks newsletter consists of a short paper I wrote for a Leadership Matters webinar I facilitated in late August. In it we explored how we might bring the heart into the new school year and the positive impact this could have on ourselves and others.

I hope you find it of benefit.

The heart of the new school year

As we go back to school at the start of this new school year the spirit of welcome will be everywhere. Young people in new school uniforms, some far too big but ready to 'grow into', friends reunited, new members of staff to get to know, and a tangible feeling of new beginnings and possibilities.

This sense of joy that being back in the company of young people and valued colleagues brings, connects us more powerfully than any other human experience. It's the antidote to stress, builds resilience and cultivates psychological wellbeing.

Cultivating joy means leading with heart. When we lead with heart we lead with love.  We resource and renew ourselves and others by establishing genuine and authentic connections which, according to Jill Suttie psychologist and editor of 'Greater Good', strengthens our resilience and can help us sustain our leadership long term.

However, as the weeks go by, we can get caught up in our daily habits. In the operational tasks, and the endless to do lists. All too often, this means as we become tired, our connection with our core purpose can take a bit of a back seat waiting for our spark - our ‘mojo’ - to come alive again. 

Rachael Horne a school leader in Lincolnshire knows this feeling well and how easy it can creep up on us.

My heart has always been in teaching since the age of 6, but during the pandemic years I lost that connection with what I loved about the job. I lost my mojo. I started to fall out of love with my work.

Then I remembered a boy I had taught 20 years ago who tragically took his own life as a young man. I had met him just a couple of years ago and listened with amazement as he recounted numerous moments he remembered from being in my class. I had remembered none of these small experiences – but they mattered so much to him.

In that moment I knew that my purpose isn’t only demonstrated in the big things, the strategies and the improvement plans, but in the small daily encounters, in acts of kindness and in being present.

My practice of mindfulness, deliberately paying attention to what matters, has helped me reconnect with this purpose and to find joy in my work again. I now take regular ‘awe walks’ around the school, cultivating these moments of joy and gratitude. A child’s smile, the gift of a dandelion, a lost shoe found, the small child who I took the time to be wholly present for as he told me his troubles.

I have learned to savour these moments and this has helped me redress the balance from going home full of everything that didn't go well to remembering that which delighted me.

It has made all the difference.

As Rachael found, joy is not always our natural state and we need to deliberately cultivate it. This is understandable. As humans we have a negativity bias. It's what's kept us alive for centuries. We are hard wired to notice danger, and be on high alert for that which we don't want, frequently orientating ourselves toward feelings of ‘insufficiency’, and ‘what’s wrong?’. This can lead to an undertone of dissatisfaction in our lives and our leadership. It can rob us of joy.

Maybe this is why, according to the Harvard Business Review over 95% of us expect to experience joy at work but under 40% of us actually do. A mismatch which has been termed 'the joy gap'. I suspect this gap is not quite as large for those of us in schools, but nevertheless, it’s food for thought.

Mindfulness can help us notice when we have fallen into this 'negativity bias' by strengthening our awareness of what's going on for us in each moment of our day.  It helps us to remember to pause, come into balance, and deliberately orientate ourselves away from these negative feelings toward noticing, opening up to and experiencing moments of awe, wonder and joy.

Liz Davison comments on how important joy is to her saying; ‘I've got into the habit, reinforced by the pandemic, of just 'working on work' as I call it. Now when I notice that happening I think right, I have to pick myself up and have a walk around school and go into early years and talk to the children. That's the joy of the job and it was good to be reminded to bring that back to the forefront of everything we do.'

You might be thinking ‘this all sounds a bit ‘unicorns and rainbows’, after all, the steady, daily work of leadership is a serious business. However there is a scientific basis behind the personal and organisational benefits of cultivating more joy and happiness at work as the  University of California  Berkeley School of Management found in their research.

The happier we are at work, the more we experience the following personally and organisationally:

• Better health and wellbeing - less absence - more creative and effective problem solving;

• Less staff turnover, fewer mistakes and greater levels of peer support;

• In the face of adversity and set back, better able to recover, and reconcile conflict;

• We are more likely to be seen as trustworthy, and worthy of respect.

So how might we, like Liz and Rachael, deliberately cultivate joy?

As you sense the joy at the start of this new school year - why not make a deliberate promise to yourself to carry on cultivating it by making it a deliberate daily practice?

Why not try one of these?

Open up your senses

Schools have a very special smell, different year groups and key stages sound different, the school environment is full of visual delights. Pause long enough to notice them and feel the extent to which they gladden your heart.

When you notice thoughts arising such as ‘this needs tidying’, ‘that looks tatty’, ‘that's not good enough’, try to come down from your ‘headspace’ and stay open to your senses and to delight. The tatty display will still be there and ready to claim your attention later. 

Start a team meeting by asking 'what's gladdened your heart this week?'

Savour joy when it appears

When you notice something that ‘gladdens your heart’ savour it. Feel it in your body, notice what happens to your breathing, your heart rate, your mood? What happens to your thoughts? Maybe they are they less scattered, less judgemental, less busy?
This ‘savouring’ practice  intensifies the experience, imprints it on our body and helps to down regulate our stress hormones.

Cultivate an innocent perception of the ‘ordinary’

Come into the school as if seeing it for the first time.
Open up your peripheral vision. Practice the art of simplicity, whilst noticing our tendency to over complicate things. Release yourself from ingrained habits of thought that can lean toward the negative.
Look through the eyes of a child. Play at making the familiar, unfamiliar and see what awe and wonder it might evoke.

A joy jar

Maybe this is a slant on the question ‘are you a glass half full person?’. I know of schools who have introduced the ‘joy’ or ‘happy’ jar to children particularly during and post Covid.
The children are invited to put a small object, drawing or slip of writing into the jar that reminds them of what helped them feel joy that week, and share it if they wish to. Even as a very grown up school leader maybe it’s worth a try?

Stay awhile – linger

Ron Heifetz in his book Leadership on the Line, encourages leaders to spend time on the dance floor, in the midst of the action, and also on the balcony, watching, sensing and experiencing.
Where’s your balcony?
Perhaps it’s at the bottom of the stairs, on the edge of the playground, at the door first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Linger there. Watch, notice, and delight in the day to day movement, the flow of the dance that makes a school a community. When you find your mind pulled toward ‘got to get on, got lots to do’, linger just a moment longer. Smile, greet and savour the feeling. Touch gratitude.

Be a joy multiplier

As leaders, how we respond to the happiness of others is significant and can sometimes be a 'make or break' in our relationships. Knowing how important it is to savour joy, we can support others to relish the moment when they are telling us good news, by being curious about it asking; 'tell me more, who else was there, how did you feel?'

Our response to the success and wellbeing of others can sometimes be tainted with envy, and we may feel ourselves contract a little. When we feel this 'contraction' in ourselves, perhaps thinking 'why them and not me, where did I go wrong?', we can simply tune into a simple phrase; 'I'm happy because you're happy, may your happiness increase'.
This is a practice of keeping our heart open, even when we feel envy and jealousy, so rather than being depleted by another's joy, we build a positive connection with it.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the ‘The Book of Joy’, says quite simply ‘joy is our birthright and even more fundamental than happiness'. He reminds us that joy is our natural state - we don't need to develop it, we already have it he says.  

We just need to give ourselves the permission, space and moments to orient towards it.

I wish you joy of this new school year

Maggie