ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 opens this section with a description of some significant ways in which school leaders—headteachers in particular—can be supported through the provision of one-to-one coaching sessions. Emil Jackson and Andrea Berkeley argue that while school leaders frequently feel overwhelmed by the range and quantity of their responsibilities, it is the quality of the emotional and psychological demands of their role that invariably takes the heaviest toll. By describing some commonly encountered scenarios, the chapter aims to illustrate the importance of offering leaders thinking time and space away from the front line of school life. Jackson and Berkeley further hope to illustrate the potential for coaching to enable school leaders to develop the emotional literacy and resilience to withstand, understand, and make effective use of the emotional and psychological dynamics that continually reverberate in schools. Finally, they consider some of the costs to school leaders—and education more generally—when adequate reflective space, such as is offered through coaching, is not made available.
Traditionally—and perhaps especially—in schools, the leadership of an organization can be seen as singular. Most people’s conception of leadership is grounded in an idea of the individual leader or, as in the case of schools, the headteacher. Nevertheless, however lonely headteachers may often feel, they do not in fact lead alone.
