Senior leadership team – The headteacher’s guide to SLT alchemy
Hannah Carter breaks down the process of honest chaos that goes into assembling an effective senior leadership team…
- by Hannah Carter
- Experienced headteacher and author Visit website
The building of a senior leadership team is a task of such absurdity and complexity that it can feel less like a professional endeavour, and more like trying to assemble a successful dinner party from a collection of eccentric, opinionated and perpetually stressed-out guests.
The common – and hilariously naive – misconception is that a successful senior leadership team is simply a collection of the most individually brilliant educators.
You know the types. The teacher whose lesson observations are so flawless they could be sold as a masterclass. The spreadsheet wizard who knows the school budget down to the last paperclip. The pastoral guru who speaks in reassuring platitudes.
This, however, is a recipe for disaster…
What makes a senior leadership team gel?
A senior leadership team composed entirely of all-stars isn’t a team. It’s a collection of virtuosos all trying to play lead guitar at the same time. Inevitably, they produce a cacophonous mess.
The true art of headship lies not in finding the best at everything, but in assembling a group of wonderfully flawed individuals whose skills and personalities somehow, inexplicably, fit together like mismatched pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
The headteacher is less a conductor of a symphony, and more the ringmaster of a chaotic circus. The perfect senior leadership team isn’t a collection of clones. Instead, it’s a glorious, shambolic mosaic of unique quirks and a range of essential functions.
“A senior leadership team composed entirely of all-stars isn’t a team”
The team that ‘gels’ is that magical, unquantifiable thing that emerges when a group of adults can sit in a meeting and respectfully disagree without anyone throwing a stapler.
It’s the shared, silent understanding of an inside joke that only people who have survived the same school trip can truly appreciate.
A team that gels is one where you can have a full-blown, passionate debate about the merits of a new behaviour policy, only to find yourselves laughing about it minutes later over a terrible cup of instant coffee.
What happens when senior leadership teams clash?
Getting there requires more than professional competence, however. It demands the kind of emotional intelligence that can’t be taught in a training course.
It’s about knowing when to push, when to pull and when to simply let the HR director vent for a bit about their cat.
A good headteacher will have a keen eye for these subtle social dynamics. They’ll be capable of assessing not just a candidate’s professional expertise, but their potential to fit into a pre-existing culture.
So what happens when the jigsaw pieces don’t quite fit, and the gelling turns to clashing?
That’s the point at which the headteacher must assume the role of reluctant diplomat. They need to drive the school’s agenda forward while simultaneously somehow managing the interpersonal friction that threatens to derail it.
You must listen to both sides of the argument, without taking a side, and validate each person’s perspective while steering them back towards a shared goal.
The art of this is to separate the person from the problem. You must be able to say, “I hear your concerns about the budget, and you’re right, it’s tight. But I also hear that our pastoral lead is worried about the mental health of our students. How do we find a solution that addresses both?”
The goal is to get your team to stop seeing each other as adversaries, and start seeing problems as collective challenges.
“The art of this is to separate the person from the problem”
This requires the headteacher to be a master of de-escalation. They need to be a professional redirector and someone who knows when to insert a well-timed, pleasantly distracting joke to break the tension.
Managed disagreements
The complication, though, is how to do all that without disempowering anyone. When stepping in to mediate, you run the risk of sending the message that your team members aren’t capable of resolving their own conflicts.
When you make a decisive call to move an agenda forward, you risk alienating the person whose idea didn’t get chosen.
A good headteacher will know that their team members’ sense of autonomy and professional worth is inextricably linked to their ability to have their voice heard and ideas taken seriously.
You have to create a space where disagreement isn’t a sign of failure, but indicative of a healthy and engaged team.
It’s about ensuring everyone feels like a valued member of that team. That’s even when their own particular battle has been lost.
One of the most profound complexities a headteacher must navigate is that tightrope walk between tradition and inclusion. Every school is a living, breathing entity. It has its own set of unwritten rules and distinct culture forged over years of Ofsted inspections and bake sales.
This tradition can be a powerful force for good, providing your school community with a shared sense of stability and identity. However, it can also become a suffocating, self-perpetuating echo chamber that treats any new ideas with suspicion.
A senior leadership team is the arena where these tensions will be most acutely felt. A recently added member may, for example, see themselves as a custodian of the school’s best traditions with a deep respect for its history.
At the same time, however, they must also be capable of suggesting that it might be finally time to let go of that photocopied worksheet dating from 1998.
Diversity, reflection and instinct
The need for diversity in leadership isn’t just a moral imperative, but a practical necessity. A team that’s inclusive in its makeup will be better equipped to handle the myriad challenges that a modern, diverse school community presents.
The headteacher’s job is to ensure that a plurality of voices and perspectives aren’t just tolerated, but actively celebrated. They’re not simply hiring staff; they’re shaping the very future of the school.
That’s why the hiring process can’t be rushed. A headteacher must be deeply reflective when it comes to their own leadership style and imperfections.
A headteacher who is a natural visionary, for instance, should seek out a deputy who can translate their wild and expensive dreams into a five-point plan with a workable budget.
“A headteacher must be deeply reflective when it comes to their own leadership style and imperfections”
The leader who excels at charming governors and parents must find an internal champion who can focus on staff wellbeing and morale, and who won’t be afraid to acknowledge when everyone’s tired and needs to go home.
Interviewing and referencing
Headteachers should devise interview scenarios and tasks that reveal how candidates think under pressure, how they would respond to the truly bizarre, and their answers to the unsolvable problems that are the bread and butter of senior leadership. And whether they have the capacity to laugh at themselves.
Reference checks ought to go beyond simple verification and into deep examinations of candidates’ track records in successful teamwork, their integrity, and ability to build lasting relationships.
At the same time, a headteacher must also trust their instincts. A candidate who looks ideal on paper, but who gives you an uneasy feeling, can sometimes represent a risk that’s simply not worth taking.
That ‘gut feeling’ will often be a synthesis of all the subconscious cues and data points an experienced leader has collected over time. It could therefore be a powerful tool in assessing whether a given person will be a harmonious addition or a human spanner in the works.
Be the careful observer
In the end, building a senior leadership team involves finding the right combination of people to create a form of collective genius. Or at the very least, it’s about forming a collective who don’t actively despise each other.
It’s a process of careful curation. It’s about building a delicate and resilient ecosystem that can withstand the perpetual crises of school life.
The headteacher’s role in all this is to act as the architect of a complex ecosystem. They need to be the careful observer who understands that the true measure of a team’s strength isn’t the individual brilliance of its members, but their ability to work together, support one another, and occasionally bring the biscuits.
A well-constructed senior leadership team is the bedrock upon which a thriving school is built. It’s the engine of a school’s success, the beating heart of its culture and guiding force of its future.
The complexity involved in building an effective SLT is immense. However, the rewards, for the school and its community alike, are immeasurable.
And if you’re really lucky, they might also be fun to go for a drink with at the end of a long, hard term…
Hannah Carter is an experienced headteacher working for The Kemnal Academies Trust and author of the book The Honest Headteacher (Teacher Writers, £12.99).
