I am a huge football fan (as you may have picked up from my previous article with my references to Carlo Ancelotti – football will be a recurring theme in this series).
My team is Arsenal and my hero Arsene Wenger. During his time as Arsenal manager, Mr Wenger always had an ability to convey calm. In his press conferences, in his interviews after games – particularly in evidence after a defeat.
His well-articulated phrase when questioned after a defeat was: “We have to take a little bit distance.”
This for me is the epitome of having a sense of perspective. In my experience having this has enabled me to preserve my balance, mental health, focus and (most importantly) my optimism.
Developing a sense of perspective is critical to calm leadership. So often we get overly stressed about things because our brains have a natural tendency to anticipate the worst – they are pre-programmed to protect us first and foremost rather than develop us.
This is why a sense of perspective is one of the most critical things to possess and/or develop. Often the problem we are afraid of is a genuine one. It exists. However, we can be guilty of what I describe as “magnitude errors” – i.e. we make the problem much bigger in our heads than it is in reality.
The consequences of making magnitude errors can be significant. When we allow things to command a bigger emotional tariff than is necessary, or take up too much of our headspace, we are vulnerable to our emotions. This can lead to being overcome by fear, feeling overwhelmed and ultimately paralysis. It’s not a great place to be.
Equally, we can be impulsive and make ill-considered decisions and judgements. It is important to avoid this at all costs. One of my calm leadership statements is: “Calm Leadership is fuelled by emotions not controlled by them.”
Staying in control of your emotions is critical to remaining calm, balanced, focused and productive. It also allows you to be a reassuring presence around other people who feed off the energy of your leadership.
However, there is a problem. Knowing that a sense of perspective is important and achieving it are two very different things.
It is not easy. I am convinced that we cannot just “decide” to have a sense of perspective.
It is through the scars and pain of leadership and life that one sees things in a more balanced, pragmatic way. The road towards developing a sense of perspective is definitely a journey to be travelled in full. In my experience, a sense of perspective comes about through two things: First, exceptional (and often painful) experiences in life and/or leadership). And second, a developed and disciplined approach to the way in which information (both good and bad) is framed in your thoughts and internalised.
Calm leadership: A nine-part SecEd series
Patrick Cozier’s nine-part SecEd series on calm leadership is publishing all this year:
Part 1: What is calm leadership and why is it important? Published November 30, 2022
Part 2: Leadership of self: Developing a sense of perspective: This article
Part 3: Imposter Syndrome: How to reduce the impact of this. Published February 20. 2023
Part 4: Everyone is out to get me! Dealing with the paranoia of leadership. Published March 27, 2023
Part 5: Leadership of people: The importance of human empathy and kindness. Published May 10, 2023
Part 6: Leadership is difficult: Embrace the role and value it. Published May 23, 2023
Part 7: The importance of honesty, integrity, and humility. Published June 12, 2023.
Part 8: Optimism during challenging times. Published June 26, 2023.
Part 9: There is no right way to lead, so be the best leadership version of yourself. Published July 3, 2023.
Exceptional life experiences
In the early years of my headship, my emotions were a rollercoaster. I literally swung from the highs to the lows in a dramatic way that was at times unnerving.
It was one of the hardest things to cope with. The “magnitude errors” were frequent and damaging. The idea that every mistake was a disaster that could lose me my job was frequent during those first three to five years.
I recall visiting my dad during a particularly tough time in 2010 (four years into headship). I was low and wanted some dad sympathy. I also wanted to warn him about a negative local newspaper article that would soon drop through his letterbox.
We were going through a rough time and one of the teaching unions had decided to strike in protest at decisions I had taken in order to reduce our painful budget deficit. The newspaper article was very unsympathetic to me.
Having prepared myself mentally and emotionally and given my dad the big build up, in true Oswald Cozier-style (and delivered with the heavy Bajan accent that never left him), my dad simply said: “Son – you choose de job!”.
And that was that! He was entirely unfazed and clearly believed I should be too! In many ways, my father was the archetypal calm leader. I have drawn a lot of strength from his example.
I understood what he meant, and I accepted it. He was advising me to take responsibility for my decisions and to embrace my challenges rather than complain about them. There was no time for being down.
The biggest challenge I have overcome, a life lesson I have used towards the sense of perspective I have now, happened eight years earlier. In July 2002, I lost my mum at the young age of 56.
She died from a horrible type of cancer. It was a very difficult time and I was destroyed emotionally. I remember just before my mum died, as she was laying in the hospital in an induced coma, I asked my then headteacher for permission to stay away from the end of year leavers’ speeches.
I knew I was feeling fragile and I would not be able to cope with the emotion on display at the end of term. I was an assistant head at the time, and I sat in my office finishing off bits of work as the speeches took place.
Nothing seemed important. I just wanted to leave work and go to the hospital to sit with mum. When she died in the first week of the summer holiday that year, my perspective on life changed forever.
So many things that I thought really mattered paled into insignificance when compared to life and death. That was a lesson to me about not allowing certain negative experiences to fill my head. If the death of my mum could make such things feel like nothing, it was possible for me to do the same through my own internal re-evaluation of the level of importance.
I concluded that very little in life is actually worth stressing about. That period of time shocked me but also taught me a lot.
A disciplined approach: Framing information in your thinking
I have practised and honed this way of thinking over the years. I have found that my initial reaction to something negative or worrisome is inevitable and unavoidable.
However, reframing events so that I do not allow things to become more significant in my head than they need to be has been vital. It is not easy as it requires a high level of mental discipline. My perspective on things has smoothed out the highs and the lows. I now have the ability to treat the imposters of victory and defeat just the same (to paraphrase a famous quote).
In my experience, slowing down, taking a bit of distance (thank you Mr Wenger) and looking at things in the cold light of day helps to reduce the emotional impact of an event, keeps our decision-making focused and keeps our leadership calm.
The best way to take a bit of distance is to give yourself time. When you know you are emotionally triggered or affected by a situation or a pending decision, the calmest thing to do is buy a bit of time if you can – and wait.
Events, scenarios, impending decisions, the actions of others, etc, all have the ability to knock us off balance. They fuel those magnitude errors and start a pattern of thought that causes complete loss of perspective.
The critical bit is not the information that lands, but what you do with that information after it has landed. As Pauline Ashbee, my predecessor at Highgate Wood, said to me right at the beginning of my headship: “Remember, you can choose what you think.” I often go through a thought process:
- Is this life or death?
- Whatever the situation – it could be worse.
- What happens if I get this wrong? How bad is it really?
- If I suddenly got a call to say one of my children was in A&E how important would this issue be?
- Can I do something about the situation to make it better? If yes, then don’t worry or over-think it. Better to focus on what needs to be done and start doing. If I cannot do anything to make it better, then what is the point of worrying about something not within my control?
- If I sleep on this, will it feel different in the morning? Do I just need to take a while to allow for some emotional distance?
- This is a challenge, so therefore it is an opportunity for growth. You are about to learn something – be excited, not scared or stressed.
- It’s going to be just fine – you’ve got this!
I also find that gratitude helps tremendously. If you can be in a mindset of gratitude, then it is much easier to have a greater sense of perspective.
Gratitude and a sense of perspective are two of the key pillars of calm leadership. Remembering that there is always someone who would gladly swap their troubles with yours is a great way to remain calm, empowered, optimistic and focused.
Back in 2018 when my youngest daughter was born, she had a serious heart defect that meant that she was on feeding tubes. She was closely monitored at Great Ormond Street Hospital leading up to open heart surgery at just four-months-old.
It was absolutely heart-breaking to watch her go through this experience and the worry and concern was greater than any parent should have to go through. We had every reason to feel down, desolate and defeated.
However, a very interesting thing happened during our time at Great Ormond Street. We saw many seriously ill children and distraught families. Some of the children we met had problems far more life-changing than our daughter. Some children sadly had very poor prognoses. They were not expected to live for long. Others had serious health issues that meant a significant reduction in quality of life.
We found ourselves being grateful for the fact that our daughter at least had a problem that was “solvable”.
This is a good illustration of how a sense of perspective and gratitude really can make a big difference to one’s outlook. Our youngest is now a bouncy and lively four-year-old!
Final thoughts
There is a temptation to “awfulise” everything in leadership. This must be resisted at all costs. It brings negativity and unnecessary stress. It is usually never as bad as we think. I am a strong believer that things could always be worse.
I tell my leadership team to embrace the tough stuff. The tough stuff and the challenge is what the job of leadership is for. It is the reason we exist – all the easy stuff should have been sorted long before it comes to our attention.
A mindset that expects and accepts that difficulty is necessary for progress, coupled with an approach that is based on self-discipline and maintaining a sense of perspective, can help us to overcome adversity and challenge. This is calm leadership.
I will leave you with some activities until the next time…
- Think about your life experiences. What difficult times did you manage to pull through? How did you do it? What were the key lessons that you learnt from those experiences? Consider how you can draw on the lessons of that journey to help you maintain a sense of perspective when things get tough in leadership.
- Make a list of all the things that are more important to you than your work. What would you drop absolutely everything for? These are the things that are worth stressing about – nothing else!
- Patrick Cozier is an experienced secondary school headteacher of 16 years. He leads Highgate Wood School in Haringey. In addition to his day job, he chairs the Haringey Secondary Heads’ Forum and takes a leading role in the work of the Racial Equity Group (part of the Haringey Education Partnership) and its focus on reducing racial inequality and improving outcomes and experiences for children of colour. He serves as a trustee for the charity Show Racism the Red Card As a member of the black community, he is passionate about seeking equality, justice and fair outcomes for people of colour. He is currently developing what he refers to as the “Calm Leadership Approach”. Find Patrick on Twitter @CalmLeadership and LinkedIn.