The biggest risk to your organisation might be you

What twelve years as a school Principal taught me about wellbeing and organisational risk

Most leaders are good at risk assessment. They think about what happens if a system fails, if a key person leaves, if the budget doesn't stretch. Very few leaders turn that same thinking on themselves. If you are the person everything depends on, your own capacity to function is not a personal side issue. It is organisational risk.

I learned this properly in my first year as a school Principal.

The year everything happened at once

It started with a completely new management information system, the software that runs everything in a school, which had to be introduced and running within a month. The only two people who understood it had already left, so not one current member of staff had seen it, let alone been trained on it. On top of that, a senior member of staff had resigned, and nobody in the school knew until it was too late. The timetable was incomplete and had to be finished in that same month.

At home, things weren't much calmer. I was living in an unfinished house, on a camp bed, with a microwave for a kitchen. Half the house was missing. There was dust everywhere and no carpets. This was early August. School was opening in three weeks.

I pulled in staff over the school holidays to get them trained on the new system. I rewrote the timetable. In the evenings I came home and pulled nails out of the floor so the carpet fitters could finally lay the carpets. What I remember most from that first month is ordering a large case of red wine, and probably crying most days. But we trained everybody. I wrote the timetable. We started the year with things in place.

The rest of that year went from one extreme to the other. Disciplinary cases. Police involvement. I reached the end of the school year thinking it was finally behind me. Then a letter arrived from the General Teaching Council of Scotland. Aggrieved parents, who had been asked to leave the school because of threatening behaviour towards staff and other parents, had made a complaint about me.

What I learned that year was a kind of resilience and inner strength I didn't know I had. It came from realising, quite early on, that I needed to stop seeing these situations as things to survive, and start seeing them as things I could learn and grow from. That shift changed how I led from that point on. Now, when a challenge comes up, I try to take a step back and look at it objectively. That's what allows me to hold on to that inner strength.

The risk nobody puts on the register

What I couldn't see back then was that the biggest risk that year wasn't the system, the timetable or the parents. It was whether I could keep functioning. I was constantly pulling over sixty hour weeks. I was running on empty most of the time, with very little support at that point from the governing board and a brand new leadership team who were also still learning.

Most leaders are good at risk assessment for their organisation. What happens if there's a staffing gap, a building problem, a system failure. But very few think about the biggest risk of all, which is themselves. If you're not able to function, if you're not looking after yourself, what happens to everything and everyone that depends on you?

When you are the system everything depends on, your wellbeing is not a personal side issue. It is organisational risk.

Looking back over all my years in leadership, the thing I wish I'd had most, especially that first year, was a coach. Someone to think strategically with. Someone to bounce ideas off. Someone I could be honest with when things felt like they were falling apart. At the time, I didn't think that was something available to me. With the benefit of hindsight, I know it would have made an enormous difference.

A question worth asking yourself

Who is in your corner right now, the person you could call when things are falling apart?

If you did a risk assessment on yourself the way you would on your organisation, what would it tell you?

Looking after the leader, not just the organisation

You don't need to work sixty plus hour weeks the way I did.

Give yourself time to sleep properly. Time to recover. Time to recharge. Time to have fun. Time to actually think, rather than just react. Nourish your body and your mind, not as an afterthought, but as part of how you lead well.

Are you actually giving your mind and body the space to rest and recover the way you should?

If this feels familiar

If you're a CEO or headteacher, I would strongly encourage you to consider putting regular support in place with a professional coach. This is not an unnecessary luxury or expense. It is good governance.

If you're a middle or senior leader carrying responsibility, pressure, people, decisions and the private weight of holding it all together, my ten month programme, Stay Strong Lead Well, is built for exactly this, across a full year of leading, not just one difficult week. You can find details on the Stay Strong Lead Well page.

If you would like to talk through what support could look like for you, you can book a free thirty minute discovery call, or email me directly at [email protected].

About the author

Johanna Urquhart is a leadership coach and mentor for women in professional and senior leadership, and the founder of Resta Forte. She brings over 25 years of senior leadership experience, including 12 years as a school Principal and CEO in Scotland, into a coaching and mentoring practice that holds leadership development and personal wellbeing together. She now lives in Piemonte, Northern Italy, and works with leaders who want to lead well without losing themselves in the process.