Know Yourself, Lead Better
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My guest today is Alicia Drummond, a BACP accredited therapist and creator of The Wellbeing Hub. This conversation dives deep into why self-awareness is the foundation of effective school leadership. We explore how your internal state directly impacts your school's culture, and Alicia shares practical tools for understanding your triggers, biases, and leadership patterns. From attachment styles to the OK Corral framework, this episode is packed with actionable strategies you can use immediately.
Key Points Covered
The internal-external connection: Research shows a leader's internal state directly impacts school culture
Understanding triggers: How childhood experiences create leadership patterns and why physical responses are early warning systems
Attachment styles in leadership: Four styles (secure, avoidant, ambivalent, disorganised) and how they affect your ability to trust and delegate
Personal bias exercise: Practical tool to identify your "in-group" and how it affects who you support vs. overlook
The OK Corral framework: Four positions (I'm OK/You're OK, etc.) that determine how you show up in relationships
Hero/anti-hero exercise: Understanding your light and shadow sides to catch yourself when moving toward unhelpful patterns
Choice, control, confidence: How awareness doesn't solve problems but gives you options for how to respond
Practical meditation: Simple daily practice for building self-awareness and emotional regulation
This conversation challenged me to think about how often we rush to fix external problems when the real work starts internally. The research showing how a leader's internal state directly impacts school culture is a powerful reminder that working on ourselves isn't selfish - it's essential leadership development.
Links
Episode Partner
The International Curriculum Association: Learn more
Thank you for tuning in, and as always, if you found this episode useful, please share your experience. You can find me online on LinkedIn and Bluesky. My email address is shane@shaneleaning.com.
