You can read all the leadership books you like and sit through countless courses and conferences, all emphasising the importance of balance, resilience, and "wellbeing strategies for leaders".
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And still, nothing truly prepares you for the actual emotional landscape of being a headteacher.
I’ve led five schools across three local authorities, and regardless of postcode or performance data, there’s a universal truth:
Being a headteacher is emotionally expensive — and the direct debit runs every day.
Nobody tells you that your emotional energy is the resource everyone quietly relies on.
You are the calm voice when a parent arrives in tears. You are the listening ear for the teacher who has family difficulties You are the soothing presence for a child whose world at home has unravelled overnight.
At 8.30am, before you’ve even checked your emails, you may have absorbed a teacher’s crisis, resolved a family dispute, and offered reassurance to a member of staff worried about their dog.
It’s all important. It’s all human. But it’s all you.
What’s particularly peculiar about headship is that while you spend much of your day dealing with other people’s emotions, your own tend to take a backseat.
You quickly learn that you are the one who must stay calm — always.
If Ofsted rings, staff look straight at you for cues: Are we panicking? If the boiler breaks, it’s “What do you think we should do?” If a parent storms in upset, it’s “Head, can you pop out?”
You become a barometer for the whole school’s mood. If you look cheerful, everyone feels lighter. If you look stressed, the staffroom hum of anxiety rises noticeably.
And so — regardless of how tired, anxious, or worried you are inside — you find yourself performing calmness, positivity, steadiness.
It’s like being on stage. Except the performance runs all day.
And then there’s the loneliness.
That’s the thing they really don’t warn you about: headship is profoundly lonely.
You are part of the team… but not of the team. You can’t always share what you know. You hold sensitive information, make unpopular decisions, carry confidences that weigh heavy and can’t be discussed over a casual coffee in the staffroom.
The decisions keep coming, day after day. Some big: “How do we balance this budget without cutting pastoral support?” Some tiny: “Is this yoghurt stain on the hall carpet really worth calling the cleaner in for?”
But they’re all yours.
And no matter how supportive your deputy, or how wonderful your team, there are moments you realise:
Nobody else can make this call.
And because you care deeply, every difficult thing lands directly in your lap.
You can’t walk past the struggling child and say, “Not my job.” You can’t brush off a teacher’s tears with, “Speak to someone else.” You can’t ignore the knot in your stomach when you know there’s a family in crisis and very little you can practically do.
You carry it. You carry all of it.
And then — like clockwork — someone will smile warmly and say, “But you get so many holidays!”
Of course, there are moments of immense reward. There’s no greater privilege than seeing children thrive, watching a new teacher grow in confidence, or being thanked by a family whose child has finally found a place to belong.
These things keep you going.
But they don’t erase the fact that you are perpetually holding the emotions of an entire school community.
And when it’s all done for the day and you walk out of the building, you don’t just leave it behind. It clings. You replay conversations on the drive home. You draft replies in your head. You wake at 3am remembering something you promised a child you’d do and forgot because three other emergencies intervened.
So what does this all mean?
It means that if you’re a headteacher — or thinking of becoming one — you must understand that your emotional energy is a precious, finite resource.
It means finding ways to replenish yourself, even when it feels indulgent to do so.
It means recognising that you can’t absorb everything indefinitely. You will need your own sources of support: a network of fellow heads who “get it”; a governor who understands the pressures; a trusted friend outside of school who will listen without trying to fix it.
And above all, it means being kind to yourself.
Because the truth is, while leadership books and courses might talk grandly about vision, strategy, and systems, the real currency of headship is emotional labour.
You will give it — gladly, generously, instinctively — because that’s who you are.
But no one can run on empty forever. Not even headteachers.
So next time someone smiles and says, “Must be great being the boss — you get to do what you like!”
You’ll smile back politely… while quietly calculating how many emotions you’ve held that day.
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