I walked into a school last month and within twenty minutes I'd already started building a story in my head about what needed to change.
I could see the patterns. The meeting structures that were eating time. The feedback loops that weren't quite landing. I've seen versions of this before in dozens of schools, and my brain was already reaching for the solutions that worked elsewhere.
And then I caught myself.
Because what I've learned, sometimes the hard way, is that what you see in the first day of visiting a school is almost never the full picture. There's context you can't know yet. History you haven't heard. Relationships you don't understand. The school is probably already aware of the thing you've spotted, and they've probably got reasons for why it looks the way it does.
I have to hold those early impressions lightly. Not dismiss them, but not trust them too quickly either.
This came flooding back to me while recording this week's episode with Richard Wheadon. Richard spent the first decade of his career in a brilliant London school. Strong culture, excellent CPD, collaborative leadership. It was so good that he didn't even realise how much of it was deliberate. It just felt normal.
Then he moved. New school, new community, no established relationships. And he did what most of us would do. He tried to recreate what had worked before.
It didn't go well.
He sent an email to a colleague early on, asking for their thoughts on several things and flagging one area he thought needed to change. The reply called him a dictator. In his previous school, people knew him. They knew his suggestions came from a place of caring about students. In this new place, nobody had that context yet. They just saw someone new arriving and telling them what was wrong.
Richard is honest about this. He says he went in too fast. He hadn't listened enough. He assumed his reputation and track record would speak for themselves, but nobody there had seen them.
What strikes me about his story is how invisible good leadership becomes when it's working. The culture in his London school felt effortless precisely because it had been built so carefully over years. He'd been swimming in it without realising someone had filled the pool.
Most of us have a version of this. You walk into a new context, whether it's a new school, a new role, or even visiting someone else's school to support them, and you carry your previous experience like it's a universal map. But it's not. It's a map of somewhere else.
Richard's advice is to listen before you lead. Which sounds obvious until you're the person who just arrived somewhere and can see six things that need fixing. The temptation to act is enormous, especially when you've got a track record that tells you you're usually right.
But being right about the problem doesn't mean you're right about the timing. Or the approach. Or the relationships you'll need to make the change stick.
Spring's arriving in the northern hemisphere this week. If you're heading into the final stretch of the school year, this might be worth sitting with. Where are you carrying assumptions from a previous context into your current one? Where might you need to slow down and listen before you act?
You can hear Richard's full story, including a brilliant moment where Ross McGill humbled him mid-call, on this week's episode: shaneleaning.com/podcast/155
I'd love to hear from you on this one. Have you ever walked into a new context and had your assumptions tested? Hit reply and tell me about it.
Shane
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