What does it really take to lead a school and what keeps people going?

Simon Botten is an executive headteacher in South Gloucestershire, leading two primary schools and serving as Head of Inclusion for a seventeen-school multi-academy trust. He has been a headteacher for nearly twenty years and is the author of Head Teachering: A Practical Guide with the Messy Bits Left In.

Simon wrote the book because he was concerned about a profession telling its story badly, editing out the doubt and difficulty, and in doing so, making headship feel unattainable for those considering it. This conversation is the antidote to that: grounded, honest and quietly hopeful.

Together we explore:

• Why Simon wrote Head Teachering and the question the book is trying to answer.

• The edited certainty of leadership culture online and why leaving the messy bits in matters.

• Moral purpose as the thing that sustains and what Simon means by measuring success in decades.

• Isolation in headship: what it looks like when leaders retreat and why connection is not optional.

• The wellbeing realities of twenty years in the role - compartmentalising, exercise and the difference between long hours and productive ones.

• Coaching new heads through overwhelm - arriving with no trust in the bank and learning to live with the chaos long enough to address it.

• Whakapapa: the Māori concept Simon draws on in his final chapter about legacy, responsibility and what we pass on.

What would it mean to lead in a way that still matters fifty years from now?