Education consultant Joanne Lo explores how self-reflection and personal wellbeing are essential foundations for effective leadership in schools and early years settings. Drawing on mindfulness and social-emotional learning, she shares practical strategies for fostering resilience, building supportive cultures, and modelling wellbeing as an educational leader.

 

Read Joanne’s article here:

https://thevoiceofearlychildhood.com/it-starts-with-us-looking-inwards-as-educational-leaders/

 

This episode is sponsored by Funding Loop

 

Funding Loop automates the process for nurseries of collecting funding forms from parents and typing that information into council portals. Funding Loop is used by over 2000 nurseries including over 80% of the top 25 nursery chains in the UK including Busy Bees.

 

To find out more visit: https://www.fundingloop.co.uk/home

 

Our 2026 conference info & tickets:

https://thevoiceofearlychildhood.com/early-years-conference-2026/

 

Listen to more:

If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like:

·       Accidental leadership in early years by Jenny Weidner: https://thevoiceofearlychildhood.com/accidental-leadership-in-early-years/

·       My experience of burnout as a Black manager by Lorraine Kara: https://thevoiceofearlychildhood.com/my-experience-with-burnout-as-a-black-manager/

·       Supporting employee wellbeing by Enya Last: https://thevoiceofearlychildhood.com/supporting-employee-wellbeing/

 

Get in touch and share your voice:

Do you have thoughts, questions or feedback? Get in touch here! – https://thevoiceofearlychildhood.com/contact/

 

Episode break down:

00:00 – Introductions 03:00 – Invisible pressures carried by leaders 03:45 – Non-verbal communication 04:30 – Normalising every single emotion 09:00 – Giving yourself permission to just ‘be’ 10:00 – Noticing how your emotions affect your body 12:00 – Setting goals for the week or day ahead, then reflect 14:00 – Stress-ees becoming stress-ors! 15:00 – Having a sunny disposition 16:30 – Using language that serves you, language of kindness 17:20 – Zone of control 19:00 – Children emotionally checking in with themselves 21:00 – Creating a safe space to just ‘be’ 23:00 – Reflective practices 24:00 – Checking in with your team 25:30 – How do we ‘sell’ this to our teams? 26:20 – Flattening the hierarchy & tuning into passions 27:00 – Connecting with each team member 28:00 – Toxic vs positive culture examples 29:00 – Creating a climate of belonging 31:00 – What are we doing that isn’t supporting our teams? 33:00 – Understanding different cultural contexts 33:45 – Observing your teams as well as children 35:00 – Seeking to understand before judging 35:50 – Body language stats! 38:45 – As a leader you are developing people 40:00 – There’s always a way to handle stress & difficult conversations 40:25 – When you’re in charge you often neglect yourself 42:00 – 2-minute check-ins 42:45 – You can choose to be toxic or positive 44:00 – Shifting from how we were, to how we will be 44:45 – Building relational trust 45:20 – Equipping our feelings with vocabulary 46:30 – Joanne’s childhood & professional journey 53:00 – Children’s summer camps 54:00 – Asking for permission to help & allowing time 59:00 – Episode reflections 01:00:00 – Enquire about working with Joanne

For more episodes and articles visit The Voice of Early Childhood website: https://www.thevoiceofearlychildhood.com