Lead with Presence, Clarity and Impact in 2026
Start the Year with Self-Leadership
Leadership Begins with Capacity
The start of the year offers a rare opportunity to pause and consider how we want to lead. The months ahead will ask for clarity, relational skill, and thoughtful decision-making. Strengthening leadership capacity at this moment creates the conditions for impact throughout the year.
Why This Moment Matters for Leadership
A pause at the start of the year
The beginning of a new year carries a particular quality. Before the pace fully returns, before diaries fill and decisions stack up, there is a brief pause — a moment to notice how we are arriving back into our work.
For educators and school leaders, this moment matters. Not because the year demands reinvention, but because it the year ahead will likely ask a great deal of you: thoughtful judgment, relational skill, emotional steadiness, and the capacity to navigate complexity with care.
Leadership challenges are often capacity challenges
In my work with schools, I see that leadership challenges rarely stem from a lack of commitment or competence. They arise when the inner capacity required to meet the work has not been intentionally developed.
The pressures of modern schooling — constant change, relational intensity, competing demands — place sustained demands on how leaders think, relate, and respond. Without space to strengthen these inner resources, even skilled and dedicated leaders can find themselves depleted, reactive, or stretched thin.
Why January is a meaningful point for development
January offers a natural threshold. At the start of the year, we have an opportunity to strengthen the inner foundations that shape leadership in practice: how we communicate, how we navigate conflict, how we hold boundaries, and how we remain present under pressure.
These are not abstract qualities. They show up daily in meetings, conversations, decisions, and culture. When leadership capacity is strengthened early in the year, its effects ripple outward over time.
About the January cohort
The Self-Leadership for Educators programme, beginning next week, is designed as a focused space to do this work deliberately. Over six weeks, participants work on a meaningful professional leadership goal connected to their role, while developing emotional, cognitive, relational, and systems literacy that supports effective leadership in real school contexts.
Rather than adding more strategies, the programme attends to the quality of the leader’s inner orientation — the instrument through which leadership is expressed.
What participants take back into their schools
Participants leave the programme with greater clarity about how they lead, practical tools for navigating challenging conversations and relational dynamics, and concrete deliverables they can bring back into their teams.
Each participant completes a Leadership Goal and Impact Plan, a Conflict-Resolution Toolkit, and a Self-Leadership Practices Portfolio, alongside a 30-day integration plan. These outcomes support both individual development and schoolwide priorities related to leadership capacity, communication, and culture.
A timely invitation
The January 2026 cohort begins on Tuesday, 13 January and is offered as fully school-fundable professional development, with PD documentation provided.
If the start of the year feels like a moment to strengthen how you lead — to work with greater clarity, presence, and intention — this programme offers a timely, supportive space to do that work.
Further details and registration can be found here:
