European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, Special Issue: Leadership & Management, 16 (1): 53-66
Sustaining the Leaders of Children’s Centres: The Role of
Leadership Mentoring
KAREN JOHN
Consultant, Pen Green Research Centre, Corby, England
SUMMARY: Leadership mentoring is a central component of the National Professional
Qualification in Integrated Centre Leadership (NPQICL), which is designed to develop robust,
creative and courageous children’s centre leaders. Mentoring provides a safe, supportive and
confidential space in which leaders can discuss the challenges of leading their centres. Like
NPQICL tutors, mentors encourage programme participants to build teams, inspire leadership
in others and collaborate in addressing the complexities of providing integrated services. But
working with discouraged children, families and communities can be discouraging for staff and
leaders – and undermine effective provision. Mentoring is meant to be an encouraging process
where leaders learn that others have similar experiences and concerns, which helps to restore
their confidence, sense of purpose and agency – and their ability to contain others’ negative
emotions. Concepts from Adlerian Psychology, such as the ‘courage to be imperfect’, informed
the mentoring approach, and findings from 23 NPQICL programme participants’ feedback
supported the efficacy of the methods used.
Introduction
These are challenging times for the leaders and staff of children’s centres, who require
encouragement and support in order to encourage and support others. Box 1 provides a list of
some of those challenges. I have had the privilege of working with Sheila Thorpe in developing
the mentoring component of the National Professional Qualification in Integrated Centre
Leadership (NPQICL) (Whalley et al., 2004/2005), of mentoring twenty-three participants who
took part in the NPQICL Pilot and supporting mentors and tutors involved in the national roll
out of the programme. I continue to mentor a number of children’s centre leaders.
The NPQICL Programme as a whole acknowledges the complexity of being the leader of an
integrated children’s centre, and mentoring is regarded as central to the development of leaders
who do more than survive the unrelenting demands of their roles. These leaders need to be
steadfast, courageous and creative in inspiring and developing leadership in others. Mentoring
provides a safe and supportive space in which leaders can, at regular intervals, take time out to
talk about and explore alternative ways of addressing the many challenges of leading their
centres. The rationale for mentoring support is that leaders are better able to promote the
‘greater good’ and cope with these challenges when their own support and development needs
are met.
We need to remember that integrated children’s centres are meant to be havens of support and
hope for the future, where families on the margins of their communities are included in the
planning and provision of services for themselves and their children. Services are meant to be
integrated in a ‘one stop shop’ model (Moss & Penn, 1996) in which pre-school and special
education, childcare, family support, health and other services are seamlessly available to
families and children near to where they live.
The ultimate aim is that these children and families feel they belong, are equal to others and
have something valuable to contribute to their communities and to society as a whole (HM
K. John, Sustaining the leaders of children’s centres: The role of leadership mentoring, 28 Sep 2007, Page 2
Treasury, 2003, 2004). These are incredibly important and ambitious projects, and with shifting
agenda and limited funding, they can overwhelm and threaten already over-stretched leaders
and staff members (John, 2004). This is where leadership mentoring comes in.
Box 1. Some challenges of leading integrated centres –
 Multi-agency working, for example, integrating different management structures, poorly
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paid or unqualified staff from different disciplines and sectors, and unequal pay
New and innovative ways of working, e.g., flattening hierarchies, sharing leadership and
fostering growth and development for all
Maintaining commitment, motivation and energy levels among low-paid workers
Retaining staff and leaders
Preventing burn-out in the team
Improving performance
Developing services that are valued by those who use them
Containing personal distress and maintaining perspective when working with social
disadvantage, challenging behaviours, intimate family issues, and family or staff distress
Developing and empowering staff through delegation, appropriate staff supervision, peer
mentoring, training and continuous professional development
Coping with the demands, rapid changes and loss of funding in early childhood and
family and community support services
Rationale for mentoring
Leaders need to be able to talk to someone outside their organisations, someone they respect
and trust, about the dilemmas they face and their doubts and fears, who understands their
circumstances and issues and has a wider perspective, who can assure them of confidentiality
and who can give them the support and encouragement they need. Being listened to and
understood are fundamental human needs and generally have a containing and calming effect –
which then makes it possible to think more clearly and creatively. Mentoring is an encouraging
process because leaders learn they are not alone – that others have similar experiences and
concerns, which helps to restore their courage, confidence and sense of purpose, agency and
efficacy.
At the same time, mentors understand that it is entirely human to become discouraged, to lose
heart and resist change – to go into our bunkers in an effort to avoid unwelcome challenges.
Unfortunately, when we lose heart we are unlikely to be able to encourage, contain or sustain
others. Rather, we are more likely to wish to convince them that our discouragement is
justified, and to encourage them – in the negative sense – to join us in our despair, to become
discouraged along with us. This is a predictable response when we are pressured to change or
move ahead too soon or too quickly – before we feel that others understand and acknowledge
our concerns or have helped us to overcome our uncertainties and find a way forward. Feeling
misunderstood or overlooked, we invite others to give up with us – or to give up on us.
Discouragement is contagious
K. John, Sustaining the leaders of children’s centres: The role of leadership mentoring, 28 Sep 2007, Page 3
This kind of discouragement is a common feature of social exclusion and disadvantage – and
mentors know that discouragement is highly ‘contagious’. Front-line staff who work with
discouraged children or families are at increased risk of becoming discouraged themselves, and
when staff lose heart, they can ‘infect’ their leaders. This is particularly so when leaders are
feeling discouraged by organisational or financial pressures and feel unable to contain the
anxiety and discouragement that staff members are expressing – or are acting out.
Within the professions of psychotherapy, counselling and social work it is well understood that
those who work with distress and discouragement are at risk of becoming distressed and
discouraged as well. Therefore, practitioners in these professions are required to take part in
regular supervision, which helps us to look at how our work is affecting us and to maintain, or
regain, a healthier perspective and helpful distance. The perceptiveness and understanding that
make those of us in the helping professions good at what we do also make us vulnerable. So
reminding ourselves and each other to maintain a helpful distance is vital. This does not mean
that we are invited to deny or cut off from our clients’ pain or issues, but that we are able to
achieve realistic hopefulness, and ideally identify more effective ways of thinking about and
working with them. A common warning is ‘don’t go into the swamp’, which reminds us to
empathise with, but not to over-identify with the problems and discouragement of others. When
we do over-identify, we are in danger of going under with them. We need to stay on firm
ground and invite those we are wishing to support to join us there.
Using Adlerian Psychology in mentoring
Maintaining the courage of one’s convictions requires the courage to be imperfect
In order to meet the challenge of working with our own and others’ discouragement, we need
the courage to be imperfect. This requires reflecting on, rather than reacting to, the needs of
clients or staff or the demands of every new initiative that comes along. I was heartened when
the head of the primary school in Oxfordshire, which came top of the league in 2005, Barbara
Jones revealed to BBC News (2005b) the secret of her success as a leader, namely, not taking
too much notice of government initiatives – or having the courage of her convictions regarding
the relative appropriateness of them. That was a couple of days after the Government
announced their intention to recommend synthetic phonics as the approach to teaching literacy,
Ms Jones simply said, “It works for some children but not others” (BBC News, 2005a).
In my psychotherapy work, I rely heavily on Adlerian psychology, in which I find inspiration
to lead and assist others in their professional and personal lives. Alfred Adler was a
contemporary and associate of Sigmund Freud’s, with whom he fell out when he asserted that
competitive strivings have more to do with trying to overcome one’s feelings of inferiority than
wishing to overcome one’s same-sex parent (Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956/1964; Dreikurs,
1971). He stressed the profoundly social nature of human existence and held that social
inequality and the discouragement it engenders is at the root of most mental health problems.
Working together and helping others bring deep satisfaction
Following the First World War and its costs in the destruction of human life and spirit, Adler
taught that our innate social interest or community feeling needed to be developed as an
antidote to our innate feelings of inferiority and compensatory striving for superiority
(Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956/1964). In this he anticipated economist Richard Layard (2005)
K. John, Sustaining the leaders of children’s centres: The role of leadership mentoring, 28 Sep 2007, Page 4
who, in his recent best seller Happiness, cited extensive research evidence of the hollowness of
human competitive striving for wealth, status or personal power and the deep satisfaction
gained from cooperation and helping others. He concluded: “We desperately need a concept of
the common good. I can think of no nobler goal than to pursue the greatest happiness of all –
each person counting. This goal puts us all on an equal footing with our neighbours, which is
where we should be, while it also gives a proper weight to our own interest …” (Layard, 2005,
p. 229). Equality, as envisaged by Alfred Adler and Richard Layard, does not mean we are all
the same but that we are of equal value and entitled to equal amounts of respect and dignity.
In presenting these concepts to the leaders I work with, I begin by drawing the letter “I” for the
vertical line indicating the “slippery pole” of self-preoccupation – self-absorbed striving in our
efforts to overcome our inferiority feelings. I like to draw a family of people, some adult-sized
and some child-sized standing to the right of the horizontal line and a tiny little person standing
near the foot of the vertical pole. I then place the tiny little person on the top of the vertical
pole, wearing a superwoman or superman cape to add a visual for the imagined position of
significance or invulnerability, often dreamed of by little people. This brings the concept to life
and encapsulates the universality of inferiority feelings and striving for superiority and
significance, as illustrated in Figure 1.
SUPERWOMAN
Superiority
S
E
L
F
P
R
E
O
C
C
U
P
A
T
I
O
N
Success
How am I doing?
Power
Position
Possession
I’m little
Inferiority
Failure
Complaining
Blaming
Fears
Excuses
Figure 1. Striving to Overcome Feeling Inferior
The antidote is our social interest or reconnecting with our community feeling: joining others,
tempering our striving for perfection with our other innate desire, the desire to belong, thus
striving to make things better for everyone by working with others. Within Adlerian
psychology, inferiority feelings are regarded as innate to all humans – or inevitable, by virtue
of our powers of observation and protracted dependence upon others, others who are bigger,
stronger and more in the know than we are. My favourite description of our shared predicament
as babies and little children is that we enter life as if in the second act of a play: our task is to
try to work out our part, the role we take in order to remain in the play. Our social nature means
that we must remain in the play. A central tenant of Adlerian Psychology is that those who
K. John, Sustaining the leaders of children’s centres: The role of leadership mentoring, 28 Sep 2007, Page 5
seem to exclude themselves from the action, or find themselves the villains of the play, must be
encouraged to rejoin, or reconnect with others in a positive way, as illustrated in Figure 2.
SUPERWOMAN
Superiority
S
E
L
F
P
R
E
O
C
C
U
P
A
T
I
O
N
How am I doing?
Success
Power
Position
Possession
Working together to make
things better for everyone
S O CIAL INTEREST
Community Feeling
W hat am I doing?
Sharing
Enjoy ing
Creating
I’m little
Inferiority
Failure
Complaining
Blaming
Fears
Excuses
Figure 2. The Courage to be Imperfect
The importance of retaining vision and values
We mentors bring to mentoring knowledge and experience not only of children’s centres and
multi-disciplinary working but also of organisational dynamics, power politics and the effects
of change. We understand how hard it is to hold onto one’s beliefs and values within a
workplace or in other circumstances where contrary beliefs and values predominate. We know
how vital it is to support and encourage staff members to trust themselves, so that they then are
able to create safe havens where vulnerable people are given the support and encouragement
they need. We know how easily supposed safe havens become toxic within hierarchical
organisations driven by insensitive outcome measures, where form rather than content and
product rather than process are valued. Of course, these need not be dichotomised, but often
they are. Mentors are able to hold the apparent contradictions and ambiguities that characterise
complex organisations and meaningful human interactions.
Mentors are not alone in identifying the waste of human resources inherent in hierarchical
organisations in which authoritarian rigidity and competitive motives diminish creative potential
and commitment. Top management consultants, for example, Rupert Eales-White (1994) and
Charles Handy (1994), also promote the development of strong organisational cultures in which
people do not require close supervision, control or surveillance, but inspiration, vision and values,
recognising the very human need to control one's own destiny through simultaneously seeking
self-determination and security.
Leadership needs to be shared
K. John, Sustaining the leaders of children’s centres: The role of leadership mentoring, 28 Sep 2007, Page 6
By flattening hierarchies and re-conceptualising leadership as something that needs to be shared
by everyone, staff members feel respected, valued and freer to take risks, offer their best and give
up their unrealistic expectations of their leaders. Leaders self-expectations then become more
realistic. Applying democratic principles of authoritative rather than authoritarian structures,
managers are encouraged to become leaders of leaders, inspiring, empowering and nurturing,
rather than controlling, rewarding, threatening and blaming staff. At the same time, it is recognised
that organisations face uncertainty, change, complexity, and a demand for higher quality and value
for money – that is, more for less (Nixon, 1994). Organisations that purport democratic principles
and seem to offer staff self-determination and security, but continue to make hierarchical demands
for increased performance – and threaten job loss when externally imposed targets are not met – at
first raise expectations, then create confusion that leads to bitterness and disillusionment amongst
staff members (Watson, 1996). Such situations keep the adversarial struggle between management
and staff very much alive, and both groups are diminished – largely because the power differential
is denied and is instead acted out.
More-for-less in early years provision
I have been involved in three initiatives designed to increase and improve provision for young
children and their families in England: Early Excellence (1997-2006), Sure Start (1999-2006),
and most recently, integrated Children’s Centres, which now have subsumed the others (HM
Treasury, 2004). Sure Start funding, which at its peak in 2004-05 reached about 20% of the
population of children under four and their families, was increased by about 10% in 2005-06.
However, in more-for-less fashion, that funding is expected to reach 35-40% of children 0-5
and their families and to provide care before and after school for older children. Local
authorities are supposed to “find” the money to cover budget shortfalls, but this is proving to be
unrealistic in practice. Another challenge to those who lead children’s centres is that the focus
on providing family support and high quality education and care for young children has shifted
to accommodate the Government’s agenda of providing childcare places to enable more
mothers to take up employment – the cornerstone of their strategy to end child poverty. Of
course, working parents are expected to pay for this childcare, and Working Families Tax
Credit and Child Care Allowance often are not enough to cover childcare costs.
Promoting self-understanding and development among leaders and caring professionals
There has been debate in higher education about the extent to which we should be in the
business of promoting increased self-awareness or self-transformation, along with attempts to
define an optimal interface between education and psychotherapy. I for one am convinced that
within the helping professions, there is no question of the necessity to achieve a good measure
of self-understanding. These days I am bold in my assertion that those with responsibility for
leading or looking after others are encouraged and supported to engage in deep self-reflection
and self-development. The NPQICL course embraces these ideas: “…there is a vital fourth
element, altogether more elusive and mysterious – that constellation of inner world components
such as assumptions, perceptions, beliefs, values, emotions, prejudices, thoughts, ideas and
imaginings. It is these components that mark out one leader from another and that largely
determine how each leader will behave in and experience any leadership transaction” (Whalley
et al., 2005, Section 1, p. 6).
K. John, Sustaining the leaders of children’s centres: The role of leadership mentoring, 28 Sep 2007, Page 7
Purposes of NPQICL mentoring
The mentoring component of the NPQICL programme is seen as a way to cascade work-based
supportive supervision in sectors like education and health, where there has been no tradition of
this kind of support. In the Leadership Mentoring Support booklet, which is part of the
NPQICL course materials (Whalley et al., 2004/2005), we summarised the purposes of
mentoring. “Mentoring support reinforces NPQICL programme aims by encouraging:
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Deeper understanding of the complexity of multi-agency work
Application of the vision, values and principles of leadership
Exploration of participants’ work practices and needs
Assessment of participants’ effectiveness in the leadership role
Confidence building activities
Clarification of goals and action planning
Greater work-life balance
Authenticity through self-awareness and self-knowledge
Recognition of their own and others’ reactions and responses in a range of situations
Integration of theory and practice” (p. 6).
We consulted others’ work on mentoring, coaching and supportive supervision (e.g.
Clutterbuck, 2001; Morrell, 2003; West & Milan, 2001), and we concluded that our ideal
model of mentoring support would be a non-directive-stretching approach, with flexibility to
meet individual needs. We adapted the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy’s
(BACP, 2002) Ethical Framework and developed a mentoring agreement pro forma, which
proved entirely acceptable and reassuring to the 41 participants in the 2004-05 NPQICL Pilot,
as well as to nearly 800 participants taking part in the first and second years of the national rollout (2005-07).
Evaluation of mentoring in the NPQICL Pilot
As part of my role as a mentor during the NPQICL Pilot Programme, I coded the approximate
number of minutes spent on issues raised and on the strategies I used to help twenty-three
participants (56% of the Pilot), to address their issues during each mentoring session. I then
coded and analysed the data on a total of 68 sessions in all. Of the twenty-three leaders I
mentored, 20 (87%) were women. They ranged in age from their late 30s to mid 50s. They
lived and worked in Southeast or Southwest England or the Midlands.
At the beginning of their first mentoring session, I informed participants of my intention to
code issues – and the anonymity of the coding across participants and sessions. Also, at the
beginning of their first session, participants were given a preliminary code sheet, along with the
Mentoring Record pro forma so they could see the format mentoring session notes would
follow and the sorts of topics and issues participants might choose to raise. However, issues
were added and further differentiated following mentoring sessions and before data entry and
analysis were completed. The frequency and number of minutes each of the issues was
discussed during sessions were calculated across participants and sessions and tests of
significance were undertaken.
Feeling like a fraud in the leadership role
K. John, Sustaining the leaders of children’s centres: The role of leadership mentoring, 28 Sep 2007, Page 8
The four Induction days of the NPQICL Pilot took place about four weeks apart from
September through December 2004, and most participants had their first mentoring sessions
after they had attended Days 1 and 2 of the Induction, but some had attended Day 3 as well.
The most striking finding from those first sessions was that 14 of the 23 (61% of) participants
talked openly about feeling like a fraud (or impostor, Clance & Imes, 1978) as a leader of their
centres. Being on the course had intensified those feelings because they assumed that others
were more expert and confident than they were. My first mentoring task with those participants
was easy: I encouraged them by assuring them that virtually all their colleagues were feeling
much the same. At course team meetings, by revealing what I had learned – that most
participants were feeling like frauds – I also was able to encourage my tutor colleagues, who
were worried that so few participants had spoken up during the first two Induction Days.
Participants felt it was a privilege to be on the course, but equally, they felt catapulted into roles
that seemed to require more than they were competent to give – and more and more was being
asked of them all the time.
Feeling isolated, uncomfortable and unsupported as a leader
During those first sessions 35% of (8 of the 23) participants – four of whom had not talked
explicitly about feeling unconfident – said they felt isolated and uncomfortable in their role as a
leader. What is more, 61% of participants felt unsupported by their line managers or that their
line managers knew less about what was required to run a children’s centre than they
themselves knew, and 61% complained of confusion and lack of direction at local authority
level. Interestingly, over the three mentoring sessions, discussion of lack of confidence and
feelings of isolation and discomfort in their leadership role reduced significantly, while the
numbers of participants who talked about not getting support or guidance from their line
manager increased, and discussion of confusion and lack of direction at local authority level
remained constant. This last finding mirrors the work of Sheila Thorpe and Mike Gasper (2003)
in their study of heads of Early Excellence Centres offering integrated early years provision.
They found that the vast majority were unsupported, and there were casualties of this lack of
support and guidance. Their report was instrumental in persuading the DfES to fund the
mentoring component of the NPQICL course.
Reflecting on leadership journey and increased effectiveness as a leader
The frequency and length of time participants discussed issues and the strategies used to help
them address their issues were of interest in tracking both the mentoring process and
participants’ development on the course. At the start of mentoring, only 17% of participants
reflected on their leadership journey during their first mentoring sessions, but 74% did so in
their second sessions and 77% in their third sessions. The average number of minutes each
participant spent discussing this issue did not vary significantly, but the number of participants
who did so contributed to the highly significant change in the amount of time spent on
participants’ leadership journeys. This finding is not surprising given the focus of the course,
but it does suggest that the course and mentoring were effective in helping participants to be
more reflective about themselves as leaders.
There was a significant decrease in the number of participants who spent time discussing
feeling over-burdened, unable to delegate and having difficulty prioritising their workloads as
leaders. These findings provide further evidence that both the course and mentoring had a
positive impact on participants’ development as effective leaders.
Participants discussed staff relationship problems significantly less frequently in later sessions,
K. John, Sustaining the leaders of children’s centres: The role of leadership mentoring, 28 Sep 2007, Page 9
and both positive staff relationships and positive staff motivation more, but poor staff
performance was discussed more frequently in later sessions. This was also true of “critical
incidents”, i.e., recent incidents that required participants to confront difficult behaviour,
events, dilemmas and their emotional responses to these. These significant increases in the
amount of time spent discussing thorny issues suggest that participants felt more comfortable
about sharing painful material and so used mentoring sessions to greater advantage.
Mentoring strategies
Across all participants and sessions, I used my therapeutic skills of reflective listening,
acceptance, empathy, encouragement and showing genuine positive regard: I truly liked and
appreciated each and every one of the 23 participants I mentored. I also used my Adlerian
antennae and Socratic questioning to understand each participant’s characteristic ways of
perceiving and responding, in order to gently lead them to deeper self-understanding and selfacceptance and give them the courage to face their problems. And I used humour –
encouraging those I mentored to see the funny side of what we humans get up to. I did not
record or track these basic strategies. But amongst those I did record, the most frequently used
mentoring strategy across sessions was “problem solving”, and significantly more time was
spent using problem-solving techniques in the final session than in the first session. More time
in the final session also was spent on the next most frequently used mentoring strategy,
“looking at theory and practice”.
The problem-solving strategies I used varied across participants, but generally they involved
asking participants what outcomes they would like, then supporting them to think through how
to get where they wished to be, often using Socratic questioning. Problems typically involved
line managers, local authority officers or staff members who themselves were discouraged, so
Adlerian theory was ideal in helping participants re-conceptualise situations.
The Crucial Cs. The Crucial Cs, shown in Table 1, provide a quick way to remember our
shared human needs to feel we belong, that is that we connect, that we are capable and that we
count and have courage. Developed by American Adlerians Amy Lew and Betty Lou Bettner
(Bettner & Lew, 1990; Lew & Bettner, 1996), they proved to be a quick and effective way to
help participants to move from blaming to understanding themselves and others, so they might
better meet their own and others’ needs.
Management guru Warren Bennis (1989) identified these very same fundamental human needs
in his book Why Leaders Can’t Lead: The Unconscious Conspiracy Continues, as did
developmental psychologist James Connell (1990) in his motivational analysis of self-system
processes across the life span. The core idea is that our sense of inferiority is relieved and we
feel more courageous and energised when: we believe we are an essential member of the
community or team, when we feel competent and self-reliant, when we feel we matter and have
a valuable contribution to make and when we feel we can handle whatever challenges come
along. Of course, children’s centre leaders, along with the rest of us, are prone to habits of
thinking and responding that can keep them feeling discouraged, e.g.:
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Set impossibly high standards for yourself and others
Compare yourself only to the great masters
Take all criticism as absolute truth - and take it personally
Worry obsessively about factors beyond your control
K. John, Sustaining the leaders of children’s centres: The role of leadership mentoring, 28 Sep 2007, Page 10
 Take others’ behaviour personally
 Identify the outcome of every project as an assessment of your value as a human being
 Condemn your mistakes & imperfections without mercy
T able 1. T he CrucialCs
If I don ’t have the Crucial C
IfI have the Crucial Cs
CONNECT
I feel secure
I can reach out,
make friends
I Cooperate
I believe
I belong
I need Communication Skills
I feel insecure, isolated
I ’m more susceptible to
peer pressure
I seek Attention
CAPABLE
I feel competent
I have self-control
& self-discipline
I am Self-Reliant
I believe
I can do it
I need Self-Discipline
I feel inadequate
I try to control others or
prove ‘you can’t make me ’
I seek Power
COUNT
I feel valuable
I can make a difference
I Contribute
I believe
I matter
I need to Assume Responsibility
I feel insignificant
I may try to hurt back
I seek Revenge
In order look for our Crucial Cs
through useful means, we need:
COURAGE
I feel hopeful
I am willing to try
I am Resilient
I believe
I can handle what comes
I need Good Judgement
I AM ENCOURAGED
I feel inferior
I may give up
I use avoidance
I AM DISCOURAGED
Amy Lew & Betty Lou Bettner (1996), Raising Kids Who Can. Newton, MA: Connxions Press
However, participants typically moved from feeling victims of circumstances to being change
agents tackling difficult issues. I was mindful of the goal of Adlerian psychotherapy and
supervision in stimulating the individual’s social interest and abandoning their defended
positions and private logic. When it seemed appropriate, I shared a model inspired by Reinhold
Niebuhr’s (1892-1974) “The Alcoholic's Prayer and Stephen Covey’s (1989) “circle of
influence”, shown in Figure 3.
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the
things I can, and wisdom to know the difference ” (Reinhold Niebuhr, 1892-1974).
NO CONTROL
CCONTROL
INFLUENCE
CONTROL
Questions: Where do I have control? Where might I have influence?
Figure 3. The Control Target
K. John, Sustaining the leaders of children’s centres: The role of leadership mentoring, 28 Sep 2007, Page 11
Figure 3 provides a graphic representation of these spheres of control, influence and no control.
The task is to take control where you have it, ignore what you cannot control, but exert
influence where you can. Asking participants to locate the area that best describes where their
control lay helped them to have more realistic expectations of themselves and what they could
hope to achieve. Paradoxically, they often found this increased their sphere of control and
influence where they had none before.
What participants valued about mentoring. Without exception participants commented on
two or more positive aspects of each of their mentoring sessions. The most frequently
mentioned aspects across sessions were that mentoring offered “space to clarify thinking” and
that mentoring was “helpful and/or supportive”. Other commonly mentioned aspects were that
it was “good to talk” (or “blurt” as one participant put it), that participants learned they were
“not alone” and so felt “more confident” because the session had “confirmed complexity”.
Many appreciated the “work/planning focus/action planning” or “problem solving” approach.
In addition to my evaluation of the issues and outcomes of the mentoring sessions in
which I was the mentor, two other evaluations of the NPQICL Pilot offered insights into
what participants felt about their mentoring experiences (Formosinho & OliveiraFormosinho, 2005; Williams, 2005). The Henley Management College was contracted to
undertake a comprehensive external evaluation of the NPQICL Pilot by the DfES and
National College for School Leadership. They found that of the 41 participants who took
in the Pilot, only two had not valued mentoring.
Professors João Formosinho and Júlia Oliveira-Formosinho from the University of Minho in
Braga, Portugal were subcontracted by Pen Green to undertake a different type of external
evaluation, the aim of which was to gauge the impact of the NPQICL on participants’
leadership practice. This impact evaluation is ongoing and will follow a small sample of Pilot
participants and a somewhat larger sample of participants in the NPQICL Roll out. However, in
their report of their initial qualitative research (Formosinho & Oliveira-Formisinho, 2005, pp.
56-59), involving eight participants in the Pilot NPQICL course, mentoring was seen to
provide: 1) personal support, 2) professional support in the form of a critical friend, and 3)
academic support in helping to clarify thinking.
Mentoring was highly valued by the eight participants who took part in the first year of the
impact study and regarded as the most valuable element of the NPQICL course by half and as
important as tutoring by the other half. Professors Formosinho and Oliveira-Formosinho used
two terms to describe what participants valued particularly about the NPQICL course as a
whole. These terms were epistemological homology and pedagogical isomorphism (ibid, pp.
42-43). These terms reflect participants’ feelings of being valued, respected and encouraged in
the same way that they were being encouraged to encourage their staff teams, and staff
members ideally are encouraged to encourage children and parents, and parents ideally are
encouraged to encourage their children.
Final comment
Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink (2003) cautioned: “Leadership that drains its leaders is not
leadership that will last. Unless reformers and policy makers care for leaders personal and
professional selves, they will engineer short-term gains only by mortgaging the entire future of
leadership” (p. 8). Mentoring helps sustain leaders and leadership.
K. John, Sustaining the leaders of children’s centres: The role of leadership mentoring, 28 Sep 2007, Page 12
Encouraging the discouraged is vital to the care and education of children because as children
our powers of observation far exceed our ability to make sense of what we observe. We notice
that others are bigger, more competent and seem more important than we are, and we often
conclude that we are of less value (Dreikurs, 1964). Parents who themselves became
discouraged and who continue to feel discouraged are unlikely to be able to encourage their
children. Integrated children’s centres are ideally placed to provide encouragement to children
and parents alike – but only if their leaders and staff are themselves encouraged. Adlerians
Renie Bahlmann and Lynda Dinter (2001) wrote:
“Encouragement strengthens a person’s confidence and his or her sense of self, and,
as a result is the key to personal growth and development. As a result of
encouragement, a person’s feeling that he or she belongs and his or her willingness
to devote himself or herself to the benefit of society … increases” (p. 273).
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Correspondence about this paper should be addressed t:
Karen John
11 Berkeley Place, Camden Road
Bath BA1 5JH
England
karenjohn@mac.com