Be More Toddler: A leadership education from our little learners, is a short reflection on leadership by Emma Turner. The author is an experienced leader, consultant, and former co-head at a UK school. It’s published by John Catt books.
The overall aim of the book is to ‘demystify leadership’ – making it feel far more attainable to educators who, due to false narratives, imposter syndrome, life commitments, and so on, may not feel that they are suited to leadership.
The highly personal short read is both a call to empower would-be leaders and a fairly informal playbook. Turner relates the skills set and approaches needed for leadership to the behaviour we see in toddlers, with references to her own parenting and her children throughout. It’s a readable and (often) relatable book for parents, with plenty of chortle, facepalm, and cringe moments from the author – as well as some valuable advice.
The author begins by explaining how they nearly bought into an existing narrative about leadership and therefore didn’t pursue it – specifically that (early) parenthood and leadership don’t mix. However, Turner suggests that parents are lucky enough to have the chance to learn from the best leaders around – their own toddlers. And if they take a leaf out of their kid’s book then they can become successful in leadership roles.
This leads into Section 2, where Turner outlines five key lessons in leadership under these headings:
⁃ Setting the vision and sticking with it
⁃ Building teams
⁃ Developing yourself as a leader
⁃ Tricky consistency
⁃ Maintaining well-being in a leadership role
Each lesson (and each section within it) leads with an amusing anecdote from Turner about the behaviour of her own kids, how she dealt with it (or failed to deal with it), what she learnt, and ultimately how toddler actions highlight/model something valuable that we can then adopt as leaders. After linking to leadership, most sections have a handy list of reflection questions for readers.
My favourite example is a subsection in the first lesson titled ‘Mine! Hold on to what is important to you’. Turner jokes about how the phrase ‘taking candy from a baby’ is ridiculous given how challenging that task actually is. The author then humorously outlines the importance of chocolate and lollipops to a child, what they represent (independence, the chance to realize their vision, etc), and how determined they are to keep it. The suggestion to (potential) leaders is to identify your chocolate buttons and lollipops: actions or values that are most important to you and that align closely to your vision. These should guide you own actions, decisions and priorities. My summary doesn’t do it justice – it’s funny.
Turner’s advice is also backed up with anecdotes about her experiences in school leadership. One example that really stood out to me was some ill-timed and poorly delivered feedback that Turner’s team once received from a senior leader. Turner reiterates the importance of leaders celebrating success throughout this book, and sharing examples of how leaders get this wrong was both memorable and somewhat familiar!
The toddlers-as-leaders angle gives the book it’s niche, but the analogy gets a bit stretched at times. The work-related anecdotes add clarity in parts and are useful for more boring readers like me that are too jaded by parenting themselves to see the positives sometimes.
The book closes with some of Turner’s views on rethinking the leader narrative. She briefly explores challenges regarding maternity, hidden workplace bias, imposter syndrome and historical narratives about leadership. Pushing against the latter, she highlights some benefits for teacher-parents who might consider leadership – notably that it’s more flexible and it enables greater autonomy.
My favourite quote from the book
‘When ‘checking in’ becomes ‘checking up’, then the positive culture, autonomy and trust is eroded… We want to create organizations where people don’t need to consult weighty tomes outlining exact systems, procedures and policies, and [where people are not] fearful of bringing innovation or challenge to the table because it conflicts with the significant micromanaging rulebooks.’
What could improve
There are various leadership roles in schools, but I felt this book was more for senior leaders than for middle leaders. I felt like there could have been mention of top down constraints for middle leaders, middle leaders acting as a buffer between SLT and teachers, etc. Turner could have probably weaved in some funny anecdotes from her family dynamic that would relate to middle leadership challenges.
Overall
This is a lighthearted reflection on navigating leadership during parenthood. The author’s humour serves as a good vehicle for imparting useful advice about leadership. I’ve referred to certain sections and reflection questions in the book on occasions while navigating my head of department role this year (see here for an example).
While the book is not academic in nature or underpinned by research, it may be a useful addition to reading lists on MA or PGCEi modules on teacher identity.
Rating: 4.3/5
Categories: General, reviews, teacher development
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