Lessons in Leadership: Finding MY way to lead

I have spent this year learning about leadership. Actually, I’ve spent most of my life doing so, but this year the process has ramped up a lot, and in a lot of different ways. I feel very lucky to have spent the year learning so much, from so many people, as I’ve grappled with my professional identity and seemingly relentless imposter syndrome while stepping into a big new role – at times, in spite of myself. I want to summarise the highlights here. 

It’s worth noting at this point that these are just the views of a girl on her journey to world domination; they’re not facts, just opinions and observations, and I write on behalf of myself rather than Edurio.

Leadership & Education: Passion and Compassion

We launched our Edurio Awards in the Autumn term of 2024, based on our national datasets and celebrating the strongest performers in a range of important areas for the sector. From these, my colleague Imanta and I interviewed a number of the winners, finding out what they were doing that meant their staff, pupil, or parent community were so appreciative. We asked about workload, building a sense of trust-wide community, pupil belonging, leadership itself, and I quickly realised we were learning more than I could have dreamed of when going into it.

We need to have high expectations for our staff and our stakeholders (pupils or parents, or in Edurio’s case, our customers) because what we are doing is important. But we need to make sure that this culture of high expectations comes hand-in-hand with a culture of support and gratitude. We must face challenges head-on, but we must be compassionate as we do so and do what we can to help those around us meet those challenges.

There are countless other lessons, explored in more depth in our guides, but some of the biggies are: 

• Values-driven Leadership. Leadership is not just about operational management but about defining a shared purpose, communicating it effectively, and embedding values into everyday decisions.
• Distributed and Empowering Leadership Models. Strong emphasis is placed on distributed leadership, where responsibility is shared and staff are empowered at all levels.
• Person-Centred Leadership. Leadership is frequently described as being rooted in relationships, empathy, and presence. Schools and trusts that prioritise open dialogue, support, and personal connection are better positioned to support their staff and engage pupils.
• Evidence-Informed Leadership. Strong leaders use data, feedback, and honest evaluation to drive strategy and improvement, listening to their community and bringing everyone with them on the journey. 
• Supportive, realistic leadership. Leadership directly affects how workload is managed and how staff experience their roles. A focus on wellbeing is essential for a sustainable education workforce.
• Leadership as Community Building. Great leaders foster a sense of collective identity and community engagement.

It’s been a privilege to spend time learning from all these great leaders, and it has shaped some of my thinking as I’ve looked at leadership across Edurio and in my own role.

Leadership & Edurio: Delegate and Elevate

In February, we had a reshuffle of the leadership team, and I got a new job. Ian joined us as Director of Growth, taking on a role that Molly and I had shared between us for a year or so. Agnese is returning as our Director of Operations, taking on a role that Ernest and Janis have shared between them for even longer. I became Managing Director, freeing Ernest to focus on the strategic aspects of the CEO role. And Gatis remained our constant, celebrating 10 years in his role as Director of Product.

As a company, we have made great progress over the years. I recall a point last summer when Ernest said “the Edurio community is stronger than it’s ever been”: I realised he’d been saying that every six months or so for a couple of years, and that every time he had been right. 40ish people, consistently embodying Edurio’s values of Growth, Openness, Genuine Care, and Ownership, broadly delivering on our goals. If we compare the way Edurio operates to the stories of good practice across the education sector, I think it’s fair to say that we have values-driven leadership at our core.

But we had more to do. We had been a start-up, and a lot of the things that made us great when we were a start-up continued to make us great. But we turned 10 last year, and we have 10 years of baggage: technical debt, workarounds, bloated processes, missing processes. And 10 years of wondering whether we’re on the cusp of greatness, or on the cusp of going bust.

As we are in the business of data, we had to face the facts: we are clearly not on the cusp of going bust, but our baggage might hold us back from becoming great.

Since February, we have: 

• Hashed out our ten-year goal
• Painted a picture of what we want Edurio to look like in three years
• Changed the structure and responsibilities of our leadership team to get to a point of having the “right people in the right seats”
• Agreed, what we need to do next year, to help us achieve the picture we’ve painted for three years’ time, and then ten years’ time
• Changed how we run our weekly meetings, to keep us on track with the most important issues
• Begun to align on the key metrics we need to track, beyond the financials we already track, to give us clarity on our overall organisational health

As I said, none of this is particularly revolutionary, and we are far from done.

Leadership & Me: Silly, Short, Smart, and (Somewhat) Self-assured

What about my route into leadership? Here are a few of my credentials (listed in reverse chronological order):

• Managing Director at Edurio
• Various leadership roles spanning research, marketing and sales
• Developing the graduate programme at a previous employer
• Studying Management and Mathematics at Leeds University
• House Captain in secondary school
• House Captain in primary school
• Consistently being a little bit bossy.

And what about me as a person?

• I’m silly much more often than I am serious
• I’m short, and I get ID’d with an embarrassing regularity for someone who’s been a legal adult for a decade and a half
• I have ringlets
• I sometimes cry in meetings
• I am the product of an all-girls school, and I still very much identify as a “girl”
• On a good day, I also believe that I am smart, analytical and practical, and able to take complex theoretical things and apply them to the situation in a sensible fashion
• I’m constantly worried I’m not doing enough
• I’ve run myself into the ground trying the “fake it till you make it” approach over the years
• I’ve spent my career terrified that someone is going to realise I am a fraud and everything will come crashing down. People like me don’t run tech companies, do they?! 

What does that mean, though? Why have I decided that the way I look has anything to do with my ability to be a good leader? Taking some of the examples of good practice we picked up in our guides, what does being a girl have to do with my ability to be values-driven or person-centred? What does my propensity to be silly have to do with my ability to empower others or make evidence-informed decisions? Who let me build this narrative for myself over the years?

Eventually, I start thinking about all the leaders in whom I see at least a bit of myself. The women who can command a room from a conference stage, even though the lectern they’re expected to stand behind is built for someone a foot taller than they are. Those who lead workshops with high levels of energy and enthusiasm, or who tackle big, serious challenges and still manage to have fun and be a bit silly without devaluing the importance of the work they’re doing. The managers and mentors who’ve looked after me along the way, leading with compassion and vulnerability. My school friends, many of whom are also increasingly senior in male-dominated fields. My colleagues. My mum. The Lionesses. Taylor Swift.

With a list this long of wonderful women, being their own brand of brilliant, why am I even questioning whether “me” is enough?

Finally, I start to think about my impact on others. I note that the work we’ve done in the last few months seems to be taking effect – I’m by no means the reason for that, the whole team is, but I am leading the team through this journey, using my strong relationships and ability to synthesise ideas to help move us to a point of shared commitment to what we are trying to achieve. I am taking the learnings we gained from interviewing our award winners and sharing them with others who are on similar journeys, including our team at Edurio.

This article from Gender.Study, tells me these traits are elements of “Transformational Leadership”, the ability to inspire, motivate, and support followers. Seeing that this type of leadership is characterised by traditionally “feminine” traits brings me concern, but also bring me comfort and confidence. 

I’m wondering what people might see in me that helps them think “people who look/sound/act like me can lead tech companies”? How can I help people in the team, or beyond, to develop themselves authentically into the leaders I know they can be? I think about the chat I had in the pub with two colleagues who, like me, have had the odd cry here and there – we discussed whether it’s really okay to cry at work, and agreed it’s probably not great that we feel the need, but at least we are being open about how we feel and comfortable being a bit vulnerable. I think about research like this from the US, which found that 55% of girls surveyed said they would shy away from a leadership role because they don’t want to be considered bossy. What can I do to try and convince them that being bossy can be a wonderful thing, even for a girl?!