By Matthew Shoults, Headmaster

In recent weeks I was interviewing students in Year 12 applying to be on the Head Girl’s Team, and it was encouraging that almost 30 students put themselves forward to fill only six positions.  It is part of our culture to encourage girls throughout the school to take on leadership roles.

But it does beg some questions. Should we be teaching all our students to be leaders?  Will they all lead, and do they even want to?  Businesses and organisations are full of talented experts occupying non-leadership roles: computer programmers, actors, copywriters, actuaries and academics all carry out highly skilled jobs, without necessarily being leaders.  And can leadership even be taught?  If students do not aspire to leadership, is it unwise to “impose” these skills on them?

In answer I would cite my own experience as a less than confident teenager.  My school, which gave me a perfectly good education, nevertheless had structures which meant that about 20% of the top year group became prefects.  This created a feeling of those who could lead and those who couldn’t.  Yet, to the school’s credit, I was encouraged elsewhere, and to my great surprise was appointed cross country captain. It helped that the team was not dazzling (the First VIII photo featured seven runners, one without shoes on), but even so I was not the fastest runner, and I certainly didn’t see myself as leadership material at the time.  Did I emerge from this office a transformed being?  Not entirely.   I was good at organising the matches against other schools, and the major meeting we hosted; I learnt to persuade and beg runners from other sports to join the team; but I probably didn’t have the commanding presence that some team captains have.

But the point is that I did learn from the experience, and most importantly my perception of my own potential shifted.  There are myriad different models and theories of leadership, with conventional names (such as transformational, delegative or participative leadership) or the more unlikely (Zeus, Athena and Dionysus – based around the traits of different Greek gods).  It is easy to get bogged down in this sort of theorising, but what these different titles suggest is what was revealed to me at the time: that leadership is not necessarily the alpha personality model, but about being able to have an effect on things around me. Most importantly, it also showed me that the only way to challenge my expectations of myself was to be nudged into a role, and to learn by doing.

This is an important issue for schools.  Careers advice is often focussed on giving students an awareness of different jobs, and trying to match a sense of personality, aptitudes and interests to these careers (this itself is a haphazard business – the test I sat at sixteen suggested lawyer, dietician and coastguard as my top three prospects!).  Yet it is not clear whether students can tell at that age whether they will enjoy leadership in employment or not (as my own experience showed).  There should therefore be an impetus on schools to encourage all students to learn to lead, and to do so by taking on projects.  This is why at NHEHS all Year 12 students are encouraged to take on roles, in subject areas, charitable fundraising, sport, music or drama and elsewhere, with many roles across lower year groups: because it is only by trying out these posts that students will really find out whether they enjoy greater responsibility, and it is much easier to learn these skills through active attempts at them, than by absorbing theory in an abstract manner.

This is significant not only because of the importance of encouraging aspiration, but because of the need to challenge imposter syndrome.  So many young people can edge away from taking on responsibilities because they don’t believe they are capable enough.  Yet research shows that as many as 80% of people suffer from imposter syndrome.  So without being compelled (or at least strongly encouraged) to test themselves out, the majority of teenagers will simply never discover that they can, after all, take the lead, and experience the confidence, pride and assurance which comes from the experience.