What is it that puts you out of your comfort zone? Perhaps it is being asked to calm an irate parent in reception, or having to stand up and give the welcome address at the community concert. Or maybe making a final decision on next year’s timetable is enough to give you clammy palms and to make your heartbeat race.

Many school leaders will experience stress when they are asked to step out of their comfort zones. Why? Part of the problem is that leadership roles are often very fixed.

Teachers often gain their first promotion after a couple of years without realising that they may be setting themselves on a set of career “train tracks” from which there will be little chance to deviate. The most obvious examples of this are the pastoral and academic routes.

In short, schools are very good at developing “I-shaped” leaders, when what they need are leaders who are “T-shaped”.

What do I mean by that? The concept of I-shaped and T-shaped employees is a metaphor used in job recruitment to describe people’s skill sets. I-shaped leaders have deep knowledge and experience in one area, but rarely apply these skills to other areas - which is represented by a vertical line.

This type of leader is typical of schools where a senior leadership team is made up of separate leads for pastoral, curriculum, teaching and learning, standards and inclusion, for example. Each of these leaders is an expert in their own area, but has little understanding of, or confidence in, the areas in which their colleagues specialise. They are likely to have been promoted early into leadership of a specific area and had little opportunity - or motivation - to broaden their experience.

Onthe other hand, T-shaped leaders have depth in their main area of expertise, but also breadth of experience across other areas - this broad experience is represented by a horizontal line that intersects the first line.

Ideally, there would be at least two leaders in a school with some insight into each area of leadership focus (teaching and learning, pastoral, etc). This represents a widening of everyone’s comfort zone, but creates greater depth of collective understanding of important issues. It also ensures greater team sustainability, as personnel come and go.

In my experience, teams of T-shaped leaders make better decisions and also experience less stress.

So how can T-shaped leaders be developed within current school structures?

1. Create a climate of curiosity

Aim to develop a culture in which staff are encouraged and rewarded for being professionally curious. Welcome questions from staff and respond promptly. Facilitate role-shadowing and invite staff to sit in on meetings. Don’t allow staff to become blinkered to the wider functioning of the school and their place within it.

2. Control the use of jargon

Every school has its own suite of acronyms and shorthand that are common currency for initiates, but bewildering for outsiders. Specialist terms are useful to communicate complex ideas, yet can inadvertently exclude those who are not familiar with them. Does everyone in your audience understand what a “LAC” or a “LADO” is? Are you sure that the concept of “blocking” subjects is widely understood within your meeting? It takes a confident individual to ask for clarification in a group setting.

Ensure that language is used to illuminate, not obscure, meaning. Always explain specialist terms to encourage wider engagement and broaden staff expertise.

3. Choose names wisely

It’s important to remove barriers that prevent staff from broadening their experience. One of these barriers is job titles.

Is there any difference between the skills needed to become a pastoral leader and those required to become an academic leader? Both demand flexibility, good planning and organisation, clear communication, empathy and determination. Chances are that if someone has the skills to become one, they could also do a good job at the other, given time to develop the right knowledge and experience.

Yet names matter. If I identify myself as a “head of year”, I may dismiss the idea of being able to lead a subject team, and vice versa.

Staff should be involved in reviewing leadership titles. In this process, the discussion is the important part, not the outcomes. You may decide to stay with your existing titles, but by having the conversation, you illuminate the similarities between roles in the pastoral and academic spheres, thereby encouraging staff to diversify their experience.

4. Design meetings to mix staff

There is an important place for small and highly focused meetings, but schools need to be careful not to abandon more open forums. Whole-staff meetings are sometimes the only time the staff body meets, yet they are often uninspiring exercises in information giving.

Make the most of these opportunities to mix staff into groups of different roles and levels of responsibility. Structure discussions that enable staff to gain insight into areas of the school that are less familiar to them. Does an academic leader in your school ever sit down with a pastoral leader and a class teacher to discuss issues that are important to all? If not, make it happen.

5. Training to develop breadth

The development of leadership breadth is too important to be left to chance, so make it explicit. Does training for NQTs and RQTs include exposure to pastoral as well as academic issues? Make sure they are given the same weighting. Is there a structured CPD programme for all staff that looks at how to lead from an academic and pastoral background? Capture information about who attends the training and what they’re getting out of it, to inform future decision-making.

6. Allow staff to change

Schools are busy places, so leadership often tends to be reactive when things go wrong. Instead, be proactive in allowing staff to identify when they need a new challenge before performance dips. A desire for change shouldn’t be seen as a failure of resolve, but as a triumph of flexibility. It may be hard for staff to admit doubts at first, but as it becomes embedded in the school’s culture it will lead to better motivated and more experienced, T-shaped leaders.

The best interventions have high impact with low input of time and money. Creating T-shaped leaders is a great example of this. Simple changes in emphasis will embed versatility and create leaders with breadth and depth of experience. Ultimately, this will broaden your talent pool into the future.

Jo Clemmet is a secondary geography and economics teacher and senior leader

This article originally appeared in the 16 October 2020 issue under the headline “Spot the ‘I’s and boss with ‘T’s”