Evelyn Forde MBE has been a teacher, a head of year and held senior leadership roles before becoming a headteacher. She is a former president of the Association of School and College Leaders and is about to release the book Herstory: A Leadership Manifesto. She writes:

I experienced horrific racism when I first became a leader. I had extremely offensive caricatures of me put under my door, I had overt racism directed at me from staff. This is not 30 years ago, this is in the past 10 years. And this is still happening now to so many non-white members of our profession, particularly those who seek leadership positions despite the many barriers in their way.

I never thought about headship explicitly when I was younger. Eventually, I knew I wanted a seat at the decision-making table - I had a lot of success as a head of year, and I felt I could offer more, but a head? It was never the goal. If the Future Leaders course had not been there, if I had not spotted it and it had sparked a thought of “maybe I could do that”, I am not sure I would have had the career I have had.

My style is that I am a people person. Whatever school I lead, that’s the person I am and the way I will be.

I had 18 deputy head interviews. Everyone else in the Future Leaders cohort was getting jobs, and I wasn’t. I had a couple of “I can see you as a great deputy but not a head” and on one occasion, “I don’t know how you would fit with our community”. There were assumptions made - was it because of my gender, because I was on my own with three daughters, because I am Black? - that other candidates simply did not get attached to them. I have had to battle to keep believing in myself when others did not.

Networking is so important. Networks are support, they are a safety net, they are confidence giving. It is incumbent on the leaders we have now to build, support and nurture those networks for our leaders-in-waiting. And to make sure they seek out not just the loudest would-be leaders but those who may not have thought it but have so much potential to do the job.

I don’t think I have got to the point of empathy fatigue. I tried to get under the skin of the problems my team were having. Sometimes those were complex problems. But sometimes they could be simpler. I remember one example where the solution was: get a cleaner. It transformed her life! You need to be open-minded and not belittle what teachers are going through.

You can’t work in isolation as a head. You cannot be “above it”. You are only as good as the team you build and the team is only good if you are part of it.

With teacher performance, is the problem that they “can’t” or that they “won’t”? If the problem is they can’t, then that is on you. You as a leader need to remove the barriers. If the problem is they won’t, leaders need to use the processes available to them and staff may need to think if there is somewhere else they would rather be. Kids only get one chance.

If someone comes to you with an idea as a leader, you need to take it seriously. You need to give it the time to think about it properly, you need to listen, and if it has a slight chance of being something, you need to enable that person to invest time in exploring that idea further. That is developing your staff and it does not happen enough.

How are you presenting yourselves as a leadership team to parents? I attended my daughter’s school as a parent as she had gotten into trouble, and when I got there I was on one side of the table, and there were seven people on the other side. It was a very aggressive way of framing that meeting and at the end, I told them that. This is not the way you build a relationship. As leaders, we need to be so aware of how we present ourselves.

Sometimes, you have to put your game face on and leave everything else at the door of the school. Your mood matters.

How many children have been excluded from your school without following due process because the parents do not have the knowledge, time or capacity to challenge it? Be honest. As a parent, I knew the system and could navigate it. I made damn sure every parent in that situation had the same opportunity to challenge as I would have done. That’s on you as a leader and if you are not doing it, that is not OK.

The power of asking “How can I help?” should not be underestimated. It is such a powerful question; it says so much to the pupil, team member or parent you are talking to.

I had an awful time at school. It was horrific. I did not want my experience to be the experience of other young Black girls. Everything I did in my career was about making sure that no one had to go through what I went through.

For key school and trust leadership insights delivered every month, sign up for the Tes Leaders’ Briefing newsletter