Know Yourself, Lead Better | A Conversation with Alicia Drummond

My guest today is Alicia Drummond, a BACP accredited therapist and creator of The Wellbeing Hub. This conversation dives deep into why self-awareness is the foundation of effective school leadership. We explore how your internal state directly impacts your school's culture, and Alicia shares practical tools for understanding your triggers, biases, and leadership patterns. From attachment styles to the OK Corral framework, this episode is packed with actionable strategies you can use immediately.

Key Points Covered

• The internal-external connection: Research shows a leader's internal state directly impacts school culture
• Understanding triggers: How childhood experiences create leadership patterns and why physical responses are early warning systems
• Attachment styles in leadership: Four styles (secure, avoidant, ambivalent, disorganised) and how they affect your ability to trust and delegate
• Personal bias exercise: Practical tool to identify your "in-group" and how it affects who you support vs. overlook
• The OK Corral framework: Four positions (I'm OK/You're OK, etc.) that determine how you show up in relationships
• Hero/anti-hero exercise: Understanding your light and shadow sides to catch yourself when moving toward unhelpful patterns
• Choice, control, confidence: How awareness doesn't solve problems but gives you options for how to respond
• Practical meditation: Simple daily practice for building self-awareness and emotional regulation

 

This conversation challenged me to think about how often we rush to fix external problems when the real work starts internally. The research showing how a leader's internal state directly impacts school culture is a powerful reminder that working on ourselves isn't selfish - it's essential leadership development.

Links

• The Wellbeing Hub

 

 

Episode Partner

The International Curriculum Association: Learn more

Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive

Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.

You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com

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