Why reading wont make you a good leader...

Regular readers of my rants probably realise I often come across as an unashamed old school curmudgeon, and there’s some truth to that. I have little time for newfangled terms like metacognition, retrieval practice, curriculum journeys, or the abundance of banal, vacuous jargon that has infiltrated educational circles.
But today’s rant is different. It’s about leadership.
Buckle up, because like an Alan Shore court appearance, I’ve got a few things to say.
Firstly: those who are desperate to be leaders will never be good ones.
Let me share two anecdotes.
The first comes from when I was a 14-year growing up in West Wales. I took a job as a milk boy, working for a local company run by two of the hardest working people I’ve ever met: Colin and Margaret. For those who know West Wales, the weather can be unforgiving. While there’s a certain rose-tinted nostalgia in remembering 4 a.m. summer starts with the sun rising over the Atlantic, winter was another story entirely. A 4 a.m. Monday wake up in January, before a full day of school, as the might of Poseidon raged outside, it took something special to get up and make sure the local town got its supply of semi skimmed.
Were there times I wanted to bottle it and crawl back under the duvet? Every. Damn. Time.
But two things stopped me. First, the ten pounds I knew I’d spend on beer at the weekend. Second, and far more important, was this phrase: “I would never ask someone to do something I wouldn’t do myself.”
Margaret, who was in her sixties at the time, had delivered milk to the town her entire life. She was the embodiment of leading by example. The thought of letting her, and her business, down was unthinkable, no matter how wet, cold, or tired I felt.
Now contrast that with anecdote number two.
A Principal I once worked for openly admitted he hadn’t read a normal book in years — only leadership manuals. Red flag number one. Sure enough, his first address to staff was a relentless stream of clichés: Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last, Start With Why... you name it. Nothing wrong with those books in themselves. Millions read them.
But if the words stay on the page and never become action, you might as well recite Esperanto to the masses.
This Principal had his chance to lead during the COVID pandemic. A real test of everything he’d apparently been preparing for. And what happened?
Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
The man went missing. He was famously locked in the school bathrooms for an hour, awaiting rescue by the caretaker because he didn’t want to touch the door handle for fear of infection. You couldn’t make it up.
The lesson here is simple. Most teachers don’t need hollow rhetoric, overpriced consultants offering insights like “water is wet,” or forced wellbeing days with stale sandwiches and awkward small talk with colleagues they’d rather avoid.
They need leaders like Margaret.
Lead from the front. Take the third eleven cricket team. Cover the period five bottom set Year Nine. That’s leadership.
And one last thing: if you feel the need to read about being a leader, you probably aren’t one.