There are moments in a career that feel cinematic. Not because they’re glamorous, but because they are so profoundly unexpected that you can practically hear the dramatic soundtrack swelling behind you. I had one of those moments three years into my teaching career, still basically a baby teacher, still convinced that owning a sturdy lanyard made me look “established” - when leadership arrived long before I felt remotely prepared for it.
At that time, I was happily embedded in the music and drama departments. My days were filled with rehearsals, creative chaos, and the joy of seeing students surprise themselves. Leadership - real leadership - felt abstract and distant. It belonged to people with decades of experience, deep filing cabinets, and the kind of calm that allows you to read a meeting agenda without breaking into a small sweat.
Then one afternoon, the Director of Studies and the Principal tapped me on the shoulder. They asked me to interview for a role overseeing the entire Creative Arts faculty: music, drama, visual arts, design and technology, and media. A position that sat above five very experienced, very capable Heads of Department.
My internal monologue reacted immediately: “Either they have mistaken me for someone else or they have lost the plot”
But I went to the interview. And somehow, miraculously, I got the job.
Which led to perhaps the most surreal professional shift of my early teaching career: overnight, the very people whose meetings I had once quietly slipped into were now reporting to me. And to add a gentle sprinkle of emotional complexity, two of those leaders had applied for the same role and had not secured it.
The tension that followed was not loud, dramatic, or confrontational. It was polite.
And polite tension is far more unnerving because it smiles at you while quietly questioning every life choice that brought you here.
No leadership textbook prepares you for chairing your first meeting with colleagues who are professionally gracious but privately processing the organisational plot twist of the year.
Those early months were humbling, stretching, and occasionally made me want to wear a badge that said: “I promise I didn’t pick myself.”
Yet beneath the discomfort was a realisation that altered my entire understanding of leadership:
Leadership hadn’t arrived too early. It had arrived precisely on time, carrying the lessons I needed to learn.
The first was humility. I had the title, but I did not yet have trust. And trust cannot be granted by appointment; it must be earned through behaviour.
So I showed up.
Not theatrically. Not strategically. Just consistently. I spent time in each department as a learner, not a supervisor. I asked questions. I celebrated their expertise. I listened deeply, to their frustrations, their passions, and their long-term hopes. I made myself present, available, and teachable. And slowly, the climate shifted.
There were moments of humour that helped too. After one particularly complex scheduling meeting, a colleague remarked, “Well, for someone only three years in, you’re doing… surprisingly okay.”
I resisted the urge to embroider it on a cushion.
Eventually, trust rebuilt itself, not quickly, but steadily. Resentment softens in the presence of authenticity. And people don’t follow because of hierarchy; they follow because they see your integrity.
What that season taught me is this:
Leadership is not a reward for readiness. It is an invitation to rise.
It asks for courage before confidence, presence before polish, and humility before hierarchy.
It asks you to lead in full humanity, long before you feel perfectly prepared.
Three years into my career, I discovered that leadership isn’t about standing above people, it’s about standing with them. Imperfectly. Honestly. And with just enough humour to make the hard moments human.
That unexpected promotion didn’t demand I be extraordinary. It demanded I be real.
And in the end, that is the kind of leader people choose to follow, not because they have to, but because they genuinely want to.
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