High Challenge, Low Threat: How the Best Leaders Find the Balance

This is a book about the things that wise leaders do. It is informed through thousands of conversations with leaders and argues that these leaders do not shy away from the tough stuff. It points to the conditions which these leaders create to allow colleagues to engage with difficult issues enthusiastically and wholeheartedly. It is taken from observations of leaders at work in a variety of settings. While these are mostly schools, these observations are checked against what is happening in wider leadership and management thinking. This book makes the case that any leadership role is concerned primarily with the relationships between individuals. It is the quality of these, whatever the size of the organisation, which make the difference between organisations which thrive, and those which stagnate. This is not to argue for soft, easy and comfortable options. Instead it considers how top leaders manage to walk the line between the impossible and the possible, between the undoable and the doable and to create conditions for productive work which transcend the difficulties which come towards us every day. Instead of dodging them, they embrace them.And by navigating high challenge, low threat, they show how others how to do the same.

Mary Myatt is an education adviser, writer and speaker. She trained as an RE teacher and is a former local authority adviser and inspector. She engages with pupils, teachers and leaders about learning, leadership and the curriculum.

Mary has written extensively about leadership, school improvement and the curriculum. Her current work focuses on the Huh Curriculum series for primary, secondary and SEND alongside the Huh Academy with John Tomsett.

She has established Myatt & Co, an online platform with films for ongoing professional development including the popular Primary Subject Networks and Secondary Subject Networks. Her most recent work is the development of The Teachers' Collection, underpinned by the findings from the 'Faster Read' research from the University of Sussex.

Mary is a patron of CAPE, and has been a governor in three schools and a trustee for a multi-academy trust. She maintains that there are no quick fixes and that great outcomes for pupils are not achieved through tick boxes.

www.marymyatt.com
X: @MaryMyatt