Recent discussions with a fellow EYP about the challenges of leading an early years setting left us both feeling as though sometimes you can be stretched to the limit, trying to achieve the impossible!
This is hard if you have a philosophy of wanting everyone to 'be the best that they can be'. This perfectionist mentality is not always a healthy one and recently I was advised to accept that sometimes, 'good enough' is just that. But how do you reconcile that with wanting to give the children in your care the best start in life?
I started to think about being a leader - you can be a manager without being a leader. Being a leader doesn't mean doing everyone's job for them or prescribing exactly how they will do their job; it is about guiding them to the point where you want them to be. We all need to reflect on our roles and practice. We evaluate and reflect on activities we do with the children; why not reflect more on our own development?
I have had a great example of this recently. One of my staff is an excellent practitioner, but when she took on a supervisory post she struggled with some aspects of the role. This caused stress because I didn't feel she was doing the job well enough. She didn't feel staff responded to her appropriately, and as a result, stress and tension built up.
I realised it was a matter of confidence - both for her, in her ability to carry out the role, and for me, in believing that she could do it. Her way was not necessarily my way. I enrolled her on some team leader training, which has paid huge dividends. She is so much more confident, she has developed her own strategies for getting staff to respond to her and comes to me with ideas and answers and doesn't wait for me to ask her for them. I didn't need to be doing her job for her, I just needed to provide her with the tools to do it, and while waiting for her to master the tools I did have to accept that 'good enough' was perfectly acceptable at that point!
