As a leader you will probably have had quite a lot of professional development to get to where you are now so your career development may be about fine tuning the skills that you have already. If you are in a leadership role in a school, there will still be plenty of choices available to you to develop further if that is what you choose to do
The first thing to decide in managing your career progression is to define your future aspirations and to check if they are realistic. This means taking a long, hard view and deciding what you consider you would like your next move to be, then matching this against your core strengths. It could well be that this is hard to do on your own and it’s something that is much better to do with a mentor or someone that knows you well but who can be impartial. If you are looking to develop your career in a different direction then it could be an idea to invest in some professional career guidance.
If you are already a Principal you might want to progress in the direction of becoming a Chief Academic Officer or move on to the Board of a School Group. If so the skills you will need to hone will be managing stakeholders and influencing skills. You will need to become more externally focused and start scouring the environment in terms understanding how to implement best practice in the education sector. You need to ask yourself are these your real strengths and can you develop them further. If so what “practice” can you provide to test yourself out.
