Oxford Mindfulness Director of Teaching and Training and former senior leader in schools, Claire Kelly and mindfulness teacher, school leader, and author of ‘Leading with Presence – It’s an Inside Job’, Maggie Farrar, share their personal stories of leadership in education and reasons why mindfulness, and being more present, can either make or break a school culture.

Leading with Presence – Claire’s story

As a teacher and senior leader in schools for over 25 years, I had a vision for an education system allowing the individuals within it to thrive, have a sense of agency and their own strengths – to know they mattered and were valued.

Meanwhile, I thought of myself as a robust individual: good physical and mental health; eating well; exercising regularly; someone comfortable with questioning what didn’t feel right; but also, someone who was always there for her colleagues, students, friends and family.

I was therefore shocked one morning, staring into the bathroom mirror at 5am (my usual get-up time), brushing my hair and feeling a handful of it fall out. Three of the fingers grasping it were wrapped in sticking plasters – the occupational hazard of paper cuts had recently led to infections under my fingernails and, in due course, I’d actually lost my nails. Sorry if that’s too much information!

Despite the living, breathing specimen of immune system shut-down and burnout that stared back at me from the mirror, I decided to carry on with my daily routine: I made my still-sleeping children’s packed lunches before cycling the 8 miles to work. At 7.30pm I was at my desk, navigating a 10 ½ -hour day of meetings, lessons, planning, monitoring and decision-making, I managed to get home just in time to serve my children their dinner, give them a bath and read them a bedtime story. I was the ‘perfect’ mother on top of everything else I had achieved that day.

While reading them their story, my son said, ‘Mummy, why did the duck say that?’‘Which duck?’ I said. I then looked down at the book I was reading to them. It was called, ‘The Naughty Duck’.

Through that one question came a cascade of realisations: I hadn’t been present at any point during that day – when making complex decisions, when meeting with colleagues, when teaching, when cycling, and when being the ‘great mum’ I believed myself to be.

Reacting rather than responding

Every decision I had made had been a reaction rather than response, always fuelled by how I was both physically and emotionally. In every conversation I had assumed there was a ‘problem’ to be solved, and I had prepared what I was going to suggest before the person had finished their first sentence. And every moment through that day had been numbed through a need to move onto the ‘next thing’. It was as if I was on a treadmill with the speed gradually increasing and no option to jump off.

I called a friend and colleague and said, ‘Do you think I am good at my job? Please be honest’. He paused for a lot longer than I hoped he would and said, ‘You are very conscientious’.‘And..?’ I said. Another considered pause. ‘You’re setting an example that isn’t helpful or appropriate. The staff feel like there’s no such thing as ‘good enough’. They feel they can’t be honest with you about how they are, as you never seem to show any vulnerability. Meanwhile, there’s no space – for discussion, creativity, planning beyond the next 3 months.’

While I felt destroyed by his comments, I will forever be grateful to him for his honesty in that moment. I’d underestimated the impact my own habitual way of operating had on the staff and, in turn, the students, as well as on my own children. I had created a ‘well-oiled machine’ with no heart.

Moving forward with more presence

Having first practised mindfulness as an 18-year-old, I’d lost it in the busyness / messiness / driven-doing-ness of everyday life. I was struggling to even find time to go to the toilet during the day, let alone set aside 30 + minutes per day for formal mindfulness practice.

And yet, when I returned to it in the weeks and months following my colleague’s astute observations, the strangest thing happened: I felt like I had more, not less, time in my day. There was more mental space in which I could make considered decisions, and people at work began to notice too – I was less guarded, driven and closed to anything that required real listening and reflection. I was more open to ideas from others, and more flexible around how things might map out. But the real ‘aha!’ moment for me was when, as I tucked him into bed, my then 6-year old son said, out of the blue, ‘I like mindfulness’. ‘Oh, have you been doing some at school?’ I asked him. ‘No’, he said. ‘But you have, and that means you’re here with me right now.’

“I felt like I had more, not less, time in my day. There was more mental space in which I could make considered decisions, and people at work began to notice too…”

Claire Kelly

Oxford Mindfulness Director of Teaching and Training and former senior leader in education

Leading with Presence – Maggie’s story

I’ve worked in education all my life, in schools, Local Authorities and with Government. I’ve also practised mindfulness for over 30 years. But it wasn’t until the last 10 years that I combined my work on leadership development with my own mindfulness practice.

Losing myself in work

Working with other leaders to support their practice and application of mindfulness has been a privilege. It’s given me the opportunity to see the significant impact that a mindfulness practice has on our effectiveness as leaders and how, by applying it day by day, we can become more aware, more authentic and more present. It also made me realise personally that, despite a long-standing mindfulness practice, how easy it is to ignore its’ ‘quiet calling’ when work takes over.

It was when I became the Chief Executive of the National College for School Leadership that I realised I was becoming consumed by busyness. The role was complex and it took me a while to see that, however hard I worked, all my tasks would never be completed. As things got harder, I worked harder. It was only when I began to make mistakes – I was forgetting conversations because I wasn’t present for them; I was spending all my time thinking my way out of problems and leading, quite literally, from the neck up – I realised all I knew about the benefits of mindfulness practice had gone ‘out of the window’. I was neglecting my practice and, as a result, my leadership was becoming more and more superficial. I had, in fact, ‘lost myself in work’.

My attention was scattered, my approach to my leadership was task-driven, and it was unsustainable. In focusing on the tasks, I was neglecting the relationships both in the organisation and with the hundreds of school leaders the organisation served. The culture of the organisation was suffering as a result.

Coming back to myself through mindfulness

It was my mindfulness practice that brought me back. Firstly, it brought me back to myself, to my body, it rekindled my relationship with my inner life as a leader. As a result, I started to show up, more tuned in to my whole self, and to the ‘wholeness’ of the people I was leading. It helped me to balance the task with the relationship, to focus on the ‘being’ side of my leadership as well as the ‘doing’.

I will be forever grateful for that period in my life as it brought an even deeper realisation that my mindfulness practice was not something peripheral to my role as a leader but was deeply at the core of it.

“I started to show up, more tuned in to my whole self, and to the ‘wholeness’ of the people I was leading… my mindfulness practice was not something peripheral to my role as a leader but was deeply at the core of it.”

Maggie Farrar

Senior leader in education, mindfulness teacher and author

Leading with Presence for Education Leaders: Enabling Cultural Change

Claire and Maggie are facilitating one of our newest programmes, ‘Leading with presence for education leaders – enabling cultural change’.

The course includes evidence-based mindfulness practices and exercises that consistently support a host of leadership qualities such as attention, cognitive capacity and reflexivity, self-regulation of emotions and behavior, self-awareness, empathy, humility, authenticity, transparency and resilience (Stedham and Skaar, 2019)¹.

This 8-week course, beginning 1 May 2025, is also underpinned by a Theory of Change that aims to generate sustainable effects on interpersonal relationships, impact positively on staff well-being, recruitment and retention, and lead to a school culture that is kinder and more compassionate whilst still maintaining high standards of achievement for all.

In the programme Claire and Maggie will be sharing stories of the many leaders they have worked with over the years as they too have strengthened their leadership presence through the practice of mindfulness, experiencing significant benefits for themselves, those they serve and the organisation they lead.

¹https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6636395/