C6. Seek inspiration
Look beyond your own context for ideas and examples. Inspiration fuels improvement and innovation.
Resources to support growth in this behaviour
Whether this behaviour has been chosen through Step 1. Diagnose, highlighted through reflection or coaching, or identified as a school or trust priority, you can now follow the steps below to develop and embed it in your daily leadership practice.
Step 2. Learn: Read Everyone Succeeds: 54 Leadership Behaviours to Transform Your School to understand what great leadership looks like in practice. Each behaviour is grounded in research and real examples from schools and businesses.
Step 3. Reflect: Use the Everyone Succeeds Workbook to apply ideas to your own context.
Guided reflection, practical actions, and space for planning turn understanding into improvement.
Step 4. Apply: Work through the Leadership Toolkit for this behaviour. Use the Seek Inspiration toolkit to identify high-quality ideas, analyse why they work, and adapt them thoughtfully to strengthen practice in your own context.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Seek inspiration Coach and Practise Frameworks to strengthen the behaviour through coaching questions about learning sources and translation into practice, rehearsing the sharing and adaptation of ideas so curiosity spreads across the school.
These can be used individually or with colleagues to embed key behaviours.
Step 6. Plan: Set measurable goals using the 90 Day Leadership Planner.
Turn improvement into action by tracking your focus and progress over time, with completed examples for different career stages.
Step 7. Lead: Apply your learning to real situations through the Scenario Finder.
Over fifty scenarios link directly to the behaviours that help you solve the challenges that matter most in your school.
One book suggestion
Leading in a Culture of Change – Michael Fullan (2001).
This book enriches your practice by showing how leaders draw insight from diverse sources and use that inspiration to drive purposeful change. Buy the book.
References from the Everyone Succeeds book
Barber, M., (2021). Accomplishment: How to achieve ambitious and challenging things. Penguin UK.
Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a Culture of Change. Jossey-Bass.
Katz, R. and Allen, T.J., (1982). Investigating the Not Invented Here (NIH) syndrome: A look at the performance, tenure, and communication patterns of 50 R & D Project Groups. R&d Management, 12(1), pp.7-20.