L12. Control the controllables
Focus energy on what you can influence. This builds momentum and resilience.
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 Control the Controllables toolkit to focus your energy on what you can influence and avoid being pulled off-course by noise or pressure.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Control the controllables Coach and Practise Frameworks to strengthen the behaviour through action steps that focus effort, rehearsing the wise direction of energy so uncertainty does not paralyse action.
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
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey (1989).
This text supports the behaviour by helping you focus energy on what you can influence, improving clarity, calm and effectiveness. Buy the book.
References from the Everyone Succeeds book
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.
Grupe, D.W. and Nitschke, J.B., (2013). Uncertainty and anticipation in anxiety: an integrated neurobiological and psychological perspective. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14(7), pp.488-501.