You have moved from phase leader to deputy headteacher in the same school and now lead former peers
You have been promoted from within. The staff know you well, and now you lead the people you used to plan alongside.
You were a phase leader, perhaps for Key Stage 1 or upper Key Stage 2, and you have been appointed deputy headteacher in the same school. In a small staff team that means leading colleagues who were your peers, your friends and sometimes your mentors last year. You may still teach a class for part of the week. Some people are pleased for you, someone may have applied for the post themselves, and others are waiting to see whether you will still be the person they confide in. Nothing has gone wrong. The task is to change how you lead without pretending to be someone else, and to settle early how the relationships will work now, before habits form that are hard to undo.
Presenting symptoms
- Colleagues still bring you things as they did when you were a peer, including complaints about decisions you were part of.
- You find yourself softening or apologising for decisions so that former peers will not think you have changed.
- Your old phase still turns to you first, and the new phase leader is being worked around.
Possible causes
- Nobody, including you, may have said out loud what changes in the relationships and what does not.
- You may be holding on to your old phase because it is where you know you are good.
- A colleague who applied for the post may be finding the result hard, and others may be watching how you handle it.
- The deputy role may never have been clearly defined, so you and the headteacher are each assuming different things.
Friendships and loyalties with former peers.
Your most useful next step: Talk to the people closest to you one at a time, early. Say what stays the same, what has to change, such as what you can and cannot share now, and ask how they feel about it.
Lead behaviours
You are still doing your old phase leader job.
Your most useful next step: Agree with the headteacher and the new phase leader exactly what you hand over and by when. Then, when people bring old phase matters to you, send them back to the new phase leader, kindly and every time.
Lead behaviours
You are not clear what the deputy role is for.
Your most useful next step: Ask the headteacher for an hour to agree the three or four things the deputy role exists to deliver this year, which decisions are yours, and how the two of you will disagree in private and stand together in public.
Lead behaviours
A colleague who applied for the post is finding your appointment hard.
Your most useful next step: Have a private conversation soon. Acknowledge it honestly without apologising for the appointment, ask what they want for their own development, and look for a real responsibility that uses their strengths.
Lead behaviours
Core behaviours
Former peers will judge the new role by what you do, not what you say about it. How you handle the first difficult decision, or the first piece of staffroom gossip, sets the pattern.
You know these colleagues well as peers. Knowing them as their leader means learning what each needs from you now, which may be different from what they needed as a colleague.
Your old phase needs a new leader with real authority. Handing over the work without handing over the decisions leaves them leading in name while everyone still comes to you.
Being promoted from within can tempt you to prove you deserved it. Admitting what you are still learning, and asking for views, wins more trust than certainty does.
Friendships do not have to end, but they do have to change. Staying warm, noticing people and keeping small kindnesses going makes the harder boundaries easier to accept.
Secondary behaviours
Use this when the role feels shapeless. A short, agreed list of what the deputy role is for this year removes much of the awkwardness about where you stand.
Use this where a former peer disagrees with you, or applied for the post. Disagreement handled openly and privately is healthier than resentment worked around.
Use this if you are carrying your old job as well as the new one. Choosing what you stop is as important as choosing what you start.
A useful first action
Write two short lists: what stays the same in how you work with colleagues, and what has to change now. Share the second list with the headteacher, then use both in your first conversations with the former peers you are closest to.
Suggested approach
- Agree with the headteacher what the deputy role exists to deliver and which decisions are yours.
- Hand over your old phase properly, with the decisions as well as the work, and send people to the new phase leader.
- Talk one to one with the colleagues you are closest to about what stays the same and what changes.
- Speak privately and early with anyone who applied for the post, and look for a way to use their strengths.
- Make your first visible decisions carefully, explain them, and stand by them.