Y1. Protect your sleep
Prioritise rest as a leadership responsibility. Sleep underpins judgement, energy, 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 Protect Your Sleep toolkit to understand your sleep patterns, build healthier routines, and protect the energy needed for effective leadership.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Protect your sleep Coach and Practise Frameworks to strengthen the behaviour through reflection on habits and boundaries, rehearsing the prioritisation of rest so decision-making remains sharp.
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
Why We Sleep – Matthew Walker (2017).
This book deepens the behaviour by explaining the science behind sleep and its essential role in leadership clarity, decision-making and emotional regulation. Buy the book.
References from the Everyone Succeeds book
Cho, K., Barnes, C.M. and Guanara, C.L., (2017) Sleepy punishers are harsh punishers: Daylight saving time and legal sentences. Psychological Science, 28(2), pp.242-247.
Guadagni, V., Burles, F., Ferrara, M. and Iaria, G., (2014) The effects of sleep deprivation on emotional empathy. Journal of sleep research, 23(6), pp.657-663.
Van Dongen, H.P., Maislin, G., Mullington, J.M. and Dinges, D.F., (2003) The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: dose-response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation. Sleep, 26(2), pp.117-126.