You’re not sure whether to apply for the next role yet
Being able to do the job and wanting it are different questions. This is the second one, and nobody else can answer it for you.
A post has come up, or will, and you have not decided. This is not the question of whether you could do it. It is whether you want the work the role actually contains, whether this is the right place and the right year, and what it would take from the rest of your life and from the job you are doing now. Leaders postpone this decision for years by treating it as a readiness question, because readiness has a to-do list attached and this does not. Deciding not to apply, for reasons you can state, is a complete answer.
Presenting symptoms
- You have looked at the advertisement several times and have not started an application.
- You can list the reasons to apply and they are all about what the role would say about you.
- You have been talking about the next step for two years and something has always made this the wrong year.
Possible causes
- What appeals may be the standing the role carries rather than the work it contains.
- It may be the right role and the wrong year for commitments outside work that are real and time-limited.
- You may be part way through something you would be leaving for someone else to finish.
- You may not want it at all, and may believe you ought to.
The title may be pulling more strongly than the work itself.
Your most useful next step: Write out what the role would actually involve on an ordinary week, in detail, from the job description and from people doing it. Then ask whether you would want that week if nobody knew you had the job. A yes is a good reason to apply. A no is worth knowing now rather than in eighteen months.
Lead behaviours
The role is right and the timing is wrong for the rest of your life.
Your most useful next step: Name the commitment precisely, and distinguish a defined period from a continuing responsibility that would need to be actively accommodated. A general sense that life is busy is difficult to evaluate; a named commitment can be considered properly, and some named commitments are permanent and still compatible with the role if the accommodation is planned. Deciding that this is not the year is a legitimate leadership decision and does not need to be justified to anybody, including yourself.
Lead behaviours
You would be leaving something half-finished.
Your most useful next step: Write down what would be unfinished and who would carry it, then be honest about whether the work needs you or whether you want it to need you. Some things genuinely should be seen through. Others are how leaders talk themselves out of moving for a decade.
Lead behaviours
You do not actually want it, and you think you ought to.
Your most useful next step: Work out whose expectation this is, and whether you have ever examined it. Moving up is one way of increasing what you contribute and it is not the only one, and a school leader who stays because the work is the work they want to do is not someone who failed to progress.
Lead behaviours
Core behaviours
The book describes the courage to confront a reality you would rather not, and insists this is a foundation for progress rather than pessimism. The uncomfortable reality here is your own motive. Wanting the standing that comes with a post is ordinary and human, and it is a poor basis for spending five years doing the work.
The book is explicit that humility does not mean a lack of ambition, and that the most humble leaders hold the highest aspirations for their schools rather than for themselves. That formulation is the test this record applies: whether the aspiration is for what the role would let you do, or for what it would make you. The book also describes leaders who build capacity rather than empires.
The book defines this as the discipline of choosing where your time and attention go, including the courage to say no to good ideas that do not align with your purpose. A promotion is the largest such decision a leader makes, and the book’s framing is the useful one: not whether the opportunity is good, but whether it is the thing that matters most to you now.
The book frames this as dropping the guilt, saying no and treating your own judgement as trustworthy, with the observation that leaders struggle with it because their identity is tied to service and care can curdle into guilt. The book applies this mainly to workload; here the same principle supports an honest decision that this is not the year. It is the behaviour that makes ‘not this year’ a decision rather than a failure of nerve.
The book describes the capacity to foresee the second and third-order effects of a decision, and is clear that this is not about eliminating risk but about weighing short-term gain against long-term impact. Applied here, the ripples are what you would be leaving unfinished, who would carry it, and what the role would displace at home as well as at work.
Secondary behaviours
Use this where the answer is not this year. The book’s frame is the willingness to commit to things that will not bear fruit for a long time, and its warning is against chasing the short-term win. A post that appears this term is not the last post that will ever appear.
Use this to get outside your own head. Ask someone who took the step what they wish they had known, and ask someone who was offered it and declined what they were weighing. The second conversation is the unusual one and it is frequently the more useful, because it is the only place you will hear the case for not going.
A useful first action
Write out what the role would actually involve on an ordinary week, not what it would mean. Then read it back and ask whether you would want that week if nobody knew you had the job.
Suggested approach
- Describe the work the role actually contains, in detail, rather than the position it represents.
- Ask yourself whether you would want that week if nobody knew about it.
- Name what it would take from the rest of your life, and whether that is a definite period or an indefinite one.
- Work out what you would be leaving unfinished and who would carry it, and be honest about whether the work needs you.
- Talk to someone who took the step and someone who chose not to.
- Decide, and say the reason out loud. Not this year, because of X, is a finished decision. So is yes.