You applied for a leadership role and did not get it
The decision has been made and you still have a job to do on Monday. What you take from this is not settled yet.
You went for something and it did not come off. There are three separate pieces of work now and they get confused with each other: finding out what actually happened, deciding what it means for whether and when you go again, and continuing to lead well in the post you have, in front of people who knew you were applying. Feedback may be framed generally or courteously, which can make it difficult to use. None of this is a verdict on whether you will get there.
Presenting symptoms
- You have been told it was a strong field, and you are none the wiser.
- You have been avoiding the colleague who was appointed, or the colleagues who knew you had applied.
- You have either decided never to apply again or decided to apply for the next thing immediately, and the decision was made while the disappointment was still fresh.
Possible causes
- The feedback may have been framed generally or courteously rather than specifically, and you may not have asked the question that would get a usable answer.
- You may have been told something specific that you do not accept, which may mean it is wrong or may mean it is the thing to look at.
- The reason may have been something outside your control, such as the strength of the field, the timing, or the particular experience that school needed at that moment.
- The visible part of this may be hardest: leading a team who know what happened.
Nothing. You were told it was a strong field.
Your most useful next step: Go back and ask a question that can be answered. “Why did I not get it” invites a courteous answer; “what would you have needed to see to appoint me” and “what would you want to be different if I applied again” do not. Ask the person who chaired it, ask for a conversation rather than an email, and write down what they say before you argue with it.
Lead behaviours
You were told something specific and you do not accept it.
Your most useful next step: Test it rather than dismissing it. Ask two people who have seen you work whether they recognise it, and ask them not to reassure you. If nobody recognises it, it may be about how you came across rather than how you work, which is a different problem and a more tractable one. If they do recognise it, you have learned the most valuable thing available from this.
Lead behaviours
You know why, and it was not something you could have changed.
Your most useful next step: Separate the two lists deliberately: what was yours, and what was never in your gift. The strength of the field, the timing and the particular experience that school required belong on the second list, and those factors were not yours to control. Be careful about what goes there, because it is a comfortable list to overfill. Then decide when you will look again, rather than deciding whether you ever will.
Lead behaviours
The hardest part is facing your own team.
Your most useful next step: Say something brief and straightforward to the people who need to hear it, once, and then let it go. You do not owe anybody an account of your disappointment. How you carry this is being watched by people who will one day go for something themselves, and the useful thing you can show them is that it is survivable.
Lead behaviours
Core behaviours
The book’s claim is that the quality of your questions determines the quality of what you learn, and it warns against reaching for an answer too quickly. Feedback after an appointment is often general, and a general question invites a general answer. A question that names what you want to know produces something you can use, and it is the single highest-return action available in this scenario.
The book describes the discipline of confronting reality rather than sugarcoating it, and is explicit that this is not pessimism. Here the reality is what was actually missing, which is different both from the kind version you were given and from the harsh version you may have constructed. Neither is evidence, and finding out which is true is the work.
The book frames humility as being secure enough to hear something you did not want to hear, and is clear that it is neither meekness nor self-doubt. Feedback you do not accept is the hardest case and the most valuable one, because the instinct to dismiss it and the instinct to collapse under it are both ways of not examining it.
The book treats emotional regulation as a skill built on noticing, pausing and choosing a response that reflects your values rather than your feelings, and it names disappointment among the emotions leadership produces. This is not about suppressing it. It is about the fortnight afterwards, when the people around you are reading you closely and the decisions you make will be poor if the feeling is making them.
The book’s point is that a leader’s daily behaviour sets a standard more powerfully than anything they say. Colleagues who knew you applied are watching how a person handles not getting something, and some of them will face the same thing. What you model here is whether ambition is survivable in this school.
Secondary behaviours
Use this where the reason was outside your gift. The book’s core discrimination is between what a leader can influence and what they cannot, with the warning that dwelling on the second consumes capacity and produces helplessness. The book illustrates that distinction through policy and funding; here it applies to factors in an appointment that were never within the reader’s control. The discrimination itself is exactly what this reader needs.
Use this on the decision about going again. The book’s frame is commitment to things that will not bear fruit for months or years, and its warning is against the short-term fix. A decision taken while the disappointment is still driving it, in either direction, is a reaction rather than a plan.
A useful first action
Write down the question you actually want answered, and then ask it of the person who chaired the appointment. Not “why did I not get it”, which invites a kind answer, but “what would you have needed to see to appoint me”.
Suggested approach
- Do not make a lasting decision while the disappointment is still driving it. Give yourself enough time to separate the immediate reaction from what the outcome actually means.
- Ask a question that can be answered, of the person best placed to answer it, and ask for a conversation rather than an email.
- Write down what you were told before you argue with it, then test it against people who have seen you work.
- Separate what was yours from what was never in your gift, and stop working on the second list.
- Say something brief to the colleagues who need to hear it, once, and then carry on.
- Decide when you will look again and what, if anything, you want to be different by then.