How many miles will it take to see the sun (Leon Russell)

Leadership examples abound in the FIFA Women's World Cup (to which I am currently addicted as the Strine/Nu Zild time frames are spot on for nightly peak viewing).

I'm loving watching the way coaches interact with players and how players interact with each other - clear leaders emerge, or don't.

Seems to me that on some teams there are some natural leaders, who the women follow. 

In one game I watched a young goalkeeper explaining to her much older, more experienced team mates, some tactical points. And they listened!

Teams without natural leaders don't tend to stick around for long in these kinds of competitions.

Mission: Impossible 7

Yesterday, my wife and I went to see the latest Mission: Impossible movie (it's great - go see it) and I have been wondering today, about Ethan Hunt's management style.

He seems to have mellowed with age. Zero anger, more thoughtful quiet acceptance in this one. In a few scenes he even avoids providing exposition and listens to his team articulate what to do next and he nods agreement. Loved that.

He is very people oriented in this film - he trusts his team! When Benji sends him up a mountain to ultimately catch a train (great excuse for a terrific Tom Cruise stunt), Ethan asks Benji what he should do next and basically Benji has a mini meltdown and says he's stressed!

Ethan kind of shrugs and rather than berate his co-worker, get angry, or complain about his stress levels, purposefully heads up to the top of the cliff to do his stunt. Loved that too.

His transformational leadership style is very inspiring.

Pack yer bags

Okay - let's have some fun before we get back to school and leave the hols behind.

Love this advert for Yorkshire Tea - Pack yer bags for your next getaway.

Thanks to James for the heads-up - as he says - Welcome to the UK, where a ‘Let’s speak to young people about taking teabags on their summer holiday to Ibiza is a completely normal brief’

It will be L7 and I'd never get to heaven if I filled my head with glue (Macca)

Photo by Nadiia Ploshchenko 🇺🇦 on Unsplash

When you’re trying to make it perfect, trying to make it exactly what you want it to be, then it’s time to drop it into the pool - Joan Baez.

Joan was talking about drawing, but she might as well be talking about management. Perfect is tough to pursue, although some micro managers might want to argue with her.

Joan goes beyond that idea though and indicates that it's not even something worthy of pursuit, that you shouldn't even desire perfection.

Some of my favourite moments in songs are when there's a mistake - the mic cuts out or an intro is fluffed (Paul McCartney has made this an artform - was that the intro? I should have been in).

When you manage or lead, it is a given that you'll make (very public) mistakes.

So, lean into them!

You can see tomorrow today (House of Love)

Photo by Muzammil Soorma on Unsplash

End of term 2 in the southern hemisphere, so we're at the halfway point of the school year. Kind of.

For senior NCEA students, it's over halfway with only a term and a bit before exams.

For the rest of the school, and the staff, it's two terms down, two to go.

A good time to re-examine goals made at the start of the year, or even come up with new ones (here's a good set of templates if you're in that position).

A quick look at mine from February:

The first one is completed. 

The second one is on track, although we'll need a new couple of Learning Centre goals for Term 3, as we've made excellent progress on two of them.

My third is also on track - it's part of my teacher enquiry and pretty much done (a year early). I need to send the results out to others and get some feedback.

So, solid A rating on the goals up to this point.

That's life. That's what all the people say. You're riding high in April, shot down in May (Frank Sinatra)

Photo by Chris de Tempe on Unsplash

That last week of term at school was a struggle. In that, at times during the week I had to struggle to maintain my relentless positivity.

I'm not going to detail what caused that feeling - time to move onwards, because I can't change anything about last week.

At the time though, remembering the monkeys on the back adage helped (the basic idea is not to take on other people's monkeys), so did a sense of perspective - sayings that I trot out to other people:

You've got to take the crunchy with the smooth.

Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you.

Life is a roller coaster.

Two weeks' study break helps as well.

See you on the other side.