This is the last part of a blog series focusing on the skills required for headship in today's changing world. Here are links to part one: The Competent Leader, part two: The Good Communicator, part three: Being the Decider, and part four: The Meeting Culture.

This summer I have written on a variety of issues associated with good headship in schools, particularly but not exclusively independent schools. Part of this project stems from the urging from friends that twenty-four years of heading a school deserve some reflection, but perhaps a larger part comes from discussions with current heads of school and others in the independent school world who are in the thick of school leadership and its many challenges. With roughly a thousand headships turning over in the next five years, it seems essential to develop a body of thought on school leadership that can speak to the practical issues in this significant generational transition.