Being a head of department is one of the most rewarding jobs in a school, but it can also be one of the most draining.

You have influence over the curriculum, the professional development of your team and outcomes for young people. Yet at the same time, you are caught in the middle, translating whole-school strategy into departmental action while also advocating for your team. You are expected to deliver results, but also look after staff wellbeing.

It is no surprise that many middle leaders feel pulled in too many directions and risk running themselves into the ground.

The challenge is not just about workload (though the number of hours is often punishing) but also energy. Leadership takes emotional, cognitive and physical effort. Done well, it sustains and inspires. Done poorly, it depletes and burns out even the most committed.

The good news is that there are practical strategies that middle leaders can use to protect themselves, while still driving improvement.

Trim the unnecessary

The first step in sustainable leadership is learning to stop doing things that do not matter.

Schools are busy places, full of traditions, routines and tasks that accumulate over time. As a head of department, you probably inherited dozens of practices that nobody has ever questioned. A central part of your role is to ask: does this still serve our purpose?

A simple audit can help. List the main tasks that your team undertakes in a term, such as assessments, data entry, displays, meetings and admin jobs. Then consider each one in turn against the following questions:

• Does this help us to improve teaching and learning?
• Does this contribute to staff or student wellbeing?
• Does this comply with a non-negotiable external requirement?

If the answer is “no” to all three, it may be time to let it go.

For example, if your team spends hours creating elaborate wall displays that are rarely used in lessons, ask whether that energy could be better spent planning curriculum or refining resources.

Similarly, if you have meetings that are routinely filled with updates that could be shared in an email, consider changing the format.

Trimming is not about lowering expectations. It is about ensuring that the work you and your team do is focused on what makes the greatest difference. The best leaders are ruthless in prioritising. That means resisting the temptation to polish everything to perfection and giving staff permission to do a good job without chasing unnecessary extras.

Protect your own energy

Leaders sometimes forget that they are not inexhaustible. If you burn out, your department suffers. Protecting your own energy is not selfish. It is part of your responsibility to the team.

One useful approach is to identify the times of day or week when you are at your most productive and ring-fence them for high-value tasks. If you think best in the morning, protect that time for curriculum planning or data analysis, rather than frittering it away on emails. Schedule low-energy activities for the end of the day.

It is also important to create boundaries. If you answer emails at midnight, you set a culture where others feel they must do the same. By modelling healthy habits, such as leaving on time when you can, taking breaks and keeping weekends sacred where possible, you give permission for your team to do likewise.

Build distributed leadership

One of the greatest mistakes middle leaders make is trying to do everything themselves.

Sometimes this comes from fear of burdening others, sometimes from the belief that the only way to guarantee quality is to take it all on personally. But the result is exhaustion and disempowered colleagues.

Distributed leadership does not mean simply delegating tasks. It means involving colleagues meaningfully in decisions and giving them ownership of areas of work. For example, a curriculum can be divided into strands, with different teachers leading development in each. Assessment approaches can be trialled and refined by volunteers. A new scheme of work can be piloted by one class before being rolled out across a whole year group.

The benefits of distributed leadership are twofold. First, the workload is shared. Second, staff develop their expertise and feel valued. Over time you build a culture where everyone sees themselves as leaders of learning.

The key to this working well is clarity. When you ask someone to lead on something, be explicit about the scope of their responsibility, the support available and how success will be judged.

Check in regularly, but avoid micromanaging. Distributed leadership only works when trust is at the core.

Project positive energy

A department has a collective energy and morale that either drives improvement or grinds it to a halt. As head of department, you are the conductor of that energy.

This does not mean you must be relentlessly positive - teams can spot false cheer a mile away - but it does mean being intentional about how you communicate.

When you talk about challenges, frame them as solvable problems rather than insurmountable obstacles. Celebrate small wins publicly and regularly, whether that is a successful lesson observation, a student who made unexpected progress or a resource that saved time.

It’s also important to protect the team from unnecessary external noise. If a whole-school initiative feels confusing or contradictory, translate it into clear, actionable steps for your department. If data drops seem relentless, help staff to focus on the story behind the numbers rather than the numbers themselves.

Most importantly, listen. The most energising departments are those where staff feel heard. Make time in meetings for colleagues to share concerns and ideas, and follow up on what is raised. Nothing drains energy faster than feeling ignored.

Driving improvement without burning out

Driving improvement without overloading yourself or your team ultimately comes down to a relentless focus on your core purpose: improving teaching and learning.

Every initiative, every task, every meeting should be tested against that purpose. If it improves classroom practice, it is worth doing. If it does not, ask whether it can be dropped or streamlined.

Improvement does not always mean big new projects. Often it comes from refining what you already do. For example:

• Instead of launching a brand-new assessment system, spend time ensuring that the existing one is used consistently.
• Rather than designing new schemes of work, polish the current ones with tweaks based on student feedback.
• Focus CPD on a small number of agreed priorities and revisit them often rather than chasing the latest trend.
• Sustainable improvement is steady, incremental and embedded. It does not leave staff gasping for air.

Leadership in schools will always be demanding. There will always be too much to do and not enough time. But it is possible to lead without burning out and to create a department that is both high-performing and humane.

Mark Enser is co-author of the forthcoming book How Do They Do It? What can we learn from amazing schools, leaders and teachers?

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