Emotional Intelligence for Schools

I'm a headteacher of a school in Bradford of children with very complex social, emotional, and mental health needs. So as you can imagine, our continued professional development needs to be quite specific to those, to those needs. And one thing I considered was we needed to look at very closely at our own, that is the staff team's emotional intelligence, because clearly to be successful with children with complex needs The staff need to operate on such a level that they are acutely aware of not only their own needs, but the learners' needs, but their own. So I contacted Scott Watson initially to have a discussion with him about emotional intelligence, how that would fit our organisation, and Scott was extremely patient, I have to say, and very thoughtful in thinking through the specific needs of my staff team in terms of developing their emotional intelligence. And actually, it transpired that the training took place over a period of time. It wasn't just a one-off, one-day typical training event. In fact, it became quite a bit more intense than that. That's because Scott Watson was highly considerate of our needs, quite astute to gaps in understanding of emotional intelligence, and he understood the need to come back and pick up on the minutiae, really, of it. And that's indeed what Scott did, having identified what our next steps were. So the training took place, the initial training took place on a full day, and then he came back for a number of twilight sessions and that then was concluded with a further second full day. That was highly successful amongst the staff team and they were indeed quite satisfied with that. But it wasn't just about that, it's about Scott considered very carefully about, in fact, whether this needed to be developed even further over a longer period of time. And since that point, Scott's been a very staunch supporter of the school and highly, highly, you know, encouraging, if you like, towards me as headteacher. That to me typifies, if you like, or exemplifies what Scott's about. He's an extremely emotionally intelligent human being himself, and he understands the needs of, you know, being children with complex needs such as ours. That was an added bonus for me because I think it's quite quite difficult at times for people to understand our work, but Scott worked very hard to understand our work, given that much of his training takes place with professionals from businesses. So I think that's a bit about Scott in that he's very willing to, you know, expand his own learning, and I think that's a really positive aspect of Scott. In terms of me as headteacher, Scott's been very supportive and is somebody, you know, that I would highly, highly recommend for other headteachers, other schools, whether it be primary, whether it be special, or in fact mainstream secondary, because the issues that we touched upon in our training are relevant to any school in any phase, and Scott would indeed be happy to explore whatever the needs of the school are. I would highly recommend Scott to work with you and support your own developmental needs in your organisation.