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It’s natural to want to avoid making mistakes in your professional life. The reality, though, is that we all make mistakes at some point.

What’s important is not to seek perfection but to reflect on what went wrong and learn from it - no doubt something many teachers tell their pupils after they underperform in a test or hand in a poor piece of homework.

For those in leadership positions - or aspiring to them - this is all just as true.

As such, we asked seven brave leaders in various roles to reflect on some of their mistakes and what they learned from them - perhaps helping you to avoid these mistakes in your career and to understand how to learn from those you do make.

1. Robert Bell, headteacher of Consilium Evolve

My mistake:

When I was a newly qualified PE teacher working in a mainstream secondary school, a student came into my lesson wearing the wrong-coloured shorts for the second time.

Following the school’s uniform policy, I issued him with a breaktime detention, which he attended that day.

Later that day was parents’ evening. The student arrived with his mother, who I could see looked worse for wear. I wouldn’t like to speculate on the details, but I imagine the student was having to look after himself a lot.

Immediately, I realised I had made a mistake in issuing him with the detention. For him, getting into school that day - let alone finding a pair of clean shorts that were the right colour - might have been really difficult.

I repaired the relationship with the student, made it clear I was pleased he was coming to school and asked if he needed any support. I also alerted the appropriate safeguarding staff.

What I learned:

It was a pivotal moment for me because it changed how I approach teaching. Now I follow the statement: “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.”

The alternative provision I run now doesn’t have a behaviour policy but a communication policy. It’s all about asking: what is a student’s behaviour telling us?

My mistake, all those years ago, has shaped the way I manage the school.

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2. Lee Mason-Ellis, CEO of The Pioneer Academy

My mistake:

Across our all-primary trust, we used a standardised curriculum that reduced workload and enabled our teachers to share great ideas. But nationally - this was around 2018 - this was looked upon negatively. People argued that it took away schools’ uniqueness, which I disagreed with.

However, around this time, we wanted to grow as a trust and we found lots of potential schools were put off by our standardised curriculum, so we changed our model to allow schools to have greater freedoms.

Within an academic year, we noticed our schools’ models were not as thorough as they had been before, and schools that we expected to receive “outstanding” Ofsted judgements didn’t. I realised I had made a mistake.

What I learned:

We workshopped with headteachers, deputies and curriculum leads, and unanimously decided to return to a standardised model, with some updated schemes - for example, a choice of two phonics programmes.

The experience made me realise that it’s integral to stick to what you believe. The decision we had made wasn’t based on what was best for our children and that must be our priority.

We knew what was right - we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. We just had to keep doing what we knew worked.

3. Lynsey Holzer, CEO of The Active Learning Trust

My mistake:

I appointed someone to our senior team who, within six weeks in the role, had caused a lot of damage. It was clear I had made the wrong decision in appointing them, and I had to act fast to remove them.

I was responsible for what happened. But undoing it was difficult because, in removing the person, I was admitting I had been wrong - I was holding my hands up. No leader wants to have to do that.

What I learned:

The process made me focus more on our trust values, which are about acting with humility and kindness. Now, at every step of the way - in hiring, appraisals - we hold tight to our values.

If I had done that with this appointment, I never would have hired this person - clearly, their values did not align with ours.

4. Carina Perston, head of English at Oxford Spires Academy

My mistake:

English is a subject that can lead to a lot of marking time. So when I moved into a middle leadership role in a new school, I sought to bring with me a new system for marking and student feedback to save teachers’ time.

However, I didn’t take long enough to observe how the department already worked, nor did I ask colleagues what they thought about the current system before suggesting changes. As such, when I introduced the changes, I could tell they were hesitant.

What I learned:

Once I received colleagues’ feedback, my team and I instead trialled a new method. Ultimately, we designed a more efficient marking system that provided quality feedback while reducing workload.

It made me reflect on my communication skills, which I improved by attending a leadership course shortly afterwards.

And it made me realise that, as a middle leader, if you want to make a change, you need to bring people along with you, not just expect them to follow.

5. Stuart Mayle, acting headteacher of Brambles Primary Academy

My mistake:

When I was a deputy headteacher, I led a team that worked on addressing bad habits and incorrect schema that children had picked up in maths lessons.

The method was based on pedagogical research. After the children worked on problem-solving, we would talk through the correct answer and discuss why some of them got it wrong.

Within a couple of weeks, we realised that in verbalising incorrect methods, we were confusing some of the children.

Some were continuing with the wrong technique because they’d spoken about it, shared it and reinforced the error. While others, who hadn’t been incorrect the first time, picked up on the wrong habits shared by their peers.

So the staff came together to reassess our method.

What I learned:

There is a lot of research that shows the benefits of allowing children to elaborate on their errors. But I realised that only works when they are already comfortable with the correct method.

Since this experience, I have realised the importance of more thorough engagement with any research we’re going to use to inform pedagogy - and making sure all staff do the same - so that we all understand the nuances of it.

The use of research in our practice has been refined as a result of this experience.

6. Rob Ford, CEO and director of Heritage International School, Moldova

My mistake:

Over a decade ago, I was assistant head at a school in Wiltshire. As part of an exchange programme, I led a trip of 50 students to Philadelphia in the US. It was February and very cold.

We spent the day doing all the touristy things, and then I suddenly had the idea we should go to South Philly to try the famous Philly cheese steak sandwich.

It was a change of itinerary and I didn’t do a proper risk assessment. Our coach driver took us there and we were walking down a very narrow street, where there were lots of cars and bad ice on the pavements. We were also getting unwarranted attention from locals.

Nobody got hurt but it became clear that I had put our school in a bad position. When we got back I apologised to my colleagues for a well-intentioned but poor decision.

What I learned:

I didn’t have all the knowledge to make an informed decision - so I shouldn’t have made it.

The experience in Philadelphia taught me not to make decisions based on enthusiasm alone, and not to pull rank but to approach decision-making collectively.

Since then, I have authorised hundreds of school visits. Because of what happened, I demand rigid itineraries and a more thorough involvement of school leadership.

7. Nicola Coe, director of maths at Inspiration Trust

My mistake:

When I first started as a maths teacher more than 30 years ago, if a teacher was absent from work, other teachers covered for them.

One afternoon I was asked to cover a GCSE physics lesson for an absent colleague; maths and physics are closely related and it was a relatively straightforward lesson on graphs and averages so all seemed fine and the lesson seemed to go well.

When the teacher returned, though, he told me that what I had taught them was wrong. I was very upset to hear this. It turned out that we teach some mathematical concepts very differently; in maths, we call values that don’t fit the trend outliers, and we count them when calculating the mean - this is what I had taught the students. In science, these values that don’t fit the trend are called anomalies and are discounted when calculating the mean.

The teacher and I worked through the topic with the class together and explained the different approaches; it turned into a good learning opportunity for all.

What I learned:

It made me reflect on my practice. I wouldn’t have covered an English lesson without checking the details so why did I assume it was any different for physics? After that, I always checked through the lesson with a subject specialist.

It also made me think about the need for more coherence in teaching. I now lead programmes for the Maths Hubs and for Stem Learning on training science and maths teachers together, to develop teachers’ understanding and enable students to become rounded learners.

The training is available nationwide and is currently offered by a large number of Maths Hubs nationally - my expertise has developed a great deal since that initial mistake.

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