A Message From The Rector

By Richard Hall | Posted: Friday June 16, 2017

The Quiet Leader

Last week I reflected on the 500 senior school reports I read and commented on.  I wondered what was the most common adjective used to describe our boys? While bright, happy, forgetful, disorganised (you can see where I'm going here!), are used the most common adjective in my unscientific poll was quiet.

Think on that for a moment, the word most commonly used across the senior reports this term, was quiet.Now many of you probably, in the context of your home, think your son is anything BUT quiet. And you would be right. But here in our context that is what we see.

Our goal therefore is to not try to change these boys, but to instill them with enough confidence to be 'noisy' when the time is right.

I also then looked for a trait that we want to grow in our boys and that is leadership - and I was wondering if there is such a thing as a quiet leader?

I am pleased to report that I believe there is and I found an article online; which helps to back that idea up. This article looks at how a student can still be a leader without being loud. While set in an American context I believe the story rings true for many of our boys. (http://www.quietrev.com/quiet_diaries/learning-to-be-quiet-leader/)

The good news is you can be quiet leader.