Brian Cooklin: Mentoring School Heads for Optimal Performance

There is an intangible element to educational leadership that resists easy metrics, something sensed rather than quantified. It shows up in the greeting at the front door, the tone in the corridors, the way staff speak about one another, and the confidence parents carry into a difficult conversation. These subtle signals reveal a lot about a school and how it’s being led.

For Brian Cooklin, a former Executive Director at Nord Anglia Education who has held senior roles across Asia, Europe, and Latin America, strong school leadership is about having a working understanding of every part of the school, from learning and wellbeing to finance, operations, and community trust.

“The various responsibilities are not treated equally and given the same commitment and understanding,” he says. When that imbalance persists, even capable heads can miss the conditions that sustain performance. Cooklin, who now mentors school leaders, believes that optimal performance is the result of leaders who understand the full machine of school life, build human trust through visible presence, and develop decision-making habits that hold up under pressure.

Cooklin’s mentoring begins by surfacing what leaders do not see, or what they have minimized for too long. In state and government systems, for example, that might be the recurring gap in compliance and political awareness. Leaders can be deeply committed to learning outcomes and student support while underestimating “the compliance agenda” and the political context that shapes what is possible. “Do you have the radar to pick up what’s going to happen next? How the various factors will coalesce, how will the different political leaders respond to what’s happening in your school?”

In international and private schools, the blind spot shifts. Heads frequently rise through teaching and curriculum pathways, then inherit responsibilities that resemble executive management. Cooklin has seen leaders who focus intensely on pedagogy while overlooking the business engine that funds quality. Budgeting, capital investment, staffing plans, and growth targets still exist, even when the head’s identity is rooted in education. “Most companies, most owners, most organizations expect business targets to be met,” he says. A leader who cannot connect educational ambition to financial realities will struggle to sustain improvement.

The underlying issue cuts across both public and private systems and it comes down to incomplete operational literacy. In international schools, that gap often reflects limited exposure to functions such as admissions, marketing, IT, HR, finance, or facilities. In state settings, it is more likely to surface as distance from central services or an unquestioned reliance on legacy processes. The contexts differ, but the effect is the same. Each function shapes the student experience and the school’s reputation. “Every part of the operation feeds into the success of the school,” Cooklin says. Treat any piece as secondary and the school’s performance will eventually reflect it.

Impact is visible, not only documented

If blind spots are the hidden threat, false busyness is the visible one. Cooklin recalls supporting a head under pressure from parents and staff who complained they rarely saw him. While the leader was indeed busy behind the scenes—”answering emails, writing reports, and handling requests”—his absence from the daily life of the school was unmistakable. “Many students didn’t even know what he looked like,” adds Cooklin.

Real leadership impact is found in the atmosphere, and parents sense it almost immediately. He compares visiting a school to stepping into a potential home. “You walk in the door and you feel, I could live here or no, I couldn’t.” That reaction isn’t something out of a school’s control. It is shaped by leadership choices that determine how visible, responsive, and human the school feels on an ordinary day.

Visibility is a leadership practice that signals attention, availability, and respect. Cooklin’s own habit was to greet staff and students at the door every morning. A parent once told him that the small gesture had outsized value, explaining that seeing the welcoming face at the top of the staircase made his eight-year-old daughter’s day.

The same principle applies during crises. When a school is under strain, the question is whether people feel supported and steady. The leaders who matter are those who can reassure without minimizing, and who are present with students and staff, even when it’s tempting to disappear behind the scenes.

Turning a good school into a great one

Leadership presence has longer-term consequences. Even good schools can stagnate over time when the school’s sense of direction begins to blur. Cooklin often encounters schools that continue to be well regarded by parents, seeing stable enrollment numbers and delivering acceptable results, but quietly losing momentum. He describes these as “coasting schools,” places where performance has leveled off and expectations have settled into what feels comfortable rather than what is possible.

More often, it is the absence of deliberate challenge that causes schools to coast. The solution, Cooklin argues, is a shift in mindset and cadence that reintroduces purpose, reflection, and forward motion into everyday leadership. In practice, this shows up through three leadership habits he returns to again and again when mentoring school heads.

1. Open-mindedness. Cooklin describes this as agility in the face of a “tsunami” of change, from technology and social media to shifting policy pressures. Leaders who default to “this has worked and we’ll just repeat it” may preserve short-term stability, but they are unlikely to build the resilience required for what is coming.

2. Reflection. Cooklin treats reflection as a non-negotiable discipline rather than a luxury. He advises leaders to reserve 15 minutes at the end of the day to analyze what happened, what language landed well, what misfired, and what should be approached differently next time.

3. A coaching culture. Coaching shouldn’t be a perk for senior leaders but an operating system for the whole school. “Every single member of staff should know there is someone they can talk to who is not their line manager and not there to judge,” he says. When these safe spaces exist, morale rises and professional confidence follows.

Optimal performance is context specific

What makes Cooklin’s work so interesting is that optimal performance is defined in context. Even schools with nearly identical demographics and constraints will produce dramatically different outcomes. The difference boiled down to two things. “Leadership first, and secondly, recruitment.” Leadership provides focus and discipline. Recruitment ensures the right people are in the right roles at the right time.

But Cooklin pushes the definition further. He measures performance through added value. “What value have you added to the development of staff and children in your school?” It is a tougher question than test scores because it forces leaders to consider growth, inclusion, and wellbeing alongside achievement.

That broadened definition matters as schools confront rising mental health needs alongside the growing debate around AI, which Cooklin sees as having the potential to reshape operations, processes, and the teacher-learner relationship. Schools have a history of lagging behind major shifts, he warns, and that may be untenable now.

Through it all, Cooklin returns to the reality of the head’s workload. The best mentoring helps leaders carry that enormous responsibility with clarity, perspective, and an honest understanding of what truly drives a school forward.

Follow Brian Cooklin on LinkedIn or visit his website for more insights.