Maggie Farrar

Director of Empowering Leadership

Maggie has worked in London and Birmingham in senior leadership positions in Schools and Local Authorities. She was the Director for Leadership Development, Research and Succession Planning at the National College for School Leadership in England and interim Chief Executive.

She has been instrumental in the development of a school led self improving system in England and has led the design and development of leadership programmes that support the growth of system leadership and the development of cluster based approaches to school improvement.

She is also supporting the development of the National Academy of Educational Leadership in Wales and works with other jurisdictions internationally on the development of networked, self improving systems of schools.

More recently her work has focused on the ‘inner life’ of school leaders and how we can thrive and flourish in the complex world of school leadership. She is a trained mindfulness teacher with the Oxford University Mindfuness Centre. She is currently working with MAT CEOs, school leaders and their teams on the cultivation of greater ‘leadership presence’, as a way of reducing stress, anxiety and overwhelm and increasing leadership learning, effectiveness, wellbeing and resilience.

She is a Trustee of ‘The Story Museum’ in Oxford helping them achieve their mission of ‘transforming lives through the power of story.’

You can find out more about Maggie and access free leadership resources through her web site https://www.empoweringleadership.co.uk/

‍She was awarded the CBE for services to Education in 2014.

‍Overview of Specialist Areas

Collaborative school improvement: working in partnership to secure and sustain greater leadership impact

Leadership presence: cultivate our ability to remain fully present, balanced, calm and secure, wholly in touch with our values and core principles even in the midst of significant challenge

Compassionate and wholehearted leadership: the power of compassion as a ‘change agent in schools’ and as a ‘protective factor’ for leadership well being and resilience

Leadership renewal and sustainability: cultivating habits of mind and ways of work that renew and sustain our leadership for a lifetime


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