I’ve spent the weekend at an inaugural conference for heads of school, marketing, communications and admissions people, in Bangkok. I had to do something that every Head of School will recognise.
I had to say the same thing twice.
Not literally, of course. That would have been rude, dull, and a fairly efficient way of helping people catch up on their emails.
But the signal I want to communicate was the same over two talks.
On day one, I spoke to a room made up of marketing, admissions and communications people, alongside members of a neighbouring leadership conference. On day two, I spoke again to the marketing crowd.
Half the people in the room had heard me the day before.
I fretted a bit. “How do I come up with something entirely new?” In a 4am moment I realised the question needed to be more “How do you make the same signal feel fresh?”
As the school year up here hurtles towards its final stretch, Heads and senior leaders are preparing to close one chapter while already peeking, perhaps slightly wearily, at the next one. There will be assemblies, gatherings, farewell speeches, staff meetings, parent messages, board updates and welcome-back notes waiting in the wings.
And beneath all of them sits this same danger. You know what you want to say, and your community may even need to hear it more than once. But repeated badly, what you hoped was simple clarity becomes noise.
Repeated well, your signals become culture.
Speaker coach Oliver Aust describes three kinds of boss-speaker. The Rambler has passion, but no path. The Robot has polish, but no pulse. The Raconteur has both structure and spark. Raconteurs don’t just talk; they transport everyone with them.
Most school leaders are not short of things to say. In fact, that might be the problem.
By June, you have a year’s worth of stories, frustrations, achievements, bruises, breakthroughs and almosts. You have strategic priorities to reinforce, staff to thank, parents to reassure, students to celebrate, and next year’s direction to seed.
Try to say all of it, and you ramble.
Over-polish it, and you become a robot.
But choose one clear signal, then wrap it in different stories for different moments, and you’ll have your community just where you want them. The end-of-year speech is not really a speech. Neither is the start-of-year address. Both are opportunities to tune the organisation.
**A great Head’s speech does not simply report on the year (“so thank you for everything you do…”). A great speech helps people join the dots they were too busy to notice while they drew them.**
I noticed this thing.
This is what it tells us all.
This is what we can make more of when we see each other again.
This is what we have to leave behind.
This is the kind of community we are becoming.
And let me show you your part in it.
None of this requires theatrical performance or natural gift of the gab. It does not require a TED Talk-like preparation, nor a stock photography twenty-slide metaphor involving mountains, bridges, boats or lighthouses, though we have all survived a few. I’ve actually subjected some of you to most of them, at some point in the last twenty years.
But a great end-of-year story does require a clear signal. One thing, said clearly. For staff, the signal might come through the story of a team that changed a routine and made learning better. For parents, it might come through a moment where the school’s values became visible in a child’s confidence. For students, it might come through a challenge: what will you do with all the opportunities you’ve started this year?
You can have the same signal but share different stories.
That is how repetition becomes momentum.
So, as you prepare to close the year, resist the urge to write the big speech first. Start smaller. Ask:
What is the one thing our community needs to understand, feel or do next?
What story proves it?
What do we need to stop saying because it adds fog?
What phrase could people repeat afterwards without needing the script?
What tone will help people trust us: warmth, challenge, gratitude, confidence, honesty?
Then write from there as a Raconteur. To help you, we’re running a quick online session in partnership with CEESA to help Heads and senior leaders do exactly this.
It is called Close the Year Well.
You will leave clearer about what you want to communicate and how to say it. We will look at practical strategies for framing stories, sharpening tone of voice, structuring a message, and keeping one clear signal fresh across different audiences.
You do not need to be a CEESA member to join.
Come along if you are preparing an end-of-year message, a start-of-year address, or simply want to stop sounding like every other school leader with a microphone and a packed agenda.