Personal Effectiveness and Wellbeing

Mark Solomons, CEO of School Wellbeing Accelerator - an acclaimed wellbeing expert with over 12 years’ experience developing leadership and culture in schools and creator of Welbee a highly effective online evaluation and staff wellbeing improvement tool, winner of the ERA 2022 Wellbeing Award and GESS Awards 2022 ‘Judges’ Commendation’ – discusses how to improve wellbeing through improving personal effectiveness

Personal effectiveness is an integral part of our personal wellbeing. We can all recognise the feeling of satisfaction for a job well done, and conversely have likely experienced the opposite – the anxiety and stress that comes with unfinished tasks and a seemingly endless ‘to do’ list. Sustainable work pressure can be positive and beneficial, however when this turns to ongoing stress, it becomes negative. It’s important to recognise this and improving your effectiveness is one way to restore balance. 

Whether you are a leader, teacher or support staff, working in schools typically comes with a heavy workload, and the majority of the education workforce is engaged in a daily routine that often passes the contractual work hours. If you let your workload dictate the hours worked, as many do, this will inevitably lead to an unsustainable work pattern, which can significantly impact your personal health and wellbeing.

In schools, there are high levels of accountability, with the need to meet targets, deadlines and deliver against the curriculum. There may be ‘unspoken’ expectations to take on additional responsibilities, as well as demands from students, parents or colleagues – those you naturally feel you do not want to let down. Or simply a personal need to be a perfectionist - to deliver everything, rather than accepting when things are good enough.

Despite the pressures or perceived pressures created by the never-ending workload, it is important to keep things in perspective. The more stressed and anxious we are about everything that we perceive as ‘having to be done’, the less likely we are to achieve it.

So how can we break poor work habits? What changes are needed so we make better choices about working hours?