Leadership+: Dr Karen Edge – Leadership for capacity and wellbeing
Watch Karen’s Leadership+ summary video
Dr Karen Edge has worked as an educator, researcher and advisor globally for over twenty-five years. Karen’s work demonstrates an unwavering commitment to promoting equality and justice and drawing on local and global evidence to drive change.
Karen is currently an academic at UCL Institute of Education having previously served as UCL’s Pro-Vice Provost (International) from 2016-19. Karen previously worked at the University California Santa Barbara, University of Toronto and Western University and held visiting academic posts in Canada, Chile, China and Malaysia. In 2022, Karen became a Salzburg Global Fellow.
Karen has led collaborative research projects in over thirty countries exploring leadership, teacher motivation, retention, generational theory and system-level design and change. A sought-after keynote speaker, Karen is widely recognised for her ability to fuse theory, practice and humour with memorable take-home messages and evidence-driven tools.
Karen delivered the session live on 4th December 2024. She focused on what the research tells us about the importance of kindness and respect at work, the impact of incivility, and what is required for us not just to avoid exhaustion and burnout, both individually and organisationally, but to truly flourish in the workplace. If you were unable to attend the webinar and would like to refer to the slide presentation to which Karen refers in the film, please contact edspll@educationscotland.gov.scot using ‘Karen Edge slides’ in the subject line.
‘Dear colleagues,
Thank you for joining our Leadership+ session! It was one of the highlights of my year. Imagine if we were able to actually chat! It may have been the highlight of my decade. My policy to always agree to collaboration with Education Scotland and colleagues across the system, never lets me down. I leave inspired, hopeful and thankful.
I have attached a few resources below that may be of interest. I may have missed a few but these are some quick access ones.
Please feel free to reach out and I hope everyone has had/has a good December break and start to 2025.’
You can use the short video to open a dialogue with a small group of colleagues about wellbeing at work. This should connect to work already ongoing, or planned, about capacity and wellbeing at work; be clear on your purpose in sharing the video. What do you want to achieve by showing it and how will you agree actions, for example?
Before sharing this video with others as part of their professional learning, watch it yourself to ensure you know the key messages. You might also want wish to familiarise yourself with some of the additional resources listed below and perhaps pick out one or two that are useful to signpost.
It is important to consider how best to ensure a safe space for sharing and reflecting on the issues Karen covers in the video. You should agree ways of working with the group beforehand so everyone knows the behaviours that are expected, e.g., attentive listening, respectful comments, inclusive practice and language. These ‘ground rules’ should be generated by the group and recorded where they can be seen and referred to if needed.
It will be important to be able to signpost sources of local and national support for anyone who may be experiencing burnout or who recognises it in others. These could be helpline numbers, national organisation’s websites or local authority sources.
You could use a few of the following prompts to facilitate professional dialogue in pairs or small groups, or perhaps private reflections and note making where the questions feel more personal.
- What most resonated with you from the film? Why?
- What might it mean for you and your practice?
- What is /isn’t within your control at work? How might being more aware of this influence your interactions?
- What does respect look like in your setting?
- What conditions exist in your setting that support kindness, calm and joy?
- Is there more we could do to strengthen those conditions?
- Are we flourishing? If yes, what is supporting that? If not, what can we do differently?
- Do we thank each other enough?
- Do we know where to go if we need help or recognise that one of our colleagues may need help?
Encourage the group to identify a small number of manageable, collective actions that will contribute to wellbeing at work. You might ask the group to note down an individual action that they will commit to, that you can revisit at a later date.
The following links were kindly provided by Karen to support her session.
Journal article preprint on burnout - Is it Just Me? Karen Edge and Sharon Kruse, 2023 (PDF)
Book- Mindful Educational Leadership, Sharon Kruse, Routledge 2023
Journal article - A review of the empirical generations at work research (what the research says about how different generations approach work and implications for leaders), Karen Edge 2013
Journal article - Generation X leaders from London, New York and Toronto: Conceptions of social identity and the influence of city-based context (a three city reflection on how race and in-group membership can influence leadership, and how we can support leadership development as a result), Karen Edge et al, 2017
Article - Generation X Leaders as agents of care (PDF) (what do school leaders and teachers want and need from their schools; a big focus on work-life balance), Karen Edge et al, 2016
News article - Is teacher burnout contagious? Kenneth Frank, 2017
News article - By now, burnout is a given, Lucy McBride The Atlantic, 2021
And here are some additional resources, that might be of interest, highlighted by Karen, from the pandemic era but that still hold value today.
Book and short film - The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, Charlie Mackesy, 2019 (BBC video)
Website - The Energy Project (see Trending Posts at foo rog home page)
Article - Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time, Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy, 2007
Media article: You’re not Listening. Here’s Why (closeness communication bias), Kate Murphy, 2020