Developing the right Head of Department skills is essential when moving from classroom teaching into departmental leadership. Suddenly, you’re no longer responsible only for your own classroom. You are expected to lead a team, manage curriculum, respond to school leadership, deal with difficult situations and ultimately contribute to better outcomes for students.
The challenge is that being an excellent classroom teacher doesn’t automatically make you an excellent Head of Department. The role requires a different set of leadership and management skills, and developing these Head of Department skills takes time and deliberate practice.
Successful Heads of Department need to communicate effectively, organise their workload, lead teachers, analyse student data, manage change and build strong professional relationships. These skills can be developed, but they require deliberate attention.
After working as a Head of Department, I’ve found that seven Head of Department skills are particularly important.
1. Communication Skills: Essential Head of Department Skills
Effective communication is essential for any leader, but it becomes particularly important when you’re responsible for an entire department.
As an HOD, you’ll communicate with teachers, students, parents, school administrators and other members of the school community. Each group may require a slightly different approach.
Good communication isn’t simply about being able to write a clear email. It’s also about making sure people actually receive and understand the information you are giving them.
I learned this lesson fairly quickly because many teachers don’t regularly read their emails.
One solution I used was a weekly learning-area update. I printed it and placed a copy on each teacher’s desk. Another approach was having a television in the department office displaying important information and reminders on a continuous loop.
The lesson is simple:
Don’t assume that email and meetings are enough.
Good HODs think creatively about how information is communicated and make important information difficult to miss.
2. Organisation and Time Management for Heads of Department
An HOD has a lot of moving parts to manage. You may be responsible for curriculum development, staff management, assessment, student results, resources, meetings, budgets and requests from school administration.
Without good organisational skills, it is very easy to become overwhelmed.
One of my strongest recommendations is to get control of your email.
Aim for inbox zero.
Every time you leave an email sitting in your inbox, you potentially create another task for yourself: you’ll have to find it again, reread it and remember what you intended to do.
Deal with emails when you can and then archive or delete them. It can save an enormous amount of time.
I also recommend developing a reputation for being exceptionally organised.
In my experience, tasks from associate principals, administrative staff and finance offices often came with a deadline of seven to ten days. Whenever possible, I tried to complete straightforward tasks within an hour of receiving them.
This had an unexpected benefit.
People began to regard me as someone who could be relied upon to get things done. That reputation became valuable when I needed assistance, resources or flexibility from the school executive.
Your reputation for reliability is an important leadership asset.
3. Leadership Skills for Heads of Department
Leadership skills are obviously one of the most important skills for a Head of Department.
You need to motivate people, delegate effectively, establish expectations and create an environment in which teachers can do their best work.
But I wouldn’t become too obsessed with leadership theory.
In my experience, effective leaders tend to have two fundamental qualities:
They are competent at their job and they treat people with respect.
The second is often more difficult than it sounds.
As an HOD, you will probably work with people whose personalities are very different from your own. Some will be enthusiastic and ambitious. Others may be resistant to change. Some will require considerable support, while others will want to be given complete autonomy.
Your challenge is to understand those differences and adapt your leadership accordingly.
If developing relationships with members of your team is something you find difficult, it is worth deliberately working on your emotional intelligence.
I found Emotional Intelligence 2.0 useful because it provides practical strategies for improving your ability to understand yourself and interact effectively with others.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase a recommended book through one of my links, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. I only recommend resources that I have personally used and believe are worthwhile.
4. Curriculum Development for Heads of Department
Curriculum development is one of the core responsibilities of many Heads of Department.
You need to understand your subject area, keep up with changes to curriculum requirements and ensure that courses meet the needs of your students.
But you don’t necessarily need to do all of the curriculum development yourself.
One of the advantages of knowing your staff well is that you’ll discover who your aspiring teachers and curriculum enthusiasts are.
Give these teachers opportunities to take responsibility for designing courses, developing units and leading curriculum projects.
There are several benefits.
The teacher develops their own professional skills, gains valuable experience and strengthens their professional portfolio. At the same time, you distribute the workload across the department.
Your role is to provide direction and make sure the resulting curriculum meets the relevant requirements.
Effective delegation isn’t about avoiding responsibility. It’s about developing the capacity of your whole department.
5. Data Analysis and Decision Making for Heads of Department
Improving student outcomes requires more than good intentions. Heads of Department need to be able to use data to identify problems, evaluate performance and make informed decisions.
Most education systems provide schools with considerable amounts of data.
This information can be useful, but system-level data doesn’t always provide the detail you need at department level.
This is where successful HODs can distinguish themselves.
Learn to produce and analyse your own relevant student data.
What do you actually need to know about your students?
Perhaps you need to know:
- Which curriculum areas are causing students the greatest difficulty?
- Which assessment questions produce the weakest results?
- Which year groups are underperforming?
- Are particular groups of students struggling?
- Is a change in teaching methodology producing better results?
These questions can provide excellent topics for faculty meetings.
Don’t assume you need to become a data expert on your own. Find people who are good at it and learn from them.
I was fortunate to be part of a network of HODs who taught the same subject. We met once a term to discuss issues such as curriculum, assessment and student data.
Find your professional network. You’ll be surprised how much expertise exists within it.
6. Flexibility and Adaptability for Heads of Department
Education is constantly changing.
Curriculum requirements change. School priorities change. Technology changes. Leadership changes. Student needs change.
As an HOD, you therefore need to be able to adapt without losing sight of your department’s core purpose.
Flexibility doesn’t mean abandoning your principles every time something changes.
It means being willing to consider new approaches and recognising when the old way of doing something is no longer working.
I also recommend paying attention to the strategic documents produced by your education system or organisation.
You may not be particularly interested in every initiative mentioned in them, but they can provide valuable clues about where education is heading.
Look for the themes that appear repeatedly.
Are there increasing references to data? Technology? Literacy? Wellbeing? Curriculum reform? Accountability?
Understanding these trends can help you anticipate what your department will need in the future rather than simply reacting when change arrives.
7. Empathy and Relationship Building for Heads of Department
Finally, I believe empathy is one of the most important qualities an HOD can possess.
Leadership isn’t simply about getting people to complete tasks.
Your teachers have different personalities, experiences, ambitions and pressures. Students are equally diverse.
Empathy means trying to understand a situation from another person’s perspective before deciding how to respond.
That doesn’t mean lowering standards or avoiding difficult conversations.
Quite the opposite.
A good HOD can hold people accountable while still treating them with dignity and respect.
This becomes particularly important when dealing with an underperforming teacher, managing conflict or introducing unpopular changes.
People are much more likely to accept difficult decisions when they believe their leader understands and respects them.
What else does a successful HOD need?
Communication, organisation, leadership, curriculum development, data analysis, flexibility and empathy provide a strong foundation for effective HOD leadership.
But they’re not the only skills that matter.
Over time, I’ve also found that skills such as delegation, conflict resolution, strategic thinking, time management and the ability to develop other leaders become increasingly important.
Being an effective Head of Department requires much more than being a good classroom teacher. You need strong communication and organisational skills, the ability to lead and develop teachers, an understanding of curriculum and student data, and the flexibility and empathy to respond to changing circumstances.
The good news is that you don’t need to be an expert in all of these areas when you first become a Head of Department. Leadership skills develop with experience, reflection and deliberate practice.
The best Heads of Department I’ve worked with weren’t necessarily the people who started with every skill. They were the people who kept learning, listened to their colleagues and deliberately worked on the areas where they were weakest.
If you’re new to the role, don’t try to master everything at once. Choose one area that would make the biggest difference to your department and work on that first.
