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Keynote · September 2026Opening the IAPS Annual Conference for the heads who lead our schools.
In September 2026 I was the first keynote of the IAPS Annual Conference, speaking to a packed hall of prep school heads about leadership, influence and the young people who are easiest to miss.
Remind heads why they became teachers.
Heads carry everything: parents, staff, governors, results and the business of running a school. The brief from IAPS was to open their conference with something that reconnected them with why they came into teaching, and gave them practical tools to lead with more influence and less force.
So I built the session around three principles of leadership, a live scorecard every head completed on their phone, and a handbook to take back to school.
Three principles heads took home.
Anyone can see the behaviour. Leaders see the person.
I told the story of the head teacher who shouted at me for something I hadn't done, and how one conversation defined her leadership in my mind for years. Every child remembers how they were spoken to.
People don't follow titles. They follow people who show up for them.
Influence comes from empathy: staff who feel safe to come to you, parents who trust you, and pupils who know you've noticed them. It's the feelings you give people, not the title on the door.
Growth and comfort don't coexist.
Leaders can't take their schools somewhere they haven't been willing to go themselves. We worked through the success cycle: belief shapes potential, potential shapes habits, and habits shape results.
Find the Omars in your school.
What young person have you overlooked?
Before the conference, IAPS asked me for one thing: get heads to go back and find the Omars in their schools. I'd never heard anyone say that about me, and it changed how I closed the talk.
I was kicked out of three schools. One of those times was for selling sweets. Nobody said, "We have an entrepreneur on our hands, let's find him a mentor." It was a quick way out. So I asked the room: what young person in your school have you overlooked, and haven't made the time to speak to?
Afterwards, one head told me he'd found an Omar in his last school and got him into the rugby programme. That's the whole point.
Clear and impactful, without any arrogance.
“He shared his experience with Heads at our Annual Conference to ask them [to] remember why they became teachers, and what really matters: finding that little Omar and showing him you believe in him! His message and presence was clear and impactful without any arrogance. I would thoroughly recommend Omar.”Katherine BluckHead of Professional Development, IAPS
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