What makes a good leader?

Routh Address 24 March 2025 

Extract from: What It Takes: My Playbook on Life and Leadership, by Sarina Wiegman

Football has been my passion since I was a young girl. The love I have for the game has always been a driving force for me, even during times when expressing that love was challenging. I remember the disapproval I had to face for being a girl playing a supposedly boys’ game, and cutting my hair short as a young player so I wouldn’t stand out as much on the boys’ team I played for.

Certainly, being the England women’s national team coach demands a lot from me. There are no days off when you have this responsibility.

The growth of the team, the players, the staff and myself are of utmost importance. I rarely use the word ‘I’ because it is always about the collective. This applies to both the players and the staff. Achieving excellence means developing and improving individuals, but the ultimate goal is to strengthen the team as a whole.
When a player flourishes in her role within the team, we become a stronger unit. And when we can showcase our strength through victories, we become the best together. This is the essence of my passion.

As many of us will know, Sarina Wiegman is a Dutch football manager and former player and she has been the manager of the England women's national team since September 2021. Under her leadership, the Netherlands won the UEFA Women's Euros in 2017, and her England team were the winners of the UEFA Women's Euros in 2022.

In What it Takes, Sarina Wiegman discusses her career in the male-dominated world of football, breaking gender barriers, developing teams, and her approach to leadership. She talks about empathetic leadership, combining high expectations with an understand the needs of those she leads, fostering a team culture where everyone feels valued and motivated. She emphasises the importance of resilience, bouncing back from disappointment, and also creating an environment where everyone feels able to express their opinions.

We need leaders who have the courage to do the right thing and to keep doing it, making those uncomfortable decisions not because it is easy, but because it is right. In whatever path we ourselves choose to follow in the future, we may well need to be those leaders who, despite the temptation to take the easier option, or just leave things as they are, find the courage to make changes for the better.

So, why am I saying all this now? Well, the time is coming for us to choose our next group of Senior School pupil leaders, the School Monitors, for the academic year 2025/26. They will follow in the footsteps of this year’s excellent cohort of Monitors, and we need your help when it comes to appointing their successors.

What do we look for in a Monitor? Well, as you will know, the best are those who are respected and reliable, humble and approachable, dedicated and organised, positive and proud of their School. We seek individuals who will have the courage to speak up if they see something wrong, to share their views and ideas and we are looking for Monitors who have integrity – those who do the right thing, even when nobody is looking.

There will be many more members of the LVI who are capable of being a good Monitor than there are spaces, so we will do our best to choose the pupils who we believe, both collectively and individually, will do the very best job.

What am I asking from you? Well, in the coming days you will be sent an electronic survey to give your honest opinions about who you think would make the best Monitors from the current LVI. This is not a vote, but we genuinely want to know your considered, personal views, which we will absolutely take into account, just as we will consider the views of others.

As I’ve said before, a leader who I’ve always admired is Nelson Mandella. When, 35 years ago, he was released from prison, many people expected him to seek revenge on the section of the population that had held him captive for 27 years. Instead, Mandela surprised the world by advocating for peace in South Africa, reconciliation, and unity, arguing that working together was crucial for building a just and equitable society, where everyone could live in harmony and mutual respect No one is born hating another person because of the colour of their skin, or their background, religion, he said, People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

Thank you for taking the time to respond to the Monitor survey respond to the survey carefully and thoughtfully. To come back to the extract from Sarina Wiegman’s book, the ultimate goal is to strengthen the team (or School) as a whole.