Tailored strategic support for your leadership
"The CST mentoring process has been incredibly powerful professional development throughout my time so far as CEO. My mentor, who is experienced, knowledgeable and successful in the education sector has been a superb guide, and CST have made the process extremely simple. I cannot recommend the programme highly enough."
- New CEO in a 10-school trust
CST’s mentoring services give CEOs and Deputy CEOs personalised strategic support from system-leading experts. Our mentors have direct experience of growing and developing school trusts at scale. This enables them to share powerful insights on leadership and engage proven models and strong networks to support their mentees. As a result, our mentoring partnerships develop your personal skills and journey as a leader and support the formation and delivery of trust vision, strategy and outcomes.
We established our mentoring services because we believe that it is essential that CEOs can access appropriate support to sustain all stages of their careers, particularly as new and growing leaders. The opportunity to have a trusted sounding board for personal, professional, and strategic decision-making over a sustained period, especially across a time of change, should be transformative. Investing in personalised CEO development is not only good for individual effectiveness and resilience, but fundamental to the performance and culture of strong trusts.
We are proud to support both experienced and new leaders, including Deputy and Designate CEOs, in trusts of all sizes and contexts.
Our support is highly flexible and completely personal. We offer three kinds of mentoring service and are happy to explore other options on request.
Preparing for trust leadership
Our mentors are system leaders who have deep understanding of the intricacies of the CEO role from their own experience of leading and building trusts. Their strategic advice is grounded in long-standing practical know-how and the wisdom that comes from sometimes getting things wrong as well as right.
"I have worked with my mentor in full intensive day blocks, and this has been very effective. My mentor has approached the days so that we have time for lots of honest reflection. They provoke my thinking a lot, but we are also pragmatic and always seem to achieve outcomes which I can then go away and develop and refine. Because of this approach I am getting work done that I would probably neglect and procrastinate over otherwise, and it would have taken me far longer to get to the same outcome, if I indeed I would ever have got to the same outcome.
"Working with my mentor has come at a critical time in my career. It may not be an exaggeration to say that having this opportunity may well prolong my working life as a CEO as it has given me the confidence to evolve as a leader, to think that I can take on more challenge but manage this better in the future."
- Established CEO in a 13-school trust
"My mentor has been excellent in really getting to understand me as a leader very quickly. He gets what is important to me and has been a real ally in terms of me being a female leader (in a disproportionately man’s world). In doing so, he has given me confidence in what I am doing and has been able to offer advice that is aligned to my values and ways of working."
- New CEO in a 4-school trust
Join our Professional Community for CEOs
Read The core responsibilities of a school trust CEO
Read The new domains of educational leadership
Company no: 05303883
Charity no: 1107640
