John West-Burnham opened the final day of the conference with a breakfast seminar to a rapt audience about leadership as a vocation.

His central argument was that the ways that we think and talk about leadership, and the ways that we practise the development of educational leadership, should be enhanced by a greater focus on leadership as a vocation.

West-Burnham distinguished between leadership as a job (something that you do to earn money), leadership as a career (something that you do to gain advancement and recognition) and leadership as a vocational calling. When we think of leadership in education as a vocation, we bring in a very moral dimension to our work and we begin to think of it as a higher order calling.

He argued that, in order to secure enough leaders in the future, we need to nurture future leadership as a vocation, as work that is value driven.

In his research for the College into the personal life histories of outstanding leaders, West-Burnham found that the primary motivation of these very successful leaders was a sense of moral purpose, and also that these leaders enjoy tremendous self-development outside of their working lives. "Looking at the history of art may be more developmental than looking at the budget," he suggested.

He argued continually that we might develop more successful, resilient and morally confident leaders if we encourage their self-development outside of work and if they are exposed to great literature and music and to an understanding of science as much as to one day courses in technical management.

He challenged his audience to think about their own self-development and about whether they are, in their work, growing in to the people they want to be. In this regard, West Burnham quoted Sir Ken Robinson: "When people are in their element they connect with something fundamental to their sense of identity, purpose and well being. Being these provides a sense of self-revelation, of defining who they really are and what they are meant to be doing with their lives"

He also quoted Warren Bennis: "the process of becoming a leader is much the same as the process of becoming an integrated human being".

Nurturing thew idea of teaching and leadership as a vocation generates focus, commitment and dedication. It also provides the leader with a source of enthusiasm and joy and moves the educator to creative exploration of how the practise their calling.

So how do we nurture this idea of educational leadership as a vocation?

• We need to develop our competence in continual reflection. He cited the example of a primary head who has kept a personal learning log all of her career and who now, monthly, publishes the edited highlights on her school website, sharing with her community "this is what I have learned this month".
• We need to place ourselves in real and challenging situations outside of our comfort zones and to contribute to solving them, whether though secondments, placements or volunteering.
• We need to continually open ourselves up to new experiences and to sharing our knowledge with colleagues near and far. West-Burnham argued that we squander a lot of intellectual capital in education because we do not share our thinking and practice enough. Outstanding heads do, he argues and it also brings them personal confidence and resilience.

West-Burnham concluded that if we can nurture the understanding of educational leadership as a value-driven, higher-order calling we can enhance the status of leadership both inside the profession and outside it in the communities we serve. And we can achieve more.

Stuart Sutherland