Introduction: Confessions of a very Imperfect Head of Department

Before I go any further, let me say this very very clearly: I have made several of the mistakes I am going to write about. Not in theory, not in a textbook sense, but in my very own department, with my own colleagues, with real children sitting in real classrooms!

When I first became a HoD nobody sat me down and said: “Here’s how you lead people while also protecting a fragile subject that…half of school already thinks is optional.” Like many of you, I was promoted because I was “good at teaching languages”, which, as I always reiterate on this blog, is not remotely the same thing as being trained to be a middle manager. Nobody showed me how to handle that colleague who quietly undermined everything I said or did in corridor chats, or how to stand up to senior leadership when their latest data “initiative” quadrupled everyone’s workload overnight!

So I did what a lot of us do: I improvised. Copied what I’d seen other HoDs do. I fired off late-night emails. I avoided potentially challenging conversations. I designed curriculum as though everyone on team had my experience, my fluency, my personal obsessions with chunks, listening-for-learning communicative language teaching and fluency. And yes, when I now visit language departments all over globe, I see so many of same patterns played out again and again, often by really good, really well-intentioned people who are often times just trying to keep their heads above water.

In this post, I want to walk through 17 of most common mistakes I see MFL Heads of Department make and unpack what they look like in real life. You may recognise yourself in some of these; I certainly do! Nobody’s perfect, and no language teacher is truly trained sufficiently to become a middle manager on day one.

If you find yourself wincing at a few of these, you’re in good company. I still wince when I look back at some of my early emails.

Let’s dive in.

1. Avoiding difficult conversations

This is, as I always reiterate on this blog, one of things I witness most when I visit languages departments all over globe. And, to be absolutely honest, it was one of my worst habits as a new HoD.

I remember a colleague who never used target language beyond the first five minutes of lesson. I knew it. They knew it. Students definitely knew it. I watched from back of classroom… worksheets full of isolated word lists, random bits of vocabulary that didn’t quite link to anything else, and I walked away thinking, “I’ll bring it up next time, when they’re less stressed…”.

Guess what? Next time…never came.

When we avoid these conversations — about weak practice, poor TL use, unprofessional habits, that colleague who “forgets” to set homework week after week — those behaviours don’t just continue, they slowly become culture. In MFL, that often means every student is essentially studying a slightly different subject depending on who their teacher is, with wildly different expectations for TL use, for speaking, for writing, for basic accuracy.

2. Acting like a ‘mini-SLT’ instead of a subject leader

Another mistake which is commonly made – especially by the more ambitious amongst us – is to imitate senior leadership rather than to lead the subject. In my case, at the early stages in my career, it felt, at times, like “proper leadership” meant repeating whole-school messages, tightening compliance, checking everybody’s exercise books three times a term, and sending out yet another “reminder” that mocks looked “non negotiable”.

When a HoD spends more energy enforcing whole-school rules than deepening subject pedagogy, you slowly end up with a polite, obedient team that has stopped thinking. You get staff who know exactly what colour pen to mark in, but can’t articulate why a particular sequence of TL input is more effective than another. Policy starts to matter more than language learning, and department drifts into bureaucratic rule-following instead of linguistic growth.

I knew I’d tipped over into “mini-SLT” when one colleague joked, “You sound just like deputy head.” It was meant as a compliment. It made me feel slightly sick.

3. Poor soft skills in communication (especially tone, volume, and timing of emails)

Sadly, this is an area where even very kind, very caring leaders do huge damage without realising it. I still remember one Sunday night, exhausted, sitting with my laptop open at 10:43 pm, typing an email that began, “Final reminder:” in subject line. I hit send. On Monday morning, a colleague walked in looking like they’d been hit by a truck and said, “I saw your email and thought I’d forgotten something massive.” I hadn’t meant to create anxiety; I was just trying to “get things done”. That’s the last time I have ever sent such e-mail. But sadly, many of my own HoDs or HoFs did subsequently send them to me or other colleagues in the years that followed.

Sharp messages, late-night urgency, or a constant stream of micro-instructions erode morale far more than we admit. This can look like:

• Cold, transactional phrasing: “Final reminder. Data due tomorrow.”
• Late-night or weekend emails with implied urgency — sent when we are finally catching up, of course, but landing in someone else’s only quiet moment.
• Instructions with no greeting, no context, no appreciation, just a list.
• Using ALL CAPS or aggressive formatting to show frustration.
• Firing off three follow-up emails instead of just walking down corridor for a five-minute chat.

Over time, staff begin to dread inbox more than they dread 9Y on a Friday. That’s not a great sign.

4.Confusing ‘being busy’ with being strategic

Once upon a time, in the very early stages of my career, the department I was working in was drowning in trackers , sheets, meetings, and colour-coded spreadsheets. Everyone looked extremely productive. Yet, if you’d asked a simple question like, “Are year 8s actually understanding basic word order?” the room would have gone quiet.

In our subjects it is frighteningly easy to lose hours to vocabulary graphs, elaborate marking rubrics, TL target documents, assessment matrices, “distance from grade” trackers, and all sorts of beautifully formatted artefacts that, when you look honestly, make absolutely no measurable difference to listening, speaking, or long-term retention.

I once created a very sophisticated assessment overview with twelve different data points per student. We spent days on it. At end of term, I realised: it hadn’t changed my teaching with even one single class!

Being busy is not same as moving curriculum forwards.

5.Over-focus on exam results at expense of curriculum and learning

I understand exactly how and why this trap happens, because I have fallen into it more than once — especially after a bad results year, especially in the listening skill. Pressure comes down from above, governors want explanations, SLT wants action plans, and suddenly everything narrows to that spreadsheet in August.

When results dominate, learning sadly becomes a short cut. Soul killing! In our subject, that’s when you start seeing:

• Grammar cramming in year 11 without proper conceptual understanding behind it.
• Memorised paragraphs that students cannot adapt or understand, but can faithfully reproduce under timed conditions.
• Rehearsed speaking answers that sound fluent until you ask one unscripted follow-up question.
• Exam “hacks” that game reading papers instead of building genuine reading skills in language.

I remember a bright student who got a very high grade after months of intense rehearsal. A year later, I bumped into them and they said, “I can’t really say anything in language now, I’ve forgotten it all.” The grade remained. Language did not.

6. Micromanaging planning and resources

At one point, one of my HoDs was so desperate for consistency that they tried to control everything: lesson formats, fonts on slides, order of activities, even suggested jokes. It looked incredibly neat. It was also slightly dead. Over-controlling how lessons must look kills ownership, creativity, and sense that teacher is a professional making live decisions with real learners in front of them. In languages, this often takes form of:

• Rigid scripts that nobody dares deviate from, even when class clearly needs something else.
• Compulsory task types every lesson (“there must be a retrieval quiz, then a drilling task, then a listening…”).
• Strict formatting rules for resources that turn planning into an exercise in graphic design rather than pedagogy.

Result? Lifeless delivery instead of meaningful interaction in TL. Students learn how to survive structure, but not necessarily how to communicate. This often happens in Depts which buy in my approach and apply it in a very rigid and prescriptive way, failing to grasp that EPI proposes a pedagogical evidence-based framework (MARSEARS) which is about scaffolding not stifling learning. Teacher creativity is encouraged every step of the way. What is prescriptive is the imperative to scaffold intelligently from modelling to spontaneity, to allow for masses of exposure to high quality input through effective and engaging activities and to allow for tons of retrieval practice.

7. Making decisions without involving staff

This one is painfully common, and I say that as someone who has absolutely been guilty of it in my more “efficient” phases. You’re under time pressure, SLT wants a new KS3 curriculum, exams are changing, you’ve got three meetings this week, so you think, “I’ll just sort it myself and present it neatly.”

Top-down decisions produce compliance, not commitment. In MFL, this often looks like:

• New sentence builders landing in inbox with no discussion of why structures were chosen.
• Marking symbols changed overnight.
• Homework routines transformed because “SLT wants more independence”.
• KS3–KS4 transition redesigned without asking those teaching most of KS3.

I once introduced new assessment system that I was extremely proud of. It was elegant. It was logical. It was also utterly disconnected from daily reality of two part-time colleagues juggling four year groups each. They did what I asked, but they never owned it — and it quietly withered after a year.

8. Giving feedback without classroom or subject context

I’ve sat in line management meetings where someone said to a languages teacher, “You need to use more TL” and then moved on to next agenda item as if they’d just given life-changing development. I’ve probably done a version of this myself, earlier on.

Generic advice is cheap; contextualised modelling is hard. Vague phrases like:

• “Use more target language.”
• “Improve pronunciation work.”
• “Challenge more able learners more.”

mean almost nothing unless they are grounded in subject-specific routines, co-teaching, or at very least concrete examples.

The few times I actually went into classroom with colleague, modelled a high-TL routine, then sat down afterwards and said, “Did you notice how I…?” were honestly far more powerful than all those airy bullet points on performance management documents.

9. Ignoring workload impact when introducing change

Often, in my experience, this isn’t malice. It’s just that leaders (again, I include my past self here) are living in a slightly different reality from classroom-heavy colleagues. You have one fewer class, maybe, or more PPA, or simply the illusion that an extra 15 minutes here and there isn’t a big deal.

Burnout, however, is rarely caused by teaching alone! It is usually created by poorly costed initiatives. In MFL, this might mean:

• New vocab sequencing that doubles prep time for every unit.
• Assessment cycles that require marking every single written task in excruciating detail.
• Phonics routines added “on top” of everything else, rather than built into what already exists.
• KS3–KS4 transitions redesigned with beautiful intent, but no training or time allocation.

I remember introducing a new homework system which, on paper, looked wonderfully consistent and rigorous. In practice, it meant my NQT was spending Sunday evenings creating and uploading materials instead of sleeping. Improvement had turned into punishment.

10. Substituting policy for culture

There was a year when our department handbook could have doubled as a doorstop. It had everything: TL expectations, marking codes, assessment calendars, behaviour protocols. It was, in many ways, an impressive document.

And yet, if you’d walked into some classrooms, you wouldn’t have seen half of it happening.

Paperwork doesn’t create habits; people do. In languages, we often write policies that look very rigorous — TL use percentages, minimum marking frequencies, beautifully spaced assessment points — but if we haven’t invested in modelling, habits, and supportive culture, they stay on paper.

I still remember a new colleague saying, “I tried to do everything in handbook for a week and I thought I was going to die.” That was a sobering moment.

11. Allowing toxicity to build within the team

This one is uncomfortable, but it is crucial A department can look perfectly functional on timetables and spreadsheets yet be slowly poisoning itself from the inside. Toxicity often hides behind linguistic identities or personal histories: the “native speaker” vs “non-native speaker” divide, the grammar purist vs communicative enthusiast, the EPI vs traditional teaching supporter, the “I did year abroad” vs “I learned later” status game. Warning signs include:

• Whisper networks and cliques forming around language choices or teaching styles
• Sarcasm, eye-rolling, private mockery of colleagues who struggle or dare to try something new
• Passive-aggressive behaviour, like quietly withholding resources or only sharing them with favourite people or not replying to emails
• Public compliance but private resistance — running down agreed routines in corridor chats
• Favouritism, where more fluent or more charismatic teachers seem exempt from accountability

I once convinced myself that a particularly sharp-tongued colleague was “just being honest”. It took me far too long to realise their constant negativity was making newer staff think they were failing every day.

12. Designing curriculum around strongest teacher (or themselves)

This is a very easy trap when you are , yourself, flamboyant, very fluent or confident in language and command great classroom discipline. You build schemes that you would love to teach, with dense texts, subtle grammatical twists, and organic TL improvisation — and then you hand them to a non-specialist, or a new colleague, and quietly wonder why it isn’t working.

A curriculum that relies on expert improvisation is a curriculum that will collapse in real classrooms. In our subject, this often looks like:

• Sequences that only make sense if you are comfortable going off-script in TL.
• Grammar explanations that assume encyclopaedic knowledge of exceptions.
• Listening tasks that “work” because you ad-lib half of instructions.

I remember sitting in on a cover lesson where a non-specialist was trying to deliver one of my brilliantly “rich” lessons. It was painful. They weren’t bad; my curriculum was simply not built for reality of most teachers.

13,Creating double standards

Nothing destroys credibility faster than inconsistency. I wish I had grasped that earlier in my career.

In many Languages departments, some teachers quietly get away with:

• Very little TL use.
• Bare minimum (or less) marking.
• Missing deadlines again and again.

while others — often those who are conscientious, reflective, and possibly younger in career — are held tightly to every rule. It is human. Every leader has their favourites and cheerleaders on the team. But this is possibly the one of the most harmful behaviours I have witnessed in my career.

I remember one colleague saying to a HoD of mine, “It’s fine, I know [X] will never be challenged, so why am I knocking myself out?”. The HoD later came to see me asking if that was the generally feeling amongst the team. I said I wasn’t sure. She then said that hearing that complain from my colleague had felt like a punch in the stomach but didn’t do anything about it. That colleagues who had complained left at the end of that year.

14. Confusing kindness with rescue

This one often comes from a genuinely good place. You see someone struggling, you’re worried about students and want to be protective. So you step in. That might mean:

• Planning lessons for weaker teachers “just this once” — which turns into half a term.
• Creating assessments on their behalf, every time.
• Handling parents’ emails for them because “it’ll be quicker if I do it.”

I have absolutely done this many times over, and initially it felt virtuous, almost heroic. Over time, I realised I was creating dependency. Those colleagues never quite developed muscle to handle things themselves, and I became silently resentful while telling everyone I was “just being supportive”. There is no harm co-planning and co-teaching lessons, but as happens with everything, you must act like a scaffold which gradually build self-efficacy and competency until it is finally removed.

True kindness is helping someone grow, not doing their professional work for them.

15. Rewarding compliance over professional thinking

If we’re honest, many systems in schools make it easier to reward the person who always nods and says yes rather than the person who thoughtfully challenges what is potentially a flawed idea – especially when it refers to a schoolwide initiative which does not apply to language learning. In the short term, compliant people make your life easier. In the long term, they can stall progress. As you might expect, I have often be that teacher who challenged such flawed initiatives.

This often results in:

• Sidelining the colleague who questions exam-obsessed, short-term fixes.
• Ignoring the teacher who points out that a certain marking policy is all cost, no impact.
• Praising those who uncritically follow ineffective routines because they are “so reliable”.

I can think of at least one colleague whose awkward questions annoyed me at time but, looking back, were absolutely spot on. I didn’t so much shut them down as fail to properly listen. That was my loss, and department’s.

16.Driving improvement without modelling or co-teaching

Expectations without demonstration are, frankly, wishful thinking. Yet we do this all the time.

In languages, it often sounds like:

• “We need much more TL use across department.”
• “Everyone must embed phonics more explicitly.”
• “We want to see more spontaneous speaking.”

all announced in meetings, perhaps with a handout, and then… nothing. No modelling, no co-teaching, no “come and see this in my lesson next Tuesday”.

The most powerful shifts I’ve seen were when a HoD said, “Come and sit in my room for 20 minutes; watch how I handle this,” or even better, “Let’s teach this bit together.” I didn’t do that nearly enough in first years; I relied far too much on bullet points.

17. Forgetting their emotional impact on teachers and subject uptake

This last one is both the most subtle and, in some ways, the most important. Leadership is not just a set of actions; it’s an emotional climate.

A HoD can often

• Make a nervous newly qualified teacher feel like languages is the most exciting subject in the building.
• Make a whole school fall back in love with idea of learning another language.
• Or, sadly, make an entire year group decide that languages are joyless, high-stress, and best avoided at options time.

I remember speaking to a student who said, “Languages just feels like something teachers are stressed about all the time.” That sentence has stayed with me. It wasn’t about curriculum or assessment; it was about emotional temperature we had created.

Our reactions to mistakes, our tone in meetings, the way we talk about exams, how we respond to SLT pressure — all of that seeps into staff, then into classrooms, then into students’ long-term relationship with language.

Conclusion: MFL Leadership Is a Human Curriculum

A language department doesn’t thrive because it has perfect progression-tracking documents or beautifully aligned schemes of work. They are useful, don’t get me wrong, but if that were true, some of the most impressively documented departments I’ve seen would also be the happiest, and they often are not. It thrives when teachers feel trusted, supported, challenged, and genuinely part of a shared linguistic culture rather than isolated technicians delivering pre-packaged lessons. When leaders invest in people, they quietly protect curriculum. When leaders model habits, those habits become normal. When leaders grow trust, subject grows with it.

Effective MFL leadership is not about control — it’s about culture. It is not about emails — but relationships. It is not about short-term grades — but long-term linguistic growth and confidence.

And if, as you’ve read this, you’ve realised you are making some of these mistakes right now, you are not alone. Every leader slips into at least a few of them when they are tired or under pressure. The point is not to be perfect; the point is to notice, to adjust, and to remember that, ultimately, we are not just curating schemes of work. After all, we are curating human beings’ experience of language — staff and students — and that is, in every sense, a human curriculum.