Managing in TEFL - “School leaders can't do it all”

We're well into 2025 now; a new year full of new challenges and plenty of old ones too. As leaders, we often try to do it all but we shouldn't, we can't. How can we manage it all? The theory of comparative advantage offers a possible way through it all. What it is it? How can it help? Is it workable in our Managing in TEFL contexts?

Managing in TEFL is a fortnightly companion for language school leaders from Active Language Teacher Training written by Simon Pearlman. Subscribe on LinkedIn or to receive a copy direct to your inbox, email us at [email protected] with the header “Subscribe to Managing in TEFL”.

One of our recurring questions as language school leaders is whether and how much we should be teaching, how many classes of our own should we have? Should we have any? Many of us came through the teaching ranks and are now managers or owners, or often both. We are comfortable in the classroom, many of us see it as our “happy place”. We enjoy working with the students, we gain insights into the effectiveness of systems and feel like we're really doing something valuable. We feel more like one of the team, in the trenches going through the highs and lows like everyone else. It keeps us in touch with the classroom and keeps developing as teachers. Also, we're probably quite good at teaching, the students that are with us are lucky to have us, arent they? There's also probably a financial imperative, we're already being paid so adding in other teacher costs seems unnecessary, especially when finances are stretched. There are so many good, solid many reasons to keep our teaching hours that it feels like a no-brainer, of course we should be teaching, right?

Yes, and, well, no. Much depends on our specific situation; perhaps if business is moving along nicely and you feel like you have plenty of time for everything, then having our own classes is no bad thing. This isn't the reality for most of us with our bulging to-do lists full of things that never quite get done. How can we meaningfully move forward if we just don't have the time? And this is where the management theory of comparative advantage comes in.?

The theory of comparative advantage suggests that we shouldn't do things that other people can do and we should focus on doing what others can't, where is our advantage compared to other people? Other people can teach, other people probably can't build and enact strategy for growth or make decisions on pricing for next year. Other people aren't in our heads and don't really know what we want.

This article from the Harvard Business Review makes the case for comparative advantage in business areas and should give us pause for thought. https://hbr.org/2025/01/leaders-shouldnt-try-to-do-it-all It gives case studies of success with some world leading businesses and we can definitely apply it to our contexts too. It suggests we should start by taking things off our lists and delegating them to other people, this reduces our workload and gives others the chance to step up. Other people can do things just as well as, if not much better than us. Once we've taken things off, we can ask ourselves, what can I do that other people can't? And then we can focus there.

This leads us back to the teaching hours question. Should we? Shouldn't we??

Perhaps when we look round the staffroom we see a team of competent and confident ELT professionals, they can probably do the job better than us. It is quite literally “their job” whereas it's just part of ours. While we might love being in the classroom, it's not our main focus. Should we move away?

We can stay deeply engaged with the classroom without having our own classes, we can be in and out, we can be around and available. If we're in the room we can do little else, we can't cover emergencies and absenses, we can't help our colleagues or our students. It might be too late for us to make changes this year but let's remember it when we're planning staffroom for next year, but then again, maybe we could change things now.

What's clear is that we can do more outside the class and our schools can be better and our businesses healthier if we apply this idea of the comparative advantage, it works for world leading businesses, it can work for us.

Managing in TEFL is brought to you by Active Language Teacher Training providers of Trinity DipTESOL, CertTESOL and Teaching Younger Learners courses. Visit our website www.activelanguage.net or email us at [email protected] for more information.