Early Education Leadership

Questions To Build Trust & Demonstrate Curiosity - a free, practical PDF from us to make trust feel teachable. 🤝

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Over the coming months, you may notice some changes across my social media platforms, pages and online groups.

After more than a decade of building Early Education Leadership, I have been reflecting on the work I have created, the people and communities I have had the privilege of working alongside, and how I want this work to grow from here.

The heart of my work remains constant: helping leaders and teams communicate with honesty and authenticity, navigate difficult conversations, build trust and strengthen the human capacity that enables people to think and work well together.

You will begin to see a clearer and more consistent way of bringing this work together. Some platforms, pages and groups will evolve as I simplify my online spaces and create a stronger foundation for the next chapter.

My relationships and work within the early childhood sector remain deeply important to me and will continue to be part of what comes next.

These changes will unfold over time, so if something familiar begins to look a little different, you are still in the right place.

I want to approach this evolution with care and intention, honouring the relationships, learning and work that have brought me here while creating space for what is emerging.

Thank you for being part of this community and for the trust, conversations and connection we have shared. I look forward to sharing more as this next chapter takes shape.

Today, on Early Childhood Educators’ Day, I want to acknowledge the people whose work shapes children’s earliest experiences of belonging, learning and relationships.

Through my work with early childhood leaders and teams, I see the skill, care and thought that educators bring to each day.

You notice the child who is hanging back.

You respond to emotions that may not yet have words.

You adapt experiences, support friendships, partner with families and make hundreds of decisions that influence whether a child feels safe, included and understood.

This work requires professional knowledge, sound judgement, creativity, emotional awareness, patience and an extraordinary capacity to be present with children and with one another.

I want early childhood educators to be recognised as skilled professionals whose relationships, decisions and daily interactions make a lasting difference. Meaningful recognition includes respect, professional trust, time, support and workplace conditions that allow educators to do their best work and continue to grow.

To every early childhood educator: I hope you feel seen and valued today, both for what you do and for who you are in the lives of children, families and communities.

Happy Early Childhood Educators’ Day.

I don't usually share something this personal, but this one felt important to put into words.

Some fifteen years or so, I didn't choose early childhood. It chose me!

I'd already spent years in leadership roles across other sectors, in the UK and Australia. Then I became a mum. My children started preschool, and that's genuinely how I found this sector, not a career plan, through a conversation.

My business back then was called Curiosity Inspired, broad and sector agnostic, built around leadership. A group of early childhood directors found it and asked for more. Everything on offer to them was delivered through the child lens; few programs offered for leaders. So I renamed the business Early Education Leadership, purely so they could find me. For over a decade, that was my world.

Here's something I believe firmly: early childhood is often an early adopter. Ten years ago, self regulation for leaders wasn't mainstream language. Those leaders were willing to sit with their own patterns first, long before the rest of the leadership world caught up. What they wanted wasn't only a program, it was a community, since leadership here can be isolating, and being surrounded by others doing the same inner work mattered as much as the work itself.

The work kept evolving because they did. Leading From Behind became one of the sector's first online leadership programs, then grew into the Online Conscious Leadership Program: three months, then six weeks, as time grew scarcer for clients. Somewhere in there I trained as a certified Conversational Intelligence coach and started using the methodology. Through COVID, I moved to almost entirely one on one coaching, alongside leaders pivoting just as hard.

Somewhere in that growth, I noticed something. Every struggle I coached leaders through, burnout, isolation, the dread of a hard conversation, a nervous system worn out from holding a team together, was never really about early childhood. It was about leadership, full stop.

The learning has run both ways, as I've grown, so have my clients.

Here's the part I've sat with longer than I'd like to admit: guilt. Early childhood took a chance on me when few were doing this work. Stepping back has felt, some days, like walking away from the people who backed me first.

But that's not quite what's happening. My children are grown now, and that has brought space to return to the broader identity I started with. I'm not leaving early childhood. I'll keep working within it, just not solely.

My hope is that this isn't a departure, but an exchange: what I learn coaching leaders in other industries I'll bring back into early childhood, the way this sector has shaped how I lead.

So I'm bringing the work forward under one name, Sarah Moore Leadership, for any leader ready to do the inner work my earliest clients were brave enough to do first.

If you want to make sure you don't miss posts about my future offerings, tap "Follow" on this page and then choose "See First" under Following, so it shows up in your feel reliably.

Every team has communication agreements, whether they are spoken clearly or carried as assumptions.

They show up in everyday moments.

How do we ask questions?

How do we raise concerns or offer a different perspective?

How do we listen when pressure is rising?

How do we repair and reconnect when communication becomes strained?

During times of stress, change, or uncertainty, people can move towards familiar patterns such as withdrawing, reacting quickly, avoiding difficult conversations, or making assumptions.

Bringing these patterns into the conversation gives teams an opportunity to choose how they want to communicate and work together.

This is the purpose of my Team Communication Agreements Workshop.

Through guided reflection, practical activities, and honest conversation, teams co-create shared expectations for how they speak, listen, contribute, and navigate challenges together.

This whole day interactive workshop brings together neuroscience-informed communication, emotional intelligence, relational practice, and practical tools that teams can use immediately.

A 60-minute implementation session supports the team to review progress, adapt the agreements, and strengthen follow-through.

Because workplace culture is shaped through everyday conversations, and clear communication creates stronger teams.

If your organisation is looking to strengthen trust, accountability, connection, and collaboration, drop me a DM and let's have a conversation.

Wise words indeed!

We’re living at a time when life is like a split screen; it’s as though we’re living in two parallel universes. On one hand, an entire world order around us is crumbling; on the other, a new and more beautiful world is struggling to be born.

I haven’t been posting on our political situation for the last few weeks, because there’s little I can tell you that isn’t blaring at you from other sources. You and I both know what’s happening, and I continue to comment on all that on my Substack. But it’s important to clear our palette sometimes too, and remind ourselves of the world that’s struggling to be born.

The two are deeply connected. It’s only in living more deeply that we can influence the world more widely. Showing up for our relationships more fully - in particular, being there for the children just coming into and growing up in this world - is a sacred responsibility. Yesterday I received two texts from friends with pictures of their newborn babies, and throughout each day I eagerly await pictures from my daughter and son-in-law of my own grandchildren. In the spiritual search for the experience of Awe and Wonder, I don’t think there’s a greater opportunity that simply gazing at the miracle of childhood.

Make no mistake about it, if we’re to create a new and more beautiful world then children will be far more central to it. To those who are family members, teachers, or caretakers of little ones, let’s never forget that nothing, and I mean nothing, is a more important contribution to the healing of the world. Someone asked me last night what I had done that was important during the day. I responded, “I started teaching my one-year old granddaughter how to blow a kiss.” He didn’t realize this, but I meant it…

This feels like such a special moment, and I wanted to share it here with the people who have been part of this journey.

I am thrilled that Self-Regulation for Leaders, the 60-minute webinar I designed and delivered in partnership with TAFE NSW, is now available to access free through the TAFE NSW ECEC Professional Learning Program.

Self-regulation has been close to my heart and central to my work for many years. Long before this conversation began receiving wider recognition, many of you saw its value and were willing to explore it with me.

You invited me into your services, teams, leadership programs and coaching conversations. You asked thoughtful questions, shared honest reflections, tried the practices and carried the learning into your work with others.

Your openness, curiosity and feedback have shaped the way I understand, develop and teach this work. Every conversation has strengthened my belief that self-regulation is an essential part of our human capacity and influences how we communicate, lead, build trust and create relationships.

To all the early adopters who recognised the importance of this work and placed your trust in me, thank you. You helped this work grow and reach more people than I could have imagined when I began.

I am also incredibly grateful to the team at TAFE NSW who supported me throughout the design and delivery, and who shared my commitment to making this learning more widely accessible across the early childhood sector.

You can access the webinar here: https://www.tafensw.edu.au/programs/ecec-professional-learning-program

Select Register or Log in, open the Webinars tile and choose Self-Regulation for Leaders.

I hope you feel some of the pride and possibility that I feel today.

This is a lovely opportunity to pause, reflect and recognise how far this conversation has travelled, and the many people who have helped carry it forward.

Thank you for being part of it!

Fee-Free ECEC Professional Learning | TAFE NSW Access free* online training with TAFE NSW’s ECEC program. Build leadership skills and enhance expertise as an early childhood educator. * Eligibility criteria apply.

FREE WEBINAR THIS THURSDAY | Come and join us!

Early childhood leadership has always involved uncertainty. Policy changes. Staffing pressures. Sector shifts. Regulatory demands. Families in crisis. Teams stretched beyond their capacity.

But there is a particular kind of uncertainty that is harder to navigate than the rest. The kind where you do not know what is coming, when it will resolve, or what the right answer is. The kind where your team is looking to you for steadiness and you are not sure you have any to spare.

This is where leadership gets hard. And this is where the neuroscience of how we respond to uncertainty becomes genuinely useful.

When we feel uncertain, the brain's threat response activates. Cortisol rises. Our window of tolerance narrows. The capacity for nuanced thinking, relational attunement, and strategic clarity all reduce. And we begin leading from the part of the brain designed for survival rather than the part designed for wisdom.

The leaders who navigate uncertainty well are not the ones who have more answers. They are the ones who have learned to stay regulated enough to keep thinking clearly, stay present enough to keep their teams connected, and stay grounded enough to make decisions without certainty.

That is a learnable practice. And that is what this session is about.

In this free one-hour masterclass, grounded in slow pedagogy, relational leadership, and Conversational Intelligence® principles, I'll share what the research tells us about leading through uncertainty and give you practical tools to help you show up with greater calm, clarity, and connection, even when things feel unstable.

In this masterclass we'll cover:
* What uncertainty does to the brain and nervous system and
why it affects your leadership before you even notice it
* Why slowing down is not a weakness under pressure but a
neurological strategy for better decisions
* How your presence as a leader directly shapes how your team
experiences uncertainty
* Practical approaches for staying regulated, connected, and
purposeful when you don't have all the answers
* How to create stability for your team without pretending the
uncertainty isn't real

This session is for you if you are:

An educational leader, room leader, director, or centre manager
A leader navigating a period of change, pressure, or instability in your service or someone who wants to lead with more steadiness and less reactivity when things feel uncertain.

This is a free, live, interactive session. Bring your questions.

"Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence, and making sure that impact lasts in your absence." - Sheryl Sandberg

To register follow the link here: https://www.earlyeducationleadership.com/event-details/leading-through-uncertainty

I look forward to seeing you there.

The Connections Forum | Connection, reflection and honest leadership conversations

Where do early childhood leaders go when they are the person everyone else comes to?

Directors and leaders across the sector are navigating funding changes, workforce pressures, questions about service viability, complex team dynamics and the daily responsibility of supporting educators, children and families.

They also need spaces where they can think, reflect and speak honestly with people who understand the realities of the role.

This is why The Connections Forum exists.

The forum brings together early childhood leaders I have worked with over many years. It provides an emotionally safe conversational space where they can reconnect with each other, revisit the conscious leadership principles I teach and apply them to what is happening in their services right now.

This month, we revisited Managing Your Emotions and explored how leaders can prepare themselves before situations and conversations that may bring up strong emotions.

Our conversation moved through some important questions:

* What is within my control?
* How might this information land for the other person?
* What story am I creating when I do not have all the information?
* How can I remain curious without taking responsibility for
another person’s emotions?

These leaders already know this work, and they also understand that conscious leadership is a continual practice. We return to it because every new challenge, team and season asks something different of us.

At the end of the session, one leader shared that she felt reconnected and less overwhelmed.

That reflection captured why these spaces matter. Leadership becomes more sustainable when people have trusted relationships, shared language and opportunities to think alongside others who truly understand the work.