Are Your Leaders Actually Leading Together?
Middle leaders form the glue between big picture strategic plans and on-the-ground actions.
You can have five thoughtful, capable leaders in a school and still create five very different experiences of leadership.
One communicates everything. Another assumes people already know. One gives plenty of autonomy. Another checks every detail. One tackles the difficult conversation early, while another quietly hopes the problem might disappear over the holidays. We’ve all seen how well that strategy works.
It doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is a poor leader. Often, people are simply leading in the best way they know how.
But here’s the question I think we need to ask: Do our leaders have a shared understanding of what good leadership feels like for the people being led?
Because staff don’t experience the leadership framework sitting in the strategic plan. They experience leadership in meetings, corridor conversations, how decisions are communicated, how mistakes are handled, whether expectations are clear and whether their leader is checking in or checking up.
Those small moments become culture.
This is why I think leadership development needs to go beyond identifying our leadership style.
Wellbeing Intelligence invites us to ask a more useful question: “What is it like to be led by me?”
That thinking sits at the heart of Leading Better Together, where we use CARE — Clarity, Agency, Relationships and Energy — to create a shared language and more consistent ways of leading across a school.
The goal isn’t to create identical leaders. It’s to build leadership coherence: leaders who bring their own strengths while sharing an understanding of the experience they want to create for others.
Leaders learn together, apply the ideas with their real teams and return to reflect on what changes. Because leadership capability is built through practice, not PowerPoint slides.
I’m currently talking with schools about Leading Better Together for late 2026 and 2027. If developing the collective capability of your leadership team is part of your plans, have a look at the program or reply and tell me a little about your team.
Find out how it works here - Explore Leading Better Together
One Small Shift
Leadership often asks us to walk a tightrope between compliance and care. We need to hold expectations, meet requirements and keep things moving, while remembering there are human beings on the other side of every decision.
This week, when you notice yourself leaning heavily towards one side of that tightrope, pause and ask: “What does this moment need from me — more clarity, or more curiosity?”
Sometimes people need us to be clear about what needs to happen. Other times, they need us to understand what’s making it hard. Good leadership is often knowing which is needed before we respond.
Coaching question: Where in your leadership are you currently being asked to hold both accountability and humanity at the same time?
P.S. CARE doesn’t mean lowering expectations or avoiding difficult conversations. Sometimes the most caring thing we can do is be clear about what matters, while staying curious about the person standing in front of us.
