Education Leaders | The Chart-Topping School Leadership Podcast

Shane Leaning | School Leadership & Organisational Development Coach

Strategic school leadership insights for education leaders who want to drive meaningful change and build thriving school communities. What if the most powerful leadership strategies were hiding in plain sight? Education Leaders uncovers the evidence-based approaches that separate truly effective school leaders from the rest. Through compelling interviews and strategic deep-dives, organisational coach Shane Leaning reveals the real challenges facing today's education leaders, and the practical solutions that actually work. Every other Tuesday, discover how renowned educators and thought leaders tackle school improvement, staff development, and cultural transformation. You'll learn actionable strategies you can implement immediately to build confidence in your leadership and create lasting impact in your school community. On alternate weeks, Shane delivers focused episodes that address the leadership challenges you face daily: managing diverse teams, driving innovation, building organisational identity, and implementing sustainable change. Each episode offers clear, research-backed frameworks for developing your leadership capacity. Whether you're a department head questioning your next move, an assistant principal navigating complexities of a big team, or a superintendent driving district-wide change, Education Leaders provides the strategic insights you need to lead with confidence. Consistently ranked #1 schools podcast in Education category across multiple regions. We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, head to https://educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 1h ago

    Compassion and Accountability Are Not Opposites

    A teacher hands in their planning late for the third time, and you know they are dealing with a difficult situation at home. Insist on the deadline and you may ask for something they cannot manage, but keep extending it and colleagues end up carrying the load while pupils’ preparation suffers. This solo episode of school leadership coaching looks at what to do when two of your values pull in opposite directions, using Rushworth Kidder’s idea of “right versus right” dilemmas. It matters for any leader who has felt torn between standards and compassion and defaulted to whichever response felt most familiar. Shane walks through five practical moves: name both concerns and what each one protects, gather the facts, look for another route, choose and acknowledge the cost, then rehearse the conversation. You’ll hear what “standards” and “compassion” might mean in the late planning example, and why a temporary arrangement with a clear review date can create room for both. Shane also shares how he slipped on his own delegation when family visited from the UK and his self-care suffered. The episode ends with a simple if-then commitment you can use this week, so you can press play and leave with something to try before your next difficult conversation. Resources & Links Mentioned: Giving Voice to Values, Mary Gentile’s approach to acting on your values Episode Partners International Curriculum Association Sisi Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. He is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world. You can find Shane on LinkedIn. We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Compassion and Accountability Are Not Opposites

  2. Oct 5

    3 Ways to Pause Before Acting | A Conversation with Andrew Miller

    Dr Andrew Miller, Academic Principal at Beijing International Bilingual Academy, explains what going slow really looks like for a school leader and why "maybe don't" could be the most useful phrase you say all year. His career spans Washington State's Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Singapore American School and Shanghai American School, so he has seen how pressure to move fast plays out in very different systems. There is also a story behind this episode: Shane's audio failed to record, so you hear Andrew's answers as they were given on the day, with short bridge lines from Shane to set up each question. You'll learn how to tell deliberate slowness apart from avoidance or a loss of nerve, and how Andrew resets his own sense of urgency on the days when he feels he hasn't done enough. He also covers how to let staff see your thinking without it sounding like excuses, and where the line sits between useful vulnerability and venting. Shane closes with three practical steps to try this week, starting with writing down what would happen if you didn't launch that next initiative. If everyone around you is waiting for you to act, this conversation gives you a way to pause with confidence. Resources & Links Mentioned: Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction Singapore American School Shanghai American School Andrew's LinkedIn Episode Partners International Curriculum Association Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. He is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world. You can find Shane on LinkedIn. We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    3 Ways to Pause Before Acting | A Conversation with Andrew Miller

  3. Sep 28

    3 Big Ideas from This Month's Episodes | Education Leaders Live

    Every month, Shane Leaning and Chris Scora sit down to unpack what has come up on the Education Leaders podcast, and this live catch-up covers two of the season's most talked-about conversations. The main event is a robust back-and-forth on Claire Badger's episode, "Do Schools Really Kill Creativity?", where Chris admits he needed three listens to get past his initial discomfort with Claire's certainty before finding real common ground. They also revisit Jim Knight's "Stop Telling Teachers What to Do" and discuss why his coaching-over-directing approach has struggled to gain traction in UK schools despite making obvious sense on paper. You'll hear why Chris pushed back on Claire's definition of creativity as needing to be both "novel and useful," and why he worries that scaffolding can tip into constraint when applied under classroom time pressure. Shane and Chris also work through the tension between aspiration and pragmatism in education, using the IB's diploma programme as a case study, and close with reflections on Jim Knight's ideas about listening, agency and the "helpful bully" trap leaders can fall into. If you've ever wondered whether structure helps or hinders creative thinking in your classroom, this conversation will give you plenty to weigh up. Resources & Links Mentioned: Education Leaders Podcast Network Do Schools Really Kill Creativity? with Claire Badger Stop Telling Teachers What to Do with Jim Knight What Can Leaders Learn from Architects? with Phil Idle Britain's Strictest Head Teacher with Katharine Birbalsingh Episode Partners International Curriculum Association Sisi Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. He is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world. You can find Shane on LinkedIn. We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    3 Big Ideas from This Month's Episodes | Education Leaders Live

  4. Sep 21

    Do Schools Really Kill Creativity? | A Conversation with Claire Badger

    Claire Badger, a former research scientist and science teacher, disagrees with one of the most popular ideas in education: that schools kill creativity. Drawing on the cognitive science in her book, she argues that creativity has a clear definition (something must be both new and useful) and that most school approaches to it miss the second half. If your school celebrates its art displays, orchestra and project weeks as proof of creativity, this conversation will make you question what those activities are actually building. It matters for international school leaders in particular, where inquiry-based and project-based learning sit at the heart of the curriculum. You'll hear why a child's paperclip-spaceship idea is imaginative but not creative, and why a group of students told to write about "Colin, a red-haired boy missing a toe" produced better stories than those given a blank page. Claire shares her own "sustainable product" project day, which ended with a perpetual motion machine, and explains why cross-curricular projects often teach less than leaders hope. You'll also pick up practical first steps, from loosening the grip of data drops and Key Stage 3 exams to changing just one element of a lesson, such as asking for a video explanation instead of pages of written calculations. Shane and Claire even compare two very different schools and ask which one is more likely to produce creative graduates. Resources & Links Mentioned: Ken Robinson's TED talk "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" The Double Diamond design process (Design Council) World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report Claire Badger on LinkedIn Claire Badger's Creativity for Teachers: A Cognitive Science Approach (The Teacher CPD Academy) Episode Partners International Curriculum Association Sisi Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. He is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world. You can find Shane on LinkedIn. We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Do Schools Really Kill Creativity? | A Conversation with Claire Badger

  5. Sep 17

    Introducing the Education Leaders Podcast Network

    Shane Leaning has spent years building the Education Leaders podcast into a trusted source for practical leadership strategies. In this special launch episode, he's joined live by the hosts of four other education podcasts to unveil something new: the Education Leaders Podcast Network. What started as a conversation between Adam Kohlbeck and Chris Passey about wanting all their favourite education podcasts in one place has become a five-show network, each independently produced but bound by shared quality standards and a common goal of broadening the conversation across the sector. You'll hear directly from the hosts of EduPulse, Beyond the Status Quo, Teaching on Purpose, Coaching Done Well and Coaching Unpacked, and Education Leaders Live, each explaining what makes their show distinct. Shane and his co-hosts discuss everything from the "kintsugi" philosophy behind Beyond the Status Quo to the new podcast studio behind Teaching on Purpose, and Adam Kohlbeck shares the same-day publication of his book on coaching for adaptive expertise. If you want to know where to find practical, high-quality education content from voices across the globe, this episode is your map to the whole network. Resources & Links Mentioned: Education Leaders with Shane Leaning Coaching Done Well x Coaching Unpacked with Shane Leaning, Jim Thompson, Adam Kohlbeck, Chris Passey and Sarah Cottinghatt EduPulse with Adam Kohlbeck and Chris Passey Teaching on Purpose with Chiltern Learning Trust Beyond the Status Quo with Kathryn Gorman and Tamara Zaple Rolfs Education Leaders Podcast Network — full feed Episode Partners International Curriculum Association Sisi Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. He is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world. You can find Shane on LinkedIn. We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Introducing the Education Leaders Podcast Network

  6. Sep 7

    Why Your Open Door Policy Fails

    Shane opens this episode by naming a habit most school leaders share: telling their team "my door is always open," then wondering why staff still hesitate to bring problems to them. He argues these phrases feel generous but give people nothing concrete to act on, leaving new starters and existing team members to guess how you actually want to be approached. Drawing on a 2013 field study of over 600 call centre employees, Shane shows how a single day of onboarding, focused on staff rather than company values, cut turnover by nearly a third within six months. You'll learn three specific things to tell your team in your very first meeting this year: how to reach you and how quickly you'll genuinely reply, the specific situations you want flagged before they escalate, and how you behave under pressure so people stop having to work it out by trial and error. Shane also shares his own example of going quiet under stress and warns against the two ways this approach usually falls apart. If you want a practical, low-cost way to replace vague reassurances with something your team can use, this episode gives you the exact script. Resources & Links Mentioned: Cable, Gino & Staats (2013) study on employee onboarding and identity Episode Partners International Curriculum Association Sisi Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. He is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world. You can find Shane on LinkedIn. We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Why Your Open Door Policy Fails

  7. Sep 1

    What can Leaders Learn from Architects? | A Conversation with Phil Idle

    This episode explores what happens when school leaders stop starting a building project with a room count and start with a harder question about who their students are becoming. Phil, a Director at EIW Architects and past International Chair of the Association for Learning Environments, has spent more than thirty years watching how classrooms, corridors and timetables quietly shape behaviour, belonging and identity. If you are planning a new build, an expansion, or simply rethinking how your existing spaces reflect your school's values, this conversation offers a genuinely different starting point. You'll learn why treating a design brief as a fixed checklist can trap a school in yesterday's thinking, and how Nanjing International School flipped that process by writing a "Dear Architect" document about beliefs rather than room specifications. Phil shares the story of a project in rural Tanzania that turned his team from experts into learners, and explains why risk avoidance has quietly become a measure of "responsible" leadership at the expense of better design. Shane and Phil also discuss why architecture and school leadership are really the same discipline in disguise, both shaping how humans learn, belong and flourish together. If you've ever wondered what your school's corridors are secretly saying about what you believe, this conversation will change how you look at your own building. Resources & Links Mentioned: EIW Architects Philip Idle on LinkedIn Sarah Williams Goldhagen's short film "What Design Can Do" Jay Shetty's "On Purpose" podcast Dr Etienne Wenger-Trayner on communities of practice Association for Learning Environments (A4LE) Episode Partners International Curriculum Association Sisi Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. He is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world. You can find Shane on LinkedIn. We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    What can Leaders Learn from Architects? | A Conversation with Phil Idle

  8. Aug 25

    Inside Britain's Strictest School | A Conversation with Katharine Birbalsingh

    This week, we're revisiting a favourite from the archives. Shane sits down with Katharine Birbalsingh, founder and headmistress of Michaela Community School, the free school in a converted Wembley office block that has posted the highest Progress 8 scores in England for three consecutive years. Katharine explains why she's never once used an agenda in a meeting, why simplicity beats choice in almost every part of school life, and why she believes real autonomy only works when staff genuinely own what they're building together. You'll hear the ice cream cone analogy Katharine uses to explain why schools quietly become too complicated over time, why she deliberately warns candidates about the parts of Michaela they might not like before hiring them, and how she applies the logic of the dating world to setting standards with parents and pupils alike. Whether or not you agree with her approach, this conversation will push you to think harder about what genuine conviction in leadership actually looks like. Resources & Links Mentioned: Michaela Community School The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers, edited by Katharine Birbalsingh The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them by E.D. Hirsch Episode Partners International Curriculum Association Sisi Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. He is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world. You can find Shane on LinkedIn. We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Inside Britain's Strictest School | A Conversation with Katharine Birbalsingh
See All (205)

About

Strategic school leadership insights for education leaders who want to drive meaningful change and build thriving school communities. What if the most powerful leadership strategies were hiding in plain sight? Education Leaders uncovers the evidence-based approaches that separate truly effective school leaders from the rest. Through compelling interviews and strategic deep-dives, organisational coach Shane Leaning reveals the real challenges facing today's education leaders, and the practical solutions that actually work. Every other Tuesday, discover how renowned educators and thought leaders tackle school improvement, staff development, and cultural transformation. You'll learn actionable strategies you can implement immediately to build confidence in your leadership and create lasting impact in your school community. On alternate weeks, Shane delivers focused episodes that address the leadership challenges you face daily: managing diverse teams, driving innovation, building organisational identity, and implementing sustainable change. Each episode offers clear, research-backed frameworks for developing your leadership capacity. Whether you're a department head questioning your next move, an assistant principal navigating complexities of a big team, or a superintendent driving district-wide change, Education Leaders provides the strategic insights you need to lead with confidence. Consistently ranked #1 schools podcast in Education category across multiple regions. We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, head to https://educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

You Might Also Like