L11. Learn to bend
Adapt your approach to context and people. Flexibility improves impact.
Resources to support growth in this behaviour
Whether this behaviour has been chosen through Step 1. Diagnose, highlighted through reflection or coaching, or identified as a school or trust priority, you can now follow the steps below to develop and embed it in your daily leadership practice.
Step 2. Learn: Read Everyone Succeeds: 54 Leadership Behaviours to Transform Your School to understand what great leadership looks like in practice. Each behaviour is grounded in research and real examples from schools and businesses.
Step 3. Reflect: Use the Everyone Succeeds Workbook to apply ideas to your own context.
Guided reflection, practical actions, and space for planning turn understanding into improvement.
Step 4. Apply: Work through the Leadership Toolkit for this behaviour. Use the Learn to Bend toolkit to decide when to apply flexibility without compromising standards or values.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Learn to bend Coach and Practise Frameworks to strengthen the behaviour through reflection on principles and flexibility, rehearsing calm adaptation so progress continues under change.
These can be used individually or with colleagues to embed key behaviours.
Step 6. Plan: Set measurable goals using the 90 Day Leadership Planner.
Turn improvement into action by tracking your focus and progress over time, with completed examples for different career stages.
Step 7. Lead: Apply your learning to real situations through the Scenario Finder.
Over fifty scenarios link directly to the behaviours that help you solve the challenges that matter most in your school.
One book suggestion
Adaptive Leadership – Ronald Heifetz (2009).
This book deepens the behaviour by explaining when to hold firm, when to adapt and how to navigate complexity with flexibility. Buy the book.
References from the Everyone Succeeds book
Chughtai, M.S., Syed, F., Naseer, S. and Chinchilla, N., (2024). Role of adaptive leadership in learning organisations to boost organisational innovations with change self-efficacy. Current Psychology, 43(33), pp.27262-27281.