S11. Break through limits
Challenge assumptions about what is possible. Great leaders help teams move beyond perceived ceilings.
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 Break Through Limits toolkit to challenge limiting assumptions, imagine a 10x version of success, and take bold steps that move beyond the status quo.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Break through limits Coach and Practise Frameworks to strengthen the behaviour through reflection on constraints and action steps that encourage innovation, rehearsing the challenging of assumptions so perceived ceilings no longer cap ambition.
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
Great by Choice – Jim Collins & Morten Hansen (2011).
This text strengthens your practice by illustrating how bold thinking, disciplined experimentation and resilience enable leaders to achieve 10X results. Buy the book.
References from the Everyone Succeeds book
Pauline Rose Clance (1985). The Impostor Phenomenon. Peachtree Pub Limited.
Doidge, N. (2007). The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. Melbourne: Scribe.
Dweck, C.S., (2019). The New Psychology of Success.
Ericsson, A., (2016). Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Lemov, D., Woolway, E., Yezzi, K. and Heath, D. (2012). Practice perfect: 42 rules for getting better at getting better. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.