S2. Tell the story
Share your strategy through clear and compelling narratives. Stories connect people to purpose and help strategic goals feel real and motivating.
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 Tell the Story toolkit to craft a compelling narrative that connects personal motivation, shared values, and urgent action so people feel inspired to move with you.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Tell the story Coach and Practise Frameworks to strengthen the behaviour through action steps and coaching questions that sharpen narrative, sequencing, and emotional pull, practising the telling of clear, compelling stories that connect strategy to lived experience and build shared meaning.
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
What Is Public Narrative? – Marshall Ganz (2016).
This text deepens your understanding of the behaviour by illustrating how structured storytelling motivates collective action, helping you frame narratives that move people towards a shared purpose. Open the article.
References from the Everyone Succeeds book
Brown, B., (2015). Daring greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent, and lead. Penguin.
Ganz, M. (2011). ‘Public Narrative, Collective Action, and Power’. In Odugbemi, S. and Lee, T. (eds) Accountability Through Public Opinion: From Inertia to Public Action. Washington D.C: The World Bank.