T3. Get the right people on the bus
Align roles with strengths. The right people in the right places drive success.
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 Get the Right People on the Bus toolkit to assess your team strategically, identify gaps, and make decisions that strengthen long-term performance.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Get the right people on the bus Coach and Practise Frameworks to strengthen the behaviour through reflection on roles and fit, rehearsing deployment decisions so strengths are used well.
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
Good to Great – Jim Collins (2001).
This book supports the behaviour by explaining how selecting the right people and roles creates the foundation for exceptional performance. Buy the book.
References from the Everyone Succeeds book
Bryar, C. and Carr, B., (2021). Working backwards: Insights, stories, and secrets from inside Amazon. Pan Macmillan.
Collins, J., (2001) Good to Great (Why some companies make the leap and others don’t). Random House.
Edmondson, Amy C. (2011). Why Teambuilding Fails and What We Can Do About It. Harvard Business Review, September 2011. (Harvard Business Review Affiliation)
Pink, D.H., (2022). Drive. Ayros.