S12. Lead for lasting excellence
Balance adaptation with consistency. Long term success depends on knowing when to evolve and when to hold firm.
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 Lead for Lasting Excellence toolkit to identify the routines that drive long-term success and refresh them before drift takes hold.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Lead for lasting excellence Coach and Practise Frameworks to develop this behaviour through clear action steps, reflection questions, and focused practice.
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).
Describes the Flywheel Effect – momentum from consistent, reinforcing actions. Buy the book.
References from the Everyone Succeeds book
Collins, J., (2001). Good to Great (Why some companies make the leap and others don’t). Random House.
Collins, J. (2011). How the Mighty Fall. Harper Collins.
Handy, C.B. (1990). The age of unreason. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Hargreaves, A. and Fink, D. (2006). Sustainable Leadership. Hoboken: Wiley.