L4. Make it happen
Turn plans into action. Effective leaders remove barriers and follow through.
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 Make It Happen toolkit to break tasks into clear steps, remove barriers, and execute with pace and precision.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Make it happen Coach and Practise Frameworks to strengthen the behaviour through coaching questions about momentum and decisive action, rehearsing the move from talk to execution so progress accelerates.
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
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done – Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan (2002).
This text helps you apply the behaviour by showing how clarity, ownership and disciplined follow-through lead to consistent delivery. Buy the book.
References from the Everyone Succeeds book
Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.