L9. Use the checklist
Create systems that reduce error and inconsistency. Checklists support high standards.
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 Checklist toolkit to define the non-negotiables for key processes and ensure consistency and quality every time.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Use the checklist Coach and Practise Frameworks to strengthen the behaviour through action steps that standardise key processes, practising disciplined execution so errors and variation reduce.
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
The Checklist Manifesto – Atul Gawande (2009).
This book helps you apply the behaviour by demonstrating how structured tools reduce error and increase consistency in complex environments. Buy the book.
References from the Everyone Succeeds book
Clark, R. E. (2008). Building expertise: Cognitive methods for training and performance improvement. 2nd edn. Washington, DC: International Society for Performance Improvement.
Gawande, A. (2009). The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.