Y4. Humility
Remain open to learning and feedback. Humility strengthens leadership impact.
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 Humility toolkit to seek feedback, admit mistakes openly, and model learning for your team.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Humility Coach and Practise Frameworks to strengthen the behaviour through reflection on learning and openness, rehearsing the admission of limits so growth 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
Good to Great – Jim Collins (2001).
This text deepens your understanding by illustrating how humility, when paired with resolve, creates exceptional, values-driven leadership. 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. London: Random House Business.
Fullan, M. (2001) Leading in a Culture of Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Harris, A. (2004) Distributed leadership and school improvement: Leading or misleading? Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 32(1), pp.11-24.
Schein, E.H. (2013) Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.