Choosing the right leadership behaviours to focus on is one of the most important decisions a leadership team makes.

Done well, it brings clarity, alignment, and momentum. Done poorly, it leads to overload, fragmentation, and surface-level change.

This page supports leadership teams in making deliberate, well-judged choices about which leadership behaviours to prioritise now, and how those choices fit into a longer school improvement journey.

How this process works

This process has two distinct phases:

1. Review – leaders complete the Leadership Behaviour Review in advance, providing a school-level view of how leadership behaviours are currently experienced.
2. Decide – the leadership team uses that information, alongside professional judgement and school priorities, to agree foundational and focus behaviours.

The tools below support these two phases.

Planning tools to support this process

Leadership Behaviour Review The review provides an aggregated, school-level picture of how consistently leadership behaviours are experienced across the school. Individual responses are not identified or shared. The purpose of the review is to: • surface patterns in leadership practice • highlight areas of strength and inconsistency • inform discussion, not make decisions on its own Leaders should complete the review ahead of the meeting so that discussion time can focus on priorities and next steps. Leadership Behaviour Review Form

Leadership behaviour focus meeting A concise chair’s agenda designed to structure the leadership meeting, guiding discussion from evidence to decisions and helping teams agree on foundation and focus leadership behaviours with clarity and discipline. Download PDF version

Leadership behaviour planning spreadsheet Use this spreadsheet during the leadership meeting to: • review all 54 leadership behaviours • agree on foundation behaviours that must underpin everything else • select two or three focus behaviours for the next leadership cycle • sketch likely areas of focus across future cycles Download Excel Spreadsheet Open Google Sheet

Leadership behaviour summaries for planning A concise, two-sentence summary of each leadership behaviour, designed to support discussion and decision-making. Use this alongside the spreadsheet, referring back to the book where deeper exploration is helpful. Download PDF version

Worked scenarios showing how leadership teams prioritise behaviours over time are available in the How to introduce Everyone Succeeds in your school guide.

Before you begin

Leadership teams often feel pressure to work on too many behaviours at once. While understandable, experience shows that embedding a small number of leadership behaviours well has far greater impact than spreading effort thinly.

This process is designed to:

• slow decision-making down
• create shared understanding
• protect leaders from overload
• build confidence in the choices made

The aim is not to fix everything, but to choose wisely.

Ahead of the meeting, the chair should email the Leadership Behaviour Review link to all leaders who will be attending and ask them to complete it in advance. This ensures the discussion is informed by a shared evidence base and allows meeting time to focus on priorities and decisions.

Step 1. Review the evidence and clarify current priorities

Before the meeting, leaders should have completed the Leadership Behaviour Review. This provides a school-level, aggregated view of how leadership behaviours are currently experienced and forms the evidence base for discussion.

In this step, use that evidence alongside professional judgement and your current school or trust priorities to agree a shared view of what matters most right now.

Discuss together:

• What are the most pressing challenges facing the school at this point?
• Where is leadership practice currently limiting progress?
• What would make the greatest difference to staff and pupils over the next six months?

The same leadership behaviour can be essential in one context and less important in another. This step ensures your choices are grounded in reality, not habit or preference.

Step 2. Review current leadership behaviours

This step should be informed by the Leadership Behaviour Review, but final judgements should be made through discussion, not scores alone. With priorities clear, review how consistently leadership behaviours are currently experienced across the school.

This is best informed by the Leadership Behaviour Review, which provides a school-level, aggregated view of leadership practice across the 54 behaviours.

When reviewing behaviours, ask:

“How consistently is this leadership behaviour enacted across leaders, teams, and situations in our school?”

Behaviours typically fall into one of three categories:

Embedded leadership behaviours

• Consistently enacted across leaders
• Hold up under pressure
• Visible without prompting

The bar here should be high. In many schools, there may be few or no behaviours that genuinely meet this standard.

Developing leadership behaviours

• Present but inconsistent
• Practice varies across teams or individuals
• Weakens at busy or pressurised points

These often represent the greatest opportunity for improvement.

Inconsistent leadership behaviours

• Expectations are unclear or uneven
• Practice breaks down easily
• The absence of the behaviour creates confusion or frustration

Left unaddressed, these behaviours can undermine other improvement work.

This step should be discussion-led, not documentation-heavy. Move at pace and avoid over-analysis.

Step 3. Identify foundational leadership behaviours

Identify a small number of foundational leadership behaviours.

These are behaviours that, given your current context, must underpin everything else leaders do.

Foundational behaviours:

• create trust and credibility
• make other behaviours possible
• are treated as always-on expectations, not rotating priorities

They are not optional and should be reinforced consistently across the leadership team.

Step 4. Select focus leadership behaviours

Select two or three focus leadership behaviours for the next leadership cycle.

These should be the behaviours that:

• matter most to current priorities
• will make the biggest difference if improved
• can realistically be embedded well through deliberate practice

Be explicit about which behaviours are not being focused on yet, and why. This protects leaders from overload and superficial implementation. Choose the focus leadership behaviours for the next leadership cycle.

Step 5. Plan ahead and take the long view

Leadership development is cumulative and long-term.

Leadership development is cumulative and long-term.

Use future cycles to sketch likely areas of focus over time, recognising that:

• priorities will shift
• plans will change
• behaviours will move between categories

This reinforces that leadership development is a slow burn, not an overnight fix, and helps leaders see how the full framework supports improvement over time.

From review to action

The output of this process should be a small number of clearly agreed leadership behaviours, owned collectively and embedded deliberately. Once leadership behaviour priorities are clear, the next step is deliberate implementation through leadership practice, coaching, and review.

Guidance on introducing the framework in schools and trusts provides practical support on:

• introducing behaviours to leadership teams
• aligning focus with the school year
• creating the conditions for behaviours to become everyday habits

Support and guidance

If you would value a short conversation to support planning or decision-making, you are welcome to book a 30-minute telephone call with Steve Margetts, author of Everyone Succeeds.

This conversation can help you:

• clarify priorities
• test your thinking
• and build confidence in the choices you are making
  

You can get in touch with Steve at hello@everyone-succeeds.com

Next steps

Once leadership behaviour priorities are clear, the next step is to embed them deliberately through leadership practice, coaching, and review.

The How to introduce in your school and How to introduce in your trust pages provides a practical guide to doing this well, including how to introduce the framework to leadership teams, align behaviours with the school year, and create the conditions for behaviours to become everyday habits.