Education Leaders | The Chart-Topping School Leadership Podcast

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  Accountability or Surveillance? | A Conversation with Tyrone Ruth 03.08.2026 28min

  Ask a teacher how many people looked at their exercise books last year and you might be surprised by the number. Tyrone Ruth counted his: fifteen different people, in a single academic year. In this episode, Tyrone, a teacher-turned-senior-leader with experience across the UK and the Middle East, unpacks what he calls the hidden curriculum of surveillance: the quiet network of book looks, learning walks, data drops and digital check-ins that most schools treat as completely normal. He argues this constant, low-level monitoring is doing real damage to teachers, even when no single leader intends any harm.You'll hear why Tyrone thinks there's a critical difference between professional accountability and a surveillance culture rooted in mistrust, and how that distinction changes the way a school should ask questions of its staff. Tyrone shares the story of an eleven-page marking policy, explains why teachers end up producing evidence rather than teaching, and uses Bentham's Panopticon to describe how simply feeling watched changes behaviour. Shane and Tyrone also get into what school leaders can actually do about it, starting with a simple but uncomfortable exercise: listing everything you currently monitor and asking who it's really for.Resources & Links Mentioned:Tyrone Ruth on LinkedInPanopticon (Jeremy Bentham) — BritannicaEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Education Leaders LIVE | July Reflections 30.07.2026 49min

  This is a bonus episode. Every last Thursday of the month, Shane sits down with Chris Scorer to pick apart the themes from the month's podcast guests, the stuff that stuck with them, the bits they disagreed on, and where it all leads. If you listen to the main feed, this is your chance to hear those conversations chewed over properly.It's a quieter one this month, summer holidays for a good chunk of the northern hemisphere, and Chris is back after an eventful July of his own. But two short episodes turned into a properly meaty conversation, and one thread runs right through it: we do things instinctively in the classroom that we somehow forget to do when we're leading adults.They start with defensive teachers. Chris flips Shane's original question on its head, not "have you had a defensive teacher?" but "have you been one, and why does the system make us feel that way?" That leads somewhere useful. Defensiveness isn't a character flaw, it's natural, and often it's a symptom of a place that's short on psychological safety rather than a problem with the person in front of you. Shane digs into the practical side, three-point communication and the side-by-side effect, why a conversation in a car feels easier than one across a desk, and why British parliament sits the way it does. There's a lovely story about a CEO who solved everything with a pen and a bit of paper. And a genuinely practical bit for leaders: what do you actually do when you've tried all the right things and the defensiveness still won't shift?The Zaretta Hammond episode gives them plenty to sit with. Her point that learning is meant to be messy, the liminal spaces, the trapeze hanging in mid-air, and the way our results pressure tempts us to over-scaffold and quietly rob students of the struggle they need. Chris connects it to leadership: we promote strong administrators who like their bookshelves ordered by colour, then wonder why nobody feels safe to make mistakes. Shane makes the case for Zaretta as someone who holds the complexity, neither camp in the tired progressive-versus-traditional split. And there's the first pancake, which is always pants, and what that tells us about growth.The best tangent is about collaboration. Why does teaching leave people so alone? Chris brings up the group planning built into Chinese domestic schools. Shane picks it up with Shanghai maths, why importing the teacher without the conditions was an expensive flop, and how healthcare has proper supervision while teaching makes do with line management and a PD slot. They land on staff room culture, professional supervision, and Shane's argument that the problem was never the idea, it's the system that leaves teachers no time to use it.They close on the big one. Education second only to medicine, until someone in a Bucharest audience of 500 gently corrected Chris: education matters more, because medicine is about the here and now, and education is about the here, now and ever after. Worth the listen for that line alone.Episodes mentioned in this conversation:How to Defuse Defensive Teachers (solo episode) → /podcast/167/Management Mastery (Poppy Nobes) → /podcast/168/Rethinking Equity Through Learning Science (Zaretta Hammond) → /podcast/169/10 Million Views Later (Tom Sherrington, a rerun pick from Skyler Rose) → /podcast/170/What are Leadership Levers? (solo episode) → /podcast/171/Coming up next month:Tyrone Ruth on how accountability can freeze a school in its tracks, and the brilliant Jim Knight of the Instructional Coaching Group on getting back to basics with instructional coaching. Plus a few solo episodes. Keep an eye on the feed.Join us live:We broadcast Education Leaders Live on the last Thursday of every month on LinkedIn and YouTube, or at educationleaders.live. Come and bring your thoughts, your pushback, and your own stories from the field. That's what the show's for.Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  What are Leadership Levers? 27.07.2026 12min

  Seventeen weeks into writing a weekly newsletter on LinkedIn, Shane has landed on a simple but powerful idea: leadership levers. This episode explains what makes a lever different from a project or a habit, why it has to be small enough to do tomorrow morning without telling anyone, and why it has to live inside something already in your week, like a meeting or a handover. Drawing on John Sweller's research on cognitive load and Stephen Rogelberg's studies on meetings, Shane makes the case that most leadership problems aren't solved by trying harder, but by placing effort somewhere better.You'll learn why a single sentence sent before a meeting can prevent hours of follow-up confusion, and why two minutes at the end of a meeting assigning names to actions can stop decisions turning into vague memories. Shane also shares how learning a framework for difficult conversations freed up enough mental space to actually listen better, rather than working out the opening line from scratch every time. If you're looking for practical, repeatable moves rather than another big initiative, this episode gives you a way to think about where to place your effort for maximum return.Resources & Links Mentioned:Education Leaders Intensive programmeEpisode Partners:International Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  10 Million Views Later | A Conversation with Tom Sherrington 20.07.2026 45min

  This week, we're revisiting a favourite from the archives, recorded back when this podcast was still called Global Ed Leaders. Shane sits down with Tom Sherrington, the former headteacher turned writer, speaker and co-author of the Teaching WalkThrus series, to trace how he built one of the biggest audiences in education from a single WordPress blog in 2012. Tom explains why he never planned any of it, how a joke Twitter handle became his brand for years, and why he still presses publish every time expecting nobody to read it.You'll hear why Tom believes the best blog posts are the honest ones, including the post about his own OFSTED experience that cost him one speaking invitation and won him another. Tom shares his view on why anonymous social media accounts don't deserve a reply, why he refuses to criticise a school from the outside, and what he'd tell a school leader starting out today. If you've ever wondered whether putting your voice out there is worth the risk, this conversation will change how you think about it.Resources & Links Mentioned:Tom Sherrington's blog, teacherhead.comTeaching WalkThrus, with Oliver CaviglioliEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Rethinking Equity Through Learning Science | A Conversation with Zaretta Hammond 14.07.2026 33min

  Zaretta Hammond wants school leaders to stop treating change as a straight line. In this conversation, the author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain explains why growth actually moves in a spiral, why there's always a dip before things get better, and why so many educators are caught off guard by that dip because the system rarely rewards the messiness of learning. She unpacks the idea of "liminal spaces," the uncomfortable in-between moments where old skills are falling away and new ones haven't settled yet, and argues that school leaders need real skill in guiding people through them, not just managing productivity.You'll learn why Zaretta believes "we cannot PD our way out of this learning crisis," what she calls the "theory of the first pancake," and why she thinks evaluation should ask teachers what they've experimented with rather than whether they delivered a polished lesson. Zaretta also breaks down the difference between rapport and alliance in the teacher-student relationship, and why closing achievement gaps depends on combining cognitive science with culturally responsive teaching rather than treating them as separate camps. If you've ever wondered why some professional development sessions leave your staff buzzing but change nothing back in the classroom, this conversation explains why, and what to do instead.Resources & Links MentionedZaretta Hammond's Ready for RigorZaretta Hammond on LinkedInCulturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain (book)James Nottingham's Learning PitRichard Elmore's instructional core (Harvard Graduate School of Education)Episode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Management Mastery | A Conversation with Poppy Nobes 06.07.2026 32min

  Most schools pour resources into developing brilliant teachers and then promote those same people into management roles with almost no preparation for what comes next. This episode centres on a genuinely exciting initiative: Management Mastery, an in-house leadership development programme created by Poppy Nobes, Head of Professional Development at Aldridge Education. Poppy built the programme after recognising a gap that formal qualifications like NPQs simply can't fill; the operational, contextual, and deeply practical side of managing people in your specific organisation. From handling difficult conversations to structuring communication channels, Management Mastery is designed to make the implicit explicit.You'll hear how Poppy and her team started by working backwards from the problems they were actually seeing in their workforce, grievances, repeated sick leave, unsupported staff, and designed a programme around the skills leaders needed to prevent them. Shane and Poppy discuss why practice-based professional development is just as vital for managers as it is for classroom teachers, the power of a shared language (including the "balcony and dance floor" concept that keeps coming up in their cohort), and why being geographically spread across ten schools from Brighton to Durham makes community-building all the more essential. If you've ever wondered whether your organisation has quietly assumed that leadership development is covered, this conversation will make you think again.Resources & Links Mentioned:Aldridge EducationPoppy Nobes on LinkedInTeach First Golden Thread CoursesEpisode Partners:International Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  How to Defuse Defensive Teachers 29.06.2026 10min

  technique called three-point communication that changes the physical dynamic of feedback conversations before a single word is spoken. Drawing on the instructional coaching research of Jim Knight, Parker Palmer's writing on how the soul approaches truth sideways, and well-established findings on side-by-side versus face-to-face conversation, Shane makes the case that a lot of the time, it isn't the words that trigger defensiveness; it's where people are sitting.You'll learn exactly what counts as a "third point" and how to use one, whether you're working from a teaching resource, a marked book, a printed data sheet, or nothing more than a scrap of paper. Shane also shares the story behind this habit, learning from leader Stacy Wallace, who always had a piece of paper on the table, and points to Adam Kohlbeck and Sarah Cottinghatt's Coaching Cuts series as a real-world example of the technique done well. If feedback conversations regularly turn into something you're managing rather than something that's actually helping, this is the episode to listen to before your next difficult chat.Resources & Links MentionedJim Knight's Instructional Coaching GroupTeaching Walkthrus (Harry Fletcher-Wood & Peps Mccrea)Coaching Cuts by Adam Kohlbeck and Sarah CottinghattEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Education Leaders LIVE | June Reflections 25.06.2026 47min

  This is a bonus episoded. Join us every month for Education Leaders Live, where we explore key insights from our recent podcast episodes, including the importance of adaptability in leadership, the role of research in education, and how to foster a community of learning.Key takeaways:* Discover what leaders can learn from cuttlefish and the challenges of adapting to different environments.* Understand the significance of research in education and how to apply it effectively in your classroom.* Learn about the journey of Patrice Bain and her impact on educational practices.Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  When Scientists Enter Your Classroom | A Conversation with Patrice Bain 22.06.2026 32min

  Patrice Bain's classroom was the first in the United States where cognitive scientists studied how children actually learn, not in a university laboratory, but with real students in a real school. That extraordinary starting point left her feeling completely alone professionally, with no colleagues to talk to and no community to turn to. This episode is for every teacher or leader who has ever felt that there are two education worlds: the one inside their school, and the wider world of research and ideas that seems just out of reach. You'll learn why reaching out to researchers, authors, and bloggers is far less daunting than it feels, and why the science of learning community is one of the most genuinely welcoming in education. Patrice shares a powerful question every school leader can ask that can transform professional culture overnight. If you lead a school and want your teachers to stop feeling like islands, this conversation will give you the practical nudge you need to press play. Resources & Links Mentioned:Patrice Bain's websitePatrice Bain on LinkedInPowerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of LearningBlake Harvard — The Effortful EducatorAndrew Watson — Translate the BrainPooja Agarwal — RetrievalPractice.org Episode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  How to Catch a Straw Man 15.06.2026 15min

  You float a reasonable idea in a meeting and within seconds, you're defending a plan you never made. This episode is about the straw man argument: what it is, where it shows up in schools, and why it quietly kills good decisions. Shane breaks down the four distinct forms it takes, from the classic distortion of what you actually said, to the hollow man (an opponent who doesn't even exist), the weak man (attacking the flimsiest version of a concern as though it speaks for everyone), and the iron man (puffing up your own idea so nobody dares question it). These aren't abstract philosophy; they show up in staff meetings, governor conversations, parent emails, and appraisal discussions wherever there's a bit of heat and a disagreement to avoid.You'll learn to spot a straw man while it's still happening using five practical tells, including the physical jolt of "that's not what I said," the telltale phrases like "so you're saying" or "so you don't care about," and the moment extreme words like "scrap," "never," or "abandon" start appearing in place of the measured thing you actually proposed. Shane then walks through a three-step response: don't take the bait, calmly reclaim your real position, and redirect to the genuine question. If you've ever left a meeting frustrated because a sensible idea turned into a monster you never built, this episode gives you the tools to stop that from happening again.Episode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Beyond 'Research Says' | A Conversation with Andrew Watson 08.06.2026 30min

  When someone tells you "research says you should be doing this," what should you actually do with that? Andrew Watson, educator, author, and founder of Translate the Brain, has spent fifteen years studying how cognitive psychology research does and doesn't apply inside real classrooms, and his answer might surprise you. In this conversation, Shane and Andrew tackle one of the most persistent tensions in school leadership: how to take research seriously without letting it override your professional judgement, your school's context, or your teachers' expertise. Andrew draws on everything from retrieval practice to the thoroughly debunked learning styles debate to show why "research-based" is a starting point for a conversation, not the end of one. You'll learn the single question to ask whenever someone cites a study (and why it's more useful than pushback), why phrases like "all the research shows" are actually a red flag rather than a reassurance, and how to help a teacher who brings you exciting new evidence think it through rigorously without dismissing their enthusiasm. Andrew also shares his core mantra for working with schools: don't just do this thing, think this way. If you're a leader trying to build a healthier relationship between evidence and practice in your school, this conversation gives you a practical framework for doing exactly that. Resources & links mentioned Andrew Watson's Translate the BrainAndrew Watson on LinkedInAndrew Watson's Learning and the Brain blogEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  What can leaders learn from cuttlefish? 01.06.2026 8min

  This episode tackles one of the quietest drains in school leadership: performing a version of yourself that isn't real. Shane introduces the cuttlefish dilemma, the pattern where leaders adapt their identity to fit a borrowed picture of what leadership is supposed to look like, and explains exactly why that performance compounds cognitive overload and leaves you running on empty by midweek. It matters now because leadership development programmes often reinforce this by handing leaders a mould to fit rather than helping them lead from what they already bring. You'll learn why starting with your values before any strategy or change project is the move that changes everything, and how your classroom experience holds more leadership instinct than you've probably been shown how to use. Shane shares what he saw across twenty leaders in his last coaching intensive, where the shift from performing to genuinely leading as themselves produced the most significant breakthroughs of the ten weeks. If you've ever felt like the job is heavier than it should be, this episode will help you work out exactly why.Episode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Education Leaders LIVE | May Reflections 28.05.2026 49min

  This is a bonus episode. Every last Thursday of the month, Shane sits down with Chris Scorer to pick apart the themes from the month's podcast guests, the stuff that stuck with them, the bits they disagreed on, and where it all leads. If you listen to the main feed, this is your chance to hear those conversations chewed over properly.This month was a big one. Chris and Shane get into four very different episodes and find a thread running through all of them: the gap between what we know we should do in schools and the time and space we're actually given to do it.They start with the new heads, Chris Passey and Sam Crome, and why so few serving leaders feel able to talk openly about the job. Shane makes the case that there's a real, legitimate barrier there, you can't always speak freely when you feel beholden to a school's brand. Chris reflects on the moment he became a deputy head and people simply stopped being honest with him. Then there's Sam's line that keeps coming up: assumptions are the death of good advice.From there it widens out. Is the relentless workload unique to education, or is it just how most of us work now? Shane pushes back on the martyrdom narrative (his wife's a journalist, he knows plenty of nurses and doctors living the same way) and gets genuinely excited about four-day weeks and flexible working done properly. Chris, ever the firebrand, wonders aloud whether schools are built for administrative comfort rather than pedagogy, with a nod to Ken Robinson and a cheerful threat to wear a Che Guevara t-shirt.The Nancy Weinstein episode gives them plenty to dig into. Her data on 35,000 students shows verbal memory roughly halved and flexible thinking dropping off a cliff since the pandemic, and worryingly, teachers are struggling to think flexibly too. The hopeful bit: the tools already exist. We don't need new tricks, we need the time to use the ones we've got. Shane introduces his favourite term, the iatrogenic effect, the idea that every change you make carries a side effect somewhere else (with a brilliant tangent about a chiropractor fixing his jaw and wrecking his back).They close on Clare Garey and sustainability, where three-quarters of young people are worried about the planet and 22% are very worried. Clare's argument is that this makes climate a wellbeing issue, not just an environmental one, and that the answer is student-led, bottom-up change. The yogurt pot story is worth the listen on its own. As Clare puts it, the change isn't the event, the habit shift is.Episodes mentioned in this conversation:Heads Who Lead Beyond School (Chris Passey & Sam Crome) → https://shaneleaning.com/podcast/159Why Saying No Feels So Hard (solo episode) → https://shaneleaning.com/podcast/160What the Pandemic Did to Student Brains (Nancy Weinstein) → https://shaneleaning.com/podcast/161Sustainability in Schools (Clare Garey) → https://shaneleaning.com/podcast/162Coming up next month:Andrew Watson on the science of learning and his Goldilocks Map, and the wonderful Patrice Bain on the power of community. Keep an eye on the feed.Join us live: We broadcast Education Leaders Live on the last Thursday of every month on LinkedIn and YouTube, or at educationleaders.live. Come and bring your thoughts, your pushback, and your own stories from the field. That's what the show's for.Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  What Schools Get Wrong on Sustainability | A Conversation with Clare Garey 25.05.2026 30min

  Three-quarters of children are worried about the state of the planet and Clare Garey argues that makes sustainability not just an environmental issue, but a wellbeing one. In this conversation, Clare, founder of Sustainability at School, challenges the idea that hanging up an eco poster or marking Earth Day is enough. Drawing on her work with international schools across Spain, India, Singapore and beyond, she makes the case that young people who learn about climate change but have no opportunity to take real action become disempowered and that school leaders have the ability to change that. You'll learn why trying to tackle every sustainability issue at once leads to overwhelm and why choosing one focused theme in year one is the most powerful thing a school can do. Clare walks through the four pillars that stop sustainability becoming just another initiative; a clear "why", a representative team, a simple action plan, and treating it with the same strategic weight as any curriculum change. You'll also hear why language matters more than leaders realise (calling it a "project" is, in Clare's words, "curtains"), how students in Hyderabad reduced their school's energy consumption by 11% by asking the operations team for monthly data, and how a school in Barcelona is on track to eliminate 250,000 single-use yogurt pots in a single year. If sustainability has felt overwhelming or abstract for your school, this conversation will make it feel both urgent and entirely achievable. Resources & Links Mentioned:Sustainability at SchoolClare Garey on LinkedInClare Garey's WorkbookEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  What the Pandemic Did to Student Brains | A Conversation with Nancy Weinstein 18.05.2026 30min

  If you've noticed that students seem different since the pandemic and you're not sure what to do about it, this episode gives you real answers. Nancy Weinstein, Chief Innovation Officer at Otus and co-founder of MindPrint, shares findings from a longitudinal study of 35,000 students aged 8 to 21, tracking cognitive skills from 2015 through and beyond the pandemic. The data reveals something most school leaders haven't yet seen: the biggest change in students isn't attention, which is what teachers almost universally report, it's verbal memory, with the average student now retaining roughly half of what they would have five years ago. You'll learn why flexible thinking has dropped significantly and what that means for how students respond to feedback in the classroom, why AI may be compounding these challenges, and where to find evidence-based strategies that already exist and work. Nancy also shares a surprising finding: teachers showed similar cognitive shifts to their students, particularly in flexible thinking, which helps explain some of the staffing and morale challenges school leaders have been navigating. If you want to move from "kids are different" to actually knowing what to do about it, this conversation is essential listening. Resources & Links Mentioned:MindPrint Learning strategies and resourcesNancy Weinstein on LinkedInThe Empowered Student by Nancy Weinstein (CAST Publishing, 2018)John Hattie's Visible LearningJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Why Saying No Feels So Hard 11.05.2026 25min

  Saying yes is one of the most common habits among school leaders, and most of the time it happens automatically, without conscious thought. In this solo episode, Shane reflects on a conversation with a fellow educator that revealed they shared the exact same challenge: both had said yes far too much, and both were feeling the weight of it. Drawing on Adam Grant's Give and Take and the recent work of Cornell researcher Sunita Sah, Shane looks at why school leaders are wired to say yes, four specific psychological reasons that drive that habit, and the real costs it creates for your team, your relationships, and your own visibility as a leader. You'll learn how to replace the automatic yes with what Shane calls the trade-off response, a four-step approach that gives your boss more information rather than a flat refusal. Shane walks through the steps, acknowledge the priority, make your current load visible, name the trade-off, and hand the decision back, with real examples from his own career, including one during COVID when even the trade-off response didn't get him off the hook. If you've ever walked away from a conversation thinking "why did I just say yes to that?", this episode is the honest, practical starting point you've been looking for. Resources & Links Mentioned:Adam Grant's Give and TakeSunita Sah's DefyShane Leaning's Education Leaders IntensiveEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Heads Who Lead Beyond School | A Conversation with Chris Passey and Sam Crome 04.05.2026 31min

  What does it really take to step into public thought leadership as a headteacher and what do consultants and trust leaders get wrong when they walk into schools? In this episode, Shane is joined by Chris Passey, Headteacher at Kimichi School and co-host of the Coaching Unpacked podcast series, and Sam Crome, Interim Headteacher and Director of Education for Xavier Catholic Education Trust, for an honest conversation about professional voice, courage, and the assumptions that undermine good support. Both guests have built a presence beyond their schools through writing, podcasting, and public commentary, and they share what it actually took to get there. You'll hear Chris reflect on the moment he deleted a tweet and "ran away and hid under a rock" and what he'd do differently now. Sam makes a compelling case that assumptions are the death of good advice, drawing on his coaching training to explain why curious questions outperform confident recommendations every time. If you're a school leader wondering whether your voice has value, or a consultant wanting to support schools more effectively, this conversation will give you something genuinely useful to take back to your desk. Resources & Links Mentioned:Chris Passey on LinkedInSam Crome on LinkedInKimichi SchoolThe Power of Teams by Sam CromeSucceeding as a Deputy Head by Chris PasseyEpisode PartnersInternational Leaders ConferenceSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Education Leaders LIVE | April Reflections 01.05.2026 47min

  April was a packed month on the Education Leaders podcast. Five episodes, four guests, and a thread that quietly ran through all of them: the value of small, listened-to, incremental change.Chris Scorer joined me for our monthly live show to make sense of it all. Here's what landed.Listening before leading. Richard Wheadon's episode on his leadership journey hit hardest here. Richard's been honest about arriving at a new school full of confidence in approaches that had worked before, only to find the school wasn't ready to hear them. Chris reflected on his own version of that story from his deputy head days. The lesson Richard pulls out, that the relationship has to flip and you're the one who needs to understand them first, is something most leaders quote at interview but find genuinely hard once the pressure to deliver kicks in.Cognitive load isn't only a classroom concept. Meg Lee's episode on the science of leading drew the parallel cleanly. We'd never overload our students the way we routinely overload our teachers. Chris had sharper questions about where standardisation tips over into removing teacher agency. There's a real risk that well-intentioned alignment becomes content delivery dressed up as consistency.The story I shared that fell apart in real time. I told one from a large primary school I worked in years ago, where they standardised planning to save teacher time. Some teachers delivered the lessons rigidly. Some scrapped them and rebuilt from scratch. Only a handful actually did what the school intended. Good intention, awful side effect. Wise leadership might have started with a consultation rather than an assumption.Curiosity as a North Star. Melati Wijsen, founder of Bye Bye Plastic Bags and Youthtopia, took us across to the Netherlands and Bali. Chris flagged the bit that surprised both of us: Melati's gratitude to teachers who didn't let her off the hook, even when she was already running a charity in her teens. There's a real lesson in how Green School Bali holds structure and freedom together. Her book, Change Starts Now, came out a month before mine and happens to be the same colour, which I'm still slightly bitter about.Vulnerability isn't optional. Julia Bialeski's episode on leading through imposter syndrome went live on Tuesday and is already the most downloaded of the month. Chris and I both copped to feeling it ourselves. Julia's framing of the panic, the public face, and the modelling cost we pay when we hide it from staff and students ties straight back to Richard's journey and to my solo episode on post-decision doubt. The thread underneath all of it: if we can't sit with not knowing, we end up performing certainty instead of building it.Episodes mentionedMeg Lee | The Science of Leading: shaneleaning.com/podcast/154Richard Wheadon | The Danger of Getting Comfortable: shaneleaning.com/podcast/155. Richard's book Learning Habits (Routledge) is well worth your time.Melati Wijsen | How Schools Can Grow Young Changemakers: shaneleaning.com/podcast/156. Melati's book Change Starts Now collects 100 lessons from over a decade on the frontline.Solo | The Science Behind Post-Decision Doubt: shaneleaning.com/podcast/157Julia Bialeski | Leading Through Imposter Syndrome: shaneleaning.com/podcast/158. Julia is also the author of Leading with Grace.Join us liveWe do this on the last Thursday of every month at educationleaders.live. Come and bring your questions. The live chat is genuinely the best part of the show.Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Leading Through Imposter Syndrome | A Conversation with Julia Bialeski 27.04.2026 35min

  Most school leaders have felt it at some point: that quiet, nagging suspicion that everyone else is more capable, better prepared, and more deserving of the role. Julia Bialeski knows it well. In the spring of 2019, she walked into her first principal job with a smile on her face and panic in her chest, presenting excitement to the world while privately wondering when everyone around her would figure out she wasn't good enough. In this conversation, Julia, educator, district leader, career coach, and author of Leading with Grace, talks honestly about why imposter syndrome hits school leaders so hard, why the loneliness of the job makes it worse, and why the profession's retention crisis has everything to do with the leadership models we put in front of the people coming up behind us. Julia shares two practical strategies that have worked for her over years in leadership: a daily learning log that helps you end the day focused on what you gained rather than what you still don't know, and the "smile file", a simple physical collection of notes, cards, and messages that she has carried with her for over a decade and reached for on her hardest days. She also shares the question that changed how she thinks about new roles and challenges: not "am I good enough for this?" but "why not me?" If you've ever sat in a leadership role quietly wondering whether you really belong there, this conversation is worth your time. Resources & Links Mentioned:Julia Bialeski on LinkedInLeading with Grace by Julia BialeskiEpisode PartnersInternational Leaders ConferenceSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  The Science Behind Post-Decision Doubt 20.04.2026 13min

  That sickly feeling after a tough leadership call isn't your intuition warning you that you got it wrong and this episode explains exactly why. Drawing on Leon Festinger's 1957 work on cognitive dissonance, a 2021 meta-analysis from Hebrew University, and Kahneman and Tversky's research on loss aversion, Shane reframes one of the most common experiences in school leadership: the quiet panic that shows up on the sofa after a hard decision. If you've ever drafted a softening email at 11pm or lain awake running alternate endings, this one is for you. You'll learn why that post-decision discomfort is a receipt, not a warning, proof that your brain is doing the work of committing, not evidence that you chose wrong. Shane also explains why the loudest complaints after a change are predictably loud (loss aversion means losses feel twice as heavy as gains), and why suppressing the discomfort actually makes you a worse leader in the room. The practical takeaway is a single written exercise you can do this week that won't make the feeling stop, but will change what it means to you. Resources & Links Mentioned:Leon Festinger's A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957)Episode PartnersInternational Leaders ConferenceSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.