Education Leaders | The Chart-Topping School Leadership Podcast

Epizódy

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  Why Your Open Door Policy Fails 07.09.2026 10min

  Shane opens this episode by naming a habit most school leaders share: telling their team "my door is always open," then wondering why staff still hesitate to bring problems to them. He argues these phrases feel generous but give people nothing concrete to act on, leaving new starters and existing team members to guess how you actually want to be approached. Drawing on a 2013 field study of over 600 call centre employees, Shane shows how a single day of onboarding, focused on staff rather than company values, cut turnover by nearly a third within six months.You'll learn three specific things to tell your team in your very first meeting this year: how to reach you and how quickly you'll genuinely reply, the specific situations you want flagged before they escalate, and how you behave under pressure so people stop having to work it out by trial and error. Shane also shares his own example of going quiet under stress and warns against the two ways this approach usually falls apart. If you want a practical, low-cost way to replace vague reassurances with something your team can use, this episode gives you the exact script.Resources & Links Mentioned:Cable, Gino & Staats (2013) study on employee onboarding and identityEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  What can Leaders Learn from Architects? | A Conversation with Phil Idle 01.09.2026 32min

  This episode explores what happens when school leaders stop starting a building project with a room count and start with a harder question about who their students are becoming. Phil, a Director at EIW Architects and past International Chair of the Association for Learning Environments, has spent more than thirty years watching how classrooms, corridors and timetables quietly shape behaviour, belonging and identity. If you are planning a new build, an expansion, or simply rethinking how your existing spaces reflect your school's values, this conversation offers a genuinely different starting point.You'll learn why treating a design brief as a fixed checklist can trap a school in yesterday's thinking, and how Nanjing International School flipped that process by writing a "Dear Architect" document about beliefs rather than room specifications. Phil shares the story of a project in rural Tanzania that turned his team from experts into learners, and explains why risk avoidance has quietly become a measure of "responsible" leadership at the expense of better design. Shane and Phil also discuss why architecture and school leadership are really the same discipline in disguise, both shaping how humans learn, belong and flourish together. If you've ever wondered what your school's corridors are secretly saying about what you believe, this conversation will change how you look at your own building.Resources & Links Mentioned:EIW ArchitectsPhilip Idle on LinkedInSarah Williams Goldhagen's short film "What Design Can Do"Jay Shetty's "On Purpose" podcastDr Etienne Wenger-Trayner on communities of practiceAssociation for Learning Environments (A4LE)Episode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Inside Britain's Strictest School | A Conversation with Katharine Birbalsingh 25.08.2026 27min

  This week, we're revisiting a favourite from the archives. Shane sits down with Katharine Birbalsingh, founder and headmistress of Michaela Community School, the free school in a converted Wembley office block that has posted the highest Progress 8 scores in England for three consecutive years. Katharine explains why she's never once used an agenda in a meeting, why simplicity beats choice in almost every part of school life, and why she believes real autonomy only works when staff genuinely own what they're building together.You'll hear the ice cream cone analogy Katharine uses to explain why schools quietly become too complicated over time, why she deliberately warns candidates about the parts of Michaela they might not like before hiring them, and how she applies the logic of the dating world to setting standards with parents and pupils alike. Whether or not you agree with her approach, this conversation will push you to think harder about what genuine conviction in leadership actually looks like.Resources & Links Mentioned:Michaela Community SchoolThe Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers, edited by Katharine BirbalsinghThe Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them by E.D. HirschEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Stop Telling Teachers What to Do | A Conversation with Jim Knight 17.08.2026 37min

  When a teacher in South Carolina hit 86% on a goal she had set for herself, her school moved off the state's lowest-performing list and the state department called to ask how she had done it. In this episode, Jim Knight, founder of the Instructional Coaching Group and the person who coined the term "instructional coaching", explains why that result had almost nothing to do with the teaching strategy involved. Jim has spent thirty years researching professional learning at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning, and he brings that research to a frank conversation about why so much well-meaning coaching quietly deprofessionalises the very teachers it is meant to support.You'll learn why Jim treats every coaching relationship as a partnership rather than an instruction, and why even experienced, well-intentioned leaders can slide into telling without noticing they are doing it. Jim walks Shane through the four conversations that move a teacher from watching video of their own classroom to setting a measurable, student-focused goal, using a real example of a teacher whose exit-ticket scores climbed once she and her coach chose cooperative learning strategies together. Along the way, he explains why Richard Boyatzis describes bad goal-setting as being a "helpful bully", and why the satisfaction of giving advice is not the same thing as doing right by the people you lead. If you have ever wondered whether your instinct to fix things for your staff is helping them or holding them back, this conversation offers a clear, research-backed alternative.Resources & Links Mentioned:Jim Knight's Instructional Coaching GroupJim Knight on LinkedInJim Knight's books, including Instructional Coaching and The Impact CycleCoaching Conversations podcast with Jim KnightDaniel Pink's "Drive"Self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan)Miller and Rollnick's work on motivational interviewingMichael Bungay Stanier's "The Coaching Habit"Bryan Goodwin and McREL's "The New Classroom Instruction That Works"Marzano's "Classroom Instruction That Works" (McREL)Spencer Kagan's cooperative learning structuresLearning Forward (formerly the National Staff Development Council)Episode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  How to Interrupt Without Making It Awkward 10.08.2026 14min

  Ever sat in a meeting watching one person take over while everyone else goes quiet, and had no idea how to step in? Shane tackles exactly that in this solo episode. He unpacks why dominant speakers do more than annoy the room: research on "hidden profile" problems shows that when one person carries the conversation, groups are far more likely to land on the wrong decision, because the quietest person in the room is often the one holding the missing piece. Shane explains why most leaders freeze in this moment and what actually stops them from stepping in.You'll learn a four-step technique called the redirect: naming the person, acknowledging something specific they said, bridging with "and" rather than "but," and inviting a named colleague into the conversation. Shane breaks down why each step matters, including the psychology behind starting with someone's name and why generic acknowledgement backfires. He also covers the timing judgement call of when to step in, and how to handle it differently when someone's length is driven by distress rather than dominance. If you lead meetings of any kind, this is a tool you can use next week.Episode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisiJoin Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensiveShane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ 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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ 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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ 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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ 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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ 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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ 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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ 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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ 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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ 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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ 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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ 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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ 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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ 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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ 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. 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.We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.