Best bets for building a culture of shared leadership

Published in: The Learning Professional – The Learning Forward Journal  |  February 2025

by Rick Fisher and Sharon Nepote  |  February 2025

Below is an excerpt from the full article published on LearningFoward.org.

Increased teacher turnover. Higher rates of absenteeism. Lower student engagement. And wait — a new district initiative that will demand significant resources. Sound familiar? We’ve been there. As former principals who led turnaround schools and now as coaches who work with school leaders and their teams, we know that these are just some of the common challenges all school leaders face, to say nothing of those unexpected challenges that inevitably emerge in any school year.

We have found there is one consistent factor that separates schools that successfully respond to these challenges from the rest: the collective understanding that overcoming challenges is a shared responsibility. In every successful school we’ve been part of or worked with, principals and other administrators are not the only leaders. In schools that make real progress, the staff as a whole has recognized that leadership is a shared responsibility.