Programme for Experienced Middle Leaders
Leading Improvement
Lead change that makes a meaningful difference in your school.
A practical programme for experienced middle leaders who want to extend their influence and impact. Identify meaningful opportunities, build commitment, navigate resistance and complexity, and evaluate whether improvement is making a difference.
Move from managing work to leading improvement
Experienced middle leaders often hold responsibility for important work, but improvement asks them to look beyond the immediate task. It means identifying what needs to change, understanding the people and conditions involved, and mobilising shared effort.
Through an evidence-informed, practical process, participants develop skills to lead improvement beyond their formal authority and assess impact over time.
Five capabilities for leading improvement
The programme develops a connected set of practices for identifying meaningful change, building commitment, leading through complexity and evaluating impact.
Identify meaningful improvement
Use Focus Inquiry to clarify the current and desired states, examine evidence and identify what is worth changing. Force Field Analysis can help surface conditions that support or constrain progress.
Build commitment for change
Map stakeholders, build relationships and communicate purpose to create shared ownership, influence and a coalition for action.
Lead through complexity
Work with resistance, competing priorities and tensions using polarity mapping, difficult conversations and professional judgement.
Implement and evaluate
Plan implementation, evaluate outcomes as well as activity, and use reflection and adaptation to help improvement take hold.
Apply the learning to your context
Work with a real improvement priority and develop practical next steps that fit your school’s context.
What participants will be able to do
Participants develop the ability to:
Identify evidence-grounded improvement opportunities that align with school priorities.
Use inquiry to understand current and desired states before deciding what action to take.
Build commitment and influence people beyond their formal line of authority.
Navigate resistance, competing priorities and complexity with professional judgement.
Plan implementation and evaluate impact, looking beyond activity to outcomes.
Use reflection and adaptation to strengthen and sustain improvement over time.
Learning that respects experience and supports application
The programme follows five learning principles. These shape how participants engage with challenge, one another and the practical work of leadership.
Dignity first
Participants learn best when they feel psychologically safe, respected and able to contribute without performative participation or public embarrassment.
Dialogue over performance
Purposeful conversation, structured collaboration and thoughtful reflection take the place of passive presentation.
Implementation matters
Professional learning should extend beyond the workshop through practical application, reflection and ongoing leadership practice.
Recognition before challenge
Learning begins by recognising participants’ existing expertise before introducing new perspectives and challenges.
Practical over inspirational
Participants should repeatedly leave sessions thinking: “I can use this tomorrow.”
Choose a format that fits your context
Leading Improvement can be delivered as a two-day workshop or an extended programme, with the learning contextualised to your school’s priorities and existing approaches to collaboration.
In-person workshop
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Two days
Extended programme
Multi-session
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Delivery mode
Face-to-face or online
School partnership
Contextualised delivery
The programme is suitable for individual schools, groups of schools or open-registration cohorts. Learning combines reflection, dialogue, case studies and practical application.
Who this programme is for
Designed for experienced middle leaders who want to increase their influence, lead improvement beyond their team and prepare for broader responsibility, including:
Experienced middle leaders
Heads of Department / Faculty
Curriculum and pastoral leaders
Leaders of school improvement
Aspiring senior leaders
Leaders preparing for broader responsibility
How schools use the programme
Schools can use this programme to:
Align improvement work with school priorities and evidence of need.
Develop experienced middle leaders who can lead beyond their own area.
Build commitment and shared ownership among relevant stakeholders.
Navigate resistance, competing priorities and complexity with greater confidence.
Strengthen implementation, evaluation and adaptation of improvement work.
Prepare leaders to increase their scope, influence and impact across the school.
Contextualised to your school
Continue your leadership development
The core curriculum can be connected to a priority or improvement challenge within your school. Case studies, discussion and practical activities can reflect participants’ roles and context, giving them opportunities to apply the programme’s approaches to work that matters locally.
Leading Improvement builds on the foundations developed in Stepping into Middle Leadership and Leading Effective Teams. It supports experienced middle leaders to extend their influence and lead change across a wider school context. Preparing for Senior Leadership offers a further step for those considering broader responsibilities.
Lead improvement that makes a difference
Talk with us about a two-day or multi-session programme for your school.