Welcome to middle leadership, the mystical place where you’re expected to lead without significant authority and inspire with limited resources. Your new role may come with a slightly larger desk and access to more emails than the average inbox can handle, but the true prize? The delicate and diplomatic dance of leading peers who still remember when you taught Year 7s in a skirt with the sale price showing, or in odd socks.
Here are 8 hints and tips for surviving (and perhaps thriving) as a freshly appointed middle leader.
Build Strong Relationships: Make Friends Before You Accidentally Make Enemies
The first rule of middle leadership: don’t assume the new title gives you street cred. In fact, it makes people slightly suspicious, like you’ve been given access to the staffroom biscuits without completing a proper background check.
Start with a charm offensive. Meet with each team member individually. Ask them about their classes, their dreams, their favourite brand of coffee—whatever gets them talking. Listen attentively (that means no nodding while scrolling through emails). Smile.
People want to feel heard, not managed. Hold off on grand ideas until they see you’re not there to reinvent the wheel with glitter and acronyms.
Communicate a Vision Without Sounding Like a Self-Help Guru
Aah yes, the vision. The part where you talk about unlocking potential and shaping 21st-century learners until even you start wondering if you’re applying for a TED Talk.
Here’s the trick: keep it grounded and linked to the broader school or system priorities. Create a simple, no-fluff statement with your team. Maybe even write it on a whiteboard (for that added sense of permanence and gravitas).
Be clear, be concise, and try not to include more than one inspirational metaphor per sentence. People don’t want to climb every mountain—they just want the photocopier to work and Year 10 to stop vaping in the toilets.
Be Visible: Channel Your Inner Hogwarts Ghost (But Friendlier)
If your team only sees you in meetings, they’ll assume you live inside your Google Calendar. Be present. Visit classrooms (without clutching a notebook like you’re an inspector from the Ministry of Fear). Say hello in corridors. Attend the Friday cake table like it’s your spiritual home.
Being visible shows you care. Being approachable shows you’re human. And being seen laughing at yourself occasionally shows you’re not an AI bot programmed for school improvement plans.
Model Integrity and Consistency: Be the Grown-Up in the Room (Even When You Want to Scream)
Middle leadership is a wild rollercoaster of expectations, contradictions, and forgotten meeting invites. Your job is to be the calm in the chaos—even when someone schedules a data review deadline the same week as parent-teacher meetings and the school sports carnival.
Stick to your values. Keep your promises. Be the kind of leader who turns up on time, follows through on tasks, and doesn’t throw anyone under the bus (even when they definitely deserve it).
The team is watching. The students are watching. The office printer is watching. Just be cool and calm amid the usual chaos.
Support and Empower Your Team: Give Them Wings (and Maybe a Strong Cup of Tea)
Your job isn’t to do everything—it’s to bring out the best in your team without burning them out or driving them to a new career in crocodile farming.
Spot talent. Offer opportunities. Hand over responsibilities with trust, not a 10-page instruction manual. Say things like, “I believe in your judgment,” even if you’re internally screaming, “Please don’t mess this up.”
Also, say thank you. A sincere compliment in a staffroom full of exhausted educators is like gold dust—or a working laminator.
Deliver on Promises: Don’t Be That Leader Who Ghosts Their Own Goals
We all know that leader. The one who excitedly announces a bold new plan and then vanishes into the mist of a holiday break like a magician with poor follow-through.
Don’t be them.
If you say you’ll do something, do it. If you can’t, explain why—preferably before someone has to corner you by the coffee machine to ask where the promised PD session went.
Reliability = credibility. It’s not glamorous, but it’s how respect is built. One completed action point at a time.
Focus on Student Success: It’s Kind of the Point, Isn’t It?
Amid the meetings, paperwork, and existential crises over data walls, don’t forget why you’re here: the students. Student progress should be the thread that ties all your leadership decisions together.
Set clear, realistic targets. Use data wisely (i.e., not as a weapon). Celebrate wins, even small ones. Let your team see how their hard work actually makes a difference.
If the work feels meaningful, people will follow their leaders – even into a half-hour meeting that could’ve been an email.
Manage the Disappointed Internal Candidate
You know who I mean. The colleague who also went for your job—and didn’t get it. Now you’re in charge, and they’re smiling through gritted teeth while slowly crushing a whiteboard marker.
Here’s what not to do: pretend it didn’t happen. They know. You know. The one-day-a-week casual knows.
Have an honest, respectful chat. Acknowledge their strengths. Invite them into meaningful conversations and projects, not just the awkward tasks involving glitter or duct tape. Show them you value their experience, even if the interview panel didn’t give them the gold star this time.
Because nothing says “true leadership” like turning a potential rival into a trusted ally. Or at least, someone who doesn’t delete your calendar invites “accidentally.”
Final Thoughts: You’ve Got This (Sort Of)
Being a middle leader is a bit like being the middle child of the education system: not quite at the top, no longer one of the gang, and often tasked with explaining policies and initiatives you didn’t write or develop … but are now mysteriously responsible for.
But done right, it’s one of the most rewarding roles in a school. You get to shape culture, develop others, and make real change happen.
So lead boldly. Laugh often. And never, ever underestimate the power of a well-timed staffroom cup of tea and biscuit.
