The Work Behind Education Leaders

It's episode 151, and I thought it was about time I properly introduced myself. Hey, I'm Shane Leaning. Welcome to Education Leaders, the chat-topping international podcast for leaders in schools around the world. I'm an author, an organizational coach, and in this show, I bring you practical ideas and honest conversations to help you lead with confidence and clarity.

This episode is supported by teaching walkthroughs and the International Aquarium Association. So, 151 episodes, it's funny, isn't it? 151, I probably should have mentioned this last episode, right? 150 is the milestone that most people would plan for.

You would do that retrospective episode, you celebrate, and 151 would just be, what? The Tuesday after, right? The day when you quietly realize you're not stopping. But that honestly feels a little bit more true to what the show is.

Now, a lot of you have been here a while, some of you for a few months, some of you for years, some of you, this might be your first episode, welcome if it is, because I realized that recently, many of you might not actually know what I do when I'm not behind the microphone. You know the podcast, but the podcast was never supposed to become an organization, and yet it did. That wasn't the business plan. There was no business plan, no grand vision.

I actually started recording because I just wanted better conversations with people doing brilliant work in schools around the world. That was the whole idea. And I was genuinely terrible at the business side of things early on. I had absolutely no idea how to build an audience, how to structure programs, how to describe even what I did very clearly.

And there were months, honestly, back in the early days where I just wondered if this was actually going anywhere or whether I was just a guy who liked talking to other leaders on the microphone. But actually I've learned a lot. And what I've learned, I think he's actually super relevant to school leadership, that the thing you build on conviction alone tends to outlast that thing you build just on strategy. I kept doing this podcast because it mattered, not because I had it figured out and a little while in as well, something shifted.

People started reaching out and started wanting to work together. One in programs, one in coaching, the name education leaders had actually started to mean something bigger than just the show. And I had a bit of a choice. Do I just keep this as a podcast or do I step into what it was becoming?

And I said, yes, it became an organization and there's three parts to my organization now. And it's called education leaders, just like the podcast. So let me give you an overview and a bit of an insight into my world. So there's the podcast first, which you know.

Second, there's a community where I try to bring leaders together across countries, across contexts, because senior school leadership is genuinely isolating work and there's something irreplaceable about a space where people just get it, where you don't have to explain the particular pressure of being accountable to literally everyone at once. And then the third part, there's an academy, which is where most of my time goes. There's two sides to my academy. Firstly is direct work with schools.

So I do consultancy, coaching, leadership development. I work with schools and school groups around the world on leadership development and organizational change. So some of you were in Shanghai with me last week. I was running a leading as a coach masterclass.

And I love that in those moments, I get to work with leaders on real challenges. That's why I keep showing up to do this. But there's another side to my academy, which is my online work. I've got my flagship program.

Super proud of the education leaders intensive, which is a three month program for leaders ready to really lean in and do the real work. And we are well into our first cohort now, genuinely exciting. We've also got some self-study courses. I've got an EAL course out.

We've got two courses coming soon. One on demystifying data with the brilliant Chris Skora and another on neurodiversity and schools with Sarah Battersby, who knows that territory about as well as anyone I've come across. Quick one, before we continue, I am really excited to be partnering with the International Quick Limb Association on the International Leaders Conference 2026. If you're serious about growing as a leader, this is the one event you need in your calendar this year.

We have got some of the biggest speakers in education coming together for this. And because we know our audience is literally all over the world, we're running it twice across different time zones. So wherever you are, you can be there live. It's the seventh and eighth of May.

Head to internationalleadersconference.com or grab the link in the show notes. Leaders tell me all the time that they struggle to find a practical way to get evidence informed practice into every classroom. And that's where teaching walkthroughs come in.

They transform the most effective teaching techniques into five step visual guides that are actually easy to follow. And what happens when your team use them? Well, enthusiasm spreads, teachers improve their craft, and they genuinely love using them. And I do, too.

That's why I'm proud to be a consultant for teaching walkthroughs. You can find out more at walkthroughs.co.uk or using the links in the show notes.

I also have a second organization, which you may not know because it's not named after the podcast. It's called The Work Collaborative. And I co-founded this with Efraim Lerner. He's my co-author on the book Change Stats here, which we published with Routledge last year.

It's a not-for-profit, and its purpose is something I have been increasingly convinced about, that schools need to restore confidence in their own judgment, because here's what I see again and again, working with schools around the world. When schools lose faith in themselves, they outsource their thinking. Consultants come in, consultant after consultant, initiative after initiative. Each one really well-intentioned, and most of them not wrong per se, but none of them are actually sticking because a school never actually built the internal capacity to own that change.

So we created The Work Collaborative to change that. Schools led by educators trusting their own expertise, making confident decisions for themselves, not closed off to outside thinking, but not dependent on it either. The brilliant Catherine Taylor, for example, she is currently leading a research paper on organizational change in schools, and I think it's going to be super important. That paper will be out in the next few months, and I will link to it as soon as it's out.

We're also developing frameworks for sustainable change. We're thinking carefully about how schools engage with external providers and even running a strand at this year's Festival of Education in the UK. There's a lot going on. And then with all of that, there's this every week without fail, The Education Leaders podcast, my absolute joy.

The messages I get from listeners, honestly, they are one of the best parts of this work. I literally received an email recently where someone talked about the cognitive overload episode recently that they'd shared with their entire senior leadership team, and I literally had another email just this morning with someone telling me that the episode last week shifted their thinking and how they saw their role. I read all of them. I reply to all of them, not as a customer service exercise, but because that community I feel is genuinely special.

I am so, so glad to have you here as a listener. So 151 episodes down. I just want to say thank you. Thank you to you right now for being here.

Thank you for choosing to spend your time with this show on your commute. On your prep period, on your run, wherever you listen, it matters more than you think. I would love to hear from you and hear how you are experiencing The Education Leaders podcast. I would also love to hear from you.

If you think there's a way we might be able to collaborate together, get my information in the show notes of this episode, get in touch. I would absolutely love to share and learn with you. Education Leaders is hosted by me, Shane Leaning. Thanks to the show editor, Pete McGill, production assistant Skylar Rose-Sturman and the original music by Guillerme Silver.

And thank you so, so much again for tuning in today. If we don't speak before, I'll see you here next week for episode one, five, two. If you're interested in learning more about teaching walkthroughs or the International Curriculum Association, check out the links in the show notes.