- Astiba Kebong’o argues that successful school leadership depends on trust, fairness and empowering competent people.
- She highlights the dangers of gossip, favouritism and sycophancy in undermining professional relationships and institutional performance.
- She demonstrates why developing other leaders ultimately creates stronger schools and better learning environments.
A school can have classrooms, laboratories, textbooks and a beautiful compound, but none of these alone guarantees success. Behind every thriving institution is a leadership culture that determines how people work, relate to one another and ultimately serve learners.
Leadership has taught me one important lesson: no head of institution succeeds alone.
A head may occupy the highest office, but the success of that office depends greatly on the people working around it. Deputies, senior teachers, heads of department, classroom teachers and support staff all contribute to the daily life of a school.
The question is therefore not simply whether a school has a leader. The bigger question is: what kind of leadership culture has that leader created?
Research on school leadership, including work by the OECD, has consistently emphasised trust, collaboration, teacher leadership, professional development and shared responsibility as important features of effective schools. Leadership is not merely about administration; it shapes the environment in which teachers teach and learners learn.
Where gossip becomes the unofficial communication system, an institution slowly loses its ability to have honest conversations.
When teachers fear that every opinion will be repeated in the staffroom or reported selectively to the head, they stop speaking openly. Meetings become formalities. Problems remain hidden. People learn to protect themselves rather than protect the institution.
A good leader should create room for honest professional conversations.
This does not mean believing everything one hears. It means distinguishing between evidence and rumour, between a genuine concern and a personal grievance, and between constructive criticism and malicious gossip.
Trust does not remove accountability. It makes accountability healthier.
Know the people you lead
Every teacher brings a different strength to the institution.
One may be excellent at curriculum coordination. Another may understand examinations and assessment. Someone else may have exceptional skills in mentoring adolescents, guidance and counselling, ICT, sports, parental engagement or department management.
A wise leader takes time to understand these abilities and deploys people where they can contribute most effectively.
That is not favouritism.
Favouritism is giving opportunities because of personal closeness. Strategic deployment is matching responsibility with competence, experience and institutional needs.
The TSC regulatory framework places significant responsibility on heads of institutions for curriculum implementation, assignment of duties, supervision, professional standards and the creation of a conducive learning environment.
These responsibilities become difficult to discharge when a leader does not know the strengths and weaknesses of the people expected to deliver the work.
One of the most unfortunate situations in an institution is when a competent junior is perceived as a threat rather than an asset.
A teacher who demonstrates initiative should not automatically be viewed as trying to outshine the head. A deputy with a new idea should not be treated as a rival. A head of department who respectfully challenges an approach should not immediately be labelled disloyal.
Strong leaders understand that their greatest strength may be the competence of the people around them.
They do not ask, “Who is becoming more popular than me?”
They ask, “Who can help this institution move forward?”
A leader who develops capable people is not making themselves weaker. They are building institutional capacity.
Beware the comfort of sycophancy
There is a particular danger when a leader surrounds themselves with people who agree with everything.
It creates the illusion that everything is fine.
Bad decisions go unchallenged. Problems are concealed. Staff members learn that telling the truth is risky while agreeing with the boss is rewarding.
An effective leadership team should allow respectful disagreement.
Not every dissenting voice is correct, but every professional voice deserves to be heard before decisions are made.
Sometimes the person who gives a leader uncomfortable information is not an enemy. They may be the person preventing a small problem from becoming a crisis.
Nothing damages staff morale faster than perceived favouritism.
When the same individuals repeatedly receive opportunities, responsibilities, recognition or privileges without clear justification, resentment grows. Eventually, even legitimate decisions may be viewed with suspicion.
Fairness does not mean treating everyone identically. People have different responsibilities, abilities and levels of experience.
It means applying clear, reasonable and consistent criteria.
Where performance is good, recognise it. Where performance is poor, address it. Where misconduct occurs, follow due process. Where a teacher needs support or training, identify that need and respond appropriately.
Human-resource management should not be about humiliating people. It should help people perform better while protecting the institution.
A school without boundaries eventually becomes difficult to manage.
Teachers need to understand their responsibilities. Learners need clear expectations. Leaders must also operate within established policies and procedures.
Discipline should therefore not depend on the mood of the person occupying the head’s office.
The TSC framework provides procedures for dealing with teacher discipline, including communicating allegations and giving the affected teacher an opportunity to respond. Such procedures matter because accountability must be accompanied by fairness.
The same spirit should guide learner discipline: establish expectations, investigate incidents, listen to those involved, apply appropriate consequences and provide opportunities for correction.
A school can be firm without becoming hostile.
Curriculum implementation is a leadership responsibility
We often discuss curriculum implementation as though it is simply about lesson plans, schemes of work, assessments and examinations.
It is much more than that.
Curriculum implementation depends on people.
Teachers need preparation, resources, professional support and time to understand what is expected of them. The demands of competency-based education and School-Based Assessment make this particularly important.
A leader who wants improved learning outcomes should therefore ask more than, “What was our mean score?”
The more important questions are:
Are teachers adequately prepared?
Which areas are they struggling with?
Are departments collaborating?
Are assessment results being used to identify learning gaps?
Are learners receiving meaningful feedback?
Are teachers receiving the professional development they need?
Are resources reaching the classroom?
A good leader does not wait for examination results to discover that a department has been struggling for an entire year.
Develop leaders, not followers
An institution becomes fragile when everything depends on one person.
If every decision must pass through the head, every disagreement must be personally resolved and every activity requires the head’s intervention, the institution eventually develops a culture of dependence.
Good leadership creates other leaders.
Deputies, heads of department, senior teachers, examination coordinators, class teachers and activity coordinators should understand their mandates and be trusted to perform them.
Research on distributed leadership similarly points to the value of sharing leadership responsibilities and involving teachers in professional decision-making.
The head remains accountable, but leadership becomes a collective responsibility.
Sometimes we forget this.
Teachers are professionals, but they are also parents, spouses, siblings, caregivers and members of communities. They have ambitions, disappointments, financial pressures and personal struggles.
They get tired.
A leader who understands this does not lower professional standards. Instead, they learn to combine accountability with humanity.
Sometimes a teacher needs correction. Sometimes they need training. Sometimes they need a conversation. And sometimes they simply need to know that somebody noticed the effort they are making.
A sincere “thank you” can mean more than leaders realise.
Recognition should not, however, become another form of favouritism. Appreciation must be genuine, transparent and connected to contribution.
The culture adults create becomes part of the curriculum
Learners watch adults more closely than we sometimes imagine.
If teachers see leaders resolving disagreements respectfully, learners experience a culture of dialogue.
If adults operate through intimidation, gossip and favouritism, learners notice that too.
If teachers are expected to follow rules while leaders appear to operate above them, the institution teaches a lesson it never intended to teach.
Education happens beyond the classroom.
The culture of a school is itself a lesson.
We need leaders who are firm without being oppressive, compassionate without being weak, consultative without being indecisive and accountable without humiliating people.
We need leaders who can listen without surrendering authority, delegate without abandoning responsibility and correct without destroying dignity.
We need leaders who understand that disagreement is not necessarily disloyalty, that competence is not a threat and that asking for help does not diminish authority.
Most importantly, we need leadership that keeps the learner at the centre.
The head provides direction. Deputies coordinate. Heads of department provide professional leadership. Teachers translate curriculum into meaningful learning experiences. Support staff keep institutions functioning. Parents provide partnership.
No single office can do all this.
A successful school is therefore not one in which everyone fears the head. It is one where people understand the direction of the institution, know their responsibilities, trust the systems and are willing to give their best.
Leadership should not be measured only by how much authority a head exercises.
It should also be measured by what happens to the people under that leadership.
Do they become more confident? More competent? More accountable? More willing to innovate? More committed to the learner?
If the answer is yes, leadership is leaving a meaningful legacy.
The real mark of a school leader is not how many people can be controlled from the head’s office.
It is how many people can be empowered to do their work well even when the leader is not in the room.
When trust replaces gossip, competence replaces sycophancy, fairness replaces favouritism and accountability replaces fear, a school begins to function differently.
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And when adults work better together, learners ultimately stand to gain the most.
By Astiba Kebong’o
Email: jackiekebongo@gmail.com
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