If Everything Depends on You, It’s Time to Rethink How You Lead
Jul 24, 2026
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Here's how to shift from being the one holding it all to building a team that leads with you.
It’s not that you don’t trust your team.
It’s that the stakes are high. The timelines are tight. And somewhere along the way, it became easier—and faster—to just do it yourself.
So now, you’re carrying the load. All of it.
You’re reviewing the data, rewriting the staff memo, sitting in on every single parent conference, and approving decisions that someone else could’ve made. Not because you're power-hungry. But because that’s how the system around you has been built.
And let’s be honest: you’re efficient. You’re capable. You’re the one who gets it done. But if you’re constantly putting out fires, solving every problem, answering every question before your team even has a chance to think through it… You're not leading.
There is a certain relief that comes when the first few days of school go well.
Staff are back, students are moving through the building, transportation is running, classrooms are settled, and the systems you spent the summer planning seem to be doing exactly what you hoped they would do.
After months of preparation, it is tempting to look around and think, We did it.
And you should celebrate ...
A few weeks ago, one of our leaders inside The Leadership Collective walked out of a coaching session and went straight to building her State of the School presentation. No blank slide. No staring at a cursor, wondering where to start. She had a structure to work from and the confidence that her message would actually land with her staff.
That moment is the whole reason I do this work. Most s...
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A school leader recently asked me a question that captures what many principals experience every day: “How do they expect us to do both?”
She was talking about the two roles hidden within the principalship. A principal is expected to be an instructional leader who spends...
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