Education Leaders | The Chart-Topping School Leadership Podcast

Dr Andrew Miller, Academic Principal at Beijing International Bilingual Academy, explains what going slow really looks like for a school leader and why "maybe don't" could be the most useful phrase you say all year. His career spans Washington State's Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Singapore American School and Shanghai American School, so he has seen how pressure to move fast plays out in very different systems. There is also a story behind this episode: Shane's audio failed to record, so you hear Andrew's answers as they were given on the day, with short bridge lines from Shane to set up each question.

You'll learn how to tell deliberate slowness apart from avoidance or a loss of nerve, and how Andrew resets his own sense of urgency on the days when he feels he hasn't done enough. He also covers how to let staff see your thinking without it sounding like excuses, and where the line sits between useful vulnerability and venting. Shane closes with three practical steps to try this week, starting with writing down what would happen if you didn't launch that next initiative. If everyone around you is waiting for you to act, this conversation gives you a way to pause with confidence.

Resources & Links Mentioned:
Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction
Singapore American School
Shanghai American School
Andrew's LinkedIn

Episode Partners
International Curriculum Association

Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive

Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. He is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.

You can find Shane on LinkedIn.

We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every month, Shane Leaning and Chris Scora sit down to unpack what has come up on the Education Leaders podcast, and this live catch-up covers two of the season's most talked-about conversations. The main event is a robust back-and-forth on Claire Badger's episode, "Do Schools Really Kill Creativity?", where Chris admits he needed three listens to get past his initial discomfort with Claire's certainty before finding real common ground. They also revisit Jim Knight's "Stop Telling Teachers What to Do" and discuss why his coaching-over-directing approach has struggled to gain traction in UK schools despite making obvious sense on paper.

You'll hear why Chris pushed back on Claire's definition of creativity as needing to be both "novel and useful," and why he worries that scaffolding can tip into constraint when applied under classroom time pressure. Shane and Chris also work through the tension between aspiration and pragmatism in education, using the IB's diploma programme as a case study, and close with reflections on Jim Knight's ideas about listening, agency and the "helpful bully" trap leaders can fall into. If you've ever wondered whether structure helps or hinders creative thinking in your classroom, this conversation will give you plenty to weigh up.

Resources & Links Mentioned:
Education Leaders Podcast Network
Do Schools Really Kill Creativity? with Claire Badger
Stop Telling Teachers What to Do with Jim Knight
What Can Leaders Learn from Architects? with Phil Idle
Britain's Strictest Head Teacher with Katharine Birbalsingh

Episode Partners
International Curriculum Association
Sisi

Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive

Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. He is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.

You can find Shane on LinkedIn.

We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Claire Badger, a former research scientist and science teacher, disagrees with one of the most popular ideas in education: that schools kill creativity. Drawing on the cognitive science in her book, she argues that creativity has a clear definition (something must be both new and useful) and that most school approaches to it miss the second half. If your school celebrates its art displays, orchestra and project weeks as proof of creativity, this conversation will make you question what those activities are actually building. It matters for international school leaders in particular, where inquiry-based and project-based learning sit at the heart of the curriculum.
You'll hear why a child's paperclip-spaceship idea is imaginative but not creative, and why a group of students told to write about "Colin, a red-haired boy missing a toe" produced better stories than those given a blank page. Claire shares her own "sustainable product" project day, which ended with a perpetual motion machine, and explains why cross-curricular projects often teach less than leaders hope. You'll also pick up practical first steps, from loosening the grip of data drops and Key Stage 3 exams to changing just one element of a lesson, such as asking for a video explanation instead of pages of written calculations. Shane and Claire even compare two very different schools and ask which one is more likely to produce creative graduates.

Resources & Links Mentioned:
Ken Robinson's TED talk "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"
The Double Diamond design process (Design Council)
World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report
Claire Badger on LinkedIn
Claire Badger's Creativity for Teachers: A Cognitive Science Approach (The Teacher CPD Academy)

Episode Partners
International Curriculum Association
Sisi

Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive

Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. He is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.

You can find Shane on LinkedIn.

We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shane Leaning has spent years building the Education Leaders podcast into a trusted source for practical leadership strategies. In this special launch episode, he's joined live by the hosts of four other education podcasts to unveil something new: the Education Leaders Podcast Network. What started as a conversation between Adam Kohlbeck and Chris Passey about wanting all their favourite education podcasts in one place has become a five-show network, each independently produced but bound by shared quality standards and a common goal of broadening the conversation across the sector.

You'll hear directly from the hosts of EduPulse, Beyond the Status Quo, Teaching on Purpose, Coaching Done Well and Coaching Unpacked, and Education Leaders Live, each explaining what makes their show distinct. Shane and his co-hosts discuss everything from the "kintsugi" philosophy behind Beyond the Status Quo to the new podcast studio behind Teaching on Purpose, and Adam Kohlbeck shares the same-day publication of his book on coaching for adaptive expertise. If you want to know where to find practical, high-quality education content from voices across the globe, this episode is your map to the whole network.

Resources & Links Mentioned:
Education Leaders with Shane Leaning
Coaching Done Well x Coaching Unpacked with Shane Leaning, Jim Thompson, Adam Kohlbeck, Chris Passey and Sarah Cottinghatt
EduPulse with Adam Kohlbeck and Chris Passey
Teaching on Purpose with Chiltern Learning Trust
Beyond the Status Quo with Kathryn Gorman and Tamara Zaple Rolfs
Education Leaders Podcast Network — full feed

Episode Partners
International Curriculum Association
Sisi

Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive

Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. He is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.

You can find Shane on LinkedIn.

We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shane opens this episode by naming a habit most school leaders share: telling their team "my door is always open," then wondering why staff still hesitate to bring problems to them. He argues these phrases feel generous but give people nothing concrete to act on, leaving new starters and existing team members to guess how you actually want to be approached. Drawing on a 2013 field study of over 600 call centre employees, Shane shows how a single day of onboarding, focused on staff rather than company values, cut turnover by nearly a third within six months.

You'll learn three specific things to tell your team in your very first meeting this year: how to reach you and how quickly you'll genuinely reply, the specific situations you want flagged before they escalate, and how you behave under pressure so people stop having to work it out by trial and error. Shane also shares his own example of going quiet under stress and warns against the two ways this approach usually falls apart. If you want a practical, low-cost way to replace vague reassurances with something your team can use, this episode gives you the exact script.

Resources & Links Mentioned:
Cable, Gino & Staats (2013) study on employee onboarding and identity

Episode Partners
International Curriculum Association
Sisi

Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive

Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. He is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.

You can find Shane on LinkedIn.

We are a proud member of the Education Leaders podcast network. For more great education shows, visit educationleaders.co/network/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.