Context Is the Strategy: How Great Leaders Adapt to the Schools They Serve

“Almost all successful leaders draw on the same repertoire of basic leadership practices. The difference is in how they apply them.”—Leithwood, Harris, & Hopkins (2019)

The Most Overlooked Element of School Leadership

In education leadership, we often focus on what effective leaders do: setting direction, building leadership teams, and fostering strong instructional practice. But there’s a quieter, equally powerful truth underneath it all:

Leadership isn’t just about what you do. It’s about how you respond to the context you’re in.

As Leithwood and colleagues emphasize in Seven Strong Claims Revisited (Leithwood, Harris, & Hopkins, 2019), leadership is only effective when it adapts to the situation at hand. In fact, how leaders apply core leadership practices changes based on the school’s size, structure, staffing, and developmental stage. No two schools are the same, so no two leadership strategies should be.

From institutional history and teacher demographics to community politics and resource constraints, context both constrains and creates opportunity. This idea is reinforced in Bringing Context Out of the Shadows (Hallinger, 2018), where researchers argue that context should be treated not as a backdrop, but as a central factor shaping leadership effectiveness.

A Tale of Two Urban Schools: Shared Leadership in Action

To illustrate how context influences leadership practice, let’s look at two urban alternative high schools within the same district. Both served similar student populations, both focused on school improvement, and both were deeply committed to shared leadership. Yet how that leadership was shared looked vastly different.

School A: Small, Transient Staff

• This school had six teachers and a high rate of staff turnover. In this setting, shared leadership couldn’t rely on long-established trust or distributed systems. Instead, we focused on helping the principal partner closely with an instructional coach. We also made a bold move: every teacher became part of the building leadership team. There was no representative model. Ownership was universal.

• The leadership team met weekly, made key decisions collectively, and used regular protocols to engage deeply in planning and problem-solving. Shared leadership here wasn’t about delegation—it was about ensuring everyone felt seen, heard, and responsible for the work.

School B: Large, Stable Staff

• With more than 40 teachers and low turnover, this school had an existing leadership team. But it wasn't yet functioning as the engine of school improvement. Here, we focused on developing a high-functioning BLT (Building Leadership Team) that truly owned the vision and strategies for improvement.

• We coached teacher leaders to develop the facilitation skills, instructional expertise, and team leadership habits needed to support collaborative teacher teams. In this context, shared leadership meant building capacity across a wide base of teacher leaders and distributing ownership through purposeful structures.

Same goal. Same system. Different strategies—because context demands it.

Leadership Practices That Flex with Context

We've talked about the four broad domains of leadership practice in previous blogs. These practices remain essential, but their implementation must flex based on the local context.

1. Setting Directions

• Build a shared vision

• Identify specific, shared goals

• Create high-performance expectations

• Communicate the vision clearly

Example Contextual Shift: In a veteran staff with deep history, co-constructing vision honors past successes. In a newer staff, the vision might need to be built from scratch—with more structure and modeling.

2. Building Relationships & Developing People

• Support staff growth

• Model core values

• Build trust

• Establish positive relationships with families and communities

Example Contextual Shift: Developing people in a high-trust culture allows for autonomy and distributed mentoring. In lower-trust environments, leaders must build credibility through consistency and emotional intelligence.

3. Developing the Organization

• Build collaborative culture

• Structure for distributed leadership

• Connect to the wider environment

• Allocate resources to support goals

Example Contextual Shift: Small schools may blend roles and rely on flexible teams. Larger schools may require distinct team structures and documented systems to ensure alignment.

4. Improving the Instructional Program

• Staff the program strategically

• Provide instructional support

• Monitor learning and progress

• Protect time for teaching and learning

Example Contextual Shift: Instructional improvement in a school with frequent staff turnover may focus on rapid onboarding and tight curriculum structures. In more stable environments, it may center on deepening collaborative inquiry cycles.

Leadership is Contextual, but It’s Not Chaotic

Being responsive to context doesn’t mean being reactive or inconsistent. Instead, it means building your leadership strategy around three core questions:

1. What are the key characteristics of this school’s context?

   • Size, staff experience, stability, community involvement, improvement history.

2. What is the current developmental phase of the school?

   • Turnaround, stabilizing, growth, innovation?

3. What routines, relationships, and strengths can we leverage?

   • A popular assembly? A respected teacher? A strong PTO?

As Bringing Context Out of the Shadows (Hallinger, 2018) highlights, context-sensitive leadership is about finding "decisional space": the places where leaders have discretion to act strategically.

Great leaders find the leverage points within their unique context—and use those to accelerate improvement.

Final Thoughts: Context Reveals the Opportunity

Every school is different. But every school has strengths. The job of the leader is to find them.

• Who holds power and influence in this school?

• What routines do people already love and trust?

• What community structures can be leveraged to support the work?

We’ve seen leaders use weekly assemblies to cast vision, tap into strong PTOs to drive parent engagement, and empower veteran staff to mentor across generations.

In every context, there are opportunities. The key is knowing where to look—and how to lead from what’s already strong.

Discussion Question:

How has your context shaped the way you share leadership in your school? What leverage points have made the biggest difference?