How Collective Leadership Helps School Leaders Finish Strong

The month of May is a marathon, not a sprint. Testing, hiring, celebrations, and next-year planning. It’s all happening at once, and the pressure to “finish strong” is real.

But for too many leaders, “finishing strong” gets translated into “doing more,” and often doing so alone.

There’s another way.

What Collective Leadership Looks Like at the End of the Year

The work may not be easier, but leaders in these schools and districts aren’t just surviving the end of the year. Rather, they’re designing it with their teams to co-own the work and the results. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Desiloed Decision-Making

Instead of tackling hiring, planning, and budgeting in parallel conversations, they bring the work into one shared frame. In our work with the University of Maryland School Improvement Leadership Academy, principals and assistant principals focus on competency-based professional learning to sharpen their skills in inclusive leadership practice.  

“SILA provided research with practical skills to improve school systems. With the skills I developed in SILA, we were able to increase our attendance rate this year from 70.1% to 83.1%.” Allison Johnson, J.D., NBCT, Assistant Principal, Anne Arundel County Public Schools

Distributed Reflection

Every team, not just administrators or the central office, has space to look back, name what worked, and surface what needs attention.

As part of our partnership with the South Carolina Department of Education, 31 schools across 15 districts are implementing collective leadership practices to spur improvement and reflect on what their schools need to be a thriving learning community. 

Centered co-ownership

When the temptation to “just get it done” kicks in, they ask: Who else could lead this? And more importantly, who is already leading, but hasn’t been named?

By coming together to view student data as a team, Scott’s Branch Middle School was able to share to increase its capacity to support each student.  

“Student achievement was always the core of our work. But the problem was we were all on our own islands. …Doing the data walls helped us see a clear picture of what each child needed.”—Caroline Mack, Teacher of the Year, Scott’s Branch Middle High School

When leaders aren’t carrying the load alone, they’re part of a system that holds together, even in the toughest weeks.

Try this

End-of-year pressure can make us default to “just get it done.” But co-leadership requires us to slow down and shift the approach. Try this:

  • Map out a key end-of-year task that’s currently sitting on your plate. It could be anything from finalizing budgets to planning PD or preparing graduation events.
  • Identify two other team members already contributing to this task, whether actively or behind the scenes.
  • Name one action you can take to share the ownership of this task with them publicly: acknowledging their role in a meeting, shifting responsibility, or asking for their input on key decisions.

The goal isn’t just to share the workload. The goal is to co-own the process and outcomes as a team.

Learn more about how schools are implementing collective leadership to drive real change.