What are Leadership Levers?

Seventeen weeks into writing a weekly newsletter on LinkedIn, Shane has landed on a simple but powerful idea: leadership levers. This episode explains what makes a lever different from a project or a habit, why it has to be small enough to do tomorrow morning without telling anyone, and why it has to live inside something already in your week, like a meeting or a handover. Drawing on John Sweller's research on cognitive load and Stephen Rogelberg's studies on meetings, Shane makes the case that most leadership problems aren't solved by trying harder, but by placing effort somewhere better.

You'll learn why a single sentence sent before a meeting can prevent hours of follow-up confusion, and why two minutes at the end of a meeting assigning names to actions can stop decisions turning into vague memories. Shane also shares how learning a framework for difficult conversations freed up enough mental space to actually listen better, rather than working out the opening line from scratch every time. If you're looking for practical, repeatable moves rather than another big initiative, this episode gives you a way to think about where to place your effort for maximum return.

Resources & Links Mentioned:

Education Leaders Intensive programme

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. Passionate about empowment, 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 and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com

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