Establishing Organizational Clarity for Middle Leaders in Schools

My first foray into middle leadership was in 2014. It was my fifth year of teaching, and I was beginning my third year in my first international school. I was the team leader for a team of eight. I honestly do not remember if I volunteered or was voluntold, as is often the case with team leadership, but I remember feeling hopeful and excited about the potential of the role. I had benefitted as a teacher from the leadership and guidance of other middle leaders like coaches, curriculum coordinators, and previous team leaders, and I felt ready for a new challenge. In my mind, having seen good middle leadership was enough for me to do the job.

However, seeing good leadership and being a good teacher did not automatically translate into me doing a good job in the role. I knew I should be making agendas and leading meetings, but how did I determine what was worth talking about? I had seen the benefits of using protocols but had no clue how to utilize the right one for the right instance. We had a solid curriculum in place and there were no new team members, so I now admit humbly that I did not see a need for us to be discussing how to improve our instructional practice. Knowing I needed to be doing something, team meetings got filled with talking about field trips, sharing a resource here and there, and saying an enthusiastic “YES!” when someone else wanted to lead something at the meeting. Sound familiar to anyone?

That experience, and the many lessons I learned from it, have stayed with me over the years and were the starting point for an earlier reflection, Unlocking Success With Middle-Level Instructional Leaders, on exploring why developing and empowering middle-level leaders is critical in international schools.

I have spent a lot of time talking to, learning from, and researching middle leaders. Department chairs, team leaders, instructional coaches, and curriculum coordinators are in positions with additional responsibilities, but because the responsibilities are often vague, unclear, or reduced to administrative tasks, they fail to be effective in improving teacher effectiveness or student learning. Being an effective middle leader is complicated and nuanced, and is not the sole responsibility of the middle leader; it requires active involvement and support by the senior leaders in the school.

Senior leadership and school systems need to establish organizational clarity to define the roles and responsibilities of their middle leaders. Organizational clarity means middle leaders understand the school’s purpose and their role within the leadership structure. Schools have complex distributed leadership structures, and middle leaders need to be firm on where their position lies within these layers. Organizational clarity is not established simply with a job description that outlines a list of duties. In order for middle leaders to excel in their roles, there needs to be a defined purpose, clear expectations, and structures to lead learner-centered conversations. Organizational clarity includes an understanding of decision-making, how these decisions are communicated, and the expectation for adherence to decisions. Organizational clarity serves as a foundation for middle leaders to guide their respective teams through processes that enhance team effectiveness, make instructional changes, and improve student outcomes because it ensures consistency, alignment to a shared vision, and positions teams to adapt to changes.

First, it is necessary that middle leaders know and understand the mission, vision, and goals of the school. Furthermore, these goals need to align with the educational philosophies of the middle leader so that they believe in the work and long-term vision of the organization. Then, middle leaders should connect their work with teams to these guiding principles as often as possible. Senior leaders can support middle leaders with how to translate these visionary ideas into actionable priorities for teachers and teams. Supporting middle leaders to create learning-focused agendas and set interpersonal norms alongside procedural norms can go a long way in setting a team up for success. Middle leaders can create year-long or multi-year action plans that support the work of the school or have regular meetings with their supervisor about their team’s progress in achieving the school’s vision. Regular meetings also provide opportunities for Principals to solicit feedback about goals and the realities teachers face.

If an organization wants middle leaders to be effective in improving teachers’ effectiveness, team collaboration, and student learning, then middle leaders need to adopt an instructional leadership approach. Instructional leadership is an approach to leadership that focuses on teaching and learning and deprioritizes the transactional managerial tasks of being a leader (Handy, 2025). Keung and Rockinson-Szapkiw (2013) report that instructional leadership has tripled the impact on student outcomes compared to other popular leadership approaches because of the focus on instructional practices. Further research on instructional leadership reiterates this powerful approach when used by department heads and in creating a positive learning environment (Leithwood, 2016; Sharif, 2020).

So, if this is the best approach, what do middle leaders need to be doing? Middle leaders should be expected to lead regular, structured, data-driven conversations analyzing student learning, critically evaluating teaching and assessment practices, and monitoring curriculum. Senior leadership and learning leaders can define how structured they want to mandate these expectations around regularity or particular protocols. I would suggest that teams should be looking at student data at least monthly and finding quick sorts, Looking at Student Thinking (LAST) from Harvard’s Project Zero, or Describing Students’ Work from the Center for Leadership and Educational Equity, effective for grounding conversations in data and refining practice.

Beyond looking at student learning, there are other opportunities for middle leaders to engage their teams critically and enhance organizational clarity. Having middle leaders open their doors for peer observations or walkthroughs with debrief conversations afterward models vulnerability and implementing effective teaching practices. A simple protocol of Wows, Wonders, What Ifs, or having pre-established “look-fors,” can provide focus for the reflection conversations. Senior leadership can set expectations for frequency or times of year, offer coverage, or provide specific protocols for observations.

This all sounds great, right? But what about the lived reality in schools? Field trips need to get scheduled, budgets need to be turned in, curriculum needs to be updated. Balancing logistics and managerial tasks with transformative work is a tension. Some effective solutions I’ve experienced are dedicating a particular meeting every cycle to logistics, delegating responsibility to other team members for completion, or setting an agreement that logistics are relegated to emails. I have also found that, despite schools being such busy places, when middle leaders are leading effective teams focused on deepening and improving practice, teachers are more willing to jump in to help with that logistical challenge or meet during an additional planning period. This could be because there are higher levels of trust among colleagues and teachers do not want to give up purposeful collaboration to complete a logistical task.

Organizational clarity sets the stage for middle leaders to be the stewards of a school’s strategic vision. They should be knowledgeable about the school’s direction, empowered and supported to lead learner-focused conversations, and provided ideas to manage the logistical workload. When organizational clarity is in place, middle leadership becomes a more desirable and fulfilling position within our schools. As educators, we are always doing more; shouldn’t we make sure that it’s having more of an impact?

References

Handy, K. (2025). The impact of different levels of instructional leaders in international schools. [Doctoral dissertation, University of the Cumberlands]

Keung, E. K., & Rockinson-Szapkiw, A. J. (2013). The relationship between transformational leadership and cultural intelligence: a study of international school leaders. Journal of Educational Administration, 51(6), 836–854. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-04-2012-0049

Leithwood, K. (2016). Department-head leadership for school improvement. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 15(2), 117–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2015.1044538 

Sharif, U. M. (2020). The role of the principal is developing an instructional leadership team in school. Educational Research and Reviews, 15(11), 662–667.    https://doi.org/10.5897/ERR2020.4057