A new assistant principal wants to lead with more confidence but cannot tell where to begin. The short answer to how to build leadership skills is: assess strengths and gaps, practise daily in low-stakes situations, and ask for regular feedback.
This guide turns that answer into a month-long routine. It sits alongside our wider guide to leadership skills for principals, and every step can be adapted to a school team.
Common misunderstandings about leadership skills
Leadership and management are related but different jobs. Marymount University’s guidance says management tends to focus on day-to-day resource allocation and task delegation toward a specific goal, while leadership centres on vision and motivating others. A school leader needs both, so a development plan should not treat one as a substitute for the other. Four beliefs commonly stop people from starting.
| Misunderstanding | What the evidence supports | Planning use |
|---|---|---|
| “I need a title first.” | Leadership roles exist without a formal title: volunteer to manage a project, mentor a new team member, or lead a committee. | Take on a small leadership role now rather than waiting for a promotion. |
| “Leadership means managing tasks.” | Management centres on resource allocation and task delegation; leadership centres on vision and motivating others. | Ask what purpose a task serves before assigning it. |
| “Good leaders do most of the talking.” | Active listening builds trust among team members and shows that you value their input. | Treat listening as a skill to rehearse, not a pause between your own points. |
| “Skills only develop in big moments.” | Daily practice in low-stakes situations, such as deciding which route to take home, builds decision habits. | Use ordinary choices as rehearsal for harder ones. |
The management-versus-leadership distinction comes from Marymount University, and the title, listening and daily-practice points from Champlain College.
Three further ideas from Marymount help you decide where to aim:
- Start with a framework. The MYRIAD framework lists six qualities: Motivating, Yielding, Relational, Innovative, Agile and Decisive. Use it as a vocabulary for strengths you already show, not as a verdict on your leadership.
- Show discipline visibly. Professionalism signals include on-time attendance, ending meetings on schedule and meeting deadlines. These cost nothing and are noticed straight away.
- Value listening and empathy. Active listening, strategic thinking and empathy are named as contributors to organizational success, which makes them sensible early targets.
Assessing leadership strengths and gaps
Leadership strengths are best assessed by combining your own ratings with someone else’s view. The University of Iowa publishes self evaluations for 11 selected competencies and says they might be most useful in combination with feedback from a faculty or staff member. The resource is written for student leadership in a university setting, but the logic carries over to school staff: a self-rating is a starting hypothesis, and a colleague’s observation tests it.
The same resource notes that assessing knowledge differs from assessing ability or behavior, and each needs a different method. In practice, ask whether a gap is about not knowing what to do, being unable to do it, or not doing it consistently, because the fix differs for each.
Use this self-assessment checklist. Rate each item as a strength, developing or a gap, and note one observable example behind each rating.
- Communicating, building trust and deciding. Harvard’s professional development arm describes essential management skills as communicating, building trust and making decisions, not just wielding authority. Can you point to a recent example of each?
- Emotional intelligence. Park University lists self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills as the core components, with self-awareness as the cornerstone. Rate each separately, since they rarely develop evenly.
- Decision making under pressure. Champlain College describes good leadership as staying calm under pressure and evaluating outcomes from multiple angles. Do you do both when a decision is urgent?
- Delegation. Do you hand over tasks with a clear outcome and a point at which you will check in, or do you keep them because explaining feels slower?
- Feedback. Do you invite it, and do you change something visible as a result?
Finally, compare leadership styles. Champlain suggests studying them and identifying the one you relate to most, which helps you recognise both your strengths and the weaknesses that tend to come with that style.
A 30-day plan to build leadership skills
In a month you can establish a baseline, practise one focus each week and review the results. Treat it as a structured start, not a finished programme. Keep a short log of what you did and what happened, so the final review compares evidence rather than impressions.
| Week | Focus | Daily practice | Planning use |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | Communication and listening | Practise attentive listening so you understand the perspectives, feelings and needs of team members. | Choose routine conversations where mistakes are cheap. |
| Second | Feedback | Seek ongoing feedback from trusted peers, mentors or team members. | Ask after meetings and projects, then look for repeated themes. |
| Third | Decision making and delegation | Stay calm under pressure and evaluate outcomes from multiple angles. | Make small daily decisions deliberately before high-stakes ones. |
| Fourth | Emotional intelligence and review | Spend dedicated time daily or weekly reflecting on emotional experiences and behaviors. | Compare your log with your baseline ratings. |
The listening, feedback and reflection practices come from Park University, and the decision-making practice from Champlain College.
First week: communication and listening
Start with listening because it supports every later week. Champlain notes that active listening builds trust and shows you value input. In each conversation, ask an open question, then paraphrase the answer before you respond. If the person corrects your paraphrase, you have found a misunderstanding early, which is the point of the exercise.
Second week: feedback
Make asking for feedback routine. Research from The Workforce Institute, cited by Marymount, states that 86% of employees feel their voices aren’t heard. Marymount also describes a Tacoma Power leader who regularly asks team members what he is doing that works well and what he could improve. Borrow those two questions, ask them of different people each day, and write down the answers without defending yourself.
Receiving feedback is not the whole skill. For the other direction, see our guide on how to give constructive feedback to teachers.
Third week: decision making and delegation
Slow down just enough to decide well. Harvard’s professional development arm says emerging leaders can improve decision-making by allocating time for analysis and reflection. Park adds that emotionally intelligent leaders manage their emotions so that decisions are thoughtful rather than reactive. Before each decision, write the question, your options and what would change your mind.
Pair this with delegation, the task-allocation side of management that Marymount describes. Hand over a routine task with a clear expected outcome and a date to check in, then resist redoing the work. Note whether the result met the outcome you named.
Fourth week: emotional intelligence and review
Reflection turns experience into learning. Park recommends dedicated time, daily or weekly, to reflect on emotional experiences and behaviors, and advises keeping clear boundaries between work and personal life to avoid emotional exhaustion. For school leaders whose days run long, protecting that boundary is part of the skill, not a luxury. At the end of the week, re-rate the checklist from the assessment section and choose a single priority gap for the next cycle.
Using the plan in a school
The plan works best when each weekly focus attaches to something already on your calendar. Practise listening in staff briefings and corridor conversations. Run the feedback questions after a planning meeting or a project milestone. Use decisions you already make, such as arrangements for cover or the order of an agenda, as your low-stakes practice. This avoids adding a separate leadership project to a full timetable.
The Iowa resource is framed around student leadership, so use its competency approach as a model rather than a school-specific rubric. Write behaviours in your own context, for example what reliable delegation looks like when you hand work to a head of department.
Keeping progress going after the month
Growth continues only if you keep tracking it. Park advises clearly defining and consistently tracking meaningful, achievable goals to stay motivated. Turn your priority gap into a goal with a measure you can check weekly, and our guide to Goal Setting Techniques That Actually Work: A Practical Guide For 2026 – Principalspartnership shows how to build that goal so it stays practical.
Repeat the cycle with a new focus. Re-run the self-assessment checklist, compare it with colleagues’ observations, and rotate between skills that sharpen your planning and skills that strengthen your relationships.
Frequently asked questions
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Can a mentor speed up your assessment? | Yes. Marymount calls finding a mentor one of the best ways to identify vulnerabilities, shore up strengths and pursue effective leadership. |
| Which formal assessments can you try? | Harvard’s professional development arm says Myers-Briggs, DiSC and emotional intelligence assessments help people understand strengths, weaknesses and leadership style. |
| Is negotiation worth practising? | It is a useful skill for emerging leaders. Harvard describes four stages: preparation, opening, bargaining and closing, and preparation means understanding your goals and the goals of the other party. See Harvard’s guidance. |
| Does mindfulness help leaders? | Park says regular mindfulness exercises or meditation sessions can improve emotional control and reduce stress. |
| Should reading be part of the routine? | It can be an optional extra. Champlain suggests about an hour a day reading management-focused publications, but the weekly practice should come first if time is short. |
