You know the situation. Two members of your school leadership team who should be working closely together are barely speaking. Meetings are tense. Decisions stall because neither will yield. Staff have noticed, and some have started picking sides. Students may not understand the details, but they feel the tension in the corridors. The school is running, but it is not running well, and everyone knows it.   This is one of the most common and most damaging dynamics in school lea

Silos in a school leadership team do not announce themselves. There is no moment where your principal, deputies, and heads of department sit down and decide to stop collaborating. Silos develop gradually, almost invisibly, until one day you realise that your leadership team is not actually leading together. They are leading separately, in parallel, occasionally bumping into each other at meetings but never genuinely integrating their work.   Patrick Lencioni, author of Silos,

"What is most important right now?" is the fifth of Patrick Lencioni's six critical questions for creating organisational clarity. In The Advantage, Lencioni argues that every leadership team must identify a single, qualitative, time-bound priority that rallies the entire organisation around a shared focus. He calls this the thematic goal, and it is the answer to the question that separates aligned organisations from scattered ones.   The word "now" is critical. This is not a

Your leadership team meetings are polite. Everyone nods. Nobody raises their voice. Decisions get made quickly. And nothing ever actually changes.   If that sounds familiar, you are probably dealing with artificial harmony, one of the most destructive and least talked about dynamics in leadership teams today.   Patrick Lencioni coined the term in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which has now sold more than three million copies worldwide. He placed fear of conflict, the dysfu

Introduction   American manufacturing contributes over $2.8 trillion to the U.S. economy and employs nearly 13 million workers across automotive, aerospace, food processing, electronics, machinery, and countless other sectors. Yet this powerful engine of economic growth faces leadership challenges unlike any time in recent memory. The manufacturing skills gap threatens to leave 2.1 million jobs unfilled by 2030. Digital transformation and Industry 4.0 technologies demand new

"Who must do what?" is the sixth and final of Patrick Lencioni's six critical questions for creating organisational clarity. In The Advantage, Lencioni argues that once a leadership team has answered the first five questions, covering purpose, values, business definition, strategy, and the thematic goal, it must clarify roles and responsibilities so that every leader knows exactly what they are accountable for and where one person's responsibility ends and another's begins.