There is a persistent myth in school leadership that you have to choose between being caring and being effective. Caring leaders, the story goes, are liked but let things slide. Effective leaders get results but leave people bruised.
It is a false choice. The most effective leaders care deeply, and their care is exactly what allows them to hold high standards.
What softness looks like
Softness is avoiding the difficult conversation because you do not want to upset someone. It is accepting work that is not good enough because the person is stretched. It is letting a colleague repeat the same mistake because pointing it out feels unkind.
Softness feels kind in the moment. In the long run, it is the opposite. The colleague who never hears honest feedback never improves. The students in their classes pay the price. And when the problem finally becomes impossible to ignore, the conversation is far harsher than it needed to be.
What care looks like
Care takes a person’s growth seriously. It says: I believe you can do better, and I am going to help you get there. That means:
- Telling people the truth about their work, clearly and early.
- Being explicit about expectations, so nobody has to guess what good looks like.
- Offering real support, such as time, coaching or resources, alongside the challenge.
- Following up, so feedback does not feel like a one-off judgement.
Care also means paying attention to the person behind the work. A teacher dealing with illness at home needs flexibility. That flexibility is care. Lowering the bar permanently is not.
When care means helping someone move on
Sometimes care looks different from what we expect. As a vice principal, I was asked to speak to a colleague who was visibly not coping. Rather than starting with performance, I started with him: “You don’t seem very happy here. What’s going on? We want to help you and we want to support you, but I need to know whether this is what you want, or whether you’re really looking for a way out.”
I asked because, in my experience, when someone is struggling in this way it usually means one of two things. Either they are asking for support, or they are looking for a credible way to leave. Both are legitimate. What helps nobody is leaving the question unasked.
In his case, he had come to feel the school wasn’t right for him, and he needed someone to say it out loud. So we gave him a genuine choice: stay, with real support to get back on track, or take a viable, dignified exit from his contract. He chose to move on, and we recommended him to a school whose curriculum suited him far better.
That was care too. Support sometimes means helping somebody leave well: for their own sake, for the students in their classes, and for the colleagues in their department who had been quietly picking up the slack. Softness would have let the situation drift for another year. Care named it, kindly, and gave him a way forward.
High challenge, high support
A useful way to think about this is two dials: challenge and support. High support with low challenge produces comfort but little growth. High challenge with low support produces anxiety and burnout. Low on both produces indifference.
The leaders people remember turned both dials up. They expected a great deal and gave a great deal. Staff felt stretched but never abandoned.
Why it matters more in international schools
International schools bring together staff from different professional cultures. In some, direct feedback is normal. In others, it can feel like a personal attack. Caring leaders learn how their message lands with each person and adjust the delivery, without diluting the message.
The standard stays the same. The way you help someone reach it can change.
Helping people get where they want to go
Part of caring for staff is accepting that not everyone wants the same thing. Some people want to be a teacher. The classroom is their passion and their vocation, and they have no wish to leave it. Others see teaching as one step on a career ladder and hope to become a curriculum coordinator, a head of department or an assistant principal.
A leader’s job is not to keep people where they are. It is to find out what each teacher wants or needs, and then help them get there. For the teacher whose vocation is the classroom, that might mean deepening their expertise, adding new skills and recognising them as the expert they are. For the aspiring leader, it might mean stretching projects, coaching and real chances to lead. Either way, the leader’s role is to develop people and multiply the talent already in the room.
And sometimes, as the story above shows, kindness means helping someone move on. When a teacher isn’t happy, everyone feels it: the lessons suffer, the department suffers and, in time, the whole school does. Helping that person find the right next step is not a failure of care. It is care.
Putting it into practice
Next time you feel the urge to let poor practice slide to avoid conflict, pause. Ask whether you are protecting the other person or protecting yourself from an uncomfortable moment. Usually, it is the second. Letting it slide lets down the rest of the team, who carry the extra load and watch the standard drop. It also lets down the individual, who may be quietly waiting for someone to start the conversation they cannot start themselves.
The kindest thing a leader can do is believe in someone enough to tell them the truth, and then stand beside them while they act on it.
Journeying:
Related Articles:
- Professionalism Over Politics — Gina Davies, Edu’Flections. On why the small behaviours we walk past become what a school learns to tolerate.
- Make Kindness Cool — Gina Davies, Edu’Flections. On how the most demanding leaders can also be the most caring.
- Nice Isn’t Kind: Toxic Positivity in International Schools — The Assistant Principal
- Leadership Is Mostly Noticing — The Assistant Principal
- Specific Praise Travels Further — The Assistant Principal
- Why Managers Can’t Skimp on Radical Candor — strategy+business
- Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams — Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly (1999)
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