Leading Without a Title
LeadingWithoutA Title
Let’s get one thing straight. Leadership is not a title they hand you in a lanyard. It’s not who signs your name on the whiteboard during classroom coverage. It’s not who gets the extra prep period or the keys to the storage closet like they’ve ascended to some sacred level of the building hierarchy.
Leadership is what happens in the hallway at 7:42am when a kid is about to spiral, and you’re the one who stops, looks them dead in the eye, and says: I see you. What do you need? No one gave you a title for that. You just did it. That’s the whole sermon right there — but stay with me.
Because here’s the real talk: sometimes the people with the titles? They don’t know a damn thing about what they’re saying. They’re reading off a district memo they received twenty minutes ago, nodding like they invented it, and you’re sitting there in the third row of that PD thinking — did this person ever actually teach a full class? Like, not a walkthrough. An actual, chaotic, beautiful, exhausting, full-length class?
I had an AP — an assistant principal — laugh at me. Not with me. At me. I came back 60 pounds heavier after a diagnosis that tried to take me out. Three different steroids just to keep my strength. I was fighting every single day just to be in that building. And this person, this so-called leader with a door plaque and a parking spot, chose that moment to laugh.
I kept that memory like fuel in a tank. Hell with those types. Every single day I walked back in, I used it. I let it make me sharper. More intentional. More present. If spite is what lights your fire — baby, burn it.
The building doesn’t change because someone sends a strongly worded email or cries in the parking lot (though we’ve all been there, no shame). It changes because someone decides to become indispensable. You learn everything. You observe everything. You absorb more information about your school’s culture, your students’ patterns, your colleagues’ needs than anyone sitting in an office ever will — because you’re IN it. Then you use that information to develop the people around you.
And if the environment becomes so toxic, so hollow, so beneath what you know you’re capable of? Leave. They don’t deserve you. That’s not weakness. That’s evolution.
I worked at a school that was divided in ways you couldn’t even make up. Staff drama that made reality TV look boring. And right in the middle of it was one guy — the absolute worst. Made fun of kids. Bullied coworkers. The kind of energy that poisons a room the second he walked in. I wanted to punch him dead in his face. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But I couldn’t. You know. Work.
So I used leadership instead. And here’s the beautiful, slightly petty, completely professional thing about people like him: they’re idiots. Not book-dumb necessarily — just emotionally blind. He couldn’t see what I was doing right in front of him. He couldn’t see how I was showing people, day after day, what it looks like when someone actually supports the team. He couldn’t see how I was quietly making the principal believe — truly believe — she had the strength to make a move.
The day she announced over the loudspeaker that he was “retiring,” I was standing at the gate. Watching him walk out. He knew. Everyone knew. He had every confrontation. He had every smirk and every snide comment and every moment of making someone feel small. And leadership gave me the last word without me ever raising my voice.
He left. His one remaining ally — equally unhinged, equally miserable — never bothered a single person again. She didn’t need a conversation. She just needed to see what real influence looks like when it’s pointed in the right direction. That’s how powerful a culture shift can be. Wordless. Surgical. Final.
Absorb every process, policy, relationship, and gap in the building. Knowledge is your currency — and no one can take your deposit.
The moment you stop sharing what you know, you’ve stopped leading. Your growth only counts if it lifts someone else off the ground too.
Not physically there while mentally in a group chat. Present. Eyes up. Reading the room. Knowing which student walked in differently today.
It’s intelligence. The most respected leaders in any building know what their people carry before they ever say a word about it.
Trust isn’t earned in meetings. It’s earned in the moment someone needed backup and you were already there before they asked.
It waits for you to get tired. Don’t give it the opening. The goal stays the goal no matter what mood walks through the front door.
to Be Great
Lead where you are. Lead with what you know. Lead because the kids in your building deserve at least one adult who decided — quietly, stubbornly, relentlessly — that the culture was going to be better because they were in it. That’s it. That’s the whole job.
