Leadership that Listens:
What Teachers Actually Want From Their Principals and Why Listening Changes Everything
2 MIN READ
Author: David Tudor: Director of K-12 Systems Change & Implementation
Post 3: What Teachers Actually Want From Their Principals and Why Listening Changes Everything
If you want to understand what’s really happening in a school building, the culture, the trust, the degree to which teachers feel supported and empowered, talk to the teachers. Not as an afterthought. Not in a hallway conversation. In a structured, safe, and anonymous way that invites honest reflection on the leadership they experience every day.
The research on what teachers want from their principals is rich, consistent, and underutilized in most districts’ approach to leadership development.
The Wallace Foundation Study: What 4,165 Teachers Said
One of the most comprehensive studies of how teachers experience principal leadership drew on data from more than 4,165 completed surveys from teachers across K-12 schools in the United States. The study, published in Educational Administration Quarterly, examined the relationships among shared leadership, professional community, trust, and teacher instructional practice.
The findings were striking. Shared leadership and professional community, the degree to which principals actively distribute leadership and foster collaborative environments, xplained more of the variation in effective teacher practice than almost any other factor. Teachers’ trust in their principal, while important, became less predictive of instructional behavior when shared leadership was strong. In other words, it’s not enough for principals to be trusted. They need to actively build structures that share leadership with the professionals in their buildings.
Wahlstrom, K.L., & Louis, K.S. (2008). "How Teachers Experience Principal Leadership: The Roles of Professional Community, Trust, Efficacy, and Shared Responsibility." Educational Administration Quarterly, 44(4), 458–495.
Teachers Are Clear About What 21st Century Leadership Looks Like
Research by Thompson in the Journal of Organizational and Educational Leadership found that teachers have clear, consistent expectations of their school leaders—and those expectations don’t center on management competence alone. Teachers want principals who promote professional growth, who create space for reflective practice, and who build genuine relationships with staff. They want leaders who model the kind of continuous learning they are expected to demonstrate in their own classrooms.
Thompson, C.S. (n.d.). "Teachers’ Expectations of Educational Leaders’ Leadership Approach and Perspectives on the Principalship." Journal of Organizational & Educational Leadership, 2(2).
Critically, teachers also want to feel heard. When their perspective on leadership practice is never solicited, when the only feedback loop runs from district office to principal, with no channel for staff voice, it communicates something powerful and demoralizing: their experience of leadership doesn’t matter.
The Gap Between What Leaders Think They’re Doing and What Teachers Experience
The mismatch between principal self-perception and teacher experience isn’t just a curiosity. It has real consequences for school culture, teacher retention, and ultimately student outcomes.
Research using the Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale found that while there are schools where principal and teacher perceptions align closely, there are others where significant gaps exist and the direction of those gaps varies. Some principals overestimate their visibility and instructional focus. Others underestimate how much their support is valued. Without structured multi-rater data, neither the principal nor their coach has any way to know.
Gurley, D.K., Anast-May, L., O’Neal, M., & Dozier, R. (2016). "Principal Instructional Leadership Behaviors: Teacher vs. Self-Perceptions." NCPEA International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation, 11(1).
Staff Voice Is a Leadership Development Resource, Not a Risk
One of the most common concerns districts express about gathering staff feedback on principal performance is cultural: what if it feels punitive? What if teachers use it as a complaint mechanism? What if it undermines the principal’s authority?
These concerns are understandable. They’re also largely unfounded when the process is designed well. Staff voice, gathered anonymously through a validated instrument and framed explicitly as a development resource, not an evaluation, tends to produce exactly the kind of honest, constructive, and actionable feedback that leaders desperately need and rarely receive.
In fact, the act of soliciting feedback signals something important to staff: that their principal is committed to growth. That they are humble enough to want to know. That the culture of the building values continuous improvement, not just compliance. These are exactly the cultural conditions that research connects to stronger teacher retention and higher-performing schools.
Next, we’ll look at what happens when leaders actually engage with that data and how the process of moving from blind spot to breakthrough transforms not just individual leaders, but entire school systems.
➡ Up next—Post 4: From Blind Spots to Breakthroughs
🔗 Learn how CEE structures staff voice for principal development: www.effectiveness.org
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