Leadership Beyond the Title: Trust, Mentoring, and Capacity Building in Schools
Darrick Lamar Bell, CAGS, MAEP
A research-informed practitioner perspective
Recognizing the leadership already present
Across the educational positions I have held, and through my experience and tenure in three separate school districts, I have observed that some of the strongest leaders in a school do not hold administrative titles. They lead from classrooms, through relationships, and in the everyday work of supporting students and colleagues. Their influence becomes visible when others seek their guidance, trust their judgment, or grow more capable because of their support.
This experience raises a question worth examining: Why do schools sometimes recognize leadership primarily through position when important leadership is already occurring throughout the organization?
The position advanced here is that educational leadership extends beyond formal administrative authority. Educators who build trust, mentor colleagues, improve practice, and develop the capacity of others exercise meaningful leadership. Schools benefit from recognizing that contribution and creating conditions in which it can continue.
Leadership as influence and practice
The literature provides an established foundation for this perspective. York-Barr and Duke (2004) reviewed two decades of teacher-leadership scholarship and documented teachers’ contributions at both instructional and organizational levels. Their review also identified gaps in how teacher leadership was defined and how its effects were studied. It supports taking teacher leadership seriously while remaining precise about what the evidence demonstrates.
Spillane et al. (2004) offer a complementary framework through distributed leadership. They conceptualize leadership practice through interactions among leaders, followers, and the situation in which they work. This perspective directs attention to how leadership happens across people and activities. It does not imply that everyone has identical responsibilities or that administrative accountability disappears.
For this article, leadership means influencing others toward improved educational practice and developing their ability to contribute. Authority, expertise, and influence can overlap, but they are distinct. A position can authorize a decision; professional credibility can encourage colleagues to seek guidance and act on it.
Leadership therefore requires more than being popular, experienced, or willing to help. The relevant question is whether an educator’s actions strengthen professional practice, shared problem solving, or the ability of others to serve students effectively.
Relationships and trust as foundations
Relationships matter when they create conditions for honest conversation, constructive feedback, and collaborative action. In schools, colleagues often need to discuss uncertainty, acknowledge an unsuccessful approach, or ask for assistance. These interactions require confidence that another person will respond respectfully and responsibly.
Tschannen-Moran (2001) found significant relationships between trust and collaboration involving principals, colleagues, and parents. Because the study was correlational, it does not establish that trust alone causes collaboration. It does support the importance of examining trust when explaining how educators work together.
Gordon et al. (2021) provide particularly direct support for leadership without appointment. Their study surveyed educators across four states about colleagues they regarded as informal teacher leaders. Respondents described leadership activities at individual, team, and school levels, along with respectful, trusting working relationships and perceived positive effects. These findings represent educators’ perceptions, rather than independently established causal effects.
My interpretation is that consistent, credible relationships can give educators opportunities to influence practice that are not fully visible in an organizational chart. Listening carefully, following through, and offering useful feedback can make professional guidance easier to seek and use. Trust also needs room for respectful disagreement; agreement with every decision is not a measure of effective leadership.
Mentoring as leadership in action
Mentoring makes the influence of educators especially visible. An experienced colleague can help another teacher interpret a difficult situation, reflect on instruction, or develop a more effective response. The leadership contribution lies in helping that person improve judgment and practice.
Ingersoll and Strong (2011) reviewed 15 empirical studies of beginning-teacher induction and mentoring. Most studies supported favorable outcomes in teacher commitment and retention, instructional practice, and student achievement. Results were not uniform, including important exceptions in a large randomized study. Their review supports the potential value of mentoring and induction without implying that every program produces the same results.
This evidence concerns induction and mentoring programs, not every informal conversation between colleagues. Nevertheless, it offers a research foundation for examining mentoring as a substantive educational contribution. For practice, the important questions are whether mentoring is purposeful, responsive to need, and followed by opportunities to apply and reflect on new learning.
Consider an illustrative example: A teacher helps a new colleague plan an approach to classroom routines, observes its implementation, and discusses what worked. The new teacher then adapts the approach independently. This is a hypothetical example, not a reported case from my districts, but it demonstrates how leadership can operate through guidance rather than supervision.
Building capacity beyond individual performance
Capacity building means developing the knowledge, skills, confidence, and shared routines that help others work effectively. It moves the focus from what one capable educator can accomplish to what a team becomes able to accomplish together.
A useful distinction is whether support creates continued dependence or greater independence. An educator may solve a problem for a colleague. A capacity-building approach also helps that colleague understand the reasoning, apply the strategy, and respond to similar problems later. Both forms of assistance can matter, but the second extends the contribution.
Kraft and Papay (2014) found that teachers working in more supportive professional environments improved their effectiveness more over time than those in less supportive environments. Their findings concern the broader school environment and should not be attributed solely to informal leaders. They reinforce the importance of treating professional growth as something shaped by working conditions as well as individual effort.
Aliu et al. (2024), in a review of 33 articles published from 2018 through 2023, identified teacher-leadership outcomes involving school development, teacher professional growth, and students. They also noted continuing inconsistency in definitions. Taken together, these studies support examining leadership through contributions to collective learning, while recognizing variation in how those contributions are measured.
Why capable leaders may remain outside administration
An educator’s decision to remain in teaching should not automatically be interpreted as a lack of leadership ambition or ability. Direct work with students may be central to that person’s professional identity. Administrative work also involves different responsibilities. Personal priorities, preferred work, and available opportunities are plausible explanations to investigate, rather than universal findings established by the studies cited here.
Organizational conditions are another part of the explanation. Wenner and Campbell (2017) found that principals, school structures, and norms can empower or marginalize teacher leaders. This suggests that leadership opportunities depend partly on how a school recognizes expertise, permits participation, and supports professional influence.
The distinction between exercising leadership and receiving an administrative appointment is important. Much teacher-leadership research examines the former. It cannot, by itself, explain promotion decisions or establish how frequently highly capable educators are overlooked for administrative positions.
There is also a practical question about recognition. When mentoring, coordinating improvement, and supporting colleagues are treated only as signs of being helpful, schools may fail to name the leadership involved. This is an interpretation arising from the research and my practitioner perspective. It points toward a question schools can examine locally: Whose expertise shapes our work, and how is that contribution acknowledged?
What the evidence can and cannot establish
Shen et al. (2020) found a small positive association between teacher leadership and student achievement in their meta-analysis, r = .19. Leadership related to improvements in curriculum, instruction, and assessment showed the strongest association among the dimensions examined, r = .21. These are correlations, not percentages of achievement improvement and not proof that teacher leadership alone causes gains. Published studies also reported larger effects than unpublished studies.
The defensible conclusion is that teacher leadership has educational relevance and merits attention. The evidence does not establish that educators without administrative titles are consistently better leaders than administrators, nor does it quantify how many of the “best” leaders remain outside formal positions.
Similarly, the core evidence cited here concerns teacher leadership. Extending the perspective to school psychologists, counselors, and other student-support professionals is a practical application that warrants its own research. Their roles can be examined using comparable questions about influence, collaboration, and capacity building without assuming identical evidence across professions.
Implications for schools and districts
The following recommendations translate this perspective into practice. They are proposed actions, rather than interventions individually proven by the cited studies.
Recognize demonstrated influence. Ask educators whom they approach for instructional guidance, mentoring, or help with complex problems. Examine the actions and resulting changes behind those nominations. Include opportunities for less visible colleagues to demonstrate expertise so recognition does not become a popularity contest.
Provide meaningful participation. Invite educators with relevant expertise into decisions about instruction and student support. Clarify which decisions they can shape, how recommendations will be considered, and how administrators will communicate the result.
Support the work with time and resources. Mentoring and collaborative improvement require attention. Schools should consider protected time, access to professional learning, and appropriate recognition or compensation when responsibilities expand. Dependence on goodwill alone is a fragile way to sustain important work.
Offer pathways that preserve direct practice. Educators should have opportunities to deepen their leadership while continuing to teach or support students. Mentoring, leading inquiry, facilitating professional learning, and coordinating improvement can be recognized as meaningful contributions in their own right.
Evaluate contributions through evidence. Look for changes in colleagues’ practice, implementation of shared routines, quality of collaboration, or other outcomes connected to the work. Use multiple sources and remain cautious about attributing student outcomes to a single educator or activity.
Build a partnership with formal leaders. Administrators retain important responsibilities for direction, resources, accountability, and equitable opportunity. Their work can strengthen leadership throughout the school by making room for expertise and following through on collaborative decisions.
A broader understanding of educational leadership
My experience has taught me to look for leadership in what people make possible for others. The educator who earns trust, helps a colleague grow, or strengthens a team’s ability to respond to students may be making a significant leadership contribution while remaining in a teaching role.
Peer-reviewed scholarship gives this observation a credible foundation. It also calls for careful definitions and measured claims. Schools should assess leadership through responsibilities and through demonstrated influence on professional practice.
Recognizing that influence creates an opportunity: districts can develop the leadership already present in their schools and support educators whose expertise helps others succeed. An administrative appointment is one pathway for leadership. Daily work with students and colleagues is another.
References
Aliu, J., Kaçaniku, F., & Saqipi, B. (2024). Teacher leadership: A review of literature on the conceptualization and outcomes of teacher leadership. International Journal of Educational Reform, 33(4), 388–408. https://doi.org/10.1177/10567879241268114
Gordon, S. P., Jacobs, J., Croteau, S. M., & Solis, R. (2021). Informal teacher leaders: Who they are, what they do, and how they impact teaching and learning. Journal of School Leadership, 31(6), 526–547. https://doi.org/10.1177/1052684620924468
Ingersoll, R. M., & Strong, M. (2011). The impact of induction and mentoring programs for beginning teachers: A critical review of the research. Review of Educational Research, 81(2), 201–233. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311403323
Kraft, M. A., & Papay, J. P. (2014). Can professional environments in schools promote teacher development? Explaining heterogeneity in returns to teaching experience. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 36(4), 476–500. https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373713519496
Shen, J., Wu, H., Reeves, P., Zheng, Y., Ryan, L., & Anderson, D. (2020). The association between teacher leadership and student achievement: A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 31, Article 100357. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2020.100357
Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J. B. (2004). Towards a theory of leadership practice: A distributed perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36(1), 3–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/0022027032000106726
Tschannen-Moran, M. (2001). Collaboration and the need for trust. Journal of Educational Administration, 39(4), 308–331. https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000005493
Wenner, J. A., & Campbell, T. (2017). The theoretical and empirical basis of teacher leadership: A review of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 87(1), 134–171. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654316653478
York-Barr, J., & Duke, K. (2004). What do we know about teacher leadership? Findings from two decades of scholarship. Review of Educational Research, 74(3), 255–316. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543074003255
Article type: Narrative synthesis and practitioner perspective informed by peer-reviewed sources. This article has not itself undergone journal peer review.
