Education Leaders | Strategic School Leadership Poor Proxies for Leadership | A Conversation with Chris Baker
Mar 16, 2026
Chris Baker, leadership development specialist and author, explores how schools mistake visibility, busyness and confidence for true leadership. He discusses why these proxies mislead and proposes judging leaders by the feelings they create and what they enable others to do. Practical steps for auditing recruitment, job descriptions and development programs are shared.
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Common Leadership Signals Are Correlations Not Causes
- Leadership assessments often rely on visible, engaging behaviours that correlate with success but may not cause it.
- Chris Baker links Rob Coe's Poor Proxies for Learning to leadership, showing common signals like silence, engagement, and completion can mislead.
I Walked The School To Prove I Was A Leader
- Chris Baker adopted visible walking and high step counts because he was told visibility equals good leadership.
- He realised this behaviour cost strategic time and pushed essential work into evenings, showing a personal cost of the proxy.
Proxies Drive Burnout And Poor Retention
- Over-emphasising visibility and busyness as leadership signals harms leader well-being and retention.
- Baker admits his own busyness proxy pushed strategic work into personal time, linking proxies to burnout risk.
