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This blog is written by Tamara Zaple Rolfs, who is a former Executive Headteacher, leadership trainer and certified Systemic Team Coach. She works with Trusts and school leaders to strengthen connected leadership, embed relational skills and translate insight, including survey data, into coherent strategy and sustainable cultural change.
Danni Fothergill’s analysis of Edurio’s national Staff Experience Survey paints a clear and uncomfortable picture: middle leaders are carrying the strain.
They report the lowest wellbeing of any staff group. They are highly committed, often energised by their work, yet physically and mentally depleted. Positioned between senior leadership and classroom practice, they hold accountability, implementation, people management and teaching responsibilities, often with limited time or structural protection to match.
Rather than asking whether middle leaders are resilient enough, perhaps we need to ask a different question:
How are we designing the system around them?
Part 1: Connected Leadership
Pressure at the middle level is rarely about individual capability alone. This is a cross-sector issue and more often, it reflects the quality of connection across an organisation.
Schools and Trusts are complex systems operating under sustained structural pressures: funding constraints, policy change, workforce shortages and rising levels of need. These realities matter. But so does our capacity to work well together within them.
Sustainable leadership increasingly depends on connected systems, where clarity, trust and collaboration are intentionally designed.
Connected leadership means:
- Acknowledging challenges honestly, without losing optimism
- Designing cultures built on clarity and trust, so expectations are lived and coherent
- Developing the skills to navigate complexity, especially when change is constant
- Creating feedback systems that move in all directions, not simply top-down
Leadership happens at every layer of an organisation. Each layer experiences different stressors. When those layers become disconnected, the strain is most keenly felt in the middle.
Middle leaders sit closest to the interface of change. They translate strategy into practice and feel the positive and negative impact of decisions the most.
As Danni explains in her article, the relationship between senior and middle leaders is particularly critical. When middle leaders have space to contribute upwards, and know that their voice influences decision-making, alignment strengthens. When they do not, frustrations grow.
Connection can no longer be seen as a “soft” issue. It is structural and more important than ever.
Part 2: What Middle Leaders Need
Alongside building connected systems, senior and executive leaders have a responsibility to create space for meaningful leadership development at the middle level.
Development should enable middle leaders to act as confident agents of change within their sphere of influence. In high-pressure environments, three areas are particularly important:
- Self-awareness and resilience
Understanding personal drivers, stress responses and leadership impact enables middle leaders to manage pressure with greater steadiness and intention. - Operational leadership skills
This includes running effective meetings, communicating clearly within and beyond their team, prioritising well, and translating whole-school strategy into actionable plans. - Relational leadership skills
Building trust, creating psychologically safe teams, holding colleagues to account with compassion, and navigating challenging dynamics are central to sustainable team performance.
In complex systems with tight resources, these skills are essential.
From Pressure to Power
The Edurio data shows that middle leaders remain deeply committed. They care about their schools. They care about their teams and undoubtedly the young people and communities they serve. They care about doing a good job.
If we want that commitment to translate into sustainable impact, we must focus intentionally on this group, the engine room of our schools.
Strengthening connections across leadership layers and investing in high-quality development can shift the experience of middle leadership from pressure to empowerment.
And that shift matters, not just for middle leaders, but for the health and performance of the entire system.