Are current educational leadership roles and relationships appropriate in a rapidly changing world? Do we need to rethink key assumptions about leaders and leadership? Are you confident about the appropriateness and effectiveness of your chosen leadership styles and behaviors? These are questions facing leaders today and Understanding Leadership can help find the answers. Applying research and case studies from inside and outside the educational canon, John West-Burnham and Libby Nicholas challenge prevailing orthodoxies and invite readers to reflect on their personal understanding as the basis for translating theory into practice. This book will help leaders make their implicit understanding explicit and so informs and aids development of professional practice. Effective leaders (and effective people) develop and grow by understanding their personal mindscape and developing it through reflecting, exploring, testing and questioning.