This piece is for MAT CEOs and the senior leadership teams running multi-academy trusts, though much of it applies to any senior team trying to function as more than the sum of its members.
Leadership teams in schools and trusts are under enormous pressure. And one of the things that doesn’t get talked about enough is what happens when the team itself starts to fracture.
I’ve seen this up close. When a leadership team loses its coherence, the whole system feels it. It travels through a lack of clarity, through a culture where authenticity gets lost and without that, you don’t get the honest conversation, the challenge, the discussion that creates the conditions for people to grow, for a community to evolve, for something genuinely good to be built.
The question worth asking isn’t whether your team is functioning. It’s whether it’s actually a team or a group of individuals operating in parallel, each carrying their own version of the story.
Because those are two very different things. And the gap between them is where culture breaks down.
So what does it actually look like?
I’ve seen it across whole leadership teams. People carrying enormous weight on their own, feeling isolated despite being surrounded by colleagues. Self-doubt that never gets named. Frustration that has nowhere to go. Communication that breaks down not because people don’t care, but because there isn’t enough trust or safety to say what’s actually true.
And underneath all of it, a disconnect from why they came into education in the first place. The gap between what drew them to teaching and what they’re actually doing every day. That gap is exhausting in a way that no workload management strategy will fix.
What I know, from building Gesher, from working with leaders through The Single Collective, and from my own experience, is that you cannot fix this with a strategy day or a new communication protocol.
It starts with a fundamental question: do the people in that room actually see themselves as a team? Or are they a group of individuals who happen to share a meeting agenda?
Because those are two completely different things. And the distinction matters when it comes to how you work with them.
Group coaching works with individuals. It supports each person to develop, reflect and grow. That has real value. But if the problem lies in the relationships between people, in the dynamics, the disconnection, the lack of shared purpose, then working with individuals won’t touch it.
Team coaching works with the team as a single entity. The relationships are the client. The culture is the client. The question isn’t just what does each person need. It’s what does this team need to build genuine connection, belonging and relational capacity? To become cohesive, authentic and effective together?
Because with that belonging, with that connection, with that relational capacity, something becomes possible that most leadership teams have never actually experienced. A network of collective responsibility and accountability. A community that flourishes on agency, ambition and hope.
That’s what good team coaching builds. And that’s what changes things for children.
Because ultimately this isn’t about leadership teams. It’s about what happens to children at the end of it all.
When a team is truly connected, when people feel they belong, when authenticity is possible, and challenge is welcome, that culture travels. Into classrooms, into the way a child or young person experiences school, and whether they feel valued, visible and safe enough to learn.
Most of the leaders I work with came into education because they believed they could make a difference. That belief doesn’t go anywhere. But the space to think, to reflect, to reconnect to it rarely gets prioritised. And without that space, it gets lost in the noise of school life.
The work of The Single Collective is to create that space. And to help teams find their way back to what matters. Together.
About the author
Ali Durban MBE is the founder of The Single Collective and co-founder of Gesher School (three times Ofsted Outstanding and a national model for SEND education). She works with MAT CEOs and senior leadership teams across England on the relational culture work in the space between CPD and wellbeing.