Welcome to The Middle Leadership Tank
LISTEN TO
Empowering Middle Leaders in your School
“ Welcome to the Middle Leadership Tank; a professional learning resource designed specifically to support the growth, confidence, and capability of your school’s middle leaders. As a senior leader, you understand just how vital these individuals are to the fabric of your school. They are the bridge between vision and practice, strategy and implementation, policy and pedagogy. And yet, for all their importance, middle leaders are often left navigating this space without structured development or ongoing support. The Middle Leadership Tank changes that, by providing them with research-informed, practical, and timely content that strengthens their ability to lead from the middle.
This isn’t about generic leadership training. Every episode in the Middle Leadership Tank is built around the unique demands of middle leadership in international schools. From managing team dynamics and leading professional dialogue to building trust, handling conflict, and embedding strategic initiatives, the Tank speaks directly to the real work that middle leaders do. It recognises the weight they carry and equips them with tools, frameworks, and ideas that make the role more manageable, more purposeful, and more effective.
Steve Paulsen
Editor of The Middle Leadership Tank
Steve Paulson is a UK educator and leadership specialist with a distinguished career supporting schools around the world to unlock their leadership potential. With a background in school leadership across diverse contexts, from high-performing international schools to emerging institutions in challenging environments, Steve brings a rare blend of global insight and grounded, practical experience.
His work focuses on helping schools build leadership capacity at every level, with particular expertise in coaching, strategic development, and fostering collaborative cultures. Widely respected for his thoughtful approach and deep understanding of the complexities of educational leadership, Steve continues to work alongside schools to drive sustainable improvement and empower leaders to thrive in their unique settings.
Each week, your staff will receive one email linking to five short-form episodes. These can be shared all at once as a weekly briefing, or broken up across the week for drip-feed, just-in-time learning. The structure is simple and flexible—designed to slot into your school’s rhythm without adding pressure. More importantly, each episode draws on global best practices and landmark research, including the work of Viviane Robinson on the impact of leadership on student outcomes, John Hattie on collective efficacy, and Michael Fullan on leading in complex systems. We also explore practical models like instructional coaching, distributed leadership, and high-trust cultures—all with the aim of building practical capacity and growing confidence in your team.
The Middle Leadership Tank offers a cost-effective and high-impact way to support professional growth across your school. For just $365 per year, your entire leadership team can access 180 episodes of research-based, practice-focused professional learning. The content can be edited, embedded into your internal communications, or used to frame discussions in leadership meetings. There are no passwords, no complex systems—just clear, compelling learning, delivered straight to your inbox.
As a senior leader, your investment in middle leadership sends a powerful message: that leadership is not reserved for the top, but cultivated at every level. By enabling your middle leaders to grow, reflect, and act with clarity, you’re creating the conditions for deeper alignment, better decision-making, and more cohesive school culture.
And perhaps most importantly, you’re creating ripples of positive change. Every time a middle leader listens to an episode, shares a reflection, or adjusts their practice, they contribute to a larger transformation—one that starts small but resonates widely. Some ripples may be quiet and steady. Others may grow into waves of cultural shift. But all of them matter. That’s the promise of the Middle Leadership Tank: a daily opportunity to grow your people, strengthen your school, and lead with intent—one ripple at a time.
We invite you to explore our sample episodes, and to imagine what might happen if every middle leader in your school started their week with a moment of inspiration, insight, and purposeful action.
Be part of a bigger change...
Every day, we release a ripple in a vast educational ecosystem.
Some ripples fade, others grow into waves, but all have the potential to make a difference.