“Leadership Can Happen in a Corridor”: The small, real shifts that happen in the moments most Educational Leaders do not even count

Most Educational Leaders have been told their job is to lead the pedagogy of a service. What they are rarely told is that the bulk of that leadership will not happen in scheduled meetings or formal observations. It will happen in the ninety-second windows between a transition and a nap time, at the edge of a conversation that was meant to be about something else, in a side corner while two children settle a disagreement on the rug.

Leadership, in this role, tends to happen in a corridor.

The Dandelion cohort has spent a session this year working through what the mentor leading the group called micro-mentoring. The framing is deliberate. Micro, because the moment is small. Mentoring, because the intent is real. The mentor introduced the session saying she wanted leaders to leave “with a renewed sense that leadership can happen in moments.” That sentence has sat with several of them since.

WHAT STOPS THE MOMENT FROM HAPPENING

One of the first patterns that surfaced in the session is how often these small moments get noticed and then set aside. One participant, describing what she sees across her days, said it plainly.

“Every even little passes through the day can be opportunities to mentor and to encourage.”

The opportunities are there. What gets in the way is not the absence of a moment. What gets in the way is hesitation.

Another leader in the room named the hesitation directly. She talked about the pattern of observing something in a room, knowing she could have a quick conversation about it, and choosing not to. Her reasoning was honest and familiar.

“We don’t always, because we don’t want to interrupt.”

Interrupting a staff member who is with children feels costly. The habit of staying back feels like respect. Over a day, that habit adds up, and many of the best small conversations never happen.

A third participant, describing the same pattern from the inside, named the internal friction.

“I second-guess myself, whether it’s the right time, and how far is this gonna go, and how big is it gonna go, and there’s children present.”

The question the leader is really asking herself in that pause is not about the other person. It is about whether she has the structure to keep the conversation the size it needs to stay.

This is where the micro-mentoring frame started doing real work. The leaders in the room recognised that the thing stopping them was not a lack of care or a lack of skill. It was the absence of a clean, reliable shape for a small conversation. Without a shape, the small talk threatens to spill into a big one. With a shape, the talk can be exactly as small as the moment requires.

WHAT THE MICRO-MOMENT IS NOT

The mentor was precise about where the boundary sits. Micro-mentoring, in the frame she has been building with the group, is

“not around performance management, supervision, fixing, therapy, or lengthy conversations.”

The negative list matters. It tells both the leader and the staff member what is not happening in this exchange. Nobody is being assessed. Nothing is being corrected. This is not the start of a difficult conversation dressed up small.

Another participant reshaped how the group was thinking about these moments. She said, “I’m not trying to correct, or improve.” The point of the micro-moment, as she held it, was closer to noticing and naming. Catching what a staff member had done well. Articulating it back. That reframe shifts who the moment is for. A corrective moment is about the leader’s agenda. A noticing moment is about the other person’s awareness of their own good work. Both can happen in a corridor. One leaves the staff member steadier than it found them.

WHAT THE MICRO-MOMENT IS

The mentor walked the group through a small set of steps designed to keep these moments clean. The steps themselves are not complicated.

1. Prime yourself first, so the conversation starts from a regulated place.

2. Name what the conversation is, so the other person knows what they are agreeing to.

3. Hold it to one specific thing, rather than letting it widen.

4. Listen before you move toward anything resembling advice.

5. Ask one good question.

6. Support a small next step, or simply leave the noticing where it landed.

7. Close the loop clearly so the conversation ends where it was supposed to.

The mentor was careful, as was one of the more experienced directors in the group, to warn the cohort not to get locked into the flow. One director suggested the leaders treat it as

“a guide rather than a script and formula as such, because otherwise we run the risk of losing that momentum with relationship.”

The structure exists to free the moment up, not to flatten it.

Another participant offered a frame that captured something important about what micro-mentoring can become. Sometimes the moment does not stay a moment. Sometimes it becomes “a springboard for some more learning” at a later time. The short conversation can seed a longer one without having to become the longer one in the moment. Leaders do not have to carry the whole weight of the conversation in ninety seconds. They have to carry enough of it to matter.

SEEK CLARITY, NOT PERMISSION

One of the more honest reflections in the session came when a leader named a pattern she had been carrying. Staff were arriving with small questions. What she had started to notice was that a large share of the arrivals were less about information and more about approval. In her words, staff came

“to ask questions and seek clarity or seek permission.”

Answering a question for clarity builds the staff member’s ability to do the work.

Answering a question for permission trains them to bring the next one.

A reflective question back, instead of a quick answer, can shift the exchange from permission-seeking into something closer to a decision the staff member is learning to make herself.

THE RIPPLE, NOT THE SESSION

One line stayed with several participants near the end of the session. One leader, trying to name what the frame had shifted for her, said it landed “like a pebble in the pond, and the ripples are just growing.” She had spent years thinking mentoring meant the long version. A scheduled hour. A written reflection. The micro-mentoring frame was giving her permission to count the small moments as the real work.

For Educational Leaders feeling the role is too big to hold, the shift toward micro-moments is not a compromise. It is a recognition that the corridor is where the job actually happens, and that treating those moments as leadership is a more honest measure of what the bar has always been.

ABOUT THE DANDELION PROGRAM

The Dandelion Program is a ten-month cohort for Educational Leaders, with mentoring, peer learning, and the practice of holding the role in the small moments.

Learn more about the program