Reflecting on Step 3: Unleashing the capacity of your team with Donna Winters

In this reflective episode of The No Silver Bullets Podcast: The Nine Steps to Executive Headship, Paul Ainsworth revisits his conversation with Donna Winters, Executive Head of the Spires Federation in Lincolnshire, and explores what her leadership reveals about Step 3: Unleashing the Capacity of Your Team.Donna leads three small rural schools — Digby, Dunston and Nocton — and her federation offers a powerful example of how executive leadership can create capacity rather than consume it. Paul reflects on Donna’s honesty, her innovative leadership structure, and the systems she has built to ensure clarity, trust and consistency across all three schools.This episode explores:Why executive headship requires a shift from doing to enablingDonna’s key insight: “You cannot do it all — and that is okay”How resisting the replication of leadership posts can strengthen a federationThe impact of shared subject leadership across small schoolsHow clear systems, flow charts and communication structures unlock capacityWhy caring for your team is a leadership strategy, not a soft skillPaul also connects Donna’s insights to the arguments in Step 3 of The Nine Steps to Executive Headship, publishing at the end of 2026.Looking ahead, Paul previews next week’s episode on Step 4: Turning Processes into Habits, featuring Ross McGill (Teacher Toolkit) and Sam Strickland. If Step 3 is about unleashing capacity, Step 4 is about what that capacity does in classrooms — through routines, modelling and consistent teaching habits.If you find these reflections useful, please like, comment, subscribe and share the podcast with colleagues. Your support helps the series reach more leaders — and ultimately, more children.