The Cost of Control (and the Courage of Curiosity)
What Happens When We Ask Coaches to Carry PLCs Instead of Leading Them Together
In my previous article, The Leadership PLC: Why Your School Needs a PLC About PLCs, I argued that when PLCs fail, it’s rarely because teachers didn’t try hard enough. It’s because leadership rolled out a system without building the structures needed to sustain it.
This article takes that idea one step further.
Because before most schools realize they need a Leadership PLC, they tend to respond to stalled learning in a very predictable way: they add more structure—and they delegate the work to the instructional coach.
I know this pattern well.
I was that coach.
The Setup That Seemed Smart
I was asked to run the PLC rollout because I had done it before.
Or, more honestly, because I had tried to do it before and it hadn’t gone well.
I carried that failure with me. So when I was asked to lead again, I didn’t walk in optimistic. I walked in wary. I was fairly certain this wouldn’t be a “true” PLC either. But when your supervisor gives you a directive, you make it work. And this time, I was determined it wouldn’t fail.
I did everything I could to make it successful.
The district had issued a directive to launch PLCs. Around the same time, the school decided to do a staff book study using The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo. On paper, it made perfect sense to combine the two. Each week, teams would meet, align to the pacing calendar, and plan using strategies connected to that week’s reading standard.
It felt aligned.
It looked efficient.
And I ran all of it.
I built the agendas. I matched the strategies. I facilitated every meeting, guided every discussion, redirected when needed, and captured all the notes.
I thought I was helping.
What I was really doing was thinking for the team.
When Support Crosses the Line
At first, everything looked like it was working.
Meetings ran smoothly. Teachers showed up. There was little resistance. When leadership stopped by to observe, it looked like a PLC was happening. Teachers had The Reading Strategies Book open. Curriculum teacher editions were on the table. Conversations sounded aligned to the pacing calendar.
Leadership was thrilled. The optics were strong.
But instruction didn’t change.
The strategies we planned didn’t consistently show up in classrooms. Follow-through was uneven. And when I wasn’t in the room, the work quietly stalled.
By the time winter testing came around, the data told a different story. There wasn’t significant growth. Not because teachers didn’t care. Not because they weren’t trying. But because the work had never truly belonged to them.
That’s when I realized: this wasn’t a functioning PLC.
It was a process being carried by me.
Teachers weren’t wrestling with student evidence. They weren’t making instructional decisions. They were attending. Agreeing. Nodding.
I had created something that relied on my thinking, not theirs.
The Problem With “Helpful”
I was telling them what to do as an outsider, albeit a well-meaning one, but I wasn’t the one in the classroom trying to teach the same lesson, with the same strategies, at the same pace, to groups of students whose needs varied widely across the grade level.
I wasn’t navigating the real-time adjustments. The unfinished learning. The behavioral dynamics. The gaps that didn’t align neatly with the pacing calendar.
In trying to create coherence, I unintentionally removed space for professional judgment. In trying to support teachers, I narrowed their ownership of the work.
What I thought was scaffolding had become control.
The Quiet Cost of Control
One comment from a facilitator stopped me cold.
She said, “It doesn’t really matter what I think. The plan’s already been made.”
She wasn’t being sarcastic. She was being honest.
The message we had unintentionally sent was clear: your thinking isn’t needed, just your presence.
Over-structure doesn’t provoke resistance. It provokes quiet compliance. Meetings feel orderly, polished, even impressive during walkthroughs. Agendas get followed. Materials are visible. Everyone appears aligned.
But the thinking is missing.
Teachers comply rather than inquire. They implement rather than interrogate. And without space to analyze their own students, data becomes something to report, not something to learn from.
It all looks calm.
And nothing moves.
Alignment Isn’t Sameness
One of the biggest misunderstandings I see in PLC work is treating alignment as uniformity.
In our case, every team used the same strategy, tied to the same standard, on the same timeline regardless of what student data showed.
That wasn’t alignment.
It was standardization.
True alignment is shared clarity of purpose, not shared scripts. It allows for responsiveness, ownership, and adjustment based on real-time evidence.
But we weren’t responding to learning.
We were following a plan.
And plans don’t learn.
People do.
What I Should Have Been Watching For
At the time, I measured success by whether the meeting ran well. Whether the conversation stayed focused. Whether the forms were filled out.
But what I should have been watching for was movement.
Were teachers making new decisions based on student learning?
Were they asking deeper questions?
Was the facilitator growing?
Healthy PLCs don’t run smoothly. They wrestle. They stretch. They adjust.
What we had was structured and stagnant.
Not Just a Coaching Problem But Also a Leadership One
I thought I could fix it. If I refined the process, planned better, adjusted faster, it would eventually work.
It didn’t.
Because this was never just a coaching issue. It was a system issue. A leadership culture issue.
When PLCs only work if the coach is present, they aren’t systems. They’re dependencies.
And until leaders take responsibility for the system, not just its outcomes, nothing sustainable changes.
From Control to Collective Ownership
I know now what I didn’t know then: PLCs don’t fail because they lack structure.
They fail because they lack curiosity.
Curiosity invites teachers into the work instead of assigning it to them. Curiosity creates space for facilitators to grow. Curiosity helps leaders stop reacting and start learning.
If I could go back, I wouldn’t ask, “How do I make this run well?”
I’d ask, “Whose thinking needs to lead this and how do I make room for it?”
Because when leadership chooses curiosity over control, PLCs stop being something one person carries and start becoming something the whole system sustains.
Reflection Questions for Leadership Teams
What role does our instructional coach currently play in PLCs?
Are they guiding the system—or carrying it?
What would happen if they stepped away?How are we measuring PLC effectiveness?
Are we tracking products (agendas, notes), or learning (instructional shifts, decisions made)?What do we mean by “alignment”?
Shared purpose—or uniformity?
How much flexibility do teams have to respond to student data?Are we unintentionally silencing teacher voice through over-structure?
What decisions are teachers actually empowered to make?Where do we need to shift from control to curiosity?
What questions should we be asking more often as leaders?Do we have a Leadership PLC to reflect on all of this?
If not, what’s the first step toward building one?
