The Leadership PLC: Why Your School Needs a PLC About PLCs
PLCs have become almost universal in education. In most schools, if you ask teachers whether they meet in a PLC, they’ll say yes. If you ask leaders whether they’ve trained their staff in the PLC process, they’ll likely say yes too.
But despite their widespread use, PLCs often fail to meaningfully improve student learning.
Not because PLCs are flawed. When implemented well, they are one of the most powerful levers we have to shift instruction and outcomes. But more often than not, we roll them out without building the foundation they need to succeed.
We provide a one-time training at the beginning of the year. We hand out a template. We assign team leads. And then we tell teachers, “Go meet as a PLC.”
When the work doesn’t take hold, we assume it’s a teacher issue. We think maybe they aren’t using the form right. Maybe they’re not committed. Maybe they don’t understand the process.
But the reality is this:
If PLCs are ineffective in our buildings, it’s not because teachers failed the system.
It’s because we failed to build the system before we rolled it out.
We didn’t prepare facilitators to lead adults.
We didn’t set up structures for collaboration.
We didn’t build time into the master schedule.
And most importantly, we didn’t create the leadership process to monitor and support the work once it started.
This is the gap that undermines PLC implementation in school after school.
And closing that gap begins with one foundational shift:
Your school needs a PLC about your PLCs.
Your leadership team needs to function as a Leadership PLC.
Three Attempts, One Breakthrough
My first experience with PLCs came as a third-grade grade-level chair. Leadership had rolled out a PLC framework and asked us to begin meeting using a provided structure. We had protocols. We had agendas. But what we didn’t have was training in how to lead adult collaboration.
The dynamics were challenging. Strong personalities, differing beliefs, and years of unspoken tension shaped every meeting. No one had taught me how to guide a conversation without directing it, or how to balance dominant voices with quieter ones. We went through the motions. But we didn’t get better and neither did student outcomes.
My first true attempt to implement PLCs came when I moved to a different school the following year and volunteered to be part of a districtwide math PLC rollout. The training I received was excellent. It was focused on unpacking standards, designing learning cycles, and applying the PLC framework. I was excited. I wanted to bring it back to my school.
But I was still a full-time classroom teacher, trying to build a collaborative system schoolwide without leadership support or positional authority. There was no structure in place to reflect on what was working or to support me in what wasn’t. Without time, backup, or leadership and instructional coach involvement, I couldn’t sustain the work. Implementation fizzled, not because I didn’t believe in it, but because I was trying to build something systemic from an isolated position.
My second attempt came when I became an instructional coach. I thought, This is it. Now I can really make this work. I had the time. I had access to leadership. And I had the trust of many teachers.
But I made a critical mistake: I overfunctioned.
I led everything. I led every agenda, every discussion, every redirect. I stepped in to help, but in doing so, I removed the opportunity for facilitators to grow. PLCs became dependent on me. When I was in the room, they worked. When I wasn’t, they stalled. We had structure, but we didn’t have capacity.
By the time I arrived at my third school, I knew I had to do something different. I couldn’t lead every team myself. I couldn’t rely on one-time trainings. I couldn’t keep trying to fix issues in isolation.
I needed a system behind the system.
That’s when I built my first Leadership PLC, a professional learning community made up of our school’s instructional coaches. We didn’t meet to check boxes or plan PD. We met to look directly at how our PLCs were functioning, to diagnose challenges, and to support facilitators in real time.
And that changed everything.
Why Most PLC Support Misses the Mark
When a PLC isn’t functioning well, the first impulse is often to give the team more tools: another protocol, a refresher on norms, a form to keep them focused.
Sometimes, we jump in ourselves. We attend meetings. We try to “coach in the moment.” We wonder why facilitators still struggle.
But what I’ve come to understand is this:
You can’t fix system-level problems with team-level strategies.
You have to back up. You have to look at the patterns. You have to figure out not just what’s happening—but why it’s happening.
That’s what our Leadership PLC was built to do.
In Module 1 of VOYAGE Horizons—The Source of the Issue, leadership teams learn how to identify the true cause behind PLC breakdowns using a simple but powerful lens:
Is the issue caused by a lack of skill, lack of knowledge, lack of resources, or lack of motivation?
When our Leadership PLC began using this framework, we stopped treating every challenge as a training issue. We stopped reacting. We started diagnosing.
Tools That Keep the Work Focused
Once we formed our Leadership PLC, the most important shift we made was this: we stopped reacting to what was happening in PLCs and started diagnosing it.
Before this, we often jumped to conclusions.
If a team wasn’t analyzing student work deeply enough, we assumed they didn’t want to.
If facilitators weren’t redirecting tangents, we assumed they were avoiding conflict.
If PLCs weren’t using data well, we assumed teachers needed more training on the protocol.
But once we began using the Identifying the Source Protocol, things became much clearer.
Instead of guessing, our Leadership PLC looked at real evidence. We looked at PLC agendas, student work, notes, and facilitator reflections, and asked: What kind of issue is this, actually?
And that’s where everything changed.
Sometimes we found that a facilitator wasn’t guiding discussion because they didn’t have the skill yet, not because they didn’t care. Other times, teams weren’t following through because they genuinely lacked the knowledge of what a collaborative learning cycle looked like. Occasionally the barrier was resources. Teachers had no common planning time, expectations were unclear, or they were missing data access. And yes, there were moments when the issue was motivation. Some teachers weren’t yet convinced the PLC process was meaningful.
But now, instead of offering generic support or reacting out of urgency, our Leadership PLC was aligned around the real problem. And because our support matched the source, it finally started to work.
We paired the protocol with the Leadership PLC Reflection Guide, a structure that helped us analyze patterns across teams, reflect on our own leadership moves, and identify where the system, not the people, needed to change.
These weren’t just “tools.” They were a new way of thinking—one rooted in inquiry, not assumption. They created accountability for us as leaders and gave us a shared language for understanding our PLC system.
And for the first time, we weren’t just managing PLCs. We were actually leading them.
One Example, Many Lessons
One of the clearest examples of the Leadership PLC in action came during a 5th grade PLC that had been quietly struggling. A confident teacher with strong opinions was dominating the conversation, while a quieter teammate, whose students were outperforming the rest of the grade level, rarely spoke. The facilitator didn’t know how to shift the dynamic, and the rest of the team had settled into a pattern of deferring.
Before the Leadership PLC, this dynamic might’ve gone unnoticed or been misdiagnosed. But when the facilitator brought it up during a reflection, our team used the Identifying the Source protocol to dig in. We quickly saw it wasn’t a resource or motivation issue, it was a skill gap. The facilitator didn’t yet know how to manage group dynamics or create space for equitable voice.
We provided coaching, modeled facilitation strategies, and made space for the facilitator to practice them. The principal showed up, not to take over, but to reinforce the facilitator’s leadership role. Over the next few weeks, we saw a shift. The quieter teacher began to share more. The dominant voice relaxed. The conversation deepened. And the facilitator grew.
That’s what happens when the system supports the people, not the other way around.
If You’re Not Collaborating About Collaboration, You’re Not Leading It
Leadership teams are often expected to monitor PLCs. But monitoring isn’t enough.
If you’re not meeting regularly as a team to look at adult collaboration, analyze breakdowns, reflect on leadership moves, and plan targeted support, you’re not leading your PLC system. You’re observing it.
The Leadership PLC is where real leadership lives. It’s where we model what we ask of teachers. And it’s where the work finally starts to stick.
So if your PLCs feel inconsistent, shallow, or overly dependent on one or two strong personalities, don’t just look at the facilitators. Look at the system. And start with yourself.
What Comes Next
Once your Leadership PLC is in place, the next essential step is to focus on the people guiding the work: your PLC facilitators.
In the next article, we’ll explore how your leadership team can collaboratively:
Identify the right facilitators
Train them in the adult leadership skills they’ll need
Provide ongoing, yearlong support without overloading or burning them out
Because if the Leadership PLC is the foundation, the facilitators are the ones helping build the house.
And when they’re supported well, the entire system gets stronger.
