Unwording Leadership: Shedding the Language That Holds Us Back
Why future-ready leadership demands a new lexicon
Written by: Adelee Penner
New Series
Leadership by Design: Navigating Complexity and Change in Education
Leadership is no longer about managing what is — it’s about designing what could be.
Leadership by Design is a series of reflective provocations for educational leaders committed to shaping the future of learning. Grounded in research and rooted in lived experience, each piece invites you to pause, think deeply, and reimagine your leadership practice for a world defined by complexity, change, and possibility.
Through stories from the field, insights from scholarship, and questions that linger long after reading, this series explores how we can lead with intention — designing systems where creativity and accountability coexist, where innovation is nurtured, and where educators and students alike thrive in the uncertainty of what’s next.
Abstract:
Language is not neutral. It shapes what we notice, what we value, and what we believe is possible. Yet in education, leadership often remains tethered to an inherited vocabulary that constrains imagination and limits innovation. Drawing on posthumanist and poststructural scholarship (Snaza & Weaver, 2015; St. Pierre, 2000, 2021; Taylor & Hughes, 2016), this reflection argues that to become future-ready, leaders must actively “unword” their practice — shedding outdated language and crafting new lexicons that reflect emerging realities. Through the lens of coaching aspiring leaders, it explores how experimenting with language can help leaders align words with values, disrupt entrenched assumptions, and expand the horizon of what leadership can be.
“We word the world,” Elizabeth St. Pierre (2000, p. 483) reminds us — a deceptively simple statement that carries profound weight for leadership. The words we use do more than describe reality; they construct it. They define what we notice, shape what we prioritize, and set the boundaries of what we believe is possible.
In educational leadership, language is everywhere. We talk about “accountability” and “achievement,” about “efficiency” and “rigor.” We describe schools as “systems” and students as “learners.” We speak of “data-driven decision-making” and “evidence-based practice.” These words are familiar and comfortable. But they are also deeply formative — and deeply limiting.
Much of what we call leadership is built upon inherited language. As St. Pierre (2021) notes, “We learn what we’re taught, and then we teach what we know” (p. 4). We inherit not only practices but the very vocabulary through which we think and speak about those practices. And that vocabulary, often born of older paradigms, quietly shapes the horizons of our imagination. If our words were forged in an industrial, mechanistic, or managerial age, how can they possibly capture the relational, emergent, and affective complexity of the world we now inhabit?
Nathan Snaza and John Weaver (2015) push this idea further. “Much of our sense of what will happen,” they write, “is dependent on our being able to think with future tense verbs” (p. 3). If our words shape our sense of the future, then what happens when our vocabulary itself is inadequate for the futures we are trying to design? What if the language of leadership has become too small for the work ahead?
This is more than a philosophical question. It is a practical one. Leaders who cling to inherited language risk clinging to inherited logics — reproducing the very systems they seek to transform. We word the world not only as it is, but as it might become. And if our words remain anchored in the past, so too will our futures.
Breaking Free from Inherited Frames
In her 2021 keynote, St. Pierre describes the painstaking work of “escaping her training” as a doctoral student — unlearning not only the methods she had been taught but also the conceptual frameworks and linguistic habits that shaped her thinking about research. Her words resonate deeply for leaders, too. Much of what we know — and how we speak — about leadership is inherited. We learn certain phrases, adopt certain metaphors, and repeat certain scripts. They become so familiar that we stop questioning them.
But familiarity is not the same as truth. And comfort is not the same as clarity.
To become future-ready, leaders must learn to disrupt their own vocabularies — to notice where language narrows rather than expands, where it constrains rather than invites. As Taylor and Hughes (2016) suggest, this work often involves “replacing the idea that the human is a separate category from everything else with an ethic of mutual relation” (p. 8). That shift is not simply conceptual — it is linguistic. It requires us to let go of words that reinforce separation and to cultivate new ones that express connection, interdependence, and emergence.
Language is the medium through which we build new worlds. And if the world is shifting beneath our feet — if leadership itself must evolve to meet new challenges — then our language must evolve with it.
A Leadership Coaching Moment: Searching for New Words
I was reminded of this recently while coaching a group of aspiring leaders. As they grappled with developing their visions for leadership, I noticed a shared struggle: they could not quite find the words to articulate what they meant. They spoke in fragments, tried out metaphors, borrowed phrases from one another. Some even invented new words altogether.
At first, this seemed like a stumbling block. But as we worked together, I realized it was something else entirely — a vital part of their growth. They were not just learning leadership; they were wording it. They were shedding the weight of inherited language and experimenting with new ways of naming what mattered most to them.
It was messy. It was uncertain. But it was also deeply creative. And in that messiness, something powerful began to emerge: a lexicon that reflected their values, their aspirations, and their vision for what leadership could be.
This is the work leaders must do. We must replace ideas, as Taylor and Hughes (2016) urge. We must, like St. Pierre (2021), break free from what we know to find something better. And when things become tricky — as they inevitably will — we must, as Snaza and Weaver (2015) remind us, “rebuild our lexicon.”
This is not just semantics. It is transformation. Because as our words change, so does our thinking. And as our thinking changes, so too does what becomes possible.
Unwording as Leadership Praxis
The work of leadership is often framed as strategic, managerial, or visionary — but rarely as linguistic. Yet the words we use shape not only how we describe the world but how we act within it. They shape how we see students, teachers, communities, and possibilities. They shape how we define success, failure, and the concept of change. They shape what we build — and what we fail to imagine.
If we want to lead differently, we must speak differently. And if we want to speak differently, we must first learn to unspeak — to question and dismantle the inherited words, metaphors, and assumptions that tether us to the past.
This is not easy work. It requires courage to let go of familiar language without yet knowing what will replace it. It demands humility to admit that the words we have may no longer serve the worlds we need. And it calls for creativity to experiment with new forms of expression — words that feel strange at first, but which might carry us closer to the futures we seek.
But this work is essential. Because leadership that clings to old language will inevitably cling to old logic. Old logic cannot build new worlds.
The leaders I coached who stumbled and stretched for new words were doing more than searching for vocabulary — they were reshaping their thinking. They were shifting from what leadership has been to what it might become. Their struggle was not a sign of weakness but a sign of possibility.
Leadership in the years ahead will demand nothing less of all of us. It will demand that we unlearn, unword, and reword — again and again — as the world shifts around us. It will require that we question the phrases we have inherited and invent new language for ideas that have yet to be born.
And perhaps, as we do, we will find that language is not merely a reflection of leadership but a vital part of its design. To word the world differently is to make a different world possible.
A Provocation for Your Leadership Practice
- What inherited words and phrases shape how you think about leadership?
- Which of those words might be limiting your imagination of what leadership could be?
- What new language might you need to name the future you want to build?
- Where might you experiment — in conversations, in vision statements, in everyday practice — with “unwording” and “rewording” your leadership?
Let’s talk again soon. Take good care of yourself.
Adelee
References
Snaza, N., & Weaver, N. (Eds.). (2015). Posthumanism and educational research. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315769165
St. Pierre, E. A. (2000). Poststructural feminism in education: An overview. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 13(5), 477–515.
St. Pierre, E. A. (2021). Post qualitative inquiry, the refusal of method, and the risk of the new. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(1), 3–9. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419863005
Taylor, C. A., & Hughes, C. (Eds.). (2016). Posthuman research practices in education. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-52800-4
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