The best principal in any building is rarely the loudest one in the room. They are the one who built a Day 91 Vision before the year started, named their Sticky Core Values out loud, and made bold moves while everyone else waited for permission.
This is not a list of personality traits. It is a list of practiced disciplines — observed across 500+ leadership conversations on the Better Leaders Better Schools podcast and validated by two decades of Wallace Foundation research. If you want to be the principal kids and teachers remember in twenty years, these are the ten qualities to build.
Great principals share ten observable qualities: a clear Day 91 Vision, Sticky Core Values, instructional credibility, relational trust, visibility, the ability to make bold moves, a culture-first focus, lifelong learning, the courage to develop other leaders, and consistency between their public and private behavior. These traits are not personality types. They are practiced disciplines that any principal can build through Selfmentorship.
If you remember nothing else from this post, remember this: the difference between a Play-It-Safe Principal and a Ruckus Maker is not talent. It is the willingness to develop these ten qualities on purpose, every day, whether anyone notices or not.
The 2021 Wallace Foundation synthesis — drawing on 219 high-quality studies of school leadership — found that an effective principal in the 75th percentile of effectiveness produces about three additional months of student learning in reading and math per year, across an entire school. That is nearly the impact of a 75th-percentile teacher, but multiplied across every classroom in the building.
The research, conducted by Jason Grissom (Vanderbilt), Anna Egalité (NC State), and Constance Lindsay (UNC Chapel Hill), identifies three domains where great principals operate: instruction, people, and the organization. Read the full report at the Wallace Foundation.
An effective principal generates three months of additional learning per student per year — across an entire school. There is no single intervention with greater leverage than the quality of the leader sitting in the principal's office.
These are the ten qualities I have seen show up, over and over, in the principals teachers fight to work for and students remember decades later. Each is a discipline before it is a trait.
Great principals do not wait for the district to hand them a strategic plan. They define the school they are building before they walk in the door — and they revisit it every quarter. A Day 91 Vision is what turns a job description into a calling. Without it, October becomes catch-up. With it, every meeting is a deposit.
Average leaders have values. Great leaders have Sticky Core Values — three to five non-negotiables they can name out loud, defend in public, and use to make hard decisions in real time. When values are sticky, a principal does not need to deliberate every conflict. The values do the work.
The Wallace Foundation research is clear: principals who engage directly with instruction — observing classrooms, giving thoughtful feedback, using data with teachers — drive achievement. A principal who has not been in a classroom this week has lost the floor. Great principals teach a lesson. Run a small group. Stay close to the work.
Bryk and Schneider's foundational research on Chicago Public Schools showed that schools high in relational trust were three times more likely to improve in reading and math than schools low in trust. Great principals invest in trust the way average ones invest in compliance. The dividend compounds.
Education World's Principal Files survey of 43 principals found visibility ranked as the single most-cited quality of strong school leaders. Not in the office. In the halls. At lunch. At dismissal. A great principal manages by walking around — not because they are checking, but because they are present.
Average principals manage. Ruckus Makers make bold moves — the hard hire, the hard fire, the schedule overhaul, the conversation everyone else avoided. Bold moves are not reckless. They are practiced. The best principals rehearse them in their journal before they make them in their building.
Strategy lives one year. Culture lives a decade. Great principals understand that the staff lounge tells more truth than the staff meeting, and they invest accordingly. They define how their school feels on a Tuesday in February — not just how it looks on the website.
A teacher does not teach the same way for thirty years. Neither should a principal. Great principals read, get coached, join masterminds, and treat their own development as a non-negotiable line item. The principals who stop learning are the principals whose schools stop growing.
Wallace Foundation research repeatedly finds that the more willing a principal is to spread leadership around, the more students learn. Great principals do not build dependence. They build other Ruckus Makers. The legacy is not what they did — it is who they grew.
The deepest quality on this list is the hardest to fake. Great principals are integrated. The way they speak to a fourth grader at the grocery store matches the way they speak to a Board member in a meeting. There is no public version and private version. There is one person, on purpose, every day.
None of these qualities arrive in a box. They are built through Selfmentorship — the discipline of becoming your own best coach when no one else is going to do it for you. The principals who build these qualities the fastest do three things consistently:
None of this requires district approval. None of it requires a budget. It requires a decision — that you are done being average and ready to do the work great principals have always done.
Digital Danny is your 24/7 Selfmentor guide — trained on 500+ podcast episodes, two bestselling books, and a decade of coaching Ruckus Makers across the world. Ask anything. Get coached. Build the ten qualities one decision at a time.
Great principals share ten observable qualities: a clear Day 91 Vision, Sticky Core Values, instructional credibility, relational trust, visibility, the ability to make bold moves, a culture-first focus, lifelong learning, the courage to develop other leaders, and consistency between their public and private behavior. These traits are not personality types — they are practiced disciplines.
The Wallace Foundation's 2021 synthesis of 219 studies found that an effective principal raises student learning in reading and math by about three months per year across an entire school. Effective principals work through three domains: instruction, people, and the organization. Their impact is greatest in schools facing the toughest conditions.
If forced to name one quality, name vision. Without a clear Day 91 Vision, every other strength gets spent reacting. With one, every meeting, hire, and bold move becomes a deposit toward the school the principal is building. Vision is the quality that organizes all the others.
Teachers consistently name three things: support for their professional growth, transparent communication, and visible presence in classrooms. Wallace Foundation research shows teacher retention rises sharply under effective principals — and falls sharply under principals who manage from the office.
A principal in the 75th percentile of effectiveness produces three additional months of student learning per year compared to an average principal. The effect is indirect — principals shape the conditions teachers work in. Better conditions, better teaching, better learning. The leverage is the building.
Made. Every quality on this list is a practice, not a personality trait. Vision is built. Trust is earned. Bold moves are rehearsed. Ruckus Makers do not wait for talent to arrive — they build the discipline of Selfmentorship and develop the qualities one decision at a time.