Leading the way

On Friday, I had a bit of a difficult moment, closely followed by another one. The first one was the old staffroom chestnut. As a Leadership Team member, it's difficult to know what to do when the complaints are coming thick and fast over lunch.
Goodness knows, we are all working very hard and everyone is producing such excellent results but there are still times when we all feel overwhelmed. It was a stick or twist moment and I stuck- I hurriedly left the staffroom.
Later on, I was talking with my class about elements of the Key Stage 1 nativity. One pupil voiced doubts about the choice of production. I tried, as gently as I could, that the decision was beyond a pupil's remit.
There- a paradox.
In the first instance, I wanted less talk about what was wrong and more appreciation of a bigger picture. But in the second, I wanted to limit the considered ambitions of a pupil.
In education, we all talk about distributed leadership. We all talk about pupil voice. But how do we manage this effectively whilst still providing schools with measured and reasonable improvement? On the one hand, we must give the opportunity of influence. But, with the other hand, we must limit that influence and jealously guard decisions and executive power.
Of course, the reality is that the responsibility is placed firmly with posts within school and so we must uphold it accordingly. But there is an ideal in my head where the powers that reside in school could be shared widely and everyone lives up to them.
But, we know the problem with ideals...