When leaders are criticised by, for example, inspectors, regulators, boards, staff, or the court of public opinion, the instinct to push back and to “come out swinging” can feel not only reasonable but responsible.
After all, leaders are custodians of their institutions, their people, and their reputations. When staying silent feels like abdication, pushing back can feel like courageous leadership.
And there are moments when pushing back is necessary: poor process should be questioned; flawed evidence should be challenged; and injustice should indeed be resisted.
But when principled challenge slips into proud certainty, the integrity required to lead humbly begins to break apart. Not because of burdensome bureaucracy, onerous compliance, or unjust regulation, but because of hubris.
Why pushback is so tempting
Psychologically, pushback offers relief. It restores a sense of agency at the moment a leader feels under threat. It seeks to reassure followers that their leader is strong, alert, and unwilling to be pushed around. In high-stakes environments, that posture can stabilise morale if used sparingly. But if it becomes the modus operandi, morale is instead taken on a rollercoaster.
Research in behavioural psychology helps explain this. When leaders perceive criticism as a threat to identity rather than a signal for learning, they default to what Daniel Kahneman describes as fast thinking: intuitive, defensive, emotionally charged. This is not a moral failure; it is only human.
But leadership is not simply the management of instinct. It is the disciplined regulation of it.
The difference between confidence and hubris
Jim Collins, in Good to Great, describes great leaders as combining personal humility with professional will. This combination matters, because imbalance creates space for hubris. It shows itself when leaders begin to believe that context explains away responsibility; when systems are blamed before judgement is examined; and when the energy of the response goes into narrative control rather than self-interrogation.
The ancient Greeks understood this well. Hubris was not arrogance alone; it was the refusal to recognise one’s limits. Leaders fell not because they were challenged, but because they believed challenge itself was the problem.
Humility is accountability made visible
Modern leadership research consistently reframes humility as a strength. Studies by Bradley Owens and David Hekman show that humble leaders (those who acknowledge mistakes, spotlight others’ contributions, and remain open to learning) foster higher trust, stronger team learning, and better long-term performance.
Humility does not mean saying “we are terrible.” It means being willing to put our hands up and say, “We got this wrong.”
Crucially, humility shifts the question from “How do we rebut this?” to “What does this reveal about our leadership system?” That move is subtle, but profound. It keeps authority intact while making learning possible.
Why compliance is rarely the real issue
In schools and other complex organisations, minor compliance failures often become symbolic battlegrounds. Leaders argue (occasioanlly rightly) that they obscure the bigger picture: the quality of relationships, the richness of learning, the daily care shown to students who clearly enjoy coming to school.
Yet those symbols matter precisely because they test whether leaders believe that standards apply most sharply to themselves.
When leaders frame every criticism as technical, external, or disproportionate, they may win the argument but lose credibility. Over time, staff learn that reflection is performative. Accountability becomes something to manage, not embody.
Andy Hargreaves has long warned that leadership cultures collapse not from challenge, but from emotional defensiveness that prevents moral learning. In short, organisations stagnate when leaders become better at explaining than understanding.
The courage of owning your mess
The most powerful leadership moments are often understated. A leader who says, calmly and without theatre, “This should not have happened, and it’s on me,” does more than defuse criticism; they model the behaviour they should want to see replicated.
Such statements do not weaken authority. They strengthen it. They create what Ronald Heifetz calls adaptive capacity: the ability of a system to learn without panic or denial.
In education especially, where we ask young people to learn from mistakes daily, the moral asymmetry of brittle, defensive leadership is quickly noticed.
Hubris ends where leadership begins
Pushing back will always have its place. But when it becomes the default response to scrutiny, leaders should pause. The question is not whether criticism is fair, but whether our response is formative.
Hubris will always tell leaders that the problem is out there. Humility reminds them to look for a solution within.
And that is leadership.
