Parents researching international schools often ask the same question in different ways: how do you actually teach leadership? Character posters on a wall are easy. Building a school where a six-year-old runs the morning meeting and a senior mentors a first-grader, that takes a system. For many schools around the world, that system is the Leader in Me program, a PK–12 whole school leadership model developed by FranklinCovey Education and rooted in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
This article explains what the Leader in Me program is, what the research shows, what critics say, and what it looks like inside a real school day. It also shares how the Leader in Me program has been woven into our own community at Qingdao No. 1 International School of Shandong Province, where it sits alongside our Mindful Hearts approach to student wellbeing.
What Is the Leader in Me Program?
The FranklinCovey Leader in Me program was created by FranklinCovey Education, drawing on Stephen R. Covey’s bestselling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The premise is simple and powerful: every child has the potential to be a leader, not only the captain of the team or the student council president.
Today, more than 8,000 Leader in Me schools across over 50 countries use the framework. It is not a standalone class or a weekly lesson tacked onto the timetable. The Leader in Me program functions as an operating system for the whole school, a PK-12 model of whole-child education that touches three pillars at once:
- Leadership, every student practices leading themselves and contributing to a team
- Culture, a shared language and set of habits runs through classrooms, hallways, and staff meetings
- Academics, goal-setting and data tracking are built into the way students own their learning
That distinction matters. Schools that treat the Leader in Me curriculum as something to “deliver” tend to get thin results. Schools that treat it as a culture to live tend to see the outcomes in the research.
The 7 Habits at the Heart of the Program
The 7 Habits give students and teachers a common vocabulary. Children as young as four learn the language in picture-book form. By high school, the same habits reappear in university essays, internship interviews, and peer mediation. The point is not memorization. The point is fluency.
Habits 1–3: Personal Leadership
The first three habits build self-management. They are often called the “private victory” because they happen inside a child before anyone else sees them.
- Be Proactive, I am in charge of me. I choose my actions, my attitude, and my mood. This is where proactive behavior begins.
- Begin with the End in Mind, I plan ahead and set goals I care about.
- Put First Things First, I do the important things before the fun things. I am disciplined.
A first-grader practices this by finishing a reading log before free-choice time. A tenth-grader practices it by mapping a semester of AP Biology against their sleep and sport schedule. Same habit, different altitude.
Habits 4–6: Interpersonal Leadership
The next three habits turn outward, toward other people. Covey called this the “public victory.”
- Think Win-Win, I want everyone to succeed, not just me.
- Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood, I listen before I talk.
- Synergize, Together we are better. I value differences.
These habits do heavy lifting in classrooms with children from many nationalities. Disagreement becomes a starting point rather than a problem to avoid.
Habit 7 (and 8): Renewal and Voice
- Sharpen the Saw, I take care of my body, heart, mind, and spirit.
Secondary students often add an optional eighth habit, Find Your Voice and Inspire Others to Find Theirs. It bridges the language of the Leader in Me 7 Habits for students with the responsibility older students feel toward younger peers and their communities.
What the Research Says: Evidence of Effectiveness
Parents rightly want proof before they trust a program with their child’s school years. Here is what the evidence actually shows, without the marketing gloss.
The CASEL Program Guide: Leader in Me evidence review, maintained by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), lists the Leader in Me program as a social emotional learning program with evidence of effectiveness at grades K–5. CASEL is the most respected SEL clearinghouse in the world, and its review criteria are strict. Reported outcomes in Leader in Me program reviews and peer-reviewed studies include gains in reading and math, fewer office discipline referrals, and higher teacher job satisfaction.
The program is also listed in the West Virginia Bureau for Behavioral Health clearinghouse listing as a recognized prevention and youth development resource. That is a second, independent signal of credibility.
One honest caveat: a meaningful share of the published studies were commissioned or conducted by FranklinCovey itself. Independent, large-scale replication studies exist but are fewer. This does not invalidate the findings. It does mean schools should look at their own data, not only the brochure’s data, to judge impact over time.
Common Questions and Criticisms, Answered Honestly
If you spend an hour on parent forums, you will find pointed criticism of the Leader in Me program. These questions around the Leader in Me controversy deserve straight answers.
Is the program religious? No. The 7 Habits framework is secular and is used in public, private, religious, and non-religious schools alike. Stephen Covey was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and some critics have asked whether that shaped the content. The material itself makes no faith claims and teaches principles, responsibility, listening, collaboration, that appear across virtually every ethical tradition.
Does it feel corporate? It can, when schools implement it poorly. Laminated posters in every hallway and a scripted assembly do not make a leader. The criticism you see online most often comes from teachers whose schools bought the license, ran a one-day training, and expected transformation. That is not how culture change works in any organization.
Does it actually change behavior? Only when the adults live it first. The program is explicit about this. Professional development for staff is the starting point, not an afterthought. When teachers use the habit language in their own meetings and decisions, children absorb it as a way of being rather than a set of rules. This is what builds a high-trust culture over time.
What separates schools that succeed from those that don’t? Fidelity of implementation and time. Schools that commit for three to five years, train every adult including office and operations staff, and let students own the culture see different results than schools that treat it as a branding exercise.
> Leader in Me only works when it stops being a program and starts being how we speak to each other.
How Leader in Me Works Inside a School Day
Abstractions are easy. Let’s get concrete.
Leader in Me lessons are delivered through an online curriculum portal that teachers use to plan structured SEL sessions by grade band. The portal also houses goal-tracking templates, habit posters in multiple languages, and the planning tools drawn from the 4 Disciplines of Execution, which the Leader in Me curriculum uses to help students and teachers turn goals into weekly action.
Student-Led Conferences
In a traditional parent-teacher conference, the teacher does most of the talking while the child listens or fidgets. In a student-led conference, the child runs the meeting. They open a portfolio, walk their parents through work samples, share goals they set at the start of the term, and show progress data in their own words. The teacher is present as a coach, not a narrator.
Parents frequently report that these conferences change how they see their child. A seven-year-old explaining her reading fluency goal sounds different from a report card.
Leadership Roles in the Classroom
Every student holds a leadership role, and roles rotate. A first-grade classroom might have a line leader, a data keeper who updates the class goal chart, a greeter who welcomes visitors, a librarian, a meeting facilitator, and an energy checker who watches for classmates who seem off. Roles are real jobs with real responsibilities, not decoration.
By middle school, roles grow up. Students facilitate class meetings, lead service projects, and co-design units with their teachers. By high school, leadership looks like peer tutoring, club founding, and mentoring younger students across divisions.
Schoolwide Culture Touchpoints
Walk through a mature Leader in Me school and you’ll notice specific things:
- Mission statements co-written by students, posted in their handwriting
- Data walls tracking both academic and behavioral goals the students chose
- Habit language used casually in corridors (“I need a minute to sharpen the saw”)
- Staff meetings that open with a habit focus and a proactive check-in
None of this is window dressing when it’s done properly. It is the school showing students, through a thousand small cues, that their voice matters.
Leader in Me in an International School Context
International schools sit at an interesting crossroads. Our classrooms hold children from a dozen or more countries, speaking several first languages, bringing different ideas about what respect, leadership, and success look like. A framework built on universal principles, responsibility for your choices, listening before speaking, seeking mutual benefit, translates remarkably well across that diversity.
At QISS, the Leader in Me program is one of the signature programs that runs through all four divisions, and you can see how we support students from Early Childhood through High School across a coherent leadership arc: Early Childhood, Lower School, Middle School, and High School. Our four-year-olds begin with picture-book versions of the habits. Our seniors revisit the same habits as they draft college application essays and sit AP examinations in our on-campus test center, which runs about 100 AP tests each year. Accreditation by both WASC and CIS anchors this work in recognized global quality standards, and you can read more about the WASC accreditation standards for school quality that shape our programs.
The program sits naturally beside our Mindful Hearts philosophy and our four core values: Compassion, Integrity, Inclusivity, and Creativity. Where Mindful Hearts asks students to notice themselves and others with care, Leader in Me gives them the habits and language to act on what they notice. One is awareness, the other is practice. The Leader in Me program’s founding belief that Everyone can be a leader is also ours, and it shapes the 21st-century skills, collaboration, communication, self-direction, that our students practice every day. Together these habits prepare students not only for a top university, a pathway our graduates have walked at a 100% acceptance rate every year, but for the decades of life beyond it.
Leadership at QISS also shows up beyond the classroom: in QISSMun, in Student Council, in athletics and fine arts, and in the many co-curricular leadership opportunities at QISS that stretch students in ways a timetable alone cannot.
What Parents Should Ask When Evaluating a Leader in Me School
If you are comparing schools that advertise the program, these five questions separate the genuine implementations from the marketing exercises.
- Is the Leader in Me program embedded school-wide, or is it limited to one grade or one classroom? A single enthusiastic teacher is lovely but not culture change.
- Do teachers receive ongoing professional development, or was it a one-time training three years ago? Habits fade without refreshment, for adults and children alike.
- Are student-led conferences part of the school calendar? This is the clearest outward sign of a school that trusts its students with real ownership.
- How does the school measure leadership growth alongside academic results? Ask to see the data walls, the goal sheets, the portfolios. They either exist or they don’t.
- Does the school’s leadership language show up in its culture, not just on its website? Sit in on a class. Listen to how staff speak to one another. Watch how a disagreement between two students gets resolved.
The answers you hear will tell you more than any brochure.
Come See the Leader in Me Program in Practice
If you’d like to see what the Leader in Me program looks like on a normal Tuesday morning, we’d love to host you on our 48,000 m² Laoshan campus. Come meet a Lower School class running its own morning meeting, watch a Middle School student-led conference in progress, or sit with our High School team to talk about how the 7 Habits travel with our graduates into university.
To arrange a visit, email Ms. Paula O’Connell at admissions@qiss.org.cn, call +86-532-6889-8888, or speak with our admissions team about school culture directly. We’ll put the kettle on.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Leader in Me program and who created it?
We use the Leader in Me program, a PK-12 whole-school leadership model created by FranklinCovey Education based on Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It functions as an operating system for the entire school rather than a standalone class, touching leadership, culture, and academics simultaneously.
What are the 7 Habits taught in Leader in Me and what does each mean for students?
We teach habits 1-3 (Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind, Put First Things First) for personal leadership, habits 4-6 (Think Win-Win, Seek First to Understand Then to Be Understood, Synergize) for working with others, and habit 7 (Sharpen the Saw) for renewal, with secondary students adding habit 8 (Find Your Voice and Inspire Others). Each habit gives students language and practice for managing themselves, collaborating across differences, and sustaining their wellbeing.
What evidence exists that Leader in Me improves academic and behavioral outcomes?
We see Leader in Me listed by CASEL, the most respected social-emotional learning clearinghouse, with evidence of effectiveness at grades K-5, including gains in reading and math, fewer discipline referrals, and higher teacher satisfaction. Independent replication studies exist alongside FranklinCovey-commissioned research, so schools should examine their own data over time to judge impact.
What are the most common criticisms of Leader in Me, and how do schools address them?
We address concerns about the program feeling corporate or ineffective by ensuring fidelity of implementation: training every adult including office staff, having teachers live the habits first, and committing for three to five years rather than treating it as a branding exercise. The program is secular and works across faith traditions, but only transforms behavior when adults model it authentically.
How does Leader in Me connect to social-emotional learning frameworks like CASEL?
We integrate Leader in Me as a recognized SEL program within CASEL’s framework, using it to build social and emotional competencies alongside academic skills. The habits provide students with concrete language and practice for self-awareness, relationship management, and responsible decision-making that CASEL identifies as core SEL outcomes.
How do international schools implement Leader in Me across different grade levels?
We embed Leader in Me across all four divisions at QISS, starting with picture-book versions of the habits in Early Childhood and advancing to college application essays and AP examinations in High School. The same seven habits scale across age and complexity, giving students a coherent leadership arc from age four through graduation.
What does a school look like day-to-day when Leader in Me is embedded in its culture?
We see habit language used casually in corridors, student-led conferences where children run their own parent meetings, rotating leadership roles with real responsibilities in every classroom, data walls tracking student-chosen goals, and staff meetings that open with habit focus. Mission statements appear in student handwriting, and disagreements become learning moments rather than problems to avoid.
How does Leader in Me complement a school's existing academic curriculum?
We weave Leader in Me alongside our academic program through goal-setting and data tracking built into how students own their learning, student-led conferences that deepen parent understanding of progress, and the 4 Disciplines of Execution that help students turn academic goals into weekly action. It works naturally with our Mindful Hearts philosophy, where awareness becomes practice through the habits.
