Laying Down Our Crown Why leadership needs fruitfulness, not just achievement

By Andy Spens  |  November 6th

Did you see the German footballer Felix Nmecha’s ‘laying down the crown’ celebration at the World Cup this summer?

Here’s what happened: Nmecha scored a spectacular goal. He then got down on one knee, lifted an imaginary crown from his head, placed it onto the grass and pointed to the sky. In a multi-billion-pound global sporting event – one obsessed with personal glory and individual status – this action was a radical disruption. In laying down his crown, Nmecha proclaimed something deeply counter-cultural: my purpose does not depend on my achievement or status.

When we think about our education system today, it’s easy to get drawn into a pursuit of the ‘achievement’ model. We operate in a world that demands visible outcomes, immediate metrics and easily quantifiable results. Under that pressure, leadership can too easily become about accumulating crowns, titles and accolades. It leads us to chase control and capitalise on opportunities to distinguish ourselves from others.

Why Leadership Needs Fruitfulness
While striving for excellence is so important for our communities, theologian Ronald Rolheiser draws a helpful distinction between fruitfulness and achievement.

“There’s a real difference between our achievements and our fruitfulness, between our successes and the actual good that we bring into the world.

However […] achievement is not the same thing as fruitfulness. Our achievements are things we have accomplished. Our fruitfulness is the positive, long-term effect these achievements have on others. Achievement doesn’t automatically mean fruitfulness. Achievement helps us stand out; fruitfulness brings blessing into other people’s lives.”

At the National Society, we talk a lot about the importance of growing organisations in which students and staff are flourishing. We might think that the opposite of flourishing is failure; however, I believe it is most often a culture of comparison and individual achievement which is disconnected from service. When our leadership is driven solely by what can be measured in the moment, or by the next self-crowning LinkedIn post, it might produce temporary public recognition. However, it also triggers an undercurrent of anxiety, competition and isolation across the system.

If we want our schools, trusts and organisations to be places of genuine flourishing for all, especially our most vulnerable staff and students, then we have to reimagine how we lead by shifting our posture from achievement to fruitfulness.

Unlike achievement, which is about elevating the individual, fruitful leadership is relational. Its primary motivation is community-focused. Frederic Laloux's brilliant book ‘Reinventing Organisations’ captures the same idea:

“The organisation is seen not as a machine to be controlled, but as a living system with a life and sense of direction of its own.”

In this sense, fruitful leadership is not about elevating the individual leader, but creating the conditions in which others can flourish.

Achievement asks, ‘What have I accomplished?’ whereas fruitfulness asks, ‘Who has flourished because I was here?’ Fruitful leadership therefore begins by laying down the crown of status and choosing partnership over dominance.

A Different View of Leadership
Leading this way requires a courageous move away from the pursuit of titles, power and top-down control towards trust, surrender and deep partnership. It means recognising that the truest markers of flourishing are often unseen and difficult to quantify on a dashboard.

Fruitful leaders lead out of a quiet steadiness of character, weaving graciousness, generosity and kindness into the fabric of their communities so that others are empowered to thrive. It’s the headteacher who resists becoming the face of every initiative, choosing instead to create space for middle leaders and teachers to step forward. It’s the trust leader who sees signs of exhaustion after a demanding season and chooses to remove meetings, simplify processes and restore capacity rather than intensify scrutiny. Such decisions rarely attract headlines, but they create the conditions in which people and communities flourish.

Many of the most fruitful leadership decisions can look inefficient in the short term. Ultimately, the true test of educational leadership is measured on a much longer timeline than a single inspection cycle or exam season. It is measured by the ‘fruit that will last’. We are remembered not just for what we did or for the targets we hit, but for who we were to the people we led and served. When we anchor our leadership in partnership and align ourselves with love as a way of being rather than an occasional act, we actively lower the levels of anxiety and comparison around us.

Leadership can be an isolating and heavy weight when the wider system constantly pushes us towards managing outcomes. That is why, in our work at the National Society, I want the spirit with which we approach our shared work with our partners to model a different way of leading: one rooted in mutual accompaniment and generosity.

Whether we are celebrating a hard-won success or navigating a difficult season, we have a duty as leaders to create sanctuaries for those around us. These are places where we can lay down the heavy crowns of status, comparison, and perfectionism, instead inviting others into community and reflection together. If we can help cultivate joy, peace, healing, and growth in the leaders and teachers we walk alongside, empowering them to pour that same relational investment back into those they serve, then that is a fruitfulness worth giving everything for.

The fruit of our leadership is often found not in the inspection outcome or the performance table, but in the colleague who found renewed confidence, the leader who grew because we made space for them, and the child who experienced a community marked by hope and belonging.

As we look to the term ahead, where are you finding space to lay down the crown of achievement and to lead for fruitfulness instead?

Andy Spens is the Head of Professional Learning at the Church of England Foundation for Educational Leadership