Leaders at all levels in schools try to implement particular policies and practices. These arise in response to pressures in the policy, social and economic contexts in which they work and from their own social and educational values. As part of the process of implementation, leaders try to modify existing organisational cultures to bind their colleagues and students to the new forms of action they desire. In doing so they use collective, personal and professional sources of power that reflect the values they hold as well as those contained within the views and policies of central government, local stakeholders and, in the case of middle leaders, senior staff in school. As everybody--students, teachers, parents and other stakeholders--has preferred values and interests in education, policies implemented by senior staff are likely to be contested. So, if they are to be successful in implementing policy and practice, leaders have to develop a clear understanding of the interplay of personal vision and professional identity, organisational culture and the flow of power between people and how these are mediated by organisational structures. In this article, the authors discuss how school leaders govern in the way in which they take account of the expressed needs of other people with whom they worked, both staff and students, formed part of their values, so that they also tried to govern in these people's interests, at least as far as they perceived them, and as far as internal and external polic contexts would allow.