In this conceptual paper, an exploration of the leadership gap between theory and praxis, which manifests itself in three different kinds of fissure in current thinking and research in the field of educational leadership, management and administration, will be undertaken. It is argued that there is a public image/communication gap, which current research and thinking in educational leadership needs to fulfill. This leads to the second issue, which is the gap between what is said (the rhetoric) and what is done (the praxis). Leaders must strive to reduce the gap between rhetoric and reality. This leads us to the third gap, which is the values gap. The world is indeed full of antithetical and oftentimes conflicting and dilemmatic situations in which morality and ethical behaviour play an important role. Thus, the main aim of this paper is to provide an in-depth exploration of the three gaps and in doing so to provide answers as to how to narrow these gaps in order for school leaders to improve their practice, drawing heavily on "lessons learnt" from three great ancient philosophers, namely Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. Some implications for practice will be referred to in the final section of this paper.