This article addresses risk and its minimization as a powerful rationality for driving leadership practices in contemporary schools. It explores risk-consciousness as "a moral climate of politics" (Giddens 2002) and as a management imperative that impacts on any contemporary organization, including schools. The impact of risk-consciousness on the work that school leaders do is explored, with particular attention to some of the negative effects of this on schools as sites of learning. The article raises questions about the implications of all this for staff development in general and the needs of school principals in particular. (Contains 3 notes.)