What Principals Actually Think About Before Making Difficult Decisions

RESEARCH NOTE: This article draws on my qualitative doctoral study of 12 Alberta public school principals. Its examples and reflection questions are illustrative applications, not direct participant quotations or a validated decision-making instrument.

Picture a school principal arriving on Monday morning to a familiar tension. Families are asking for a more consistent approach to student support. Staff agree that students need it, but the team has already navigated months of change. The school division expects progress. The timeline is short.

On paper, the principal has a decision to make: introduce the new process now, adjust the rollout, or ask for more time.

In practice, there is no option that neatly protects every legitimate interest. Move quickly and staff capacity may fracture. Slow down and families may interpret the delay as inaction. Ask for flexibility and the principal may have to defend a locally sensible choice within system-wide expectations.

This is a fictional composite scenario created to illustrate the leadership tensions discussed in the research.

That gap between the apparent simplicity of a choice and the complexity of living with it sits at the centre of my doctoral research.

What the research examined

In Understanding the Decision-Making Process: A Case of Alberta School Principals, I studied how 12 public school principals, drawn from all six College of Alberta School Superintendents zones, understood their own decision-making. Participants brought experience from two brackets: one to five years and ten or more years in the principalship.

The study moved through participant-generated mind maps, individual interviews and a follow-up focus group. Reflexive thematic analysis helped make sense of the relationships between what leaders described, what they prioritized and what complicated their choices.

Five interconnected themes emerged. They suggest that principal decision-making is not simply a rational sequence of identifying a problem, choosing an option and moving on. It is an ongoing act of interpretation, responsibility and relational work.

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What principals are weighing before they decide

The themes are not five boxes to tick in order. They are overlapping pressures that can become more or less important as a situation evolves.

01. The moral weight of competing responsibilities

A principal may have to choose between obligations that are all ethically defensible. A student may need immediate support. Staff may need time and stability. Families may expect transparency. District policy may impose a particular process.

The question is not always whether the leader recognizes the right thing. It may be whether the leader can act when every option leaves someone carrying a cost.

The study characterizes this as moral labour. Decision-making carries emotional weight, including the residue of knowing that a necessary action can still be painful or imperfect.

Before deciding: Which legitimate responsibilities are in tension, and whose burden might be least visible?

02. Whether the decision will be experienced as legitimate

A principal may have the authority to announce a decision. Authority alone does not guarantee that people will view it as credible, fair or worth supporting.

For instance, a staff member may disagree with a change yet still regard the process as legitimate if concerns were heard, the reasoning was explained and the leader remained accountable afterward. Conversely, a procedurally sound decision can damage trust when people feel dismissed.

The theme of relational legitimacy draws attention to how decisions gain acceptance through trust and relationships rather than positional authority alone.

Before deciding: Who needs to be heard, and what would make the process feel fair even to someone who disagrees?

03. What is still changing in the situation

Leadership rarely provides a complete dataset at a convenient deadline. New information arrives. A conversation shifts the interpretation. What appeared urgent yesterday may look different after another perspective is considered.

The research describes nonlinear sensemaking: leaders read context, reconsider assumptions and sometimes revisit earlier judgments. This is not necessarily a failure of decisiveness. It can be evidence that the leader is responding thoughtfully to a changing reality.

The critical distinction is between revisiting a conclusion because meaningful information has changed and avoiding a decision simply because its consequences are uncomfortable.

Before deciding: What am I assuming to be true, and what new information would reasonably change my judgment?

04. What the system allows and what it quietly demands

School principals do not make choices in isolation. Policy, legislation, timelines, staffing, budgets, division expectations and community conditions help define the space in which decisions can occur.

One of the study’s findings concerns systemic constraint. Principals may act as buffers and translators: interpreting organizational expectations locally, protecting people from unnecessary pressure where possible, and explaining local realities upward.

That makes an important leadership question more precise. Rather than asking only, “What would I like to do?”, a principal must understand which limits are fixed, which are negotiable and what the system itself needs to know.

Before deciding: Which constraints are genuinely non-negotiable, and where do I still have room to exercise judgment?

05. Whether the decision can be sustained

A decision may appear successful on the day it is announced and still become harmful through its implementation. A new initiative can be worthwhile and poorly timed. A necessary accommodation can be reasonable and under-resourced. A short-term solution can quietly transfer too much work to an already stretched team.

The fifth theme places sustainability and capacity inside the decision itself, not as a detail to consider once the decision has been made.

This changes the definition of a good decision. Immediate resolution matters, but so does the capacity of students, staff, families and leaders to live with the action over time.

Before deciding: Who will carry this forward, what will it cost them, and what support or trade-off must accompany it?

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Why these five pressures need to be considered together

Return to the hypothetical student-support rollout. The moral need to respond is real. So is the relational need to consult staff and families. The principal may be revising an initial plan as new information emerges. Division requirements impose a timeline. The implementation will only work if staff have the time, clarity and resources to follow through.

Choosing to proceed, pause or redesign the rollout does not eliminate these pressures. It changes their balance.

That is why the study’s findings are better understood as an ecology of decision-making than as a formula. Each aspect shapes the others. A stronger relationship may create the trust needed for a difficult implementation. A rigid timeline may intensify moral tension. A capacity problem may change what a responsible course of action looks like.

A practical reflection before your next difficult decision

You do not need another elaborate decision matrix to begin. Take a real dilemma, remove identifying details, and write one honest response to each of these questions:

• Responsibility: What values or obligations are competing, and who might be overlooked?
• Relationships: Whose trust is at stake, and how will they understand the process?
• Interpretation: What important uncertainty remains, and what might change my view?
• Constraints: What is required, what is assumed and where is discretion possible?
• Capacity: What will this decision ask of people next week, next term and beyond?

Then add one final question: What is the next responsible move, even if I do not yet have the entire answer?

That move might be a conversation, a request for clarification, a different timeline, a commitment to communicate more transparently or an actual decision. The point is not to prolong every choice. It is to understand the human conditions that make a choice responsible.

What this means for leadership development

If we prepare leaders only to follow policy, compare options and communicate outcomes, we leave out a substantial portion of the actual work. Principals also need opportunities to rehearse competing obligations, interpret ambiguous circumstances, engage with disagreement and recognize the cost of change.

The findings have implications for principal preparation, school-division professional learning and policy implementation. They also make a case for something deceptively simple: leaders need meaningful opportunities to think with other leaders.

A reflective conversation cannot remove every constraint. It can, however, reveal assumptions, make the tensions more visible and help a leader see an option or consequence that was not apparent alone.

The decision is not finished when the answer is given

Leadership decisions continue through the conversations they produce, the trust they preserve or erode, and the capacity they leave behind.

My research does not offer a universal algorithm for choosing correctly. A qualitative study of 12 principals should not be stretched into a claim about every leader in every context. What it does offer is a richer language for the realities of deciding when there is no uncomplicated path.

Perhaps the question we should ask school leaders is not simply, “Did you make the right decision?”

Perhaps it is also: “What did you have to hold together to make it, and what will it take to sustain it?”

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Continue exploring the research

For the full study, methodology and conceptual framework, visit my interactive research page or read the dissertation through the University of Saskatchewan. For educators who want to think through a real decision with colleagues, the interactive method offers a practical place to begin.

About the author: Tyler Comeau is an educator, researcher, author and speaker whose work explores educational leadership, difficult decisions and the human realities of leading schools. Learn more about Tyler.

Source and scope: Comeau, T. (2026). Understanding the decision-making process: A case of Alberta school principals [Doctoral dissertation, University of Saskatchewan]. University of Saskatchewan HARVEST. Research-based interpretations are distinguished from fictional scenarios and practical reflection prompts throughout this article.

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