What Lead It Like Lasso Can Teach School Leaders About Teacher Evaluations

Marnie Stockman, Ed.D. and Nick Coniglio, co-authors of Lead It Like Lasso, share what school leaders can learn from Ted Lasso-style leadership when rethinking teacher evaluation. Their message: evaluation should not feel like a compliance trap. Done well, it can become one of the most powerful trust-building tools in a school.

We didn't set out to write a leadership book for educators.

Marnie started as a high school math teacher. Nick spent most of his career in small businesses and startups, hiring young people and figuring out how to bring out the best in them because there wasn't money to do much else. We met in the ed tech world, eventually left together, and found ourselves building a software company in a completely different space.

Along the way, people kept asking us the same question: What's the secret to your success?

We decided to write about it. We also decided pretty quickly that we are not leadership gurus. Leadership geeks, maybe. We've read everything. We love this stuff. But we wanted to write something different than every other leadership book already stacked on your nightstand. Something grounded in a show that somehow got human nature more right than most business books do.

That's how Lead It Like Lasso came to be.

The hook is the show. But the book is really about something much simpler: leadership has way less to do with position or titles and way more to do with presence.

We've all met people with impressive titles who make everyone smaller around them. In the Ted Lasso world, that's Rupert Manion. And we've all known people with zero formal authority who walked into a room and changed the culture just by how they showed up. That's Ted.

Whether you're leading a school district, a classroom, or a team meeting (or just trying to survive dinner with your family some nights!), leadership is about helping people become the best versions of themselves. That's it. And our most-quoted line from the show captures it better than we ever could: Be curious, not judgmental.

Schools Are People Work. That's Why This Matters Right Now.

Marnie's daughter is a teacher. She called recently because she had to find her own substitute, just another item on an already impossible list. Teacher shortages, mental health demands, academic pressure, testing requirements, staffing chaos; it's all landing on the same people at the same time.

And here's the thing about all of that pressure. The people in schools are supposed to help students become their best versions. But you can only do that if you're showing up as your own best version. When you're running on empty, that's really hard.

That's why trust, empathy, and optimism aren't nice leadership qualities. They're not soft skills you add on top of everything else. They're the foundation of a culture where people can actually do their best work.

As Marnie puts it: leaders are the emotional thermostats of their schools. And teachers are the thermostats of their classrooms.  

Without trust and psychological safety, people get tight, tense, stressed, and that's not an environment where anyone grows. Ted Lasso believed that belief was contagious. These traits work the same way.

Why Evaluations Feel Like a Trap (And Why They Don't Have To)

Here's something we heard constantly when we were building an evaluation platform in ed tech: evaluations are more about checking boxes than building people.

Nick's good friend is an elementary school teacher, and this is exactly what she talks about. The feeling that the only time a principal walks into her classroom is with a laptop and a rubric; not to support her, but to grade her. And in that moment, she is absolutely not thinking: Oh great, a growth opportunity.

Too often, that's the experience. The evaluation feels punitive because it is punitive, or at least it's set up that way. The feedback is disconnected from day-to-day support. The visit is formal and infrequent. The teacher feels like she's auditioning for her own job.

That perception doesn't come from nowhere.

The fix isn't only a better rubric. The fix is a different relationship. And that relationship is built in the small moments, long before anyone opens a laptop in a classroom.

Trust is built in lots and lots of small moments. Teachers notice who shows up consistently, who listens, who follows through. When a school leader has that kind of reputation, that presence, a difficult feedback conversation lands completely differently. It's not a surprise. It's a continuation of a relationship that already exists.

What Growth-Centered Actually Looks Like

One of Marnie's favorite scenes in Ted Lasso isn't a big dramatic moment. It's near the end of episode three, when Ted tells the team there are gifts in their lockers. They open them and find books. And as you look at the title of every single book, you realize Ted had paid attention to each player, not just to who they were, but to who they could become.

Wouldn't it be something if evaluation worked that way? Not a rubric check. Not a compliance form. But a real conversation grounded in: Here's what I see in you. Here's what I think is possible for you. Let's figure out how to get there.

That's what growth-centered evaluation actually looks like. It's individualized. It requires reflection. It asks not just where someone is, but where they want to go.  

Roy Kent didn't become the leader of that team in one conversation. It took multiple scenes, some coaching, some resistance, and eventually a moment of real clarity. In the real world, that takes months. But it starts with someone paying attention and asking the right questions.

The hard truth is that reflection is one of the most under-resourced things in education. There's rarely time for it in the evaluation process, in professional development, or in the way students are asked to think about their own growth. We need more of it, not less. And that starts with leaders who actually make space for it.

Lead With Curiosity, Not Correction

If there's one practical shift that can change the tone of feedback conversations immediately, it's that one: lead with curiosity, not correction.

Instead of walking in with the answer, walk in with a question.  

• What did you notice during that lesson?
• What were you hoping students would take away?
• Where did it feel like it clicked, and where didn't it?

Ask reflective questions. Celebrate real strengths. And then talk honestly about what you're seeing.

When evaluation is done with that kind of intention, anxiety drops, not because the conversation is easier, but because the relationship can hold it. The teacher knows this isn't an ambush. The principal isn't showing up to catch her on a bad day.

That's psychological safety. And it doesn't come from a policy. It comes from how a leader shows up every single day.

Culture is not what's written on the wall. It's what's talked about in the parking lot.

Leadership Has to Be Earned. Every Time.

One of the core ideas in the book is that leadership is earned, not given. Ted Lasso never pretended to know a thing about soccer. He said it outright: There's an entire internet of things I don't know about soccer. And somehow that honesty, that willingness to not be the expert, is what made people trust him.

Marnie has seen this play out directly. Two elementary school principals both moved into high school leadership roles. One came in assuming the job translated directly, that authority would follow him through the door. He failed. The other came in listening, asking questions, staying curious. She watched that second principal earn trust slowly, steadily, one small moment at a time. And now teachers are starting to genuinely follow her lead.

The lesson applies everywhere. When you walk into a new role, a new school, or even a new relationship with a struggling teacher, you don't lead with what you know. You lead with the humility to keep learning.

That's why our framework doesn't start with strategy and vision, like most leadership books do. It starts with core values. Knowing what makes you tick. Understanding your own personal operating system, because if you don't lead yourself first, you're not ready to lead anyone else.

What Good Culture Actually Produces

When evaluation is approached this way, as something done with teachers instead of to them, the impact on school culture is real. Not theoretical.

Teachers can feel when evaluation is only about compliance. They can feel, just as clearly, when it's actually about growth. When leaders are consistent, when they're curious instead of corrective, when they follow through on what they say, people respond differently. The culture becomes more honest. More collaborative. More energized.

And honestly, more fun. Teachers should be able to try new things, keep growing, feel something like passion for the work. That's much more likely when evaluation is a tool for improvement rather than a box to check.

That's what we'd want for every school. Not just better evaluations, but leaders who believe that helping people become their best versions is the actual job.

The next evaluation conversation does not have to start with a rubric. It can start with a relationship.

Marnie Stockman, Ed.D. and Nick Coniglio are the co-authors of Lead It Like Lasso and passionate believers that everyone is a leader — whether you're leading yourself, your family, a team, or an organization. Lead It Like Lasso is available in print and on Audible.

If your school is interested in new ways to improve the learning experience for children, you may also be interested in automating tasks and streamlining processes so that your teachers have more time to teach. Education Advanced offers a large suite of tools that may be able to help. For example, three of our most popular and effective tools are:

• TestHound, our test accommodation software, helps schools coordinate thousands of students across all state and local K-12 school assessments while taking into account dozens of accommodations (reading disabilities, physical disabilities, translations, etc.) for students.
• Pathways, our college and career readiness software, helps administrators and counselors create, track, and analyze graduation pathways to ensure secondary students are on track to graduate.
• Evaluation, our teacher evaluation software, which documents every step of the staff evaluation process, including walk-throughs, self-evaluations, supporting evidence, reporting, and performance analytics.