Animating flourishing in school leadership: The 4P Framework

by: Dr. Sabre Cherkowski, Dr. Benjamin Kutsyuruba, Dr. Keith Walker

date: August 26, 2025

What would mean to understand leadership as a generative, life-giving practice? This question may seem trivial given the consistent findings about the profound toll of stress, burnout, and work intensification on Canadian principals and vice-principals (Pollock et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2018). We recognise and deeply appreciate the challenges and hardships that school leaders and educators are facing in these uncertain and volatile times. At the same time, we see opportunities to create conversational spaces about the improvement of wellbeing. Shifting the focus from a deficit lens to an appreciative lens opens our view to see the strengths, gifts, and potentials available in our living systems. Shifting our focus to what makes us feel well and alive fuels our human desires for purpose and meaning, along with our needs for connection, care, belonging and love.

This article offers an overview of a strengths-based, appreciative framework of educational leadership that centers on four animating values for flourishing—purpose, passion, play and presence (Cherkowski et al., 2020, 2023). Together, these values offer a holistic lens for understanding how school leaders can craft their work in ways that promote and sustain vitality, connection and meaning, even amidst the pressures of contemporary schooling. In so doing, school leaders find that their wellbeing and sense of flourishing is nurtured and sustained.

Leading from an Appreciative Lens

Our research uses an appreciative and intentionally positive lens to explore wellbeing in school. We assumed that wellbeing is experienced along a continuum spanning from negative to positive. School leaders may experience the negative aspects of illbeing as they struggle to cope with challenges and survive at work. On the positive side of the continuum, wellbeing is experienced as thriving or flourishing within the work environment (Cameron et al., 2003; Carmeli & Spreitzer, 2009; Quinn, 2015). From an appreciative lens, we have focused on the positive potential for creating conditions for wellbeing at work when educators can tap into their experiences of animating or living out their own expressions of flourishing (Cherkowski et al., 2023). When asked what it feels like to flourish in their work, educators have shared that they flourish when they are part of a team making a difference in the lives of their students, or when they feel cared for and known in their school and can share laughter and enjoyment with colleagues during their days at work, or when their school leader challenges and supports their ongoing innovation and professional growth. From a positive psychology perspective, we found that Seligman’s (2011) PERMA framework offers insights into how educators could pay attention to their experiences of flourishing to further generate and grow more of what makes them feel well and most alive in their work. Using this framework, paying attention to positive emotions (P), engagement (E), relationships (R), meaning (M), and accomplishments (A) in our work and lives over time can shape a life where we experience the positive end of the wellbeing continuum more often. The positive education model uses Seligman’s model to cultivate wellbeing through curricular approaches that immerse students in experiencing and reflecting on PERMA at school (Norrish et al., 2013; White & Kern, 2018).

Positive leadership emerged from the research on positive organisations. Positive leaders attend to strengths, gifts and talents and place an “emphasis on what elevates individuals and what does right in organizations” (Cameron, 2012, p. 3). They work with others to build quality relationships, grow a sense of purpose and meaningfulness in the workplace, and cultivate positive communication and feedback processes (Cameron, 2021; Dutton & Spreitzer, 2014; Quinn 2015; Tombaugh, 2005). Framed within the context of K-12 schools, positive leaders orient toward strengths and optimism, have a commitment to ethical integrity, emphasize building high-quality relationships, and have a sense of calling or deeper purpose in the work of education (Murphy & Seashore, 2018). We have found that appreciative approaches to leadership can create conditions for educators to notice and nurture flourishing in their contexts (Cherkowski et al., 2023, 2020).

Within our research on flourishing in schools, we have seen over and again the important role leaders play in creating conditions for those within their learning communities to thrive. As we heard from leaders about what made them feel well and alive in their work, we saw the importance of reciprocity in flourishing—we feel a stronger sense of wellbeing when those around us do as well. Our research on flourishing leadership was built from our initial framework for flourishing in schools where purpose, passion, and play were established as key values for building a school culture where teachers experienced wellbeing (Cherkowski & Walker, 2016, 2018). In our qualitative research, we engaged in appreciative interviews with principals and vice-principals to learn about what makes them feel well in their work. From our analysis of this data, we added a fourth value of presence to the framework for flourishing leadership.

Animating the 4Ps in School Leadership

Purpose is often cited in leadership frameworks as an important guiding value that helps leaders focus on what matters most and contributes to a sense of meaning and accomplishment. All of these are important elements in the PERMA model of flourishing. From our participants, we heard about the importance of purpose in working with others, and that working from their own sense of purpose can energize them to support others to move forward in their own expressions of purpose. The stories from school leaders conveyed a sense of wellbeing when they focused on those moments of meaningful work with teachers, students and their administrator colleagues.

We defined passion as a sense of thriving that educators experience when they are building capacities for seeing and encouraging strengths, gifts and talent in others and in themselves. The school leaders who we talked to explained the importance of rekindling passion often through learning and continuing to challenge themselves to grow and engage in ongoing self-reflection. They shared the importance of guiding and mentoring teachers and staff to see their strengths, gifts, and opportunities for ongoing learning and growth. They also shared the importance of noticing areas of their work that bring them joy, crafting their days and months in ways that created space for these moments to happen more often, and reflecting on these moments as part of their overall leadership accomplishments. Building relationships was central to the experience of passion in their work, and participants shared the importance of collective expressions of what mattered most to them in their work as a way to bolster and further fuel their workplace sense of passion.

Play is not often a word associated with the work of teachers and school leaders but this value is a key component of noticing, nurturing and sustaining a sense of flourishing in schools. As we engaged in conversations with teachers, staff members and administrators described the moments of laughter and amusement they had often experienced with colleagues. The importance of experiencing positive emotions to grow and sustain wellbeing was animated through this value of play in throughout activities in their schools. Play was also expressed through tinkering with ideas, pedagogies and various frameworks to innovate and develop more meaningful and impactful ways of promoting teacher and student learning. These school leaders shared their stories of enjoying opportunities to create conditions for others to join in with them of finding fun in and through the work they did together. These moments of “play” did not deny the challenges and struggles of the work, but, rather, allowed participants to focus on positive capacities and values and learning to appreciate the full range of human experiences in their work. They voiced the affirmation of being able to see the challenges, stressors, and complexities in the work of teaching and learning; they honored the difficulties and obstacles that they often had to overcome as a school community trying to do their best for their students and families. Within these stories of stress and frustration, and sometimes of exhaustion and being overwhelmed, they recognised the importance of finding small moments of joy as a sustaining and necessary quality for thriving in and through the challenges. As these moments with colleagues were shared, the positive effects seemed to amplify, helping them to find connections among colleagues that contributed to improvement and assisted in sustaining their vitality as leaders through even the most serious challenges they faced daily school life.

Presence is the fourth value that we added to the framework for flourishing leadership. This value highlights the awareness that leaders have about the need to build connections and relationships through being physically present and available in a way that allows them to know the stories that make up their schools. The leaders we worked with shared the importance of their knowing and understanding teacher colleagues and how they worked best with their respective students. As with the other values, presence does not happen in a vacuum, but rather emerges and becomes amplified when in relationship with the values of purpose, passion, and play. The leaders discussed the importance of being present with and for the members of their school community in ways that reflected that they are known and cared for. Leaders are attuned to the pulse and the vibes of the school, and have learned to tune into the energies around them as part of their leadership. They recognised that this is a visceral feeling and can come with experience over time, but tends to happen through a sense of attention to wanting to know and be known, and to recognise the fullness of the stories of each member of the school community. Taking time to co-experience school life, ask questions and gain first-hand observations were important. They shared that this value of presence can be daunting and draining if they pay attention to challenges, conflicts and problems that are always going to be at the forefront of their daily work. They described how they had learned to pay attention from a more positive approach, seeing strengths and opportunities and that could then tap into their sense of purpose. Through an appreciative view, this presence offered them the real-time chance to feel when they were part of something larger than themselves.

Threading through all the stories, and tying together the four animating values, is the importance of balance in wellbeing. Flourishing has been defined as “the achievement of a balanced life in which individuals feel good about lives in which they are functioning well” (Keyes, 2016, p. 101). This was evident in the stories of experiences shared by the principals and vice-principals in our study. They shared the importance of learning to know how to balance the demands of their work with the resources that they have available to them as individuals and as a collective. We heard stories of wellbeing that included the challenges of work intensification, overload, stress and work–life imbalance. When asked what wellbeing meant to one vice-principal in the study, she shared, “I feel like that’s sort of the holistic approach and the balance between what are the priorities of the day and where do we need to sort of fit all of that in…[wellbeing is] striking the balance, sort of getting to know where everybody is at and what their story is and then weaving that through the work that we do to support one another.” As these leaders shared, finding the balance in their work and also finding a balance between work and life was an important, but constantly shifting, value. They reflected on the importance of mindfulness of their purpose, their passion and their opportunities to find moments of play and joy within the challenges and limitations of what they could do. As with the other values, the experience of seeking balance was an individual effort that was sustained and promoted through collective actions and endeavours. Relationships, trust, compassion, care, connection—these steadying qualities are learned and re-learned over time through the work of leading for and through the work of learning to flourish.

What does this mean for school leaders who want to craft their work for wellbeing? Starting with small steps towards what matters most was shared as advice by those in our studies. Animating flourishing in school leadership will look different for all leaders and for all members of a school community. As we have described in other writing, wellbeing is multi-dimensional and is expressed differently by different people in different ways and at different times in their life. Paying attention to purpose, passion, play and presence within each particular school community will open space for particular approaches to living out wellbeing in ways that make sense for those members of that community. What we have found in our research is that asking the question can open the space for new ways of seeing how to learn how to grow wellbeing together. As we move forward in these uncertain and volatile times, what if we asked questions to prompt our imagination beyond what is often felt as surviving and coping with the very real challenges and hardships facing educators. What if our work as leaders was to learn how to flourish so that we may open space for all others in our community to do the same?

Reflection Question

How have you experienced the 4P’s – purpose, passion, play and presence – in your role as an education professional? How might shifting your focus to noticing, nurturing and animating these values support flourishing?

References

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Cherkowski, S., Kutsyuruba, B., & Walker, K. D. (2023). Flourishing school leadership: A model for principal wellbeing. In B. Carpenter, J. Mahfouz, & K. Robinson (Eds.), Supporting leaders for school improvement through self-care and wellbeing (pp. 403-419). Information Age Publishing.

Cherkowski, S., Kutsyuruba, B., & Walker, K. (2020). Positive leadership: Animating purpose, presence, passion and play for flourishing in schools. Journal of Educational Administration, 58(4), 401-415.

Cherkowski, S., & Walker, K. (2016). Flourishing leadership: engaging purpose, passion, and play in the work of leading schools, Journal of Educational Administration, 54(4), 378-392.

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Meet the Expert(s)

Dr. Sabre Cherkowski

Professor, Okanagan School of Education, University of British Columbia

Dr. Sabre Cherkowski is a Professor in the Okanagan School of Education at the University of British Columbia. She holds a PRC Tier 1 Research Chair in Leadership, Learning and Wellbeing. She teaches and researches in the areas of leadership, organizational wellbeing, and professional learning and development.

Dr. Benjamin Kutsyuruba

Professor, Queen's University

Benjamin Kutsyuruba is a Professor in Educational Leadership, Policy and School Law in the Faculty of Education, Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario. He has worked as a teacher, researcher, manager, and professor in education in Ukraine and Canada.

Dr. Keith Walker

Professor, College of Education, University of Saskatchewan

Keith Walker, PhD, DD, is a professor in the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. His academic interests, expertise, and activity revolve around executive leadership, human and organizational wellbeing, positive organizational development, governance and applied ethics in education and in the not-for-profit sectors.