Strong leaders for stronger teams: Leadership & change agency in education & care T4 2026
Lead with clarity, compassion and purpose - and create the conditions for your whole team to thrive.
About this course
Lead with clarity, compassion and purpose
What does it mean to lead well? To support the people in your care to grow, feel capable, and do their best work?
Strong Leaders for Stronger Teams: Leadership & change agency in education & care explores leadership as a deeply personal, needs-informed practice. Facilitated by Sandi Phoenix, this course draws on leadership research and literature, positive psychology, contemporary neuroscience and the Phoenix Cups® Framework to explain how leadership styles, unmet needs and wellbeing shape the way teams communicate, function and thrive.
Through reflection, real-world scenarios and practical tools, you'll develop the clarity and confidence to coach and mentor others, navigate change, and foster a team culture built on trust, connection and shared purpose.
Who this course is for
Built for the leaders holding it all together
Education and Care leadership roles
Anyone working in a leadership capacity in Education and Care settings, including LDC, FDC, OSHC, Kindergarten and Pre-School.
Educational LeaderManagerNominated SupervisorDirectorCoordinatorFDC CoordinatorApproved ProviderLead EducatorRoom Leader
Teachers, Preparatory to Grade 3
The Australian Curriculum already asks you to teach personal and social capability, identity and emotions, through the Personal, Social and Community Health strand of Health and Physical Education. This course gives you the Phoenix Cups Framework as the shared language that brings that teaching to life, a way for your whole class to name their needs alongside their feelings.
Now on pre-sale
Self-paced learning, plus two live sessions with Sandi Phoenix
Strong Leaders for Stronger Teams is open for pre-sale now. Enrol today and access to your self-paced modules will open on 13 October, alongside two live webinars.
Self-paced, in your own time
Every module sits in your course login, ready for the pockets of time that actually exist in your week.
Live with Sandi, twice
Two 1.5-hour webinars exploring the main themes of the content. Bring your own questions, and hear how other leaders are working through the same challenges.
Webinar 1
Tuesday 27 October
6:00pm AEST · 7:00pm AEDT
Webinar 2
Tuesday 3 November
6:00pm AEST · 7:00pm AEDT
Times shown are Australian Eastern time: 6:00pm AEST for Queensland, 7:00pm AEDT for New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT. That's 8:00am UTC, the same clock hour in the UK once British Summer Time ends in late October, so anyone joining from England can pencil in 8:00am on both dates.
Reserve your place while pre-sale is open. Enrol now and both live webinars are already booked into your calendar.
Enrol nowIn this course
You'll explore how to
Understand and embody a range of leadership styles that suit your team
Coach and mentor educators using strengths-based, guidance-aligned approaches
Navigate change and challenge with clarity and confidence
Build a resilient team culture grounded in psychological safety and wellbeing
Lead through connection, using the Phoenix Cups® Framework to understand your team's needs
Why this course
How this course benefits you
Strengthen your leadership identity
Clarify who you are as a leader: your values, your strengths and your style. Lead with authenticity and confidence, even in challenging moments.
Build a team that thrives
Learn practical, needs-informed strategies to improve communication, support educator wellbeing and create a culture where people feel safe, capable and connected.
Lead change with compassion
Develop the skills to navigate change and conflict, mentor others through difficulty, and build the kind of trust that sustains teams through uncertainty.
Course curriculum
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Introduction
FREE PREVIEW -
Finding your way around
FREE PREVIEW -
Acknowledgement of Country
FREE PREVIEW -
Copyright & your agreement
FREE PREVIEW -
A quick check-in
FREE PREVIEW -
A freebie for you
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A gift for you
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Do you know about Strong Leaders Community of Practice?
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Part 1 - Background Psychology
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What is a paradigm?
FREE PREVIEW -
Why do people behave the way they do?
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Positive Psychology, a perfect fit for a leader
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Flow, the secret to happiness, TED Talk
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Finding and protecting flow
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Leading flow pedagogy
FREE PREVIEW
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Part 2 - Phoenix Cups Framework
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The Phoenix Cups Framework
FREE PREVIEW -
Dig deeper into the Phoenix Cups
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Know your team's Cups
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Know your teams strengths
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Creating a culture of wellbeing
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Webinar 2: Strong Leaders for Stronger Teams with Sandi Phoenix
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Awareness Test
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Session 2 Part b webinar
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Super cool video about change blindness
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Leadership styles
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Leading the emotional climate
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Biases in leadership
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Unhelpful thinking
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Communicating with your team
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Coaching and mentoring, the stance
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Opening the conversation
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The questions toolkit
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Coaching rather than telling
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Change agency
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Effective teams
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Leadership for wellbeing, culture, and Safety
FREE PREVIEW
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The miracle question
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Vision planning
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From vision to QIP
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Further reading on leadership
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A quick check-in before you go
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Keep in Touch with the Phoenix Team
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Other Professional and Personal Development Opportunities
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Introduction to Positive Psychology
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About this course
- $98.00
- 45 lessons
- 4 hours of video content
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Course content
What this course looks like
We'll explore together
- A range of leadership styles, and how your strengths, needs and values influence the way you lead and motivate others
- Strengths-based, solution-focussed and guidance-aligned approaches to coaching and mentoring educators through behaviour change
- Team culture, communication and problem-solving through a neuroscience and needs-informed lens
- How adult wellbeing, stress and unmet needs impact leadership capacity and team dynamics
- How to navigate change, address challenges and support teams through uncertainty
- Shared critical reflection to embed leadership strategies into everyday practice and Quality Improvement planning
You'll walk away with
- A clear understanding of your leadership style and how it shapes team motivation, communication and behaviour
- Practical strategies for coaching and mentoring educators using strengths-based and needs-informed approaches
- Confidence to navigate change, address challenges and support your team's wellbeing with clarity and compassion
- Skills to build and sustain a positive team culture grounded in psychological safety, collaboration and reflective practice
- A working understanding of the Phoenix Cups Framework as a leadership tool, so you can lead through connection and meet the needs that shape how your team shows up
Doing this with your leadership team?
Bring them, and add a term of Community of Practice.
The course on its own is $98 and gives you the thinking. The Strong Leaders Community of Practice gives your whole leadership team five facilitated live sessions across the term to do something with it, in a Critical Friends group of leaders from other services. Both include the two live webinars with Sandi and both open on 13 October.
What you're looking at
The course, on your own
$98One person. One login, 13 October to 28 December.
- The full Strong Leaders for Stronger Teams online course
- Two live webinars with Sandi Phoenix, 27 October and 3 November
- The Phoenix Cups® 101 & Wellbeing Challenge, yours to keep after the course closes
- Certificate of completion, mapped to NQS Quality Area 7
The upgrade
Your leadership team, together
$1,980Up to five leaders. One invoice, due 27 October.
- Five logins to this course, 13 October to 28 December
- Two live webinars with Sandi Phoenix
- Five facilitated Community of Practice sessions, Tuesdays 10 November to 15 December, alternating 1pm and 6pm AEST
- Your Critical Friends group: around five leaders from other services, fixed for the term
- The community, open until June 2027: minutes, resources, your questions answered between sessions
- The Phoenix Cups® 101 & Wellbeing Challenge for every login
Sales close Tuesday 27 October. See the full program.
Already bought the course, or about to? Everything your service has spent on course logins comes off the Community of Practice package if you upgrade before 27 October. Start here if $98 is what you can approve this week.
The thinking behind this course
Research, evidence and theory
Many leaders in the EC sector come to leadership through their love of children and their skill as educators. Leadership theory wasn't always part of the journey. This course is built on a body of research: the way we lead shapes the team around us. And that leadership can be learned.
Leadership theory Transformational Leadership Burns, Bass & Avolio
Transformational leadership centres individual needs, builds trust, and aligns naturally with how we think about wellbeing for both children and educators. It is the leadership style most associated with flourishing teams, and the one this course is most focused on developing in you.
Needs-based framework The Phoenix Cups Framework Phoenix & Phoenix
Drawing on Self-Determination Theory, Choice Theory and humanistic psychology, the Phoenix Cups Framework gives leaders a practical, accessible tool for understanding the needs shaping their team's behaviour. It shifts the lens from judgment to curiosity, and from compliance to care.
Wellbeing theory Self-Determination Theory Ryan & Deci
When educators feel autonomous, competent and connected, they thrive. SDT has four decades of evidence behind it, and directly challenges the control-based leadership patterns that are most common in our sector.
Positive psychology PERMA Framework Seligman
Positive emotion, engagement, positive relationships, meaning and accomplishment: all can be actively cultivated in the EC workplace through intentional leadership.
A note on leadership in the EC sector: research shows that leaders who haven't had formal leadership training often default to transactional approaches. This course offers the kind of leadership training many EC leaders never received. You'll explore these frameworks in depth, and leave knowing how to apply them in the real, complex, rewarding work of leading in Education and Care.
Your Facilitator
Managing Director, Phoenix Support for Educators Sandi Phoenix
Sandi Phoenix founded Phoenix Support for Educators in 2011 and created the Phoenix Cups® framework, which helps education and care professionals and parents understand children's behaviour and plan for their wellbeing. She began her career supporting children's inclusion in education and care, and has spent more than twenty years supporting educators to foster children's social and emotional learning.
Reviews
What educators are saying about this course...
Fantastic course
Georgia Gertos
This course really made me think about how to speak to educators and to have that open discussion of what cups are the educators main cups and how to continu...
Read MoreThis course really made me think about how to speak to educators and to have that open discussion of what cups are the educators main cups and how to continuously work to fill those cups up.
Read LessStill deciding?
See what your team would be committing to
The Community of Practice page has the full term dated out, session by session, with the two webinars, the five facilitated sessions and the Critical Friends groups all in one place.
National Quality Standard
NQS Quality Area Alignment
Mapping this course to the NQS. This course supports educators and leaders to strengthen their practice against two National Quality Standard Quality Areas. Select each area below to see how the course content connects to your service's quality improvement journey.
ELEMENT 4.2.1Professional collaboration
Management, educators and staff work with mutual respect and collaboratively, and challenge and learn from each other, recognising each other's strengths and skills.
ELEMENT 4.2.2Professional standards
Professional standards guide practice, interactions and relationships.
ELEMENT 7.2.1Continuous improvement
There is an effective self-assessment and quality improvement process in place.
ELEMENT 7.2.3Development of professionals
Educators, co-ordinators and staff members' performance is regularly evaluated and individual plans are in place to support learning and development.
For registered Early Childhood Teachers
Australian Professional Standards for Teachers
Mapping this course to the APST. If you are a registered Early Childhood Teacher, the content of this course maps to the following focus area of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. Select the focus area below to see how this course supports your professional learning.
FOCUS AREA 7.4Engage with professional teaching networks and broader communities
Understand the role of external professionals and community representatives in broadening teachers' professional knowledge and practice.
