This article reviews the work of two Albertan educators, David Townsend and Pam Adams, in their application of collaborative inquiry to improving school leadership. Collaborative inquiry is essentially a professional practice that has yet not been comprehensively theorized. This article seeks to lay some foundations for a theorization of the practice by identifying structures and processes that appear to underlie the remarkable success of applications of the practice in several school districts in Alberta, Canada. The emerging mode is one that envisages seven powers: the power of teams, the power of relationship, the power of the process, the power of inquiry and reflection, the power of collaboration, the power of modelling, and the power of narrative. These powers appear to underpin much of what has been written about the ways in which collaborative inquiry has become a powerful force for leadership development in Alberta, and more recently in the State of New South Wales in Australia.