The focus of this article is on leadership in primary schools and the author argues and provides some evidence that the leadership of the headteacher can make a dramatic difference and raise standards in a school. This is in sharp contrast to the rather tentative conclusions of previous academic research. The author also argues that school leadership, if it is to be really effective, must include major contributions from the deputy, the senior management team (or rather the leadership group), the rest of the school workforce and the governing body. In other words it is leadership that is widely shared that makes a difference. To support this argument, the author draws on interviews that he carried out in 2000 with two groups of six headteachers of successful primary schools in Birmingham as indicated by their key stage 2 test results (tests taken by pupils in their final year at primary school). All had been heads since the late 1980s or early 1990s and one of the groups was of Catholic primary heads. The first set of interviews focused on their senior management teams and the second on their deputies. In 2003, the author was able to re-interview six of these heads, focusing this time on their reflections on headship. In this article, the author intends to highlight the main findings from these interviews, appreciating that, as this is a small and limited sample, the wider relevance of the findings can be questioned.