In considering how to bring joy back to education and the curriculum in England, I argue that it is also necessary to bring the joy of teaching back to classroom practitioners. A fundamental contribution to this may be leadership typologies employed by schools' senior leadership. As an experienced secondary English teacher, over the last 20 years I taught at schools in which my experiences of being led -- just prior to, and then under, the education reforms introduced to promote the 'knowledge-rich' approach1 -- were very different. This article reflects on my experiences of contrasting leadership-styles, and of educational leadership on a national scale, through the metaphorical lens of one of the poems I taught for GCSE English literature. My aim is to consider how leadership can be successful, sustainable and inspiring of joy.