This paper is a case study of a Chinese educational leader who was in charge of an institution when it was in the process of being upgraded from a secondary vocational school to a self-funded tertiary vocational institution. Using a life history approach, the paper furnishes an informative picture capturing the dual transformation process of the informant's leadership and the institution under his leadership. It describes how the informant adopted a diversity of leadership images in winning various stakeholders for his institution in the leading process. It reflects enormous challenges that tertiary vocational education leaders have to face in the commercialisation process of tertiary education on the Chinese mainland. (Contains 1 table.)