Leadership, currently prescribed as a key requirement for effective school organization and management, is examined here as a rhetorical or discursive device, as a "turn", in the sense used in literary and sociological discussion of the linguistic turn. In the educational sphere, a tacit separation of leadership from issues of governance and management is becoming apparent. This move may be significantly related to an aestheticization of learning, and what is said to be increasingly the performative nature of its application in educational institutions in England. Leadership is inherently relational, but institutes and sustains unequal power relations. The paper argues that a significant distinction should be understood between performance and performativity, analogous to "event" and "possibility", which affords unrealized ethical and emancipatory opportunities for educational practice. (Contains 1 table and 2 notes.)