High quality early care and education (ECE) supports the healthy development and learning of young children. Implementing and sustaining quality depends on staff contributions and actions. Research from fields such as K-12 education, health, and management finds that quality improvement is more likely to occur and be sustained in the context of distributed leadership, in which administrators and frontline staff work together to affect change and improvement (Kirby et al., 2021). In distributed leadership, those in formal leadership roles and frontline staff share power and decision making in one or more domains of work. This brief intends to provide readers with an overview of the research on distributed leadership along with a concrete example of how ECE settings can achieve distributed leadership. Specifically, in this brief, the authors aim to (1) describe and elevate the concept of distributed leadership in center-based ECE settings and its potential benefits, including its role in supporting quality improvement, and (2) provide a concrete example of distributed leadership development from a quality improvement initiative called the Culture of Continuous Learning (CCL) project. The authors conclude with thoughts about how to incorporate distributed leadership into existing professional development and quality improvement systems to better support ECE settings across the country.