This paper introduces and explores the concept of "salutogenesis" as a way of interpreting school leadership research and its findings in two significant areas: its effect on student outcomes and the motivation of incumbents. In its original setting, salutogenesis describes an approach that focuses on health, rather than on disease, but regards both as points on the same continuum. "Pathogenesis" is the opposite, more traditional view. The two make very different "ab initio" assumptions: pathogenesis starts by regarding illness as a departure from the natural state and something to be cured; salutogenesis regards illness as the natural condition, and health as something to be created. In the context of adapting these concepts to schooling, where "illness" can be read as "dysfunction", the latter approach would take the view that schools are inherently imperfect and chaotic places, and that the aim of leadership is therefore to create a more functional state. The pathogenic approach, on the other hand, assumes that the natural state is inherently stable so that the purpose of leadership is to ward off malfunction.