The long term leadership task of creating favourable circumstances for followers to excel are discussed in this article using narratives supplied by education managers in schools of the Nkangala District in Mpumalanga Province. Thereby deficiencies in the long term leadership proficiency of these managers are identified with a view to be able to address these shortcomings. It emanated from the research that education managers do have a very basic working knowledge of the process of vision building, communication of the vision and values management whereby favourable circumstances for followers to excel are created, but that they seem to experience a challenge in translating this into good use for their schools.