This paper uses a hybrid leadership framework to examine how formal teacher leaders at the middle management level direct and facilitate staff resources for distributed pedagogical leadership. By conducting qualitative shadowing, involving video observation, field notes and stimulated recall interviews, and abductive analysis, this study demonstrates and discusses how formal teacher leaders step forward as hybrid leaders who integrate leadership into both interaction and their positional capacity. Building upon established leadership categories, the new category of "leading knowledge development" is discovered. The main finding is that hybrid leadership is illuminated in various leadership actions, which expand the understanding of leadership work. Conclusions drawn from the data and results suggest that hybrid leadership, in its exercise of both positional and distributed leadership, must be considered a move towards a new leadership identity. For policy and practice, this new hybrid leadership opens up a new conceptual space that is crucial to understanding how leaders recognize and contextualize their actions as a result of highly complex and dynamic work practices.