A doctoral study of three Black male school leaders in East and Southeast Asia, and of the alliances they had to build before they could lead.
Dr. Avreeayl Womack-O'Neil completed this dissertation at the University of Missouri–Columbia in June 2026, supervised by Dr. Minseok Yang. It asks one question:
How do coalition-building strategies utilized by Black male leaders in international schools in East and Southeast Asia advance organizational effectiveness?
The answer that emerges is not the one the phrase “coalition-building” usually suggests. This is not networking. Across all three participants, coalition-building turned out to be the way these leaders established the standing that their job titles did not automatically give them — and only then the way they moved their schools.
How the study was done
The design is qualitative narrative inquiry, working from a constructivist paradigm. Participants were recruited by purposive and snowball sampling. Three Black male leaders met the criteria; each sat for two semi-structured interviews of sixty to ninety minutes between December 2025 and mid-March 2026. Transcripts were coded line by line and analysed thematically after Braun and Clarke (2006), producing a nine-code first-round codebook. Trustworthiness followed Lincoln and Guba (1985), with member checking and thick description. The study was approved by the University of Missouri IRB, number 2131480.
Their schools, cities and countries are deliberately not named. The participants appear as John, Dominic and Brian.
| John | More than 15 years in education. Has led in the United States, Southeast Asia and the United Kingdom. Ed.D., MA, BA. |
|---|---|
| Dominic | More than 25 years. Has led in the United States, East Asia, Southeast Asia and South America. M.Ed. in Educational Leadership, M.Ed., BA. |
| Brian | More than 20 years. Has led in the United States and East Asia, as both Assistant Principal and Principal. |
Three narratives is a small sample, and the dissertation says so. There are no quantitative measures of effectiveness here. What the study offers instead is depth: two long interviews with each leader, and an account of what the work actually felt like from inside it.
The framework: leadership read through its context
The study is grounded in contextual leadership theory, drawing on Oc (2018), Osborn et al. (2002), and Clarke and O'Donoghue (2017). The premise is that leadership practice is most effective when it is tailored to the cultural, institutional and political environment it operates in — that leading is less about executing a fixed set of traits than about reading a situation correctly and adjusting.
Dr. Womack-O'Neil reviewed six other models before choosing it. Distributed leadership was among those he set aside, on the grounds that it risks role ambiguity and diffuse accountability in schools with high staff turnover. That is worth noting, because distributed practice reappears later as a finding — not as the governing frame, but as something the participants arrived at themselves.
Trust comes first
Trust is not presented here as a pleasant by-product of good leadership. It is the precondition. Coalition-building, Dr. Womack-O'Neil writes, was “not simply a leadership strategy used to improve school systems” but “a culturally responsive and relational leadership practice rooted in trust, communication, visibility, consistency, and advocacy” (p. 42).
Each leader built it differently. Brian did it through hiring, one appointment at a time: “Each year, as people left, the coalition was built by who we hired” (p. 66). He deliberately did not impose authority when he arrived. Dominic built it through infrastructure — a newsletter on a fixed schedule, surveys, feedback requested at every staff meeting. John built it through authenticity, arguing that a leader should not have to suppress cultural identity to be effective.
“My definition of a coalition is I needed a team of people that I can trust and depend on.”
— Brian, p. 66
What strains it is documented too, and the dissertation is measured about it: communication misread by the people receiving it, requiring correction and re-correction; indirect messaging from supervisors, which created “tension, confusion, and challenges within collaborative leadership structures” (p. 89); and leadership turnover, which weakens culture when capacity sits with one person.
Influence is relational before it is positional
This is the study's spine. Answering his research question directly, Dr. Womack-O'Neil writes that “rather than relying primarily upon formal authority, the participants consistently utilized relationship-building, collaboration, communication, and mentorship to strengthen organizational alignment and navigate institutional systems shaped by racialized assumptions and subconscious bias” (pp. 98–99). He states the sequence plainly: influence “often depended upon sustained relational trust and organizational credibility before broader institutional influence could occur” (p. 100).
The evidence is specific. John described assembling a critical mass for every initiative, building coalitions with White colleagues so that he could be “heard and validated by a structure that doesn't always embrace my voice” (p. 47). Dominic gave the sharpest illustration that a title is not influence: he watched his suggestions pass unremarked, then be adopted when a colleague at the same level raised them (p. 88). Brian arrived with an assistant principalship and twenty years behind him, and was still “received with a little bit of resentment” (p. 66).
“I'm oftentimes having to rally the troops and build a critical mass of folks that don't necessarily look like me in order to be heard and validated by a structure that doesn't always embrace my voice.”
— John, p. 47
Position is not dismissed. Dr. Womack-O'Neil describes John's distinction between mentorship and sponsorship as turning precisely on the use of positional power to create opportunities for others. The finding is about sequence, not about hierarchy being irrelevant.
Transparent communication
Of everything the participants named, this came up most consistently. They “repeatedly emphasized that successful coalition-building depended heavily upon transparent communication, consistency, and organizational clarity” (p. 76).
In practice it was routine rather than aspirational. Dominic's newsletter went out on a predictable schedule, with deliberate attention to who he thanked and what he chose to highlight. He asked for feedback at every staff meeting. He also had to relearn the job abroad: the level and type of communication he had used in the States “just wasn't enough for parents” (p. 76). Brian's contribution was naming problems out loud in leadership rooms instead of letting them pass.
“The better you can communicate to and from, the better you can control that message rather than somebody else controlling that message.”
— Dominic, p. 60
Mentorship, and the sharper thing next to it
Every participant had been mentored into leadership, and every one of them was deliberately developing someone else. Almost none of it was formal.
Dominic described mentorship “less as formal programming and more as relationships built through honesty, trust, and advocacy” (p. 61). The feedback he valued most was uncomfortable — including a colleague who told him to “work on your face,” because stress was reading as anger. Brian spent ten years learning by proximity to one school leader and called it “mentorship at its highest level” (p. 72). John's turn came when a former colleague pushed him to lead a department before he thought of himself as a leader.
But John draws a distinction the study returns to. Mentorship advises. Sponsorship opens doors, and it is what actually moves people past gatekeeping.
“It's not just mentorship. It's sponsorship and having people that are in positions to uplift you… You always had it in you, and I'm just making space for you to shine.”
— John, p. 51
The study records a counter-case as well. Dominic expected solidarity from a Black male supervisor and met resistance instead. Shared identity did not guarantee shared support (p. 62).
Culturally responsive leadership
Not an accessory to the work — a precondition for it. The discussion states that culturally responsive leadership “was essential to coalition-building within international school settings,” and that effectiveness depended on leaders' ability to adapt communication, relationships and decision-making to multicultural environments (p. 100).
Dominic framed it as observation and humility: “Really understanding the community, where they come from, what they value” (p. 61). Brian's account is harder. Students and families at his school used the N-word without knowing its history. He held town hall meetings on where the word comes from rather than responding punitively.
“I take it from the point of view, ‘I'm helping you out.' This is not because I'm offended. This is because I'm trying to protect you and educate you.”
— Brian, p. 71
The tension inside the theme is preserved rather than resolved. Brian adapted to local norms and also held a line, saying that during school hours he stayed “very much centered on what I believe to be the school culture” (p. 70).
Shared leadership, and planning to be replaceable
Effectiveness was strengthened, Dr. Womack-O'Neil concludes, “when leadership responsibilities and organizational ownership were distributed across members of the school community rather than centralized solely within formal leadership positions” (p. 101).
Brian is the clearest case, and his concern is succession rather than authority. Of his work with his assistant principal: “The way he (assistant principal) and I run the sub-school is such that I feel like after this year, maybe next year, I could leave, and he will be able to run the sub-school” (p. 92). He wanted that built into the structure, not left to chance.
This is not an argument for flat authority. Brian gathered wide input and kept decision rights: “I really did take a lot of opinions of the team… But I was clear to them that this is not a democracy” (p. 69). In schools where staff turn over constantly, distributing capacity is what keeps a culture alive after the person who built it leaves.
Race, credibility, and the margin for error
Identity shaped all of it. The participants navigated “leadership perception, gatekeeping, subconscious bias, and questions of legitimacy while simultaneously working to maintain credibility, strengthen school culture, and support organizational growth” (p. 96). The central interpretive claim of the study sits here: coalition-building “may function differently for Black male leaders” because credibility had to be established relationally before institutional influence was available at all (pp. 99–100).
John called the allies he assembled “a coalition of co-conspirators” (p. 47), and was candid about an internal cost, reflecting that he had at times been “seeing leadership through a white gaze” (p. 83). Dominic described being moved into finalist pools and then never contacted (p. 58). Brian described a narrower margin than his colleagues had.
“I walked into every meeting. I walked into school every day with a clear understanding that I'm not going to be afforded the ability to make the same mistakes as maybe the next person or the rest of those other principals.”
— Brian, p. 67
The study is careful with its limits. Brian said he had not personally experienced overt racism in East Asia, only that “I'm just prepared in case race is an issue” (p. 68). Dominic actively resisted reading every slight racially, saying he would drive himself crazy if he did (p. 59). And identity appears as a source of strength, not only of friction — John: “I think being Black is lit. It's great.” (p. 48)
What it means for schools
The recommendations are concrete:
- Treat coalition-building as a core leadership competency in preparation programmes, not as something secondary to operational duties.
- Build intercultural capacity deliberately, rather than assuming relational skill transfers across contexts.
- Move beyond informal mentorship toward intentional leadership pipelines with sponsorship, coaching and equitable advancement.
- Examine hiring and advancement critically — equitable recruitment, diversified hiring committees, professional learning on unconscious bias and on equitable leadership evaluation.
- Prioritise communication structures that support transparency and minimise hidden tensions.
- Adopt distributed leadership and succession planning so that capacity is not concentrated in one person.
- Ground advancement in demonstrated expertise and organizational contribution — not in stereotypes or symbolic diversity expectations.
Where the research goes next
Dr. Womack-O'Neil calls for parallel studies of Black leadership in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, and for further work connecting coalition-building to organizational sustainability. The most ambitious proposal is conceptual: he argues for investigating coalition-building's “conceptual boundaries, defining characteristics, antecedents, and outcomes” to establish whether it constitutes a distinct leadership theory in its own right (p. 108).
“Coalition-building is not simply a strategy for effective leadership; it is the relational foundation upon which trust, collaboration, inclusive school culture, and lasting organizational effectiveness are built.”
— p. 115
Citation
Womack-O'Neil, A. (2026). How do coalition-building strategies utilized by Black male leaders in international schools in East and Southeast Asia advance organizational effectiveness? Doctoral dissertation, University of Missouri–Columbia. Dissertation supervisor: Dr. Minseok Yang. Committee: Dr. Minseok Yang, Dr. Pilar Mendoza, Dr. Gabrielle Malfatti, Dr. Eric L. Johnson.