This paper is based on two Israeli schools that participated in the International Successful School Principals’ Project (ISSPP). One is a high school serving 1300 students (7th-12th grades) with 105 teachers, and the second is an elementary school serving 570 students with 45 teachers. Both successfully deal with a heterogeneous student population and present high achievements, low rate of violence and vandalism, and a high sense of belonging to the school. Employing distributed pedagogical leadership, particularly the concepts of polyphony and responsibility we found that whereas the outcomes are similar, the mechanisms the principals use are different. In the high school, the principal maintains teachers’ polyphony by respecting the time, opinion and expertise of all, while creating responsibility by demanding periodic reports. In the elementary school, the principal holds regular staff meetings on subject matter, in which every teacher can freely express his/her opinion, but eventually has to accept group decisions. In both cases the teachers’ ability to present their personal voice along with responsibility to act upon the shared pedagogical vision is one of the secrets of the schools’ success. The differences stem from contextual factors such as school size and the principal’s personality.