This paper aims to map different concepts or perspectives on leadership; transactional leadership, transformational leadership, distributed leadership, system leadership, integrative leadership and total leadership by investigating the concepts’ origins, their aims and foci, expected outcomes and effects, processes and tools to achieve the outcomes, and important actors involved. Most important is what kind of ideas or theories of change (Dyson and Todd, 2006) underlie the different concepts. A theory of change is "a systematic and cumulative theory of the links between activities, outcomes and contexts of the initiative" (Kubisch and Connell eds. 1998, p. 15-44), or a theory of how and why a process works. It is a hybrid of process and outcomes analyses which is often used to explore behaviors and outcomes that are not easily measurable. Understanding the theories of change that underlie different leadership approaches will help us to develop clearer hypotheses of the extent to which a given approach is likely to lead to desired outcomes in school, and to develop useful strategies for school improvement through leadership. While leadership concepts presuppose theories of change that guide their assumptions, these have not typically been made explicit.