The U.S. high stakes accountability and reform context presents a useful case to examine how principals struggle with and co-construct values and identities with constituents to balance contradictory demands in these reform settings. This paper reports on a study of an urban principal’s identity construction during the first three years of his tenure as a school leader, and the ways they are socially negotiated in a reform setting. Data are drawn from multiple interviews over a three-year period with the principal of a school engaged in a small-school transformation. Interviews focused on the principal’s conception of his identities and how his personal and professional background, and interactions with constituents, aided in constructing and confirming/disconfirming these identities. Additionally, researchers interviewed teacher focus groups and observed school tours and faculty meetings. The principal employed his personal identities as “father,” “teacher at heart” and “rebel.” Finally, over the three years of his tenure, it appears that all of these identities integrate in some way to reference decidedly gendered, at times patriarchal, constructions of leadership. These identity constructions position constituents in particular ways and serve narratives of leadership that also seem to reference a policy discourse of “turnaround” leaders.