This paper will suggest that school leadership research in general influences policy and practice less than experience and evidence based reports ( e.g. OECD, 2008; McKinsey, 2010) and that this is largely because much of it is conducted in 'silos' or by researchers with affiliations to particular research tribes, each with their own cultural and methodological norms and rules of conduct.The results are often partial analyses and accounts which identify what happens, for example in effective schools, but not why or how or studies that provide rich in depth case studies of leadership which are not able to be generalised.This paper will identify five leadership research tribes and suggest that crossing historical conceptual and methodological boundaries between tribes is likely to result in more nuanced understandings of the work of school leaders and the policy, personal and contextual contexts which influence school leaders. The authority which such understandings are able to claim is more likely to impact upon policy and practice communities.