Various forms of performativity have become a dominant part of a globalised neoliberal policy agenda in education. These forms of governmentality have emerged predominantly in countries such as the US, England, Canada, Australia and increasingly across Europe. The impact of these rationalities of government is significant for the field of educational leadership and the work of school leaders as exemplified through the relentless standards drive in educational leadership, management and administration. In this paper, I draw upon the work of Lyotard and Derrida to undertake a deconstructive reading of the standards movement in educational leadership. Drawing on a range of specific policy examples from around the world, I argue that these policy discourses operate as forms of performativity in action through their specific language games and particular privileging hierarchies of representations of educational leadership. These standards documents continue to portray heroic and hierarchical models of leadership that are neither indicative nor useful to the work of leaders in schools. In this paper I make the case for researching leadership ‘as it happens’ (Lyotard) and leadership ‘to come’ (Derrida) that may provoke new ways of understanding educational leadership.