This paper examines contemporary Australian school leadership drawing on interviews with twelve principals in low socio-economic schools in a capital city as well as interview data collected from three district administrators, the line managers of the principals in these schools. The paper draws on Gewirtz and Ball's (2000) distinction between two ideal types of leading in schools, that is, 'welfarism' and 'managerialism' and their gendered dimensions. It takes up feminist concerns about the regendering of educational leadership that is occurring as a result of educational marketization. Specifically, the paper examines the articulation of masculinist managerial discourses in the talk of a district administrator and the rearticulation of these discourses of leadership in the talk of one of the male principals working in a low socio-economic school community. We demonstrate the ways in which neoliberal discourses of educational performativity are appropriated by both the district administrator and the school principal in and through their management talk.