In the era of neoliberalism, the debates surrounding the concept of leadership are becoming more protuberant in the educational terrain of higher education in the UK, as educational leaders are struggling to reconcile neoliberal interests with professional aspirations to bring positive changes into their leadership practice. The aim of this paper is to contribute to a long-standing critical tradition in the educational leadership literature through an analytical examination of the idiosyncrasies of leadership in higher education institutions in the UK, utilising Foucault’s key theoretical units, such as ‘discipline’, ‘governmentality’ and ‘biopolitics’, as a ‘toolbox’ for dissecting the implications of neoliberal marketisation of education on leadership practice. The paper disregards more traditional references to leadership as taxonomy of leadership styles, focusing instead on the construct of leadership as a realm of power encounters within the UK higher education system as well as on the associated forms of knowledge that regulate leadership practices by defining and ‘normalising’ modern educational institutions. The paper concludes that Foucault’s theoretical perspectives could be used as a methodological template for a deeper critical analysis of leadership practices, equipping academics with additional tools for critiquing the existing boundaries of neoliberalism and intervening in the transformation of the social order by undertaking an investigation of the ‘problems of the state’ and the ‘practices of governmentality’, as suggested by Foucault.