Japan, a forerunner of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), positions itself as an advocate for embedding sustainability within pedagogy; yet these efforts remain stifled by a cultural adherence to ‘top-down’ hierarchical practice. Against this background, leaderful classroom pedagogy’s emphasis on collaboration, shared responsibility, and empathy emerges as a viable alternative to top-down leadership models. Accordingly, an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was undertaken with Japanese university students attending a global studies program. Through semi-structured interviewing, participants shared and reflected on their lived experiences of leadership and ESD, with findings indicating that hierarchical leadership structures hinder the egalitarian, student-orientated approach deemed prototypical to ESD and, thus, opportunities to inhabit meaningful leadership roles. While leaderful practitioners face considerable challenges if attempting to uproot leadership models firmly ingrained in the teacher-leader student-follower duology, we posit that the relationship between ESD and leaderful classroom pedagogy is mutually beneficial.