[00:00:00] Welcome to the Principal Patterson Podcast, where leadership meets excellence in education. I'm Chanavia Patterson, and I'm here to help you navigate the nuances of becoming a high performing school leader. Each week, we'll explore essential pillars of high performing schools, from climate and culture, teaching and learning, systems and operations, and even coaching and development.
Remember, everything that happens in our schools, Is leadership created or leadership allowed? Join me as we create schools of excellence, one principal at a time.
Welcome to the principal Patterson podcast. I'm your host Chanavia Patterson. Today, we're diving into a topic that is crucial for every school, a leader, building an unbreakable leadership team. If you've been in a position where your leadership team is struggling to stay in alignment, or you face some [00:01:00] unexpected crisis that challenges the school's performance, you're in the right place. By the end of today's episode, you're going to have the tools to assess where your team stands. You'll be able to identify the strengths that you can build upon and take action to create a more cohesive, high performing an unbreakable leadership team.
Let's get started.
So I want to first start by sharing a story from my own experience. When I became a principal, I inherited an established leadership team and our school wasn't doing well. Um, the leadership team, while it was made up of a lot of passionate and capable educators, they were struggling with constant conflicts and lack of alignment.
And so I was really blindsided by how deep some of the issues ran. I kept thinking, like, how did it, how did this happen? How did it get to this point? But that explains why the school was in distress. You see, I believe that everything that [00:02:00] happens in schools is leadership created or leadership allowed.
Therefore, if there's conflict at the top, it's going to crumble down into the teachers and down into the classrooms, which is why the school was in the state that it was in. When I came across the work of Bruce Tuckman, he's a psychologist that created the five stages of team development. Things start to make more sense to me and are just realize that this team, this leadership team was in what he calls the storming phase. So in order to build this unbreakable leadership team. There are three steps that I believe school should. I have to go through. Step one is to identify the stage that the team is functioning in.
Step two is to assess your own leadership level. And step three is to discover the disconnect so that everyone can get back in alignment. So starting with step one, identifying [00:03:00] the teams of stage of development. So according to Bruce Tacoma, there are five stages. Stage one is forming, this is when the leadership team is all getting to know one another.
They're establishing themselves. Um, no one really, you know, goes against the grain or, or goes against anybody in the leadership meetings or things like that. We're in that forming stage. It's the honeymoon season. During this time, it is important that the school leader, establishes not only just expectations, which is what a lot of people say.
Like that's how you, you know, Get the team to be in alignment. Just establish clear expectations. Yes. And. In addition to clear expectations, what I found. That has been the most helpful as I work with school leaders and district leaders is not only establishing expectations, but also establishing role clarity. I notice that a lot of during that forming stage when everyone is trying to [00:04:00] understand how they're going to work together, they had to get really clear on their role, their responsibility, how they were going to be accountable for their role.
So role clarity is, is the solution when you're in that forming stage. So if you're a leader and you are, have a leadership team that you're building and they may be new to the team, or you are inheriting a team and you're. Trying to establish roles. Role clarity. It should be your primary focus.
So the next stage, according to Bruce Tuckman's work. Of team development. Once you come out of the forming stage, next is the storming. This norm is going to come. This is where the real work begins. This is when the differences start to surface and conflicts arise. And this is a really tough place to manage, but as necessary for growth. I can vividly recall that during my. Oh, it might've been. Within the first six months as a principal, we hit the stormy phase.
Very [00:05:00] hard. The tensions flared, you know, there were some competing ideas and, uh, teachers wasn't, you know, in alignment, they didn't like the curriculum. The leaders didn't like the way I, some of the leaders didn't care for the way I was leading the school. It was just a lot of conflict. But instead of avoiding the conflict I leaned in. I leaned in, I I'm a person that is, I'm not afraid of conflict.
I don't mind addressing issues head on, and I can truly say that it has served me well. So in this phase, when you notice, like, okay, we're going through a storm, this is not the time to avoid is time to lean in. And for any school leaders that are listening. This is not to call you out is to call you in , because too many times we see leaders that are turning a blind eye to conflict. Because they don't. You know, a lot of people say I don't like conflict. You know.
Okay. But avoiding the conflict is not helping your school is not [00:06:00] helping your students. It's not helping your teachers. You have to lean into it. I call it coach through the storm. Gotta coach through the storm. So during this phase address it. Address the conflict and it doesn't have to be in a, in a nasty way or anything like that.
I have a very simple three, a process. We want to acknowledge it. We want to address it. And then I'm going to ask for a commitment to improve. Simple. Very simple. And I can walk, I can give more examples of what that specifically looks like. But as we move out of the storm, then you can move into what he calls the norming phase.
And this is when roles are clarify, we've gotten through our storms, expectations are clear and the team starts to function smoothly. That's a great place to be, but it's not the place to stay because after, you norm, then the performing comes. Now we're high functioning, we're efficient, we're collaborative.
We're driving [00:07:00] resolved. Like that's the, that's the sweet spot you want to get to? Not just nor me and everybody know their role and we're getting results you want to perform. So once we start performing and everyone is getting results, students are getting results. Teachers are getting results, the leaders are being served well.
That's the stage of development. I think a lot of leaders want to get to. As, uh, as they're building their leadership team. And then the final phase is when you start adjourning or even mourning, and this is a normal part of the process where the team's work is done will you've met the, the, the goal of whatever you were working towards.
And he calls it morning because I, and I can definitely relate sometimes. Team members leave during this phase of team development, and guess what? The cycle starts over. You have to reform again. So. It's various five stages of the development. And I, if you can picture it like a cycle, you start when you [00:08:00] form. Then you start storming. Then you norm, then you perform, and now you're adjourning or mourning. Mourning that the leader may be transitioning up. Which is what happened to me.
You may be mourning because some leaders are transitioning out. Which happened to me as well, or you could be adjourning because the school has, has hit the milestone that they were working toward. So either one of those could fall into that, that last category of, of stage development. So I want you to take a moment to think what stage is your team currently in?
Are you in the forming?
Is everyone still trying to understand their role? Then as the leader, you should be focused on role clarity. Establishing the expectations, but also giving clarity to their role. Are you in the storming phase where there's a lot of conflict? And competing. [00:09:00] Agendas. Or have you started norming? Are you at the performing stage? Or are you possibly mourning or adjourning?
Make a mental note. Uh, where you feel your team is currently at, in the five stages of team development. So step two of building an unbreakable leadership team is to identify your own leadership level. So now everything that happens in schools is leadership created or leadership allow. And I love the framework that John Maxwell has on the five levels of leadership, because it really helps a leader understand where they're operating and the five stages starts where. Some people are at the positional level of leadership where people follow you because they have to, because you have the title that's like low level leadership. I think everyone starts there, but that's not where you, in. But as [00:10:00] you're building your team, you have to look at yourself and say, what level of leadership am I operating in so that I can better support and build this team.
So are you at the low level of position where, okay. I just got the position and people are just. Quote unquote, falling in line because of the title. Or have you moved up to permission? Where people are following you because they want to. That's a great place to be. You want your team to follow because they want to debt means you have established some really great relationships. Level is all about the relationship that you have established with your team. Once you move from that level, then you're at the production because your team is following and they are in alignment because of the results. Great place to be, and you can continue to grow and evolve as a leader.
But the second step of building that unbreakable team is to know who, how you're operating as the leader. Are they bought in [00:11:00] to you because of your title or your position, or are they bought in because they want to be bought into who you are and what you represent as their leader.
Did you know there is a TAG available for this episode? If you're new here, TAG stands for Take Action Guide. It is your ticket to implementing what you've learned today on the podcast. Think of it as your personal playbook for putting all of these ideas into practice. This free, downloadable resource is designed to help you implement what you've learned into your school.
Your tag, Take Action Guide, includes reflection questions, practical exercises, and planning tools that are tailored to this episode. Download your Take Action Guide at PrincipalPatterson. com Forward slash tag or click the link down in the show notes. Okay. Now let's get back to the episode
Step three of building an unbreakable [00:12:00] leadership team. Is discovering the disconnect. Now, this is one of the most powerful things that I have found that really helps team get back in alignment and so that they can create a healthy school culture is discovering the disconnect. There are a lot of different tools out there, but I personally use disc to assess my team's communication.
What motivates my team? What stresses my teams. Like these are the things that work so that you can be a better leader. And the way you would do this is to identify their disc profile. Like are, is your team made up of dominant educators. Are they more influential? Are they steady or are they conscientious?
Like this makes up the disc profile. So our recommend you have your team take. Some type of profile assessment to better understand their communication preference, what motivates them. And there are a lot of [00:13:00] different options, but I personally use disc with my clients. Um, but it definitely helps them see their teams in a different light.
And then you, as the leader are able to lead well because now you have a custom profile of every person on your leadership team. You can even go as far as doing it with all of the teachers as well. give you an example of how it, what it looks like. Like if let's say you have someone that whose profile shows that they are, they have a dominate personality type. Well, you would know as the leader that this person needs direct communication. They like get to the results. Give me the main points.
They don't like a lot of small talk. And when you start to learn that about your leaders, that's how you are able to build an unbreakable team because you know exactly how to communicate with them, you know exactly what stresses them out, but you also know exactly what motivates them.
So, if you haven't already, I [00:14:00] highly recommend that you sit down with your leadership team and assess. What stage do you believe that the team is in, in a way you can do this is, you know, put up the five phases and have them, um, assess where they feel. Every everyone, uh, says where they feel the team is and see, are you all in alignment? Do some of the team feel that you're storming to why others feel like no, we're performing.
Oh, we're out of alignment then. The second thing I would do is assess yourself. What level of leadership are you currently performing? Are you at the low level where it's just my title and my position, and I'm still learning the ropes. There's nothing wrong with being at that level, but the goal is not to stay there. Or are you at the permission level where people are, are willing to buy in and follow my lead? Because of the relationships that I've created. Or are you at the productivity level?
Because you're getting resolves you're in classrooms, you're coaching teachers, you know how to get student results, which means, you [00:15:00] know, how to help teachers get those student results. So that would be the second thing. And then lastly is discover the disconnect. Create a profile, identify every person on your leadership team, how they like to communicate. What stresses them out, what motivates them? Because when you do that, now you have a customized culture plan for your team. And for your school.
Before we wrap up, it's time to play tag. That's right. You're it. I'm talking about this episode's Take Action Guide. This free downloadable resource is designed to help you implement what you've learned today in your school. Your tag includes reflection questions, practical exercises, and planning tools that are tailored to this episode.
Remember, now that you've listened, it's your turn to take action. Download your tag at PrincipalPatterson. com [00:16:00] forward slash tag or by clicking the link in the show notes. Let's play tag and transform our schools together. One principal at a time.
Thank you for joining me today on the Principal Patterson Podcast, where we create high performing schools, one principal at a time. Before we wrap up, I have one last favor to ask. If you found value in today's episode, I'd love for you to rate and review the podcast. Your feedback not only helps me continue delivering content that serves you, but it also helps other school leaders discover this podcast.
Share the episode with your fellow principals, your leadership teams, or anyone you feel could benefit from shifting their leadership approach. Together we can elevate school leadership and create more schools of excellence. So please rate, review, subscribe, and share with your community. [00:17:00]
