3 Ways That Leaders Can Foster a Healthy Culture

Leadership is not just important in creating a healthy culture; it’s critical!  The positive influence of the school leader can make the school a healthy and inviting place.   

For many leaders, however, talking about culture is not a comfortable topic.  In his book, The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni describes how many times leaders consider the health of their organization to be somewhat “soft” or “touchy-feely.”   Many times, even if the leader understands the need to address some kind of dysfunction, more often than not, they gravitate right back to the parts of the business that they feel most comfortable with (usually areas like strategy, finance, marketing, technology, best practice, etc.) Most leaders spend upwards of 90% of their time in their “smart” bucket and feel unqualified and uninspired to put any effort or energy into the “healthy” bucket.  Unfortunately, what leaders don’t recognize is that it is the healthy bucket that drives the smart bucket.  Minimal politics, high moral, high productivity, and low turnover are all direct results of a great work environment and blows wind into the sail of the smart bucket! 

If your school’s culture needs some attention,  a great place to start is to take personal responsibility to invest in the health of your school.  If you haven’t done so already, begin to think about how you will intentionally design your school’s culture.  Here are three things you can do to begin to foster a healthy school environment:

#1 Encourage a “team mentality”

Create an environment in which people see themselves as part of a team, rather than a collection of individuals. You want your people to think in terms of “we” rather than “me.”

#2 Rally around the mission, vision & purpose of your school

Create an environment in which everyone is working towards the same things.  When your people understand how they are contributing to the team’s goals, they are empowered with a sense of meaning.

#3 Embrace & Learn from your “customers”

Foster an environment in which customer experience is a primary consideration.  In our Christian Schools, our customers are the families who are choosing to entrust us with their children, and we should treat them as part of our school’s team, considering both their feedback and expectations.

It takes a strong leader to bring about cultural change.

Do you have what it takes?