Last Friday night, along with my wife, four kids and about two hundred other people, I attended our football club’s Presentation Night to celebrate the season that was. It’s the end-of-year wrap-up to acknowledge the achievements of teams and individual players. Some would say there are lots of speeches and it’s a bit of a drag. For me, it was the total opposite.
Although it’s a fantastic night to celebrate the worthy individuals who put their heart and soul into the club, something far more significant struck me. Being involved in any large club, group, team, or business is about creating a sense of belonging.
And it’s exactly the same in our schools.
It wasn’t about paying a membership to feel part of things, or sticking to the rules of the game. It wasn’t about the big clubrooms or the fancy venue, and ironically, it wasn’t even about the wins or losses we had on the ground.
It was a little less tangible.
It was about the connection with other people.
It was about a common purpose.
It was about the culture.
It was about the unwritten rules and the ways that we interacted with each other that created a feeling of worthiness, no matter what your role or how good a player you are.
This feeling isn’t built on one night. It’s built from hundreds of small interactions over the years that accumulate into this feeling. It’s about an authentic understanding of everyone and what they bring to the group. It’s about relationships.
It also struck me that although individuals who received individual accolades were appreciative, their most fulfilling moment was when they stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their peers or were thanked and congratulated by the leaders of the club. It was more about the intrinsic value of the words or appreciation being spoken that made people rise. It wasn’t about individual awards.
The pride beaming on their faces was evident as they interacted with each other. Again, not because they were told to, but because everyone was involved.
They wanted to belong.
I kept asking myself how we best create this feeling in our schools.
How do we find ways to creep closer to seeing the behaviour exhibited by those young people attending on the night be mirrored in our school?
How can we create more moments and a greater pull for young people to want to belong, and show the right behaviours?
In his book Belonging, Owen Eastwood says that as humans, our competitive advantage in life is in our strength of togetherness. It’s our primal need.
As I walked out the door at the end of the evening, my beliefs about culture were reaffirmed. If we create a culture where people belong, and the people who lead the culture speak and behave with the right inputs, everyone else is more likely to follow. People rise to the expectations the environment places on them. This is what I witnessed.
I believe it’s the same in our schools.
I understand if you feel a school and a sporting club aren’t like-for-like. I get that. They are not the same. I also respect that you may not like the sporting analogy. Again, I appreciate that. But think about a group with whom you strongly connect, and I’m sure this makes sense.
What motivates me every day is that I continually grapple with the challenge of replicating this feeling in our schools.
How do we create an environment where people behave the right way, even when no one is watching? How do we develop a sense of belonging that is so strong that people go beyond the call of duty for others? How do we create relational trust that is so high others care for you, and look out for you? Not because they have to but because it’s the right thing to do.
I firmly believe that the answer lies in our culture.
