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Staff Culture

Staff Culture

School Leaders and Teachers are at least familiar with the notion of School Culture. It’s also not lost on them that the culture of their staff is a subset of it.

 

But do you know what your staff culture is?  Do you know what you want from your staff culture?  And do your staff own their responsibilities in building it?

At Real Schools, we do.  I’m a little nervous about sharing our staff cultural framework with you as, the moment we spruik our culture or values to others, it usually feels boastful or like marketing to me.

 

I’ll suck it up and share our staff culture in the hope that it’ll be useful.

 

We started with how we want our staff to feel when they work at Real Schools.  We landed on three feelings or states – vulnerable, brave and extraordinary.

 

Then we co-designed a few simple behaviours that we encourage internally and hold each other to account for.  They are:

 

Vulnerable

  • We ask for help.
  • We put our problems in glass boxes.
  • We acknowledge each other for doing great work.

Brave

  • We all put people/family first, even when it’s inconvenient.
  • We provide and accept feedback for adjustment, not judgement.
  • We hold ourselves and each other to world-class standards.

Extraordinary

  • We want every team member in their genius for the highest proportion of their time.
  • We lead without labels.
  • We respect every minute of each other’s time.

We’ve also agreed in on how we deal with it when we fail to live up to these behaviours … because we expect that to happen from time to time.  It won’t surprise you to know we basically tackle that circumstance restoratively.

 

Agreeing on our staff culture gives us a base camp, a place to return to when things get hectic, hard or emotional.  We expect that to happen from time to time as well.

 

Is your staff in need of a cultural and behavioural place to return to?  Best you get to work on that.

 

Keep fighting that good fight,

ADAM

PS. Make sure you sign up for one of our workshops in February for your spot in the draw to win a $200 visa gift card.

 

Real School workshops are happening all over Australia and we’ve designed them to give you the practical tools you’ll need to embed Restorative Practices in your school. Hope to see you there! Dates and locations here.

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