Many of the crew at Leading Teams are former teachers. So we have first hand experience of the counter-productive behaviour that can undermine school performance.

What is the main focus in schools? Students, of course.  But sometimes the teaching team and the leadership team can lose their alignment. Find out how two school principals got their teaching teams back on track.

Rapid growth can cause upheaval in any organisation. Lara Secondary College Principal, Lyn Boyle had to manage a near seven-fold increase in enrolments and teaching staff over a five year period.

“It’s not surprising that we started to lack commitment to the school’s vision and values” says Lyn. “It starts with simple things like turning up late to meetings, talking during meetings, or not doing what the team had agreed”.

Lyn says her team had begun to lack responsibility and accountability. “Leading Teams brought the staff together in a powerful way.  Everyone is now more unified in their approach and we’ve all agreed to having high expectations”.

Lyn Boyle feels the level of accountability amongst her team is higher than it’s ever been. “We are more open and honest about our standards and prepared to do something about it if we don’t measure up”.
St Kevin’s Primary School Principal, Tracey Heenan, called Leading Teams to help improve the culture and performance of her team.

“We had some relationship issues, conflict and generally needed to address our treatment of each other” says Tracey.

“I found their direct approach really effective” she says. “They deal with the issues directly. It’s pretty confronting, but they go straight to the heart of what behaviours are unacceptable. It had to be done for us to improve our performance and move on”.

Tracey is pleased with the positive feel and calmer mood of her team. “People are dealing with issues face-to-face. They are taking responsibility and not expecting the Principal to fix every problem”.

Repairing unhealthy teams is a smart move. Leading Teams has helped both these schools back on the path to high performance. And that’s great for the teachers, school leaders and students.