How to create the perfect principal entry plan[Part 4 of 6]

Culture doesn’t collapse overnight—it crumbles one ignored choice at a time. In this chapter, you'll learn how to co-create a school culture rooted in belonging, celebration, and shared responsibility

👋 Welcome to Ruckus Makers the home of Selfmentorship. We write for leaders who are done waiting for the system to develop them and have taken radical control of their growth. If that’s you, then subscribe below and you’ll know the moment a new mini-book drops ⚡️

Part 4: Co-Create an Extraordinary Culture

In his book, The Promises of Giants, John Amaechi (2021) tells a potent story about the importance of culture. The story is about the residents who live in an apartment building where all of their apartments border a shared common area.

Some of the residents smoke. When they are done with a cigarette, they flick the butts onto the ground.

“Someone else will pick them up,” they say.

Other residents start to notice the trash in the common area. Not my problem, they think. After all, it isn’t their cigarette butt. But now those residents start to leave behind sandwich wrappers, water bottles, paper, and plastic bags.

“Someone else will pick them up,” they say.

Next come the cardboard boxes. Finally, a mattress is abandoned.

The garbage continues to pile up, yet no one does anything about it.

The smokers continue to smoke, flicking their cigarette butts onto the ground, until one day, the embers catch on the cardboard, which sets fire to the rest of the litter. The whole thing goes up in flames, endangering the entire apartment complex.

What was once a problem that no one took responsibility for is now everyone’s problem.

Everyone is responsible for the culture of an organization, too. And what is a culture? It’s the accumulation of our choices.

Author and business psychologist John Amaechi (2018) writes, “People make choices. Choices make culture.”

It usually starts with something small. We notice that someone’s actions or words aren’t aligned with our mission, but we let it slide. Not my problem, we think. We notice that our colleagues are passing off responsibilities like a hot potato. But hey—not our problem.

As a leader, it’s tempting to want to keep the peace or ignore potential culture issues that aren’t really problems yet. We have too many other things on our plate.

This strategy works fine until one day, you’ve got a fire on your hands. Suddenly, that toxic culture has become everyone’s problem—especially yours.

Why We Ignore Culture

“Fires” and emergencies are the most common reasons I hear leaders give for losing focus on their school’s culture. They’re busy, and they have lots of urgent problems to address. Without even realizing it, culture gets pushed to the side.

The other obstacle to nurturing our culture is administrivia: paperwork, tasks, to-do lists. There are constant inputs and demands on your time that all take your attention away from culture.

You can’t afford to let that happen.

Culture is the heartbeat of your school. It’s especially important in the first 90 days because those days set a precedent for the rest of the year. In this part, I’ll share some of my favorite ways to make culture a priority in your school.

Take the Temperature

How do you know what your school’s current culture is in the first place—especially if you’re a new leader or new to the school? Sometimes it’s difficult for leaders to get an accurate read on how people really feel.

To help make it easier for everyone to share their thoughts, I like to use the following exercise in a staff meeting. You can repeat this a few times throughout the year to help you stay up-to-date, and you can try it with students and parents, too.

• First, find at least 10 random pictures that evoke strong emotions. For example:

  • One of your students

  • Puppy

  • Older person

  • Nature

  • Space

  • Traffic jam

  • Paperwork

• Ask staff to sort the pictures and pick the top three that best represent the quality of your school culture.

• Ask for volunteers to explain their reasoning, or if there’s time, let everyone share their thoughts.

• How do their responses align with the Remarkable School Vision you developed in Part 2?

This activity will help you understand the cultural history of the school and identify potential issues.

Put Relationships First

Quality relationships lead to a quality culture, and vice versa. As the leader of your organization, you set the tone and example for everyone else. The time and energy you put into building relationships will pay dividends in improving your school’s culture.

Be Present

The best place to begin is by staying present during interactions with our staff. This is often difficult! We’re so attuned to looking out for problems and staying on top of the demands of administrivia that it can be hard to set those aside. And yet, the number one way to show people we care is by honoring them with our full attention.

The self-care you’ve been practicing will come in handy here. It’s hard to be fully invested in others when your back hurts, you didn’t sleep well, or you’re starving. Practicing mindfulness will train your brain to stop being so reactive to the constant interruptions coming your way.

Create a Culture Team

Remember, culture is everyone’s responsibility, not just yours. Create a team of culture ambassadors in your school. This team might include staff, students, parents, and other stakeholders. They will be your culture cheerleaders and help you to represent the school’s vision throughout the community.

Get Explicit About Belonging and Othering

School culture is about our choices, but more specifically, it’s about the impact our choices have on everyone else in the school community. It’s about how we make others feel.

In the first 90 days, you can establish a common language around culture by talking specifically about both belonging and othering. Belonging is about the way we create a welcoming and inclusive environment where everyone feels valued, whereas othering is about the ways we (intentionally or unintentionally) exclude and separate people within our organization.

To get this conversation started, lead your team through this exercise:

• In the middle of a whiteboard, write the question: How does belonging feel?

• Give everyone five to 10 minutes to discuss. Consider playing some of their favorite songs from the Get-to-Know-You Survey in the background.

• Next, invite everyone to share, and as they do, create a mindmap on a whiteboard. You’ll probably hear words and phrases like safe, trusted, connected, or making a contribution.

• Have someone from your culture team take a picture of these words as a snapshot of how everyone can create a culture of belonging.

• Then, write the next question on the board: How does othering feel?

• Again, take five to 10 minutes to discuss. Othering might feel like being invisible, isolated, diminished, or unwelcome.

• Take another picture of these insights as a reminder of the feelings and emotions to look out for. They are the cigarette butts and garbage that piles up over time.

• Refer back to your mindmap work throughout the year.

If you invest in forms of belonging and work to eradicate the ways people feel othered in your organization, the quality of both your relationships and culture will improve.

Create Moments

Once I was coaching an elementary school leader who wanted help improving her school’s culture. The school was heavily invested in PLCs and loved data. This principal was so excited about the gains her Tier-3 intervention teachers were making and had been celebrating their success. Unfortunately, she’d received feedback that the rest of the staff felt overlooked since their progress wasn’t as dramatic as the Tier-3 teachers’.

This leader had done a great job recognizing and celebrating one group of teachers but needed to find ways to recognize and celebrate everyone’s accomplishments.

We do that by creating moments.

Author Chip Heath (2017) writes,

“Moments are what we remember and what we cherish. Certainly we

might celebrate achieving a goal, such as completing a marathon or landing a significant client—but the achievement is embedded in a moment. [...] This is what we mean by ‘thinking in moments’: to recognize where the prose of life needs punctuation.”

Remember my sticky core value about the purple cow from Part 1? Creating moments is how I live out this value in my work everyday.

Some obvious moments for your school are the first day, holidays, and the end of a quarter or semester—but you don’t have to wait for a milestone to create moments. Let’s talk about how to do this regularly throughout the school year.

Consistent Celebration

When I was a principal, my culture team sent out a Staff Member of the Month nomination form to all students, faculty, and parents. This form listed every staff member in the school, including the bus drivers and the staff who served lunch everyday, all of the teachers and custodians, and finally, our vice principal and myself.

The person filling out the form would check one person’s name from the list.  Then, the form listed our school’s core values, and the person would check the core value the nominee best exhibited. The final two questions were:

• How does this person live out this core value?

• Anything else you want us to know?

The culture team compiled the results and awarded one prize to a stand-out staff member every month. They made sure that these prizes were awarded equitably throughout the year.

But what’s more—even those who didn’t “win” still received a copy of the nominations they received so that they could see the positive feedback and compliments that others had written about them. Those forms were not anonymous, so they could follow up with the person who nominated them to thank them.

This monthly ritual was such a hit and staff were so excited about the feedback they received that they took to posting their nomination forms in the staff lounge every month. It was a great lesson for me on the power of moments.

Remember That You Set the Tone

Author Todd Whitaker (2011) writes, “When the principal sneezes, the whole school catches a cold” (p. 36).

Just as teachers set the tone in their classrooms, you set the tone for the whole school. Staying present and engaged, putting relationships first, and buying into the magic of moments begins with you.

Take Action: Gather Your Culture Team

• Create a culture team at your school.

• Plan to lead one or both of the exercises listed in this part—or empower your culture team to do so.

If this landed for you, here are a few ways to keep going.

Build your 90-day plan with Digital Danny. Work with him over the next 90-days or for the entire year. Two paths. Once choice.

He’s always available, never forgets, and evolves with you.

Listen to the Better Leaders Better Schools podcast. You’ll find over 10 years of conversations with the most interesting people doing the most interesting work in school leadership. Every episode is a Mirror Person who knows more than you about something you care about. Start anywhere.

Read the Part 5 in this series below.