By Jamie Bricker
Principals deserve strong recognition for steering their schools through the unprecedented challenges of the past year. The pandemic brought constant disruption, and many school leaders worked tirelessly to keep students, staff, and families supported. With any luck, the coming school year will offer a steadier environment and a chance to focus on strategic priorities.
As autumn approaches, principals naturally turn much of their attention to staffing and team-building for the year ahead. One of an administrator’s most important responsibilities is placing the right people in the right roles so students can thrive. The four metaphors below highlight essential considerations for assembling, growing, and empowering an effective school team.
Circle of Trust – Contemplating Your Team
A healthy school culture treats the entire staff as one inclusive circle, not as concentric rings of insiders and outsiders. There should be no “in-crowd” or “out-crowd,” and no one should feel isolated or targeted. Effective principals cultivate professional relationships with everyone, maintaining professional boundaries while avoiding favoritism. The goal is a unified staff—our staff—working together toward common goals.
That inclusiveness sometimes means making extra effort to reach colleagues who have felt marginalized, overlooked, or underappreciated. Not only does this strengthen staff unity, it also taps into valuable perspectives that can inform better decisions. Lasting school improvement depends on having everyone engaged and committed to the work.
Staff won’t agree with every decision, and that’s healthy. What matters is that decisions are made transparently and with integrity—grounded in professional judgment rather than personal relationships. When leaders consistently act with fairness and openness, staff are more likely to trust the process, even when they disagree with an outcome.
Seeing New Possibilities – Assembling Your Team
Recruiting strong new hires and developing current staff are both essential to moving a school forward. It is tempting to preserve the status quo by placing people in roles because their thinking mirrors the principal’s. That approach feels safe, but it limits growth and risks stagnation. If a school isn’t moving forward, it is effectively sliding backward.
Forward-looking principals hire and assign staff who bring diverse perspectives, complementary strengths, and a willingness to learn. They prioritize potential as well as experience, looking through a window of future possibilities instead of a mirror of past practice. The aim is collective progress—getting everyone aligned with the school’s next steps rather than settling for what has worked previously.
Widening the Paddles – Growing Your Team
Each staff member brings a different set of skills and experiences—what I like to think of as the width of their paddle. A wider paddle means greater confidence and effectiveness for a given initiative. Some team members will be naturally equipped to lead, while others will need support to develop their capabilities.
Strong teams grow when skilled staff mentor and coach colleagues, helping them widen their paddles. Those with deep expertise should be given leadership roles; those still building experience should receive learning opportunities. Over time, teachers and staff will alternate between leading and learning across different initiatives.
What matters most is shared commitment. All team members must paddle in the same direction—competing pulls or passive participation undermine progress. Principals must address anyone who consistently resists or disengages, and ensure that expectations for contribution and effort are clear. No one should be a passive passenger on important initiatives.
Freedom of Expression – Empowering Your Team
Empowerment requires a clear framework. For each major initiative, leaders should co-create guiding principles, expectations, and timelines with stakeholders. These frameworks should align with the school’s overall priorities but be developed collaboratively so they are meaningful and practical for those doing the work.
Within those agreed-upon boundaries, staff should have latitude in how they meet goals. Micromanagement stifles creativity and erodes trust; it wastes administrative time and dims staff enthusiasm. A better approach is to give teachers and teams the tools and freedom to contribute their ideas, then combine the best parts of those contributions into a stronger whole.
This collaborative process must be authentic. If leadership solicits input only to ignore it later, trust will be damaged and future participation will decline. When staff see their ideas genuinely considered and integrated, morale and ownership of school initiatives rise.
This is the final article in a monthly series on the impact of Affective Leadership in schools. Affective leadership focuses on working with people—engaging, respecting, and valuing stakeholders—rather than trying to operate through or around them. When staff feel heard and appreciated, they invest more deeply in the school’s mission. The pandemic has underscored how critical those connections have become.
About the author
Jamie Bricker is a published author, international speaker, and a retired school principal who champions affective leadership. He has witnessed the powerful impact of leading with empathy and collaboration. Jamie co-hosts two podcasts, including Affective Leadership – Positivity Promotes Productivity, and he publishes weekly blog posts about leadership. His writing and insights can be found on LinkedIn. Contact: [email protected] — www.jamiebricker.com.
This article was originally published by The Learning Counsel, a research institute and news media hub focused on the shift in education toward digital curriculum.