Episode 11: Coach'EM Up Leadership Series: Building Relationships and Trust!

Building strong relationships and trust are crucial for effective educational leadership. We explore actionable strategies such as active listening, empathy, collaboration, and having fun in the workplace to create an environment that empowers teachers and students alike.

• The importance of trust in educational leadership 
• Strategies for building trust with staff 
• Creating a supportive environment for faculty 
• The role of active listening in relationships 
• Utilizing mentorship to build connection 
• Collaboration and shared decision-making for fostering trust 
• Tailoring professional development to meet staff needs 
• Emphasizing the importance of joy and fun in the work environment 
• Engaging listeners and encouraging feedback

Chapters

• 1:08 Building Trust and Relationships in Education
• 17:16 Meaningful Professional Development and Relationship Building
• 21:16 Improving Leadership With Feedback

Transcript

Principal JL: 1:08

Hello, educational leaders, it's great to be back for the next episode in our series of the Coach' Em Up Leadership Series. Today's episode we're going to talk about building relationships and trust as an educational leader. It's really important that we build relationships and trust as an educational leader. It's really important that we build relationships and trust. Now, you probably have heard of this before. Right, you've heard, probably since you've been in education. Hey, you need to build relationships with your students, you need to build relationships with the parents, you need to build relationships with everybody around you. It is important and you learn it from the time you're a teacher. But it's just as important to build relationships and trust as an educational leader with your teachers, with your staff, as well as students and parents and community members. Relationships and trust are the cornerstone of thriving schools, where it helps foster collaboration, boost and morale and empower and educators and students to excel. So, before we get into some of these actionable steps, I want to talk to you guys about probably one of the greatest coaches of out there of all time.

Principal JL: 2:19

Right now, I'm a little biased. You guys may disagree with me, but the reason why I'm talking about this we're we're talking about a leadership style is about coaching right. As an educational leader, you're coaching up your staff, you're coaching up your, your team, your teachers, your students, everybody involved here and so, before we get into building trust and relationships, one of the best coaches out there that I know that built relationships and trust with their players was Dr Tom Osborne. Now, dr Tom Osborne has a PhD in educational psychology, so he knewa little bit about building trust and relationships, and I've actually heard the man speak a few times, and one of his principles that he talks about when building a good team is building that trust in that relationship, and so that's kind of where this all comes from. As an educational leader, how can I become like coach Osborne? And just so you guys know, coach Osborne was a part of all five Nebraska's national championships as a coach, two as an assistant and three as a head coach and so, as an educational leader, that's what I think about. How can I build that trust? How can I build relationships with my teachers and my staff so we can build a community that has a great school culture, and so that is where we're going to get into.

Principal JL: 3:49

The next thing now is we're going to talk about the role of trust and leadership. Here are some actionable strategies that help cultivate and build meaningful relationships that can transform your school and community. And build meaningful relationships that can transform your school and community. What is the role of trust in leadership? Trust enables us to be honest, proactive problem-solving through dialogue, and one of those ways to do that is to have a foundation of communication. Having a good foundation of communication will help you establish that trust.

Principal JL: 4:29

Okay, you also need to be able to support your teachers. You need to be able to boost their morale and help them become innovative. The only way you can do that is to support your teachers by creating an environment where they're not afraid to take risks. I always tell my teachers hey, don't be afraid to use a strategy that you've seen that you would like to do. I want you to take that risk because that's how you're going to become a better teacher, and if you fail at some, oh well, you're going to learn from it. Then you're going to move on for the next time. So create that supportive environment for your staff so they can take risks, so they can become more innovative. That's another way to build that trust.

Principal JL: 5:04

Another way is facilitating change, having leadership roles within your teaching staff to help build that trust. So one way I do that is my school improvement team. I have a team of teachers and staff members that come together to solve problems and I have a lot of trust in them. They have a lot of trust in me, and then we kind of establish that trust through that process and then the trust also goes beyond the school building right. So being able to reach out to community members and create partnerships and have people involved into your school outside of the school will also build that trust that you need to have as a leader.

Principal JL: 5:45

First thing you want to do is help build that trust, and those are some things you can do to do that. Now, how do you do that? You have to be consistent as a leader, right? So being consistent keep promises, follow through. Don't make any promises you can't keep. That's a role. And another thing I always talk about is I'm never going to ask you to do something I haven't done or I wouldn't be willing to do. That's another thing that I also want my staff to understand as well. I'm not going to ask you to do anything outside of the scope that I would do myself. Being consistent is one way to build that trust.

Principal JL: 6:26

Another way to build trust is being transparent. You've got to be able to be transparent and be open about things. You've got to be able to share policies, challenges and you've got to be able to have open dialogue. And when you have those things and you're transparent, you're going to build trust in that capacity. You also have to be vulnerable as an educational leader. Guess what we're going to screw up and that's okay. You got to be okay with saying, hey, man, I screwed up, I was wrong, but this is how we're going to move forward. Being able to have humility is important as an educational leader, because if you can show people that you're vulnerable to making mistakes, then you're also creating that supportive environment, because then they know that if they make a mistake, you know they they can own it as well. Another way to build trust is have empathy. You got to be able to show that you care, like you got to be able to tell people like I care about you as a leader and you got to have empathy for them. And if you're genuine about that, then you'll be able to tackle challenges and have successes because they know you care about them. And it's really important that your teachers and your staff and your students and people know that you care about them as well.

Principal JL: 8:32

Another thing is to build trust is to be visible. This is something I try to do. I try to not sit in my office. I try to get out. I try to talk to people. I try to be present in the building. There's times that I have to go back to my office and I got to get stuff done, and I know that, and they know that. But I have things set up to where. Hey, if you see my door close, they'll bother me, because I really got to get this done. Unless it's an emergency, I'll take it from there, okay. At the same time, there's those verbal and nonverbal cues. I have to communicate with my staff. I try to get out and be as visible as possible as well. Those are the ways that I try to build trust.

Principal JL: 9:18

After you kind of help build that trust, the next step is you got to start building a relationship. I think one of the things that I needed to do when I became a first year principal at the school I'm at, my first goal was to remember everybody's name, say their name and be able to know something about them within the first, probably 90 days of my job, I wanted to get to know my staff as best as I can, because I needed to get them down. Now, students are different because I have a thousand students and I know a lot of students. I'm not 100 percent on that, but at the same time, I know everybody in my building, I know what their roles are, and that helps build that trust, but also that building that relationship as well. I'm going to give you some strategies here as well.

Principal JL: 10:07

When we talk about building relationships, empathy is first so. Acknowledge that there's other perceptions. Acknowledge that you're not the only one that has these ideas, but other people have ideas. How can you bring those together? Have an open line of communication that's another strategy. You want to foster transparency and be accessible to dialogues. You don't want to just, you know, be able to acknowledge other people's perspectives, but you also want to be open as a communicator to other people's ideas. But also, you got to have a. You know everybody's got to kind of work together on that and meshing that together Celebrate wins. I think that's really important. Something that we want to do is we want to try to recognize our staff and appreciate them and small successes, not just in the big ones. The big ones are great and everything. But what can you do to celebrate wins with your other staff members Like? I had, a staff member one time tried a new strategy. They were successful with it and we had like a little celebration hey, you did a great job. You know, you did a really good job on that strategy and they were really proud of it and all the hard work they put into it. So make sure you celebrate successes with your staff.

Principal JL: 11:24

Another strategy that you can do to help build a relationship is be an active listener. One of the things that you need to be able to do is you need to be able to take a step back and listen to people when they talk. So one thing that I have done with my active listening is I listen to them and then what I do is say so what I understand you saying is or are these things Right? And I want to repeat back to my staff member what they've communicated to me. So I understand that what they're saying and I'm fully getting what they're, what they're trying to communicate and what that does is. It helps them know that I'm listening to what their issues are and when I repeat it back, they know I'm listening because I'm able to tell them okay, I understand this is what you're telling me. Do I understand that correctly? And I'll give them a chance to let me know. Do I understand what they're saying correctly? Because if I'm not, I need to maybe let them elaborate or I need them to help me have some clarification so I can be for sure. Understanding of what they're doing.

Principal JL: 12:33

Doing active listening strategy is an important way to help build relationships. After active listening, we're going to talk about consistency. We talked about consistency with building trust. We're also going to talk about it with building relationships. We're also going to talk about it with building relationships. So you want to be able to be very consistent as a leader when you're building relationships. You want what you say and what you do to align. You don't want to say one thing and do another, because then they're going to look at you like, oh my gosh, can we trust this guy? Is he really going to do what he says? Well, that's important. You've got to be consistent with what you say and what you do and make sure those align so you can build that relationship with your staff members. And that's not just building relationships, but that's also building that trust as well.

Principal JL: 13:25

The next thing is creating networks for growth and collaboration through mentorships. One thing that we do is we have guide teachers that mentor new teachers. Even if that teacher, that new teacher, is taught for 10 years at another district, we still give them a guide teacher. They need to have somebody to help them understand the ins and outs of the building that we currently are in, so they can have a go-to person. Creating those mentorships or creating leadership positions for your staff members is really important, because now you're trusting other staff members to mentor other staff members to become a part of that community and that team that you are creating within your school building.

Principal JL: 14:09

The next thing we want to talk about strategy-wise is a team of collaboration. You want to encourage teamwork, you want to encourage hey, we're in this together, and I think that's one of the great things about being an educational leader and building a school improvement team is you can always go back and say you know what? These are things we decided to be tight on, these are things that we decided that we are going to work together on, and we need to do a better job of this or that you know and be able to have those honest conversations so they understand, hey, we're doing well, but we also can continue to do better by as long as we're encouraging that teamwork After teamwork. I want to talk about flexibility. Right, you got to be able to adapt to meet individual needs and understanding. So understand you are working with people. They have personal lives outside of the school. Things are going to happen. They're going to to come up. Real life hits them throughout the school year. So you, as a leader, got to be flexible and so I'm really open.

Principal JL: 16:02

When my teacher's struggling, you know, outside of their work, what can I do to help support them? What can I do to make it to where they can take care of the business they can take care of? Because I'm telling you, when a teacher's personal life is, you know, out of whack, their teaching is going to be out of whack. So you need to help them to get their personal life to you know, to where they need to be, so they can also be the best teacher they can be. And as an educational leader, you got to be flexible about that and things will come up. You just got to be able to take them as they come and just remember, you are dealing with people and, as this profession is, it's a people business and you have to be able to build that relationship by staying flexible. Another strategy we could talk about is shared decision-making. This is where building that school improvement team is super important, because, guess what? You're helping those teachers have ownership in decision-making and when they have ownership in decision-making, you're going to create more relationships and trust through your building, because they know that they've done it together, they've shared that decision-making and that process together.

Principal JL: 17:16

Professional development let's talk about that a little bit. Make sure your professional development is meaningful and helps them grow. Do not give them professional development that is not meaningful. I try really, really hard to give my staff professional development that they know that it's going to be useful, and so in order for me to do that, I have to know what our vision is. Where are we going? What are we working on? Because I want to provide professional development that caters towards that. If I provide professional development that does not cater to the growth of my teachers and my staff, I won't do it. I'm not going to waste their time, and that's what you got to think about as an educational leader when you think about professional development. Don't do it just to jump through a hoop. Make sure that the professional development opportunities you give them actually are meaningful and help them grow. I also have teachers that will come up to me and say, hey, this conference, this workshop would be really great for me to go. And this is why, and a lot of times I'll say, yeah, that's a great conference. I think that's something that you know that you can have value for, and then I would approve that and let them go to those things. Don't be afraid to allow your staff to go to different professional developments outside of your school as well, because if they're taking the time to go look up those things, they're taking the time to get better and you want to try to support that as much as possible.

Principal JL: 18:51

The last strategy in building relationship is to have fun. This job is already hard enough. If you're not having fun at work once in a while, you're going to be miserable. Take the time to joke around with your staff. Take the time to joke around and have fun at work, because if you are joking around and you're having fun and you're enjoying being around the other people, they're going to enjoy being around you, but they're also going to be able to let themselves have fun as well, because if they see their leader like, hey, we're going to work hard, but yet we're going to have fun in the process, that's going to mean something to them and it's going to be valuable to them and that's how you can build those relationships as well.

Principal JL: 19:34

So the things that we talked about, the strategies we talked about with building relationships are, you know, having empathy, having open communication, celebrating wins, being an active listener, being consistent mentorship, team collaboration, being flexible, shared decision making, professional development and humor, and just having fun in general are all different strategies you can use to help build your relationships. Understanding, when you build relationships, you're building trust and what you're doing is you're creating a more tight knit teamwork that's going to go out and go out there and work hard for each other to create that school environment that you desire. Therefore, building trust and relationships is gradual. It's an ongoing process that requires dedication and consistency. By prioritizing empathy, transparency and collaboration, educational leaders can inspire their teams to create thriving school communities.

Principal JL: 20:41

What I would like to have you guys do is tell me your favorite strategies when it comes to building trust and relationships, and so what you can do is you can go to the fan mail link and you can go in there and I want you to type in there what are some trust building strategies you have or relationship building strategies you have, because I would love to know if there's anything that's not on this list that didn't touch base with because this is not an all inclusive list but it's easier Some things that I know are important to help build trust and relationships.

Principal JL: 21:16

But I would love to hear from you guys as we go through this coach' em up leadership series, there's going to be times where I love to hear you guys's feedback. Hey, how do you guys like in the series so far? What are you finding value in it? I really want to know if you guys are finding coach'em up leadership series valuable, because I really enjoy doing it. I want to be able to help you guys, but I also want to do it in a way that is simplified. Right, we have all these different types of leadership styles, but if we could just think about ourselves as an educational leader, as a coach, we'll be able to help transform our school culture, our school building and everybody in it to become the best they can be and have that growth mindset. Hey, today was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed this episode about building relationships and trust. I hope you find it useful. If it does, I'd love to hear from you on that. Until next time, guys always look to be 1% better.