Reality 1: If we are to respond to the ongoing changing needs of our students we need to have a culture of learning, listening and experimentation within the staff. Sitting in discomfort needs to be the mindful option, not something to avoid.
Reality 2: With wellbeing an important and needed focus for teachers, finding the balance of safety and stretch can be problematic for leaders. When to push, when to hold.
Hypothesis 1: If we mindfully and transparently create a culture of high challenge and high support, people will rise to it. People are looking to professionally grow. They want stretch, they just require empathy and connection to accompany it.
Hypothesis 2: The CoVID era has made a number of the people we work with fragile. They crave certainty, there is a greater sense of ‘I’ rather than ‘we’, they find change more difficult rather than easier now. More than a few are seeing the work in education as a ‘job’ rather than the vocation many of their leaders see it as.
Where can we influence creating a professional culture that is open to both safety and stretch? Where there is a focus on both connection and growth?
Make a high challenge, high support culture your aim.
Working with a few principal networks across Australia currently has reiterated to me the importance of our impact as leaders on culture. Often people will say that it takes a long time to change culture. I don’t agree with this. I have seen cultures tank through a change of leadership, and others head upwards as soon as the leadership shifts and not go back down.
While we know culture is created by all, leaders put out many behaviours that others are guided by. These behaviours set the scene for ‘the way we do things around here’. They also set the scene for people to ‘this is what is safe/unsafe to do here’. They quickly understand through your actions whether it’s safe to share their ideas, their mistakes and their vulnerability.
It’s the litmus test of psychological safety.
Our leadership actions show people whether it is safe to be a learner, safe to disagree, safe to make mistakes. They will also show whether you dare to lift the bar and set a course for growth and innovation, encouraging everyone to contribute and stretch.
Through the cultural diagnostic The Buzz, school teams can assess where they think the culture is and what their contribution is to this culture, based on the pillars of Collective Growth Mindset, Compelling Environment and Authentic Dialogue.

The Whole School Diagnostic Report – Professional Learning Culture
Here are some examples of a school with a very complex environment reflecting on their professional culture. This culture comes after 2 years of a new leadership team. There had been a low level of trust when this leader commenced, mainly around the culture of shutdown and autocracy that reigned with the previous leader. These types of reflections are a testament from the team on how strong their professional culture is now, with the focus of the leader to not only co-create with them a culture of connectedness but also learning. Safety AND stretch. Head AND heart. These responses are gold:
Qualitative question on diagnostic: What are the strengths of your professional learning culture?
- The change in leadership has meant a change in the importance of professional learning sessions. All members of the leadership team actively attend and contribute to professional learning sessions, placing a greater level of importance on the content and approaches being implemented and it now truly feels like the whole school is moving together.
- Everyone has a voice during PL to question and explore content in constructive, curious ways. Professional learning is run by different leadership members and deliberately designed to provoke curiosity and collaboration to increase ownership.
- Principal class leadership are committed to ensuring teachers are using best practice approaches in the classroom and for assessment. We know we have permission to try something new and not to be worried if it doesn’t work.
- Everyone is eager and willing to continuously learn.
- Open to trying new things and open to engaging in research.
- Support each other when things are not working.
- Clear vision to improve student outcomes.
- Safe to question and acknowledge when you are feeling unconfident.
- Enhanced chances for productive and rigorous learning conversations as
- Organisational levels, and opportunities provided to staff to succeed.
- A culture of eliminating the irrelevant, provoking things instead that are productive & impactful
We need professional cultures that create a compelling environment for people to connect and feel supported, as well as keep constantly evolving. Without a focus on leading on both sides of this, the head and the heart, people will choose with their feet – out the door.
Your leadership makes a difference. Be mindful of what you are modelling to others and keep going! You are your cultural advantage.