In this article, we will develop a framework for the classroom centered around the idea that each class is a team. This framework revolves around two general concepts: strong relationships and strategic routines. These might seem either obvious or overly general. But we shall see how essential both are if we want to foster a successful culture in the classroom.

A Good Apple: Cultivating Relational Safety

In his book The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle describes how organizations can create cultures that flourish based on studies of various teams such as the Navy SEALs, the San Antonio Spurs and the Brain Trust at Pixar, to name a few. Coyle structures his book around three skills essential to culture creation: build safety, share vulnerability, and establish purpose. Each of these skills address ways individuals connect to a shared culture, which can be expressed in several diagnostic questions.

When we are aiming to build safety, we can ask a few important questions. Does every individual feel safe to share?  Is there a bond of connection that everyone feels? Is there a sense of identity individuals sense by belonging to this group? Perhaps the most important of the three skills is creating relational connection.

In his chapter entitled, “The Good Apples,” Coyle describes how an experiment was run in Australia studying group dynamics. Planted inside a number of four-person groups was an individual who was intentionally supposed to sabotage the group. This person was a bad apple, attempting—and usually succeeding—in reducing the quality of each group’s performance. Yet, in one instance, a group involved an individual named Jonathan, who effectively checked the attempts of the bad apple. Jonathan—dubbed the good apple—exhibited subtle characteristics that made everyone in the group feel welcomed and valued. Every gesture and statement made by Jonathan enabled the group to feel a connection with the others in the group.

Coyle lists a number of patterns that Jonathan—and other connectors like him—practiced that cause this feeling of safety and connection. He notes “close physical proximity, often in circles” as well as “profuse amounts of eye contact.” There are “lots of short, energetic exchanges (no long speeches)” along with “lots of questions” and “humor, laughter” (Coyle 8). These patterns make a group “sticky.” Members of these groups come to feel a sense of belonging through many reinforcing patterns and practices. While it can be difficult to manufacture such cultures, we can note these patterns and implement them strategically. For instance, when I want to initiate a project, I will call a class to huddle up. American football has made this such a recognizable practice, that my student immediately circle up in a hunched over position. I can give simple pointed instructions and generate excitement, connection and buy in by this “close physical proximity, often in circles” pattern. “Okay, guys, we need to put away all the chairs from assembly. What’s our strategy?” In the huddle, I let them share their ideas and then we get down to work. Moments like this create a culture of belonging and connection. Find simple ways to incorporate patterns like this into your day.

Later in the same chapter, Coyle dives into the work of Pentland to break down five factors of optimal team performance. Like the list of patterns above, these can be implemented to cultivate a sense of teamwork and build culture. Coyle writes:

“1. Everyone in the group talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short.

2. Members maintain high levels of eye contact, and their conversations and gestures are energetic.

3. Members communicate directly with one another, not just with the team leader.

4. Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team.

5. Members periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back to share with the others.”

Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code (Random House, 2018), 14-15.

Notice how much culture is built around quick moments of conversation. As teachers, we are often inclined to stop side conversations. These can be distracting and show a lack of attention towards the subject at hand. Yet, when our goal is building culture, we actually want a good amount of intra-group dialogue to occur. What this means is that we ought to train our students to shift between focused attention and then side-to-side group engagement. Coach students in topic-driven discussion. Provide feedback on roundtable debates and dialogue. This entails that our classrooms are not dominated by mono-directional instruction, such as lectures. Instead, we must become effective at practices like dialogue, debate and discussion.

Another feature of these factors is what we could call distributed leadership. Sure, as teachers we are the leaders of the classroom, often giving orders and instructions and always guiding the class throughout their learning. However, there are ways we can empower students to become champions of the culture we are building. This can occur by training them in how to lead discussions. We can give them rules for effective debate and argumentation. Break down the big group into platoons of teams, assigning different groupings and team leaders each time. These moments of empowerment get the students invested in the creation of a culture that has the stamp of their personalities. While it might feel like this detracts from the teacher’s leadership and authority, when done correctly, the teacher actually accumulates more leadership capital through guiding, coaching and correcting these young, emerging leaders.

The concept of “go exploring” can also feel risky. But notice how that is likewise a major contributor to empowerment and buy-in. The teacher as leader gives clear instructions as to what ought to be explored and what information would be worth sharing. This can be done in the classroom by having students scan back through the chapter for identify beautiful word choices of an author. Students can be assigned the task of coming up with discussion questions for the next chapter. Young students love exploring and finding specimens in nature study. They come back to the teacher and the group with a joyful, “Look what I found!”

I highly recommend reading through all of Coyle’s book whether you are a teacher or administrator. Learning the tools to guide and shape culture enable you to have intentionality in what is built but also a “stickiness” that makes your culture hard to resist. My thesis here as I interacted with Coyle’s first chapter is that we as leaders in our classrooms and schools can be the “good apples” promoting the safety and connection that makes culture possible.

A Champion Culture: Principles and Practices

Here at Educational Renaissance, we really like Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion. Now that he has come out with a new edition, we need to navigate a world where there are great qualities that are the domain of his 2.0 edition as well as new insights published in his 3.0 version. One of the greatest frameworks he provided in the 2.0 version was a write-up of “Five Principles of Classroom Culture”: Discipline, Management, Control, Influence, and Engagement (342-347). Here we’ll walk through a few of these principles and spell out some key practices to implement to build a thriving culture.

Lemov is spot on when it comes to a description of discipline. I am reminded of the classical sense that Latin root discipulina means instruction (much as the Greek word for disciple, μαθητής, means “learner” or “pupil”). Discipline is not about punishment, but about inculcating what Lemov calls “self-discipline.” Charlotte Mason connect this idea to habit training. “There is no habit or power so useful to man or woman as that of personal initiative,” Mason claims (Home Education 192). True freedom comes when we are able to hold ourselves accountable to what we know to be true, good and just.

The second principle Lemov elucidates is management. Unlike what many might expect, he does not promote a system of rewards and punishments. Instead, he equates management to relationship building. He writes:

“To truly succeed, you must be able to control students—that is, get them to do things regardless of consequence, and inspire and engage them in positive work. You also are building relationships with students that are nontransactional; they don’t involve rewards or consequences, and they demonstrate that you care enough to know your students as individuals.”

Doug Lemov, Teach Like a Champion 2.0 (Jossey-Bass, 2015), 344.

This really is Leadership 101. If your class is going to have a healthy culture, there must be a strong relational connection between student and teacher. This relationship serves as a bridge that must hold the weight of coaching, training, instructing and counseling.

Third is control, with Lemov describes as “your capacity to cause someone to choose to do what you ask, regardless of consequences.” Notice how this overlaps with management. There must be a safe and connected group dynamic such as Coyle describes where the teacher can call students up firmly and confidently. This comes from what Lemov expresses as “faith in students’ ability to meet expectation” (Lemov 345). We are not lowering expectations to make it “easy” on the students. Instead, the teacher supports students to reach high and offers support to get there.

The relationship building inherent in management and control leads to the fourth principle, influence. “Influence gets them to want to internalize the things you suggest” (Lemov 346). The control principle is all about the teacher believing in a student’s potential to reach high. Influence now gets the student to believe in herself. This comes through celebrating victories, reflecting on challenges overcome, and setting new goals to reach even higher.

Finally, the principle of engagement centers on compelling lessons. We must be careful here to avoid mere entertainment. A teacher might be gifted in sparking laughter or eloquently delivering lectures. But if the material itself is not appreciated for its intrinsic value, the whole culture can crumble. Exciting lessons are often associated with challenge and complexity. It is fascinating to see how children enjoy trying to solve interesting problems. Reading great books, writing effortfully, and calculating complex problems can be a pathway to flow for students. Engaging students in meaningful work is how to build a culture of excellence.

This philosophical introduction to the late chapters of Teach Like a Champion 2.0 lead to numerous techniques that help build classroom culture. Here I will highlight a few that can maximize your leadership as a teacher. We begin with “Strategic investment” combined with “Do it again.” In both of these you lead rehearsals of the routines, procedures and practices of the classroom. Here you can show exactly how things get done in the classroom, and then repeat the practice until it meets expectations. Consider how this framework leads to organized desks, clear routes for classroom traffic, homework steno checks, hand-raising, or rules for proper discussion.

You as a teacher project something of your personality and authority into the classroom. These next techniques leverage that presence you have in the classroom. From “Be seen looking” to “Firm calm finesse” and “Strong voice,” you convey to the classroom that you are in control of the environment—creating a safe and connected culture—through your ability to notice when students are doing what is expected and calling them up when they fall below standards. Being at peace in the presence of your students lets them know that you are both happy to be with them, but also not ruffled when things get a little out of control. You can bring them back with your strong voice. Now this is not yelling or raising your voice. Instead, you are clear, pointed, and confident in what you have to say.

The words we use make such an impact on the culture we are building. The techniques “Precise praise” and “Joy factor” go a long way towards building up a culture of excellence. With both of these techniques, we avoid phrases such as “good job” or “well done,” instead preferring to specify exactly what was praiseworthy. “Great job raising hands to share your thoughts, class.” “I really appreciated how you supported your claim with evidence.” By being precise, you clearly identify actions that are praiseworthy. This removes mere affirmation of the individual while demonstrating your watchfulness for the excellent standards that are central to your culture. Hard work and new understandings ought to be celebrated, not as a reward but as the natural consequence of the joy intrinsic is such things. Make these moments tangible for your students and provide a framework for taking satisfaction in their work.

As the leader in the classroom, you become the champion of the excellence that will mark your culture. We can be the good apples that create the safe and connected culture where students can thrive. By applying the principles and techniques outlined here, you can create a classroom culture that is a delight.

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A vision, as you might expect, is purposefully general. It can be so broad, in fact, that it can entail a number of pathways to achieve it. This is where an organizational mission comes in. A mission is a purpose statement for how one specific organization is going to fulfill a vision.

For example, imagine you live in a town where you notice that a growing number of young people in their 20’s and 30’s report lacking purpose in life. Having passed through the modern education industrial complex, they lack the thoughtfulness and tools to think about what it would be like to craft a life built on enduring values. They have been trained to think that life is about maximizing income, not living for a higher purpose.

What’s more, these young adults in your town display a noticeable lack of creativity. They do not read, build, explore, serve, or sing for fun. They have graduated college and landed decent paying jobs, but their leisure is short-circuiting as free time is routinely consumed through tech addiction passing as “catching up on shows.”

As life’s big challenges begin to set in, these young people realize they do not know what they think about complex political issues. They are left paralyzed by the suffering that comes from the illness of a loved one. They are not sure whether God is actually good and really involved in their day to day lives. 

Upon noticing such a problem in your town looking out, you further observe looking in that a version of yourself shares some of these deficiencies. Meanwhile, an aspirational picture begins to emerge in your mind of a young person who lives and looks decidedly different. “What if I drove down the street and saw a young man or woman living like…this?” you ask yourself. “How would this happen?” 

Thus begins your journey toward Christian, classical education and perhaps even starting a school toward this end.

In this article, I will explore how schools can strengthen their mission statements and then align their communities with this overarching purpose. The goal is that through achieving strong organizational clarity, schools in the Christian classical education renewal movement can better deliver on what they have set out to achieve and then be faithful to this work for the longterm.

Many Missions, One Vision

There are hundreds of Christian, classical schools in the United States. I recently heard that there were 140 of such schools in 2010 and now there are over 700. This is amazing progress for the movement in just 13 years. For each one of these schools, there is a distinct mission or purpose, stating why it exists. Consider this small sampling, which exemplifies the variety:

• We exist to glorify God by cultivating students of wisdom and virtue through a Christ-centered, academically robust classical education.
• We exist to assist parents in their duty of biblically training their children by offering distinctly Christ-centered and Classical academic instruction.
• We exist to glorify God by equipping students with the tools necessary to pursue a lifetime of learning so that they may discern, reason and defend truth in service to our Lord, Jesus Christ.
• We exist to inspire students with an education founded on a Christian worldview, informed by the classical tradition, and approached with diligence and joy. 
• We exist to support families and churches by providing an academically excellent classical Christian education that cultivates knowledge, wisdom, eloquence, and godly character and equips students with the tools of learning that will last a lifetime.

What you may notice above is that each of these missions emphasizes a different aspect of the Christian, classical education renewal movement. Some underscore the importance of partnership between church, family, and school. Others emphasize that bringing glory to God ought to be the “why” of the mission no matter what kind of Christian organization. But what all these schools have in common if we were to press them is a shared vision about the sort of alumni they seek to develop through their programs.

The Eight-Word Mission Statement

Interestingly, in the organizational development world, there is growing interest in what has been called the “eight-word mission statement.” (or even seven words). It is exactly what it sounds like: a brief concise purpose statement that captures the “why” of an organization with stunning simplicity.

Here’s the formula: A verb, a target population, and an outcome that implies something to measure. As Kevin Starr, a though leader in social entrepreneurship, puts it,

Save kids’ lives in Uganda. Rehabilitate coral reefs in the Western Pacific. Prevent maternal-child transmission of HIV in Africa. Get Zambian farmers out of poverty. These statements tell us exactly what the organization has set out to accomplish. Once we’ve got it, we know whether they are working on something that fits our own mission, and we have a useful starting point for any subsequent conversations.

Stanford Social Innovation Review (https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_eight_word_mission_statement#)

Starr identifies two specific strengths of this approach to crafting mission statements. First, it focuses on concrete results, thereby avoiding vague language. Second, it spotlights the “what,” not the “how.”

I suspect that one reason mission statements at Christian, classical schools can arguably be too long, such as in the examples above, is that proponents of this type of education cannot help themselves but include the “how.” Notice how many of the mission statements above include the specifics of the education they offer. They are drifting into the way they will accomplish their mission, rather than focusing on the central purpose.

If we take Starr’s advice, here might be a compelling alternative: “Cultivate students of wisdom and virtue.” Now, this may feel overly general. After all, it fails to to say anything about classical or Christian education. Is this a problem? Not necessarily. If you are committed to keeping your school’s mission focused solely on the “what,” then you must resist the temptation to detail method and instead be ultra clear on the chief purpose, which for our schools is about the formation of a particular kind of student.

Readers may not fully buy into the idea of an eight-word mission statement. For one, it can feel at times like it fuses vision and mission, future state and pathway, in a way that conflicts with the traditional distinction described above. Regardless of where you land, the point is that, when crafting a mission statement, you want to achieve maximal clarity on why your school exists. The more clarity you gain, the more you can align your school community with this core focus.

Creating Missional Alignment

Once a school has its core focus articulated via a mission statement, it can be to think about how this mission is to serve as the aligning rails for all activity within the organization. In Wisdom and Eloquence (Crossway, 2006), Robert LittleJohn and Chuck Evans define alignment as “like-mindedness about the essential qualities of the school and a common understanding that everything that happens under the school’s banner is informed or required by its core mission. We often use the term ‘vertical alignment,’ or the insistence that every activity, every decision, flows figuratively downhill from the school’s mission.” (203).

Admittedly, I have been puzzled by this concept at times. It has not always been clear to me how all the various activities of the school are “informed” or “required” by its core mission. For some activities, of course, it is obvious. Logic class, for example, flows downhill from a classical mission in that logic, or dialectic, is one of the three language arts of the classical trivium. A Shakespeare performance is informed by the mission insofar as Shakespearean drama holds a major place in the annals of western literature.

But what about curriculum nights? School picnics? Admissions welcome packets? Capital campaigns? Employee benefits packages? It is not obvious that these flow downhill from a distinctively Christian classical mission. After all, these activities exist in other schools. So what is the difference?

The Aligned Community

Here it is important to underscore the distinction between “required” and “informed.” To “require” is to need for a particular purpose while to “inform” is to give shape to. Every activity at a school must either be necessary to the school’s core mission or be shaped by it. Let us consider a few examples for each of these categories.

I can think of a number of necessities, required ingredients, for a classical school to achieve its mission. The school must have a wide and varied curriculum of classical literature, art, music, and history. Additionally, it must focus its instruction on training students in the liberal arts, the complex skills of reading, thinking, speaking, calculating, and creating. And it must include in its objectives an emphasis on the character formation of its students rather than solely going for more head knowledge. These examples, we might say, exist in the center core of the mission. Take away one of these qualities and you risk achieving the purpose you have set out to accomplish.

Then there are the activities of the school that are not required by the school’s mission, but must at the very least be significantly shaped by it. Take a capital campaign, for example. Schools cost money to operate, and strategic decisions to take the school to the next level often require significant funds. To raise this capital, one must share with potential donors a compelling vision for how their gifts will advance the school’s mission. What will make up the content of this vision? Whatever is decided, the explicit connection must be made to the school’s mission of cultivating students of wisdom and virtue. Otherwise you are raising money for something else.

Let us look at another example and drill a little deeper: the girls volleyball team. How can we align this program with the school’s core mission? We begin by putting the mission in front of us: cultivating students of wisdom and virtue. We then begin thinking about what wisdom and virtue look like for student athletes in the volleyball program. Wisdom may have to do with their approach to competition on the court as followers of Christ. Or it could connect to how students interact with one another during practice. A focus on virtue could influence how much effort students put into practice each day or deciding as a team they will never give up no matter the odds.

By evaluating each program or activity in your school against the rubric of your school’s mission, you can align your entire community to this core focus. This keeps all constituents on the same page and rowing in the same direction. As LittleJohn and Evans sum it up nicely: “A vertically aligned school can be confident that each member of the community understands the school’s mission and his or her role in helping to achieve that mission” (203).

Conclusion

Schools are complex operations. They consist of many types of constituents: board members, parents, faculty and staff, students, and alumni. They are also comprised of all sorts of activities, ranging from hot lunch to curriculum development to facilities management to the actual instruction in the classroom. Consequently, keeping the school united is a crucial task and it all begins with a clear mission statement. Once this purpose statement is articulated clearly and points toward an aspirational future state, the vision, comprehensive alignment must be carried out. By taking inventory of every activity and decision at the school and determining alignment with the mission, school leaders can bring unity and direction to their communities that will spark momentum and a sense of confidence for what the future holds.

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For example, a teacher responsible for teaching The Great Gatsby must consider how the book will be taught, what she will focus on, and how she intends for students to develop and grow through the study. Each day, she walks into a room full of students in need of direction for approaching the text. This requires leadership.

In modern educational circles, we often speak, not of leadership, but of “classroom management.” Unfortunately, this phrase is embedded with faulty assumptions about who students are, what the purpose of learning is, and how we are to manage them toward some desirable end. As a result, classroom management techniques are problematic in two key ways.

First, classroom management techniques are often behavioristic. In other words, they seek to address the behavior of students through systems of external rewards and consequences, rather than aiming to form the whole person of the child, especially the heart. Strategies are deployed to artificially motivate behaviors of respect, obedience, service, and even kindness in a way disconnected from the child’s internal moral development. Is this child growing in a love and understanding of the idea of respect for authority? How is the child becoming more servant-hearted in her disposition? These questions are not usually asked in typical classroom management conversations.

Second, classroom management techniques are often task-oriented rather than people-oriented. This makes sense since the phrase emerged during the post-industrial revolution in which the effective and efficient completion of tasks was prized above all else. Now, at its best, modern business management theory is people-oriented, but most managers too easily slip into the mindset of “How do I get this employee to perform this task?” rather than “How do I lead this employee on a path toward growth and increasing expertise?” The latter focuses on the development of the talent and skill of people, not simply whether they are hitting the deadlines. 

To equip teachers to grow as true leaders of their students, in this article I will recommend three recently published leadership books that contain relevant ideas for classroom leadership. These resources will help teachers see their true leadership role and therefore embrace the responsibility for them to invest deeply in the lives of their students. While teachers will need to push through some of the business-focused examples of these resources, the underlying ideas are both relevant and applicable for classroom leadership today.

Multipliers by Liz Wiseman 

The first book I want to recommend is Multipliers (HarperCollins, 2017) by researcher Liz Wiseman. In this book, Wiseman sets out to show how leaders can make people under their supervision smarter, rather than targeting mere compliance. Early on, she differentiates between two managers, the Genius Maker and the Genius (9). The genius maker grows people’s intelligence by “extracting the smarts and maximum effort from each member on the team.” This type of leader talks only about 10% of the time, thereby making space for others to grow through active participation in coming up with solutions to a problem. 

In contrast, the genius is self-oriented. He is smart and successful, and everyone in the room knows who has the best ideas. He may facilitate “conversations” but soon these turn into opportunities for him to share his correct views with others. After all, he is the genius. Why not just listen to him? The result is that people do not have the permission to think for themselves or the legitimate responsibility to make decisions. It all goes back to what the genius thinks is right. 

For Wiseman, the genius maker is a multiplier of of intelligence while the genius is actually a diminisher. At heart, multipliers “invoke each person’s unique intelligence and create an atmosphere of genius–innovation, productive effort, and collective intelligence” (10). The upshot is that these leaders not only access people’s current capability, they stretch it. People actually report getting smarter under the supervision of multipliers. The fundamental assumption of a multiplier is “People are smart and will figure this out” whereas the assumption of the diminisher is “They will never figure this out without me” (20). 

Teachers can become multipliers of intelligence in their classrooms by resisting the urge to be the residential genius. Although they are older, smarter, and more experienced, these assets can be leveraged to empower their students toward growing their own abilities, rather than making it all about the teacher.

Diagnostic Questions for Teachers:

• Do you empower students in your classroom to make major contributions to class culture, discussions, learning, and skill demonstration? 
• Is there room in your classroom for students to make mistakes as you stretch them to attempt difficult assignments?
• Do you ask your students to explain complex concepts to their peers rather than yourself?
• Does your approach to grading grow student intellectual confidence or does it foster dependence on your own intelligence?

Boundaries for Leaders by Dr. Henry Cloud

Boundaries for Leaders (HarperCollins, 2013) is written by clinical psychologist Dr. Henry Cloud, an author recognized for his work on cultivating healthy relationships. In Chapter 1, he writes, “This book is about what leaders need to do in order for people to accomplish a vision” (2). The key word here for Cloud is people. He will go on to argue that people perform their best work in healthy work cultures that take into consideration the psychological well-being of both employer and employee. By setting good boundaries in place and leading in a way that people’s brains can follow, Cloud contends, good results will come. 

Cloud writes that boundaries are made up of two things: what you create and what you allow (15). A boundary is a property line, marking out who is responsible and for what. When someone is given real ownership of something, anything that happens under their supervision only happens because they created it or allowed it. 

In top-performing classrooms, teachers teach in a way that makes it possible for their students’ brains to function as they were designed (25). This happens through setting good boundaries. Cloud writes, “Show me a person, team, or a company that gets results, and I will show you the leadership boundaries that make it possible” (26).

As a psychologist, the author is aware of how the human brain works and what leaders can do to maximize brain health and productivity. In turn, teachers can use these insights as they seek to pass on knowledge, skills, and virtues to their students.

For example, it is helpful for a teacher to understand that the brain relies on three essential properties to achieve a particular task, be it the following of a classroom procedure or the completion of an assignment:

1. Attention: the ability to focus on relevant stimuli, and block out what is not relevant (“Do this”)
2. Inhibition: the ability to “not do” certain actions that could be distracting, irrelevant, or eve destructive (“Don’t do this”)
3. Working Memory: the ability to retain and access relevant information for reasoning, decision-making, and taking future actions (“Remember and build on this relevant information”)

As teachers design their lessons and think through what they want their students to accomplish for the day, it is beneficial to think through these three neurological elements for the completion of a task. When we ignore one or more of these elements, we risk short-circuiting our students optimal use of the way God designed their brains.

Diagnostic Questions for Teachers:

• What student behaviors in your classroom have you created or allowed?
• How do your lessons promote student attention on what is most important for the curricular objective?
• What procedures and expectations have you established and maintained to ensure that what is not important or destructive is not allowed in?
• How are you building your students’ working memory of key information to help them complete assignments with greater success? 

The Motive by Patrick Lencioni 

The Motive (Wiley, 2020), written especially for CEOs, explores the underlying motivation of a good leader. Author Patrick Lencioni, well-known for his book Five Dysfunctions of a Team, illustrates through a leadership parable that one’s motivation for leading will dictate what one prioritizes and how he or she spends her time.

In the parable, two types of leadership motivation are at play (135). Reward-centered leadership rests on the fundamental assumption that the leader, having been selected for the role, has arrived and therefore possesses the freedom to design her job around what she most enjoys. It is the belief that the leader’s work should be pleasant and enjoyable because the leadership position is the reward. She therefore has the freedom to avoid mundane, unpleasant, or uncomfortable work if she so pleases, which she does.

In contrast, responsibility-centered leadership assumes that leadership is all about responsibility and service. It is the belief that being a leader is responsible; therefore, the experience of leading should be difficult and challenging (though certainly not without elements of gratification). 

To be clear, Lencioni writes that no leader perfectly embodies one form of motivation or the other. But one of these motives will be predominant and leaders need to be self-aware of what drives them. Reward-centered leaders often resist and avoid doing the difficult things that only they can do for the team they are leading. As a result, the whole organization suffers.

When it comes to leading a classroom, there are all sorts of things that a teacher would prefer not to do: address difficult student behavior, call a parent with bad news to share, have “family talks” with the whole class about negative classroom culture issues, or give a low grade on an assignment. But to be the best leaders they can, teachers need to lean into these responsibilities and thereby discharge their role teacher well.

Diagnostic Questions for Teachers

• What is your motivation for becoming a teacher?
• What are the 3-5 things you can do for your class that no one else can do? 
• How are you caring for your class culture, especially rooting out dysfunctional behavior and forming healthy interpersonal dynamics?
• What kind of feedback do you give your students on their behavior and work? 
• When was the last time you had a difficult conversation with a student in which you addressed unhealthy behavior?
• When was the last time you complained about a student’s or parent’s behavior? What steps do you need to take to address it?
• How often are you reminding your students of the big picture of their education, your particular curriculum, and the core values of your classroom?

Conclusion

Teachers are the leaders of their classrooms, responsible for casting vision for their students, supporting them in their work, and cultivating healthy classroom cultures. Rather than deploying classroom management techniques which can be overly behavioristic and task-oriented, teachers should embrace their role as leaders and focus on developing their people. By helping teachers become better leaders, we will see dynamic classrooms, better learning results, and, most importantly, thriving students.

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This hearty plant can survive the harsh conditions of different locations such as Sweden, Japan, and Montana. In my own Illinois it thrives in a region known for hot summers and cold winters. Compare this profile to the Zinnia, which is also known for its heartiness, but cannot survive the deep cold of Illinois.

I recently pulled up a patch of Lily of the Valley with a view of keeping it indoors. And while this is a hearty plant, it will be necessary for me to be careful to establish a healthy culture for this plant in ways I wouldn’t have to when it is outdoors. For plant tissue to grow well indoors, there needs to be slightly high humidity, the temperature needs to be stable, the light conditions must be rigorously attended to, and the plant must be fed nutrients on a regular basis. The very same plant which cares not whether I tend to it all year round, once brought inside becomes very particular about its environment. For it to grow well, I must tend to the culture of my house.

Tending to our culture to optimize growth for individuals in an organization or students in a classroom is analogous to the care I must take with my Lily of the Valley cutting. Like it or not, every classroom and every school has a culture. The question is not whether we have a culture, it is rather what we do about it. There are better and worse cultures, so the goal is to be able to understand what kind of culture we have and then be able to apply tools to help improve the culture of our classroom or school.

Analyze the Culture

The first step in optimizing our culture has to do with deep learning and focused attention on the culture as it currently stands. You can accomplish this through simple observation and description. I recommend taking a notebook and capturing every moment of the day. What are students like when they arrive? How do I feel when I leave for work each day? Is there a moment of the day that I dread? What are the transitions like during the day? Are students responsive and engaged in their work? What are the best moments of the day? The approach here is to get at both the problems or issues in the day as well as the best or most productive parts of the day. Even a few days of observing and noting will spell out the differences between the ideal culture you are going for and the ways it is falling short of that ideal.

Another step to take is to survey your people. This can be done in a formal way by using a tool like Survey Monkey, Google Forms or some other tool. If you choose to use a formal survey, be sure to keep the survey of a manageable length. Survey Monkey recommends using less than 30 questions, or to put it in terms of time, that it should take someone 10 minutes or less to complete the survey.

Questions should be open-ended and fair, allowing the respondent to provide an accurate answer. Allowing the respondent to use a sliding scale or Likert scale (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree) helps mitigate survey bias. Here are a few questions that you could use in a student culture survey:

Students in my school treat one another with respect: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree.

I and the other students in my class care about learning: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree.

Now, you can survey your people less formally. Having a bank of questions that you can ask students, parents, colleagues in conversations can help you get amble feedback as you try to analyze the culture of your classroom or school. At parent-teacher conferences, for instance, you can ask parents to share stories their child has shared about school. Be listening for clues about the cultural values you are trying to build. Some parents or students will be very free, even to the point of offense, when they share their thoughts about the culture of your class. Try to listen for the kernel of truth even if you find it difficult to receive someone’s thoughts.

Having put in the work to describe the culture and survey your people, you are now in a position to determine some of the key factors that are driving the culture of your classroom. You may determine that despite students feeling safe and cared for, they still exhibit lots of anxiety. Or you might find that the culture of enthusiastic learning that you are trying to cultivate is hindered by things like the arrangement of the desks or distractions in the classroom. The ultimate goal is to get to a place of clarity about different levers you might be able to pull to begin influencing culture in a certain direction.

A Vision for Culture

Having described the current culture and surveyed your people to determine the factors that are driving the culture of your classroom or school, you are better positioned to get down to the work changing the culture for the better. Yet, we cannot enact positive changes without a clear vision of where you are heading. Work must be done to get clarity about your highest values and the goals you will be striving towards. I am quick to point out that casting vision is work that can be done simultaneously or even before assessing your current culture, even though I’ve placed point after doing the work of analysis.

Jim Collins in Built to Last articulates how core values are inherent, almost sacred, principles or traits that can never be compromised. We can identify some of these through the analysis exercise above. What is it that we are already doing based on high-value principles. For instance, your students might be going after good grades because there’s already a value placed on excellence. Identifying these core values takes reflection on what might already be in place.

Patrick Lencioni in his HBR article “Make Your Values Mean Something” differentiates core values and aspirational values. He defines aspirational values as “those that a company needs to succeed in the future but currently lacks.” As you consider driving the culture of your classroom or school forward or upward, you will need a combination of core values and aspirational values working together. For instance, if your class is already driven by excellence, but they are completely stressed out, you may find that an aspirational value such as joyful learning needs to be incorporated.

To get at these values, you will actually need to detach from your classroom or school for reflection and deliberation. I think of this as similar to the moment Moses goes up the mountain, communes with God, and then returns to his people with a set of high-value principles, ten to be specific. Getting at core and aspirational values is very much a spiritual exercise, because what you are trying to get clarity on is the set of inspiring ideas that will capture the hearts and minds of those you are leading. The work here is to find a way of articulating something that is both meaningful and abstract. Keep in mind, that there really should only a few of these inspiring ideas.

Once these inspiring values are spelled out, you are ready to begin connecting these up with a plan. How do we live out these values? This entails goal setting. For example, if we are compelled by a vision of joyful learning, I can set a goal of giving one expression of joy every day for the next month. Notice how there are specific and measurable details in this goal. George Doran in his 1981 article in Management Review entitled, “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives” lays out the now-famous acronym for goals that are specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time-based. Setting out goals in such a way provides a means for measuring what really matters when it comes to building the culture you are striving towards.

The Habit of Practice

Creating a culture is the ultimate practice of habit training. I believe this is what Charlotte Mason meant by atmosphere. She is very clear that atmosphere is the not the creation of some artificial space where “a child should be isolated in what may be called a ‘child environment’ specially adapted and prepared.” (Philosophy of Education, 94) What she describes positively about atmosphere is quite inspiring:

“The bracing atmosphere of truth and sincerity should be perceived in every School; and here again the common pursuit of knowledge by teacher and class comes to our aid and creates a Current of fresh air perceptible even to the chance visitor, who sees the glow of intellectual life and moral health on the faces of teachers and children alike.”

Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education, pg. 97

We might restate this as a culture of truth and sincerity where the fresh air we breathe is initiated by core and aspirational values carried out with clear goals in mind touching on intellectual life and moral health. And in this atmosphere or culture the child very naturally pursues the goals or objectives set forth. It is not as though they are forced to be kind by the environment, but there is clearly a sense that “that’s the way we do things around here.” The child does not mechanically become intellectually stimulated because we have put particular paintings and plants in the classroom, but it is obvious when you look around that “people like us get really excited by what we learn.” A well-considered culture begins to generate habits in keeping with our values. Mason writes, “We may not leave off the attempt to form good habits with tact and care, to suggest fruitful ideas, without too much insistence, and to make wise use of circumstances.” (School Education, 185) The circumstances of our classroom form the opportunities to train in orderliness, thoughtfulness, kindness and so forth.

In this mode of thinking, we can create routines that establish our cultural values. These might be as simple as a handshake upon entering the room in the morning, a process for handing out texts, or a class job that is a delight to all. You might find yourself compelled by this vision, but doubtful that you can create the change necessary to guide your classroom or school toward your inspiring vision. Yet, you can create rapid change through rehearsals. For instance, let’s say you want to create a culture of tidiness. You begin with an inspiring vision of the satisfaction and utility of a clean space. Then you have everyone practice every morning, potentially multiple times, organizing their cubbies, lockers, desks, room, etc. You share a mantra, “a place for everything and everything in its place.” Day after day, the routine is practiced. The culture of tidiness takes root, and you can see on everyone’s faces a sense of pride in the classroom, in their work and even perhaps in their homes.

In modern research, habits have been boiled down to three basic components, a cue, a response and a reward. This approach to modifying our behaviors has a good deal of neurological basis to it. The area of sophistication I would add to this basic model is that the nature of the reward makes a big difference. A simple or trite reward such as a piece of candy, a star on a paper or a letter grade can be effective in enacting change, but usually not lasting change. This has to do with issues encountered in the dopaminergic system. Simple stimuli have diminishing returns because low-level stimuli are simply not that motivating because at a fundamental level basic rewards are not meaningful to us. The better framework for rewards is a feeling of satisfaction such as completing a long-term project, working at something difficult, or accomplishing a goal. These are associated not with dopamine but with the neurotransmitter seratonin, which results in higher levels of positive mood, such as satisfaction, happiness and optimism. (see “Happiness & Health: The Biological Factors- Systematic Review Article,” Iran J Public Health 43 (2014): 1468–1477.) One of the ways I’ve expressed this is that “the habit is the reward.” What this means is that when we create a culture imbued with inspiring values, the reward we are working toward is the serotonergic effect of a happier, calmer, more stable set of emotions.

Now in light of this sense of the reward we are working toward, it is worth celebrating the cultural breakthroughs we achieve. To the extend we are measuring what matters, as expressed in the previous section, we want to celebrate what matters. Once again, the inspiring values guide us to ways we can celebrate. If we have been developing a culture of kindness, perhaps the way we celebrate is to devote a Friday afternoon to sharing personal stories with one another. If we are working on a culture of deliberate practice, we can celebrate by sharing our accumulated skills with one another.

Practical Tools to Build a Culture

To close out this topic, there are five practical tools you can build an inspiring culture in your classroom or school. First, use a mimetic approach. It is frequently the case that we need to model what we are asking our students to do. I can demonstrate how I use kind words, or I can show the steps I use when I am organizing my desk. The mimetic method shows how and then asks the students to imitate.

Second, get others involved. Bring in visitors. Tell parents ways they can be reinforcing these values at home. Partner with another class to build the culture together. This approach builds some synergy and accountability to support the efforts you have in mind.

Third, have strategic conversations. You may have heard of the 80/20 principle or the Pareto distribution, which indicates that roughly 20 percent of the individuals in your class are going to have an outsized influence on the culture of the classroom or school. So be strategic to get these individuals on board with the program, simply because you know that most other will follow suite if they lead the charge.

Fourth, get the group talking. This can be a bit tricky, because you aren’t looking to engage in a debate about whether the value you are putting forward is actually a value. Instead, you want to stimulate their interest and enthusiasm by having them voice ways they could contribute to the culture by embracing this value. If I am cultivating kindness, I could ask the group a question, what could we do to be the class with the reputation for kindness?

Finally, praise is more powerful that chastisement. Immediately upon seeing evidence for the value your are leading, praise the class for exhibiting this so well. Make your praise specific and descriptive. Instead of a general “good job” it would be better to say “way to go class for keeping your desks so organized.”

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• Unclogging toilets and mopping up sewage in the restrooms of your new facility
• Setting up hundreds of chairs for an event on your own because you know you can’t ask any more of your teachers or volunteers
• Subbing for Calculus one day and Kindergarten the next, outside of your comfort zone and with unclear lesson plans
• Kindly mediating an hour and a half long meeting with a teacher and an unhappy set of parents who will likely leave the school
• Trying to keep track of complicated budgets for various areas of the school, when you’ve got no background in accounting
• Picking up a screaming and flailing child from the hall and carrying him into your office, providing counseling to calm the child down, then calling the parents to follow up on a strategy for discipline
• Planning events and coordinating the speaking roles of many different parties: teachers, board members, parents and your own boss, the Head of School
• Calmly and gratefully receiving constant criticisms and proposed “solutions” from well-meaning teachers, parents, board members and colleagues, who only see part of the picture you see and who don’t understand the time and resource constraints the school is under
• Calling sets of parents who have applied to your school to navigate a tricky conversation sharing feedback from admission testing for their child who is not prepared to enter on grade level
• Feeling the need to innovate new programs even while you know you don’t have enough time to do everything you’ve already committed to doing well
• Experiencing the pressure to be an expert in 50 different areas of academics and the business of running a school, and knowing you actually have expertise in just a handful
• Dealing with the frustrations of people not following your rules or instructions, whether it’s students, parents, or even teachers, meaning you have to take time out of your schedule to tackle another potentially challenging interpersonal conversation
• Never knowing exactly what sort of crisis you’re headed for today when you turn the keys in the ignition and drive off to school in the morning, but knowing from experience that some sort of crisis is more than likely

Serving as a Principal at a classical Christian school is not for the faint of heart. 

In the list above, I’ve tried to highlight some of the elements of a principal’s regular duties that are often left off of your typical job description. If you’re skeptical about the above list, I can assure you that these are all autobiographical to one extent or another, and that I could have gone on with other categories of tasks, equally as difficult, unexpected, stressful and emotionally fraught.

A few years into my tenure as a school administrator I remember attending a session at a private school conference where the presenter shared that the increase in salary and benefits accorded mid-level leaders at private schools often does not match up well with the increased stresses, challenges, time commitment and responsibilities. 

Now I’m not writing this article to dissuade aspiring academic leaders at classical Christian schools. We are in desperate need of more men and women who are competent and willing to embrace the role. Nor even am I writing for the indulgence of a good, old-fashioned pity party for us principals (as tempting as that is…). 

Instead, at the instigation of my current Head of School, I think it’s valuable to explore some of the costs of being a principal or other mid-level academic leader at a small to midsize classical Christian school (say, under 250 students), or else a Head of School at a small school (under 125). This role has a unique set of challenges, and just as Jesus warned of the costs of discipleship, it is my hope that by clarifying the costs of principal leadership at a classical Christian school, more aspiring leaders will be able to willingly take up this specific cross with eyes wide-open and the mental and emotional resources to do so successfully. 

Before we begin, I would note a caveat. Your mileage may vary: not all school situations are alike, and so some of the aspects I mentioned above might be successfully carried by someone else on staff. But at the same time there might be other job requirements I won’t mention. I have used specifics to paint a general picture, not to detail an actual job description. 

So, you think you want to be a principal… Have you considered that being a principal is…

1) a dirty, messy and physically exhausting job,

2) an emotionally draining job that requires you to maintain a relentless optimism and joyful mood in the midst of disheartening circumstances,

3) a multifaceted job requiring a range of competencies and a dizzying variety of challenges,

4) a leadership nightmare because you are always navigating several different audiences, and

5) an ideal job for a teacher and philosopher who can maintain equanimity in an active life? 

Let’s tackle each of these five aspects of the job of principal in term. Hopefully, this list will deter the faint of heart and those who are not suited to the demands of the position. But more than that, hopefully, it will help other aspiring principals prepare themselves for such a noble task. As Paul says of the role of overseer in 1 Timothy 3:1, so I say, “If anyone aspires to the office of principal, he desires a noble task. But not one for the faint of heart or unqualified. Let each one test himself to see whether he has what it takes.”

If you’re still reading this article and you are neither a principal nor an aspiring principal, I would encourage you to read on. Parents and teachers can benefit from understanding better the demands that are placed on those who are leading them. This can give them compassion when their administrator (inevitably) fails them in some way. I know that I have been helped and encouraged to shoulder the challenges of my role by kind and thoughtful teachers and parents who looked beyond their own concerns and showed appreciation for me and an understanding of my circumstances.

In a similar way, board members and heads of school might be sobered to recognize the complexities and day-to-day realities of the mid-level administrator. Inspired and multi-competent leadership at this level might not be the only inciting factor in a school’s improvement and growth to maturity, but it’s a major one. A principal who can successfully tackle the physical, emotional, many-hat-wearing, and philosophical leadership demands of the role can propel a school on to excellence. This implies that such persons should be appropriately trained, sought out, empowered and supported.

All of us at Educational Renaissance have served in mid-level principal or academic leadership roles at schools, so we have a special concern for how this role can function as a lever for genuine classical renewal and excellence at a school. Without further ado, we count the costs of principal leadership.

So, you think you want to be a principal…

1) Have you considered that being a principal is a dirty, messy and physically demanding job?

If you think going into school administration might release you from the demands of teaching and give you the luxury of a desk job, think again. 

While it may seem like teaching keeps you on your feet all day, and the principal can sit behind her desk for hours on end, this image doesn’t adequately reflect the role at a small classical Christian school. 

The fact is that many, if not most, classical Christian schools cannot afford the full custodial staff of established schools. This makes the principal’s job dirtier and messier than your typical office job. There may be exceptions where the church a school is renting from has a competent and well-run custodial and facilities staff. But in general, aspiring principals should expect that addressing toilet issues and vomit cleanup are part of the J-O-B. 

Event set up and tear-down also require moving chairs and tables, purchasing food and drinks, napkins and plasticware. Even if you engage other employees and volunteers, principals often have the privilege and the responsibility to lead the way in this sort of manual labor and cleanup. 

In addition, a principal’s day should be active if she is to be successful in her role of leading teachers, parents, students and staff. The sheer weight of meetings can take a physical toll, if you’re doing your job right. I schedule bi-weekly check in meetings with every teacher or staff member who reports to me, and I think this meeting cadence is necessary for keeping everyone engaged and coaching them to their full potential. Likewise, if your school is growing, you should be interviewing every set of new parents before you admit them to your school. You should also connect with every set of parents once a year before re-enrollment, either through in person meetings or on the phone if you want to proactively engage parents and solve issues before they become a family’s reason for leaving the school. 

Then consider all the ad hoc meetings, meetings with coaches, fine arts directors, club leaders, community leaders and vendors for various services the school needs. The principal needs physical stamina simply to keep up with the pace of meetings. 

In addition to these meetings, the principal should be regularly walking around the school and visiting the classrooms of teachers. A rigorous schedule of observing teachers is the quickest and most effective way to increase the quality of teaching and learning that I know of. I am regularly held accountable for a certain number of observations a week. This discipline more than any other contributes to classical Christian excellence in a school. 

The energy demands of this sort of role alone are considerable. If you are currently a principal or are considering becoming one in the near future, make it a priority to care for your physical wellbeing through a healthy diet, a full night’s sleep and regular exercise. And as you face the temptation to cave on any of these due to the pressures and stresses of the role, refuse to give in and play the long game on your effectiveness. 

2) Have you considered that being a principal is an emotionally draining job that requires you to maintain a relentless optimism and joyful mood in the midst of disheartening circumstances?

If your school is anything like the schools I have worked at, it is full of human beings. And the fact of the matter is that human beings sin. They talk behind one another’s backs. They grumble and complain. They don’t always live up the high ideals of classical virtue and communal cooperation. 

And many of these problems will come knocking on your door if you are the principal. Even if you don’t have to solve every issue that rears its ugly head, you will know about more problems in your school than you care to. You must bear the weight of disappointment and, to a certain extent, anxiety for the possible negative effects of these issues on the future of your school. You may not be suffering persecution like the apostle Paul, but sometimes being a principal makes me think of the end of Paul’s rant in 2nd Corinthians 11 about his sufferings, 

“And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?” (2 Cor 11:28-29 ESV)

A mentor of mine once compared school leadership to the role of a priest in the Old Testament. You must be able to bear the sins and heartaches of the community and lift them up to God, not spit back at the community the hurt and pain and disappointment. You must find a way to be joyful and optimistic, even in those moments when it feels like the institution that you’ve been pouring out blood, sweat and tears to build is tearing itself apart. You need to be able to maintain your equilibrium with student discipline problems, teachers crying in your office, and background drama about this or that initiative or decision. 

A few tips for doing this well include having clear boundaries as a school leader. Have a regular practice of what Cal Newport calls Shutdown Complete. Close your laptop at the end of the day and stop responding to email unless there is a real emergency. And no, that issue that a parent emailed you about late at night is not a real emergency. Seriously consider not getting your work email on your phone, as I do. Don’t try to solve every issue or problem. Know what you can control and what you can’t. Have realistic expectations. 

Your classical Christian school is not going to be a utopia that brings Christ’s kingdom fully to earth before Jesus comes again. Don’t put all your hope in the institution. I believe in institution-building and the power of classical Christian schools, but we must remember that arguably no Christian institution has stayed faithful to its calling for more than several generations. Human institutions, no matter how fine, do not last forever. 

On the other hand, the human beings you work with each day, the students and parents, teachers and fellow staff, are eternal beings. C.S. Lewis’ description in “Weight of Glory” helps me keep my perspective in the midst of these emotional demands:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”

3) Have you considered that being a principal is a multifaceted job requiring a range of competencies and a dizzying variety of challenges?

The principal at a small classical Christian school must be a generalist. There are too many aspects of the business of running a school that will neglected, if you focus most of your attention on any one. Spend all your time on improving the curriculum, and you will blow out the budget AND your teachers will have problems with student discipline. Spend all your time on classroom discipline and order, and the lack of extracurriculars and sports will hamper your growth. Spend all your time on planning events for parents, and your teachers will be worn out and disengaged. Take my advice and spread your time wisely between the things I mentioned, and your school still may struggle because you have no marketing and admissions strategy.

In order to function well as a principal, you must be ready and willing to learn about aspects of the business of running a school. Whether it’s heading up the marketing and admissions of the school, as I do, or tackling budgeting and payroll, insurance, fundraising, or event planning, you’re likely going to have to figure out how to be competent at other major functions of the business of a modern school. It’s pointless to protest and say, “Medieval schoolmasters didn’t have to learn how to manage a website and run online ads for Open Houses.” We’re not in the Middle Ages anymore and running a school in our society is complex.

It may help to think of a flourishing classical Christian school on the analogy of a symphony rather than a solo performance. School communities have many aspects that must be in harmony and must grow and develop in harmony. The principal (and head of school) are not solo musicians who light up the stage in their area of competence and skill. They are more like conductors who keep time for everyone and bring different sections of instrument in at the right time for their special moment. Schools grow and improve because many things are going well in many different areas of the school. 

Principals can’t just play to their strengths. They must operate in their weaknesses until the school has grown to the point that they can raise up other leaders who will outshine them. When you don’t have a marketing director, you still have to do marketing. And in fact, you will never be able to afford a marketing director, until you have done improved your marketing to a certain point. It’s a painful but true irony that these core functions of the school need attention most, when you have the least resources to give them. 

The best analogy for this that I have treasured over the years is the plate spinning routine of Henrik Bothe. Watch the whole video if you are an administrator at a small school, and everything about the experience of the school year will suddenly make sense.

4) Have you considered that being a principal is a leadership nightmare because you are always navigating several different audiences?

Let me explain what I mean. In most businesses, it’s clear who the customer is and the product is fairly simple. In the business of private schools, the parent is the customer, but your chief relationship is with their child. The child’s education is the product but it’s a challenging project with a long time horizon and inevitable ups and downs that you can’t entirely control. This creates a unique communication dynamic to say the least. Add to this the ethos of a Christian school, and many of the leadership challenges that churches have suddenly enter into the mix. Add in the specifics of classical education with all the variety of expectations that parents will have of that term, and now most of the things you can say are liable to misunderstanding from a number of fronts. Lastly, consider that your customers are paying a price tag for their children’s education, when most parents pay nothing to send their kids to government schools. They are understandably going to be pickier and more demanding about all aspects of the school.

As my Head of School often says at prospective parent interviews, “We deal with people’s money, their religion and their kids.” If that isn’t a situation fraught with rhetorical peril, I don’t know what is. Emphasize too much a particular denominational distinctive at your Christian school and half your audience might grow concerned. Talk up the discipline and rigor of classical education, and some parents may ask where the joy and love of learning have gone. Tell them about the joy and play-learning, the discovery centers and discussions, and some will ask why their child’s test scores aren’t high enough and why they keep hearing about this other student misbehaving in class.

One of the main lessons I learned in my first few years as an administrator is the need to understand and sympathize with the parent’s perspective. When I was just a teacher, I was so focused on exploring the philosophy of classical education and on my own experiences of teaching that I couldn’t envision things through a parent’s eyes. A principal must be able to toggle back and forth between his teacher hat and his parent hat. 

I’ve also been really helped by the statement of Keith Nix, Head of School at Veritas in Richmond, that school leaders should emphasize more what they are for, rather than what they are against. Polemics have their place, but speaking in terms of what you are for enables you to strike the right note for multiple concerned parties. You can pair together seemingly contradictory goals like ‘joy’ in the classroom and ‘order’, high standards and high support, excellence and intentional care. It’s also important to remember that when you speak at events, you are being heard both by teachers and by parents, by board members and by fellow staff. In some ways the role of a principal is mediator in chief. In another sense you must have the conviction to stake out a direction and say hard truths that neither party may be particularly happy to hear. 

5) Lastly, have you considered that being a principal is an ideal job for a teacher and philosopher who can maintain equanimity in an active life? 

If you’ve read all that I’ve shared so far and are still undeterred, the role of a principal might just be the noble task for you. So, I want to end on a positive note. The particular beauty of a role like principal is how it combines several exciting and challenging tasks. The role begs for a leader with some level of philosophical bent, especially at a classical Christian school. If you are to stake out a direction for the academic programs of the whole school, you should ideally do so from a deep well. But you must also be conversant with practical concerns. You should be idealistic enough to challenge the status quo of modern education and realistic enough to work improvements out gradually with real people in real time. 

You should be a competent teacher, not only because you may need to substitute for kindergarten or seniors, but also because you must teach teachers the art of teaching, the art of resolving conflict well, the practical details of lunchroom expectations, and the grand philosophy of education.

The ideal principal has a hunger to learn and grow and half wishes for a life of contemplation and study but loves the activity of people and planning too much to fully embrace scholarship alone. For the principal the active life of school leadership is cast with a contemplative hue. Practical application and philosophical consideration must be blended well. The principal must love pedagogy and people, building programs and performance evaluations. 

So, you think you want to be a principal? It’s a noble task if you have what it takes!

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In Good to Great, author Jim Collins argues from longitudinal research that one reason organizations fail to make the jump from good to great is that they never land on their “one big thing.” He calls this “thing” the Hedgehog Concept. Collins defines it as a simple crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of the organization’s superior distinctive, economic engine, and abiding passion (97). Collins writes, “The essence of a Hedgehog Concept is to attain piercing clarity about how to produce the best long-term results, and then exercising relentless discipline to say, ‘No thank you,’ to opportunities that fail the hedgehog test” (Good to Great and the Social Sectors, 17).

In this blog, my final installment in a three-part series on Good to Great (you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here), I will explore how Christian, classical schools can identify their Hedgehog Concept. Like my other two articles, it is important to remember that much of Collin’s advice is designed for businesses, not schools. Collins himself acknowledged this limitation, which led him to publish an accompanying monograph for social sectors. Nevertheless, in my own thinking, I have discovered that there are quite a few helpful instances of overlap between the business and social sector, including the need for a Hedgehog Concept. In what follows, I will unpack further the notion of a Hedgehog Concept and then offer specific guidance regarding how Christian, classical schools can find theirs. 

Understanding the Hedgehog

There are three key parts to the Hedgehog Concept, all of which work together in a synergistic way. The result is a crystalline center, which becomes the core business. Once the core business is identified, the company must exercise rigorous discipline to resist opportunities that would lead it away from its center.

So what are the three parts? I will take them one at a time.

#1: What can you be the best in the world at?

This may sound like a humorous, if not arrogant, question. But it forces an organization to think deeply about what truly sets it apart in the marketplace. It is not enough to simply identify a list of core competencies. This list may get you a sly, maneuverable fox, but not a hedgehog.

Moreover, this circle is not asking what the organization wants to be the best at. Collins writes, “Every company would like to be the best at something, but few actually understand–with piercing insight and egoless clarity–what they actually have the potential to be the best at and, just as important, what they cannot be the best at” (98). In order to gain this kind of understanding, organizations need to be honest with themselves, confronting the brutal facts about what assets set them apart and what constraints might provide clarity on the direction they should focus.

It is tempting for companies who are doing well–meeting their quarterly goals and so on–to feel that they are on the path the greatness. But Collins warns that this could actually be the curse of competence. To transcend this curse, companies must resist the temptation to become complacent with brief instances of success. To achieve exceptional results over the long-term, companies should take encouragement from short-term results while continuing to strive to find their hedgehog concept, a process that took the good-to-great companies fours years on average to find.

#2: What drives your economic engine?

To identify the second circle within the hedgehog, Collins asks, “If you could pick one and only one ratio–profit per x–to systematically increase over time, what x would have the greatest and most sustainable impact on your economic engine?” (104). 

For example, Walgreens made the jump from good to great when it identified its primary economic denominator as profit per customer visit. This decision led them to redesign their building design, product line, and pricing around maximizing the productivity of each customer visit. For Gillette, another good-to-great company, it would not make sense for its engine to be driven by customer visits because it does not own brick-and-mortar stores. Instead, Gillette concentrated its engine power on product per customer. Gillette focused on gaining customer loyalty through both repeated purchases (e.g. razor cartridges) and high profit purchases (e.g. non-disposable razors) (107). 

For nonprofit organizations, like schools, they cannot locate their economic engine in a profit metric for obvious reasons. But nor is it sufficient to simply focus on other sources of cash flow, which Collins initially thought. What Collins learned in his research is that in the social sector, the economic engine needs to be retooled into a resource engine with three key components: time, money, and brand. The question then becomes: “How can we develop a sustainable resource engine to deliver superior performance results relative to our mission?” (Social Sector, 18).

#3: What are you deeply passionate about?

The final concentric circle in Collins’ hedgehog concept is all about passion. This is the most straightforward and intuitive of the three circles. As organizations find their hedgehog concept, their one big “thing,” it must be something that the people are excited about. Whether it is the product itself or what the company stands for, there must be an inner motivation that drives them. It is this passion that will help companies push through glass ceilings and sustain results over the long-term.

Identifying a Christian, Classical Hedgehog Concept

As we begin to explore what a Christian, classical hedgehog concept might look like, it can be helpful to shift around the order in which we tackle the circles. As a nonprofit, schools should begin with their cause–what they are passionate about and, ultimately, why they exist. When we can get clear on the mission, we can then proceed through the conceptual process.

#1: What is your school deeply passionate about?

For most Christian, classical educators, our passion falls into a few buckets. As educators, we delight in children. We love their joy, curiosity, and enthusiasm. We regularly catch glimmers of who they can become as their personal strengths and interests emerge. We are passionate about coming alongside our students to help them steward the gifts God has given them and to help them flourish as human beings. 

We are also passionate about God’s redemptive work in human history. It is a stunning reality of the gospel that God has enacted a plan to reconcile fallen creation to Himself. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the kingdom of God is breaking into our world, bringing hope and redemption for all peoples of the earth who put their trust in Christ. Christian, classical education is one way we as Christians can participate in impactful work for the kingdom.

Finally, we are passionate about real and deep learning that is rooted in something bigger than, for example, workplace preparation. When we reimagine learning as the pursuit of goodness, truth, and beauty, and the formation of virtue in students, we grow excited about going on this journey ourselves and inviting students with us in this transformative process.

#2: What can your school do better than anyone else?

This is a tricky one. There are lots of ways to answer this question and different classical schools will have slightly different answers depending on their size, history, and context (see the introduction to this article for all the different potential areas of focus). However, from a philosophical and curricular standpoint, there is a unifying thread that necessarily connects truly classical schools no matter what size and location. 

Here are a few examples:

• Learn in a genuine community of inquiry through discussion-based learning
• Facilitate organic student growth, free of checking the boxes of bureaucratic state standards
• Read the classics of western civilization, contemplating and digesting the riches of the tradition
• Prepare future leaders with strong character and rhetorical skills 
• Equip young Christian men and women to lead lives of meaning and purpose

What about sports programs, school musicals, financial accessibility, and academic accolades? These components may be part of a particular strategic plan or initiative, but they are likely not central to the school’s hedgehog concept. For classical schools, leaders need to keep the main thing the main thing: equipping students with the knowledge, virtues, and skills they need to flourish Through a time-tested curriculum, and commitment to preserving the best of the past while gleaning insights of the present, classical schools can set apart themselves from other schools.

#3: What drives the resource engine for your school?

As you may recall, Collins believes there are three components to a nonprofit’s resource engine: time, money, and brand. The goal is to connect this resource engine to the organization’s passion and what it does best. While there is much to be said on this topic, I will comment briefly on money and brand, saving time for another day (ironically).

From a financial perspective, schools receive revenue from, generally speaking, tuition and fundraising. Therefore, schools need to exercise both business acumen and fundraising skill. They need to think carefully about how much it will cost to run the school and create a sustainable financial plan to cover these expenses. Ideally, the school will cover most, if not all, of its operational expenses with hard income (e.g. tuition and fees), freeing up fundraising efforts to fund infrastructure projects and longterm strategic goals.

On the brand component, schools can help power their resource engine by earning a reputation of achieving its mission with excellence. This reputation, which takes time to develop through consistent practices and results, will reinforce what a school can charge for tuition and how much it can raise. In this way, the resource engine works synergistically along with the other circles of the hedgehog concept. The cause of the school’s passion will mobilize donors to give. As the brand improves, emotional goodwill and mindshare will increase, growing the school’s reputation in the community. This in turn will lead to increased enrollment, more alumni, and a wider donor base. This phenomenon of momentum, which takes time over a period of sustained effort, Collins calls the Flywheel Effect.

Conclusion

In order for Christian, classical schools to faithfully serve students over the long-term, they need to identify and commit to their Hedgehog Concept. The concept begins with the emergence of a passion to equip future generations of Christians with the knowledge, skills, and virtues they need to flourish both individually and as members of society. It is then augmented with an understanding of what the school contributes to families in the communities it touches: Christ-centered, liberal arts education. Finally, the school’s Hedgehog Concept is complete when it hones in on a resource engine that connects all three circles so that they reinforce each other for longterm institutional sustainability.

1. “Price, Product, Process: A Conceptual Update” in I&P, Vol. 40, No. 10. Independent School Management.

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Leadership has been studied from many angles in an attempt to delineate all the factors that make great leaders. While there are common threads among all the different schools of thought, a singular definition is elusive. It is easy to tell when leadership is being done well, but how do we replicate the traits, circumstances and contingent factors that went into making any given person an outstanding leader?

Defining leadership, though, isn’t all that hard. A leader brings a group from one place to another in a coordinated way. I like the simple definition of leadership in Rare Leadership, “leading is primarily about guiding the group that does the work” (32). A dear friend of mine, Tasha Chapman, who teaches leadership at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, shared her image of a leader. She talks about a group needing to cross a river. Getting the whole group across takes leadership through planning, teamwork, vision, inspiration, motivation and timeliness. A leader cannot do all the work if everyone is going to get across the river. Effort must be distributed, yet coordinated. There must be direction (get to the other side) and yet flexibility to meet changing circumstances along the way. Applying this image to the classroom, we can think of a class making it from the first day of class to the last day of class as something like a river crossing. The teacher is the leader who can envision the destination and keeps the group together all along the way.

In this article, we’ll explore several principles of leadership drawing on a number of resources. Most principles of leadership at fairly simple in concept, and yet to apply them well takes practice and coaching. Whether you are a teacher or an administrator, hopefully an overview of these six leadership principles will enable you to grow the leadership quotient in your classroom or school.

1. Clear, Simple Communication

The first principle of leadership is effective communication. There are so many ways in which we mis-communicate, largely because we know what we mean and we assume everyone else knows what we mean, and yet something happens that interferes in the interchange. And yet, communication can be effective when we understand a few basic ideas.

I place clarity and simplicity on two ends of a continuum pertaining to the amount of words we communicate. Often times we attempt to clarify what we mean by throwing more and more words into the mix. So clarity represents one end of the spectrum. Simplicity, on the other hand, is about using a few words as possible. These concepts create a tension for the communicator. I need enough words to be clear to my listener, and yet not so elaborate that I lose simplicity.

This is something I reference in my work on habit training. The second step of habit training is describing the details of the habit. Here the teacher or parent needs to break down the habit into a very simple set of instructions so that the child is able to succeed. I find this principle to be transferrable to all situations, from classroom routines to emergency procedures. Clear, simple communication is the first task of leadership.

For a teacher, minute by minute of every day, communicating with students is job number one. Obviously there are other forms of communication that a teacher must engage in, with fellow teachers, with parents, with administration, etc. Applying the concept of simplicity and clarity works at all levels of communication. Keeping all these different parties in the know leads to the next principle of leadership.

2. Coordinate Your Team

The second principle is a cognate of the first. Keeping your team together and pulling in the same direction is at the heart of leadership. Effective communication only works within a community. This is an idea hinted at by Peter Drucker, who uses the word “communion” to describe a group of people pursuing a common purpose (The Essential Drucker 341). Notice the interesting cognate group: common, communion, community, communication.

This is a source of profound meaning for a teacher. Your class is your community for a year. Building a bond – a communion – with your students is a genuine treasure. Coordinating your team, your class or your school begins with a common purpose.

Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why, writes about the power of expressing your common purpose. He defines the why as “the purpose, cause or belief” that you pursue as an organization. (39) The why can be differentiated from the what and the how. What you do is usually pretty easy to identify. In the classroom, we read books, we solve problems, we take tests, etc. The how is likewise an easy proposition to express. “We use classroom discussions . . .” “We employ a mentorship model of instruction . . .” Both the what and the how, though, aren’t what build a common purpose. Sinek argues we need a why. Clarifying the why can be difficult, because it is often felt and sensed, but hard to articulate. He shares that clarity of the why “comes from absolute conviction in an ideal bigger than oneself.” (134) So what is it that is the highest ideal of your classroom? Finding the why of your classroom, your school, or your team is essential to keeping everyone moving in the same direction. This feeds back into your communication. Why are we preparing for the upcoming performance? Because we are on this mission to achieve our why.

3. Long-range Objectives

Lesson planning is all about connecting the day’s lesson to objectives. Often we are thinking in term of unit objectives, subject competencies and grade-level benchmarks. The teacher as a leader must consider a number of objectives on the horizon and lead the group toward those goals every day, each lesson.

Clarifying long-range objectives is the third principle of leadership. In order to clarify these long-range objectives, one must have perspective. David Allen in his book Getting Things Done describes perspective with the analogy of an airplane at different altitudes. He calls 50,000 feet the altitude of purpose. It considers the question, “Why am I on this planet?” and envisions what your life ought to look like. At 40,000 feet, the question becomes, “what is my vision for the next 5 years?” At 30,000 feet, you set goals that will help you achieve this vision. The first three altitudes envision long-range objectives. The next three levels bring planning closer to the “now.” At 20,000 feet, you identify areas of focus in life, considering your main areas of responsibility. At 10,000 feet, you choose the right projects that help leverage each area of focus. And at 0 feet, or the runway, you are “just doing,” or as Allen calls it, taking the “next action.” (51-53)

I find this framework really helpful for coordinating long-term and short-term objectives. You really don’t need to spend a lot of time at the 30,000 to 50,000 foot altitude. These are ideas that are best considered during a long break or a focused day-retreat. And while many of these are framed around the grownup who has a career and different spheres of responsibility, I think we can envision these things for our students. Why has God put these children on the planet? What will the next five years look like for this group of individuals? What goals in the near span will help them flourish?

The curriculum often dictates the lower levels of planning. The areas of focus tend to be the academic subjects. The right projects might be a science lab or written essay. The next action is today’s assignment. But school is so much more than the domains of knowledge if we are committed to children as whole persons and to creating formational environments. Are there areas of focus, projects and next actions that help a child grow in personal responsibility or kindness toward others?

4. Prioritization

Hand in hand with long-range objectives is prioritization. The day-to-day life of a classroom can be chaotic. You’ve got a student absent one day, there’s a field trip another day, and a fire drill thrown in there during the week. As much as we plan, we can get thrown off that plan quite easily. So, to meet the shifts and changes that come our way, we need to learn how to prioritize based on a clear understanding of our objectives.

The person who has revolutionized my understanding of leadership is Jocko Willink. His book Extreme Ownership stands out as a one-of-a-kind manual of leadership principles. A former Navy Seal who served in the battle of Ramadi, Willink has had to reprioritize in the most extreme circumstances. He writes:

“Just as in combat, priorities can rapidly shift and change. When this happens, communication of that shift to the rest of the team, both up and down the chain of command, is critical. Teams must be careful to avoid target fixation on a single issue. They cannot fail to recognize when the highest priority task shifts to something else. The team must maintain the ability to quickly reprioritize efforts and rapidly adapt to a constantly changing battlefield.”

Extreme Ownership, 162

The battlefield is obviously different than a classroom, and yet target fixation can happen to us as teachers. It’s easy to get overly fixated on low test scores in math, or find yourself inundated with essays to grade. When these dynamics face us as teachers, we need to reconnect with our long-range objectives, communicate effectively and make a call about the most important next action. Your assessment of the situation might lead you to ask a fellow teacher to take your group to lunch so you can do a math workshop with some students. You might need to reconfigure your schedule slightly to make solid progress on grading. But, you might determine that despite low test scores and a backlog of essays to mark, we really need to do some teambuilding as a class to learn about kindness and care for each other. Prioritization comes from a well-considered perspective of long-range goals.

5. Empower Your People

This is a principle of leadership that operates at all levels of the school. The administration should empower the teachers to take initiative to achieve the mission of the school. Similarly, the teacher should empower the students to take hold of the tools that will enable them to achieve forward momentum on their own long-range objectives. This can sound scary, to entrust young ones with power. Aren’t they liable to fail, break something or take advantage of whatever freedoms they are given?

Yet, if we believe that children are born persons, then it is incumbent on us to empower our students. Educating young ones is simultaneously calling them to high standards and providing substantive support. I like the idea John Maxwell encapsulates in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, when he explains his 20^th law, “Explosive Growth.” The central idea is that good leaders lead leaders. In other words, teachers are not leading followers, their students are actually leaders themselves. Listen to some of the phrases Maxwell uses in his description of “leaders who develop leaders:” “focus on strengths,” “give power away,” “invest time in others.” (210) Empowering your people means leaning into their strengths through the investment of time.

I really like how our third graders at school have been empowered by their teacher. They are responsible for caring for the plants in the school. Each of them learned about their plants – what it’s called, how much water it should have each week, removing dead leaves, etc. Every Thursday you can find these students roaming the school with their water to tend to the plants. They have the privilege to go into any classroom to tend to the plants. I’m fascinated by how little supervision is required of them. They politely ask to water their plant, the go about their business and then return to their teacher. The plants look great, and the students have a sense of pride in the work they’ve done. These students have been empowered to take genuine responsibility. They have been entrusted with something of significance. They are now looked upon as experts about the plant they care for. You can imagine how this empowerment might play out over the course of the next several years. They’ve build trust, responsibility, accomplishment and will be ready for the next level and the next level after that in years to come.

6. Cultivate Humility

Level-five leadership is a concept Jim Collins develops in Good to Great. The kind of leader he is referring to is both driven by the cause or purpose of the business (what Simon Sinek calls the “why”) but also humble. You would see in this kind of person a mix of ambition and quiet reserve. The difference between a level-five leader and other (perhaps more typical) leaders is that a level-five leader is driven by the cause, whereas other kinds of leaders might be driven by personal achievement, financial gain, or competition with others. Collins writes:

“Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy – these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.” (Good to Great, 12-13)

Good to Great, 12-13

A teacher can be a level-five leader, turning away from the pathway of the “sage on the stage” to a leader of students who are pursuing a cause and a purpose. I am reminded of the most powerful Jedi in the Star Wars universe, Yoda. When we first meet him, he is a humble, bumbling, old swamp dweller. We soon learn that he is powerful in the ways of the Force. He begins to train Luke Skywalker, who departs before his training is complete. Luke is the protagonist, the one who is on the hero’s journey. Yoda, the teacher, is the level-five leader who is driven by the cause of the good side of the force, who must protect and promote the values of the Jedi order. And yet chooses the path of humility to train the hero.

One of the most transformational moments in my career as a teacher came when I realized I was not the one on the hero’s journey. Instead, the hero’s journey is what my students are pursuing. I get to guide them, like Yoda – or Merlin, or Gandalf, or Dumbledore – for a short time along their journey. Cultivating your own humility is not about being pretending to be bashful (false humility) nor about beating yourself up (negative self-talk). Instead, cultivating humility comes through being captivated by a majestic vision or a compelling cause. Your will, your personality, your ambition are all directed not at your own advancement, but in promoting something higher than yourself.

Putting It All Together

Certainly there are more leadership principles than these six, but I find these to be fairly universal when reading books and manuals on leadership. The point is that effective leadership can be broken down into several component parts. And yet the all need to be operating together. The six principles combine into sets. The first two pertain to communication. The second two are about planning. And the final two are about managing. Yet in each of the six principles, something from the others is embedded within it. Take humility, the sixth principle. Notice how true humility comes from a commitment to a compelling vision, which we talked about in principle two with the “why.”

So breaking it down in this way means we have to put it all back together into a singular concept of leadership. The idea here is that a teacher is a leader. A teacher is constantly communicating to students, fellow teachers, administrators, and parents. A teacher is planning from lesson plans to scopes and sequence to curriculum maps, planning is what we do. And a teacher is managing students and projects. If you weren’t already convinced, hopefully this article has helped you to see how much of a leader a teacher actually is.

I close with a concept from Stephen Covey. The seventh habit in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is “sharpen the saw,” which is an analogy for continual improvement. As individuals, we need to take care of ourselves physically, spiritually, and emotionally. The work we do as leaders can dull the blade of the saw, and so we are wise to invest in ourselves for our long-term wellbeing and effectiveness as teachers. As a team of teachers, we need to support one another, offering advice and assisting one another in the accomplishment of our mission to make a lasting impact in the lives of the children given into our care.

If you are an administrator, understanding that your teachers are leaders creates a framework for professional development. The six principles laid out here can be used as training concepts. Your role as an administrator is key to enabling the teachers to be ever mindful of the mission, the cause, and the core values of the school. Utilize some of the training time during the year to promote continual improvement. A spiritual retreat, relational activities or workout sessions can emphasize your own commitment to supporting teachers’ efforts to “sharpen the saw.”

Now let us follow our true leader, the shepherd of our souls, who has purchased our redemption through his blood. As a teacher, he laid down his life for us that we might live. May we as teachers follow in his footsteps.

If you liked this article and want to “sharpen the saw” by learning new techniques for the classroom, check out Kolby’s eBook The Craft of Teaching which applies concepts from Teach Like a Champion 2.0 to the classical classroom.

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A few years later, Collins wrote Good to Great and the Social Sectors (2005). In this companion monograph, Collins draws out five key issues leaders face when applying the seven characteristics of great companies to nonprofit organizations like churches, hospitals, and schools. One issue, which I addressed in my first article, is that businesses and nonprofits evaluate success differently. Whereas businesses almost exclusively evaluate success by financial output, nonprofits measure success by how effectively they are achieving their mission. This sort of evaluation is admittedly more complex, Collins writes, but it is possible when leaders gain clarity on desired outcomes and establish metrics they can rigorously track. 

In this article, I will examine an additional issue nonprofit leaders face when applying Good to Great principles: getting the right people on the bus amidst social sector constraints. I can imagine school leaders nodding already. They know how difficult it is to recruit, hire, and retain faculty and staff, especially in light of tight budgets. Despite this challenge, I contend that it is possible to attract and retain great teachers through cultivating the right culture and selectively choosing the right people. For Christian educators, these people will be self-motivated, humble men and women who are devoted to Christ and love both children and learning.

First Who, Then What

Before I consider the unique constraints educational leaders are under when staffing their schools, I will first summarize what Collins means by “First Who…Then What.” Essentially, what he is getting at here is that before leaders settle on their final business model, or organizational strategy, they need to first get the right people on the bus. This may strike you as counterintuitive. While it is reasonable to expect that establishing the new vision would logically precede hiring the right people–indeed, attracting the right people through the vision–this is not what Collins and his team found. They discovered that with the right people onboard, the organization as a whole becomes stronger–more versatile and more driven to succeed–even before the new direction is set (41).

In fact, for Collins, it is precisely this ordering of “First Who, Then What,” that differentiates a “Level 5” from a “Level 4” leader. Whereas a Level 4 leader sets the vision and hires a crew to help make the vision happen, the Level 5 leader builds a superior executive team and together they figure out the best path to institutional excellence. The vision and people could be the same, but the emphasis is different. The Level 4 approach is leader-dependent, while the Level 5 approach is team-centered. For this reason, it is even more important to get the right people on board.

On the sensitive topic of people decisions, Collins is careful to point out that the “great” companies made efforts to be rigorous in cultivating a culture of discipline, but they were not ruthless in how they treated people (52). They consistently applied exacting standards at all times and at all levels, to be sure, but not in a capricious sort of way. These companies were clear and predictable in their expectations as well as thoughtful in performance evaluations. Employees, therefore, could trust their supervisors and need not worry about their positions when the going got tough. In fact, six of the eleven good-to-great companies recorded zero layoffs, and four recorded one or two layoffs, for years on end. Conversely, the comparison companies suffered innumerable layoffs and incessant restructuring over time (54). The path to greatness, it turns out, is not by the swing of the ax, but the careful use of the pruner.

The Question of Compensation

So how can school leaders get the right people on the bus? It is time to address the question of compensation. Certainly, compensation plays a role in attracting talent. Teachers, like all humans, need to provide for their families and livelihood. They ought to be compensated reasonably for their work. All too often, unfortunately, private Christian schools are known for low compensation and meager benefits. While it is outside the purview of this article to address a solution in depth, I do want to assure readers that it is possible to compensate teachers well and enable the institution to be profitable when the right financial structure is put in place.

However, even if schools can offer reasonable compensation packages, it is simply the case that compensation is not going to be the primary driver for attracting great teachers. The best teachers are not in it to make a competitive salary, but to make a difference. Thus, the key advantage schools have in attracting talent, over and against the business world, is the invitation to join a mission infused with meaning. The mission for Christian, classical educators is to impact the lives of young people, helping them thrive as image-bearers and equipping them with the knowledge, virtues, and skills to serve society and Christ’s kingdom. It is ultimately the distinctiveness of this kind of mission that is going to attract great teachers.

Compensation is not only used to attract talent, of course. It is also used in many industries to incentivize good performance. This is growing more and more common, not only in the business world, but in schools. However, Collins and his team discovered some good news for organizations with tight budgets: compensation is not an effective motivator for producing long-term excellent results. Collins writes,

The comparison companies in our research–those that failed to become great–placed greater emphasis on using incentives to “motivate” otherwise unmotivated or undisciplined people. The great companies, in contrast, focused on getting and hanging on to the right people in the first place–those who are productively neurotic, those who are self-motivated and self-disciplined, those who wake up every day, compulsively driven to do the best they can because it is simply part of their DNA. (Social Sectors, 15 ).

As school leaders consider how compensation impacts attracting, retaining, and motivating great teachers, Collins’ research offers both encouragement and a subtle challenge. The encouragement is that schools can attract great teachers apart from extravagant compensation packages. They offer a truly unique benefit: the opportunity to invest in a life of meaning and purpose by helping young people and serving Christ’s kingdom. The subtle challenge, nonetheless, is to practice rigorous financial prudence, taking advantage of the best budgetary practices in independent school management, in order to compensate teachers fairly so they serve at their schools with a general sense of financial peace.

Attracting and Retaining the Best 

If compensation is not going to be the primary attraction for great teachers, how can schools attract the sort of self-disciplined and self-motivated people that Collins describes? How can school leaders effectively draw the right men and women to join the mission?

First, Collins advises a rigorous and selective hiring process. If school leaders are going to find the very best, they need to develop a way to evaluate what they mean by “best.” Once this process is created, they need not fear deterring top candidates from too rigorous of a process. In actuality, the sort of candidates schools should be after will be drawn to the challenge. These exceptional men and women will be interested in working somewhere that shares their values for excellence and hard work. A rigorous selection process sets the tone for what sort of culture the school maintains. Top candidates will pick up on this immediately.

Second, Collins recommends early assessment mechanisms. These mechanisms will enable school leaders early on to determine whether the faculty member is a long-term fit. In this approach, the first six-twelve months function like an extended interview. As Collins writes, “You don’t know a person until you work with them” (15). In this way, early assessment mechanisms will avoid delaying the determination of a bad fit. Unlike companies, which typically follow strict evaluative processes for determining the retention of an employee, schools can struggle to let people go. After all, schools, unlike businesses, are communities united around a greater purpose. Members of these educational communities share core values that bond them together in a unique and transformative way. Consequently, it can be very difficult to part ways with teachers after years of serving in the trenches together. By implementing clear and objective assessment mechanisms early in the teacher’s employment, there will be immediate clarity on how things are going. Moreover, these assessments will communicate the culture of support and discipline the school seeks to maintain. As teachers who are not good fits experience this culture, they will often self-select out (14). 

With all this talk of rigorous selectivity, assessment mechanisms, and the desire for institutional excellence, it is important as Christian educators to remember an important truth. While school leaders are ultimately responsible for creating a strong faculty plan and culture, in no way is this license to discourage or objectify members of faculty and staff. Regardless of abilities and outcomes, practices pertaining to attracting, assessing, and retaining teachers must align with the broader educational philosophy of our Christian commitments. This includes treating teachers as persons and mentoring them to pursue wholeheartedly God’s will for their lives.

Sample Interview Questions

If recruiting the right people is a top priority for schools, then it becomes crucial to discern who these people are during the hiring process. In The Ideal Team Player, author Patrick Lencioni identifies three core traits that ideal team members possess: humility, hunger to do one’s very best, and smartness as it pertains to connecting with people (think EQ). To this end, here are some sample interview questions Christian school leaders might ask to discern whether the candidates possess these traits.

1. What motivates you as a person? Would you consider yourself self-motivated? Why or why not?
2. Describe how your faith in Christ impacts your daily life. What role does the local church play?
3. Share an example in which you actively sought to help or serve someone. What motivated you to step in and help?
4. Share an example in which a student encountered struggle in your classroom. How did you respond? What was the result? How did you include the student’s parents in the process?
5. Have you ever worked with a difficult colleague or boss? How did you handle that situation? 
6. What is the hardest you have ever worked on something in your life?
7. Provide two examples of colleagues you enjoyed working with. What did you appreciate about them? What did they contribute to the team? 

Of course, a rigorous and selective hiring process for schools is going to include more than an interview or two. It could also include lesson demonstrations, meetings with potential colleagues, essay responses, and the like. Whatever a school decides, the point is to not shy away from taking the time to find the right people. For, according to Collins, getting the right people on the bus makes all the difference.

Conclusion

There is much more that could be said in this article on the topic of attracting, hiring, and retaining the right teachers. We must remember in this discussion that people who go through the life cycle of being an employee at a school are not objects, but men and women made in God’s image. They are not mere human resources to be manipulated or discarded at the school’s will. Whether a teacher becomes a long-term member of the school community or not, school leaders would do well to treat each teacher with dignity and respect. The lure of institutional excellence is enticing. Noble is the aspiration to advance the kingdom of God through classical, Christian education. But only when core values are upheld, especially a firm commitment to treat all members of the school community as persons, will an institution thrive for the good of society and the glory of God.

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A few years later, Collins wrote a short sequel, this time targeting a nonprofit audience, entitled Good to Great and the Social Sectors (2005). In this monograph, Collins thinks through how the seven characteristics apply to nonprofits like churches, hospitals, charities, and schools. He is careful to note that the goal for nonprofits is not to pretend they are businesses, but rather, to become “great.” He writes, “We must reject the idea–well-intentioned, but dead wrong–that the primary path to greatness in the social sector is to become ‘more like a business” (1). The solution, he believes, is to leave modes of mediocrity behind and replace them with habits of greatness. 

In this article, I will explore what Collins has to say about making the jump from good to great in schools. In particular, I will explore the first of five issues Collins suggests educational leaders might encounter as they seek to apply the seven characteristics of great companies in their schools. This is the issue of defining “great” and calibrating success without traditional business metrics.

Seven Characteristics of “Great” Companies

To begin, let me briefly define the seven characteristics of companies that made the jump to greatness in Collins’ research. Collins and his team studied twenty-eight companies, eleven of them qualifying as “great” companies in contrast to the other seventeen. To distill the characteristics, his team of researchers carefully studied what the eleven great companies all had in common that distinguished them from the comparison companies (7). 

The results of the research are the following characteristics:

1. Level Five Leadership: Leaders with a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will
2. First Who, Then What: Getting the right people on the bus before finalizing the business model
3. Confront the Brutal Facts: Unwavering faith in the future of the business coupled with the relentless pursuit of current reality
4. Hedgehog Concept: Getting clear on the core business through reaching the center of three concentric circles (see below)
5. Culture of Discipline: A work culture blend of integrity, humility, ambition, and entrepreneurship
6. Technology Accelerators: The careful selection of technology to advance the company
7. The Flywheel: Trusting the slow process of doing the right things to build momentum over time

It is interesting to think that the secret to greatness could be boiled down to seven relatively simple characteristics. And yet, this is exactly what Collins and his team discovered. Of course, applying these principles is easier said than done. There is a reason why the companies he studied were true outliers. But the silver lining is that any organization, including schools, can increase effectiveness and get on the path to greatness through the careful study and implementation of these organizational characteristics.

Five Issues for Social Sectors 

With the business framework of Good to Great in view, let us begin to think through how the seven characteristics might apply in social sectors, like schools. When engaged in this task, Collins observes five issues that tended to come up in light of the difference between for-profits and not-for-profits (3). Here they are:

1. Defining “Great”: Calibrating success without business metrics
2. Level 5 Leadership: Getting things done within a diffuse power structure
3. First Who: Getting the right people on the bus within social sector constraints
4. The Hedgehog Concept: Rethinking the economic engine without a profit motive
5. Turning the Flywheel: Building momentum by building the brand

In the remainder of this blog, I will focus on the first issue: defining “great” and calibrating success without traditional business metrics.

Defining “Great”: Inputs and Outputs

In business, the outputs for evaluating effectiveness are fairly straightforward: financial returns and achievement of corporate purpose. A business at the end of the day is evaluated by its financial margins. In the social sector, however, it is significantly more complex. You cannot measure the success of a nonprofit by the size of the budget, efficiency of expense ratios, or breadth of donor circles. To be sure, these can serve as helpful metrics for governance purposes, but they do not get at the heart at gauging whether the mission is being achieved successfully.

To evaluate “greatness” in nonprofits, Collins advises to make this crucial distinction between inputs and outputs. In the corporate world, money serves as both an input and output of greatness. Companies are evaluated both by how much money enters the company (the input variable), and, more importantly, how much money is produced (the output variable).

For example, if I were to start a snow cone company, I would certainly need an input of cash. The more capital I possessed up front, the more ice, syrup, and freezer storage I could acquire for production. The goal, of course, is the output of cash–how much revenue I can generate from sales. Therefore both monetary input and output play a key role in measuring the greatness of my snow cone aspirations, but especially monetary output.

Like my hypothetical snow cone company, an independent school requires an input of cash to cover expenses–items like payroll, facilities, and curricular materials. There will also be an an output of cash–the revenue generated from tuition primarily. But the difference between selling snow cones and educating students is that, for the latter, the tuition dollars themselves do not serve as the measuring stick for how well the school is achieving its mission.

Delivering on the Mission

So if money is not an appropriate output for measuring the greatness of a school, then what is? Surely there are ways to measure greatness. As Collins writes, “To throw our hands up and say, ‘But we cannot measure performance in the social sectors the way you can in business’ is simply a lack of discipline (7). So how do we do it?

For Collins, it is the effectiveness by which the nonprofit delivers on the mission and makes a distinctive impact. For schools, therefore, it is how effective the school achieves its mission of preparing its students for whatever kind of impact they hope to have in the world.

Still, measuring mission delivery can be difficult. To repeat, we cannot simply reduce mission effectiveness to a dollar amount. Collins advises nonprofits to use both quantitative and qualitative means, acknowledging that all measurement indicators are flawed to some degree. So quantitative metrics like test scores, faculty evaluations, parent surveys, annual giving, financial margins, and re-enrollment metrics can and should be used, but we must acknowledge their limitations in telling the full story. The key, writes Collins, is not to find the single perfect indicator, but to land on a consistent and intelligent method of assessing your output results and then tracking your trajectory with rigor (8).

Boards and leadership teams, therefore, need to get clear on what is meant by great performance for their particular school. What is the baseline for delivering on the mission? What are the big-picture goals and how do you know if you are making progress? These are the questions school leaders need to be asking.

Three Outputs of Greatness

Collins suggests three ways for nonprofits to measure outputs of greatness relative to their mission. “Superior Performance” measures the results and efficiency of the organization. “Distinctive Impact” gauges the unique contribution the organization is making to the communities it touches. And “Lasting Endurance” tracks exceptional results over a long period of time.

Applying this framework to schools, here is one way to put meat on the skeleton:

Superior Performance: Results and efficiency on the school’s mission

• Enrollment Over Time
• Student Retention
• Faculty Retention
• Annual Fund YTD Progress 
• Stories of Student Growth
• Stories of Alumni Impact
• Alumni Survey 
• Parent Promoter Score
• Inquiries Per Week
• Observations Per Week

Distinctive Impact: Unique contribution to the communities the school touches

• Like-minded schools visiting for inspiration and guidance
• Contagious families spreading the word about the school
• Alumni increasingly sought for leadership roles and perspectives at work, church, and in the public square
• Partnership with the local community

Lasting Endurance: Exceptional results over a long period of time

• Multigenerational families: Alumni enrolling their children
• Excellence sustained across generations of teachers
• Supporters donate time and money, investing in long-term success of the school
• Strong organization before, during, and after the Head’s tenure 

In sum, to recalibrate the measurement of school success, educational leaders must think through the key ways they can measure mission effectiveness, distinct impact, and lasting endurance. How do these relate to the seven characteristics of “greatness”? Collins writes, “You can think of the entire good-to-great framework as a generic set of variables that correlate strongly with creating the outputs of greatness…Any journey from good to great requires relentlessly adhering to these input variables, rigorously tracking your trajectory on the output variables, and then driving yourself to even higher levels of performance and impact” (8-9).

Conclusion 

Educational leaders must understand that endowment, revenues, cost structure, and income statements are input variables, not output variables, of school greatness. For schools to make the leap, boards and executive teams should think seriously about what variables they want to use to measure the degree of effectiveness in fulfilling the mission of their institution. It is difficult work to be sure, but the effort is worth it. There are generations of children awaiting to be equipped, and it is exciting to think that our schools can play a significant role in this transformative process for the glory of God.

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