Thoughts on Developing Teams in Schools

Leadership and Developing Teams

This article on leadership and developing teams was written for my NPQML: Project example here. Since then I have completed both the NPQSL and NPQH. Developing teams and teaching staff in my school is my remit. I have reflected on the importance of training leaders at all levels to lead a team. This is especially important to deal with the post-covid challenges. You can the transcript of my leading a team training here.

Developing Teams as a School Leader

If we acknowledge the validity of the Leithwood et al statement “School leadership is second only to classroom teaching as an influence on pupil learning.” And that the aim of any school is to improve teaching and learning, then supporting teachers has to be the key leadership behaviour. It is the view of school and middle leaders that it is the skill to coach and develop others that has the biggest impact on school improvement.

I am hoping the NPQML will guide me to be a better coach focused on the development of my teams. I have been attempting to do this by running training programmes for staff. By looking at the McKinsey review of Adult learning and leadership development I may not have implemented this as effectively as I could have done. For instance, I take the responsibility of setting the agenda, ensuring its alignment with my subject development plan focused on ICT. I did not build learning around strategic projects or encourage a peer community to develop. 

Developing teams: A Target to Ensure School Improvement

So a target to ensure improvement would be to create and sustain a collaborative culture. This can be achieved effectively by establishing a mentoring system, demonstrating expected behaviours through role modelling, and fostering team involvement in self-reflection. Teams can analyse the impact of their work. It would be interesting to attempt a collaboration of staff teams across a number of local schools to share ideas and good practices. Since the completion of this article, I am engaged in three such projects in Kent.

From the study, it seems research into the impact of school leadership is increasing and there are multiple initiatives in the early stages of implementation. If the idea on an international scale is to “develop the best” through formal training of school managers and leaders then, surely a formalisation of the in-school development of adult learners would have a similar positive impact. This is the theory behind appraisals and performance management.

The Role of Professional Development in Developing Teams

Often the CPD available in schools is piecemeal and driven by a teacher’s interests. This is less effective than CPD planned from a strategic level. At least this is my experience, I have pushed for and been supported on numerous courses and professional development opportunities both linked to my leadership and curriculum. I can recall only one instance when a senior leader proactively pursued this to address a specific requirement within the school. To motivate and develop the school teams maybe a focus on planned and integrated CPD linked to the SIP would have a huge positive impact; but at a relatively high cost in terms of cost of courses, cover required, disruption to classes etc.

This approach would facilitate a more decentralized model of leadership, where individuals with expertise and dedication in specific areas assume responsibility at various levels within the school hierarchy, fostering a sense of ownership and commitment.

Building a Winning School Team: Your Strategic Playbook for Better Learning

You know what? For all the talk about curriculum, facilities, and technology, the single biggest influence on a student’s success, second only to the magic happening inside a classroom, is the quality of school leadership. That’s a powerful idea, isn’t it? It means that as a leader, your main job is essentially creating the best environment possible for your teachers to thrive—and that means developing strong, cohesive teams.

We aren’t just looking for “good” teams; we’re aiming for high-performing, resilient teams that drive student learning forward. This strategic development can be broken down into four practical, connected areas. Let’s look at how you can do more than just manage staff; you can build a genuine engine for improvement.

Laying the Groundwork: Culture, Trust, and Belonging

Honestly, nothing else works if the foundation is shaky. Think of your school team as a fragile yet powerful machine. If the parts don’t trust each other, the machine won’t just perform poorly—it will eventually break down. This foundational step is all about making your school a place where people genuinely feel safe and valued.

Why Psychological Safety Is Your MVP

The very first brick in this foundation must be trust and psychological safety. Without enough psychological safety, your teams will be limited in what they can achieve. They’ll hold back; they’ll play it safe. You can’t expect teachers to challenge a deeply held, but flawed, practice if they fear being punished or judged.

Teams must focus on building this vulnerable kind of trust. It’s the kind where colleagues can share a mistake without the negative consequences of a failure, instead seeing it as a collective learning moment.

Get to Know Your People—Really Know Them

As a leader, you have to intentionally strive to forge authentic relationships with your staff. This isn’t just about knowing their names and what grades they teach. It’s about truly knowing their personal passions, their professional aspirations, and the things that influence their worldview. When you know a teacher loves building things, for example, you can offer them a chance to lead the new MakerSpace project. You’ve just created a leadership opportunity that advances the school’s mission while leveraging their passion. See how that works?

This deep knowledge positions you to promote their growth and move the whole school forward. And here’s the thing, especially in rural or isolated settings, administrators have to proactively connect and involve everyone to build a truly supportive work environment.

Walk the Talk: Modeling Core Values

Leaders inspire trust by modeling consistency and integrity in their decisions and actions. If you preach collaboration but make all the important decisions behind a closed door, trust crumbles instantly. Transparency is critical. You should communicate openly about decisions and be willing to admit when you’ve made a mistake and actively ask for feedback. That vulnerability creates space for your staff to be vulnerable, too.

Finally, high-performing teams must possess a clear vision and purpose. Help your team create a shared story that defines who you are, why you are there, and what you do. This story must be shared and understood by everyone.

How We Work: Structuring and Operationalizing Teams

Once the culture is right, you need to provide structure. Strategic team development requires clarity in roles, efficient operating procedures, and truly effective communication.

Who Does What? Role Clarity is Everything

Teams should audit the knowledge they possess and the knowledge they need. This shared understanding helps create mental models of how the team functions and what its tasks are. This leads to ultra role clarity. Honestly, it’s easy to waste countless hours because people aren’t sure who is responsible for a task.

Role clarity is incredibly important in multidisciplinary teams (and you should absolutely have them!) to overcome confusion and potential “turf issues.” Everyone—from the classroom teacher to the community mental health staff—must know their lane, even when they cross over.

Don’t Be Afraid of Different Voices: Team Diversity

Teams must embrace diversity and breadth of experience. Drawing on varied expertise leads to better outcomes and decision-making. Multidisciplinary teams, including school and community-employed mental health and educational staff, are crucial for comprehensive support systems. You might also expand leadership teams and create advisory councils with youth and families to diversify the input you receive. Having a variety of perspectives helps avoid blind spots.

Taming the Clock: Improving Meetings and Communication

Let’s be real: most people groan when they hear the word “meeting.” Teams should agree upon communication methods and times. Meetings must be intentional. They should feature learning, discussion, and sharing of expertise, rather than just being a tedious checklist of jobs and dates. Implement meeting best practices—scheduled times, clear agendas, and focusing on decision-making—to promote efficiency. Your teachers have a lot on their plates; don’t waste their time.

Nurturing the Core: Leadership Capacity and Instructional Focus

It’s a truth universally acknowledged in education: skilled educators dramatically increase student achievement. Therefore, school leaders must focus on nurturing teaching capacity. This is where your influence truly shines.

Wearing the Instructional Leader Hat

Instructional leadership models show that the principal drives the educational vision, but they don’t have to do it alone. A principal can act as an instructional leader by:

• Directly Executing: Coaching, giving feedback, and analyzing data personally.
• Coaching the Coach: Training an instructional coach or assistant principal who then executes the vision.
• Delegating the Lead: Designating another person (like an assistant principal) as the instructional lead while focusing on non-instructional tasks, ensuring that designated leader receives solid support from the district.

Spreading the Wealth: Distributed Leadership

Distributed leadership views leadership as activities that are spread across various individuals in the organization, rather than residing only with the principal. As a leader, you must model collaboration and distribute leadership by genuinely valuing your colleagues’ ideas and opinions. You’re not losing power; you’re multiplying it.

The Power of Intrinsic Motivation

Leaders must understand what intrinsically motivates teachers to grow professionally. Providing teachers with autonomy and regarding them as professionals contributes hugely to their effectiveness. Let teachers own their craft. When they feel trusted to make decisions, their motivation goes up, and so does their impact.

Learning From Experience and Failure

Mentorship is most effective when it’s centered around authentic, meaningful experiences. Bring teachers into high-level strategy discussions—calendar planning, parent issues—to give them a broader understanding of the school’s complexities. But crucially, you must engage the teacher in reflective dialogue (before, during, and after implementation) to help them explore leadership principles and learn from experience, including failure. Failure is simply data for the next attempt.

Collective Growth: PLCs and Continuous Improvement

To ensure teaching and learning truly improve, structured collaborative efforts are absolutely vital. This is the operating system that keeps the whole machine running smoothly and getting better with every turn.

Establishing Real Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)

PLCs are groups of educators working collaboratively and continuously, with a focus more on learning than on teaching. The core work focuses on collective learning and shared practice, such as peer coaching and classroom observations.

Authentic PLCs operate by focusing on four questions:

1. What do students need to know?
2. How will we assess the learning?
3. What do we do when students don’t learn the content?
4. What do we do for students who have already mastered the content?

PLCs use common formative assessment results to identify student needs and pinpoint areas of teaching strength or weakness. This keeps the focus squarely on student outcomes, not just on sharing lesson ideas.

Making it Better, Bit by Bit: Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI)

School districts can overcome teaming barriers through targeted guidance and Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) strategies. The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle is a critical tool for CQI . Teams use this simple, powerful cycle to rapidly test small-scale changes to improve quality and efficiency. A team might ask: “If we try communicating solely through shared documents for a week, does it make our planning more efficient?” They plan it, do it, study the results, and then act by adopting, adapting, or abandoning the change.

Teams that achieve the most improvement often focus on multiple teaming indicators simultaneously—they increase multidisciplinary membership and push for efficiency all at once.

Developing a strong school team is, honestly, a lot like building a synergistic engine. You, as the leader, must first lay a foundation of trust and psychological safety (the chassis). Next, you strategically assemble diverse, high-capacity members (the internal components). Finally, you establish smooth, reflective processes (the operating system) that ensure everyone is working together efficiently and learning from every rotation to drive the collective goal of improved teaching and student success.

Summary

• Developing Teams as a School Leader:
  • School leadership is second only to classroom teaching as an influence on pupil learning.
  • Supporting teachers and developing teams is key to improving teaching and learning.
• Creating a Collaborative Culture:
  • Creating and sustaining a collaborative culture is essential for school improvement.
  • This can be achieved through mentoring, role modelling, and self-reflection.
• The Role of Professional Development:
  • CPD in schools should be planned and integrated, linked to strategic goals.
  • A focus on CPD can empower leaders at every level and improve school teams.
• Leadership Development and Adult Learning:
  • Effective leadership development should involve building learning around strategic projects.
  • Encouraging a peer community can also help in developing teams.