Staughton College’s Culture of Support

Educators often complain of a lack of support in their jobs and work environments that are closed, cliquey, even toxic.

Culture comes down to people and relationships, how staff work together, or don’t, and whether they feel that they are members of team that shares a common goal. A positive workplace culture is something that might happen spontaneously or, more likely, through a considered process.

Kristy Herridge, Principal at Staughton College in Melton Vic, has made a concerted effort over a number of years to improve the way her staff work together. She was instrumental in engaging consultants Leading Teams to help build a school environment that encourages a sense of belonging and equips staff with strategies that help them to rub along and get past the inevitable disagreements.

“Leading Teams has provided us with the framework that has allowed us to dramatically improve to develop a connected, supportive, transparent and progressive culture.

“When new staff come to our school, they almost always comment about how supported they feel. One new staff member a few years ago asked how long this initial support would go for. We said that it just keeps going! Another staff member said that we had talked about our collaborative culture in her interview and she had thought we were just ‘selling the place’. After a year at the school, she said ‘I wanted to tell you that everything you said is true’.  Visitors to our school notice the way we all work together. They can feel it as they come in,” Herridge says.

The program has been running for nine years now, Staughton College began working with Leading Teams in 2014 as part of a network wide opportunity where the school was offered funding to participate.

“At the time we were looking for ways to improve but did not really know a lot about the program other than it was coming highly recommended,” Herridge says.

“From the first session it became apparent that this was a bit different from the other work we were doing in that it allowed us to look at, and improve, how we worked together. In the first year we developed our trademark and agreed what behaviours we would commit to and what behaviours we would challenge.

“We learnt how to improve our capacity to have genuine conversations with each other about our trademark and agreed behaviours. We worked on our relationships to support each other and to be able to have genuine conversations within the framework of our trademark.

“We have significantly empowered staff to respectfully challenge one another to help each other improve.  From the beginning we could see that it provided a framework for us to improve how we worked together and could be honest with each other in how we could get better.

“After a few years the funding came to an end, however, by this time we considered our work with Leading Teams to be foundational to everything else that we did and so we continued our work with them by funding it ourselves,” she says.

Staughton’s work with Leading Teams provides a framework for working together that underpins everything the school does - from recruitment, to induction, to exit.

“Staff can see that the senior leadership is committed and willing to walk the talk. They also experience the benefit of the collaborative culture in that it allows us to get on with the important work. We consider it so important that we have made it explicitly part of our systems and practices so that our work with Leading Teams cannot just fade away.

“This doesn’t mean that everything is always perfect and that we don’t have challenges. Of course we have many. What it means is that we have a culture of trust that allows us to honestly communicate with each other and a process to successfully work through these challenges together. The sessions with our facilitator are really important in keeping us on track but living the framework each day by empowering each other to help get better is the most important part of making this work come alive."

Brendan Maher is a facilitator with Leading Teams and puts together the programs delivered to a school based on each school’s situation.

“Every organisation will have specific considerations that we need to account for in delivering our program. However, the beauty of our ‘High Performing Teams Model’ resides in its simplicity. The potent combination of having a common purpose, understanding the necessity of embracing and building strong professional relationships, working collaboratively within an agreed behavioural framework, and demonstrating a preparedness to engage in genuine conversations, will positively impact the mechanics of any organisation.

“Regardless of whether an organisation is a school or otherwise, there are incredible similarities in the way people interact with one another. There are egos in all organisations, there are also varied opinions and varied ways that people express them. There are nearly always smaller groups within organisations - cliques - and there are inevitably also people who have a clear picture of what an organisation does and why it does it.

“In reality, regardless of the industry, egos, varied opinions, and divided groups, can be present and get in the way of achieving an organisation’s common purpose,” he says.

Maher has worked in numerous schools since joining Leading Teams in January 2020. He has had 40 years of engagement in school communities prior to Leading Teams - both in principal and teaching roles - so he understands the unique challenges and opportunities that educators face. About 75% of his work at Leading Teams is in the education space.

“When leaders adopt a position of ‘people first’, they take their teams forward, they improve performance, and most importantly they positively impact the lives of the people they work with.

“Leading Teams’ High Performance model, and the work we do around it, brings incredible satisfaction to me in my role as a facilitator simply because I know we are helping people and teams improve their performance in all realms of life.”

Tailoring the program to a specific situation, sector, or organisation is a process that begins with listening and relationship building.

“For facilitators at Leading Teams, our priority at all stages of engagement with a client is to listen to them, and in turn, ask the right questions to help us unpack and address the issues they are facing.

“While we will always engage with a team and be well prepared, it is equally important that we are able to adapt our work to meet the needs of any team on any given day."

The program is not static, it evolves and adapts to new situations and challenges, when Maher arrived at Staughton College the leadership team was dealing with repeated lockdowns, remote learning programs, and the day-to-day stresses of COVID, both at work and at home.

“The most obvious, and indeed uplifting quality I noticed about the entire team of leaders at Staughton College was just how resilient they were. Despite the circumstances the team consistently spoke with a high degree of optimism and hope.

“The leaders at Staughton College - David Lord and Kristy Herridge - had embraced the Stephen Covey notion of ‘Concern, Influence and Control’. They were abundantly clear of the numerous ‘concerns’ they had and also that they needed to focus their energy on that which they could control - namely their attitudes and behaviours - and leverage these to positively influence their students, colleagues and the broader community in Melton South.”