Same School. Completely Different Experience of Work.
It's November, which in a school means everything is due at once. Reports, concerts, graduations, orientation days, staffing for next year, and somewhere in the middle of it all, the actual teaching. If you're reading this between bus duty and a parent email, I see you. Education is skilled, human work, and Term 4 asks a great deal of the people doing it.
Something I've noticed over many years in schools is that two teams in the same school can have completely different experiences of work. Same principal, same timetable, same photocopier that jams at exactly the wrong moment.
Yet, one team feels clear and supported while the other is guessing at expectations and quietly rolling its eyes in meetings.
A lot of that difference comes down to everyday leadership: how expectations are shared, how meetings run, how feedback is given, how people are spoken to in the corridor. Each moment is small, but they add up to what it feels like to work somewhere.
I call it the ripple effect, and it travels in both directions.
To make it easier to talk about, I use a simple lens called CARE.
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Clarity: Do people know what is expected, what the priorities are?
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Agency: Do people know where they have a say, and where the decision sits somewhere else?
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Relationships: Can someone ask a question, admit a mistake or disagree without paying for it later?
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Energy: Is the work using people's energy on things that matter, or on out-dated processes nobody has had time to remove?
One Small Shift
Try this before the end of the week. Pick one letter of CARE and ask where it is strong in your team and where it is missing.
You don't need a project plan. Sometimes simply naming it is what starts a better conversation.
If you lead a team, you're an educator too, with your own pile of competing priorities. Nobody is expecting you to fix everyone's wellbeing.
What you can do is pay attention to the conditions you influence: the clarity of an expectation, the way a meeting opens, the thank you that is specific rather than generic. Those are within reach, even in November.
