Culture usually evolves by accident; as soon as you have two or more people come together repeatedly, you have shared behaviour (because they interact), so behaviours become established (good and bad) and voila! You have a culture.
It might be a great, high performing culture. The fact is most cultures are ‘ok’ not terrible but not brilliant. If you want to create an exceptional school you need to develop your culture, as that’s what we see as being the shift from ‘Good’ to ‘Outstanding’.
A crucial part of culture at is being able to hold each other to account when we are not behaving or performing in line with our culture; it’s about having successful difficult conversations.
Did you know that healthy conflict (having really successful difficult conversations) is a defining feature of high performing teams, so even if you don’t want to master the two other key leadership skills (vision and growing skills), this is the one to get really good at because you will really feel the benefit.
Sadly, very few leaders are trained in how to have successful difficult conversations; perhaps that’s why it’s our most popular training.