Design a Day They Won't Forget

Picture the last time you watched someone new walk into your building on their first day.

Somewhere between walking in and their first hallway conversation, there's a moment when they shift from nervous to curious.

That's a peak moment, an idea borrowed from The Power of Moments, by Chip and Dan Heath. People remember the peaks of an experience and how it ends, and forget almost everything in between.

Most schools stumble into a few peak moments by accident.

The best leaders design them on purpose.

That is the design work of connection, community, and culture.

Connection starts with simple, small actions that ensure a person feels specifically seen, heard, and valued.

In Retention Is the Result, Danny tells the story of two school leaders preparing for a professional development day.

They asked every staff member one question ahead of time: what's your favorite drink, right down to the number of syrup pumps?

On the first day, every person walked in and found their exact drink waiting for them.

One teacher mentioned she was hard of hearing, so the team prepared printed hard copies of every handout and captioned every video for her.

Someone paying close attention can turn a survey answer into a moment.

That's connection: the small, specific proof that a leader was listening.

Connection between a leader and one other person is a start.

Community is what happens when that kind of attention becomes the norm across an entire staff, extended from person to person.

Research on why teachers choose to stay in schools backs this up.

Salary gets a teacher in the door. But pay ranks well below feeling trusted by coworkers, feeling like they belong, and feeling like someone would notice if they were struggling.

Community keeps them coming back, semester after semester.

Every person on your staff has two questions, whether they know it or not:

Community is the collective, everyday answer to those questions.

It’s built every day, in hallway conversations, daily decisions, and noticing when others need help.

Zoom out a little, and culture will become observable as the result of hundreds of answers to those two questions, accumulated over a semester, a year, a career.

Put it simply,

Trust requires being honest with people — the good and the hard parts.

Love means making sure they never wonder whether they belong.

Together, truth and love build a culture people want to be part of.

That requires a leader who remembers the new hire's coffee order, or notices when the veteran teacher goes quiet in the staff meeting. Those small moments stack up, and when connected and collected with careful consideration, become a culture worth staying for.

Presence, it turns out, is a high-leverage leadership skill.

Presence like this can lose its luster when worked on in isolation.

But it builds momentum when you talk to other leaders doing the same work.

They might notice something you missed, you might borrow something that worked somewhere else, or you might find a critical colleague to help you get honest about moments you let slip.

That's what Mastermind is for.

We are a community of school leaders trading actionable ideas about connection, community, and culture, week after week.

Join us and design your own peak moment.

👉 https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/mastermind-application/

Retention starts on Day One, and sets the tone for the year.

Chip and Dan Heath call it a "peak moment", the kind of experience that sticks because you’ve clearly planned for it.

Companies like John Deere have built entire onboarding traditions around this idea.

Your school can do the same thing with some intention.

Next time you're welcoming new staff, steal a few of these:

All of these ideas say the same thing: we thought about you before you got here.

That's connection. Connection builds community. Community becomes culture. And retention is the result.