What Your Staff Isn't Telling You

She already knew the answer.

That's the part I keep coming back to. That's what gives me an adrenaline-shot of anxiety every time I think about it.

Every June I spend hours building our school's class configurations for the following year. Class sizes, grade configurations, the work of fitting real children into imperfect combinations.

And once I feel like I have it right, I bring it to staff for their input.

This year's org was particularly hard.

Classes full to the brim. Awkward splits. Singletons from one grade dropped into another.

I knew it wasn't ideal but I couldn’t see any way to make it better.

So I brought it to the staff for a work session.

After the meeting, a teacher came to my office. She’s very experienced and someone whose opinion I respect.

She mentioned, almost in passing, that she was pretty confident she'd end up teaching a 3/4 split next year.

That wasn't in the current configuration.

I went back to the numbers. Started over. Rebuilt from the bottom division up.

And the pieces all magically locked into place.

No more full to the brim classes. No more awkward splits. No more singletons. A cleaner org than anything I'd produced in days of work.

I went back to tell her what I'd found and she mentioned she’d known it was a possibility all along.

She'd seen it from the start, before the meeting, before I'd finalized the version I brought in.

She hadn't said anything in the room. She hadn't said anything in my office either. She didn't give it to me. She just suggested the possibility.

Which is gracious of her.

But I'm also embarrassed. Embarrassed I missed it. Embarrassed I put teachers through all that in a meeting.

Nobody knows, other than the one teacher.

Our student numbers will shift over the summer as students move into and out of the catchment.

I'll very likely have a natural reason to rebuild the org in the fall.

That's my out.

But she knows.

Argh.

I've been sitting with a question ever since.

If she saw it and didn't say it directly — even in my office, with the door closed — what else is being left unsaid in my building?

I thought we had a culture where people could speak up.

Maybe we do, mostly.

But "mostly" doesn’t cut it when someone has a better answer.

I don't know how big the gap is. But I know it's there. And the cost of that gap isn't always obvious.

Sometimes it's a fixable org chart, a good idea that never gets tried, or a problem that could have been avoided.

And sometimes it’s a teacher leaving the school, because they got tired of holding their tongue.

That's exactly the problem Danny Bauer wrote about in his new book.

Retention Is the Result opens with a story about a principal whose teachers were ready to quit.

Not because of workload or pay or politics, but because they didn't feel safe enough to say what they needed directly.

This line from Chapter 1 stands out:

Danny has spent a decade coaching school leaders through exactly this, and Retention Is the Result is that process, systematized.

The process starts with a tool, The School Leadership Scorecard.

Twelve questions. Six dimensions. Yes or no answers.

It asks what you've actually done.

A few of the questions will stop you cold:

These are mirror questions.

And if you're anything like me, a few of the answers will be no.

The book doesn't stop at the scorecard though. It walks you through what to do with those no’s, in hiring, onboarding, mentoring, and building the kind of culture where people want to stay.

And where they share the better idea.

Pick up Retention Is the Result.

Most leaders have a sense of how their staff is doing.

But have you ever wondered how your staff would score you?

Try this:

Think of three teachers you trust.

Ask each one a single question, in person:

"Is there something you've been wanting to tell me that you haven't said yet?"

Then stop talking.

What comes back will tell you more about your culture than any climate survey.

Psychological safety is something your staff demonstrates, or doesn't, in moments exactly like this.