Relationships Aren’t the Starting Point-Here’s What Is
When I was a teacher — and probably when you were too — you were taught relationships matter first. And they do. Everyone's seen the video of the teacher explaining kids don't learn from people they don't like. True, especially in the classroom. It holds up in administration too.
But what actually makes relationships work is something underneath them: systems. Processes. The reason people trust you isn't just that they like you — it's that they know what's probably going to happen next. That's when we get into the "why" behind decisions (cringe, I know) — the why and the how matter more than we give them credit for.
School transformation is my specialty. I love walking into a messy school and righting the ship. That almost always means rebuilding systems that are broken or don't exist yet. Here's the catch: you can't just build a system on day one. You have to observe first. And while you're observing, there's chaos, and you have to handle it. That part is hard. It's herding cats.
But once you start building the systems, the shift is obvious. People stop challenging you — or the challenges that come up diffuse fast. That's when you can dig into the relationships that make people feel genuinely safe. That part is the hard-earned part.
Elementary schools walk a particular line: kids are little, so we want them to feel safe, and sometimes that gets confused with skipping structure. I've had to remind adults that order on the playground — walking in lines, waiting for their teacher — is exactly what makes kids feel safe. The unseen kid, the bullied kid, the bully himself — they all know someone is watching and there's a moment to reset. Once that structure existed, a lot of the discipline problems we used to see on the playground disappeared.
Most school leaders will tell you staff relationships are some of the hardest to manage. I used to think of my staff the way I thought of kids in my classroom: everyone gets what they need to move forward, but always within boundaries. Holding staff accountable is actually what lets the rest of the staff feel supported — think of it like keeping the whole class in from recess when one student's behavior is the actual problem. Following up hard conversations with a written summary isn't paperwork for paperwork's sake — it's what lays the groundwork for real growth. That's a system. I used it in nearly every hard conversation I had.
A few systems you can put in place right away:
A walkthrough system built around the strategies your data tells you matter most
A clear look at discipline patterns that tells you where support is actually needed
A defined system for what happens after a behavior incident — every time, not just sometimes
None of this replaces the relationship. It protects it.
The staff who trusted me most weren't the ones I was closest to. They were the ones who always knew where they stood — good day or bad day, easy conversation or hard one. That's not distance. That's the whole point.
Systems aren't the opposite of relationships. They're what let the relationship survive the pressure that's coming for it anyway.
