The Principal's Handbook

When Teacher Teams Just Can’t Get Along (and What to Do About It)
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Principal's Handbook. In today's episode, we're talking about when teacher teams just can't get along and what to do about it. That's all coming up next right here on the Principal's Handbook.

Speaker: Welcome to the Principal's Handbook, your go-to resource for principals looking to revamp their leadership approach and prioritize self-care. I'm Barb Flowers, a certified life coach with eight years of experience as an elementary principal. Tune in each week as we delve into strategies for boosting mental resilience, managing time effectively, and nurturing overall wellness.

From tackling daily challenges to maintaining a healthy work-life balance. We'll navigate the complexities of school leadership together. Join me in fostering your sense of purpose as a principal and reigniting your passion for the job. Welcome to a podcast where your wellbeing is the top priority. I.

Well, welcome everyone. I wanna ask you, have you ever walked into a meeting of some sort where it's a grade level meeting, A PLC? [00:01:00] And instantly felt the tension in the air. I'm sure you have. I'm sure we've all been there, and it can be super uncomfortable and you as leader, you are in charge of helping these teams work together and have good conversations and collaborate and model collaboration.

And so that can be really frustrating when you walk into a meeting like that and you feel that tension because instantly you start thinking about, I know I've had these thoughts of, I've had the thoughts of what hard conversations do I have to have now? What am I going to do to make this better?

Because this is so uncomfortable and it's not what is best for our kids is to have meetings like this with the adults. And I can actually remember a specific incident and I wasn't there, but it was a department meeting. And during that meeting they were talking about state laws, state initiatives related to the science of reading, and a lot of teachers were very passionate when all of this was coming out. And we're learning new laws all the time about different mandates we have to be [00:02:00] doing.

And I wasn't there, like I said, but my assistant principal was, and I had a teacher just go off and it was so uncomfortable. I actually had multiple teachers reach out to me, really bothered by the situation. They felt like it was really uncalled for. And it just made the whole environment, like you couldn't even communicate, you couldn't say anything.

It just was really uncomfortable. And I just wanna say, sometimes this happens. And in this specific case, I was able to have a conversation with the teacher. This wasn't a team he always collaborated with. And we had a hard conversation and we were able to talk about what's appropriate on how to collaborate in a team and how it's not appropriate having those kind of conversations.

But sometimes this is an ongoing issue. Even if you have the hard conversation, it just keeps happening. And so every principal has at least one team that drains their energy, that they're constantly, working with, trying to [00:03:00] help them get along and collaborate better. And when I was in a K five building, I'm now in a K two building, but in a K five building.

It was a bigger building. There were a lot of teams, a lot of different dynamics. We had grade, we had department meetings that were K 2, 3 5. Then we had grade level teams that were PLCs. Then we had sometimes PLCs that were content teams. , Sometimes we had our specialists had a PLC intervention specialists.

There were just a lot of different teams meeting and it was a really good thing. I carved out time away from planning time and it was a great thing. However. It can be really difficult ' because one, you wanna make sure that you're participating in those meetings. As a principal, you don't wanna just not be there.

And some of the meetings that I had were happening at the same time, so I was bouncing, from meeting to meeting. Sometimes they would be . At different times, PLCs were always at different times, so I tried to go to as many as possible. But when you have PLCs during the school day and you're dealing with observations, [00:04:00] behaviors, I, it definitely happens that you're not able to make it to all of them.

And my goal was to make it to as many as possible. But there were definitely teams that I needed to try to be there more because they needed more guidance. And so just think about that. I want you to think about your team or teams that need more guidance, that struggle to get along.

Working with teams are really challenging, and I always say it's because you're talking about getting different personalities to work together. Humans, it's already hard because, you know, we're emotional beings. We take something somebody said or. We have to collaborate, get along with others.

It just, there's a lot of dynamics that go into a group working well. And a lot of strong,, thoughts about teaching in a group. I think teachers in general are just passionate about what they do in a lot of cases and they take what they do very personal.

And so if somebody says something about teaching, it can feel very personal to teachers and can be a very [00:05:00] emotional thing. , So I just wanted to bring all that aspect up as part of it. What my goal really is for today's episode is to break down why teacher teams get stuck.

How to approach those tough conversations with empathy plus authority. I think that's the best way, and then I'm going to share a resource that actually helps you navigate that step by step. So I wanna start by just talking about with teacher teams, what is really going on beneath the surface when a team can't seem to work together.

We're gonna talk about the hidden patterns behind a dysfunctional team or a team that's not collaborating. , And what you really wanna do is look for the team dynamics as patterns, not personalities. So team behavior is always a clue. It's not random, it's communication. It's just like working with a difficult child with behaviors.

It's all communication. And so when the team is not getting along, when they have, , fights or they're just not [00:06:00] collaborative or whatever it is, , really the team dynamics are often a reflection of the safety, the trust in that team, the control. Each member of that team has, how many leaders are on that team?

The different personality types. Is everybody just kind of passive? Are there people who wanna step up? , what I like to help principals think about, and I actually have a toolkit for navigating challenging teacher team dynamics.

, Is I want you to think about just different archetypes, so I'm gonna share a couple. Different types of teams that you might have. So one example is the click, and this is a group of teachers that they've been working together forever. They might finish each other's sentences. They love working together and you think, okay, this is great, but the problem is if anybody new shows up or if they have to collaborate with anybody different because.

They shut other people out because it is like a clique. , It might look like exclusion. , What looks like them [00:07:00] excluding people is often a need for safety and control After. Years of leadership turnover maybe, or after years of them being together that has created this safety, this trust for them. And to have a new person is really scary and they don't wanna give up that control.

So then they end up, , coming across as a clique. So that's one type of team dynamic. . Another group is the team of all leaders. So every member on that team is a natural leader. And what happens when you have a team like that is, it's great because you can get a lot of things done, but meetings sometimes can feel like a power struggle instead of collaboration because everybody.

Is trying to find their dominance. , They care a lot, but there's no structure to like align their energy. There's no ebb and flow of them working together because everybody's trying to find that power control in it to let their leadership style come out. So that can be really hard when you have a team of all leaders.

On the other hand, it can be hard when [00:08:00] you have a team of no leaders. Let's say you have five or six teachers on a team and nobody is the type of teacher that wants to step up and be a teacher leader. Same thing. Maybe they don't have the confidence that they can lead. There are teams that just want you to tell them, tell me what to do.

I just wanna do my job. Tell me what to do. Another example is the divided team. So you can sense a split right away. So maybe there's just different personalities on the team and then they kind of within that team create clicks. , There could be eye rolling side conversations. There's just no trust.

So again, if you have a team of six or seven, maybe two or three are in a clique or , work together well. But in a team of seven, they all don't work together well. So that can be really tricky too. And then just one more, there's more in my, , toolkit, but I'm just gonna share the conflict avoidant team.

I've worked with many teams like this. They nod politely, they agree on everything and never [00:09:00] actually say what they're thinking. It feels calm, but that's a team that's not progressing. And I've coached through one of my teams like this where it was really about. We have to have the hard conversations together because I, as the leader can have the hard conversations, but

it doesn't really help us as a group continue to grow if we're constantly avoiding those hard conversations. So we had to talk about that a lot. So just wanted to give you the background in a couple different patterns that I've seen now with all of those patterns. You really have to be reflective.

So think about your team right now, which of those patterns that I described, and there's more patterns, but which of them feels most familiar? , Is it a team that dominates? Is it a team that resists? Is it team that just wants to follow the rules? One that avoids conflict, like. What teams are you dealing with right now?

And then once you can name the pattern and decide what type of teams you're dealing with, and I really [00:10:00] encourage you, maybe not this second, you could, depending on what you're doing, if you're driving, you can't. But if you're listening to this and you're sitting, break, break down your teams

how would you describe that team? , Look at each team. How would you describe them? And once you can name the pattern, you're going to be able to coach them differently. And that's really what my toolkit helps you to do. It helps give you language for what you're seeing and coach those teachers differently.

But that's what I wanna do on this podcast too. I want you to think about. Your team dynamics that you have, what's going on with each team? And then move into how we can coach them differently. So now we see these archetypes, now we see the hidden patterns, we see what's happening. Our next step is to first shift our mindset about it before , we move into action.

First, I always wanna say before you address this or go into a meeting, if you know the meeting is gonna be difficult, a PLC's going to be difficult. You really wanna regulate yourself. [00:11:00] You wanna get your mindset in a good place before you go into that meeting and either address the behavior in that meeting or even lead the meeting.

, Or before you have the hard conversations to address the behavior. , What I want you to think about is before we can change how our teachers and our teams are showing up, we have to look , at how we're showing up. , What are the things that we're doing that might contribute to some of those team dynamics?

I'm not saying to place blame on yourself, I'm just saying to think about like, how do you contribute to that? So one example I'm gonna give is sometimes when I have a difficult team, and what I noticed I was doing was I would avoid that team. I loved going to the meetings. Where they collaborated. Well, right.

But they really, those were the meetings. They didn't need me. And so I want you to think about how are you showing up for each of these types of teams that we're talking about? , I want you to think about, do you show up to that team in a certain way? How does your personality come out to [00:12:00] them?

Do you come out passive? Do you notice that you seem annoyed? What are the emotions that are happening for you? Because remember, your thoughts drive your emotions, which drive your actions. So if we find that we've got these negative emotions. We've gotta check what those thoughts are as we're going into these situations, because if we wanna change the team dynamics and make it better, we first have to start with ourself and what are the thoughts we're thinking about the team, what emotions are we showing, and then how is that impacting our actions as we work with that team?

So, one thing I always like to do to shift my own thoughts is I like to look at it from an empathy lens. I like to think with empathy, so instead of going in with the thought of , Ugh, this team just needs to get it together. I like to think about what is specifically going on.

So for example, if I'm going into a team where there's one dominant teacher, I like to have empathy. Okay, why is that teacher feel the need to be so dominant? Do they fear losing [00:13:00] control? , If it's a quiet team, why are they so quiet? Do they not have the confidence to speak up? Do they think they don't have good ideas?

And I've seen that before or maybe. They felt unheard before. So they're just, they decide not to try. Okay. So come in with that empathy lens because that's gonna change your thought. It's gonna change your emotions, and it's gonna change that action. , I can think of an example of. , Veteran teachers who would question me a lot, they would question a lot of different things that I did, and at first I took it personally.

I would get so defensive. I thought they didn't respect me as a leader. They don't think I'm good at what I do. But when I slowed down and asked questions, I learned. That they've had a lot of principles in a short amount of time, and really they just want to feel heard.

They just want somebody who will listen to them and understand their perspective. And so when I could change my empathy lens to , that helped me a lot. So one thing I do actually in my toolkit [00:14:00] for challenging teacher team dynamics is I use, it's a coach called Byron Katie. She's a life coach that has a book, , called Loving.

What Is That is so good. And in her book she talks about four questions. It's a reframing tool. So I'm gonna go through this and explain. So if you have the thought, this team just doesn't care. You're gonna go through her four questions. Is that true That the team doesn't care?

You might be like, yes, it's absolutely true. , The second question is, can I know it's absolutely true? Probably not. 'cause we can't read their minds. So the third question is, how do I react when I believe the thought that the team just doesn't care? If you have the thought that the team just doesn't care, you're probably not reacting great because you're gonna have a negative emotion towards 'em.

Negative action. So then you want the fourth question? Who would I be without that thought? Okay, so without the thought that this team just doesn't care, you're probably going to think about them differently when we shift from frustration. To curiosity about what's [00:15:00] going on. We can actually coach our teachers from a place of being calm, curious, not from a place of being frustrated and just wanting to take all of the control.

So I really encourage you to get curious, have that empathy. Where are you coming from? , And ask yourself, who would I be without that negative thought? Because. I'm sure you'd be a completely different leader if you can change any negative thoughts you have about a team. So once you've grounded yourself in empathy, you've changed that thought, it's time to introduce a structure because having some sort of structure is what is going to transform, chaos arguments into true collaboration.

So I'm going to share, a couple simple structures that can be really helpful. So remember, too. You don't have to solve every team problem in one meeting. You just need a structure and you focus on every team a little micro step at a time. Just like you don't have to solve every problem. I always say, [00:16:00] look at your teams like differentiated leadership,

like we lead teachers just like we teach. It's gotta be differentiated. You might be doing something different at one PLC if you've got this collaborative, smooth running team compared to another. PLC. So you just have to, , remember that you just wanna make these small steps, these micro steps of progress with each team, and

it's going to take different amounts of time. I have, like I said, certain teams that are so collaborative in my old building that they just took stuff and ran with it really quick and other teams just needed more time. It wasn't anything. Bad. They just needed more time. Okay. So here, I just wanna share three concrete structures you can use.

, One is doing round robin protocols. Basically this could be used if you have a team where nobody wants to talk or everybody wants to talk, or one person's dominating. You could just have it where they know it's going to be round robin. Everybody's going to have a time.

We're [00:17:00] going to go around the circle. Everybody's going to have. Time to talk. And maybe if it gets really bad, you give everybody a certain amount of time to talk a five minute time or whatever it is., If people dominate. But you wanna have a structure. So knowing what type of team is going to tell you if a round robin protocol will work.

Where you're just having everybody, go around the circle, say what they need to say. So if you're in A PLC, you're talking about data. Start by going around, have everybody share their data. Then you go to the next question, what's working well, okay, everybody go around and around Robin, let's talk about what's working well.

This way everybody gets a chance to talk. So that's one different structure you can use. Another type of structure is having assigned roles. I did this a lot where. There'd be a facilitator, a note taker, a timekeeper. We had a building leadership team and usually our building leadership team members were the facilitators for our PLCs, because then they came to BLT and. [00:18:00] They would bring the input from their PLC. So they typically were the facilitator. It didn't always work out that way, but having those assigned roles is another thing that you could do. Another structure you could use is having anonymous input. So if there's conflict avoidant teams and they wanna say something that they're afraid to say, they could use Google forms.

, , Sticky notes, things that they don't necessarily have to put their name on. That's something you can do. The other thing is I always try to push them to have those hard conversations, so you know, what's just one thing we could say that's. A hard thing for us to say, and I would coach teachers on this individually for the team dynamic.

But as far as the structure, they could do it where it's anonymous input and they're just writing their thoughts on sticky notes or entering their data into a. Google form. Going back, looking at that and talking about what was entered into the form. Okay. So those are some different ways if you have some [00:19:00] really , , conflict avoidant teams.

One thing I wanted to share that I did include in the Teacher Team Dynamics toolkit is each profile in the toolkit comes with a reflection sheet and a conversation guide.

With exact phrases, empathy frames, mindset questions, everything you need to set this up because it'll just save you time. , I do believe if you do the work ahead of time where you really think about your teams. You think about your thoughts about those teams and you think about the structure that you need to help that team work well together, it is really going to be helpful.

So think about that. Like I said, if you need more support, check out that toolkit, the last thing I wanna address is when it feels like nothing is working. Just know that sometimes , despite your best efforts, despite how hard you work on this and what you put in you at the end of the day, can't control the individual behaviors, so you just have to keep pausing and reflecting and deciding what to do different.

It's just like kids with behaviors, it's frustrating because we can't control [00:20:00] what the kids do, and it's the same with the adults that we work with, but we just have to pause, reflect, reassess, and think. . If this isn't working, what can we do different? And I have a What's Not Working Guide in the toolkit, , but some things that I just want you to reflect on.

If it seems like nothing's working and you're getting frustrated and you're just feeling like , it won't ever get better. I just want you to think, is this a people problem or a system problem? So if they're complaining about legit concerns all the time. Think about is it a people problem or is it a system problem?

And then is trust broken beyond repair or do they just need a structure? So is there a lot of dynamics in that team that's really contributing , to the collaboration not being there. Is it the case that you can't repair that trust, it's not going to get better? Or do the teachers just need structure?

And then have you seen small signs of progress you can build on? Sometimes we just want everything to be fixed, like I said, we [00:21:00] want it to be good right now, but the problem is , we forget these micro moments that are actually small signs of progress, and we need to be excited when we see those and we need to call those out for the teams.

Sometimes leadership means that you have to decide when to reset a team, when you need to rebuild a team. , Maybe you need different people on the team, what do you need?

So really focusing on that. Reflecting on that. Because the goal isn't perfection in our leadership. It's constant progress, and it can be very difficult, like I said, when you feel like you're not making progress. But I promise if you just focus on these micro moments within these challenging team dynamics, over time, you are going to see a big difference, especially if , really evaluate what these teams look like.

You change your thoughts, you change how you're approaching the team. You come at the teams with empathy, but also that authority, that boundary, and then you create a structure that works for the team [00:22:00] and just reset when you need to. Because the truth is every team can grow. Every team has the opportunity to grow.

But it starts with coaching from you, with that empathy, with the clarity, with the boundaries of this is what it needs to be. . So that's why I created the Teacher Team Dynamic toolkit. It's really to help principals feel more confident walking into any team meeting, no matter how challenging, no matter what dynamics you're facing, it helps you feel like you're ready.

So just remember, you can't control. Your teacher's behavior, but you can control your approach. You can control how you're coaching them, are you making it a supportive place that you're coaching them to collaborate better or are you creating division by.

Maybe creating boundaries without empathy and , just making it a difficult situation. So pay attention to that and think about how are you contributing to the team dynamics that are happening there as well. So if you wanna get the teacher team dynamics toolkit, Go to the eight to four principle.com [00:23:00] and you can start leading those team conversations with confidence and calm and all the resources that you need.

And if you want ongoing coaching and support on topics like team culture, discipline, hard conversations, time management, join us inside the eight to four principle Leadership hub. I offer monthly challenges in there and I hold you accountable. You can win prizes. Live office hours with q and a where you can ask your specific questions about topics like challenging teacher team dynamics and get the toolkit as part of your membership.

So that's another option as well.

Keep in mind, you have the power to shape your life according to the mindset you choose. I hope you have a great week, and I'll see you back here on the show next time.

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