EPISODE 181: 6 Early Warning Signs of a Toxic School Culture

Summary

In episode 181 of the School Leadership Reimagined podcast, Robin Jackson shares insights into detecting early warning signs of a toxic school culture that can impede positive changes and the success of educational institutions. The episode emphasizes the importance of recognizing these signs early to prevent deeper cultural issues that can derail improvement efforts. The focus is on six specific indicators of toxicity and practical strategies to address and mitigate these concerns, ensuring a healthy, collaborative, and mission-focused school environment.

Highlights

• Robin Jackson revisits early warning signs of a toxic school culture emphasizing their relevance today. 🎧
• A toxic culture derails change efforts, making it vital to address toxicity first. 🚫
• Identifying six key indicators: lack of risk-taking, rules over people, absence of honest dialogue, overactive back channels, self-preservation, and punishment-focus. 📋
• Lack of risk-taking limits innovation and progress making current practices stale and unchallenged. 🔒
• A rule-bound culture prioritizes conformity over student and teacher well-being and mission fulfillment. 📏
• Honest communication is crucial; without it, underlying issues and conflicts go unresolved. 🗣
• Builders should proactively tackle these signs before they become broader cultural issues. 🔍

Key Takeaways

• 1. A toxic school culture can derail any change efforts, hence detecting early signs is crucial. 🚨
• 2. Lack of risk-taking, overemphasis on rules, and absence of honest dialogue can signal cultural toxicity. 🚩
• 3. When self-preservation overtakes collaboration, it can foster a toxic environment. 🤝
• 4. Informal communications often become more powerful than formal ones in toxic cultures. 📣
• 5. Focusing on punishment over reward demoralizes and stunts growth and positivity. 😕
• 6. Builders act quickly to address cultural toxicity to maintain and promote a positive, thriving school environment. 🔨

Overview

Robin Jackson, in her podcast episode, highlights the critical importance of spotting early signs of a toxic school culture. She underscores how such a poisonous environment threatens any attempt at positive change by creating resistance amongst teachers and staff. Jackson points out how identifying these signs in advance helps prevent a full-blown cultural crisis, thereby safeguarding the school's mission and values.

The podcast discusses six primary indicators of impending toxicity: absence of risk-taking, an overly rule-focused environment, lack of open dialogue, dominant informal communication channels, self-preservation over collaboration, and an emphasis on punishment rather than recognition. Each of these elements contributes to a school culture that resists innovation, transparency, and support, subsequently stifling the overall growth and success of a school community.

By acting proactively, Jackson asserts, leaders or 'Builders' can mitigate the influence of toxic culture. They are encouraged to foster open communication, celebrate achievements, and instill collaboration over self-interest. This nurturing of a positive culture not only prevents toxicity but also ensures a thriving educational environment propelled by shared goals and mutual respect.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Podcast Introduction In this chapter, the podcast introduces its theme of transforming school leadership. It addresses the challenges faced by educational leaders, including resistant teachers, uncooperative parents, and restrictive policies. The chapter sets the stage for discussing strategies to maintain a clear vision for schools amidst these obstacles.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Facing Challenges in School Leadership The chapter "Facing Challenges in School Leadership" provides strategies and actionable tips for overcoming obstacles in school leadership. It emphasizes that school leaders don't have to wait to make a difference and can create a success story with the people and resources already available to them. The focus is on immediate action and leveraging existing assets to achieve success.
• 01:30 - 03:00: Rewind Episode Introduction In the episode titled 'Rewind Episode Introduction', host Robin Jackson discusses common challenges faced in school cultures, such as complacency with the status quo, negativity in meetings, and a general sense of overwhelm. Jackson mentions upcoming resources aimed at addressing these cultural issues.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Toxic School Culture Overview In this chapter, the focus is on an early podcast episode which discusses the early warning signs of a toxic school culture. The episode remains relevant today, serving as a reminder of the importance and power of school culture. Listeners are encouraged to revisit this topic and stay tuned for upcoming discussions over the next few weeks.
• 07:00 - 10:00: Sign 1: Absence of Risk Taking This chapter, titled 'Sign 1: Absence of Risk Taking,' is part of a series discussing the early warning signs of a toxic school culture. Hosted by Robin Jackson, the episode highlights the importance of recognizing these signs to maintain a healthy educational environment. The segment opens with a well-known quote by Peter Drucker, emphasizing the power of culture. Although the full details of the discussion are not provided, it sets the stage for understanding how a lack of risk-taking can signify underlying issues within a school's cultural framework.
• 10:00 - 13:00: Sign 2: Rules Over Mission This chapter emphasizes the importance of addressing toxic culture before implementing any changes. By using the phrase 'strategy for breakfast,' it highlights how a negative environment can undermine any strategic efforts. The author advises that detecting and mitigating toxicity is crucial for ensuring successful change initiatives, as a toxic culture can quickly destroy the momentum of new projects. The chapter suggests that, despite initial appearances of support in meetings, underlying toxicity can persist and sabotage change efforts.
• 13:00 - 17:00: Sign 3: Lack of Honest Dialogue This chapter discusses the challenges of engaging in honest dialogues within educational environments. It highlights the frustration of encountering situations where individuals may express gratitude or support for initiatives but fail to act on them. The text points to a disparity in urgency regarding important educational changes; while some may focus on matters benefiting adults, they overlook the needs critical to students' success. Such a lack of alignment and genuine conversation about priorities can hinder progress and meaningful change in schools.
• 17:00 - 20:00: Sign 4: Active Back Channel The chapter titled 'Sign 4: Active Back Channel' addresses the challenge of initiating new initiatives and creating a sense of urgency regarding matters that serve kids within school culture. It suggests that the presence of certain toxic elements or signs might be hindering progress. The chapter emphasizes the importance of identifying and addressing these toxic signs before attempting any change efforts or trying to engage teachers.
• 20:00 - 24:00: Sign 5: Self-preservation Over Collaboration Chapter 5: Self-preservation Over Collaboration The chapter discusses the concept of hidden toxicity within school culture, emphasizing the importance of identifying and addressing such toxic elements. A toxic school culture is characterized by complacency, negative attitudes, personal agendas, infighting, and drama becoming the norm, which can significantly hinder school operations and achievements. Highlighting these behaviors serves to underline the need for awareness and proactive measures to cultivate a healthier and more collaborative environment that prioritizes collective goals over individual self-interest.
• 24:00 - 30:00: Sign 6: Emphasis on Punishment The chapter discusses the distinction between a toxic culture and toxic individuals. Toxic people are characterized by prioritizing their personal agendas over the well-being of children. They often resort to unethical, mean-spirited, or even illegal methods to manipulate others, increase their power, achieve status, or divert attention from their personal or professional weaknesses.
• 30:00 - 35:00: Recap and Importance of Early Detection The chapter focuses on the significance of early detection of negative behaviors within an organization, particularly within educational institutions. It emphasizes that while a strong organizational culture can sometimes overcome an individual toxic person, a much more concerning issue is when toxicity becomes ingrained in the culture itself. When negativity becomes a habitual way of operation, it spreads and infects the entire organization's attitudes, beliefs, and customs.
• 35:00 - 39:00: Tools and Resources The chapter discusses how individual behaviors can become the default behaviors in a school environment, affecting everyone, including newcomers with fresh energy and enthusiasm. Over time, these newcomers also adopt the negative behaviors due to the toxic culture present. The chapter emphasizes the danger of normalized bad behavior, as it ultimately derails the environment.
• 39:00 - 45:00: Closing and Call to Action In the chapter 'Closing and Call to Action', the discussion centers on the pervasive issue of entrenched negative behaviors within an organization or community, particularly in relation to children. The narrative highlights that these behaviors have become so normalized they are no longer recognized as inherently negative, infiltrating all aspects of interaction and belief systems. The chapter emphasizes the challenge of implementing leadership strategies or initiatives in such an environment, pointing out that a toxic culture can undermine or consume any efforts towards positive change, regardless of the strategies employed. The call to action is implied in the need to recognize and address the cultural toxicity to enable the success of leadership strategies.
• 45:00 - 47:00: Buildership University Invitation The chapter 'Buildership University Invitation' discusses the detrimental effects of a toxic culture within a school environment. It emphasizes the importance of identifying early warning signs of toxicity to prevent these behaviors from undermining efforts for change and improvement. The chapter outlines the crucial initial step of recognizing these warning signals to address them promptly and effectively. In this context, the chapter begins by highlighting six indicators that suggest a school culture is becoming toxic, starting with the first sign: an absence of positive attributes or constructive behaviors.

EPISODE 181: 6 Early Warning Signs of a Toxic School Culture Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 you're listening to the school leadership reimagined podcast episode 181. how do Builders like us make a dramatic difference in the lives of our students in spite of all the obstacles we Face how do you keep your vision for your school from being held hostage by resistant teachers uncooperative parents ridiculous District policies or a lack of time money or resources if you're facing those challenges right now here's
• 00:30 - 01:00 where you'll find the answers strategies and actionable tips you need to overcome any obstacle you face you don't have to wait to make a difference in the lives of the people you serve you can turn your school into a success story right now with the people and resources you already have let's get started foreign [Music] ERS welcome to another episode of the school leadership reimagined podcast I'm
• 01:00 - 01:30 your host Robin Jackson and today is a rewind episode You see I've been hearing a lot from people around challenges that they're having with their school cultures this year either because people are satisfied with the status quo or people are you know getting snarky with each other in meetings or there's a general sense of overwhelm in the culture and so we are working on some really good resources for you around culture that we're going to be releasing in the next several weeks but as I was
• 01:30 - 02:00 going through some of the resources we had I remembered this episode it's one of the earliest episodes we did in the podcast and it's really good because it talks about some early warning signs of a toxic School culture that I think that still ring true even today so I wanted to share this episode with you again in case you missed it the first time and even if you heard it it's a good reminder about the power of of culture and then I want you to look out in the next couple of weeks as we're going to
• 02:00 - 02:30 be sharing several other resources around healing your school culture building a healthy school culture for your school so enjoy the episode and I'll see you again next week [Music] hello there welcome back to another episode of school leadership reimagined I'm your host Robin Jackson and today we're talking about six early warning signs that your school culture is turning toxic you know one of my favorite quotes is a quote by Peter Drucker and he says that culture eats
• 02:30 - 03:00 strategy for breakfast now what he means by that is that a toxic culture can completely derail any change efforts that you want to make so it's really really important to detect and deal with any sign of toxicity first before you begin your change efforts otherwise that toxic culture will completely destroy any efforts that you make to secure real change in your school I mean you've seen this before right you announce a new initiative and the staff meeting and everybody acts like they're on board
• 03:00 - 03:30 only to sabotage the initiative down the line or or maybe you've been working with a teacher and sharing feedback and resources and the teacher always thanks you for your support but they don't actually make any changes in their classroom or maybe you're trying to do what's right for students but everybody in your school seems satisfied with the status quo they really don't get your sense of urgency or they have a sense of urgency but they have a sense of urgency around things that don't really matter they have a sense of urgency around things that serve adults but not a sense
• 03:30 - 04:00 of urgency around things that serve kids so if you've ever been frustrated that you can't seem to get a new Initiative off the ground or or that you can't get everybody to feel the same real sense of urgency about things that really matter I guarantee that if you look under the hood you're gonna find one or more of these signs that you've got some toxicity lurking in your school culture so before you launch into any new change effort or before you try to get your teachers on board it's first really
• 04:00 - 04:30 important to find out if you have any hidden toxicity in your culture otherwise you're in for a nasty surprise down the line now before we dive into the list I want to talk a minute about what we mean by a toxic School culture you see a toxic culture is where complacency or negative attitudes personal agendas infighting and drama well they've become the default behaviors in your school and they really threaten your ability to
• 04:30 - 05:00 serve others and they threaten others ability to serve children so I want to distinguish here between a toxic culture and toxic people you see toxic people are people who place their personal agendas above what's best for children and they use an ethical or mean-spirited sometimes illegal means to manipulate others so that they can increase their power and Achieve status or divert attention away from their own personal or their own professional shortcomings they can create a lot of
• 05:00 - 05:30 drama yes but if you have a strong culture you can usually overcome a toxic person but a toxic culture well that's where that negative behavior has become an organizational Habit in other words it isn't just a toxic person behaving that way it's now the way that everybody operates within the culture the toxicity has infected the attitudes the beliefs and the customs of your entire school and this toxic Behavior which once was
• 05:30 - 06:00 something that individuals did is now the fault behavior for everybody working in your school and it can infect new people so even if they come in and they're really excited about working and they bring new energy after a few weeks they have now imbibed that toxic culture and now they are behaving in ways that are very different from how they would behave in another environment now here's why this is all so dangerous when bad behavior has become the norm it derails
• 06:00 - 06:30 everything good you try to accomplish in the building people aren't even behaving badly on purpose anymore bad behavior has just become the Habit it infiltrates everything from the way that we talk about kids to how we respond to kids to how we respond to each other to what we believe about kids and about our ability to help them so can you see how toxic culture can eat any leadership strategy or any leadership initiative that you might be using right now or trying to get started right now can you see how
• 06:30 - 07:00 that toxic culture can just eat that for breakfast now if you don't want your change f efforts to become a casualty of toxicity then the first step is to detect these early warning signals of toxicity lurking in your school's culture so that you can nip them in the bud before they have a chance to really infiltrate your culture okay without further Ado here are the six early warning signs that your school culture is turning toxic early warning sign number one there is an absence of
• 07:00 - 07:30 risk taking now when I say absence of risk taking what I mean by that is that everyone including you are afraid to take even prudent risk so Innovation is often really rare or it's half-hearted and people are kind of content with the status quo sometimes you have younger teachers who come into your building and they're criticized for trying to change everything or they're patronized for their ideas and no one takes their ideas really seriously because everybody's
• 07:30 - 08:00 comfortable you've been doing the same thing the same way for as long as you can remember and then what will also happen is that people will start policing Innovation they'll subtly discourage others from trying something new and usually it's not outright discouragement it comes with cross as well we tried that before or that might work where you came from but it's not going to work here and then people give you a rationalization for why it may not work another way that you can see this early
• 08:00 - 08:30 warning signal of toxicity is that sometimes your school is fairly successful and maybe successes may do a little cautious or you're more worried about trying to preserve what you have but rather than taking a risk to make it better so in that scenario a lot of times people have so much affection for the past for the way that things used to be that it keeps them from really getting excited about the future they they stop seeing possibilities and they
• 08:30 - 09:00 think that they have reached a really comfortable satisfying level and there's no reason to continue to innovate and continue to try to get better now this often leads to people who stop learning because they think that they're doing the best that they can and they really stop seeking out new ideas people don't understand that the culture outside of school is changing and the gap between what's happening inside of school and what's happening in the rest of the world is getting wider and wider
• 09:00 - 09:30 and wider and so what they do is they create this cocoon around themselves and they start protecting themselves from the outside and they stop being very open to new ideas in fact they become become very cautious about those new ideas now when you see people shrinking from taking risk or making excuses about why they can't take risks or doing things to preserve the status quo then it's a sure sign that your culture is heading for toxicity if you don't deal with this now over time people will
• 09:30 - 10:00 become so entrenched in their way of doing things that they're going to resist change they're going to undermine every new initiative and they're going to stay stuck in the past instead of moving forward to the future so it's really important that you nip this one in the bud now early warning signal number two rules are more important than people or Mission now this one usually happens when teachers feel that they have very little latitude to do their jobs they believe that that if they don't follow the
• 10:00 - 10:30 curriculum pacing guide for instance or if they don't use the approved format for lesson plans that they're going to get into some kind of trouble so what happens is they start focusing on checking off boxes and they lose sight of why they are there in the first place and how they can best their students you'll also see this early warning sign when people are more focused on maintenance than mission that means that they've lost sight as to why they're there to begin with and they make or they enforce rules that no longer make
• 10:30 - 11:00 any kind of sense and they never question why they're doing something they just do it because it's the rule now this early warning sign can also come up when people are more concerned with maintaining and enforcing rules than they are with helping kids or they punish students rather than discipline them to help students learn how to make better decisions in the future and they get mad at you for not doing the same thing or for not punishing students enough so if you go in and say well let's try restorative justice or let's
• 11:00 - 11:30 do some other things to really get these kids reintegrated into school they get mad at you for not punishing them and they focus on the punishment rather than focusing on rehabilitating kids and helping them learn from their mistakes and finally you see this early warning sign when there's a sense of urgency yes but it's a sense of urgency about the wrong things usually that pertains to the adult's comfort more than students needs and if you don't deal with this early warning signal soon over time people will get so focused on the rules
• 11:30 - 12:00 that they'll totally lose sight of the mission and the purpose that your school was built on and soon you're going to hear things like they don't pay me to do that or will we get a bonus if we do that and people will start making decisions about serving kids based on the status quo the rules and the rules will become more important than the students and the work that we're meant to be doing so what will happen is that our work will get buried under policy
• 12:00 - 12:30 and and rules and regulations will begin to Trump relationships so you need to tease this one out early on so that people can stay open and focused on the mission in rather than on maintaining the status quo okay so now let's move on to early warning signal number three where there is an absence of honest dialogue now notice I didn't say that there is an absence of dialogue I'm focused particularly on the absence of honest
• 12:30 - 13:00 dialogue and that's where difficult conversations are avoided because no one wants to hurt anybody else's feelings or no one wants to feel uncomfortable themselves by saying something that may be true but maybe a little uncomfortable and this usually happens when teachers are not getting consistent feedback when they're teaching so the teacher begins to feel unsure about what they should be working on or how they're doing and it can also happen when teachers don't feel comfortable giving you honest feedback
• 13:00 - 13:30 about how they're doing or what they may need or whether they're struggling or whether they need more support the problem with the absence of honest dialogue is that when you don't talk about things openly and freely problems are allowed to Fester rather than being dealt with immediately and then soon you're not just not having open and honest dialogue that's when the passive aggressive comments start sneaking in and that's when people start saying one
• 13:30 - 14:00 thing publicly but doing another thing privately so a teacher May sit in a post-observation conference with you and act as if they agree with all of your feedback and then go back into the classroom and not make any changes you can also see this early warning sign crop up whenever anyone in your school starts to deal with Conflict by talking about people rather than talking to people so at any point where people are not dealing with problems where they are
• 14:00 - 14:30 either getting passive aggressive or they're avoiding conversations altogether or instead of talking about the problem they talk about the person that's when you start to see these early warning signals that you're headed towards toxicity and if an absence of honest dialogue log is allowed to continue sooner or later communication is going to totally break down and once that happens there's a lot of infighting and arguments and feuds and all-out wars and people begin to lie and hide and
• 14:30 - 15:00 avoid dealing with things and and trust and safety is destroyed so it's really important to create open and honest dialogue before the lack of communication destroys your culture all right so now we're going to move on to early warning signal number four and this one is that the back channel is more active and more effective than formal lines of communication so this happens when a small minority dominate
• 15:00 - 15:30 your school-wide discourse and other voices go unheard so we've all been in those staff meetings where one or two vocal people speak up about a topic and everybody else remains quiet even though we know that there are other people there who have a different opinion they just don't feel like they need to be able to say it in the Forum of a staff meeting those conversations start happening in a little sidebar conversations so they start happening outside of the staff meeting and when that happens there's this real lack of
• 15:30 - 16:00 transparency about what gets said in public and it's very different than what gets said behind closed doors and then soon if you don't deal with this rumors start to dominate and they seem to have more true truth than the official communication so people believe the Grapevine more than they believe your official email or your official memo and instead of dealing with disagreement people begin to wage what I call proxy wars that distract from the real issues
• 16:00 - 16:30 so people fight about one thing but that thing they're fighting about really serves as a proxy for what they're really mad about and so people aren't being upfront and honest because they are relying on that back Channel rather than using the right channels to be able to communicate with the powers that be so when the back channel is allowed to grow and become the main way that people communicate in your organization what happens is it can completely sabotage
• 16:30 - 17:00 your efforts to move your school forward and that's because you lose control over the narrative and when you lose control over the narrative other people can substitute their agendas their interpretations their vision for your hours so you need to get that back Channel under control early on before it has a chance to take over the narrative and derail your ability to move your school forward all right early warning signal number five there is more self-preservation and
• 17:00 - 17:30 collaboration in other words teachers are so busy looking out for themselves that they don't support each other it's every man or every woman for him or herself and that can happen when people start making decisions based on who is in and who is out who has perceived power and who is powerless and it can also happen or you can also see this crop up when you have to play politics in order to get anything done or there's
• 17:30 - 18:00 this entrenched US versus them mentality so people start taking sides and then what happens is that conflict starts to become personal rather than philosophical and people stop sharing Solutions all they do is complain about problems or you'll see this happening when people go into their classrooms and they close their door and they teach but they they never come out of those classrooms and share the resources or their successes with other people and
• 18:00 - 18:30 people stop seeking help from other people too and they just go it alone and so you'll often see this in schools where there are pockets of Excellence but the Excellence is not pervasive and that's because people aren't collaborating people are so worried about preserving themselves that they're not supporting each other you'll also see this when you have really unproductive team meetings or no team meetings at all some people again are not collaborating and then here's another sign students and their families
• 18:30 - 19:00 they get subtly blamed for a lack of progress because people don't want to take ownership and responsibility to themselves so they put that on the students and their families and they may not do it in a mean way or a vicious way so that's why this one's so hard to detect sometimes they do it under the guise of just stating the facts I call it holding soft stereotypes or that poor baby mentality when they say these poor babies they come from such poverty or
• 19:00 - 19:30 they come from broken homes it's no wonder that our test scores aren't higher what people are doing is they're putting the blame on the kids rather than taking ownership and responsibility and that comes out of a desire to preserve self rather than deal with problems rather than confront things coming forward so when people start looking out for themselves more than they support each other no one's taking full responsibility for the success or the failure of your school instead you
• 19:30 - 20:00 have a lot of blame and and shame and judgment and what's more people start forming clicks and they become even more entrenched in what matters to them as opposed to what will help your school move forward their own agenda takes precedence and and some people are grabbing for power and doing what they can to preserve their own status or Worse hide their own incompetence rather than learn and grow and and do the things that they need to do do to move your school forward so the key is to detect this attitude early the first
• 20:00 - 20:30 sign of self-preservation you need to nip it in the bud right away and you need to create collaboration and support structures and have those in place so that people become accustomed to sharing resources to collaborating on the best course of action and to supporting each other towards the greater goals for your school all right last early warning signal this is early warning signal number six and this one is that punishment is emphasized over recognition and Rewards so in this
• 20:30 - 21:00 scenario most people's behavior is mostly motivated by the avoidance of punishment so people are doing or not doing things because they're scared that there will be some retribution and in this situation there's a palpable lack of safety because people are afraid to speak up for fear that if they do they're going to be punished by you or they're going to be punished by their colleagues and this also can manifest itself and I've seen this a lot in schools where if a few people mess up
• 21:00 - 21:30 everybody gets punished so you have one or two teachers who are coming in consistently late and the whole staff gets reamed out about how it's so important to be on time at the next staff meeting when really you're only dealing with one or two people who are violating the rule and the other way this manifests itself is that sometimes our rules about how people behave in school are designed for the teachers who are not doing their jobs rather than the
• 21:30 - 22:00 teachers who are doing their jobs so let me give you for instance sometimes you have some teachers who are not planning and so instead of dealing with those teachers we Institute these rules that say teachers have to turn in lesson plans every Friday by two o'clock when the majority of teachers are planning and they are staying ahead of the game and you just have a few teachers who are not planning so instead of dealing with those teachers we make a school-wide rule and so people start to worry about getting punished rather than being
• 22:00 - 22:30 recognized for the work that they are doing the other way that this happens is that sometimes cultures have very few ceremonies or Traditions to celebrate what's working or what's good in the school instead we sit around and we tell each other stories about our school that have a negative tone or that are discouraging or Worse demoralizing we're not speaking enough about what's great and what's good that's happening in our schools and instead we're complaining
• 22:30 - 23:00 about all the the things that aren't working and that starts from the head and trickles all the way down the step so when people are focused on avoiding punishment they don't do their best work so if you don't deal with this early warning signal early on some people are going to be hiding their challenges for fear that they're going to be punished instead of being open to feedback or seeking out support and ultimately growing what's more a spirit of negativity will will start to take over your entire school and it will not only
• 23:00 - 23:30 infect your teachers it will infect your parents and it'll affect your students and soon your entire School climate will suffer and there'll be this sense of hopelessness and despair but if you can get everyone focused on the good that currently exists in your school through recognition and through celebrating your successes you can really hardwire hopelessness into your culture and then you can help teachers truly believe that they can and are making a difference in the lives of the students that you serve
• 23:30 - 24:00 so just to recap the six early warning signs that your school culture is turning toxic they are number one there is an absence of risk-taking number two rules are more important than people or mission number three there's an absence of honest dialogue difficult conversations are avoided number four there's more self-preservation than collaboration number five the back channel is more active and more
• 24:00 - 24:30 effective than the formal lines of communication and number six punishment is emphasized over recognition and reward so that means that most behavior is motivated by the avoidance of punishment now here's why taking notice of these early warning signals is so important if you ignore them and you allow them to Fester they're going to infect your school culture and turn things toxic very very quickly that's the bad news now the good news is that if you get to
• 24:30 - 25:00 them early you can overcome these toxic elements before they permeate your entire School culture and that's what Builders do Builders don't wait for things to get toxic before they intervene Builders are constantly on the lookout for signs of toxicity and they deal with it quickly before it has a chance to get any worse and that way they never have to worry about a toxic culture derailing their efforts to build better schools so now it's your turn
• 25:00 - 25:30 take a moment to test your school do you see any of these early warning signals of toxicity currently in place in your school culture or Worse do you see more than one of these signs in your school culture take time this week to spot any of these six early warning signals now so you can nip them in the bud early on and avoid having to face the much more dramatic consequences later on and to help you do that I've got a tool for you just go to school leadership
• 25:30 - 26:00 reimagined.com episode 7 to download this week's freebie six early warning signs your school culture is turning toxic it's a checklist to help you detect whether you've got some early forms of toxicity lurking around in your school culture and once you spot it you can deal with it and eradicate it before it has a chance to ruin everything that you're trying to build again you can get your freebie by going to school leadership reimagine.com or are if you
• 26:00 - 26:30 aren't in front of a computer right now you can just text the word episode seven no space episode 7 to the number 33444 and if you found today's episode useful go ahead and subscribe to the podcast so that you won't miss next week's episode where I'll show you exactly what you need to do to detoxify your school culture so that you can get rid of any toxicity for good it's gonna be a good one so I will talk to you next week that's it for today I'll see you
• 26:30 - 27:00 next time foreign [Music] hey if you're ready to get started being a builder right away then I want to invite you to join us at buildership University it's our exclusive online community for Builders just like you where you'll be able to get the exact training that you need to turn your school into a success story right now with the people and resources you
• 27:00 - 27:30 already have inside you'll find our best online courses live trainings with me tons of resources templates and exemplars and monthly live office hours with me where you can ask me anything and get my help on whatever challenge you're facing right now if you're tired of hitting obstacle after obstacle and you're sick of tiny little incremental gains each year if you're ready to make a dramatic difference in your school right now then you need to join buildership University just go to
• 27:30 - 28:00 buildershipuniversity.com and get started writing your school success story today foreign [Music]