Simon Sinek argues that leaders must model caring behaviour to create "circles of safety" (psychological safety). Using school/corporate examples, he contrasts punitive, metrics-first responses with curiosity-driven, supportive interactions that encourage employees to admit mistakes, ask for help, learn empathetic skills, and become more loyal and effective both at work and at home.
Chapters
Just like we asked parents to model behavior for their children, it so too must our leaders model the behavior for our teachers. Let's take a corporate or school example. They're very similar. Let's say performance is suffering. It is a fairly normal scenario for somebody in a leadership position to walk into a classroom and say, you know, your performance is down for the third school year in a row. We got to pick up these numbers, otherwise we're going to have a problem versus saying, hey, I noticed that your performance is down for the third school season in a row. School school year in a row. I'm worried about you. What's going on? Are you okay? When someone feels like someone cares about them as a human being, it is remarkable how much they will be willing to not only open up, but ask for help. And then we can actually rush in to support. Look, we all know what it feels like to be on a trusted team, right? It means we can raise our hand and say, I made a mistake. I don't understand. I need more training. I've got trouble at home. It's affecting my work without any fear of humiliation, retribution, that it's going to affect our careers. In fact, we feel safe enough to say these things with the knowledge that our leader or our fellow teachers will rush in to support us. Unfortunately, we also all know what it feels like not to be in a trusted team when you'll never admit a mistake. You'll never admit you don't understand something or know something. You'll never ask for help or admit that you have problems at home that are affecting your work performance for fear that it'll hurt your career or get in trouble or get humiliated. And quite frankly, it's good leadership that makes those circles of safety, that environment of psychological safety. And if a teacher feels like they are personally growing, that they are learning skills like empathetic listening and have an effective confrontation, how to have an uncomfortable conversation. If they're learning these skills at school for use at school, of course those skills have use at home. And they will see that their relationships outside of school flourish and they will be super loyal not only to the system, but the school because they're becoming better versions of themselves because of where they're working, not in spite of where they're working.
