What can you do when teachers undermine your leadership efforts and threaten your school's reform efforts?

What can you do when teachers undermine your leadership efforts and threaten your school's reform efforts?

Most schools have a staff member or two (no more, we hope) who stand out for their negative attitudes. Allowed to fester, that attitude could infect other members of the team and eventually an entire school community.

Included: Members of our Principal Files team share how they deal with staff members who spread negativity.
Negative people are like human black holes that suck the life out of you. So what can you do with these energy vampires in your life?

A positive school culture starts at the top with the principal.
But even the most upbeat principal knows that pockets of negativity can surface and spread, sometimes slowly and quietly and other times like wildfire. That's why wise principals always keep their radar tuned, watching for signs of discontent.

Turning Negatives into Positives
“Negative people will always be around,” “When there is a negative staff member, one thing that you can do is to have him or her spearhead an initiative. Let that person be in charge of an activity, and that will usually stop them from being the negative one.”

Leaders need to swiftly identify any teachers they work with who fit one of these patterns and deal with accompanying negative behaviors. Here we focus on two types: underminers and on-the-job retirees.

Assess your leadership style to make sure you are providing positive, proactive ways for teachers to share concerns. Underminers may develop as a result of unnecessarily controlling, autocratic leadership, which gives few opportunities to positively resolve issues. Even if your style is more open, if you're new, teachers may go underground with their negativity because their past leader was autocratic.

Set productive ground rules for staff behavior, such as allowing one party to complete his or her side of the story before you rebut; being ready to talk about both the positives and the challenges associated with new ideas; and keeping the discussion focused on the topic, not the person.

Consider school climate to be the day-to-day working atmosphere in a school; school culture is the permanent structures, beliefs, and practices that anchor that school.