In The Relational School: From Behaviour Management to Cultural Transformation Sue Chandler shares how schools can go from not only valuing relationships but actively supporting them. She explores what it takes to build a relational culture that embeds connection, accountability and trust in everyday practice, and why well-intentioned initiatives sometimes struggle to stick. This abridged extract for Teacher readers is taken from a chapter discussing change fatigue and building staff readiness.
Staff may be willing – even enthusiastic – and still unable to take on new relational work. Capacity, clarity and emotional bandwidth matter as much as motivation. A teacher can be fully committed to restorative practice and still have nothing left in the tank. A leader can be supportive yet unclear, and that lack of clarity spreads quickly through a school.
In simple terms, staff lean into change when they understand it, believe in it and can do it without burning out. Willingness needs space to grow.
New relational approaches will always struggle in crowded landscapes where old routines and legacy obligations leave no room for reflection, practice or reinforcement. Unless leaders deliberately create capacity, older compliance-driven habits will quietly dominate.
This means being discerning about what stays, what pauses and what stops…
Appointing for relational culture
If schools are serious about building relational culture, that commitment has to show up in who they appoint and promote. Too often, selection processes give disproportionate weight to technical expertise, subject mastery or longevity, while relational competence is treated as a desirable extra rather than a core capability.
Yet the research is clear. Amy Edmondson (2019) has shown that psychological safety – the confidence to speak up, admit mistakes and learn – is a stronger predictor of team performance than technical skill alone. Albert Bandura’s work (1997) highlights that collective efficacy grows from shared belief, coordinated effort and mutual trust. In schools, Goddard, Hoy and Hoy (2004) found that collective teacher efficacy – the staff’s belief that they can make a difference together – is one of the strongest predictors of student achievement.
These conditions depend on relational capability.
When schools appoint leaders who can build trust, hold difficult conversations and model accountability, people feel safe, aligned and supported. When those capacities are missing, even highly skilled individuals can unintentionally weaken culture.
Staff notice what is rewarded. If technical efficiency consistently outweighs relational competence, that becomes the norm. If relational skill is taken seriously in appointments, staff understand that culture is not peripheral – it is core business.
In schools where appointments include explicit consideration of relational capability, teams develop confidence that conflict will be addressed rather than avoided. Adults model the same skills students are being asked to learn. Trust deepens. Consistency grows. Parents sense steadier communication and clearer expectations. These relational strengths rarely show up neatly in a résumé; they reveal themselves when candidates talk about how they’ve responded to behaviour, repaired harm, restored trust or supported others under pressure…
Inviting dissent
One of the most reliable indicators of readiness is whether a school can handle dissent well.
It is easy to value relationships when everyone agrees. The real test comes when someone raises a concern. At that point, leaders can shut it down, label it negativity or treat it as essential feedback.
Dissent is often misunderstood. It is rarely disloyalty. More often, it is care.
McKinsey’s (2023) research shows high-performing organisations don’t avoid dissent – they invite it. They ask questions like:
• ‘What are we missing?’
• ‘What feels risky here?’
• ‘What support would make this doable?’
Crucially, the research suggests that leaders often need to go further than permission and actively signal that dissent is expected, because in hierarchical systems silence is frequently the safer default.
Amy Edmondson’s (2019) work on psychological safety adds useful nuance. Not all silence is supportive, and not all voice is helpful. Schools typically see four patterns:
• Withholding (unproductive silence)
• Processing (reflective silence)
• Disrupting (unproductive voice)
• Contributing (productive voice)
Seen this way, silence and voice are system responses, not personality traits. Silence is rarely a lack of professionalism or engagement; it is information about conditions. Likewise, speaking up does not automatically equate with contribution. Voice can be courageous, disruptive, constructive or unhelpful depending on how it is invited, received and used.
Readiness is about helping staff move towards contribution – where doubts, barriers and practical concerns can be surfaced early and worked through together. Productive dissent is supported by clear boundaries, roles and processes – otherwise debate becomes chaotic or personal. Leaders must choreograph how dissent happens, so challenge deepens thinking without damaging trust.
This becomes even more important when shifting towards relational practice. These changes introduce new language, expectations and routines at a time when staff may already be stretched. Resistance is often fatigue disguised as doubt. When leaders make space for concerns to surface, they turn resistance into data – insight that helps shape the next steps.
The goal isn’t agreement. It’s trust – trust that concerns will be heard, explored and used to strengthen the work.
The Relational School: From Behaviour Management to Cultural Transformation by Sue Chandler is available from all major book retailers and Amba Press, the publisher.
References
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman.
Edmondson, A. C. (2019). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. Wiley.
Goddard, R. D., Hoy, W. K., & Woolfolk Hoy, A. (2004). Collective efficacy beliefs: Theoretical developments, empirical evidence, and future directions. Educational Researcher, 33(3), 3–13.
McKinsey & Company. (2023, February 15). Into all problem solving, a little dissent must fall. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/into-all-problem-solving-a-little-dissent-must-fall
Thinking about a change in your own school that you are leading where staff are already willing and enthusiastic: Do they also have the ‘capacity, clarity and emotional bandwidth’?
What are the challenges that exist in these 3 areas that could be barriers to making the change stick? What practical steps are needed to support staff through the process?
