When I was in high school and college my summer job was to life guard during the day and teach swim lessons in the morning. While I had always wanted to be a teacher, I had no experience teaching swim lessons. So, the program was set up that you watched a veteran swim teacher for one session (Nancy was maybe 2 years older than me) and then you took over for the next session. I would watch Nancy for an hour, have a 15 minute break, then teach my own class of 5-7 little kids. 
I loved it and the kids all learned how to swim in that 2 week session. Most important thing I learned was that the kids needed to feel safe with me or no learning occurred. That lesson has traveled with me through my entire career as an educator. For growth to occur, people need to feel safe.
Recently, I read Dan Coyle’s book, the Culture Code The book is a great read, and helped me to better consider how great culture is built. I had assumed that groups either have great culture or not. That while, there are commonalities between groups that people love to be around, building the culture was more of a hit or miss proposition. Turns out, according to Dan Coyle (and backed up with examples of groups with great cultures) that there are specific skills that help to create that culture that so many of us would love to experience and to be a part of.
The three skills; 1) Build Safety, 2) Share Vulnerability and 3) Establish Purpose. Building safety was something that I did when I started teaching the swim lessons. If the little kids did not feel safe, then they would not release the tight hold they had on my neck long enough to learn to swim. But building safety in any school, or organization is important. New Teacher Orientation, New Student Orientation, New Employee Orientation needs to go further than how to log in to the computer system, and helping the newbie find the bathrooms. Organizations with great cultures create a sense of belonging from the start. There also needs to be an awareness that being new is something that lasts through a whole cycle. So New Teachers, can greatly benefit from ongoing meetings to talk about all that is coming at them. Having a great mentor can help too.
As I had gotten a few years under my belt in administration, I felt more comfortable in the role and in my own skin. This allowed me to be more able to admit when I screwed up. Sharing vulnerability helps others to feel a little more comfortable when they make a mistake. I don’t know about you, but my most significant learnings on the job came from my screw-ups. Finally, establish purpose. While serving as an administrator in a Catholic High School, I worked with a group as we crafted our Mission and Vision Statements. It was time-consuming and pain-staking work. We would spend entire meetings discussing and arguing about one word. At the end of our allotted time to create the statements, we rolled it out for approval by every group imaginable connected to the school. The statements went into handbooks, and on posters to be in every room on campus. We practically dislocated our shoulders patting ourselves on the back so much. One big problem though, the vast majority of our teachers and students could not tell anyone what the statements were without reading them. We did not do the work to establish our purpose and make sure that every member of the school community knew what that purpose was.
Great cultures are so important for an organization to be successful; pick up the Culture Code by Dan Coyle to learn some necessary skills.
