Team relationships are important in a healthy and happy workplace. When team members have a sense of belonging and camaraderie, they’re less likely to be absent or want to leave, and more likely to work towards shared goals. But how much can leaders influence the relationships in their team, and how much should they?
The lowdown
Workplace relationships can be complicated and, within any team, these will vary enormously in type and quality. People will often develop relationships because they are bound together by a task, subject or deadline, for example, and these connections can be perfectly functional and still be somewhat transactional, because they are about seeking and sharing information with the right people, at the right time.
In other cases - such as planning a school trip or co-designing a curriculum initiative - an effective team relies on people developing high levels of trust in their colleagues’ competence, as well as in their integrity, so the relationships take on a different significance.
What we know about what works
As a leader, it can be possible to “nudge” relationships in a positive way, without actively managing them, says Dr Helen Hughes, associate professor and behaviour lab director at the University of Leeds Business School. For instance, by initiating social events where people meet in a non-working environment, she adds.
“As a leader, you can set the tone for good interaction,” she says, through “positivity, celebrating team members and their achievements, giving collective credit for successes”.
“However, as a general rule, your role should not be to micromanage interpersonal interactions, but instead to help build your team’s commitment towards a common goal,” she continues.
“Being clear about what this goal is, what success looks like and what you want the team to do to achieve that requirement is important. By taking that lead, you can provide a clear direction of travel that avoids team members moving in different directions, and them falling out in the process.”
It’s important to remember that not all teams will be the best of friends outside of work, she adds, and that is usually fine so long as they “get along well enough that they can work effectively together”.
But how should middle leaders approach situations where difficulties are arising? As a leader you should not be involved in every interaction and minor dispute, Hughes says, and as long as people are disagreeing respectfully, you should allow them to resolve things by themselves.
“Your involvement too early or frequently can lead to a sense of escalation that can be difficult to move back from,” she says.
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Meanwhile, leaders should also be on the lookout for more the less apparent signs of trouble in the team, she says.
Hughes explains: “Perhaps the most obvious example of things going wrong is where there is active fallout among team members, or where a team is missing deadlines or making mistakes. However, there are also more subtle signs that things are going wrong.
“For instance, there might be apathy about the team’s work and/or their colleagues. Team members might avoid the staff room or each other, or show little opinion on new initiatives or behaviours. In such instances, it might be tempting to let this lie, but the better thing to do is tackle this head-on.
“Speak to your team members to understand their concerns and feelings, and then work to address them. A thriving team culture takes time and effort to cultivate, and starts with you, the leader.
“Toxic teams can develop when poor behaviours are ignored, or rewarded; for example, where someone routinely behaves poorly towards their colleagues and, despite this, gets a promotion. These kinds of behaviour are quickly learned among others and can lead to terrible ripple effects for the team’s culture.”
Ultimately, she says, teams with positive and healthy relationships are “often those in which people are willing to help each other out where they have no obligation to do so”, whether that’s developing co-curricular activities together or pulling together to deliver a school play or sports fixture.
And likewise in healthy team environments, team members will usually feel able to air opinions and disagree openly, because they know their differing views will be “heard in good faith”.
The experienced leader view
Jon Hutchinson is director of curriculum and teacher development at the Reach Foundation. He writes:
There’s a strange paradox in teaching; despite being in a building surrounded by people, it can often feel like the loneliest job in the world. It’s possible to go all day - even days or weeks - without any meaningful interactions with other adults.
In the worst cases, I’ve heard of departments where teachers refuse to share planning with the rest of their team. This is an example of where adult relationships are so poor that the only real losers are the children.
Of course, teaching can also be the opposite of this. In a department with a strong culture, there is an esprit de corp that folks in “normal” jobs could never imagine. As a middle leader, can you really tip the balance in one direction or the other?
You may feel as though the relationships between the staff on your team are out of your control. After all, everyone is a grown-up, and there isn’t really anything in the job description that says everybody has to be best friends.
You might sometimes feel like an older sibling in managing these relationships. You are both of your team, but also lead it. If everyone is falling out all of the time, then you’ll be held at least partly responsible for the situation.
Ultimately, if things get out of hand, there is a layer of management above you who can step in, but you’d probably rather that doesn’t need to happen.
Perhaps what makes all of this so difficult is that while we have a pretty solid evidence base and set of strategies for teaching and learning, there hasn’t really been commensurate attention paid to the science and craft of relationship-building.
You can read a report from the Education Endowment Foundation on retrieval practice, formative assessment or metacognition, but if the biggest problem that you’re facing as a middle leader is poor relationships, the research cupboard looks pretty bare.
Yet there is an emerging science on both the importance of adult relationships (both as an inherent good and in terms of pupil outcomes), as well as how to promote them.
In deputy headteacher Sam Crome’s excellent book The Power of Teams, the secret ingredients are laid out. As a middle leader, you’ll need to carefully build a sense of shared purpose, create an environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging, maintain a culture of psychological safety and mutual trust, and promote ongoing learning as a team.
None of this, of course, is easy or quick. But it is possible to intentionally craft a culture of strong relationships between your team members if you pay attention to these things. The result, research is increasingly revealing, will be a happier environment, higher retention and improved pupil outcomes.
