You want everybody, teachers, students, community and board members, to walk into your building and feel the great energy that you’ve worked so hard to establish. If you want your school culture to be positive, guard against these three destroyers of staff morale.

​Vertical management

We’ve all been on staff that has been top-down and complained about the “leadership” not caring about or even knowing about our situation.

Being overly authoritarian and not collecting or listening to your staffs’ input leads to grudging compliance at best and active resistance at worse. The more collaboration between staff and you, will help keep motivation high.

Meeting Overkill

I’ve been to any number of professional development and staff meetings that I thought were a massive time suck. During those occasions I was on my phone tuning out or answering emails. A great way to demonstrate that you value your staff is to value their time. That way they can take that mental break or do something else that will be more impactful to their classroom outcomes.

Cancerous Staff Members

On a large staff there are usually one or two cynical staff members that can infect new teachers with their negativity. These are the teachers that complain about the new initiatives you're implementing and they actively work to shut down innovation. Find ways to bring them into the fold or figure out a way to coach them up or out. Put processes and procedures in place to minimize their damage until you can do so. Limiting their influence will have a huge impact on the morale and motivation of the entire staff.

When you identify any of these serial motivation killers in the profile of your building culture do everything in your power to reduce and eliminate them.

​What are other motivation killers in your building? How do you mitigate them? Share in the comments’ section.