Module Objectives:
- Critically analyse and evaluate your own communication style and its impact on various stakeholder groups within the school and wider community.
- Strategically apply advanced communication techniques to navigate complex interpersonal dynamics and foster shared understanding amongst diverse teams.
- Develop and implement proactive strategies to cultivate and maintain high levels of relational trust with staff, students, whānau, and external partners, even amidst challenging circumstances.
- Articulate the nuanced relationship between relational trust, effective communication, and their role in leading school-wide initiatives and fostering a positive school culture.
- Evaluate and apply relevant leadership frameworks and research to inform their approach to communication and trust-building within a leadership context.
As Deputy and Associate Principals, you are pivotal in shaping the relational landscape of your kura. This module challenges you to consider communication and trust through a strategic leadership lens.
Deepening Understanding of Communication Styles:
For Deputy Principals, a nuanced understanding of communication involves:
- Contextual Agility: Recognising how different contexts necessitate adaptable communication approaches, considering power dynamics and potential sensitivities.
- Strategic Messaging: Crafting clear, consistent, and compelling messages aligned with the school’s vision and values.
- Active Listening and Inquiry: Employing sophisticated listening techniques to understand perspectives and facilitate constructive dialogue.
- Non-Verbal Communication and Presence: Cultivating a leadership presence that conveys confidence, empathy, and approachability.
- Conflict Navigation through Communication: Utilising advanced communication skills to mediate conflict and guide teams towards resolution.
Resources:
- MindTools – offers numerous articles and tools on communication skills. Explore what is useful for you, from effective written communication to listening skills and everything in between!: https://www.mindtools.com/c_CommunicationSkills.htm
- TED Talk: Julian Treasure – “How to speak so that people want to listen”: https://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_how_to_speak_so_that_people_want_to_listen
- Article: “Four Ways to Communicate with More Empathy” – Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2022/08/4-ways-to-communicate-with-more-empathy
Elevating Relational Trust in Leadership:
For Deputy Principals, building relational trust involves establishing a school-wide culture of trust through:
- Leading with Transparency and Integrity: Demonstrating consistent ethical behaviour and fostering open communication.
- Empowering and Distributing Leadership: Trusting staff with autonomy and fostering shared ownership.
- Strategic Vulnerability: Demonstrating appropriate vulnerability to encourage shared learning and support.
- Navigating Difficult Conversations with Empathy and Courage: Addressing challenging issues directly and with empathy.
- Building Trust with Diverse Communities: Adapting communication and engagement strategies to build meaningful partnerships.
- Accountability and Follow-Through: Consistently following through on commitments.
- Systemic Approaches to Trust Building: Implementing school-wide initiatives that promote trust.
Resources:
- Article: “The Trust Factor” – Educational Leadership (ASCD): https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/the-trust-factor
- Video: Brené Brown – “The power of vulnerability” (TED Talk) – while not education-specific, offers valuable insights into building trust through vulnerability: https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_the_power_of_vulnerability
Task:
Reflecting on Communication and Trust in Practice:
Consider a recent situation where effective communication significantly contributed to building or maintaining relational trust within your school, or conversely, where a communication challenge impacted trust.
Discuss with your learning partner the key communication strategies employed (or not employed) and their impact on the level of trust. Post a summary of your discussion and key insights on the forum (150 words maximum).
Assessment:
- Completion of all readings.
- Participation in the online forum discussion.
- Conversation with learning partner and subsequent post on forum
5 Responses
In Mondoono’s article about ‘The Trust Factor’, she noted that if you find you are talking about someone more than you are to them, that it is time to have a difficult conversation. I had concerns regarding a teacher’s classroom practice and learner outcomes last term, so I chose an inquiring approach rather than presenting all my assumptions. By simply listening, I discovered the bigger picture: she had self-identified these areas but felt overwhelmed by the significant variance in student needs and what turned out to be a broken collaborative partnership. This allowed me to acknowledge her feelings of stress and overwhelm while remaining upfront regarding my concerns about student success and her well-being. As a result, using active listening alongside honest feedback helped maintain relational trust. Rather than feeling defensive, she felt supported, allowing us to co-construct a clear action plan to strengthen her teaching practice.
My insight was that by listening first, rather than just presenting evidence, I allowed the teacher to share her vulnerability rather than putting up defensive walls, revealing that she already self-identified the issues but needed emotional and practical support to address them.
Reflecting on Communication and Trust in Practice:
When reviewing our school wide assessment practices in 2025, team leaders and SLT recognised there were gaps in our summative assessment. With SMART becoming available in 2026, we invited staff to be part of the trial group late 2025. Staff chose to opt in (most did). As we delved into the SMART assessment this May we quickly recognised several flaws. I led with transparency and honesty and acknowledged there were issues. I listened to staff concerns and recognised in order to support staff wellbeing, I didn’t want to overload them with additional work with a tool that had issues. I wanted to show that I valued their time and wanted to support them in the best way I could. I set the assessments for all classes and when an issue over the writing AI assessment tool became apparent, I wanted to follow through with our commitment to the new tool but also support staff. I decided in order to continue building HAIL (honest, authenticity, integrity and love) I would reduce the teacher work load and mark all writing pieces for our kura. This meant almost 300 pieces of marking. This effort was to reinforce that we work as a team and that SLT is here to support, collaborate and remove obstacles when possible.
Reflecting on Communication and Trust in Practice:
When handling a tricky Year 4 friendship dynamic, being flexible and open was key to keeping parents’ trust. By meeting with families right away, I was able to tackle the playground anxieties and unfair labels that were starting to divide everyone.
Framing the drama as a normal part of growing up instantly lowered the parents’ defensive walls. It shifted the conversation from ‘bullying’ to simply learning how to navigate friendship boundaries. Listening closely to parents’ worries about outside peer pressure built rapport quickly, allowing home and school to team up on a strategy to keep things kind while giving the girls some social space.
Setting up two-week check-ins showed real accountability, and admitting that these dynamics are genuinely hard for eight-year-olds created a supportive partnership rather than a top-down hierarchy. It really proved that leadership communication is not just about coaching kids; it’s about managing the parental and sibling influences surrounding them.
Forum Post: Communication & Relational Trust in Practice
In implementing the refreshed curriculum school-wide and working to align the Science and Social Sciences curriculum into our IB programme of inquiry, contextual agility and strategic messaging proved to be important for me in maintaining relational trust with teachers. Initially, the MOE announcements around implementing the new curriculum documents may have triggered staff anxiety, which in turn could have threatened a collective buy-in to the work that needed to be done.
Recognising a potential shift in our usual trust, I decided to use an active inquiry approach to curriculum implementation. We acknowledged the increased workload and invited questions. I outlined the gradual process of implementation and stressed that the power was with teachers as there was consultative feedback to the Ministry available up to 24 April. This was our chance to help make the curriculum as good as it could be, by deliberately using them in Term 1. This transparent approach shifted the dynamic from defensive resistance to collaborative problem-solving.
I also outlined that we would be working together in our usual fortnightly PYP meetings to map and align the curricula into our PYP programme of inquiry, so that we could maintain our authentic PYP pedagogy in the units of inquiry.
Key Insights for me:
Trust is Dynamic: Effective communication isn’t just about delivering information; it requires the emotional intelligence to listen and adapt when anxiety arises. It is also dependent on transparency, around systems and processes that teachers trust.
Empathy Precedes Alignment: By addressing staff vulnerabilities with courage and empathy, we, as a school, reinforced Bryk and Schneider’s core components of relational trust—respect and personal regard—ultimately strengthening our school culture and shared ownership of the initiative.