How To Lead So People (Including You) Don't Want To Leave!

In today’s educational landscape, retention has evolved from a human resources concern into a core leadership responsibility. On average, one in five principals nationwide are leaving their schools each year, and almost 30% of educators are actively seeking new opportunities. With the cost of replacing a school principal estimated at $75,000 and replacing a single educator reaching nearly $25,000, not to mention the impact of operational disruption and cultural fatigue, retaining high-quality staff must be a priority. 

In addition to the financial impacts, the data reveals a critical insight for school leaders: only a small fraction of employees leave solely for money. More often, people leave because of their daily experience, which is largely shaped by their direct supervisor. Yet school leaders are frequently consumed by the immediate demands of the day, leaving little time to cultivate environments that allow both teaching staff and building leaders to thrive. In an era of increased student needs and tighter budgets, leaders must prioritize supporting and developing people, starting with themselves.

Internal Leadership Precedes External Leadership

Leadership is often viewed as the external words and actions that inspire others to reach their full potential. However, truly impactful leadership begins internally. Before shaping school culture, leaders must first examine how they lead themselves, including how they manage their mindset, priorities, relationships, and responses under pressure. Leadership grounded in self-awareness and purpose creates the foundation for inviting others to willingly participate in building a thriving culture together. Think of the classic airplane advice: secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others. Leadership works the same way. Build a culture where you can breathe, grow, and thrive, and chances are the people you serve will thrive there too.

In order to build a thriving culture through internal leadership, leaders can apply these three principles: authority, agency, and authenticity.

• Authority: Setting high expectations and designing systems to achieve excellence.
• Agency: Actively contributing while taking responsibility for your own actions and choices.
• Authenticity: Understanding yourself deeply and building genuine relationships with others.

Remember, these qualities must first be demonstrated personally before they can be expected from others.

Authority: Designing Systems for Excellence

To lead systems effectively, you have to first model initiative, organization, and discipline in your own life. When you are intentional about the structures that support your own growth, you earn the credibility to expect the same from others.

In today's labor market, a lack of support and growth opportunity is one of the primary drivers of voluntary exits. Leaders play a critical role in helping staff develop, consistently implement, and reflect on systems that hold high expectations. And that influence is strongest when leaders are doing the same work themselves.

A few questions worth sitting with: How effectively am I prioritizing my physical health, my key relationships, and my mental well-being? What systems have I put in place to help me be my best given everything that is being asked of me? How am I holding myself accountable?

Leader Solutions (For individual leaders):

• Know your end goals and how you will measure progress. Understand when you are at your best and what discipline you need to protect your priorities.
• Build in accountability partners who can help you reflect honestly on where you are and where you are headed.
• Design a daily, weekly, and monthly schedule that allows you to sustain your physical health, personal relationships, professional responsibilities, and personal well-being.
• Invest in professional development that builds the skills you need to achieve your goals and better support those you serve.

Leadership Solutions (At the systems level):

• Create coherent systems that align purpose, curriculum, training, and reflection, with clear measures of progress.
• Implement internal talent marketplaces: Instead of "hoarding" talent within departments, create systems where educators can find new projects or tasks that align with their evolving skills and desired goals.
• Focus on mastery, not just results: A "performance orientation" driven by ego and outcomes leads to energy drain, whereas a "mastery orientation" focused on learning fuels intrinsic motivation.
• Invest in targeted upskilling: Professional development should be framed as differentiated and need-based or "turnover prevention spend" rather than just a budget line item.
  
  

Agency: Active Contribution and Responsibility

Agency is choosing to contribute and taking ownership of your actions. IAgency is the cornerstone of engagement. Employees, including leaders, can go through the motions and check off tasks daily, or they can be invested in how their thoughts and actions contribute to the organization's success as a whole. 

Effective leaders understand their own strengths, knowing that when they are able to do regularly what they do well, they are happier and more satisfied in their work. They realize that others have strengths that can help them overcome their blind spots, and intentionally bring individuals together, creating a cohesive team where each person’s contribution strengthens the whole. 

In a school setting, autonomy does not mean working in isolation; it means acting with a sense of volition and choice. When educators contribute with a feeling of personal investment in their roles, they are less likely to engage in procrastination or avoidance and more likely to exhibit "pro-organizational" behaviors. 

Leader Solutions (For individual leaders):

• Be curious and invite different perspectives on issues you are facing, and be open to new ideas, growing yourself and the organization.
• Form connections with colleagues based on getting to know their strengths and what they care most about.
• Employ a leadership coach to help you understand the barriers to your motivation and actively work to overcome them.

Leadership Solutions (At the systems level):

• Give staff the freedom to determine how they will achieve their goals. That demonstrates real respect for their professional judgment.
• Implement rapid feedback loops and regular coaching conversations grounded in professional growth goals that staff help set themselves.
• Involve students in goal-setting and leverage teacher expertise to individualize support for student progress.

Authenticity: Building Cultures of Psychological Safety and Belonging

True belonging requires authenticity and vulnerability, yet many supervisors and educators feel pressured to "cover" facets of their identity at work. A necessary component to a positive culture is psychological safety, defined as the shared belief that the environment is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. When educators feel they will not be punished for admitting a mistake or sharing a dissenting opinion, they stop hiding behind barriers and start bringing their full selves to their work. This contributes to the number one factor of student success - collective efficacy.

Building this level of collective belief requires leaders to recognize that they are not separate from the culture they are trying to build, they are a central part of it. Staff want to be led by someone who is both capable and connected, a leader who can provide direction and supports while also building authentic relationships.

Connection is what creates a culture where people feel they belong. In a time when many individuals experience isolation, stress, and increasing professional demands, the opportunity to contribute to something meaningful alongside others is powerful. Schools that cultivate this sense of belonging create environments where educators feel valued not only for what they do, but for who they are as professionals and people.

Cultures of belonging do not happen by accident. They are built through intentional leadership and coherent systems that align purpose, expectations, and support for the individuals working within them.

Leader Solutions (For individual leaders):

• Model vulnerability and trust by acknowledging that you do not have all the answers, and that failing forward is not only acceptable but a path to improvement.
• Leverage your strengths and actively seek guidance where you have blind spots.
• Understand your values and what triggers your stress when someone goes against them.

Leadership Solutions (At the systems level):

• Frame improvement as a systems initiative focused on learning, not an initiative that signals deficit in student ability.
• Differentiate training so that every staff member gets what they actually need.
• Address culture sabotage directly. Gossip and blame-based language do not resolve themselves. Set high expectations, have the hard conversations, and ground them in evidence and good intentions.

Lead to Stay

Building a culture where everyone can reach their full potential begins with looking honestly at your own needs as a professional. When you address authority, agency, and authenticity in your own leadership life, you become better equipped to cultivate those same qualities across your entire team.

When leaders invest in themselves and in their people as whole human beings, something shifts. People do not stay because they feel they have to. They stay because they want to.

That is the culture worth building.