Does Your School Culture Feel Heavy?

Creating a culture without defensiveness, blame, and fear

Dallas Willard often emphasized an idea that has stuck with me: there is no problem in human life that apprenticeship to Jesus cannot solve.

That’s quite a statement, and the longer I lead, the more I think it has profound implications for Christian leadership.

Christian schools have no shortage of problems. Parents get frustrated. Teachers make mistakes. Leaders make poor decisions. Board members disagree. Communication breaks down. Sometimes criticism is justified, and sometimes it isn’t. Usually, the truth is more complicated than the first version of the story we hear.

We Don’t Have to Pick a Side

I’ve been around leaders who protect their image at almost any cost. When something goes wrong, the instinct is to explain why it wasn’t really their fault. I’ve also seen leaders who quickly find someone else to blame. And then there is the temptation to pick a side.

For executive leaders, some instinctively side with the board and look back critically at the organization. Others identify so strongly with their leadership team that the board becomes the opposition. But the Christian leader’s first allegiance isn’t to the board, administration, faculty, parents, or even the institution. Our first allegiance is to Christ.

That frees us to ask a different question: What does leadership in the manner of Christ require of me here?

Don’t Shortcut the Feedback

When a parent, teacher, board member, or employee brings us a concern, there are a few shortcuts leaders should avoid:

1. Don’t immediately internalize the criticism and become defensive.

2. Don’t try to convince the person why the “school is right.”

3. Don’t assume everything being shared is true.

4. Don’t quickly find someone to blame.

All these shortcuts prevent us from doing the harder work of listening, asking questions, seeking truth, and determining what actually needs to change.

Christian leaders should be able to support without enabling and hold people accountable without becoming legalistic. That balance is difficult if our identity depends upon being right, being liked, or appearing successful. It becomes much easier when our identity is rooted in Christ.

The Culture Should Feel Light

Paul’s description of love in 1 Corinthians 13 may be one of the most practical leadership passages in Scripture:

“Love is patient, love is kind... it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”

One mark of mature Christian leadership should be that we are not easily offended.

Imagine an organization where that description actually shaped the way people worked together.

The culture would feel light. Not because the work is easy or problems are ignored, but because people aren’t carrying the additional weight of defensiveness, image management, blame, and fear.

Healthy leaders don’t eliminate problems. They create environments where problems can be dealt with honestly without adding unnecessary weight to them. Generally speaking, healthy leaders help produce healthy teachers, and healthy teachers create better outcomes for students and families. Leadership health eventually works its way through the entire school.

It Starts at the Top

Culture like this is modeled from the top. When leaders are easily offended, organizations become defensive. When leaders assign blame, people learn to protect themselves. When leaders hide mistakes, people learn to manage appearances. But when leaders listen, admit mistakes, extend grace, tell the truth, and maintain appropriate accountability, people learn that they can do the same.

That’s why discipleship isn’t separate from leadership development in a Christian school. Discipleship is leadership development.

So perhaps the deepest question when facing our next organizational problem isn’t simply, How do I fix this? A better question might be, How would an apprentice of Jesus walk through this?