Creating a Culture of Care: Small Leadership Moves That Transform Wellbeing

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So, uh, the floor is yours, Karyn. Can't wait to hear what you got.

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Yay. Ready to roll. Thank you so much for that, Jess., so, uh, as Jess stated, my name is Karyn Richmond. I am

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an employee wellness coordinator from the Sun Prairie Area School District which is just outside of Madison

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Wisconsin, our capitol. We are just slightly east of Madison and our school district has approximately 8,5600

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students and approximately 1, 400 employees. So, I just want to

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express my gratitude to Jess and Karen and the Alpaca team for inviting me in.

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This has been an absolutely inspiring and delightful morning. Uh if you have been following this track all morning,

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uh I feel like the session with Kate on those warm-ups, the value of

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warm-ups, as well as Jess and Cody on visible leadership and present leadership are a perfect segue into what

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we're going to talk about today. And I like to be an informal presenter. So I want people just to popcorn out if you

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have questions or comments as I'm moving through the slides. I designed this to be interactive. I don't want this to be

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a sit and get. So so welcoming your engagement. Also just a little housekeeping thing. I have two screens

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going. So my slide deck is is on this screen. but then the chat and you are over here. So, if I'm turning my head to

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the side, it's because I'm wanting to view what's in the chat., and also Jess, if you can kind of keep me a breast if there's anything in the chat

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That I might need to be aware of. So, so welcome.

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So, welcome everyone. Thank you for attending., just to kick things off, I want to want you to get grounded in with a quote that I love by Maya Angelo.

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And I never use quotes exactly, but the overall message of it is people will forget what you said. People will forget

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what you did, but people will always remember how you made them feel. And I just love grounding into that concept as

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we move forward with this because think about that as a leader and maybe even who leads you and how how they have

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impacted you with the way that they've made you feel.

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just provide a session overview. So, we're going to be talking a little bit about how well-being is a leadership responsibility. Often leaders are

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trained in curriculum overall leadership skills, but they don't necessarily well-being doesn't come to top of mind. And it's also

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historically been considered part of you know housed in HR and that it's a silo in HR. And today we're going to

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talk about how leadership is responsible for creating that culture of care and creating well-being across your organization.

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We're going to talk a little bit about how your daily behaviors as a leader shape this experience for creating that

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culture. And I love I just love the little winds. I have to hold up my little cowbell here on little winds

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alpaca. I love that tagline because small shifts create a big impact. And a reference I also like to use if any of

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you give me a thumbs up if any of you have ever heard the book at Atomic Habits by James Clear and or read it.

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Oh, I'm seeing the thumbs up. Awesome.

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And basically what he talks about in that book, I highly recommend it if you have not read it, is how just making

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a 1% improvement each day consistently over time has large cumulative results.

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And so I think often as leaders, we think big. We're like, what can I do to make this impact? And very quickly it gets overwhelming. So, as we're moving

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through through the session, I want you to think about how my small daily actions will make an impact over time. I don't need to create this huge

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initiative to make an impact.

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All right, just setting the table for what we're going to talk about and the why behind this. Why is it important to

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create a culture of care? Karen already referenced this. I loved like the report that she shared out. A lot of that

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information was captured in that as well as in the session that Jeff and Coty uh shared a few sessions back. So, we know

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teachers are burned out. That's not a surprise. teachers are indicating that their case loads are not

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manageable. teachers are twice as likely to leave the profession more than five years ago. here in Wisconsin

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we're seeing kind of a double impact in that we have less and less people going into education. So that's turnurning out a lot more less of those educators as

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well as we know they're leaving the educational field more quickly than they used to. Back in the day, it's you got your degree in education. You

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might have stayed a teacher or moved through the ranks, but you did it your entire career. And we're no longer seeing that. So, we really know that

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well-being and focusing on well-being impacts staff retention, student outcomes, and culture. So, we're going to get a little bit more into that now.

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Okay. Why does this matter? This matters because as a manager, as a leader, you are driving the engagement. And again, I

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loved how Jeff and Coty helped set the stage for this with a lot of Gallup statistics. I love Gallup as well.

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Gallup has indicated that 70% of the variance in engagement in workforce, your employee workforce is due to the

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management. And there's that old adage, people don't leave a job, they leave their manager. That's true. That's proven to be true., like I said, uh

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Gallup has tons of, uh, statistics and research out there around this, but we know that managers are a huge driver with engagement, and we

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want our employees to be showing up for work, bringing their best, most vibrant selves to show up for the students each

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day., another thing again that Jeff and Coty talked quite a bit about is how recognition boosts retention.

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Again, that is a Gallup statistic that people who feel recognized are twice as likely to stay in their role for

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longer term. If people do not feel like they're recognized in a meaningful way, they are much more likely to leave that job. And then lastly, again, just

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thinking about and reflecting on how leadership is impacting the overall culture of your organization. So, one

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thing I would like everyone to reflect on for a moment is what daily leadership behaviors are hurting or helping staff

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well-being. And if you can pop those in the chat, that would be great. I know some of you might not want to be vulnerable and say, "Okay, I'm doing

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something that's hurting our staff well-being." But a perfect example is if you're in a leadership role, you're a high achiever. And one of those

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behaviors might be that you're burning yourself out or not setting boundaries for yourself. So, if we can just take a moment to pop those in the chat., I'm

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just going to take a look at that., yes, checking in with team members. That is an excellent one. We're going to be talking about that in a few moments.

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Being overwhelmed and frustrated. Yes., let's see. Anything else in here?

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Anyone else?

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We've got saying hello to people in the hallways.

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Yes., avoiding checking in because you know you're not going to like the answer.

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Yes, that's a good one. Those those courageous tough conversations that you don't always want to have.

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Yep., being present in the conversations., oh, not acknowledging staff.

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Yep. Okay, great. Thank you for that participation. We're going to touch on all of those things. And again, as an

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educator, I love to be able to walk away with practical tools to put in your toolkit. And so hopefully you will walk

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away with that. And the thing that's really great is that they're simple and they're neutral cost, which again, as an educator and a leader, that's kind of

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talking our language because we're all under budget constraints right now.

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Okay. So just an o overall I just want you to think be thinking about the core message of this session which is

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well-being. The well-being of your workforce is shaped by the daily work experience. So burnout doesn't happen in

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one day or with one incident. It is cumulative over time. So just be filing that away and reflecting on that as we

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have further discussion ahead here. Uh, additionally, as I already stated, leadership matters. It matters a lot.

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Again, Gallup says that that creates a 70% variance in engagement of your

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employee group. And we want our people to be engaged because we're in the business of educating students. And if our teachers are burned out and calling

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in sick, that means that that curriculum is not being with delivered with rigor and fidelity on those days that there's a substitute in that

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classroom. And also, if they're showing up feeling overwhelmed or stressed, they're not going to be able to bring their best self to deliver that curriculum with rigor and fidelity and

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meet all of the varying needs of the students, including their social emotional needs.

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So now we're going to get into the practical leadership practices that you can start implementing right away

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tomorrow and some tips to make those happen. So we're going to talk a little bit about one-on-one rounding. Giving

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time back. That's a huge one. many of you have probably if you're in a leadership role now, you have been in the trenches at some point when you were

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a teacher. So you know how how precious that time is. And as a leader, it's even more precious really., recognition practices

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offering permission-based leadership, and also looking at the whole person as a leader.

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So, one-on-one rounding., these are some some key tenants of impactful one-on-one rounding. So, often we may

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think about, okay, I'm meeting with an individual at the beginning of the year.

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We're going to go over what their goals are, what I'm evaluating them on, how they're delivering the curriculum

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but are you also thinking about how you can help support them? So, one of the things that we guide our leaders on and

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coach them on is including in that one-on-one rounding, asking that individual, how can I best support your

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well-being this year? And often if if you're in the initial stages of implementing that, the person might be taken aback or shocked because they're

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not used to a supervisor actually taking an in the intentional time to say, "I care about your well-being and I want to

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know how I can best support you." So, be thinking about how you can co-create that plan with that staff member to

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identify how you can best support them with their well-being and with their other needs as an educator., doing that helps to build trust. Also, the

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one-on-one rounding. You might have formal rounding sessions, but as someone stated earlier in the chat box, like don't forget about those check-ins.

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it's easy as a leader for time to escape and get away on you and all of a sudden it's like, oh my gosh, we're in the last month of school and I never circled back

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with the staff person because they're not on schedule to be evaluated this year., also think about there are meaningful moments that you can do even

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if you pass someone in the hallway and you can pause and take the time to check in with them. Then it doesn't always have to be formal. Look for those opportunities.

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So a reflection question that I want you to be thinking about is, do your check-ins include questions about

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well-being and support? And if you can just pop it in the chat just, you know, either a yes or no or a thumbs up.

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just wondering kind of where people are at with us. It might not be something that intuitively bubbles up for people as a leader. So, I'm just going to look at the chat for a moment.

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Yes, I love Caitlyn what you shared about divide and conquer. Don't do everything yourself. designating

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designate to some other people on your team as well.

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Yep. I love that the transparency of, you've asked how you can help support them, but just maybe think about

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specifically like how you can support their well-being., love the honesty, Jamie. As a leader, we are overwhelmed.

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We have an overflowing plate. So, sometimes we forget about those things.

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Okay, awesome. Love all these comments.

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Hoping to improve on it next year. love it.

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All right., moving on to another leadership strategy, giving time back.

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And again, this is something that is probably not new to anyone, but it's so easy for this to slip away when we have

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lots of pressures and stressors. And we are answering to our top leadership on our school board as well on meeting

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those scorecard goals. making sure testing scorers are we're closing those gaps, all of those things. but just

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try to intentionally think about auditing the meetings that you lead. can you shorten that meeting? Are there some things that could be put in an email? Can you eliminate that meeting?

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Also, another thing to be thinking about is protecting time. And this is another one that again, it's easy to escape and

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let this slip away., are you making sure that the the your workforce in your building that those PLC times and those

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prep times are being protected? Often those are times where leaders will try to slip in like, "Hey, we're going

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to hold this IEP for this student or 504 plan during your prep time and that creates tension and erosion of trust.

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We want to be reducing friction for our workforce. making sure that they have that time to prepare lessons, to do

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grading, all of those things. So, just be thinking about how you can audit meetings and shorten them. What are ways that you can protect the time of your of

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your employees? those things make a difference in the culture of your building.

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And just be thinking in your mind, is there one meeting coming up that you could shorten or eliminate? I know in Wisconsin tomorrow is our official

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last day of school. So the school year is wrapping up for all of our Wisconsin schools, but as a leader, you still have a lot of committees. You have

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other leadership that you manage. uh we have summer school here. So be thinking about are there any meetings you have coming up that you could shorten or eliminate?

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Recognition that matters. So, this was something again I loved it that Jeff and Cody are doing this across uh their

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state and their county on how to recognize people and a few things that I just want you to think about if you are trying to implement an intentional

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recognition strategy. So, number one, identify what those person's preferences are. We do this as a part of our

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onboarding practice. So, as each employee is onboarded, we actually have them complete a form that where they

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where they list what is their preference for being recognized. Do they prefer one-on-one recognition? Do they prefer written recognition, small group or

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public recognition? We all know some people don't like public recognition.

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That's embarrassing to them., so make sure that you're honoring that person's preferences. That also creates that culture of care that that you understand them and what their preferences are.

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Another thing you want to be thinking about when you are offering a recognition, no matter what the format is, is including behavior and impact. So

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that secret sauce formula is behavior plus impact. If you just tell someone, hey, you did an awesome job today

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teaching that lesson, that might make them feel good, but you're really not providing them specific feedback on what

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they did that made a difference or what made them awesome. So, one of the sentence starters we like to use is

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because of you and then complete that sentence. So, be thinking about how you can include that behavior and the impact

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that they made. And then lastly, make sure it's timely and genuine. So you don't want recognition to be you're just

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checking off a box because it's something that you feel you should do.

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So be genuine about it. People feel if it's genuine. And also if you have those opportunities, those teachable

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moments where you're uh like let's say you're doing an observation of a teacher and you see something you really

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like, give them that feedback in real time. So don't have the feedback be delayed as as if you can give that feedback in a timely fashion that's always appreciated and more impactful.

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And then just something for you to think about and you don't need to answer this. This does doesn't have to go in the chat but just in your own mind be thinking about

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would staff describe your feedback as meaningful and specific. And if the answer to that is no, that's okay. We're all human. We're not perfect. So maybe

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think about how you can circle back to the formula of behavior plus impact.

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Permission based leadership. Okay, this is a really tough one for leaders because again if you are a leader, you

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are a driver, you're a performer, you are hardworking. and so you might not be modeling those boundaries well

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but guess what? Just like how kids pay attention to what parents or adults do, staff pay attention to what you do. So, how are you modeling boundaries that

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support well-being? Uh, a great example for from someone in our district is before she had children, she was at work really early in the morning, stayed

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really late. Once her first child became school age, she let her parents or rather her staff know I'm going to be taking my child to school every day.

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So, I will still be here when school starts, but I'm not going to be here super early as I was historically. I'll be available through my cell phone

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but my child is a priority and I'm going to be driving my child to school every day. Uh also encouraging balance, that

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work life balance, home life balance. So again, are you working burning yourself out with really really long hours? I

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know as leaders we do work long hard hours. however, it's also important

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to manage our own stress, whole person leadership. So thinking

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about again leading with empathy, flexibility and supporting the real life needs of

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people. And that's very fluid and can change based on that specific person.

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Also, another thing that I like to share with leaders is, are you willing to make yourself vulnerable? I love how in the

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chat some people made themselves vulnerable by saying, "Oh, I'm I'm not doing this, but I'd like to." That's honesty., and we're all human. We're

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all living a human experience. And when when you allow yourself to be vulnerable to your employees, that creates

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credibility, it builds trust. And a lot of PE leaders might think initially you know, I'm going to lose credibility

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over this or lose control. But actually the opposite happens. So when you make yourself just a real person and with

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real problems that you encounter too, that builds your credibility and creates that culture of care. And just be

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thinking about when was a time that you maybe had to implement some flexibility or empathy toward a team member

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because maybe they had a really acute stressful situation going on in their personal life. What did you do to help support them?

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Okay, kind of tying everything together again. I like I said, I love the alpaca little winds tagline. Again, going back

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to James Clear Atomic Habits, those small actions drive culture and that consistency matters. And one of the

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things that I do and that many of our leaders do and we coach them to do is putting reminders actually in your

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calendar, little blocks. I'm going to put in a 15inute block twice a week where I'm going to intentionally send

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out recognitions to people on my team and I'm going to do that every week. I'm not just going to do it for two weeks and let it drop off. Another thing that

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I absolutely love and I swear Alpaca is not giving me any kickbacks for this, but I just love Alpaca. These culture

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cards that they that they have created are phenomenal. using these in your meetings. get one, give one.

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Write a thank you note and leave a blank one in it to say pass it on. Uh coffee compliment, surprise a colleague with a coffee and write a note on their cup.

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Love these little recognition little wins. these culture cards from Alpaca give you some great tangible ideas.

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Again just recapping how does this bring value to your organization? Creating a culture of care

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builds engagement. We want an engaged workforce. It helps reduce that burnout.

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When people feel cared about somehow that makes them just feel more engaged and appreciated. Also we know that uh

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making people feel cared about and creating a culture of care that retains your people. people again they leave managers or negative work cultures.

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they might love their job but if the culture is not supportive of them they might choose to go elsewhere and again we know that fosters that strong culture.

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Okay. So what can you do? Three action steps you can start tomorrow. think about how can you audit one meeting. Is

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there a meeting that you could shorten, combine or maybe put in an email? take it completely off of the calendar.

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check in with someone with intention. So rather than just passing in the hall or

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having a friendly exchange, really take the time to have a meaningful conversation with that person and make them feel seen and heard and

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valued., you know, check in with how they're doing with their well-being. And then lastly, another little small action

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you could do is again recognizing someone meaningfully. Is there someone on your team that you can celebrate and use their preferences to celebrate them?

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It might be public. It might be a written note. It might be a one-on-one conversation. And use that formula of

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including their behavior and the impact that they made.

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Lastly, here is your call to action. So, what one leadership action can you

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commit to this week? And I see we're at 129, but I would love it if people would just be willing to pop something in the chat., perhaps one of those things

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that we just discussed on this previous slide. What's one thing that you can commit to this week? And another thing that I love about the workbook that

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Alpaca created is we all know as educators when you write something down, you are much more likely to achieve that

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goal or accomplish that action step. So, I love that we're that we will be moving into the workbook and you can write that

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down in your workbook as well as a reminder.

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All right, looking over just the things here. Love all of the Oh, calendar recognitions. Love that. Thank you notes.

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Jess, do you want to comment on any of these?

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Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I love the one about thanking summer staff for working over the summer., lots of notes about summer., checking in with intention.

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Uh, adding check-ins to the calendar.

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Lots of uh lots of focus on that there from different people on the team., yeah. Oh, let's see.

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Oh, building in time to recognize staff is something that will be helped by putting it into writing. Yes, absolutely.

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Definitely agree with that. Yeah.

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And your staff meetings and you as a leader can role model that, but their recognition should be in different

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directions. So, it should be across colleagues and peers as well. Is that something that you can build into a staff meeting?

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I know we need to move into the workbook, but does anyone have any questions that they would like me to answer?

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We have time. If there are questions, Karen, we can we can abbreviate some of that other time if people have specific questions that they would like to ask.

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Okay.

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We close our meetings with a gratitude whipound, which I'm assuming means that everybody is saying what what their uh

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point of gratitude is., that's fantastic.

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I love that. I love the I love this is one of the things that I love about these sessions also is we all learn from each other., I just offered a general

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framework for it, but we all get ideas from each other. So, if anyone has any other ideas that they want to pop in, please pop them in the chat.

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Oh, would I be willing to share my survey that I give my faculty on their preferences for recognition?

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Absolutely. Not sure how Jessica on the back end is alpaca going to be like sharing out additional resources or

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Yeah, if you would if you share that with us, we can distribute that to the to the list registrants. Absolutely.

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Yeah, happy to do that.

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Great. Anybody have any specific uh questions or comments for Karen or want to come off mic and and ask anything specifically?

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I do see a comment from Jamie about what do you include in your beginning of the year wellness your staff survey. So, so

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actually backing up Jamie, it we actually send out a staff survey before the end of the year. and that

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includes a wide array of questions around culture and how they can best be supported and it is a Google survey and

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I am happy to also share that out with Jess and Alpaca and that can be shared out with people and you can look at all

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of those questions. We since we you know wellness is a huge part of our strategic scorecard. We are very

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intentional about how we do things but it can be more informal too. It's something you could do at the beginning of the year as a building leader or

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principal. but I'm happy to share that out with you. let me just take a look at these other questions. Is there any other questions?

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If there's any other questions, if you want to come off mic, I'm happy to happy

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to answer them. Otherwise, I think that covers the questions, but I have a wide array of resources that I can share out, including some of the things that we

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do for recognition., you probably can't really see this, but there's like we have like a best practices. This

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is something that we created and put in these within these little like holders and these are get that were given to our leaders with a training on

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how like the best practices of recognition how sentence stems again it's like those three best practices how

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does your team prefer to be appreciated the behavior plus the impact and then also giving you sentence stems I can

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share that as well thank you so appreciate that Karyn is there anything that you think based off

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of the conversation so far today that might be a good conversation starter for the breakout room as they head there to have a little group conversation.

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Absolutely. So I think maybe again just doing your own internal audit of you know hopefully during this session you've been reflecting on okay I'm na

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I'm I'm knocking it out of the park in that area but here's one one leadership strategy I could implement that we could improve on or doing it with

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intentionality and consistency. So just reflecting and thinking on what's one thing that you would like to

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implement perhaps for the upcoming 2627 school year. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Karen.

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Really insightful.