You’ve built the action plan.
You’ve identified the priorities, established the goals, determined the highest-leverage actions, and hopefully put the right people in the right places.
On paper, it looks beautiful.
Now comes the harder part.
You have to get people excited about doing the work.
Because even the best action plan will fail if the people responsible for implementing it don’t understand it, believe in it, or see themselves as part of it.
And that starts with how we communicate change.
Change Creates Uncertainty, Even for Great People
Major change can make people nervous. But sometimes even small changes create uncertainty.
People begin wondering:
Why are we changing this?
Was what I was doing before wrong?
Can I actually do what is being asked of me?
What happens if this doesn’t work?
For experienced educators, change can be particularly complicated. These are people who have developed strategies, systems, and expertise over years of working with students. When a leader suddenly walks in with a tightly scripted plan and says, essentially, “Here is exactly what you will do and exactly how you will do it,” the message received may be very different from the message intended.
Instead of hearing, We have a strong plan, they may hear, We don’t trust you.
That doesn’t create commitment. It creates compliance.
And compliance will only take an organization so far.
Buy-In Doesn’t Mean Anything Goes
The answer, however, isn’t moving to the opposite extreme.
Leadership during change cannot be, “Here’s the goal. Figure it out however you want, and let me know when you get there.”
There are teams where that level of autonomy can work. I have worked on them. When you have highly experienced people who understand the mission, believe deeply in the vision, and have demonstrated their ability to produce results, leaders can provide tremendous autonomy.
But that is not where I would begin when leading significant change.
Change requires clarity.
People need to understand where we are going, why we are going there, what success will look like, and what expectations are non-negotiable.
The key is providing that clarity without removing people’s ability to think.
Give People Something to Own
One of the most successful years I experienced as a school leader began with a clear plan, but it did not end with my plan.
My core leadership team and I identified our goals, objectives, and major actions. We knew where we needed to go and had established the guardrails for getting there.
Then I brought in my teacher leaders.
I shared the vision. We discussed the priorities. I explained why the work mattered. And then I asked for their thinking.
They challenged pieces of the plan. They brought perspectives we hadn’t considered. And yes, we made adjustments because of those conversations.
Then we brought the work to the entire staff.
But we didn’t stand in front of them and hand them a script.
We gave teams time to answer a much more important question:
What does this look like in our classrooms?
Teams worked together to translate our schoolwide priorities into actual classroom practices. Veteran teachers brought their expertise. Newer teachers benefited from working alongside experienced colleagues. Teams calibrated expectations together.
We established the destination and the guardrails.
They helped build the road.
That year produced some of the strongest buy-in…and some of the strongest results we experienced.
That wasn’t accidental.
People get excited about work they are part of developing.
This Is Where Transformational Leadership Matters
Leading change requires leaders to continually connect today’s work to tomorrow’s possibility.
Your staff needs to hear the vision more than once.
Actually, they need to hear it so often that you may become tired of saying it before they become tired of hearing it.
Keep reminding people:
This is where we’re going.
This is why it matters.
This is what will be different for our students when we get there.
Then create milestones that allow people to see that the work is producing results.
Don’t wait until the end of the year to celebrate success.
Identify what progress should look like after 30 days. After six weeks. After a quarter.
Monitor those milestones. Talk about them. Celebrate them.
When people can see that their work is creating movement, the vision stops feeling theoretical.
It becomes something they believe they can actually achieve.
Set the Destination. Build the Road Together.
Strong leadership during change lives somewhere between control and chaos.
We cannot micromanage talented people until there is no room left for expertise, creativity, or innovation.
But we also cannot announce an ambitious goal and simply hope everyone figures out how to get there.
Our responsibility is to create clarity around the destination, establish the expectations that truly matter, provide the structures and support people need, and then invite them into the work of figuring out how we get there together.
Hold people accountable.
Monitor the work.
Protect the non-negotiables.
But also trust the people you hired to bring something valuable to the table.
Because the goal isn’t simply to get people to follow your plan.
The goal is to build a team that believes the plan belongs to all of you.
Cheri