Creating Value In Schools
Liz Worthen is the owner and editor of Creating Value in Schools. Her career in education spans teaching, training, commissioning and programme development – creating resources which enable leaders to flourish in their roles. This blog post is drawn from the podcast episode Listen first, act better: why listening matters in schools. There's a temptation, particularly in leadership roles, to arrive with the answers already formed. You've assessed the situation, you know what needs to change, and you're ready to act. As Hannah Wilson commented in a recent podcast episode, “we have got a massive bias for action in education”. But what if the most valuable thing you could do first is simply stop – and listen? The more I’ve spoken to school leaders and educators for the Creating Value in Schools podcast, the more convinced I’ve become: listening isn't a soft skill or a nice-to-have. It's a practical strategy that saves time, builds trust, and leads to better outcomes. Good intentions aren’t enough for an effective end result. When Aldaine Wynter took on a new role as Director of International Mindedness, Diversity and Inclusion at Washington International School, he made a deliberate choice to spend his first year listening before launching any major initiatives. That meant drop-in sessions with parents, meetings with every department, and conversations with affinity group leaders and team members who'd been in post before him. "You can't underestimate the significance of speaking to people," he says. And while he's honest that some initiatives still won't land even after all that listening, the relationships built in that process make it far easier to gather honest feedback when they don't. It's a longer game – but it's a more sustainable one. Rather than imposing a vision from the top, Aldaine has been able to "meet the community where they are," which is exactly what good leadership looks like in practice. Sean Harris, Director of PLACE at Tees Valley Education, shared a deceptively simple example that illustrates the same principle. Like most schools, they produced a community newsletter – glossy, well-intentioned, quarterly. They assumed it was working because they didn't see copies in the bin. Then they actually asked families what they thought of it. You'll only find out if you create the space to hear it. The feedback was candid. Parents said they only read it when their own child was featured. More importantly, one mum pointed out something no one had considered: the newsletter talked about poverty, but in a way that felt invisible and distant. What she actually wanted? Practical things: budget cooking tips for half term, free days out, low-cost activities for school holidays. The result? A termly community magazine now co-produced with families, children, local charities and businesses. They changed the paper stock too – the glossy finish they'd chosen because it looked impressive to external stakeholders turned out to be too slippery for children to use a pen for the craft activities inside it. It's a small detail, but it says a lot about how good intentions aren’t enough for an effective end result. You need to ask the people it’s for. This kind of listening matters just as much in one-to-one situations. School business leadership mentor Nickii Messer works with leaders navigating difficult – or as she prefers to call them, honest – conversations. Her advice? Resist the urge to solve. "We listen to resolve," she says. "We're problem solvers." But in those conversations, the priority is to listen to understand – to resist filling silences, to allow introverts the thinking time they need, to let extroverts talk through their thoughts even when it sounds messy and contradictory. The example she gives is telling: a team member who keeps arriving late. It's easy to assume they've disengaged, that they don't care about the impact on their colleagues. But the real reason might be that they're quietly caring for someone at home and don't know how to bring it up. You'll only find out if you create the space to hear it. Listening gives us an honest picture of people's situations From there, the language shifts too – away from "what are you going to do about this?" and towards "how can we work together to resolve this?" That's not just a nicer way of talking. It signals something real about trust, and trust is what makes honest conversations possible in the first place. Perhaps the most memorable moment comes from Wendy Litherland, sustainability director and senior leader, who works with her school's eco group on community projects including sleep-outs in support of a local homeless charity. When they visited the charity to ask what was actually needed, the answer surprised her: something for the dogs. Wendy admits her first reaction was resistance: she wanted to feed people. But as the charity explained, homeless people are often deeply bonded to their dogs and will feed them before themselves. So the school got to work – cutting jumpers into rugs, collecting tennis balls and dog food, and putting together bags for the dogs alongside the bags for people. When they handed them out, it was the dog bags that moved people to tears. The outcome couldn't have been planned in advance. It only happened because someone asked, someone listened, and someone acted on what they heard. Because listening gives us an honest picture of people's situations – why they do what they do, how they feel, what they actually need. It builds trust. It makes collaboration real rather than performative. And it leads to solutions that genuinely serve people, rather than solutions that simply look good from the outside. It takes more time upfront. But it makes better use of everyone's time, energy and resources in the end. And in schools, where all of those are in short supply, that matters. Listen to the podcast episode (14 minutes)
Listening before acting
Social listening in action
Listening in difficult conversations
Listening leads you somewhere unexpected
So why do we need to listen?
What next?
