C5. Celebrate successes
Recognise effort, progress, and achievement. Celebration reinforces what matters and builds morale.
Resources to support growth in this behaviour
Whether this behaviour has been chosen through Step 1. Diagnose, highlighted through reflection or coaching, or identified as a school or trust priority, you can now follow the steps below to develop and embed it in your daily leadership practice.
Step 2. Learn: Read Everyone Succeeds: 54 Leadership Behaviours to Transform Your School to understand what great leadership looks like in practice. Each behaviour is grounded in research and real examples from schools and businesses.
Step 3. Reflect: Use the Everyone Succeeds Workbook to apply ideas to your own context.
Guided reflection, practical actions, and space for planning turn understanding into improvement.
Step 4. Apply: Work through the Leadership Toolkit for this behaviour. Use the Celebrate Successes toolkit to plan recognition deliberately, link it to values, and shine a spotlight on achievements that build momentum.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Celebrate success Coach and Practise Frameworks to strengthen the behaviour through action steps that identify what to notice and how to recognise it, practising authentic celebration so effort and progress are reinforced.
These can be used individually or with colleagues to embed key behaviours.
Step 6. Plan: Set measurable goals using the 90 Day Leadership Planner.
Turn improvement into action by tracking your focus and progress over time, with completed examples for different career stages.
Step 7. Lead: Apply your learning to real situations through the Scenario Finder.
Over fifty scenarios link directly to the behaviours that help you solve the challenges that matter most in your school.
One book suggestion
The Power of Moments – Chip & Dan Heath (2017).
Explains how recognition and designed moments build culture and motivation. Buy the book.
References from the Everyone Succeeds book
Bliven, A. and Jungbauer, M., (2021). The impact of student recognition of excellence to student outcome in a competency‐based educational model. The Journal of Competency‐Based Education, 6(4), pp.195-205.
Heath, C. and Heath, D., (2017). The power of moments: Why certain experiences have extraordinary impact. Simon and Schuster.
NFER (2018). Tackling Teacher Retention and Turnover Challenges. Available at: https://www.nfer.ac.uk/media/ebkabwz0/tackling_teacher_retention_and_turnover_challenges_htu.pdf