A member of staff has acted against the school’s values and people are watching what you do
The conversation with the person is one thing. What everybody who saw it learns from your response is another.
Read this first. Before doing anything, establish what is actually known and whether this belongs to a leadership conversation at all. Where the behaviour may amount to misconduct, or may raise a safeguarding, disciplinary, capability, grievance or whistleblowing matter, the relevant procedure governs it. Identify that procedure and the person who owns it, and follow it. An informal conversation held first can compromise a formal process, and this record offers no employment, disciplinary or safeguarding advice. Nothing here assumes that any account you have been given is accurate. What follows concerns the situation once it is established that this is a values conversation and not a formal matter. Somebody has acted in a way that runs against what the school says it stands for, and other people saw it. Two things now need a response, and leaders commonly handle one: the person, and everybody who is waiting to see what happens.
Presenting symptoms
- Colleagues who were present have not raised it with you, and you are aware that they know you know.
- You have caught yourself weighing how good this person is at their job against what they did.
- You have heard at least two accounts of what happened and they do not match.
Possible causes
- It may be a single lapse by someone who would not ordinarily behave that way.
- It may be, or may become, a misconduct, safeguarding, disciplinary, capability, grievance or whistleblowing matter, in which case it is not yours to handle informally.
- Similar behaviour may have been tolerated or handled unevenly before, which makes this a question about the school rather than about one person.
- The person may be senior, influential or very good at their job, and that may be creating pressure to deal with it lightly.
It may be a misconduct, safeguarding, disciplinary, grievance, capability or whistleblowing matter.
Your most useful next step: Stop, and do not have the informal conversation yet. Establish the facts you actually hold, record them, identify the procedure that applies and the person who owns it, and follow that route. Where a child may be at risk, the safeguarding arrangements govern and take precedence over everything here. An informal conversation held first can compromise a process and can make it harder for the person as well as for the school. Upholding the value in this situation means following the procedure, not having a word.
Lead behaviours
It is a single lapse and a direct conversation is the right response.
Your most useful next step: Have it yourself, quickly, and in private. Name the specific behaviour rather than a general concern, say which value it ran against and why you are raising it, and ask what happened from their side before concluding. The book’s framing is useful: you are saying this because it matters and because you believe they can meet the standard, not to punish them. Agree what will be different and leave it there.
Lead behaviours
Similar behaviour has been tolerated or dealt with unevenly before.
Your most useful next step: Deal with this instance, and then deal with the real problem, which is the school rather than the person. Acting hard on one occasion after tolerating several is experienced as arbitrary and costs more credibility than it buys. Establish what has actually been allowed, decide what the standard is from now, say so to everybody, and then apply it consistently from that point rather than retrospectively.
Lead behaviours
The person is senior, influential or very good at their job.
Your most useful next step: Notice the pressure and name it to yourself. A response that would be automatic for a colleague nobody depends on, and becomes a conversation about context for someone you cannot easily replace, tells every member of staff exactly what the values are worth. Apply the same standard. Take advice on the correct process, while resisting any temptation to lower the standard because of the person’s status.
Lead behaviours
Core behaviours
The book describes establishing what is actually true rather than the comfortable or the convenient version. Here that governs the first decision in the record. Accounts of an incident differ, often honestly, and a leader who acts on the first version may be acting on a partial one. It also guards the other direction: establishing the facts is not the same as looking for a reason not to act.
This is the one place in the theme where the book’s own statement of the behaviour applies directly. The chapter names holding people to account when values are not upheld, including when it is uncomfortable, as one of its explicit actions, and it is equally clear that what a leader tolerates is what the culture becomes. It also supplies the harder half: where the matter belongs to a formal procedure, upholding the value means following that procedure rather than dealing with it personally.
The book names the avoidance of difficult conversations for fear of upsetting a colleague as the behaviour’s central failure, and is equally clear that accountability is an investment in someone rather than a confrontation. Its own suggested opening, that you are saying this because you believe they can meet the standard, is what makes the conversation survivable for both people and is why this is a leadership conversation rather than a reprimand.
The book’s subject is the reliability that lets people know where they stand, and it says plainly that where consistency is missing, doing nothing is not an option. That is the whole of the third and fourth routes. A standard applied to one person and not another is not a standard, and staff calibrate what the school actually values by watching which colleagues it applies to.
The book’s claim is that a leader’s actions set the tone more powerfully than anything they say, and that what is modelled is what is expected. In this record the modelling is the response itself. Everybody who saw the original behaviour is now watching a second thing, which is what the school does about it, and they will draw their conclusions from that rather than from any statement of values.
Secondary behaviours
Use this on how the conversation is held. The book’s subject is understanding how people work and what they respond to, and its method is the one-to-one rather than the assumption. The same words land differently on someone who will take them seriously and someone who will collapse under them, and knowing which you have in front of you changes how you say it, not whether you say it.
Use this where your own practice is implicated. The book is explicit that humility is not self-doubt and describes leaders who admit their own mistakes. If the behaviour happened in a school where this has been tolerated, or where something you did made it likelier, saying so first is what makes the standard credible rather than convenient.
A useful first action
Write down what you actually know, separating what you witnessed or read from what you have been told, and note where accounts differ. Then establish whether this belongs to a procedure before deciding anything else. Both take a few minutes and both are difficult to do once a conversation has already happened.
Suggested approach
- Establish what is actually known, distinguishing what you have seen or read from what you have been told, and note where accounts conflict.
- Decide whether this may be a misconduct, safeguarding, disciplinary, capability, grievance or whistleblowing matter. If it may be, identify the procedure and its owner and follow it, and do not hold an informal conversation first.
- Where it is a values conversation, hold it yourself, quickly and in private, naming the specific behaviour and the value it ran against.
- Ask what happened from their side before concluding, and agree what will be different.
- Check whether similar behaviour has been tolerated before. If it has, set the standard going forward and say so to everybody, rather than applying it retrospectively to one person.
- Decide what can appropriately be said to the people who saw the original behaviour. Without sharing confidential detail or the outcome, acknowledge that the matter has been addressed and restate the standard that is expected.
- Test your response against the standard you would have applied if the person were less senior, less influential or less good at the job. Different circumstances may need different responses; the standard should be the same one.