Each year, some new principals find themselves in new positions or schools with broken cultures—where staff and student voices had been silenced or ignored, change managed poorly, equity initiatives stalled, and difficult issues tabled. Our work on principal mentorship has highlighted the value of intentional and district- or state-supported, often mandated programs that stress trust, candor, and confidentiality.
Programs in Vermont and Massachusetts have shown that comprehensive mentorship improves principal confidence, effectiveness, and retention. Shared goals and standards are essential, as is careful training of mentors and matching with new principals. Meaningful mentor–mentee relationships should be sustained through at least the principal’s first year.
What, then, of principals in schools where individuals and even entire constituencies feel alienated from one another? What can a new principal do where teachers have lost faith in their leaders, where students may feel unseen, and where the community may lack pride and a unified will to support the school?
Principals must be committed to a single overarching concept: kindness.
Principal mentorship creates a ‘culture of kindness’
Everyone knows what kindness looks like and has felt the value of being seen and listened to as we are, of having new and sometimes unwelcome things explained to us, of being heard with empathy and understanding, and of feeling trusted. Kindness involves understanding the experiences and perspectives of others and creating environments of inclusion, appreciation, and safety.
Successful leadership involves being seen, knowing one’s people and institution, and prioritizing accessibility. Effective leaders develop vision and make policies through actively learning and appreciating the assets, wants and needs of their schools and communities. Such school leaders are empathetic and responsive. Their actions of listening, letting voices be heard, and offering support generate a culture of kindness.
Cultures of kindness correlate with positive school outcomes. It is in everyone’s interest—including district and state offices—to have schools be places of trust and kindness. Principal mentorship programs should be expanded, and these programs should center kindness in their “curricula.” Mentors must be trained to help new principals enact and nurture the elements of kindness in their daily practice.
Mentorship for kindness has a key role in helping leaders face some of their most difficult situations. School leaders can learn in school or read in books about best practices for confronting hard issues and having “difficult conversations,” but there is no substitute for being able to dissect complex situations with a trusted, experienced mentor.
A mentor can help a leader craft and role-play critical strategies like active and nonjudgmental listening, avoiding rushed “problem-solving” before multiple perspectives have been considered, not overplaying compassion at the expense of understanding, keeping cool to reduce others’ stress levels, and knowing when, how, and from whom—like the mentor!—to seek further advice.
More from DA: Why “Be Where Your Feet Are” is this distinguished principal’s motto
Leadership devoted to developing cultures of kindness influences staff, students, parents and the community, affecting every kind of student outcome; students learn better in a “happy place.” Research shows that constituent confidence in principals correlates broadly with school effectiveness, teacher engagement and student performance. A principal who shows and lives kindness can create a school climate that attracts teachers and to which they will want to remain attached—and in which families and communities take pride and pleasure.
To offer structured mentorship for new principals is an act of kindness itself, a gift of trust and collaborative support from a district that sets a tone and will keep on giving. Existing programs have been highly effective, and new leaders provided with ongoing support build authentic faith in themselves and in their communities that fortifies them to lead with calmness, consideration, courage, empathy, and equity—with exemplary, real, and contagious kindness.
Phyllis Gimbel, a professor of educational leadership for Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts, and Peter Gow, past executive director of the Independent Curriculum Group, are long-time educators and school leaders and authors of Leadership Through Mentoring: The Key to Improving the Confidence and Skill of Principals (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021). They believe that kindness and mutual respect are essential to great teaching and learning.
