Before the Strategy, There Are People

When I read Jubilee Ransome’s January piece for NAESP, Why Staff Psychological Safety Must Come Before Strategy, I felt something between recognition and relief. Not because it offered something new, but because it named something so many of us in school leadership live every day but rarely say out loud.

Psychological safety is not a buzzword. It is the air our schools breathe.

Ransome writes that real psychological safety is not about surface-level connection or knowing someone’s favorite color. It is about creating spaces where people feel safe enough to disagree, to take risks, to say “I don’t know,” and to grow. That distinction matters deeply in schools, especially in turnaround environments where the pressure to perform can easily drown out the need to belong.

By the time I arrive on campus each morning, there is already a plan waiting for me. Assessment data, attendance numbers, intervention schedules, and improvement goals that demand urgency. Strategy.

But what determines whether any of that strategy actually works is whether the adults in the building feel safe enough to tell the truth. Not the polite truth.

Not the compliance-driven truth. The real one.

“I’m overwhelmed.”

“This isn’t working.”

“I see something we’re missing.”

Ransome warns that leaders lose ground when they rely on gotcha practices, public criticism, or fear-based compliance. I have seen that play out. When people don’t feel safe, they go quiet. They stop offering ideas. They nod in meetings and talk in parking lots. Eventually, even the strongest educators leave not because the work is too hard, but because it has become too unsafe. I have been that educator. I have left schools that are based on compliance and blind loyalty.

In turnaround schools, this dynamic is especially dangerous. We need our people thinking, questioning, experimenting, and owning their practice. That requires risk. And risk cannot live where fear does.

One of the most powerful ideas in the article is that psychological safety must be built from the very beginning, not patched together after trust has already been lost. When you step into a new school or a new leadership role, people are watching. They are deciding whether you see them, whether you listen, and whether it is safe to bring their full selves to the work. You cannot fake that later with team-building games or catered lunches. Connection that shows up only after tension rises feels reactive, not real.

In my own principalship, I learned this the hard way. I've made the mistakes. I've tried to build a trusting team with games and lunches. It was energizing and fun, and for the moment it felt like we had turned a corner. But the real work of trust began afterward, in the quiet moments. One-on-one conversations. Open notebooks. Listening without a hidden agenda. Following up when people spoke. Building a team of teachers with a common mission, and letting those who aren't in it for the students leave.

That is where safety is built.

Ransome also highlights ownership and agency as hallmarks of psychologically safe cultures. That resonates with me. When people feel safe, they do not hide their mistakes. They name them. They don’t deflect. They take responsibility.

“I missed that. Here’s how I’ll fix it.”

“I made an assumption. Let me reset.”

“I contributed to the confusion.”

That kind of ownership does not come from fear. It comes from trust.

In schools where psychological safety is strong, accountability does not feel like punishment. It feels like partnership. People know they can be honest without being shamed, and challenged without being diminished.

Strategy still matters. Plans still matter. Data still matters. But none of it moves without people. People do not bring their best thinking, their creativity, or their courage to places where they feel small, watched, or silenced.

As a principal, I have come to believe this: before we can improve a system, we have to protect the humans inside it. Psychological safety is not soft leadership. It is strong leadership. It is what allows schools to tell the truth about where they are and imagine where they could go.

When we build cultures where people feel safe to speak, to stumble, and to grow, strategy finally has something solid to stand on.