Live Your Values: The Secret to Stronger Culture and Commitment

A school’s values aren’t just aspirational statements—they are a powerful driver of culture, trust, and performance. Research from Harvard Business School and the MIT Sloan School of Management shows that organizations with clearly articulated and consistently applied core values experience higher employee engagement, lower turnover, and stronger performance across teams.

But value alignment doesn’t happen by accident. As researcher Brené Brown puts it, “it’s practicing your values, not just professing them.” In education leadership, that means hiring people who believe what you believe, modeling those values in good and bad times, and embedding them into your systems—from human resources (HR) to student culture to leadership decisions.

In this session, participants will:
- Get clear(er) on their organization’s core values.
- Explore current research on how strong organizational values shape commitment, motivation, and performance.
- Learn ways to embed core values to enhance every facet of the employee experience, from hiring to onboarding to day-to-day work to performance evaluation to letting people go.
- Learn ways to weave core values into school culture, behavior management, and school-home communications.
- Discuss how to know when you or a member of your team has strayed from your core values and what to do about it.

When the values are clear and consistently practiced, they become a powerful force for cohesion, trust, and excellence. This session will help participants to ensure that their school’s values are more than posters on a wall—they’re the heartbeat of the culture.