Leadership starts with listening to understand not to respond!
As a new principal or vice-principal, your most powerful tool isn’t your authority—it’s your ability to listen. In today’s schools, leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about creating space for others to feel heard—especially when tensions rise, trust is shaky, or conflict surfaces. Let’s face it! Our training as educators was on how to lead and teach our students. As a school leader, things have changed and now we’re teaching adults and it’s a whole different set of skills we’ll need.
Through Principal PALS* Pathway and Teacher PALS* Pathway we help school leaders new to their roles in the past 4 years to grow into listeners first, responders second—and build stronger schools as a result.
Principal PALS* Pathway demonstrates HOW TO
*PALS (Personal And Leadership Skills)
- work with parents in difficult circumstances.
- get yourself and parents on the same page to promote student learning, their child’s learning.
- deal with teacher/staff conflict.
- invest time in relationships with staff in order to build a collaborative school time and promote student learning.
- use your pesonal strengths to deal with adult to adult conflict, making things right and making it about student learning.
- save time dealing with conflicts in order to focus on your school’s priorities for student learning.
🛠️ Learn How to Lead Through Listening
Relational leadership is a practical approach that teaches you how to respond with empathy, clarity, and confidence—without rushing to fix or defend. It starts with you and with knowing your strengths.
Build your Principal PALS* Pathway and Teacher PALS* Pathway to transform difficult conversations with parents in 90 days!
- Day 1 On-boarding and Strengths Assessment (individual)
- Day 2 Complete assessment
- Day 5 Review and debrief results
- Day 30 & 31 Team awareness day 1 and 2
- Days 40, 60, 80 Live call coaching
- Day 90 Assess, recap and celebrate
With Principal PALS* Pathway, you’ll receive
- ✔️ Conversation frameworks that promote understanding, not defensiveness
- ✔️ Circle prompts to surface concerns respectfully and openly
- ✔️ Scripts for listening-first responses to parent or staff conflict
- ✔️ A leadership values template to share your vision of restorative leadership with your team
Get started as a SCHOOL LEADER WHO LISTENS TO UNDERSTAND NOT TO RESPOND
Book a free 30 minute consult
What Superintendents and Principals Say
So was all this restorative practice work worth it?Absolutely and I I think we have to continue it. I think that we’re seeing a shift in the confidence of our administrators. They’re building their network of support. I think the data of just the decrease in safe schools incidents reports is very tangible. Jenny, Superintendent
I’ve had to do a lot of work on not falling into the trap of people pleasing versus having direct, honest kind of conversations. … the work in restorative practices has helped me to develop in those areas. Jenn, Assistant Superintendent
We started this year (Sept/ 2024) with a lot of safe schools incident referrals to the office…and we had over 40. So it felt as a school, we just needed to do some capacity building to know how to address those instances in the moment. … I would say this the last month (June 2025)we’ve maybe had maybe one incident report. I’ve definitely seen that to have a pretty big impact. Jen, Principal
A group of girls in grade six have really been struggling this year. They’re all very similar personalities and there’s a lot of girl drama. I’ve been checking in on them about every two weeks and the last three weeks here… they’re praising each other. They’re working through problems together not running to the teacher with every little minor problem. …We’ve seen some real huge gains. Nothing’s perfect, of course, but those wins are great. . And parents are happy, which is also a blessing. Jessica, Principal
I think using restorative practices just comes from a place of like empathy and compassion. And even though we all say we have empathy and compassion, sometimes we’re not utilizing them to the extent that we can. This restorative practice gives you permission to sit and listen to people, wait to respond, even giving yourself time to respond. Mandy, Vice-principal
We were kind of a having a problem at the beginning of the year, and I was like, “Oh, I just don’t want to deal with this because I know she’s (staff member) a tough cookie, and set in her ways.” My superintendent just gave me the confidence and said, “You know you got to have this conversation because it’s for the best of the student and that’s what matters. ” And we did have that conversation and I did feel a whole lot better. Okay, I can do this. I can have those conversations. … It was for the benefit of the student, and (the staff member) saw that afterwards.Nicole First Year Principal
I really liked the times where like we got together during our principal meeting, and we practiced a restorative strategy like the 5 Step Circle where we all brought a problem of practice. That’s really helped me because it was something easy that I could take to a staff staff meeting. I would remind staff about some of the things that we’ve done that at a staff meeting and then suggest, “do you think we could just try that with your kids in a circle? And let’s talk about what recess is feeling like not centring any student out.?”Jen, Principal (Second Year)