Launch teams with joy and purpose!

3 Starter Leadership Moves for Your Teacher Teams.

“Leading is not about imposing; it's about creating the conditions for others to thrive. In our Grade 3 team, those conditions are already making collaboration both joyful and purposeful.”

- Bruna Mulvezi (Grade-level leader)

I love the above post by Bruna and I'm grateful that she highlights Intentional Moves as a touchstone text for her team leadership work.

"Joyful" and "purposeful."

Let's get real - not all teams would describe their work together with these words.

So what can you do this school year to launch your teams so that teachers enjoy working together and have a clear direction for their work?

I'm offering a FREE WEBINAR 9/22/25 to help get you started and here are some leadership moves to get you going:

Let's Highlight 3 Starter Moves:

Move 2.1 Co-construct norms through consensus.

To quote Bruna again, “(Norming with a team is…) A commitment to act in ways that help each of us, and all of us, thrive."  

I recently modeled the process outlined in Move 2.1 with teacher leaders in a summer institute. This unique approach to norm-setting, where educators craft agreements based off of meeting “pet peeves”, helps your team avoid generating a list of meaningless generic rules and instead builds commitment to agreements your team members really care about.

Move 3.2 Instill a sense of belonging.

Throughout the book I reference your greatest strength as a team leader, “Think like a teacher.” You can draw from the many ways you instill a sense of belonging with students in the classroom to your work with adult learners.

Skillful Team Leader and instructional coach, Karen Coyle Aylward (who is referenced throughout Intentional Moves), shares a simple leadership move that instills belonging for blended teams with new and seasoned teachers.  

Have every team member sign-up for a date to bring in student work right from the start. They don't need to know what work they'll bring in yet, but it establishes an inclusive culture where there is an understanding that:

No matter how many years you've been teaching, everyone has something to contribute and we all share common student-centered challenges where we need one another to problem solve.

Move 6.10 Align with priorities and individual goals.

Imagine priorities and goals as Russian nesting dolls: The largest doll represents your district/school priorities. Within that is a medium doll which houses our teacher team goals, and one doll smaller represents our individual teacher professional-practice goals. 

Even if alignment is not perfect, ensuring that the work you do in your teacher teams connects to larger priorities is a pretty much guarantee that your team is going to make progress toward what's important.

And, when individual professional-practice goals match up in some small way to what the team is working on, teachers are more likely to be more invested in your team's work and motivated to learn. Why? “Adults are motivated by learning that improves either who they are or what they do.” (p. 48)