A few years back, I wrote about the importance of developmental relationships as defined by Search Institute—“close connections through which young people discover who they are, cultivate the abilities to shape their own lives, and learn how to engage and contribute to the world around them.”
Search Institute identifies these five elements that strengthen developmental relationships with students:
- Expressing Care
- Challenging Growth
- Providing Support
- Sharing Power
- Expanding Possibilities
I ended that blog with a wondering:
“What if we intentionally applied that same framework to the relationships among adults in our schools?”
Around that same time, Search Institute shared this reflection from Lauren Geraghty of Communities in Schools San Antonio:
“What we realized rather quickly is that if you don’t know how to model those elements—if you’re not expressing those elements from adult to adult and the students aren’t seeing you model that in your adult life—how much are they really going to buy into your relationship framework?” (It Starts with Us: Building Relationships Among Adult Staff)
For instructional coaches and school leaders, the five elements provide a useful lens for examining how our daily interactions either strengthen or weaken developmental relationships among staff. In this blog, I’m looking back across blogs and podcasts I’ve posted in recent years to explore connections to these five elements. How might coaching practices, professional learning communities, and hypothesis-focused professional growth plans expand opportunities for building developmental relationships among adults?
Whether we are working with students or adults, belonging grows from behaviors, not intentions.
Expressing care communicates a simple but powerful message: You matter here. Your growth matters. Your thinking matters.
In many of my podcasts on coaching conversations, I’ve emphasized that listening and questioning communicate respect. When educators feel heard, they are more likely to risk sharing their uncertainties and ambitions.
I shared this in a podcast on mattering: “When we give our full attention, when we remember what someone shared in our last conversation, when we follow up, when we slow the conversation because something important has just surfaced, we communicate to the other person, you are significant. Attention says, “You are not interchangeable.” That’s foundational to mattering. When a coach responds with, ”Last time we talked, you mentioned that this was weighing on you. How is that going now?” That’s not a technique. That’s a message. A message that says, I see you, I remember you, and you matter. (Coaches Build a Mattering Ecosystem)
Challenging growth communicates, “I believe in your capacity to grow.” It signals, “Your work matters enough for us to think deeply about how it might become even more powerful in impacting student success.”
I explored this idea of professional respect in a blog examining the shift from a professional development mindset to a professional learning mindset. (Professional Development or Professional Learning)
A professional development mindset often appears in sporadic, one-time events—workshops, inservice sessions, guest speakers, or webinars that are not necessarily part of a larger plan or vision. These experiences may not align with school goals, promote educator voice and agency, encourage learning in community, or respond effectively to students’ and teachers’ needs. Too often, a PD mindset attempts a quick fix or delivers a small dose of content that is insufficient to stimulate a meaningful change in thinking or practice.
A professional learning mindset, on the other hand, centers on accelerating personal and collective learning and closing the knowing–doing gap. Shifting mindsets requires moving from delivering information to intentionally co-designing learning and growth opportunities with educators. Leaders and coaches can play an important role in creating these professional learning environments. Challenging growth occurs when educators are invited into this kind of ongoing professional learning where questions are explored, practices are examined, and new possibilities are tested.
As Dylan Wiliam reminds us: “What makes teaching such an exciting career is that there is no fear that you will master it before retirement.”
Developmental relationships honor that reality. They encourage educators to continually stretch their thinking and practice.
Providing support encourages vulnerability and risk-taking that lead to continued educator growth and, ultimately, increased student success. If challenging growth communicates belief in an educator’s potential, providing support communicates, “You don’t have to figure this out alone.” Peer observation and peer coaching are powerful practices for providing that support. (Peer Observation and Peer Coaching – Defining the Difference)
I describe peer observation as an activity focused on the observer’s learning. Educators benefit from the opportunity to watch teaching and learning in colleagues’ classrooms. When followed by collegial conversations, these observations often spark reflection about one’s own instructional decisions and classroom practices.
In peer coaching, the focus shifts to the learning of the observed teacher. The observing peer collects specific observational data requested by the teacher and then engages in a reflective post-observation conversation. The goal is to support the teacher’s examination of the impact of instructional decisions on student learning.
These collaborative practices create structures where educators can test ideas, examine results, and learn together. Support transforms challenge from pressure into possibility—and it is often the presence of a thoughtful colleague, coach, or leader that makes that possible.
Sharing Power and Expanding Possibilities communicate trust in educators’ professional judgment. Developmental relationships are strengthened when educators have voice in shaping their own learning and growth. Rather than having goals or strategies prescribed, teachers participate in identifying the questions they want to explore and the instructional practices they want to examine.
This thinking is central to my work with hypothesis-based professional growth plans. (Developing and Coaching Professional Growth Plans)
Teachers begin by identifying a change they would like to achieve in student learning outcomes and then develop a hypothesis about an instructional strategy that might generate the student learning behaviors needed to reach that outcome.
For example, a teacher might explore a hypothesis such as: “If I increase opportunities for students to explain their thinking during problem solving, they will develop an increased engagement and a deeper understanding.” The teacher and coach then design ways to test the hypothesis—through instructional adjustments, observations, and analysis of student responses. The focus shifts from proving competence to investigating learning.
In this process, power is shared because educators define the focus of their inquiry. Their professional curiosity and classroom experience guide the learning journey. Possibilities expand because teachers move beyond implementing strategies handed to them. Instead, they explore instructional practices through cycles of experimentation, reflection, and evidence.
The role of the coach or leader is not to prescribe the answer but to support the inquiry. These hypothesis-driven growth plans position teachers not as recipients of professional development, but as investigators of their own practice. In doing so, they strengthen the very developmental relationships we hope to foster throughout our schools—relationships built on care, challenge, support, voice, and opportunity.
Question to Ponder: “Where are we intentionally modeling among the staff, the relational culture we hope students will experience?” Sustainable culture change start with us.
When educators experience developmental relationships with one another, they are far better prepared to create those same relationships with students.
