Building and maintaining positive relationships with your teaching colleagues - it’s worth it!

As a teacher, it’s all too easy to focus on the relationships you want to build with your class and pay less attention to the positive relationships you need to build with your teaching colleagues. But when you’re in a career that’s as stressful as teaching is, building and maintaining those relationships can make all the difference. In this blog post, Steph Caswell shares her advice on how to love the ones you’re with.

The importance of positive relationships

Teaching’s a funny old game isn’t it? Not many professions have you uttering the words, “Please stop eating the Pritt Stick” and “It’s time to use our indoor voices” as much as teaching does. 

But it’s also one that can cause intolerable amounts of stress and anxiety, with Ofsted, data analysis and the fallout from a global pandemic breathing down your neck like a drunk uncle at a wedding.

It’s this stress and anxiety that make it all the more important to build and maintain positive relationships with your teaching colleagues because it’s only them who know what it’s like. Your family and friends…heck even other teaching buddies…can empathise, but it’s the ones in your school, dealing with your challenges, that can really become the support network you need. 

More than that, they can become lifelong friends. 

But it’s not always easy to know how to build these positive relationships, especially if you’re new to your job or other people’s experience make the prospect seem daunting. Here are 3 simple tips you can start doing today to help you make those all important connections and develop positive relationships that last. 

Communicate

Relationships thrive on good communication. Yes, talking to colleagues is a key part of this, but try to develop conversations that move beyond school life. If you’re always complaining to each other about different aspects of your job, you’ll soon enter a negative energy spiral. 

Instead, try getting to know your colleagues’ interests outside the classroom. Not only will it ensure you avoid being sucked into the negativity vacuum, but it also builds trust and confidence between you and them. Of course you don’t need to get to know everyone’s personal lives, but finding out a few people’s hobbies and interests is a great way to build relationships. 

It’s not all about the talking either. Developing your listening skills is a key part of great communication. But when we talk about listening here at Laughology, we mean really listening. Not someone who lends half an ear whilst marking books or tidying the classroom, but someone who finds a quiet spot and gives their full attention. It can make all the difference. Just like you teach your children to listen with their ‘whole bodies’, the same principle works here too.

Set up boundaries though, otherwise it’s all too easy for people to hijack your good nature, giving you the reputation of everyone’s sounding board. If someone wants to chat, even if it’s about their weekend, but you’re in the middle of marking a pile of books, why not arrange to chat with them at a more mutually convenient time? You then remain in control of your workload and your energy levels.

Be sociable

Many positive relationships are built, sandwich in hand, across the staffroom table. Workload may dictate how often you visit the staffroom, but visit you must. Why? To get to know your colleagues and to ensure you take a break from the inevitable cycle of planning, preparation, marking and assessment.

A space to offload, the staffroom also provides you with the opportunity to pick up new ideas or to simply offload about the Pritt Stick nibbling. It doesn’t have to be everyday and it doesn’t have to literally be ‘in’ the staffroom. 

Some teachers we work with arrange a lunchtime walk with colleagues to get a change of scenery and to ensure daily exercise.

Another way to cement positive relationships with colleagues is on a staff social. Relaxing, letting your hair down and chatting with them about school or travel plans or that latest Netflix box set, can be just what’s needed to get to know each other a little better. You can leave the school persona behind and get to know the real people behind the cardigans.

Whether you’re in the staffroom, enjoying a walk in your surrounding area or grabbing a drink down the pub, you’ll find that building stronger, more positive relationships with colleagues often happens away from the classroom. So put down that pen, and get out there!

Get emotionally intelligent

Daniel Goleman, author of the book, ‘Emotional Intelligence’ (EQ) suggests that an ability to understand others, as well as the ability to manage our own emotions, is just as important as our IQ. Maybe even more so.

Goleman believes that, in order to build effective relationships, we must develop the skills of

• Self-Awareness
• Self-Management
• Social Awareness
• Relationship Management

By doing so, we can experience a greater number of positive relationships with those around us. EQ also improves our relationship with ourselves, helping us be more reflective and aware of how our behaviour and emotions impact others. 

Colleagues will appreciate your emotional intelligence and recognise it as a skill within you. It will make you a better friend, colleague and…dare I say it…teacher if you can tap into your EQ consistently. Like listening, emotional intelligence is a skill, so don’t worry if you’re not convinced you’re able to use yours effectively yet. 

The four aspects of emotional intelligence can be learned and practised on a regular basis. Why not see how you can improve?

Make the time to build positive relationships

Investing time in building positive relationships with your teaching colleagues is a worthwhile investment. After all, you’ll be seeing them more regularly than your own family, so take the time to get to know them. Build up positive interactions with them and soon you’ll come to rely on them for support, but also to have a good giggle too. 

And that’s what we’re all about. Laughing your undercrackers off with people you work with - there’s nothing quite like it, particularly if you’ve spent the day using your indoor voice.