The Benefits of Being Predictable

At the beginning of every school year when he was the principal of Saraland Elementary School in Alabama, Stan Stokley conducted interviews with local TV stations. The segments were lighthearted, and Stokley enjoyed them quite a bit, except for one question: “What are you doing that’s new and exciting this year?”

The question frustrated Stokley, who recently retired after more than two decades in school leadership. As he sees it, “new and exciting” is the wrong standard to apply to successful schools. He was focused on maintaining high standards among educators and students, not mixing things up for the sake of mixing things up.

“My encouragement to new principals is, ‘Don’t feel like you have to try something brand new,’” Stokley told me. “I think being really good at a few things is more important than having a new initiative every year.”

Stokley is a proponent of predictable leadership. The word predictable sometimes has a negative connotation; it can mean obvious and formulaic. Boring, even. But predictability is actually an invaluable leadership trait. As a Fortune 500 company executive told Harvard Business Review, “We know [the CEO’s] values, we know his skills, we know his track record, so we can forecast how he will react and what he will do. He is utterly predictable—in a good way!”

That sentiment holds true in education, where predictability is arguably even more important. School administrators aren’t driven by profit margins, earnings calls, and one-upping competitors with flashy products—they need to build a community anchored on reliability and trust. Predictable leadership means not getting too high or too low, overpromising or underdelivering, or unnecessarily causing whiplash. It applies on both the interpersonal and systemic levels.

I recently spoke with Stokley, as well as Chelsea Jennings, principal at Sonora Middle School in Arkansas, and Mike Martini, principal at West Field High School in Utah, about how they work to be predictable—and the advantages that presents.

Build ‘Thick Trust’ With Follow-Through and Follow-Ups

One of the reasons I reached out to Martini is that he was there when West Field High first opened its doors in 2024. As you might expect, hiring a whole staff and overseeing a school from day one is enormously difficult. No amount of contingency planning is enough to account for all of the logistical issues and mixups that occur during a school’s opening.

And West Field was really not ready to open when it did. Parts of the building didn’t have power yet; other parts didn’t have proper flooring. But there was no more time—students and their families were ready to go. Martini believed in his staff to help him navigate a turbulent period, and they believed in him. “Going through hard things, you become closer, and you gain that trust,” Martini said.

The Harvard Business Review article refers to this closeness as thick trust: “When a leader fulfills expectations over time, it creates an informal contract with employees, a mutually reinforcing bond of thick trust.”

Jennings has built thick trust partially through her outreach. Every Sunday for six straight years, she has sent out a newsletter to her staff. It always arrives between noon and 4 p.m. and includes information about the week ahead. Jennings is committed to maintaining that schedule, seeing it as a demonstration of her commitment to the job, which she wants to see reciprocated when she organizes meetings with teachers. “When teachers know that you’re respecting their time or that they can trust that communication is going to come at certain points, it creates a predictable leadership situation,” Jennings said. “I think it crosses over to our relationships.”

Another component of reliable communication is that it’s earnest and empathetic, and involves some back-and-forth. When Stokley met with a teacher or parent, he always had a notebook on him. He wanted to make sure he could look back and digest conversations. Taking notes kept him focused, and indicated to the other person that he was paying attention. “No matter how minor the issue may seem to me, I’m always going to make good notes and try to follow up,” Stokley said.

Stokley would get back to people as quickly as possible. In most cases, he’d call the staffer or parent at the end of the same day that they met, a good-faith showing that their grievance was top of mind for him. He didn’t always have a firm action item prepared, but the people he spoke with were almost always grateful that he was acknowledging them and working through their concerns.

The proactive communication described by Jennings and Stokley goes a long way. According to an Oracle survey of nearly 5,000 employees cited by Fast Company, “when leaders were visible and accessible, it was one of the most significant contributors to positive outcomes,” including confidence and faith in leadership, and improved performance.

Respond to Stressors With Clarity, Candor, and Confidence

There have certainly been moments over the last few years when Martini came close to reacting with exasperation or frustration. But one of the lessons he has internalized is, “When I overreact, then there’s a ripple effect,” he said. “My staff, my students will overreact. So the calmer I am, the less chaos occurs.”

Martini isn’t recommending that school leaders mask or push down their emotions, just that they consider what is in their control and what isn’t, and aim to respond to difficult situations or complaints with transparency and a measured tone.

Defensiveness might seem warranted in a job that comes with lots of criticism, but it rarely is, Stokley noted: “There’s something constructive in every criticism. Typically, when somebody comes to you with a problem, there’s an instructive piece there, and you need to be able to step back and look at what they’re saying, what’s being presented, to see what you can learn from it.”

Stokley noticed that when he owned up to mistakes, it “built rapport with my people,” he said: “They respected that.” Jennings agrees. She believes that consistency means acknowledging when you’re inconsistent, which she instills in her staff via the Brené Brown line, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”

Jennings cited a recent experience with a teacher who’d swung by her office for an impromptu check-in about a relatively small, but meaningful, concern. Jennings was exhausted and didn’t tune in as closely as she would’ve liked. When she followed up, she apologized: “I said, ‘Hey, I’m sorry that I was so tired, but I did catch what you needed and took care of it.’ That way, she also knew my tone was off for a reason,” Jennings said.

When she’s going to engage in difficult conversations with staffers (and occasionally families), Jennings relies on sentence frames to make sure she’s clear. This is to “ensure that I keep it focused on the behavior or the issue and not on the person,” she said. Frames she uses include:

• “The pattern I’m noticing is…”
• “The unintended consequence might be…”
• “Help me understand your thinking around…”

Similarly, Stokley had a strategy for what could turn out to be acrimonious conversations with a parent; he projected a sense of calm by visualizing floating above the room, looking down at the conversation’s participants. “I would be like, I’ve seen this before, I know how to go about this,” Stokley said.

Avoid Surprises and Stick With What’s Working

Martini agrees with Stokley that “new and exciting” isn’t worth too much in education. One of the biggest challenges of running a new school is reaching a point where everyone feels comfortable and adjusted. Martini is still working to build a realistic slate of routines and traditions that match other high schools in his state. “Kids and our community don’t like surprises as much as people may think,” Martini said. “They like to know what is going on, and what’s going to happen, and why.”

Because everything is so fresh, Martini organizes “constant meetings” and debriefs with community members and teacher-leaders after major events—a football game, the homecoming dance, parent-teacher conferences, or AP testing. “There’s persistence and consistency in our processes,” Martini said. Together, they go over three questions:

• What went well?
• What problems occurred?
• What are some solutions to those problems for next time?

Jennings shares the view that school initiatives and processes work best when they are frequently discussed and are altered with her staff. “I don’t really make any decisions, unless it’s an emergency, without going through my leadership teams or some sort of staff consensus,” she said. She likes to send out brief staff surveys (sometimes as short as one question) to ensure that administrators and teachers are on the same page. Whenever someone comes to her to propose something, they know she’s going to vet it first. “We’re creating a level of trust there,” Jennings said. “Nobody thinks that I’m just going to spring something on them.”

Jennings sometimes feels pressure to innovate and integrate a new initiative, and she doesn’t shy away from potential change. She just considers the “surprise and delight pieces, the innovative pieces,” as she calls them, to be supplementary measures within the scope of a predictable, well-run school.

“If you’re established—your test scores are solid, you’re growing kids, you have a good thing going in your building—then keep the big things solid and consistent,” she said, adding, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”