At the United Nations International School (UNIS) Hanoi, belonging is at the heart of a thriving school. It fuels relationships, engagement, and empowers everyone to see themselves as a valuable, contributing member of the community. Our Elementary Leadership Team has developed a strong set of beliefs and practices that support us in leading with a focus on belonging and community, creating conditions for student learning to flourish.
We Lead Learning with Purpose
The first chapter in our leadership playbook is that we lead learning with purpose. This is perhaps the most important role that we play. With clarity of purpose comes the intentionality to articulate our goals, explain their importance to all members of our community, and outline the path forward.
To lead with intention is to be guided by the vision, mission, and values of the school. As one of only two United Nations schools in the world, we strive for personal and academic excellence for all our students. Having a strong vision and mission helps us align our work as leaders and educators.
As a team, our leadership philosophy and practices have been influenced by thought leaders and evidenced-based research. Robert Dilts’ theory of neurological levels centres identity as the container that holds all else – we are collaborators, inquirers, and leaders – and each of these identities require us to anchor ourselves in our UNIS Hanoi school values. Furthermore, trust is widely known as the foundation of any highly functional team, and that such teams are guided by shared norms, embrace cognitive conflict, and facilitate open communication.
Over the last five years, leading with purpose has enabled us to support and transform teaching and learning across our Elementary School. Examples include rethinking how we teach mathematics, structuring our faculty professional development into two-year-long units of inquiry, creating dynamic, highly functional teams of teachers, and naming our biases so that we can move closer to creating a school community that is truly inclusive.
We Listen and Seek Additional Perspectives
No single reality exists: it is woven from diverse perspectives. In educational leadership, understanding our school is essential. The most effective way to do this is by creating systems for gathering, processing, sharing, and routinely using varied perspectives to improve learning outcomes.
Gathering perspectives takes many forms. Expert perspectives are crucial for staying up-to-date on new programmes, assessments, specialised learning areas, and curricula. And while often overlooked, student perspectives offer invaluable insights into the impact of our initiatives, pedagogy, and values.
Assembling a diverse leadership team provides an internal structure that can review, identify themes, and process these different viewpoints. Protocols like ‘A Day in the Life Of’ help our team consider multiple stakeholder perspectives. We frequently assign roles and personas when making decisions, like stepping into the shoes of students, teachers, or parents to understand the different points of view around an issue. Reflecting on the hopes and perspectives of each stakeholder has generated new insights and ultimately led to significant improvements in our processes.
A truly successful school culture is one where everyone feels safe to share their perspectives openly. To foster this, a leadership team should find ways to incentivise these efforts. One strategy we have implemented is the ‘Giraffe Award.’ We intentionally share our gratitude for any community member who ‘sticks their neck out’ to respectfully share a different perspective or an unpopular opinion. By recognising all points of view, we make our understanding of reality more complete and our focus more inclusive.
“With clarity of purpose comes the intentionality to articulate our goals, explain their importance to all members of our community, and outline the path forward.”
We Champion and Challenge One Another
Leading any school effectively requires teams to model the dispositions and behaviours that allow individuals to champion and challenge one another. These two actions are interdependent: while you could do one without the other, neither would be truly impactful. Together, they profoundly influence how you lead.
So, what does championing others look, feel, and sound like in our leadership team? It starts with self-awareness – knowing your own strengths and reflecting on your growth journey – from which you develop the ability to see the unique strengths in others. It’s about appreciating that we are all different and bring distinctive contributions to the team. Championing others means highlighting great ideas and initiatives, backing them with unwavering support, helping teammates, and advocating for their ideas to be heard. It’s about bringing positive energy to interactions.
And what about challenging others? This is crucial for growth and improvement. It’s about pushing boundaries, questioning assumptions, and fostering a culture of continuous development. It’s healthy, but it’s not always easy. It means being comfortable with being uncomfortable, knowing that the effort is usually worth the discomfort. A strong foundation of trust and rapport is essential to engage in these hard, growth-producing conversations as a team. We regularly seek feedback from one another and are expected to hold ideas lightly. Once an idea is on the table, it becomes the team’s idea, allowing us to discuss it without deep personal attachment.
Teams that skillfully balance championing and challenging one another are positioned to achieve teaching and learning outcomes more effectively and efficiently, embodying the value of courage and fostering continuous growth.
We Commit to ‘Joy Spotting’, Being Playful, and Having Fun
Our fourth chapter is a powerful call to action for all leaders to actively commit to ‘joy spotting’, being playful, and having fun at work. We deeply believe in cultivating these dispositions as a key driver of productive and impactful leadership. Psychologist Shawn Achor asserts that happiness at work fosters greater productivity, creativity, resilience, and stronger relationships. A leadership team that enjoys being together, where risk-taking and creativity are the norm, and where work feels playful and fun, creates a positive ripple effect across our community.
We’ve learned that play, fun, and joy are no laughing matter; in fact, being happy at school creates optimal conditions for growing brains. Teacher mental health and happiness directly impacts students and the classroom environments, just as school leaders’ wellbeing and happiness influences the working environment for all teachers. Leading with an emphasis on joy, creativity, playfulness, and fun communicates a strong message that classrooms should also reflect these values.
As a school, we uphold the value of play and happiness as one of the universal rights of children and a key component of learning. If we want joy for our students, why not for our teachers too? A playful approach to leadership embraces regular ‘joy-spotting,’ weekly gratitude practices for faculty, and an agreement that meetings should thoughtfully include opportunities for creativity and fun, even in the serious work of leading a school. As Magsamen and Ross highlight in “Your Brain on the Arts,” flourishing comes from moments of awe, curiosity, novelty, and surprise. We believe our productivity is a direct result of our cultivation of joy, playfulness, and happiness, and that our organisation is all the better for it.
Ultimately, our playbook for belonging isn’t just a strategy: it’s the heart of a vibrant, joyful learning environment. We invite you to reflect with your own leadership teams on what your leadership playbooks might contain.
Megan Brazil, Nitasha Crishna, Joshua Smith & Kay Strenio
Megan Brazil, Nitasha Crishna, Joshua Smith, and Kay Strenio and are the Elementary School Leadership Team at UNIS Hanoi.
