Supporting Teacher Growth Through Trusting Relationships

Early in my career, I believed my responsibility as an instructional leader was to find what needed fixing. I walked into classrooms looking for missed opportunities, stronger questions, tighter transitions, and ways to improve the lesson.

It took me years to realize that classrooms aren’t built solely on lesson plans. They’re built on the people in the room.

That realization changed the way I lead—I stopped trying to be just an evaluator, but instead to be an observer, looking for ways to support a teacher in their role and draw out the best version of their work.

If you’re a new leader in your school, these strategies can help you tap into the strengths your teachers have and support them as they develop their skills in the areas that need attention.

Slow Down Before You Try to Fix

When I coach new school leaders, I encourage them to slow down—before deciding what needs to be fixed, spend time understanding the world you’ve just entered in a teacher’s classroom. Every classroom is its own small ecosystem, and the teacher is at the center of that ecosystem. Their experiences, confidence, fears, values, heartbreaks, and sense of purpose quietly shape everything that grows within it. Students don’t simply respond to instruction; they respond to the human being leading the room.

The first weeks of school are my listening season. Of course, we talk about curriculum, routines, and instructional priorities. But I’m equally interested in the person behind the practice because understanding a teacher’s experiences and identity is often what allows their teaching to flourish.

For a long time, I believed relationship-building was simply the first step before the “real work” of coaching could begin. Now, I understand that the relationship between myself as a leader and the teacher I am coaching is the work.

Relationships are often mistaken for being nice or becoming friends. That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about understanding the human being entrusted with a classroom before assuming we understand their practice. When teachers feel seen—not just for what they produce, but for who they are—I’ve found that they become more willing to engage in the kind of honest reflection that meaningful growth requires.

To understand your teachers, it can be helpful to ask questions that get at the heart of why a teacher entered the work: “Why did you become a teacher?” “What is your favorite part of the content you teach?” “What lesson are you most excited for this year and why?” “What is something you want to try this year, and how can I help?”

Look for the Invisible Thread

When entering a coaching conversation, I like to think about there being two layers: the one we all clearly see—lesson plans, student engagement, etc.—and the one we cannot always see—a teacher’s confidence, their expertise, or their nervousness to get feedback. I think of this second layer as the invisible thread.

Often, I’ve found that the invisible thread—the thing we need to be talking about to improve classroom instruction—is a teacher’s confidence. Sometimes it reveals fear of failure, perfectionism, burnout, or the weight of responsibilities outside of school. When I explicitly discuss the personal connections to the work and ask a teacher how I can best support them in their growth, it changes the coaching conversation.

It isn’t always easy to find, but I encourage coaches to look deeper when observing classrooms to see how else they can support teacher growth beyond just offering a new instructional strategy.

Build Trust That Empowers Teachers to Seek Support

Because I showed genuine interest in my teachers as people and aimed to support them in their personal growth as educators, in addition to offering ways for them to improve their lesson plans and delivery, my teachers learned to truly trust me. Where I may have entered conversations immediately calling out problems in the past and creating distance between me and my teachers, I now know to start from a place of collaboration and shared responsibility to improve. This creates a real sense of trust where teachers know they can come to me and ask for help when something isn’t going right in the classroom.

Beyond just creating a sense of collaboration and support in conversation, I have actively tried to show my teachers that I am listening to them and that I am not trying to put them down, but instead helping them address issues. One particular conversation stands out to me: As I talked with a teacher, I could tell from the teacher’s body language that something I was saying had landed hard. Years earlier, I probably would have continued talking, believing my responsibility was simply to make sure the feedback was delivered.

Instead, I stopped. I said “I think I’m upsetting you.” She paused before quietly saying, “Yes... but I know I need to hear this. And I know that, in the long run, I’ll be grateful we had this conversation.” I could have accepted that answer and moved on. Instead, I asked one more question: “Say more. What’s making this feel uncomfortable?”

That conversation changed our relationship. Not because the feedback changed. Because the space changed. Eventually our conversations became, “Please tell me the truth because I trust you.”

When people know they are seen—not simply evaluated—they become more willing to examine their own practice honestly. Reflection deepens. Self-awareness grows. Accountability becomes something we build together instead of something imposed from the outside. Trust doesn’t replace high expectations. It makes high expectations sustainable.

Looking back on my early years as a coach, I see that my biggest mistake wasn’t focusing too much on instruction. It was overlooking the relationship that meaningful coaching depends on. Transactional coaching may improve a lesson. Relational coaching changes how someone sees themselves inside the work. That shift doesn’t just improve teaching. It creates communities where curiosity replaces defensiveness, where honest conversations become possible, and where educators begin learning alongside one another instead of performing for one another.