By Dr Jon Morris

In recent years, we’ve seen a growing trend of reducing culture to neat, one-word slogans to sum up school culture like learning culture, power culture, strong culture, or effective culture. We’ve even seen leadership consultants and school improvement experts offering silver-bullet solutions—the one thing supposedly missing from a school’s culture. While these phrases can serve a purpose in setting vision or focus, they can also dangerously oversimplify something incredibly complex.

This reductionist, soundbite-driven approach risks narrowing the idea of school culture to something manufactured in boardrooms and leadership meetings. It presents culture as a leader’s responsibility alone—as if it can be designed, printed onto a glossy vision poster, and simply imposed on a school community.

But for me, this completely misses the point.

Culture is not made by leaders. It is made by people.

Let me take you beyond school culture and education for a moment to a story I think every school leader should know.

David Marquet, a retired U.S. Navy submarine captain, tells a compelling story in his book Turn the Ship Around. In 1999, he was unexpectedly assigned command of the USS Santa Fe, one of the worst-performing submarines in the fleet. His original posting had been to the USS Olympia, a very different type of vessel, and he’d spent a year learning every detail of that ship in preparation. But with the sudden reassignment, Marquet now found himself leading a crew aboard a ship he barely understood.

In many organisations—military or educational—this would have been a recipe for micromanagement, fear-based leadership, or paralysis. But Marquet took a radically different approach. He began by asking questions. Not rhetorical ones to assert dominance, but open, curious, practical questions: What do you think we should do? Why? What’s the risk here? What do you recommend? In doing so, he gave his crew autonomy, responsibility, and voice.

What’s striking is how this humble but focused method changed not only the performance of the submarine, but the morale, pride, and ownership of the crew. In other words, he changed the culture—not through command, but through conversation.

This has huge implications for school leadership.

We talk a lot about shaping school culture, setting the tone, or modelling expectations from the top. These are all important. But leadership cannot afford to be an echo chamber. Culture is not built in SLT meetings, CPD PowerPoints, or carefully worded policy documents. It is built in corridors, classrooms, offices, and staffrooms. It is built in the conversations we have with every member of the school—teachers, TAs, pastoral staff, site staff, admin teams, cleaners, midday supervisors, and of course, the students.

Let me be blunt: if you only talk to the teachers, you only know part of your school.

The receptionist may be the first-person families speak to. The lunchtime supervisor may witness patterns of behaviour invisible in the classroom. The caretaker may be your eyes and ears in spaces students use more freely. These individuals are not only contributors to school culture—they are curators of it.

Culture is never singular

One of the most common leadership blind spots is assuming that culture is consistent across a school. That your school has a culture. In reality, any large organisation contains subcultures. The culture in Year nine may feel different from that in Sixth Form. The ethos in the Maths department may not match that of the humanities team. Inclusion may look very different in one part of the school compared to another. This isn’t a flaw—it’s a reality.

The role of leadership, then, is not to flatten all culture into uniformity, but to understand the nuances, learn from them, and use them to build shared strength.

There is also a wellbeing dimension here. When school staff feel heard—genuinely heard—their sense of value increases. If a member of the cleaning staff has been in your school for 15 years but has never once been asked their opinion on behaviour, that’s a missed opportunity. Not every conversation will lead to a breakthrough, but the act of asking builds trust, and trust builds culture.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for chaos or collective decision-making on every strategic issue. I don’t expect there to be a proportional, vote-based system for all decisions. Schools need clear leadership.

We need to make hard decisions, drive improvement, and protect standards. But you cannot claim to know your school’s culture—or improve it—if you haven’t engaged with all the people who shape it.

So, here’s my call to action…

Let’s spend less time designing buzzwords for school culture, and more time walking the corridors. Let’s talk to people. Let’s listen—not just to opinions, but to stories. Let’s ask questions not just about pedagogy, but about purpose, practice, and daily experience.

Culture isn’t a slogan. It’s a conversation. And every school leader needs to be part of it—with everyone.

Jon is an experienced school leader with nearly 20 years in secondary education, including 15 in senior leadership and recent experience as a Headteacher. He has led three schools to improve their Ofsted grading and worked across four local authorities and three multi-academy trusts. Holding a Doctorate in Education from the University of Birmingham, he is a published academic and author of Culture Eats School Improvement for Breakfast. A graduate of Ambition’s Future Leaders Programme, Jon is passionate about educational leadership and culture. He also runs the blog: https://culture-eats.blogspot.com, supporting leaders in creating thriving school environments.