Leadership Fundamentals Guide

Team rhythms

If you want to lead a service well, the first thing to sort out is your team rhythms. That is the set of regular moments where you connect with your team as a group and one-on-one. Without rhythms, everything becomes ad hoc, which means urgent things get dealt with, and everything else slides.

In an early learning service, rhythms look a little different depending on how your team is set up. If most of your educators work similar shifts and are together regularly, a monthly team meeting might be enough. If your educators rotate across rooms and run different shifts, you need to plan the rhythm more intentionally so everyone gets a chance to attend.

As a minimum, aim for the following four rhythms:

Even if it is hard to get everyone together every month, try to bring the full team together at least once a quarter. This is the moment when everyone in the service hears the same information and stays connected to how the service is tracking.

Running the team meeting

When you do run a team meeting, use the time intentionally. Set a clear agenda rather than running through a list of operational updates. Team meetings should be used for four things:

1. Share important updates about the service and where it is heading
2. Review how the team is tracking against goals (including QIP priorities)
3. Highlight the positive things happening across the service and acknowledge the behaviours you want to see more of
4. Create space for questions about direction, changes and service-level things the team would not raise in a room huddle

You might share feedback from a family about the impact the educators are having on a child, or highlight an improvement in learning documentation, or recognise an educator who went above and beyond on a challenging transition. These moments reconnect the team to why their work matters.

One-on-ones that actually work

The recommendation is that every leader meets with each direct report for at least 30 minutes once a quarter, scheduled as a formal one-on-one. Between those formal meetings, you keep up informal check-ins on the floor as needed. Some services prefer fortnightly or monthly, the cadence matters less than actually running them.

One-on-ones should not be used to run through the roster or the week ahead. Those operational things can be handled through your daily communication. Instead, focus the meeting on two things: care and coaching.

Care

Genuinely take the time to check in on how the educator is doing as a person. Early childhood work is rewarding and demanding at the same time. People bring their own stuff to work. Create space to ask how they are going and listen to where they are at before you move to anything else.

Coaching

Support the educator to grow in their role. That might be giving feedback, helping them reflect on their practice, or working through a challenge in the room. Rather than giving them the answer, ask questions that help them think through the situation themselves. This builds their confidence and their problem-solving ability.

A simple agenda that works well:

1. How are you going? (personal check-in)
2. How are you tracking against your goals? Anything that might prevent you getting there?
3. What are you focusing on for your development before our next check-in?
4. Coaching and feedback (around 10 minutes)
5. Service updates you should know about
6. What is the number one priority you are committing to between now and our next check-in?

Share the agenda with the educator beforehand. That sets the expectation that both of you will come prepared. If someone has not prepared, it is fine to reschedule. The meeting should feel intentional, not rushed.

The CLA One-on-One Meeting Builder drafts tailored questions for a specific educator and gives you a template to run the meeting against.

Communication standards

The third part of strong team rhythms is deciding how your team communicates between the meetings. Think about the tools you are using and what each one is for. Not everything needs a meeting, and not everything needs a long message.

Sort through the questions below and write the answers down somewhere the team can find them:

• What information should be communicated through email versus your messaging app?
• What actually needs to be discussed in a meeting?
• When should educators update learning documentation?
• How should urgent information be shared, family emergency, staffing gap, serious incident?
• Which messages are OK on personal phones out of hours, and which are not?

A useful home for this is a one-page communication standards document in your team handbook or shared resource library. List the tools you use, what each one is for, and when a reply is expected. When the team understands how and when communication should happen, confusion drops and the service runs more smoothly.

Why regular check-ins matter

Most leaders know one-on-ones are important. The question is whether they actually happen. The research on this is unusually clear for HR data.

Do not leave performance conversations to a six-monthly or annual review. That is not frequent enough to keep a team engaged. Quarterly formal one-on-ones combined with ongoing informal conversations on the floor is the rhythm that works in early education.

Building a feedback culture

Feedback is one of the most important things a leader does, and also the thing most managers avoid. The first step is to set up a feedback culture in your team, the shared expectation that feedback is part of normal work, not a signal something has gone wrong.

Set the expectation with your team clearly:

• Feedback is a regular rhythm. Everyone receives feedback on what they are doing well and where they can grow.
• If someone is receiving development feedback, it does not mean they are underperforming. It means you care enough to help them grow.
• If someone was underperforming, they would know, because you would be crystal clear about it, in writing.

Saying this explicitly creates safety. When educators get development feedback, they can take it as development, not as a sign you are about to performance-manage them.

Feedback is not just constructive. Make sure you take time out of your day to give positive feedback too, real, specific, detailed positive feedback. Not just "great job." Name what the educator did and what impact it had. Research shows positive feedback reinforces the behaviours you want to see repeated.

As a rule of thumb, give at least twice as much positive feedback as constructive. Start by modelling it yourself, then encourage your team to give each other positive feedback when they see it. Over time the team builds a feedback muscle and peer-to-peer constructive conversations become possible too.

Identifying the real issue

Before you give feedback, take a moment to work out what is actually going on. The real issue is often not the first thing you notice. Grab a piece of paper and brainstorm: what am I actually seeing, and what is the core concern?

Common drivers of performance issues in early education:

• Skills gap. The educator has not been trained on a specific piece of practice or a process. Can we close the gap with coaching or a short training?
• Unclear process. The expectations were never written down or explained. This one is on the service, not the educator.
• Team culture. Something else in the team is affecting this person's engagement, an unresolved conflict, a low-morale room, a difficult dynamic.
• Wrong role, not wrong person. Values match, skills are solid, but the specific position or age group is not the right fit. Often a move to a different room lights someone up.
• Something going on at home. If a high performer suddenly drops off, do not jump to performance management. Ask care questions first.

Once you know the core concern, the right next step often gets obvious. Sometimes it is a training plan. Sometimes it is a development plan. Sometimes it is a feedback conversation. Sometimes it is just asking how they are.

Delivering feedback with COIN

Kim Scott's book Radical Candor describes two axes that matter in feedback: how much you care about the person, and how directly you are willing to challenge them. Good feedback shows real care AND says the thing clearly.

The two failure modes:

• Ruinous empathy. You care about the person and tiptoe around the message so much that the feedback gets lost. They leave the conversation unclear about what you actually wanted them to change.
• Obnoxious aggression. You deliver the message directly but with no visible care. The person feels attacked, defensive, and shuts down.

Aim for radical candor. Show you care AND say the thing clearly. Same principle as a good one-on-one, care and coaching held together.

The COIN framework

Anna Carroll's COIN framework gives you a four-step structure for delivering feedback. It works for constructive and positive feedback.

COIN is not a script to read out. It is a structure for a two-way conversation. At each step, invite the educator's input, what they saw, how they experienced it, what they think would help. You are creating commitment together, not delivering a verdict.

Before you walk in

1. Plan the conversation, but do not put it off for long. Addressing an issue early is easier than addressing it late.
2. Give the educator a heads-up that you will be giving feedback in the meeting. Surprises feel like ambushes.
3. Ask how they like to receive feedback. Some people want the headline first then to digest; others want a conversation and space to react. Different preferences are fine.
4. Keep positive and constructive feedback in separate conversations. Do not dilute the gold in detailed positive feedback by tacking a development area on the end.
5. Think about how the person is likely to react and how you can set up the conversation so they can hear you.

The CLA COIN Feedback Planner walks you through each step and drafts a conversation plan you can take in with you.

Documenting every feedback conversation

Every feedback conversation, positive and constructive, goes in writing. A short email to the educator after the meeting recapping what you discussed, what was agreed, and any next steps.

Three reasons:

• Clarity. The educator has a clear record of what was discussed and what is expected. They can come back to it and work on it.
• Motivation. Documented positive feedback is worth more than a verbal "great job." It reinforces the behaviour and the educator keeps it.
• Evidence. If a development area does not improve and later becomes a performance situation, you have a paper trail showing the issue was raised early, what support was given, and how the educator responded. Without documentation, your case relies on memory.

Next steps

This guide sets the foundations. The CLA tools below turn the foundations into the actual artefacts you need, agendas, plans, conversation drafts and walk-through scenarios.