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353: How this Christian School Moved from a Toxic to a Healthy Workplace Culture

Best Christian Workplaces : September, 04 2023

Flourish Model Educators Culture

353: How this Christian School Moved from a Toxic to a Healthy Workplace Culture

If you'd like to discover how to move from a toxic to a healthy culture while facing extraordinary challenges then you need to listen to this interview. Our guest today is Steve Anderson, superintendent of Grace International School in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

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In this episode:

Chiang Mai has been a strategic place for mission organizations who want to impact the 10/40 window (03:11)
Grace International School has been participating in the Best Christian Workplaces Engagement Survey for nine years. In the early years, Grace International School had low scores. Since then it's made plenty of improvements over time and now has been certified for quite a while as a certified best Christian workplace. (04:10)
In the early years, Grace International School was coming out of a toxic score and environment. As an organization, they had to make some changes and take some intentional steps, after listening to the BCW’s results. In those early days, it was about leadership development. (05:03)
Should organizations take a break from surveying when going through some tough spots? (06:24)
Best Christian Workplaces Engagement Survey was a tried and trusted tool that helped Grace International School identify what they needed to do to move forward after losing their campus (07:25)
Some of the benefits of healthy culture in Education (08:51)
Healthy score now reflects a culture of staff who feel heard, valued, and empowered.(09:29)
The survey allowed Grace International School to measure how well their employees felt heard and felt they were part of important conversations and decision making processes. (11:39)
Conducting focus groups from both staff, students, and parents to determine how we're externally communicating, how they're internally communicating. (12:03)
Having professional development days when the staff is allowed to ask the leadership questions (14:37)
How to bring a diverse group together and embrace shared vision and values. Building trust in a a diverse setting (17:59)
Onboarding new teachers to embrace values and the culture (22:18)
In preparing for next steps for the school, Grace International has found value in being a part of a network of other Christian schools like ACSI (27:59)