Noticing what works in governance
By Adrian Pyle, Director of Chaplaincy and Connections
For use in councils/boards of schools who value or connect to the characteristics of the Uniting Church (or are just exploring them). It may take you about five minutes to read aloud at the start of a meeting. There is a video version of this reflection located at the bottom of this page. (Approximately five minutes to read aloud at the start of a meeting).
Chair’s introduction
Please note that this is an optional script.
“As part of our meetings this year, we are taking a few minutes at the start to pause with a short reflection. It is not a sermon or a lecture, just a way of stepping back briefly and asking what might be shaping us beneath the surface as we lead. The aim is not to resolve anything immediately, but to give us a shared lens before we move into the agenda.”
Why this reflection?
At this stage of the year, most boards are obviously well into their work. The form of the papers is familiar and issues emerge and return, sometimes in slightly different forms.
In that environment, governance often becomes very good at identifying what needs attention next. Less often do we pause to ask a different kind of question: what is already working in the place we govern, even if it is not immediately visible?
In practice, that question can be quite concrete. A board might notice where collaboration between staff is happening without direction, where a pastoral issue is being held well over time, or where students are responding positively in ways that do not quite appear in formal reporting.
Some boards build this into their work deliberately. For example, a chair might occasionally ask the principal to bring a short paper not only on an issue of concern, but including a reference to where the school is already functioning well in that area. This is not a celebration piece, but an attempt to see what is already carrying weight within the school.
A short pause to notice the things that are working can begin to shift how the next decision is approached.
What’s the story this month?
This is one that many Uniting Church communities of faith are hearing this month.
That shift in attention sits quite closely to a moment in the Gospel according to the community of John, in the first verses of chapter 17.
What we encounter in this story is a prayer. And what is striking is that it does not begin with what needs to be fixed or established.
Jesus speaks of people who have already been given to one another. He names a relationship that exists before any further action is taken. Within that, there is a hope that they may be one.
It is easy to read that as a call to create unity. But I think this passage is actually pointing somewhere else. It sounds to me to be less like something being built from scratch and more like something being recognised as existing and then being built upon.
Translated into a board setting, that shift in understanding might look like this:
- Before creating alignment in the board on a divided issue, the chair might ask, “where are we already aligned on this, even if only in part?”
- Before introducing a new initiative around culture, a board might ask the principal, “what existing relationships or practices are already helping people work well together, and how visible are they?”
The prayer starts by asking what is already in place, as though that is where the work begins.
Where else this idea shows up
That same pattern appears in other ways of understanding community. Across many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives, identity is shaped through relationship with people, with place and with story. Belonging is not assembled through academic or mental agreement; it is recognised within a network that already exists.
In a school context, that might prompt a board to ask questions such as: “Where do students already experience belonging?”, “In which parts of the school day or community does that seem most visible? What is already helping that to happen?”
In contemplative strands of the Christian tradition, community is approached in a similar way. It is not driven primarily through design or control, but through attention; through noticing how people relate, where energy gathers, and where connection is already forming.
In practice, this might mean that board members do something as simple as noticing which initiatives gain genuine engagement and which require constant reinforcement, or asking staff not only what is difficult, but what is quietly working and why.
Across these traditions, there is a shared sense that what holds a community together is often visible in small, everyday ways, if there is time to notice it.
What this might mean for school boards
Seen in that light, our earlier questions in this reflection continue to develop a practical edge.
Boards are rightly focused on what is not working. Yet if that becomes the only lens, it can lead to changes that unintentionally unsettle what is already functioning well.
And those small shifts in practice, like ones we’ve already mentioned here, can make a difference.
So again when a matter is raised, alongside “what needs to change?”, a chair or board member might also ask: “What is already working here that we should not lose?”
When reviewing a proposal, the board might test it by asking: “Does this build on existing strengths, or does it replace them without fully understanding their role?”
Boards might also invite reporting that surfaces these patterns more clearly. For example:
- Asking for a short section in key papers that identifies existing practices or relationships that are contributing positively;
- Requesting examples of where students, staff or families are already navigating an issue well; or
- Setting aside a brief agenda item each term to reflect on “what is holding the community together at the moment”
Two Uniting Church characteristics speak into this space
- Listening and collaborative decision-making: this characteristic is not simply a step in a process but is a discipline of paying attention to what is already being said, enacted, and experienced within the community. Practically, this might mean extending discussion slightly before closure or inviting one or two voices that have not yet spoken to reflect on what they are noticing is working.
- Embracing diversity of faiths, cultures and languages: a recognition that coherence is not achieved by reducing difference, but by understanding how different perspectives are already contributing to the life of the whole. In practice, this might involve asking, “Whose experience helps us understand this more fully?” rather than moving too quickly to a single interpretation.
Taken together, these characteristics suggest that governance is not only about setting direction. It is also about recognising what is already present, and working with it rather than around it.
A few questions to sit with
These are not for immediate answers, but perhaps to let travel with us through the meeting:
- Where, in the life of this school, are things already working well that we may not have fully named?
- When we move to fix a problem, do we understand what we might be displacing in the process?
- Are there patterns of trust, collaboration or insight already present that could be strengthened rather than replaced?
- What might shift if, alongside identifying what needs to change, we made a deliberate effort to notice what should be carried forward?
