Every educator has sat through a meeting that felt like a waste of time. Think back to the last one you attended. Now estimate the hourly wages of everyone in the room. Add them together and consider what that meeting cost, not just in dollars, but in time, energy, and lost momentum. It’s astonishing, isn’t it? Meetings are too expensive to waste. But what if they became the most powerful lever for student success in the school?
Too often, teacher teams operate at a transactional level—they share materials or logistics, but stop short of the kind of deep collaboration that truly impacts student learning. However, we can develop systems to help teams move beyond surface-level exchanges toward meaningful, transformative teamwork, where inquiry, evidence, and shared responsibility lead to real results.
And it all starts with a simple but surprisingly revealing question I recently heard from a teacher: “Wait, we have to be trained on how to have a team meeting?”
It’s a fair question with a not-so-simple answer. Like many things in education, it depends. If your goal is to have a transactional team where teachers share lesson ideas, discuss pacing, make copies, and maybe grab each other coffee, you probably don’t need training. Most educators work together in congenial, cooperative ways. But, our students need more. They need us to move beyond transactional relationships.
This isn’t a one-or-the-other scenario. Transformative teams still value positive social interactions and strong relationships, but they don’t stop there. They dig deeper. They engage in meaningful dialogue, wrestle with practice, and hold each other accountable to ambitious goals. The reality is, there may be no setting in the world where coming together for a common purpose is more powerful, or more needed, than in our schools. We’re not aiming for students to have one great year or one great teacher. We want every student to experience great teaching and deep learning every year of their academic career. And that requires more than congeniality and good intentions; it requires transformative teams.
There may be no setting in the world where coming together for a common purpose is more powerful, or more needed, than in our schools.
Coaching and support are crucial for teacher teams aiming to build high-functioning, student-focused collaboration. But it’s important to acknowledge that most professional relationships in schools are still transactional, which limits their impact. Transactional relationships often stop at polite exchange. Transformational relationships go further, and they require vulnerability, candor, and a shared commitment to student success.Â
Here’s the good news: our teams already have the power to make that shift. Moving from transactional to transformative teams opens the door to one of the most powerful forces in education: collective efficacy. Decades of research, from John Hattie’s meta-analyses1 to Rachel Eells’s dissertation2, point to one clear truth: when teacher teams believe in their collective power and work toward a shared goal, student achievement rises. But belief isn’t enough, it must be paired with systems that support the work.
So, how do transactional teams interact, and how is that different from how transformative teams interact? The table below helps us analyze the difference in actions between transactional teams and transformative teams so we can understand how to make the shift, and help us identify our team’s strengths and areas for growth.
If you are like me, you appreciate an easy-to-follow formula. Tapping into the transformative power of collective efficacy is not simple, but here are steps your school team or teacher teams (or leadership teams, or any teams) could take to begin to bridge the gap between transactional and transformative teaming.
- Clarify Purpose and Set a Collaboration Goal: Start by developing a shared understanding of what effective collaboration looks like and why it matters. Use the “Shifting Teams” chart or a team self-assessment to reflect on your current strengths and challenges. Then, choose one specific goal to strengthen your collaboration and move toward transformational practice.
One team I recently coached enjoyed working together. They planned lessons, shared resources, and brought each other Starbucks every Friday. But when they used the “Shifting Teams” chart, they realized their collaboration rarely pushed beyond the surface. They agreed on a goal to create space for deeper conversations about student learning, starting by dedicating part of each meeting to reviewing data and co-planning support strategies. By focusing on a shared purpose and one clear goal, they began to shift how they worked together, and the results followed.
- Establish Supportive Systems: Put structures in place that make collaboration purposeful, efficient, and sustainable. This includes using consistent agendas, defining clear roles (like facilitator, timekeeper, and notetaker), agreeing on shared norms, and ending each meeting with an action plan.
A high school ELA team realized their meetings often felt disorganized and reactive. By adopting a simple agenda template aligned to their instructional goals, rotating roles, and ending each meeting by setting the agenda for the next, they increased both productivity and accountability without adding more meetings to their calendars.
- Leverage Individual Strengths: Get to know each team member’s strengths, interests, and preferred ways of contributing. Use this insight to distribute leadership, recognize effort, and build a culture where everyone feels seen and valued.
At one elementary school, a team started using a simple “team inventory” to capture each person’s areas of expertise and what kind of recognition made them feel appreciated. One teacher loved organizing data, while another was a creative lesson designer. The team intentionally leaned into these strengths and created space for each person to shine, transforming the group dynamic from cooperative to collaborative.
- Set and Monitor Student-Centric Goals: Establish clear, measurable goals that prioritize student learning, and develop a system for tracking progress over time. Revisit the data regularly to assess impact and make adjustments.
For example, one middle school math team noticed that while their students performed well on simple computations, they struggled with multi-step problems and real-world applications. They decided to make math discourse their initial focus, setting a goal to incorporate structured problem-solving discussions into lessons at least three times per week. Starting with one shared goal helped them build momentum and confidence for deeper work ahead.
Once a team has built a shared purpose, set clear goals, and established supportive systems, they’re ready for deeper work. Moving from surface-level collaboration to truly transformational growth provides educators with the safety to show up as their full selves. When we focus on what students need, when we lean into each other’s strengths, and when we create space for real talk and real learning, meetings become something more. They become the heartbeat of the work trust and reciprocal vulnerability. We stop going through the motions and start moving forward with momentum. Teams must be willing to name challenges honestly, even when one person’s challenge is another’s strength. That kind of transparency allows for meetings to truly become a powerful lever for student success.
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- John Hattie, Visible Learning: The Sequel (New York: Routledge. 2023). ↩︎
- Eells, Rachel Jean. “Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Collective Teacher Efficacy and Student Achievement.” PhD diss., Loyola University Chicago, 2011.
https://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1132&context=luc_diss. ↩︎
