QELi worked with Sharon Barker, Principal, and her leadership team at Highfields State Secondary College, Toowoomba, ahead of their opening in January 2015. As a brand new team, their objective was to establish a strong and positive culture that would flow throughout the new school community. Sharon shared her thoughts on the process.
“The most important thing for me in building the new school was around the culture of the school and I wanted it to be about the people. Once we knew who the team was, I wanted to get everyone together before the start of the school year and start building solidity as a high performing team.
I needed something that was going to be precise and high powered and that was where I turned to QELi. If we wanted to be a high performing team, we needed to know what it looked like. Our program facilitator knew exactly what we needed to achieve from the minute she walked in. We worked with our senior leaders to lay the foundations of a high performing leadership team and spent a further three days with the rest of the teaching and support staff to build the
culture of a high performing school. Everyone was energised and the facilitator gave us a number of tools and strategies, which we still use today and have continued to support our team.Bringing on board a whole new group of staff and shaping them into a high performing team was critical to the success of our school. Choosing to invest the time and money into our team was vital to make sure we set off into the future knowing that we started really well.”