You Are Not Your Team's Reminder App — And Treating Yourself Like One Is Costing Your School

A principal I coach came into a session recently and told me she had addressed a concern with her leadership team. When I asked how the conversation went, she said, "I just reminded them about the expectation."

I stopped her right there.

In leadership, how you frame an expectation determines whether your team believes it is optional or non-negotiable. There is a fundamental difference between reminding someone of an expectation and reiterating one. Most school leaders use these two words interchangeably, and that is exactly why so many leadership teams operate as if expectations are suggestions.

Why Reminders Quietly Undermine Your Authority

When you remind someone of something, the implied message is that they forgot. And forgetting is forgivable. Forgetting is human. Forgetting can happen again.

Think about what you remind people of in your daily life. You remind your students to push in their chairs. You remind your child to grab their lunch. You remind yourself to return a phone call. Reminders exist in the space of things that are low-stakes, easily overlooked, and without real consequence if they slip.

When you walk up to a grown adult on your leadership team and say, "I just want to remind you about getting into classrooms more," you have not set an expectation. You have issued an invitation that your team member is fully capable of declining. And depending on your culture, they may have already decided to do exactly that.

The language of reminding signals to your team that there is a softer version of accountability available, one where they can nod, say "of course," walk back to their office, and keep doing what they have been doing. Your reminder becomes background noise.

This is not about intent. Most principals who frame conversations this way are genuinely trying to be collegial, non-confrontational, and respectful of their team members as professionals. That instinct is not wrong. What is wrong is the assumption that softening the language of accountability protects the relationship. More often, it protects the team member's ability to stay comfortable at the expense of your school's progress.

What Reiterating Expectations Actually Looks Like

Reiteration is not about raising your voice or being harsh. It is about being clear.

When you reiterate an expectation, you are communicating that the standard exists, that it has not changed, that you have evidence it is not being met, and that you need to understand why. That is a fundamentally different conversation from a reminder.

A reiteration might sound like this: "I wanted to have this conversation one-on-one because I have evidence that we are not in alignment around classroom walkthroughs. This is not a new expectation, and I am not here to make you feel bad. I want to understand what is getting in the way, because from where I sit, there is nothing additional on your plate that would make this impossible."

Notice what that framing does. It is direct without being punitive. It names the evidence. It removes the excuse before the excuse is given. And it puts the burden of explanation on the team member, which is exactly where it belongs when you are dealing with an adult professional who has been trained and supported in the expectation.

The shift from reminding to reiterating also changes what happens after the conversation. When you remind someone, the follow-up is another reminder. When you reiterate with evidence and ask for a committed response, the follow-up is accountability. Those are two very different trajectories for your school.

Before You Reiterate, Ask Yourself This: Is This a Will Issue or a Skill Issue?

Here is where many principals get stuck. They identify a gap on their leadership team and move straight into an accountability conversation without first diagnosing the root cause of the problem. And if you bring the wrong intervention to the wrong problem, you will not solve it — you will simply create a more frustrated version of the same situation.

There are two categories of underperformance in leadership teams: will and skill.

A skill issue exists when your team member genuinely does not know how to do what you are asking. They may lack the training, the experience, or the contextual knowledge needed to meet the expectation. In that case, the most important thing you can do is coach, equip, and support. Holding someone accountable for not meeting a standard they have never been taught is not leadership; it is frustration dressed up as accountability.

A will issue is different. This is when your team member has the capacity to do what you are asking, has done it before, and is simply choosing not to. Perhaps the expectation has lost its urgency. Perhaps they are testing the limits of your follow-through. Perhaps they are waiting out the school year without a genuine investment in the mission. Whatever the reason, the response to a will issue is not more training. It is a direct, honest conversation about commitment.

The way you identify which one you are dealing with is to ask. Not in a group meeting where people can hide behind each other's silence, but in a one-on-one conversation where you look a team member in the eye and say, "Help me understand what is getting in the way, because I do not believe it is a skill problem. You have done this before." And then you stop talking and let them respond.

That pause is where the real information lives.

Why This All Matters for the Culture You Are Building

School culture is not shaped by your mission statement or your professional development calendar. It is shaped by what you tolerate, what you address, and how you address it.

When principals consistently soften their accountability language, their teams learn the culture of that building. They learn that expectations are negotiable. They learn that the standard will be restated a few times before any real consequence follows. They learn that buying time is an available strategy. That learning does not stay with the leadership team; it filters down into every layer of the school.

Your teachers are watching how you handle your leadership team. Your leadership team is watching how you handle their accountability. Everyone in the building is taking cues from the person at the top about what the standard actually is.

The principal who consistently reiterates expectations, who follows evidence with direct conversation, who names what she sees without being cruel about it, and who makes clear that the standard does not shift based on title or tenure, builds a different kind of culture. She builds a culture where accountability is the norm, where the expectation of excellence is consistent, and where people either align or decide this is not the right place for them.

Both of those outcomes, alignment or self-selection out, move the school forward.

A Reflection Before Your Next Leadership Conversation

Before you walk into your next conversation with a member of your leadership team about an unmet expectation, I want you to sit with these questions.

Am I framing this as a reminder or a reiteration? And which one does the situation actually call for?

Do I have specific evidence I can name, or am I speaking in generalities that give the other person room to deflect?

Is this a will issue or a skill issue, and am I prepared to respond to whichever one it turns out to be?

And finally, have I been clear enough, consistent enough, and direct enough that this person truly understands the expectation, or have I been hoping that enough gentle reminders would eventually get us to the same place?

Strong leadership teams are not built by accident, and they are not sustained by reminders. They are built by principals who are clear about what they expect, honest about what they observe, and willing to have the real conversation when the evidence calls for it.

That is the work. And you are more than capable of doing it.