Crucial Teams for Rural School Leaders

Enhance your collaboration skills to build trust and achieve your school’s goals together.

In a rural school, your leadership team might be five people wearing twelve different hats. You don’t have the luxury of miscommunication. When one relationship goes sideways, the whole system feels it, and so do the kids you serve.

Crucial Teams is built around the SDI (Strength Deployment Inventory), an assessment over 5 million people have used to understand what actually motivates them and the people they work with. It gives your team a shared way to understand one another, so the work of leading a school doesn’t get derailed by resistance or a lack of clarity.

Trust is the Infrastructure

Before any team can take on a new initiative, they first need to trust each other’s intentions. In a small, tight-knit rural school, trust is the infrastructure. Skip building this step, and even good ideas stall out. This training doesn’t replace the systems work you’re already doing. It’s what makes that work possible.

What you’ll walk away with

• A clearer picture of what drives you — a way to name your own motives instead of just reacting to your own frustration
• A more generous lens on your teammates — seeing behavior as an expression of what someone values, not a character flaw
• A shared language for talking about strengths — including how your best qualities can turn into liabilities when you lean on them too hard, too long, or in the wrong moment
• Insight into your own patterns in conflict — plus a few concrete moves to keep disagreement productive instead of corrosive
• An understanding of behaviors vs. motives — you’ll be able to separate what people do and why they do it so you can respond more effectively

Who should attend

Superintendents, principals, instructional coaches, and leadership teams in rural districts — especially teams doing improvement work together (MTSS teams, curriculum leadership teams, admin teams) where the quality of the working relationship directly shapes the quality of the work.

Format & logistics

• Dates, times, locations:
  • Thursday, November 12, 9:00 – 10:30 AM (virtual)
  • Tuesday, December 8, 8:30 AM – 3:30 PM (in person @ CESA 3)
  • Monday, January 11, 9:00 – 10:30 AM (virtual)
  • Wednesday, Feb 24, 9:00 – 10:30 AM (virtual)
  • Wednesday, April 7, 9:00 – 10:30 AM (virtual)
• Cost: $910 for a team of three (Note: Districts that received joint federal notifications for 2026-2027 and are a part of SID can register one team for free.)
• What to bring: Access to the SDI assessment will be provided before the in-person session. The Learner Guide will be mailed to you prior to the first virtual session.

Ready to register?

REGISTER HERE:

Spots are limited to keep the group small enough for real conversation.

Questions? Reach out to Matt Renwick at mrenwick@cesa3.org for more information.

Anticipating a few questions…

Do I need to take the SDI assessment before the training? Yes, you and your team members will set aside time to take the assessment prior to the in-person date.

Can I attend on my own, or does my whole team need to come? A team of three people is best; this work focuses on the interpersonal relationships between colleagues.

What if I want to register more than three people for my team? Talk to Matt about pricing for additional team members (mrenwick@cesa3.org).

Testimonials from Past Participants

“Being a part of the collaborative gave me the time needed to reflect on my growth as an administrator as well as time to revisit my commitments to the people I serve.  The collaborative provided me with new ideas in bite-sized pieces.  What I took away from the collaborative, I was quickly able to implement.  I always left our meetings feeling energized and connected.”

– Erin Eslinger, Principal