The 1-on-1 Conversation That Will Change Your District's Culture

We spend a lot of time in our district office analyzing data and tracking our scorecard metrics, but essential data can’t be restricted to numbers on a spreadsheet. The qualitative data that rounds out all of our numbers in Oxford School District is often found in a genuine conversation.

I've written before about why parent and community feedback is important, but gathering feedback from faculty and staff is crucial, as well. I now want to share with you the method by which we gather this feedback—not just from parents, but also from leaders, faculty, and students. For this post, I’ll focus specifically on how we gather feedback from our faculty and staff.

Borrowing from Healthcare: What is Rounding?

In Oxford, we gather feedback from faculty and staff using a proactive practice called rounding, which we borrow directly from healthcare. 

Think of how hospital doctors regularly round with their patients: they check in, gather updates, discuss treatment, and plan follow-up. This practice works similarly in education. Rounding in education is modeled after the quick, low-anxiety connections doctors and nurses make, focused on ensuring consistent support and gathering timely feedback.

Rounding is an intentional check-in with the people in our system, and we practice it with everyone who is willing to participate. (Most are excited about the opportunity.) This practice, which is one of my favorite tactics, is a major part of our commitment to building a supportive, thriving district culture.

Building Trusting Relationships

At its core, a rounding conversation is a short, one-on-one conversation that gathers input, assesses engagement, and builds relationships. Because rounding conversations allow us to build relationships, our district and school leaders can use these conversations to intentionally foster trust and demonstrate that every voice is valued. While this practice is also proven to boost teacher retention by making staff feel heard, its ultimate purpose is building the relationships necessary for continuous improvement.

At its core, a rounding conversation is a short, one-on-one conversation that gathers input, assesses engagement, and builds relationships.

While you can certainly tailor rounding conversations to different audiences, with faculty and staff, we focus on three outcomes during every rounding conversation to build trust:

• Personal Connection: We take the time to know something about them (e.g., "How did your child do in the recent soccer tournament?").

• Reducing Barriers: We proactively learn what is "getting in the way of you doing your best work."

• Showing Gratitude: We ask, "Is there anyone that’s been especially helpful to you?"

From Insight to Action to Impact

Rounding provides the rich narrative that formal surveys often miss; it moves us beyond the numbers on spreadsheets. Our leaders—from principals to Cabinet members—engage in regular rounding to gather valuable data about needs and to harvest wins for recognition.

The core questions we ask employees are designed to gather actionable data:

• What is working well for you in your work?

• Do you have what you need to do your job?

• Is there anything I can do to help you continue to perform well?

• Is there anyone who has been especially helpful to you?

When we start by validating what's working well and then move to identifying barriers, it makes our staff feel heard and cared for.

The results are already transforming how we do business: from August 2025 to the middle of January 2026, we completed 1,240 rounds; logged 2,043 recognitions (meaning many people have one or two people to thank); and addressed 43 actionable issues. In addition, over 80% of our employees have participated in rounding conversations.

Rounding reinforces the idea that when leaders connect often, collect feedback, and recognize colleagues, they build a foundation of trust. This foundation allows educators to focus on delivering high-quality instruction, which ultimately drives student success.

Closing the Loop: The Act of Follow-Up

The most critical part of rounding is the follow-up. To sustain a positive culture, we must be advocates for using feedback from those closest to the work. 

Rounding reinforces the idea that when leaders connect often, collect feedback, and recognize colleagues, they build a foundation of trust. This foundation allows educators to focus on delivering high-quality instruction, which ultimately drives student success.

Some employees are hesitant to speak up, so we have to go to them and ask for their feedback. Often there is a tendency to not want to ask employees how we can help them because we worry they will ask for expensive equipment or things we can’t deliver. However, in my experience, employees don’t usually request over-the-top items. They are usually looking for simple solutions to help them enhance instruction or make the classroom environment safer or better for their students.

All in all, if we never ask, we’ll never know. If our goal is true continuous improvement, we must make proactive asking a habit. This allows us to act on critical feedback, creating better workplaces for our employees and, in turn, better learning experiences for our students.