How Do Distributed and Transformational Leadership Teams Improve Working Conditions and Student Learning in Underperforming High- Needs Schools?

Theories of distributed leadership suggest that organizational learning and change results not from the efforts of a single individual, but rather from a network of people working within their broader systems. Team empowering leadership enhances human resources development of the organization to promote the sharing of knowledge that is necessary for change. In this study, we study transformational and distributed leadership team that have been linked to improving working conditions and students’ learning in high-needs schools. Specifically, we highlight a team-based intervention where positive organizational improvements were made to academically struggling schools, and then qualitatively examined the associated processes to understand what enabled the occurrence of those positive changes. We find that the team structure allowed for the clarification of expectations, enhancement of communication, and improvement of educator working conditions through professional development support and distribution of leadership responsibility, which ultimately resulted in improvement in school culture and performance.


Introduction
Learning is foundational to organizational change (De Caluwe & Vermaak, 2003;Leithwood & Louis, 2021). In order to facilitate positive change in schools, systemic influence of education leadership is critical (Billingsley & Banks, 2018;Senge et al., 2012). That said, theories of distributed leadership suggest that organizational learning and leadership influenced change results not from a single individual, but rather from a network of people working within their broader systems (Harris, 2004). Unfortunately, education has frequently been cited as being resistant to change (Flora, 2020;Kraft & Gilmour, 2017), and recent education reform efforts have faced practitioner resistance because they often occur despite the educator workforce rather than for and with them (Saltman, 2014;Terhart, 2013;Tran, 2020). Heavy reliance on centralized leadership decisions from above, without input or collaboration from the workforce corpus, is antithetical to past research findings suggestive of the positive impact of a collaborative and participatory work environment. For instance, the empirical literature in the review on teacher retention, Guarino et al., (2006) found that teachers valued collegial work environments with "integrated professional cultures." The importance of collaboration has been examined in schools across the world (Day, 2009;Hargreaves, 2019;Ingersoll, 2001;Lortie, 1975;Webb et al., 2004;Weiss, 1999). For example, one study in China found teachers who work in collegial environment are happier and more dedicated to teaching, especially when administrators provide them with support, students expressed appreciations of their effort, and parents showed them respect (Kwong et al., 2010). Another study in England found teachers who teach in collegial environments work more closely with their colleagues to improve instructional and pedagogical skills (Day et al., 1993).
Furthermore, in the last two decades, emphasis has been placed on team-based problem solving and collaborative professional growth groups in education, such as professional learning communities, network improvement communities and multi-tiered systems of support (Jones et al., 2019). While most of these efforts are designed to improve instruction for students in the classroom, we argue in this paper that collaborative teamwork also has value for human resources (HR) development for school leadership. Specifically, we draw on empirical data and recent talent management theories to present a new perspective on the value of collaborative leadership teams for enacting organizational change in education. While traditional employers have often only emphasized their own needs, goals and objectives by strategically directing employee efforts for the primary purpose of enhancing organizational performance, the Talent-Centered Education Leadership approach (Tran, 2020) advances the Education HR management scholarship by arguing for a shift of this paradigm to be inclusive of addressing employees' needs. By allowing employees the opportunity and space to be supported, appreciated and listened to, the conditions will be ripe for positive change to blossom in the education workplace. Thus, we situate our work within this narrative.
The purpose of this study is to examine the processes allow for sustaining the positive impacts of leadership team that diffused acquired knowledge throughout the school to improve performances. It draws on the literature and the study on working conditions in high-needs schools and empirical research findings from an Arizona pilot intervention. The innovative features of this intervention model include building a school leadership team that involves both administrators and teachers and a distribution system that bridges leadership and literacy in high-needs schools, which explicitly highlights on building leadership teams for the enhancement of human capacity. We find that doing this allows for the clarification of expectations, enhancement of communication, and improvement of educator working conditions through professional development support and distribution of leadership responsibility, which ultimately led to positive organizational change.

Distributed Leadership
The question of how to support teachers so that they can thrive and succeed, especially in having difficulties in hiring under-resourced schools, is a conundrum. The school conditions associated with hard to staff often exacerbated the problem with not only higher levels of repeated teacher turnover (Tran & Smith, 2020), but also principal turnover (Snodgrass Rangel, 2018), and both have been linked to each other (Buckman, 2022;Jacob et al., 2015) and to lower student academic performance (especially for underrepresented students, such as students of color) (Bartanen et al., 2019;Miller, 2009;Ronfeldt et al., 2013). The effects of the repeated turnover and instability creates an environment that is difficult to sustain positive change efforts. Given these challenges, many scholars in recent years have encouraged various forms of distributed leadership to enhance the capacity of school leaders to ameliorate these issues (Brown et al., 2020;Murphy, et al., 2009;Spillane, 2005).
From the leader's perspective, emphasizing distributed leadership can diffuse responsibilities to free up capacity for school leaders to optimize their support for teachers. This is particularly critical because principals cannot have the needed expertise in all subject matters to provide the appropriate instructional feedback to teachers across disciplines. Distributing responsibilities enables principals to focus on other priorities. Through intentional design, schools can establish a stable and sustainable school leadership team and build their capacity to use data for continuous school improvement. Beyond benefits for the leaders, distributed leadership also has the potential to create a work environment of participatory decision making and enhanced collaboration for employees (Brown et al., 2020;Gronn, 2000). Leadership teams provide the venue to diffuse knowledge and capacity to the school to positively impact outcomes such as educator engagement and retention, as well as student engagement and achievement through improvements in educator working conditions and school culture. This diffusion is important because in order for institutions to improve, "knowledge must flow through and be embedded in organization. Knowledge-intensive teamwork, which comprises collaborative activities that locate, share, create, and apply knowledge among a group of people" (Chuang et al., 2016) is critical for transforming knowledge into the collective capital that is essential for organizational success.

Transformational Leadership
Besides distributing responsibilities, another related approach that many leadership scholars have proposed in school talent management is transformational leadership (e.g., Anderson, 2017;Burns, 1978;Foster, 1986;Sagnak, 2010), where leaders strive to advocate collaborative values and inspire team workers to follow these values (Bass, 1985;Groves, 2016). Transformational leaders influence followers by articulating compelling visions, inspiring change, and paying individualized attention to followers (Bass, 1985;Burns, 1978). Extensive evidence shows that transformational leaders instill positive attitudes in their followers and motivate them to perform at higher levels (for meta-analytic reviews on this topic see Anderson, 2017;Judge & Bono, 2000;Judge & Piccolo, 2004). Growing evidence also shows that transformational leadership in teams helps leaders to positively influence their work and effectiveness Groves, 2016;Hoffman et al., 2011;Wu & Chaturvedi, 2009). A central idea of transformational leadership is that followers are encouraged to find commonality to pursue collective goals (Noor et al., 2018;Shamir et al., 1993). In order to link transformational theories to team performances, we need to know more about the underlying team level mechanisms and processes that allow for organizational change (Detert & Burris, 2007). Despite the positive potential of the transformational leadership, more research is need to be conducted to discover the team contextualized factors that influence the transformational leadership effectiveness. For example, this style of leadership results partly from situational influences (Boal & Hooijberg, 2000), where both superiors and subordinates can influence leaders. Thus, we need to take a step further to consider contextual influences on team leader transformational leadership from not only upper-level superiors but also from the teams they lead.
The advantages of transformational leadership may not generalize to all management teams as empirical research of leadership from an open system perspective have produced numerous combinational leadership approaches within organizations (Leithwood et al., 2010). For instance, it has been suggested that the use of two team improvementoriented processes together, may connect transformational leadership to team performance outcomes: (1) team adaptation in adjusting to changes (Burke, Stagl, Klein et al., 2006) and (2) team proactivity through self-initiated behaviors in seeking continuous improvement (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999). In this study, we advocate for the coupling of both transformation and distributive leadership practices, providing empirical support for both of their value for enacting change in low-capacity underperforming schools.

Teamwork in Talent Management
Teamwork has been significantly recognized as salient in the Talent Management scholarship. Talent management refers to a rapidly growing subfield in HR industry (e.g., business, education, administration) (Lieberman, 2019) that can be defined as processes for managing and developing people in organizations (Boselie & Thunnissen, 2017), managing the demand, supply and the talent flow through the human capital mechanism (Pascal, 2004), and HR planning (Lewis & Heckman, 2006). Literature of strategic HR Management has documented the significance of wellconstructed work environment to improve organizational outcomes (Collins & Smith, 2006;Huselid, 1995;Rydell & Andersson, 2019), along with sole performances (e.g., Takeuchi et al., 2009;Wu & Chaturvedi, 2009). More recently, collaborations have been identified as important to facilitate productive work contexts (Lieberman, 2019), and that social interactions influence organizational success. In fact, Garcia (2015) explains that "relationships serve as important conduits for the transfer of new ideas, knowledge, energy and personal support," and that the structure of these relationships influences organizational performance (p. 24). Practices of talent management have been identified as one approach through which organizations can vitalize efficient teamwork and promote organizational learning that is necessary for meaningful change (Afshari & Hadian Nasab, 2021;Collins & Smith, 2006).
As the growing diversity of the school population, talent-centered HR practices are important in education (Tran, 2020), especially as it relates to their influence on team-based outcomes such as the team knowledge behaviors (Burkhauser, 2017;Lieberman, 2019) that sustain positive change. However, despite escalating recognition of the pervasiveness of teamwork in the general HR field (e.g., business, finance, and industry), little research has examined how teams can affect the working environment to make positive changes in schools, especially in high-needs (i.e., low performing and high poverty) contexts. Thus, this study we explored a transformational and distributive leadership team practices where positive organizational changes were made to academically struggling schools, and then qualitatively examined the associated processes to understand what enabled the occurrence of those positive changes (Hitt et al., 2007;Paauwe, 2009;Wright & Boswell, 2002).

Theoretical Framework
This study is grounded in a competency-motivation-opportunity approach adapted from the broader HR literature by Chuang et al., (2016) to understand knowledge-intensive teamwork. Chuang et al. (2016) uses the terminology "competency" in opposition to "ability" to accentuate the importance of both individual and collective attributes. We further supplement this approach with dual interrelated theories that work together to enhance competency, motivation and opportunities for the knowledge acquisition and sharing that is foundational to school improvement. The first is the theory of utility whereby participants (principals, assistant principals, teachers, and district leaders) and researchers work together to use data or evidence as a source of reflection. They also use planning to inform school development via improved working conditions and school culture, which will then improve students' grades and personal development, using research-based leadership practices grounded in effective leadership practices (Leithwood et al., 2010) as well as traditional humanistic values and aims of education (Dewey, 1938;Noddings, 2016;Walker & Soltis, 2004). The resulting collaborations will not only improve the individual self-efficacies of school personnel, but also integrate them into a form of collective efficacy that has been disclosed the importance for student achievement (Goddard et al., 2007). The humanistic dimension of education and teaching aligns with the modern HR management approach known as Talent Centered Education Leadership (Tran, 2020) and is critical for the design of our model given its strong motivational influence on teachers in underperforming schools (Achinstein et al., 2010).
The second is the self-efficacy theory based on Bandura's social cognitive model (1997), which suggests that teachers and principals will increase their sense of self-efficacy by sharing their knowledge. When interpreted through the educator working conditions and retention lens, it posits that educators who receive support from their administration (an external workplace condition) and feel they have the necessary skills and training to educate their students (a positive internal sense of identity) are not only more likely to stay and grow with their school, but are also more likely to enact positive changes that stem from their organizational learning. These two theories together posit that our leadership team model will provide the competency and motivation for school personnel to improve school outcomes and provide them with the opportunity (e.g., time and space) to do so.
At its most basic level, the conceptual model for our study predicts that the leadership teams will improve school working conditions, and this will in turn improve school academic outcomes and educator retention. However, from a system's perspective, a complicated web of processes undergirds the linking of those mechanisms. For instance, the improvement of teacher retention is predicted to not only influence school academic outcomes, due to factors such as consistency of instructional direction from a stable faculty body (Miller, 2009;Ronfeldt et al., 2013); but also the improvement of school academic outcomes will also have a reciprocal effect on teacher retention; schools with higher performing students are considered as more attractive workplaces (Bartanen et al., 2019). These processes were discussed in more detail earlier in the paper and are graphically displayed in Figure 2.

Research Design
In the leadership capacity development model piloted and reported in this paper, formal and informal leaders are developed as teams with the purpose of building effective educational leadership capacity in schools. Leadership is conceptualized as a distributed, pedagogical, and often mediated activity with different levels (classroom, school district). Grounded in trust, communication, and relationship, all of which practices include using evidence (formative, summative) sources and reflections in order to make school improvements . The leadership development model is, thus, grounded in research on high-capacity leadership teams in high-minority and low performing schools (Calderhead et al., 2012;Hallinger & Heck, 2010;Leithwood, et al., 2010;Mitchell & Sackney, 2009;. Participants learned leadership content through a research-based delivery system for school development (Desimone et al., 2002), including direct instruction in institutes for ten days during a three-year period, regional coaching with school group meetings for feedback every month, and onsite school coaching. Institute and local meetings were experiential, modeling procedures to mediate and intervene among individual learner needs, local school-community traditions, and Common Core standards. Most importantly, institutes meetings provided school participants and district leaders with structured (discursive) spaces for dialogue and reflections from different levels regarding effective practices on data literacy, culturally responsive practices and other research-based practices.
Six features distinguish the design of development intervention model utilized by the leadership teams. They included: 1) emphasis on schools that are fringe of official "turnaround" condition; 2) evidence-based instructional leadership team content (evidence-based practices, school cultures, professional learning communities, content and instructional strategies, culturally responsive leadership, parent-community communication); 3) consecutive professional development programs delivered intensively through direct instructions (10 days throughout the year) along with local meetings (professional network) where educators experience building leadership capacity firsthand as they apply and extend the learning from the institutes; 4) attention explicitly to culture and the school, district, and community context; 5) support on-site coaching to use a source of reflection, including providing informative feedback to teams and individuals regarding collaboration, school capacity, academic and culturally responsive school culture, curriculum/instructional practices, use of data/evidence; and 6) Dialogue. This dialogic delivery approach was constructed from research on effective professional development (Desimone et al., 2002) and literature on distributed curriculum leadership (Uljens & Ylimaki, 2015).

Sample and Data Collection
The team leadership capacity intervention featured an 18-month process of institutes planning with instructors, guest speakers, and regional follow-up meetings with an institute facilitator, readings followed by discussions regarding implementation, and three school observations sessions offered with feedback during two semesters. Teams were involved in the principal and two or three school administrators (depending upon the size of the school). Seventy-five schools participated in this phase of our work, selected according to criteria for underperforming (tier three or priority) schools in Arizona. Seventy-eight percent were students of color, with sixty-eight percent specifically being Hispanic Non-Whites.

Data Analyzation
Data were collected using multiple sources, including school level performance results based on standardized test scores, qualitative interviews and ethnographic notes during each school observation sessions. We will describe each in more detail below.

School Level Performance
Performance results from the study demonstrated improved school letter grades. The school letter grades were calculated based on Arizona's accountability system designed to "Develop an annual achievement profile for every public school in the state based on an A through F scale. The system measures year to year student academic growth, proficiency on English language arts, math and science, the proficiency and academic growth of English language learners, indicators that an elementary student is ready for success in high school and that high school students are ready to succeed in a career or higher education and high school graduation rates." (Arizona State Board of Education, n.d.) From our analysis of school letter grades from the first test cohort indicated that a full attendance of development team in the school gained the prospect of increasing accountability rating by one to two grade levels. Specifically, more than 50% of those participating schools in all team development sessions and activities improved their by one or two letter grades. A few schools with lower levels of participation (i.e., some, none) were still able to make improvements, albeit smaller in magnitude. The participated schools exhibited more improvement overall than those schools who had not participated in the leadership team interventions (see table 1). Using findings from the first test group, we revised the curriculum for a second test group to include additional modules on data literacy, school culture, curriculum, instruction, and culturally responsive practices. Over 80% of schools that fully participated in the second group improved their school letter grade by one grade. For more details about the project's impacts on student performance outcomes (Ylimaki et al., 2014.

Qualitative Interviews and Observations
While the project outcomes are surely important, it is equally important to find out how dynamics made for positive changes to occur. Therefore, in this study, we conducted qualitative interviews with participants to corroborate and enrich the improvement findings. The semi-structured interviews averaged 35-40 minute each and were supplemented by observation settings in schools. Semi-structured interviews and observations were conducted during successive instructional leadership institutes in order to determine what changes in capacity building occurred in the school development stage.
An interview protocol was created by the research team before the interviews. The interview protocol procedure followed the four phases by Castillo-Montoya (2016)  piloting interview protocols. The research team conducted pilot interviews with five teachers to test the quality of the protocol and identify possible biases from the researcher. The interview protocol was modified upon the performance of the pilot interviews. The researcher added to more probing questions to make sure additional information can be obtained by asking the same question from a different perspective. Six researchers conducted seventy-one face-to-face interviews. Each interview lasted 30-45 minutes through semi-structured. Before the interviews, participants were informed with the purpose of this study and how data would be used. Interviewers also be informed that all the information would be kept confidential. Seventy-one interviews were recorded. The researchers took notes during each interview, and de-identified the recordings to protect the identities and confidentiality. Only researchers had access to the recordings of these interviews.
Each participant must be or has been a teacher with more than a year and attended all workshops and trainings. The data was analyzed inductively and deductively using NVivo software in light of leadership practices (Leithwood et al., 2010;Ylimaki et al., 2007). Particular themes were emerged from the interviews. Team members coded the interview after examining all the transcribed interviews and gaining a general sense of the theme conveyed from the interview transcripts. The themes were compared among different coders regarding how the same data should be coded with the agreement of 0.90 intercoder reliability. Consistency between different coders in their independent analyses was emphasized to ensure accuracy of data interpretation. Table 2 lists the gender and racial demographic information of 71 interviewee respondents. In next part, we will discuss findings that administer context to illustrate the dynamics that allowed for the positive changes in school outcomes to occur.

Opportunities for Understanding and Progress through Shared Leadership
Overall, our results suggest that participants began the project with limited knowledge about effective leadership practices for using students' achievement data (formative, summative) and other evidence as a reflective source. Interview findings also suggested schools have limited team capacity before training. However, by the completion of the intervention, participants applied and extended the leadership skills that they had learned in the team-based development training. According to the interview respondents, they attributed these changes and improvement in the school culture and working conditions to enhanced communications. This coupled with the resulting increase in teacher and leadership sustainability represented the catalyst that ultimately improved their school letter grades. Consistent with Chuang et al.'s (2016) theory, teachers were motivated by the shared leadership and praised the opportunity to collectively develop their collective competencies. As one teacher put it, "It's kind of like we're progressing hand in hand, or what I see this training has enabled us to do is become a team. Before we were meeting every two weeks for 30 minutes before school. Where we weren't given time to gel, to use your word, to become a unit. Then what we do, then we take it back to our teams." Teachers were quick to point out that that as a result of the ongoing dialogues with the leadership team, they felt listened to, and that their voice and contributions were valued.
Similarly, another teacher commented on the relationship between the instructional leadership team and the working condition in the school. In response to the transformative changes, they have seen as a result of the distributive leadership project, she stated, "The Instructional Cabinet is collaborative and represents the various segments of teachers; it breaks up leadership into more useful aspects than just my boss; it is shared leadership, and it has improved working conditions in the school." To the teacher, shared leadership signaled to the teachers a less divide between them and administration and more of a "we are all in this together" work culture. The leadership team structure allowed for teachers to feel safe expressing their diverse viewpoints, without fear of penalty by their administrators.

Improvement in Working Conditions for Educator Retention
Linking the improved working conditions to her own retention, a reading coach specifically noted, "We are totally in a different place. I feel supported through this leadership training that we've been doing. I will not be looking to leave the school for a better working climate." One principal who was going to retire at the end of the semester also noted potential benefits for sustainability of the school direction: I've enjoyed it. I'm still sitting here with my team going, "Okay, we need to do this next year, dah dah dah," and I have no idea if it's going to happen or not. They would like it to happen. I know they'll carry forward, or hopefully whoever takes over will be open to where we've been, and where we were thinking we would be going, and I'm sure they'll add their own expertise.
On the other end of the continuum, a relatively new principal told us that he planned to stay in the school to provide sustainability. In his words, I'm trying to be more collaborative, more distributive in my style trying to be a little bit more hands on, and trying to have more of an accountability which I think was lacking, my staff has had many principals in many years, the last few principals have been all 1-2 to years so I know something, I'm sure going with, I'm sure they thought we can wait her out, I keep communicating to them unless the district moves me, I'm here for 5 years.
Principals and assistant principals also noted improved working conditions and a higher level of trust among the leadership team as a result of the leadership team model. Another principal described how leadership team dialogue allowed for organizational change through shared understanding of values and common ground that allowed for positive organizational change to occur. Specifically, he noted how the leadership teams provided teacher and administrators the space and time to clarify "The school vision and mission, the directions that we are going in, the capacity-building groups that we have, our curriculum action team, as well as the revamped and rejuvenated leadership council with better direction. We are starting to tackle some things that needed to have been tackled for a while. We have better communication across the board, better professional development for our staff focused on student learning. We are moving down the road in that direction." In sum, the leadership teams allowed for mutual exchange of ideas and opportunities for deep dialogues between members to jointly articulate their shared understanding of the purpose of the school and how to achieve the purpose.

Enhancement in Communications and School Culture
The topic of improved communications was frequently identified. For instance, a principal noted that teachers and administrators improved communication vertically and horizontally. She stated that such professional coherence helped them focus on students and meeting the needs of increasingly diverse students. Upon her reflection, she noted that, "Our culture is better, and I hope we will be able to sustain our momentum and retain teachers." Going further, another principal noted the importance of reflection and feedback. As he put it, "I think just reflecting through is that it's not me. It's this team of people communicating, and determining these are the needs. This is what we need to do. This is where we get feedback from teachers that they need, and now let's put it together. That's what I think has been really wonderful this year." Still other administrators focused on enhancements in the overall tone or feeling of enjoyment in the school. For example, one linked the improved working conditions of teachers, which improved school climate for students, noting, "I think, if anything, the more positive campus is like the end-all, or the be-all-end-all, of anything else, is that like you said happy teachers are going to have happy kids; all of whom are productive." One assistant principal team member connected the improved climate to the delivery system of the intervention process: And then you meet in your regional groups and you get to discuss what worked, what didn't work, what might you do differently; you get to troubleshoot, "You know, well, you know I tried this and just, you know, it kind of flopped." And there's a lot of that collegiality of practice that you don't get necessarily in the principalship because there's not a lot of opportunity for collaboration among administrators. But then to take that and to have a similar set of strategies in a different place, a different approach, a different school and see, well, what worked for you and what didn't. It's kind of like that PLC idea for administrators across a larger span of territory and schools.
The Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum at one district also recognized positive gains in school working conditions as a result of increased leadership capacity. We quote this administrator at length as he summarized the effect of the process and effect on leadership capacity on school development and the improved self-efficacy of the school to make positive changes: It has provided the principal with his leadership team, comprised of teachers, to really look at the low hanging fruit, to really get the momentum moving forward before reaching to the top. I have worked with the principal since the beginning, and his challenge was as a leader, in working with his leadership team--he was trying to get to the top fruit, which was just not attainable because he could not get the staff to go with him. [The School Improvement Project] has provided the research, the systems, the applications to start small, look at the lowhanging fruit, start to build momentum, have clarity in purpose and direction, and get the buy-in to start moving forward. With that structure the [School Improvement Project] has provided, it's showing the principal how to build teams to have, for example, to help with issues on curriculum, culture and working conditions. It is no longer just the principal trying to lead the way. It's surrounding of all the staff trying to get on board. He is also hiring really good people. He is surrounding himself with good leaders as well. The [School Improvement Project] has really helped him get to that starting point by not focusing on the things you are not ready for yet, but on the more critical needs, how to get to those next steps; let's get a strong foundation first and the [School Improvement Project] has provided that strong foundation.

Discussion
School administrative support for teachers has been found to be critical for both student learning (Snodgrass Rangel, 2018;Waters et al., 2004) and teacher retention (Horng, 2009;Ladd, 2011), and yet this type of teacher development support is an area that principals have reported to be challenging (Barber et al., 2010). The problems are exacerbated for impoverished high-needs (high poverty and minority) schools (Tran & Dou, 2019), who often underperform and face more severe educator (i.e., teachers and principals) shortages than their non high-needs counterparts. The pressure of the school leadership position often results in increased principal turnover, which by itself is relate to increased teacher turnover (Buckman, 2022;Jacob et al., 2015;Miller, 2013). Despite this, research has suggested that effective professional development has the potential to improve schools' learning outcomes (Jacob et al., 2015;Player & Katz, 2016), as well as improve teacher and principal retention (Jacob et al., 2015). In short, professional development for school leaders has the potential to turn around underperforming and understaffed schools.

Conclusion
In the study, we find an effective way to facilitate school leadership development through a team-based approach that conceptualizing school leadership beyond specific individual school administrators. This conceptualization provides agency for more school stakeholders that can yield the benefits of employee engagement and buy-in. Despite the fact that high-needs schools are often seen as "lost causes" with circumstances that are unchangeable due to their context, results from our pilot have demonstrated promise in terms of school academic improvement through enhanced leadership capacity. The present study affirms prior work that has signaled the importance of relationships and the social dimension of work for educational improvement (Allensworth et al., 2009;Johnson et al., 2012;Tran, 2020). Specifically, interviews with participants produced perspective data that highlight enhancement in communication symmetry stemming from the leadership teams that bolstered the participatory culture in schools. A finding has been substantiated is this culture positively influenced teachers' satisfaction, commitment and stated desire to stay in the schools (e.g., Richardson et al., 2008).

Recommendations
This research is situated within the burgeoning Talent Centered Education Leadership framework (Tran, 2020) that emphasizes responding to employee needs for achieving organizational success. Teachers, who were ordinarily afraid to speak up about important school decisions, felt a psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999) expressing their views in the leadership team setting -meaning they felt confident they could provide input and suggestions without fear of penalty. By incorporating more diverse input and voices in inclusive decision making, the potential for innovative change is cultivated (Javed et al., 2019). This work extends the literature by empirically testing the potential of developing leadership teams, comprised of school administrators, coaches, and teachers, to improve educator working conditions for retention and student performance outcomes for state designated underperforming schools. Given that relationships matter for organizational improvement, and that strongest predictor of teacher retention in the work environments are social in nature (Simon & Moore Johnson, 2015), the next step is to understand how relationships can be leveraged to facilitate those improvements.
From a broader perspective, there are many additional opportunities for future research in the field of team-based human resources management. For example, Lieberman (2019) and Garcia (2015) suggest that researchers could use an organizational network analysis to better understand the connections (e.g., relationships for decision-making, support, partnership and problem solving) to assess and optimize team structures to enhance collaboration for innovation. The process involves the simulation of the interactions of collaborative networks that consists of different individuals coming together to achieve a common objective. This and other types of social network analyses are increasingly being used by HR analytic and organizational development professionals and can be invaluable towards improving our understanding of the influences of the composition and structure of teams, especially in the modern context of virtual networks. The data for such analyses can be collected through surveys (both principal and staff surveys consisted of the same 137 Likert-scale items), as well as existing data structures such as emails, bulletin boards and large databases (Johnson et al., 2018).

Limitations
A limitation of our study is that this work only conducted in one state. Because we collected data from only one state, we do not know whether our findings would be generalizable to school leadership teams across the United States. Consequently, future studies should examine additional school leadership teams in other states.
A second limitation of this study is the challenge on distributing a humanistic, traditional values of educators in highneeds schools with culturally diverse students. This is particularly important because teachers who work in high-need schools often express a humanistic motivation to help economically disenfranchised minority youth as their reason for teaching (Achinstein et al., 2010;Tran & Dou, 2019). These same teachers, however, often leave these same schools because they encounter barriers towards improving social justice and the associated lack of culturally responsive support structure within the school to help their students. It indicates that if we seek to improve student outcomes, close achievement gaps and improve equity of educational distribution, we should emphasize the grounded traditional, humanistic values, and encourage teachers to have a voice to contribute meaningful discussions about the direction of the organization through the deep dialogue engaged within strong social structures such as leadership teams. We have to consider conditions that support team work among teachers, and the roles that teams play in working conditions' improvement, learning and teachers' career decisions. As we prepare for the future of education, we must learn from decades of research that has continuously identified the importance of relationships for school outcomes, and use these findings in our efforts to humanize the education workplace to not only enhance conditions for teachers, but for students as well (Tran, 2020).