Every day in schools, our relationships are built one conversation at a time.

You know these moments well: the hallway hellos, the quick “Do you have a minute?” at the door, the whispered check-in with a student after class, the after-school email to a parent you want to reassure. When you look closely, these aren’t just routine exchanges. They’re the heartbeat of our schools.

As I wrote in my book The Leader Inside, “The heartbeat of education lives inside the walls of schools. Within those walls you can find stories of kids and teachers in the mess of learning.”

Beneath every priority, every lesson plan, every data meeting lies something more human.

It’s how we talk. But it’s also how we act.

Recently, I listened to a Mel Robbins podcast conversation with Harvard Business School professor Allison Wood Brooks, and it made me pause and think deeply. One line in particular stayed with me:

“How we talk is who we are and what we’re able to do in the world.”

That sentence lingered long after the episode ended. Because in education, how we talk to students, families, and colleagues is who we are.
But the longer I thought about it, the more I realized: how we act on those conversations determines who we are continuously becoming.

Talk, without action, is motion without momentum.
Action, without reflection, is movement without meaning.
But don’t we need both?

That’s what makes education unique, we don’t just talk about learning, we live it. We turn ideas into experiences, and conversations into change.

What I Learned from the Podcast and How It Applies to Education

As I listened, I began to imagine what this could look like in our schools.

What struck me most about the conversation was Allison’s description of her TALK framework: Topics, Asking, Levity, and Kindness.

At first, it sounded like a guide for communication in any setting. But as I listened, I couldn’t help but think: this is the work of being human, teaching, learning, and leading. This is how great educators build relationships, strengthen culture, and move from conversation to transformation.

So I began to see TALK not just as a communication tool, but as an instructional framework, one that, when combined with action, drives growth for students, teachers, and the communities in which you serve.

T is for Topics: Prepare, then follow through

Allison describes “topic prep” taking even thirty seconds to think intentionally about what will make a conversation meaningful.

In education, that same kind of preparation shows up when you plan a lesson or a coaching conversation with a purpose that goes beyond content — when you think about how you want people to feel and what you want them to walk away ready to do.

It might sound like:

• Starting a team meeting by celebrating progress before diving into next steps.
  
• Planning a student conference with one actionable goal in mind.
  
• Following a difficult conversation with a quick note that says, I heard you. Here’s what we’ll do next.
  

Talking sets the tone.
Action sustains the trust.

A is for Asking: Questions that move learning forward

Allison reminds us that one of the biggest barriers to connection is egocentrism, our tendency to see through our own lens. Asking better questions helps us step out of that and into understanding.

In schools, the questions we ask determine the kind of learning we create.

When you ask:

• “What evidence are we seeing that this strategy is working?”
  
• “What might we try tomorrow to better reach these learners?”
  
• “How are students responding to the way we’re teaching this text?”
  

…you shift from conversation to collaboration.

I’ve seen this shift in classrooms. One teacher took a conversation about engagement and began incorporating more non-digital experiences that made learning tangible. Another turned an idea from a colleague into a thought carousel, getting students up and around the room, building on one another’s ideas.

And just last week, I watched a teacher adjust her lesson in real time to meet her students’ needs, pulling in a strategy from an earlier coaching conversation. She layered learning for her students to help them access the difficult language of Shakespeare using media to motivate, connect, and deepen understanding.

These moments start with talk.
But they become transformative through action.

As leaders, how often do we pause after the conversation to notice what’s changed because of it?

L is for Levity: Lightness that creates space for courage

One of my favorite moments in the podcast was when Allison described levity as “fleeting moments of sparkle and fizz.” She explained that boredom, not conflict, is often the quieter killer of connection.

Levity, in education, is both communication and culture work. It’s not about being funny or entertaining; it’s about bringing lightness and humanity into the room. It’s the tone that helps people feel safe enough to take risks, share ideas, and recover when things don’t go as planned.

You see it when a teacher uses humor to ease tension before a challenging lesson, or when a principal starts a meeting with gratitude and laughter before diving into difficult work. You feel it when a coach celebrates small wins before offering feedback, reminding others that growth is a shared journey.

Levity is the warmth that gives people courage to try something new. It’s the story, the laugh, or the “remember when?” that humanizes the challenge ahead.
It’s what turns we should into we can.

“We’re all on these journeys looking for those magical moments of connection.”

And that’s what leadership is too, an act of hospitality. In his best-selling book Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidara asks:

“How do you make the people who work for you and the people you serve feel seen and valued? How do you give them a sense of belonging?”

In schools, those moments don’t just build belonging, they build bravery.

K is for Kindness: Listening that leads to next steps

Kindness isn’t about being “nice.” It’s about creating the safety for communication, the kind that invites people to share, question, and grow.

But kindness in action means we do something with what we hear.
It might look like:

• Adjusting a plan based on feedback.
  
• Revisiting a conversation once emotions have settled.
  
• Publicly recognizing someone’s effort or growth.
  

Kindness becomes credibility when it’s visible. When people see their voice led to change, they feel valued and that’s when trust is built.

Moving Forward

Allison ends the episode with a reminder: “Even the best communicators aren’t perfect.”

And isn’t that true for us, too? We don’t get every conversation right. We stumble, we miss cues, and we revisit moments we wish we had handled differently. But leadership, I’m talking about meaningful leadership lives in what happens next. It lives in the follow-up, the action, the shift.

In The Leader Inside, I wrote, “Gifts live within exceptional educators, waiting to be unwrapped at the right place, at the right time, with the right people.” The same is true for action. Our words unwrap belief, but our actions reveal it.

That’s why turning talk into action is not just what we do, it’s who we are.

Every educator who adjusts a lesson in real time, every leader who circles back to a conversation, every student who tries again after feedback, they remind us that progress begins in dialogue but lives in what follows.

As I listened to the podcast, I kept thinking about Will Guidara’s words in Unreasonable Hospitality:

“You need to be unreasonable to see a world that doesn’t exist yet.”

Educators do this every single day. We imagine possibilities before others can see them. We build worlds of belonging out of ordinary moments, a warm greeting at the door, a thoughtful question during a meeting, a pause to listen when it would be easier to move on.

When you bring enthusiasm to those moments, as Guidara also writes, “All it takes for something extraordinary to happen is one person with enthusiasm.”

That’s the real work of education and leadership, showing up with belief, generosity, and unreasonable hope.

Because when we combine talk with action, when our conversations become catalysts for connection and growth, we don’t just improve communication; we transform culture.

And maybe that’s where being human, leading, and learning truly begin…in the space between what we say and what we do.

Because how we talk, lead, and act determines who we are and who we become.