Tag: leadership

10 THINGS I LEARNED AT UVA

I recently visited the Darden School of Business associated with the University of Virginia (UVA), and it was an amazing time of learning. The trip was for the Partnership for Leaders in Education (PLE), which helps build leadership capacity in order to successfully turn around low performing schools.

Since I had the privilege of visiting UVA, I wanted to share some of the things I learned.* Below you’ll find a list of ten strategies, ideas, or people with whom I had the pleasure of meeting.

1. The importance of feedback. A principal who attended UVA with me had a great epiphany: creating a protocol, agenda, etc. and then asking for feedback isn’t as powerful as receiving feedback from people who are helping you create the product in real time. Too often we ask for feedback when it’s too late.

2. Creating urgency. Everyone talks about the importance of communication, which is absolutely true. What isn’t discussed as often is the importance of urgency. To create positive change, leaders must first explain why the change is imperative.

3. Asking “Why?” over and over (and over again). The great consultants deftly facilitate understanding by asking “why?” many times.

  • Consultant: The students in subgroup X didn’t do well on this common formative assessment question. Why?
  • Teacher: Because they weren’t listening.
  • C: Why?
  • T: Because they didn’t care about what I was teaching.
  • C: Why?
  • T: Because they’re not interested.
  • C: Why?
  • T: (Pause.) Because the lesson wasn’t interesting to them.
  • C: Why?
  • T: (Pause again.) Because I didn’t make it interesting.
  • C: How could you make it more interesting?
  • T: I suppose I could include information in my instruction that applies directly to their lives.
  • C: Is there anything else you could do?
  • T: I could talk less during the input portion of my lesson and provide the students with something more engaging during the structured and guided practice portions. 

Asking “why? over and over is necessary if you’re going to get anywhere close to the root cause of an issue.

4. The 25 Cent Rule. This is from Tonya Kales. Imagine you have two quarters, three dimes, four nickels, and five pennies. Now take no more than five minutes to write the top ten to fifteen things you can do at your school to increase student learning. Now take your two quarters and place them by the two top things on your list. Then take your three dimes and place them beside the next three most important items. Do the same thing for the four nickels and five pennies. The quarters represent your “big rocks,” the things that give you the biggest bang for your buck regarding student learning. The pennies are placed next to the lower priority tasks, and unfortunately those tasks are where we often spend the most time.

5. Clarity regarding measurement of data. This is also from Tonya Kales. Let’s say you want to lose weight; what’s the best way to measure success? A scale? Clothing size? BMI? Food journal? Pictures? Exercise journal? Calories? What if you’re heavier on the scale due to muscle gain, but you look better? What if you’re cutting the calories, but the food you’re eating isn’t healthy? What if you have an impeccable food journal, but you’re not seeing any results? And what if a group of people are trying to lose weight, but they’re using all these different metrics to determine success? This would make success difficult to determine, huh?

6. Martin N. Davidson. I want to be this guy when I grow up. I ordered his book on Amazon after attending a few of his sessions. You can find the book here.

7. The Consultancy Protocol. You have a presenter, timer, and consultant(s). The presenter shares a problem of practice, and the consultant(s) ask questions or make statements that help the presenter arrive at her or his own conclusion. Answers and opinions are not provided to the presenter. It’s pretty powerful. Some of the effective questions or statements that could be said are:

  • Tell are more about…
  • Have you considered…?
  • What do you think (a person) would say about…?
  • It appears you are operating with an assumption that…
  • This leadership challenge raises a couple of questions for me…

8. The importance of everyone getting good at the same thing (or at least pulling in the right direction). Oftentimes, we think we need to be perfect in order to be effective. All we really need is a team moving (ever so slightly) in the right direction. Of course, having only a few initiatives that everyone does well is the goal, and when a district has coherence and alignment, it’s easier for the central office to provide support because everyone’s doing the same high leverage things. It makes things simple, and simple is beautiful. However, it all starts with pulling in the right direction.

9. The importance of one’s environment while learning. The UVA campus is inspiring. Location can be an important factor in student success.

10. Chalkboards are awesome and are undervalued in K-12 education. Long live the chalkboards! The UVA classrooms had at least three chalkboards at the front of each room, which had the ability to be moved up and down by the presenters. This definitely added to an aesthetically pleasing learning experience.

…

*When educators attend conferences, academies, or encounter unique people or experiences, it’s important they share what they learned with others. 

BANDING TOGETHER FOR PURPOSE

[The following is an excerpt from a book I’m currently writing for self-publication later this year (2018). All feedback is welcome!]

“Being a mature being means living with a purpose, your own purpose: it’s about welcoming responsibility as the nourishment a big life needs; it’s about behaving as a good citizen – finding ways to add value to the community in which you live; it’s about wrestling with your weaknesses and developing heart, mind, and spirit.” — John Taylor Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction

It’s important to begin our journey rising and converging by focusing on why we do what we do. This is because we all need a purpose in order to do great work, and it’s of course helpful to receive assurance that we’re making a difference in the universe and participating in something important. The majority of people enter the field of education because they want to make children’s lives better, and it’s this purpose that provides meaning to their lives. Because of this, people need a cause in which they believe in order to buy into change.

When a new strategy, protocol, or program is implemented, leaders must understand the importance of focusing on how it fits into fulfilling the team’s purpose. To go through the motions doing something in which there’s no buy-in because it doesn’t connect to one’s purpose makes a person feel hollow inside. People require a cause in which they believe in order to have a purpose. This is why some teachers end up being miserable: they don’t see a connection between why they became an educator and what’s being implemented at their school sites.

Sebastian Junger, author of the excellent book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, writes how oftentimes people are happier during war than peacetime. He cites the Blitz during World War II when the Germans bombed England in 1940 and 1941. These mass air attacks targeted not just British industrial targets, but also towns and cities. This was a frightening time for England, and no one in his or her right mind would want this devastation to happen anywhere. Even so, Britons came together and displayed a level of heroism that’s truly inspiring. Later, there would be accounts of people who lived through the Blitz who looked back at that time of their lives fondly Why is this? Because they banded together and had a purpose.

The Britons definitely had a reason for existence; it was to stay alive and help others stay alive. This laser like focus was something everyone could buy into, and in hindsight the people of England remembered this purpose, and the solidarity it formed, with a sense of nostalgia.

When you have a reason for living, there are tasks you want to accomplish in order to support what you love.

So why don’t many teachers and administrators look back at the past decade (or two decades, or three decades) of their work and feel the same solidarity and fulfillment of purpose when it comes to their school or district? It isn’t simply because they’ve experienced conflict over the course of their careers. As we read earlier, there will always be conflict and chaos at school sites. In fact, you can have a significant amount of conflict within an organization, and it can continue thriving.

In the incredible book Man’s Search for Meaning, Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl writes, “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” There is always a web of tension in every situation. Sometimes the web is barely perceptible, and other times it’s as if Metallica is rocking out in the room. Teachers who are unhappy at work don’t hate their jobs simply because there’s tension; the problem is they didn’t believe the focus and decisions of their leaders were right for the students.

Britons clearly understood the focus: survive! Likewise, educational leaders must have a strong and simple focus on what’s important at school sites, and then this focused message must be communicated in both actions and words on a daily basis to students, staff, and all stakeholders. The purpose must be communicated 24/7–there is no downtime in the 21st Century.

PURPOSE OVER PASSION

[The following is an excerpt from a book I’m currently writing for self-publication later this year (2018). All feedback is welcome!]

When I tell people I’m not very passionate, it’s often met with derision. “Passion,” they say, “is the most important trait you can possess when working with kids.” I have to respectfully disagree, and I think Eleanor Roosevelt can back me up:

“Early on in her ascendant political career, a visitor once spoke of Eleanor Roosevelt’s ‘passionate interest’ in a piece of social legislation. The person had meant it as a compliment. But Eleanor’s response is illustrative. ‘Yes,’ she did support the cause, she said. ‘But I hardly think the word passionate applies to me.’ As a genteel, accomplished, and patient woman born while the embers of the quiet Victorian virtues were still warm, Roosevelt was above passion. She had purpose. She had direction. She wasn’t driven by passion, but by reason.”–Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

As Ryan Holiday writes, Roosevelt was above passion–she had purpose. Purpose is what sustained the Britons through the Blitz. It’s what propels all people through trials and tribulations that besiege us.

Passion doesn’t cut it when everything is on the line. Passion usually doesn’t even suffice when it’s 5:30 A.M., and you have to get up for work. What gets you out of bed? It may be a sense of responsibility, but I’m certain for most people within the field of education, there’s a large sense of purpose (not passion) willing your body from under the warm covers.

Purpose is also what gets a teacher through a minimum day before a holiday. Purpose is what strengthens a teacher’s resolve when the test scores come back low even though he or she has worked extremely hard. Purpose is what keeps a PLC team together when egos are clashing. Purpose is what motivates a principal who feels alone and isolated.

“Great passions are maladies without hope.”–Goethe

Oftentimes we speak of passion and purpose synonymously, but they’re not the same. Passion is fleeting. Passion can get the job done, but it can’t get all the jobs done. Purpose is the trait that pushes through the frustrating, impossible, or plain mundane and follows through with initiatives. It’s easy to implement a program, but you’ll need more than passion in order to make sure the program functions properly for years to come. Everyone wants to start new cool things at schools and within districts because the beginning of all implementations are fun. A leader has to have sustainable purpose in order to support effective initiatives that get the job done.

So what are some ways to help strengthen a culture centered on purpose?

  • Avoid using the word “passion.”
  • Continually reflect upon the most important things that must be accomplished for students to learn.
  • Have staff members and students post their purposes on the walls of every classroom.
  • Systems over goals. (More on this later.)
  • Read books.
  • Avoid “shiny objects.” (More in just a bit.)

So what should your purpose be? That’s the million dollar question, and everyone is going to have a different answer. Some people say, “Well, it’s surely not to test kids to death,” while others will say, “Assessing students and knowing what they know is the most important part of my job as an educator.”

In my opinion, most people aren’t born with an articulated vision of their life’s purpose. It requires experience, relationships, reading, and possibly even the beginning of one’s career in order to figure out why we do what we do. I wasn’t able to articulate my purpose until I had already worked approximately eight years as a teacher. I remember sitting in the waiting room of a car dealership as my Honda Accord was being serviced. While I waited for my sensible and economical car to be ready, I read Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning in which he writes, “The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.”

I won’t say at that moment a light shone down from heaven and angels started singing, but I do remember feeling a sense of relief as I thought to myself, “OK, so that’s what I need to do.” There was nothing passionate about this realization–passion wasn’t necessary. All I needed was my personal and professional experiences up to that point, coupled with the wise words of Frankl. Soon after I was able to articulate my sustaining purpose:

Even though every situation supplies non-stop conflict, I will strive to help others find meaning in their lives.

This purpose dovetailed nicely with my professional life, and it’s what drives me to do my best–even when I feel zero passion.

I’ve also come to realize that clearly defining both your own personal purpose and the organization’s purpose is an excellent way to narrow your focus. Too often teachers and administrators make grandiose and passionate goals, only to fail miserably as the school year slogs on. Honestly, failure could be attributed to too much passion and not enough purpose, but it also could be a result of doing too much in general. An interesting corollary to finding purpose is the importance of striving for simplicity.

(The next section in the book is entitled “Simplicity.”)

RESPONSIBILITY AND SKIN IN THE GAME

[The following is an excerpt from a book I’m currently writing for self-publication later this year (2018). Any feedback is welcome!]

As a lead learner, how do you hold other people accountable to high standards of performance every day for student learning to flourish? More importantly, how do you hold yourself to a high standard?

Experts have stated over the years that motivating one’s staff, and oneself, can be done in a myriad of ways. Buzzwords are generously thrown around in administrator courses and within leadership books: autonomy, candor, culture… all good words with wonderful intentions. The problem is these terms are effects of something else. In other words, you can’t have a campus where autonomy, candor, and a positive culture flourish without a main cause.

Speakers and writers who make their livings discussing how to build accountability within schools and districts are missing this cause, and I must admit I was blind to it as well. It took the words of Nassim Nicholas Taleb to help me locate this blindspot and give it a name. As often happens, thoughts and beliefs are constructed by the vocabulary one possesses. Just as Taleb provided us with the word “antifragile,” he’s also provided insight regarding a term that shines a light on every place of learning and exposes the level of accountability members hold themselves to.

Skin in the game.

Let’s back up a bit. I was listening to Michael Fullan speak about two years ago, and he discussed how one of the correct drivers of student learning is “securing accountability.” Having read his book Coherence before attending his talk, I was familiar with this driver and didn’t expect to learn much more when it came to this idea. I was wrong. Not long into his explanation of securing accountability, he provided a synonym for the word accountable: responsible.

In an instant I saw this driver in a different light. Accountability and responsibility are of course similar, but responsibility speaks much more powerfully to me. We all have a responsibility to help students learn and mature into flourishing citizens who can in turn help others. We are all responsible for the state of the world in which we find ourselves, and it’s the great women and men who have taken a stand (when it’s difficult to do so) that creates positive change. These people saw it as their responsibility to live in a way where they would suffer consequences for their actions–mostly for the unfortunate reason that oftentimes doing what’s right is not popular.

In the field of education, administrators are taught they must create “buy-in” within their organization. Fullan divides the “securing accountability” driver into two sub-categories: external and internal accountability. (From here on out I’ll refer to “accountability” as “responsibility”). External responsibility is the process by which an administrator influences others to do what he or she wants, and it’s accomplished by means of directives, evaluations, and systems constructed to provide a specific result. This form of leadership can definitely be effective, but it’s extremely fragile because it depends on one person making sure everyone else is doing something. Once that administrator leaves, whatever is being managed will disappear because the staff didn’t hold it dear to their hearts.

Internal responsibility is more robust because, as the name suggests, people internalize the change and make it part of their practice. In some instances, external responsibility may come first, but the hope is that it morphs into an internal responsibility system for each members of the organization. This is when culture becomes positive, and a school site or district pulls in one direction toward its purpose.

This all sounds well and good, but the important question is: how do you create a sense of internal responsibility within a person? Earlier I wrote that great women and men in the past have changed the status quo by taking a stand for or against something by making themselves vulnerable because of it. A nice way of putting it is they take risks for their opinions rather than protecting themselves from the consequences of their actions.

External responsibility is easy: mandate, evaluate, implement, threaten (just kidding); you can always try to make someone do something. The goal, however, is to foster internal responsibility, and the most effective way–in fact, possibly the only way–to promote internal responsibility is by having skin in the game.

It’s common knowledge students will behave well in the classroom of a teacher they respect. They’ll even work harder for teachers whom they know care about them. The same goes for adults; teachers will work extremely hard for a principal they like. The million dollar question, however, is how does a principal garner the respect of his or her staff? It’s not by giving them whatever they ask for. It’s not by sending them to fun conferences. It’s not by being nice or strict or firm.

It’s by having skin in the game.

I go back to the words of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, as I often do, because he speaks and writes truth. In his new book Skin in the Game, he cogently explains the importance of taking risks for one’s actions and opinions. For example, he writes, “If you give an opinion, and someone follows it, you are morally obligated to be, yourself, exposed to its consequences.” Someone with skin in the game is more than willing to pay a price for having exposure to the real world. When they tell others to do something, they don’t hide behind another strong leader or the mantra “that’s just the way it is.” They don’t hide behind anything, which is unfortunately rare–especially within large organizations. As Taleb writes, “Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his or her actions.” Skin in the game as a leader is basically a broader way of referring to extreme ownership.

Ineffective leaders hide amidst fuzzy bureaucratic obstacles. They do what they have to do, and then insulate themselves from the effects of their nebulous decisions. When these people apply external accountability measures, staff balks. The leaders find no one listens to them, no matter how many administrative books containing buy-in strategies they’ve read and implemented. And if external measures don’t work, it’s crystal clear internal responsibility isn’t fostered.

People want leaders with skin in the game. Whenever I’ve visited a school where kids are learning, teachers are working in harmony, and (a chosen few) effective strategies are being implemented well, you’ll find a principal walking around the campus who doesn’t protect herself from her actions. Even if they don’t know it, most people crave for a lead learner such as this to take command of their campus. This is the type of leader who gets results from external responsibility. More importantly, this is a leader who has developed internal responsibility within herself and her staff. She’s taken risks for her opinion, and she’s received both accolades and grief because she was tied to her decisions and actions.

Let’s examine what a lead learner with skin in the game does not look like.

(My book will hopefully be published this year!)

BRINGING VALUE

[The following is an excerpt from a book I’m currently writing for self-publication later this year (2018). Any feedback is welcome!]

“No leader sets out to be a leader. People set out to live their lives, expressing themselves fully. When that expression is of value, they become leaders. So the point is not to become a leader. The point is to become yourself.”–Warren Bennis, On Becoming a Leader

True lead learners are people who live authentic lives so they can fully express themselves. They have a purpose, which not only helps them become who they truly are, but also aids them in nurturing authenticity within their organization.

Learning and expressing oneself go hand-in-hand. If you’re compelled to express yourself, you’ll continue to learn the multiple ways you can do so. This constant learning means you’ll be an authentic leader, or as Michael Fullan writes, an “indelible leader.” In his book, Indelible Leadership, Fullan writes of the importance of “deep learning,” which can only happen if leaders help their staffs find meaning. As stated before, this isn’t done by attempting to tap into people’s passion. Leaders accomplish this by promoting deep work. Fullan quotes Cal Newport from Newport’s book Deep Work:

“To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction. To learn . . . is an act of deep work. If you are comfortable going deep, you’ll be comfortable mastering the increasingly complex systems and skills needed to thrive in our economy. If you instead remain one of the many for whom depth is uncomfortable and distraction ubiquitous, you shouldn’t expect these systems and skills to come easily to you.”

There are some leaders who cruise at 30,000 feet and only want to think about the big picture. They can’t be bothered with the details–perhaps it’s just too much for them to process. Other leaders get stuck in the weeds. Their intentions are good, but they waste valuable time and resources working through problems that can most likely be ignored.

A lead learner isn’t coasting at 30,000 feet nor chopping through the weeds. Instead, I like to think of a lead learner as a helicopter pilot who can deftly fly to different elevations very quickly. These people soar at 30,000 feet in order to bring coherence when needed; then they can drop and hover over the weeds (without getting stuck!) when a specific issue requires their expertise. I truly believe teachers are longing for leaders like this. They want someone who sees the big picture and also can dive in and get messy when it comes to curriculum, instructional strategies, collaboration protocols, and more.

As stated by Cal Newport, depth is important because deep learning means you can take complex systems and make them simple. A lead learner brings a lot of value to his or her organization by being comfortable with complexity and always looking for ways to make ideas more easily accessible to all adults at a school site.

In one of Cal Newport’s other books, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, he explains how a person can become valuable to an organization. As I re-read Newport’s book, I was struck by how similar his thoughts are to other great thinkers I’ve already shared in this book. First, he writes about the importance of a craftsman mindset over a passion mindset.

“Whereas the craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you.”

To be valuable within a school or district, it’s best to begin each day with the motivation of finding how you can help others rather than how they can help you. At first this sounds easy, but to maintain a mindset of everyday generosity takes constant effort. If you have to feel passionate about what you’re doing, in the long run not much will be accomplished. We’ve touched upon this already, but it’s worth noting that a worker running off passion will not be able to sustain the mundane responsibilities found within the field of education. As Newport writes:

“When you enter the working world with the passion mindset, the annoying tasks you’re assigned or the frustrations of corporate bureaucracy can become too much to handle.”

As a teacher or administrator, the bureaucratic tasks that are constantly thrown at you can wear you down and make you bitter if you don’t approach the day with purpose. It’s the integral first step in becoming valuable.

Newport further discusses the “craftsman mindset.”

“It asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is ‘just right,’ and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good. No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it—and the process won’t be easy.”

Once you decide on working with a purpose (i.e. craftsman mindset) you can begin learning the craft. The teachers and administrators I’ve seen who have a craftsman mindset are constantly reading, practicing the strategies they’re learning, and performing acts of generosity not just toward students, but also adults. You earn your career through hard work and constant learning. Afterall, we don’t call it being a “lead learner” for nothing.

Second, to bring value you must recognize student achievement will come when the adults on a campus get really good at what they do. This is accomplished by understanding what being “good” means. You can quickly learn which activities are worth your time by tracking your day by hourly increments on a spreadsheet–perhaps even quarter-hour increments. Then, you need to seek out immediate feedback concerning your actions, which could come in the form of student test scores, the thoughts of colleagues, or the observation of your boss. Imagine if students sought out feedback concerning their work on a daily basis! The same benefits can be derived from teachers and administrators who are honing their crafts by asking for feedback.

Third, Newport describes the importance of incorporating difficult strategies into one’s practice in order to improve. He writes:

“But this stretching, as any mathematician will also admit, is the precondition to getting better. This is what you should experience in your own pursuit of ‘good.’ If you’re not uncomfortable, then you’re probably stuck at an “acceptable level.”

This reminds me of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s belief that a person should be lost physically or mentally every day. The only way to grow is to stretch oneself and feel the uncomfortable nature of uncertainty. Traditionally, educators have believed they can arrive to a point where they know everything and can just be left alone to do what’s “best for the students.” In reality, the work of “becoming” an educator is never finished. Just as the ever-changing nature of fashion is never finished and platforms such as Facebook never stop morphing into new entities–lead learners never stop evolving.

Fourth, it’s imperative we develop “rare and valuable skills.” This is hard, but as Newport writes:

“Hardness scares off the daydreamers and the timid, leaving more opportunity for those like us who are willing to take the time to carefully work out the best path forward and then confidently take action.”

The bottom line of being valuable within a school or district means you’re positively affecting student learning in the biggest way possible. This is difficult, and it takes amazing work to make it a reality; therefore, you need a clear path toward understanding how it’s accomplished.

To review, here’s an outline of what it takes to be valuable:

  • Purpose (craftsman) mindset over passion
  • Get really good by tracking your time and seeking feedback
  • Stretch yourself by trying new things (the process is never over)
  • Develop rare and valuable skills

If these four steps are accomplished at school sites and district offices, then true value will be attained and our students will improve by leaps and bounds. If the adults are constantly improving, the students will improve, too.