Learning

Resources for Finding Community Pt 2

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A couple weeks ago, I shared Resources for Finding Community Pt 1 with the hope that you could begin to find the connectors within your organization or team. Learning who the people are that have influence is the first step.

The next step is to begin to identify the characteristics of your community. Beginning with the premise of “when we are at our best….”, try using the questions below. These are a starting point for conversations that involve the senses. When I’ve used these in the past, I have found that small groups (mixed departments and roles on the campus/department/team) work best.

A community is always in transition – people come and go, priorities shift, and supplies can become scarce. Yet if members have reflected on who connects the pieces, what expectations they can have for their behavior, and how they can memorialize all they value, then the community has the best chance of surviving any disruption.

Try these out at your next opportunity and let me know what you learn.

What Are You Becoming?

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The Boston Marathon was the other day, and I had two friends running it. They were excited to be back, especially for this 10th anniversary. And as I settled in to watch the TV coverage, and track them on the app, I kept hearing the announcers talk about individual runners. And they would refer to them by their best times. “That’s a 2:03 guy” & “She’s a 2:25 runner”. They were identified based on a static moment in their running history. As if that’s all there is to them. Hmm.

Nearly three months ago, I retired from public education. And my first day in this new adventure, I did what I thought most retired people do – I went to the mall and walked around. It’s amazing how much quieter it is on a Wednesday. I’m not sure what I expected to find that late morning, perhaps a sense of new purpose….or merely the best place to get frozen yogurt or a fresh cookie. Discovering the usual suspects slumped in chairs and across benches, I wondered if this was my new #squad. I’m far too spry for all this, right? And as I traversed the food court and circled back behind the carousel, a billboard sign caught my eye.

Eliud Kipchogee is the greatest marathoner of all time, and he often shares the notion that no human is limited. From that, I believe he is affirming that we are all on a journey forward; on a path toward more. When we slow down and consider that we are each in the dynamic state of becoming – that we are existing in the place between what has been and what will ultimately be – then maybe we can find the grace & patience that we all deserve. Whether a student in your class, a client for your firm, or a friend that may challenge the relationship, we are all still under development.

And thus it begs the question – What are you becoming?

Say Hello with Your New Summer Collaboration Tool

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Each spring, campus leaders live in two worlds.  They are dually focused on all the annual testing amid the quickly approaching end of the semester and also building out the plans for the coming school year.  It’s terribly hectic while amazingly exciting.  And as schools head toward summer, I want to share a tool that I believe can help your team manage the next few months while avoiding the loss of momentum.

The most common questions from non-educators as June approaches are either (a) Do you have to work in the summer and/or (b) What do you do in the summer, just hang out? My polite reply is that summer is the off-season and that, similar to professional athletes, summer is spent both recovering from and preparing for the upcoming school year. Hiring of course is critical, yet planning is also paramount. Toss in the well-earned need for team members to simply vacation, and you can begin to see what can happen.  Finding time to gather and plan is tough. Yet I think there is a tool for you to consider.

Voxer has been described as a sort of walkie-talkie for teams of almost any size. While that is fair, I think it holds even more power in the hands of a user. Unlike most walkie-talkie experiences, the users aren’t tied to be next to each other or close to a receiver/repeater. You can be anywhere with access to data.

Now I understand that you may be thinking that it’s unnecessary since your people on campus are – well – they’re down the hall.  You can already text them, and, you know where to find them, right?

Group Planning

However, I recommend trying to use Voxer this summer so that, as you begin to scatter, you can still actively plan together. Yes, shared docs on a Google Drive can be products of this work, yet I think some of the best learning and ideas come from hearing each other’s voices and having time to process. You can add pictures, videos, comments, and more within the Voxer group. So as one person is on the beach, another cycling across Vancouver, and another hanging in their office, you can all stay connected.  Below is an image I found that offers some basic Voxer101 information.

Voxer 101

Full transparency, I have tried this before with mixed results.  The people that jumped in and tried to leverage the tool found some success.  With others, it was a mixed bag.  And that’s alright.  I know that if I didn’t make use of this then we would have hoped we were individually working on plans, and we would have spent time reading texts or emails or even sharing Google Docs.  All of that is in isolation, right?  My point is that there was no synthesis, no energy, and no excitement as an idea began to crystallize. How would we genuinely know we were sharing the best ideas and making them better? It would be a static experience right as we were seeking something dynamic.

I hope you’ll consider giving it a go.  The added touch of voice matters.

What kind of tools are you using to ensure your off-season is highly productive?  What other resources have you tried for collaboration?

Resources for Finding Community Pt 1

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Whether you are new to campus or looking for new insights from a familiar place, there are various means to further your learning. And my intent with this post is to focus on a few just-in-time strategies you can use tomorrow to find community.

Malcolm Gladwell discusses the idea of connectors in his book, The Tipping Point. The quick of it is that for any idea to gain traction and hit that “tipping point” then it often comes after the leader learns who the connectors are within his organization. And in order for you to have a better chance for success, it’s critical for you to assess who they are starting today. It’s important to remember the notion that your connectors/leaders aren’t necessarily in positions of power; rather they have influence.

I like these questions for a few reasons. As I’ve noted in white on the image above, they begin to inform you where the connectors are in your organization. I also think it’s equally revealing who is not connected. If they don’t have answers for each question, or they simply seem to list themselves, then that is important for you to know as well.

The last tip that I’ve learned when using these is that, since these are personal questions, it is better to send them to people in a Google Form and allow them a couple days to respond. Then you have all the information together.

These questions are flexible and can be adapted in many ways. It’s also reasonable to expect the replies to evolve over the semester or school year. I hope you’ll try them out at your next opportunity and let me know how they work. And please also share any resources you may have curated in your continued attempt to find community.

5 Coaching Questions

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I have to admit that, for a short time each day, I’ll watch TikTok. In addition to some incredibly creative videos, there is quite a bit that can be learned. Of late, I have stumbled on to @Askvinh – a resource that either affirms practices that I’ve tried or inspires new strategies to use. If you aren’t familiar with him, then I would encourage you to check him out. Some good stuff there.

An important element for any leader to learn is how to coach someone that has a dilemma. Often we default toward consulting, wherein we give them specific advice to move forward or solve a situation. And sometimes that’s what is needed and is completely appropriate. The more challenging piece for both members can be a coaching scenario. This is where the leader helps someone reach their own conclusion. It is harder, takes more time, and can lead to frustration. I think these five questions from an @askvinh TikTok can help & I’m eager to share them.

  1. What’s on your mind? This opens the door for anything and avoids the trap of embarking on the conversation from a specific mindsight. So instead of asking, “What’s wrong?”, which can set a tone of discontent, you are expressing to this partner that you have an open mind and are available for whatever might emerge.
  2. What else? This allows the speaker to share everything they want with your permission. They can empty the tank.
  3. What’s the challenge? This focuses them on the obstacle or hurdle that seems to be in the way. You are giving them the opportunity to define this which takes it from a “soft or gooey” state to something more specific, more objective.
  4. What do you want? This forces them back toward a solution. Essentially, you are pointing them forward and it remains personal. This is still about them.
  5. What can I do to help? This is where you learn whether you need to offer a specific set of next steps or if they feel confident to move forward. Either way, you have helped.

It’s not uncommon for people to elevate to leadership positions based on individual accomplishments. Sometimes the resulting personal struggle revolves around the development of management muscles. And at the same time, we are mentored to strengthen our leadership potential by becoming active listeners. I totally agree with a commitment to that skill.

Through my exploration of leadership, I have come to the conclusion that we can more explicitly develop leadership in others through the questions we ask. I believe those five questions are effective, and I encourage you to try them in your next conversation. Let me know how it works.

Thirty Seconds That Woke Me Up

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I saw this commercial the other day and it stuck with me. Thirty seconds long and yet I had to share it with others. It seemed that, in that moment, Western Governors University had summarized what a personalized education plan could/should look like. Check it out here: The University of You

Years ago I attended a PLC institute and got to hear Rick DuFour talk about public schools and this new model for how educators would come together to make student learning more powerful. Specifically, I remember him saying that what needed to be learned was static (constant) and that the amount of time needed to demonstrate the learning is what was dynamic (the variable). The idea of removing the mandate that a kiddo had to demonstrate mastery of the content taught in this classroom, at this school, in this town, by this date, resonated and made complete sense. That was nearly 20 years ago and I don’t think we’ve made nearly enough progress.

Even as we come out of the March 2020 – August 2021 virtual vs Face-to-Face school experience, far too many public schools are, in my opinion, stuck. Foregoing the opportunity to do something different, something unknown, something better for kids, we slid back into what we already knew. “Now isn’t the time to try something else because we have lost so much” is the refrain I kept hearing.

I’m not saying we blew it as we can always get better. Heck, it may have been the right decision. Yet I do believe that the next leap in public education is figuring out how to really personalize learning for a kid. And honestly, today, at this moment, it feels like too much to tackle. Sure, I’ve got early ideas of what some of the key elements might include; and certainly thoughts on what should NOT be part of it (required seat time, one-shot-assessment, etc). But how to make it all “fit”? I don’t know. Yet we’ve got to do something.

I have spent the last 12 years leading a large comprehensive high school, and I think that’s the level that is most in need of growth. I have to believe that we can gather enough intellectual and political will to change some pieces so as to improve the overall experience. I mean, we sorta have to, right? Can we at least agree that we are in a moment of urgency? Now it’s going to take lots of people smarter & wiser than me to rally together on this, at the most local level, and I’m ready to join that conversation. We’ve got to take action so that they can begin to view their 8:30-4:00, five-day-a-week, “job” as something with potential rather than another thing to endure. I know that my students are watching and they’re growing tired of waiting.

Now I know almost nothing about WGU yet they seem to have a clear vision of what & for whom they exist. And their plan signals a boldness that isn’t exclusive to them. Maybe it’ll work. Most likely they’ll learn and have to adapt and adjust. But you know what, they’re trying. And I know that, personally, for me right now, I’ve got to commit to furthering my own learning in this area. I can be better. We have to be better.

Leveraging Mistakes at Any Age

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I recently shared on Twitter an article that came to me from Runners World.  The title spoke about how competitive runner Molly Huddle handles a bad race or workout (Click here for the article)   She explains that when she was with two other famous runners in an elementary school, the kids kept asking questions about failure.  This surprised her, and admittedly, probably would have surprised me.  However as I was running this morning, I thought about this very idea.  Kids were focused on what could be learned from failure.  At that young age, they understood that it’s what can be taken from adversity or failure or a bad experience that might matter most.  They get it.  Maybe they don’t have the words to articulate what they are exploring, but they were seeking ideas for how to handle it.  And when they face it, they may be a bit more equipped to respond.

And this now begs the question – where does that approach go as they get older? And how can we bring it back?

An excuse is stated without intent to find a solution, and removes blame from yourself to something external. A reason addresses factual causes.Later she contrasts excuses vs reasons and I found this compelling for educators.  Too often I think we offer, or at least entertain, excuses because that is often the path of least resistance.  It’s always easier to look for a culprit rather then to look for a path forward. The students she spoke with seemed to understand that stuff happens.  And when you opt to ask questions then you can reflect.  And when you commit to reflect you find a solution or a next step. It is the act of choosing – making a decision – that matters.

Which of your most recent mistakes did you choose to learn from?  Did you start that process alone or with someone else?  Which of those two options works best for you?

Living in the Gray

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Awhile back I was making my way through Dare to Lead by Dr. Brene’ Brown, and stumbled upon this quote which left me intrigued.

“Leadership is the ability to thrive in the ambiguity of paradoxes and opposites”

– Dr. Brene’ Brown

I appreciate the use of the word Thrive.  First it reinforces the idea of a wide spectrum of performance when it comes to leadership.  Second is that if there are gradients of performance then that also means it is complex.  Each of those are affirming to the notion that leadership should be respected.  It doesn’t say live, survive, complete, etc.  It says that in order to prosper or flourish as a leader you must be able to operate with ambiguity.  So lets talk about that.Leadership ThriveI am drawn to the idea of Ambiguity being the same as inexactness.  And the gray is where we often attribute the idea of being open to more than one interpretation.  So much of what we do as leaders lies in the contrary.  I understand the discomfort with not always knowing when so much is at stake.  I get that it is hard and challenging, and you may not understand for a long time whether your choice was the best one.  That small undefined area, that sliver of mystery, is where the strongest leaders have the chance to emerge.  To thrive.

So often when we are thrust in to the role of being a leader the immediate goal is to appear proficient.  We want to be able to answer each question, address each concern, and keep everything moving forward.  A new leader can survive making decisions early on – many of them likely simple and black/white.  And maybe even the gray ones seem easy enough as most people being supervised will be polite and offer the benefit of the doubt.  However, some leaders linger in that space, they get comfortable.  However I don’t think you can thrive – prosper – flourish – if you don’t dig deeper in to that gray area.  It’s hard.  Yet the gray area is where risks are taken, lessons are learned, and better ideas emerge.  If you aren’t willing to lean in to the gray area then you may never realize your potential.

I don’t know, I haven’t figured this one out yet.  It’s been rolling around in my head for some time.  What do you make of this descriptor for leadership?  How do you wrestle with the unknown?

 

You Never Know Where That First Step Will Lead

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There is a great story that Sir Ken Robinson shared during his famous 2006 TED Talk regarding how schools kill creativity.  In the video he tells us of two anecdotes involving a little girl and a little boy.  And the gist of the story is that both of them separately take chances with whatever they are working on – they Give it a Go!  They aren’t afraid to be wrong when they are young and they’ll take a chance.  (Here is a link to that particular section of his TED Talk Sir Ken Robinson Link )

Inspired by his commitment to creativity, I have tried to model what it is like to take a chance as a leader.  The last three years we have begun each year focused on the idea that LEARN is a verb.  We began this by focusing on the muscles and pushing our teachers to commit to the experience of learning.  We asked them to choose anything they wanted to learn about – it didn’t matter if it was connected to education at all.  Rather we wanted them to simply be a learner again.  I wrote about how I did this with my leadership team in a previous blog My Attempt at #GeniusHour with Adults.  In any case I was now trying it with 185 teachers and 30 support staff.

“Learning is experience.  Everything else is just information.” – Albert Einstein

Our second year we focused on the brain and what you did with your learning.  Having engaged as a learner again, we wanted them to exercise their creativity in how they demonstrated that new knowledge. The idea was that simply learning something is no longer enough.  The next step, the innovative step, is to create something new from your learning.  And, perhaps, the biggest step is/was to then share it with others.

“Learning is creation not consumption.” – Dave Meier

Finally, this fall we pushed with the heart.  Fortunate to have Dr Brene Brown and her team spend two days with our faculty/staff was an amazing opportunity to really push us forward.  In retrospect, I believe this was definitely an act involving vulnerability as I knew some people would be thrilled and others dismissive.  I processed this experience through a blog post a few months ago We are Where We are Until we Move (and sometimes that’s okay)  I have seen the impact in pockets around campus, almost like seeds planted.  Time and patience is what’s needed for this to flourish and saturate the campus.  Our kids can only benefit so I’m in it for the long haul.

“We are born makers.  We move what we are learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands.” – Dr. Brene Brown

I share all of this as I reflect on what we continue to do.  Truthfully, when I embarked on this work with others, I didn’t know where it would lead.  I certainly couldn’t have predicted that nearly 200 faculty/staff would share their personal learning with others, making themselves vulnerable in new ways that I doubt they anticipated.  I would not have placed any bet in Vegas that Brene Brown would select us as a pilot school for her Daring Greatly Educator Workshop.  And had I known about the stumbles along the way, the eye rolls that I saw, and the comments that I heard, then I doubt I would have embarked.

I heard Brian Apsinall say on a podcast the other day that “it’s okay to be where you are.  It’s not okay to stay there.”  So I guess I moved.  I gave it a go.  And I hope you will also.

 

A Call To Explore

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Years ago I visited the Arlington Cemetery in Washington D.C.  Standing with a friend near the Eternal Flame, we found ourselves in awe both by the setting and the words from a JFK speech inscribed on a wall.  Breaking the silence, my friend simply stated, “it feels like he took all the best words.”  I simply nodded my head.  She was right.  leadership & learningAs a result of my PLN growing over the last several years, I have become convinced that investing in ourselves is paramount to growing stronger as leaders.  If you are not pushing yourself to learn more – either through reading, writing, posting, or lurking – then you are robbing others of all you can offer.  Don’t do that.  Instead, get in the game.  Personal or professional learning is now available 24/7 from the comfort of your couch.  Will it come in spurts?  Will it ebb and flow?  Might it be hard and confusing at times?  Yeah, probably.  The most important stuff usually is.

Merriam-Webster offers as a definition of the word “explore” the following:  to become familiar with by testing or experimenting. Inherent in the definition is being an active participant.  As I continue to work on my own leadership, I find myself drawn, more than ever, toward learning more about leadership in many forms.  Whether it is through my reflecting on an article, blog, image, or a personal lesson learned, I commit to #explore what it means to be a leader, especially when working with both students and adults on a large urban campus.  I intend to hold myself accountable through my reflections within this blog.   img_5fa2bec61763-1Accepting that JFK was right and our learning is critical toward our leadership, how can you commit to be active now?