What Do YOU Need to be a Design Inspired Leader?

This week I was reflecting a lot on leadership and more specifically the self-care of leaders.  In one of my recent coaching engagements, I was pulled back into the reality of being a school principal and it was almost as if I was experiencing it all over again. Triggered by conversations I was having, I was flooded with all the memories (good and bad) and the reality of the day to day grind of being a school principal.

First one to pull into the school parking lot every morning, last one to drive away in the evening.  Attending every school function, district meeting, and school board meeting. Accepting the invites I received from students to attend special events.  Carving out time to go out of my way to connect with students, parents, and teachers. Sound familiar?

This was my life as a school principal and I know this is the life that many of you lead.  It was the hardest job I ever had and yet I loved every minute of it. Upon reflection, I think I would have enjoyed my role as a principal even more if I had practiced a little more self-care.  If I could go back and do it all over again, I would be kinder to myself AND I would be a little more vocal about my needs as a leader. Here are three things I would change to show myself a little more self-love:  

• Change Your Inner Dialogue:  It sounds so basic, but the inner dialogue we have with our self is the loudest and most prominent voice we hear.  Are you constantly telling yourself all the things you have to do as a leader? Do you focus on your shortfalls? What might happen if you started talking up all the positive things you are doing as a leader?  Think about how you speak to yourself. Is it with love, acceptance, and kindness or is it harsher and filled with critiques? I challenge you to try to quiet the critical voice in your head. Try to let the words of gratitude and self-love prevail - even if you can’t do it for the full day, try it for an hour.  Or better yet, try to start your day telling yourself all of the amazing things you are accomplishing! I try to practice what I preach and still find this one difficult, however, when I am headed into a particularly challenging meeting or presentation I have started to take a private moment, where I can take a few deep breathes and do a superhero pose.  Sound strange? Try it! It makes all the difference!

• Choose Your Colleagues Wisely: No you don’t actually get to choose your colleagues, but you do get to choose which colleagues you spend time with.  Make it point to surround yourself with colleagues who lift you up and share a positive view of the work you are doing.  Have you ever noticed that negative energy begets negativity? Well, the same is true for positivity. Surround yourself with positive people and you can’t help but notice the difference it has on your mood. I’d encourage you to take this one step further and find a colleague who challenges you in a good way!  For me, this person is a former colleague and school leader, Katie Kinnaman. We no longer live in the same state, but a few calls every month and Katie challenges me to take on new challenges!

• Negotiate For What You Need:  You are being asked to take on herculean tasks and probably wouldn’t have it any other way. But here is the thing, it is well within your rights to ask for the support you need. What if you actually scheduled a conversation with your boss about the support you need?  I remember all too way, starting at a new school in a new district and thinking YIKES I need more support, but I felt like I was too new to ask for it. It took awhile, but I finally drummed up the courage to set up a meeting with my Superintendent and negotiate for what I needed.  The conversation was so successful, my only regret was that I had waited so long to do it! Try structuring the conversation ahead of time with this easy to use download.

I’d love to hear what other supports you might need to lead more like a designer! Reach out, let’s chat!

Want a Team of SuperStars? Try These 3 Super Easy Strategies!

“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.”

— Helen Keller

There is so much power in the team you have around you, that it’s well worth nurturing each of the superstars on your team. While the lone heroic leader who takes on the work solo is often celebrated, I believe our work is more effective (and enjoyable) when done as a team.  As the leader, you may be the catalyst, but your most innovative work will likely be done as a team. Improving schools is definitely a team sport that requires the involvement of every member on the team.

Here are 3 strategies to harness, fully utilize and nurture a team of SuperStars around you:

1 - Identify Superpowers & Kryptonite  The Justice League, a fictional superhero team appearing in American comic books, is powerful because each member has their own unique superpower. The Flash has superhuman speed. Superman possesses the power of flight, superhuman strength, x-ray vision, and heat vision. You get the idea. These superheroes are powerful on their own, but the collective power of the Justice League is amazing!  What are the superpowers on your team? And equally as important what is everyone’s kryptonite? (essentially what brings them down in a group or kills their superpower.)

Try having everyone on your team claim their superpower in a group and identify their kryptonite.  Even if you don’t have time to do this as a group, you can start to identify the superpowers on your team by watching people in action and asking questions. “What do they do better than anything else? What do they do better than the people around them? What do they do without effort? What do they gravitate to without being asked?”  Identifying the superpowers on your team, not only helps you build a stronger team, but it can also help you connect people to opportunities and establish the right level of support for them. Lean in to the superpowers of everyone on your team.

2- Create Team Norms Teams that are successful are successful because of the ways they have chosen to work together.  The team’s norms are a greater predictor of success than the actual composite of the team. So in some regards, it is less about who is on the team and the ways in which members interact with one another. In their simplest form, norms are informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a group.  Norms can be unspoken or explicitly expressed—either way, they have a profound influence over how a team works together. What norms do you have for your school or district?  Do you encourage teams to actively talk about and set norms?   Below are a set of norms you can use as a starting place but make sure to co-create and personalize the norms with your team.

• Assume best intentions

• Be a learner, not a knower

• Bring your authentic self

• Take risks and choose to engage

• Respect confidentiality

• Play (& work) hard!

3 - Clear the Path & Get out of the Way!   Education has traditionally relied on a top-down model for decision making but a top-down leadership structure can be detrimental to our teachers. Remember that everyone on your team was hired to do a job for which they are well qualified.  Sometimes we need to move aside and let them do their jobs. As leaders, we may have ideas of how to improve our school, but our teachers have ideas too. We need to trust them and acknowledge that we may not be the smartest person in the room.   Teachers are our greatest asset. Empower your teachers and give them a chance to share their superhero power!

What other strategies have worked for you as you nurture a team of superstars?

Invest in Innovators, Not Innovation

“What is your plan for innovation?” this is the question I was asked a lot when I was working as the Director of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships for the Los Altos School District.  I guess it’s a fair question, but we didn’t have an “innovation plan” per se we had a plan to create more innovators. Innovation within an organization happens when you invest in people, providing them with the tools they need and creating a culture that supports innovative thinking and behaviors.   

Unfortunately, this is where I see so many well-intentioned leaders go wrong.  They want more innovative schools and more innovative experiences for their students, so they focus on implementing more innovative programs—project-based learning, a new iPad deployment or even design thinking projects just to name a few.  They heavily invest in products and training and then wonder why a few months down the road they aren’t seeing the results they hoped to see. I would contend that they entered the change process at the wrong point. Jumping straight to behavioral changes may feel that you are embracing a strong bias to action, but these efforts will likely not yield the results without first focusing on the mindsets of every adult in your school or organization.  Mindshift work is hard and it’s certainly not sexy but it is what leads to behavior change and in many cases is what leads to innovation.

So, how do you invest in your future innovators?  Here are 3 suggestions that I have found successful:

• The Power of the Possible:  Continually share examples of teachers, schools, and districts that are approaching their work differently.  As educators, we are the only profession where our internship started at the age of 5! It isn’t easy for even the most well-intentioned teacher to unwind all of their beliefs and practices without seeing a different way.  Need inspiration? Check out Edutopia or Education Reimagined stories of what is possible.  Share these stories any way you can! And then keep sharing!

• Create Short R&D Cycles:  Empower teachers who do want to try something new with students.  Work to create a culture where risk is minimized and testing out new ideas is celebrated.  Have any discretionary money? Create a mini-grant, where a teacher can apply for money to support a new idea with the caveat that they share their learning with a broader team.  

• Invest in Learning: Don’t limit learning opportunities for adults to professional development days or staff meetings. Flood your team with opportunities to learn.  Sure you may not be able to require their participation, but at the very least you can create awareness of opportunities. Why not do a whole staff book read?  Need a suggestion? I may be biased, but Design Thinking for School Leaders is a great place to start.  Or send a few teachers to a conference, there are some great ones around the corner—Learning & The Brain (Educating with Empathy), ASCDEmpower19 or SXSWedu.

I’d love to hear how you are investing in your team!

The System Isn’t Working, So Let’s Redesign the System

“Our school system wasn’t designed for the needs of our students and so we have to figure out how to change a system never designed to serve the kids we serve.”  

These were a few of the powerful remarks made by Dr. Luis Cruz during the opening keynote of Rowland Unified School District’s professional learning day last week.  As I listened to his message, I couldn’t help but wonder what will finally tip the balance? What will it take to truly redesign public education systems?

I agree with Dr. Cruz that our “system” has to be redesigned and yet I also worry that talking about the need for a system to be redesigned allows us to abdicate some personal responsibility.  Taking on an entire system is complicated and yet a system is made up of a group of units that regularly interact and form an integrated whole. So taking on any part of a system and redesigning it has the potential to influence other parts of a system.  This is where personal responsibility is key. I believe EVERY educator has a responsibility to redesign the system. I recall too often from my days as an Assistant Superintendent, hearing teachers and principals talk about the need for the District Office to do something about one issue or another as if the DO were some magical entity. Whenever I heard this, I would politely interject that the District was made up of ALL of us, sure some may have more power to impact changes but we ALL have a responsibility to speak up for changes needed for our students.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

— Albert Einstein

As framed by Dr. Cruz, systems can be broken down by:

• Policies - Do the policies we have in place serve ALL students?  Unfortunately, some policies that we have in schools make zero sense when looked at from viewpoint of serving the learning of students.  For example, how does your school interact with truant students? It is almost comical, but some schools discipline truancy with suspension.  If we want students to be at school then why are we suspending those who might need us the most?

• Practices - Do the practices we have in place serve ALL students?  The practices can be a little trickier to uncover as these aren’t usually written down anywhere. Our practices are the just the way we do things or have done things for years.  One practice that we should collectively call into question, is the practice of placing our most inexperienced teachers with our neediest students. Can you imagine a first-year surgeon taking on the most complicated case of conjoined twins or a new lawyer taking on a high profile case like the OJ Simpson trial?  It doesn’t make any sense and yet we have practices like this that don’t serve our students well.

• Procedures - Do the procedures we have in place serve ALL students?  What are the grading procedures at your school? I was chatting with a parent who shared that her son only gets two bathroom passes a day and if he needs another bathroom pass he loses points from that class, impacting his grade.  How does that serve his learning?

• People’s Mindsets - Do we have the right mindsets to serve ALL students? This is where things get more complicated.  Education attracts people for all the right reasons. Most people who go into education do so because they want to help kids, and yet those very same people can be very resistant to change.   As Dan Lortie points out in SchoolTeacher: A Sociological study, teachers are often drawn to the system because it worked for them making it nearly impossible for them to have any real desire to change the system.   For teachers, unknowingly our internship starts at the age of six and then we unintentionally replicate the system we have been a part of for most of our lives.

Of the four P’s listed above, people’s mindset is the most important to change.  I have seen that with the right collective mindset of people, policies, practices, and procedures are so much easier to change. This is why I devote so much of my time and energy toward helping leaders develop new mindsets.  As Albert Einstein so eloquently shared, “ We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

I’d love to hear how you are working to redesign the system!

Why Do We Have So Many Rules in Education?

Front Office at a Jr. High School

• No hoods may be worn in hallways at school.

• Students must follow the dress code.

• Students must line up single file when the bell rings.

• No talking in the library.

• No chewing gum at school.

• Students must line up in a boy line and girl line for lunch.

• Students who are late will go to after school detention.

• Students may not get off the buses until 8:25 am (even if they arrive at 8:15 or earlier).

• Students must wear the uniform with the school logo (even though it is more expensive and our students can’t afford them.)

• Students will be given nightly homework by each teacher.

• Students must ask permission to go to the bathroom.

• Students must sit quietly in the mornings before school starts.

• Students must sit in rows by class as they enter the cafeteria, no moving seats

These are just a sampling of the hundreds of rules educational leaders were questioning a few weeks back at a Design Thinking Session I co-led with Kami Thordarson at the ASCD Conference on Educational Leadership.  As a long time educator, I’ve always struggled with how rule-based education is but have been hopeful that we’ve moved beyond the experiences I heard and honestly felt shocked by the rules still in place at many schools.  No wonder students struggle to be engaged. I don’t know about you as a learner but I immediately tune out teachers, presenters or leaders who start with a list of rules for me to follow. Why should we expect anything different from our students?   

“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”

— The Dalai Lama

And these rules don’t yet touch on the unwritten “practices or traditions” that govern so much of what we do in schools.  You know “the way we’ve always done it” kind of things. Below are just a sampling of these practices and traditions leaders were questioning during our time together.

• Why is our school year 180 days?

• Why are Parent-Teacher conferences scheduled during the workday?

• Why does every teacher need their own classroom?

• Why do we structure our schools around age-based student groups?

• Why do we have letter grades?

• Why are we (teachers) continually correcting student work?

• Why do we insist that students with profound cognitive deficits be tested on grade level?

• Why do we assign homework?

The world has changed drastically, and yet many of our educational institutions are embracing practices of the past that have become so much a part of us we no longer question why we do them.  This is further exasperated by the fact that most of our teachers and parents are also a product of the educational system and as a result are accustomed to the routines, rules, and rituals of school.  We are all fish swimming in the ocean, having a hard time describing what the water is like around us. And yet, in order to change practices, we must first become uncomfortable with the status quo. The good news is that anything that has been designed can be redesigned including all of our archaic rules & practices.  If you too are questioning the rules at your school, here is a simple 3 step process you can use to challenge and change them.

Simple Change = Profound Impact   What is the simplest thing you can do that will have the most profound impact and move you closer to your goal?  Is there something small, a practice or rule, that is getting in your way? If so, investigate it using a simple one-two-three approach:

• Identify (one simple rule or practice getting in your way),  

• Ask Why? (why does the rule or practice exist? Is the rule for students or was it created for the convenience of adults?)

• Modify (how can you change the rule or practice to make a big impact)

What rules are you starting to question?  Let’s stop tweaking our educational system around the edges and start intentionally breaking rules that will create space to re-imagine school based on the needs of our students. Intentional rule breaking can help us step into the universe of possibility.

I’d love to hear what rules and practices you are questioning. Better yet, I’d love to hear what rules you are breaking and changing! Share #DT4EduLeaders #RuleBreaker