Endings, it is said, are only new beginnings. And so it is with the year whose end is only hours away. I thought it instructive on the cusp of a new year to consider how the transitions that we have experienced in the course of 2011 are actually opportunities to recommit to creating the best public educational systems we can imagine. At the risk of omitting some important transitions and sounding a bit like a family newsletter, permit me to mention just a few items relevant to NC Triangle leaders and leadership.
I begin with kudos to Del Burns, former Wake County Schools superintendent and now co-author of a new book, for inviting us to consider how to put the public back in public schools. I have not yet read his book, so beyond congratulating him on the courage to write on what I understand to be a fictional narrative based on the two years of upheaval sowed by the board of education election of October 2009, I cannot comment. In my opinion, Wake County Schools and the community it serves begins 2012 with far more social cohesion than it did last year, and for that we can all be grateful.
I offer for your consideration the many leadership changes across the region resulting from retirement, resignation, and reassignment. Closest to home is my own retirement from the North Carolina Public School System, an act in which I was joined by Neil Pedersen, former superintendent of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School System. Neil was the last remaining founder of Triangle Leadership Academy, and so it evokes a kind of poetic symmetry that he and I go out together. We continue our collaboration, however, which leads me to the next new beginning.
The professional development programs of the North Carolina Principals and Assistant Principals Association in which I have been involved are taking root all over the state. More than 300 principals have matriculated or are in process of matriculating Distinguished Leadership in Practice. In 2012, we are rolling out Future-Ready Leadership for assistant principals. Neil Pedersen, Tom Williams, Kermit Buckner and I are co-creating six days of professional learning for two groups of 60-80 assistant principals to convene throughout the year in Charlotte and Raleigh. Given shrunken district budgets for in-service leadership development, this is great news.
Another outstanding supporter of mine personally and of leaders both public and private, Howard Schultz, is switching gears from his role as purveyor of VitalSmarts products to taking a broader role in foundation and public service. Howard's recent conversation with certain organization executives give me hope that we may continue to deploy Crucial Conversations©, Crucial Confrontations©, and Influencer© with senior education leaders. I hope to write more transparently in future entries.
Joining East Carolina University and North Carolina State University, Triangle educators welcomed Gardner-Webb University's Master of Executive Leadership Studies program last August. Approximately 55 aspiring principals will continue in their second semester of study next month, with classroom instruction by Jim Palermo and me, and internship supervision by Dave Coley, Tom Benton, Tom Dixon, and Rod Ramsey. These cohort programs promise to fill the leadership pipeline for school all across the region. I have written. and will continue to write, about program improvements, but rest assured, we are finally on the right track in this state in developing the public school leaders we need.
On a more personal note, the work with High Point University that MJ Hall, former TLA consultant, invited me to be part of is continuing with great energy. Dean of School of Education, Marianne Tillery, Professor of Education, Vernon Farrington, and other HPU educators are planning with education and business VIPs across the state to explore how to improve K12 educational outcomes by leveraging boundary-spanning leadership. I count this work among the potentially most important developments in figuring out what's next in identifying and supporting senior leaders in building better schools and a better society. It's a big job and I am grateful to MJ for making me part of it.
This blog would not be complete without mentioning the election of Joe Peel as mayor of Elizabeth City. Education practitioners and policymakers across the state owe Joe a debt of gratitude if for no other reason than, when in his role as TLA executive director, he managed to persuade the state board of education to adopt TLA's seven critical functions of leadership as a basis for the new North Carolina Standards for School Executives. I will take credit for distilling the extant research and literature that produced them, but except for Joe's political influence, they would have remained only a framework for TLA learning assets.
In conclusion, I am inviting you to consider what transitions you are making in your life. What has fed and will continue to feed you, what you need to cast off and yet don, who you need to accompany you on your leadership journey, and who has come with you as far as was given to them to come. In his book, Transitions, William Bridges made an important contribution to the literature on change. Among other things, he reminds us that it is not so much change that we fear but the uncertain steps we must take that leads to the change. I invite you to fix your eyes upon the horizon and take counsel not of your fears but of your heart. You will not regret it.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Schroedinger's Cat and Fashioning School Leaders
Continuing a topic I began last month, I ask in advance for your patience as I spin out a little metaphor. If you are reading this blog, we have already established a trust relationship. Today, I am banking on it.
And a note of humility: many minds finer than mine have helped create our structures and systems. As always, my intention is not to torch what others have built, but to illuminate the building. In fact, I too am a builder whose work is continuously in need of improvement. In that spirit, I write.
Schroedinger's cat is a 1935 quantum physics thought experiment that illustrates the paradox of reality, at least in the quantum world. The experiment postulates that one cannot know what is happening to a thing if one is not observing it. In fact, theory says that nothing does happen to the thing until one observes it.
A cat inside a box, for example, may be simultaneously alive and dead. It is only the observer's lifting the lid and peering in that seals the cat's fate. I invite the courageous reader to see Margaret Wheatley's (1999) Leadership and the New Science for an exploration of this and similarly fascinating topics.
I am beginning to believe that the classic thought experiment may provide a way for us to think about educating future school leaders. As a study and practice, leadership education seems both to live and die only as we observe it. Attention to it by policymakers waxes and wanes, and at this waxing moment, I think we may be about to unwittingly kill the cat.
Last month, I stated my intent to dive deeper into my concerns about the new North Carolina program for principal preparation, including and especially, documentation of on-job-training performance manifest in artifacts. At the end, I hope to have encouraged you to think critically about where we are now and our means of collecting data that may inform mid-course correction.
At my school, Gardner-Webb University, we collect six artifacts: Analysis and Action Plan for Student Learning, Analysis and Action Plan for Teacher Empowerment and Leadership, Stakeholder Involvement Plan, Organizational Management Analysis, Cultural Advocacy and Action Plan, and School Improvement Action Plan. So far, so good. We may optimistically assume our cat is alive.
Artifact topics are informed by a growing research base that supports why they, and not just any topics, are ones that provide principals with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to develop their schools into high-performance learning organizations. We probably agree that such a goal is laudable.
It is not the goal of creating the ability to lead a high-performance learning organization, however, that is troublesome; rather it is the distortion of instruction that is leading to the student creation of the artifacts that we assume will represent attainment of the goal. I have been accused of being a highly-effective teacher, so let me tell you what is happening in my class.
In the semester that is now ending, I had 20 students with whom I met face-to-face for up to four hours weekly and with whom I facilitated online discussion and occasional web-based instruction in the interim. Despite expected administrative growing pains and downstream communication gaffs, my students have done an excellent job conforming to program expectations. And that is my concern.
Essential to the new program are expectations that aspiring leaders actually lead in their schools, that differences in student learning result from that leadership, and that their leadership is collaborative. On the face of it. that is a good thing. But then reality happens. We look into the box and inside the box, the thoughtful leaders-in-progress we hoped to have been making may actually be . . . well. we don't yet know do we?
My students. God love them, have been totally consumed in their non-class hours by cutting and pasting from their school's NC School Report Card, Teacher Working Conditions Survey, Professional Learning Team minutes, and other extant databases all to meet the requirements in the artifact rubrics. I wonder when they had time to teach students?
So who can blame them for an occasional lapse in doing what is, in my mind, the most important thing they could be doing right now-- consulting their own minds about being a leader, not just doing a leader. Here is some of what we are asking our aspiring principals to do:
We have created rubrics for 30 separate parts of six artifacts to be crafted and reviewed over the course the five-semester program. Of these 30 parts, students are to have responded to 12 during first semester. Students will return to these artifacts over the course of their program, amend them as needed, and finalize them at some undetermined time in the future.
Add to the scramble to submit and resubmit artifacts and the state of ambiguity about when an artifact is actually finished, students' foreknowledge that expert review of the artifacts is the primary means by which a principal license will be conferred, and tell me, where do you think an aspiring North Carolina principal will spend her time?
I think I can say with certainty that, given program expectations, she will not spend it inside her own head thinking deeply about her practice. Yet a huge body of research in training and development suggests that reflection on practice is the first step to improving performance.
To bookmark this conversation, I return to our metaphor, Schroedinger's cat. I know we cannot avoid looking in the box to see if our cat is alive. We should want to know. But I do want us to have at least put in a bowl of food, a cup of water, and have kept the box in a warm, oxygenated place before we open the lid. Arguably, we should get the design and conditions right before we even put the cat inside.
And a note of humility: many minds finer than mine have helped create our structures and systems. As always, my intention is not to torch what others have built, but to illuminate the building. In fact, I too am a builder whose work is continuously in need of improvement. In that spirit, I write.
Schroedinger's cat is a 1935 quantum physics thought experiment that illustrates the paradox of reality, at least in the quantum world. The experiment postulates that one cannot know what is happening to a thing if one is not observing it. In fact, theory says that nothing does happen to the thing until one observes it.
A cat inside a box, for example, may be simultaneously alive and dead. It is only the observer's lifting the lid and peering in that seals the cat's fate. I invite the courageous reader to see Margaret Wheatley's (1999) Leadership and the New Science for an exploration of this and similarly fascinating topics.
I am beginning to believe that the classic thought experiment may provide a way for us to think about educating future school leaders. As a study and practice, leadership education seems both to live and die only as we observe it. Attention to it by policymakers waxes and wanes, and at this waxing moment, I think we may be about to unwittingly kill the cat.
Last month, I stated my intent to dive deeper into my concerns about the new North Carolina program for principal preparation, including and especially, documentation of on-job-training performance manifest in artifacts. At the end, I hope to have encouraged you to think critically about where we are now and our means of collecting data that may inform mid-course correction.
At my school, Gardner-Webb University, we collect six artifacts: Analysis and Action Plan for Student Learning, Analysis and Action Plan for Teacher Empowerment and Leadership, Stakeholder Involvement Plan, Organizational Management Analysis, Cultural Advocacy and Action Plan, and School Improvement Action Plan. So far, so good. We may optimistically assume our cat is alive.
Artifact topics are informed by a growing research base that supports why they, and not just any topics, are ones that provide principals with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to develop their schools into high-performance learning organizations. We probably agree that such a goal is laudable.
It is not the goal of creating the ability to lead a high-performance learning organization, however, that is troublesome; rather it is the distortion of instruction that is leading to the student creation of the artifacts that we assume will represent attainment of the goal. I have been accused of being a highly-effective teacher, so let me tell you what is happening in my class.
In the semester that is now ending, I had 20 students with whom I met face-to-face for up to four hours weekly and with whom I facilitated online discussion and occasional web-based instruction in the interim. Despite expected administrative growing pains and downstream communication gaffs, my students have done an excellent job conforming to program expectations. And that is my concern.
Essential to the new program are expectations that aspiring leaders actually lead in their schools, that differences in student learning result from that leadership, and that their leadership is collaborative. On the face of it. that is a good thing. But then reality happens. We look into the box and inside the box, the thoughtful leaders-in-progress we hoped to have been making may actually be . . . well. we don't yet know do we?
My students. God love them, have been totally consumed in their non-class hours by cutting and pasting from their school's NC School Report Card, Teacher Working Conditions Survey, Professional Learning Team minutes, and other extant databases all to meet the requirements in the artifact rubrics. I wonder when they had time to teach students?
So who can blame them for an occasional lapse in doing what is, in my mind, the most important thing they could be doing right now-- consulting their own minds about being a leader, not just doing a leader. Here is some of what we are asking our aspiring principals to do:
We have created rubrics for 30 separate parts of six artifacts to be crafted and reviewed over the course the five-semester program. Of these 30 parts, students are to have responded to 12 during first semester. Students will return to these artifacts over the course of their program, amend them as needed, and finalize them at some undetermined time in the future.
Add to the scramble to submit and resubmit artifacts and the state of ambiguity about when an artifact is actually finished, students' foreknowledge that expert review of the artifacts is the primary means by which a principal license will be conferred, and tell me, where do you think an aspiring North Carolina principal will spend her time?
I think I can say with certainty that, given program expectations, she will not spend it inside her own head thinking deeply about her practice. Yet a huge body of research in training and development suggests that reflection on practice is the first step to improving performance.
To bookmark this conversation, I return to our metaphor, Schroedinger's cat. I know we cannot avoid looking in the box to see if our cat is alive. We should want to know. But I do want us to have at least put in a bowl of food, a cup of water, and have kept the box in a warm, oxygenated place before we open the lid. Arguably, we should get the design and conditions right before we even put the cat inside.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Obliquity and Fashioning School Leaders
Obliquity. It's the name of a book I'm currently reading authored by eminent economist, John Kay (2010). A gift from my new best friends at High Point University, the book is a research-based treatise demonstrating why the most important goals in our lives are best achieved without really focusing on the goals at all. The path to success, according to Kay, rarely runs through the bottom line.
Kay cites figures no less-prominent than Andrew Carnegie and Bill Gates to present a rival hypothesis to explain why individuals who achieved financial success attained it not because they sought it, but as a by-product in pursuing a passion. Their passion is often manifest as a practice performed as much for the sake of itself as for the result.
Kay argues that the same principle applies to companies who first seek excellence then profitability. Comparing Goldman Sachs, who survived the 2008 financial meltdown, to Lehman who did not, Kay writes, "Lacking a corporate culture that valued the practice, as well as the profits of banking, Lehman fell victim to the profit-seeking it extolled" (p. 44). Apparently, greed is not good; it is cannibalistic.
Understood as problems to be solved, Kay asserts that our goals are subverted by the existence of multiple solutions, real-world complexity, ignorance of the nature of our problems, using models that imperfectly describe reality, and my personal favorite, failing to understand that the outcome of what we do depends on how we do it. Honesty is not the best policy; it's just the right thing to do.
Writing about the book is my oblique way of introducing a topic which increasingly occupies my attention--the newly-designed and implemented approach to principal preparation and licensure in North Carolina. I have come to know it well through both my teaching in the Gardner Webb University Master of Executive Leadership in Schools program and my having served on the program re-design team for North Carolina State University.
The goal of the State Board of Education is laudable--all public school principals prepared to lead schools and increase student achievement. The proposed strategy was to abandon extant, and as critics argued, ineffective, preparation programs, each with its own curriculum, and replace the "let a thousand flowers bloom" philosophy with a unified approach.
The approach involves curricula addressing the seven standards of the North Carolina Standards for School Executives, internship experiences each semester, and student-developed artifacts created in response to on-job-training leadership experiences. Also new is licensure, not by the state as has been historical practice, but by the university and districts. The quality of the university program is subsequently judged based on a sampling of its students' artifacts examined by independent adjudicators.
It is far too soon to pass judgment on the success of the new approach. Indeed my adjunct professor colleagues and I are working hard to ensure its success. I am, however, seeing some red flags that seem to find resonance in John Kay's ideas. This blog is not the venue to share my thoughts in their entirety, but here are a few teasers to keep you reading subsequent entries:
First, how do program participants balance creating point-in-time artifacts with experiencing the dynamic nature of their job, team, school, and principal mentor? Schools have many moving parts that refuse to sit still for a five-semester program. Second, how do program participants in low-performing schools with overwhelming challenges experience parity with participants in more advantaged, well-led schools? Third, how do students tasked with creating artifacts on a near-weekly basis engage in thinking about important educational issues and trends not represented in the artifact?
In the end, however, effective leaders present solutions not excuses. So to my colleagues, I suggest that we continue to teach the big ideas that served us well even as we support student-created artifacts and address problems yet to be discovered. To my students, I urge you to complete your artifacts in good faith but understand that they, like standardized test scores, are a kind of idol, a representation of leadership but not leadership as you will experience it as a principal.
I'll give Kay the final word tonight: "Directness blinds us to new information that contradicts our presumptions, fools us into confusing logic with truth, cuts us off from our intuition, shunts us away from alternative solutions that may be better than the one we're set on, and more." I invite you only to reflect on how, in our regimented approach to developing tomorrow's leaders, we may ultimately miss the mark by aiming too directly at the target. That would be a shame.
Kay cites figures no less-prominent than Andrew Carnegie and Bill Gates to present a rival hypothesis to explain why individuals who achieved financial success attained it not because they sought it, but as a by-product in pursuing a passion. Their passion is often manifest as a practice performed as much for the sake of itself as for the result.
Kay argues that the same principle applies to companies who first seek excellence then profitability. Comparing Goldman Sachs, who survived the 2008 financial meltdown, to Lehman who did not, Kay writes, "Lacking a corporate culture that valued the practice, as well as the profits of banking, Lehman fell victim to the profit-seeking it extolled" (p. 44). Apparently, greed is not good; it is cannibalistic.
Understood as problems to be solved, Kay asserts that our goals are subverted by the existence of multiple solutions, real-world complexity, ignorance of the nature of our problems, using models that imperfectly describe reality, and my personal favorite, failing to understand that the outcome of what we do depends on how we do it. Honesty is not the best policy; it's just the right thing to do.
Writing about the book is my oblique way of introducing a topic which increasingly occupies my attention--the newly-designed and implemented approach to principal preparation and licensure in North Carolina. I have come to know it well through both my teaching in the Gardner Webb University Master of Executive Leadership in Schools program and my having served on the program re-design team for North Carolina State University.
The goal of the State Board of Education is laudable--all public school principals prepared to lead schools and increase student achievement. The proposed strategy was to abandon extant, and as critics argued, ineffective, preparation programs, each with its own curriculum, and replace the "let a thousand flowers bloom" philosophy with a unified approach.
The approach involves curricula addressing the seven standards of the North Carolina Standards for School Executives, internship experiences each semester, and student-developed artifacts created in response to on-job-training leadership experiences. Also new is licensure, not by the state as has been historical practice, but by the university and districts. The quality of the university program is subsequently judged based on a sampling of its students' artifacts examined by independent adjudicators.
It is far too soon to pass judgment on the success of the new approach. Indeed my adjunct professor colleagues and I are working hard to ensure its success. I am, however, seeing some red flags that seem to find resonance in John Kay's ideas. This blog is not the venue to share my thoughts in their entirety, but here are a few teasers to keep you reading subsequent entries:
First, how do program participants balance creating point-in-time artifacts with experiencing the dynamic nature of their job, team, school, and principal mentor? Schools have many moving parts that refuse to sit still for a five-semester program. Second, how do program participants in low-performing schools with overwhelming challenges experience parity with participants in more advantaged, well-led schools? Third, how do students tasked with creating artifacts on a near-weekly basis engage in thinking about important educational issues and trends not represented in the artifact?
In the end, however, effective leaders present solutions not excuses. So to my colleagues, I suggest that we continue to teach the big ideas that served us well even as we support student-created artifacts and address problems yet to be discovered. To my students, I urge you to complete your artifacts in good faith but understand that they, like standardized test scores, are a kind of idol, a representation of leadership but not leadership as you will experience it as a principal.
I'll give Kay the final word tonight: "Directness blinds us to new information that contradicts our presumptions, fools us into confusing logic with truth, cuts us off from our intuition, shunts us away from alternative solutions that may be better than the one we're set on, and more." I invite you only to reflect on how, in our regimented approach to developing tomorrow's leaders, we may ultimately miss the mark by aiming too directly at the target. That would be a shame.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Leadership Lessons from Penn State
This entry is very unusual. Instead of my words, I am quoting tonight an article from one of several online periodicals to which I subscribe. I have often shared with the aspiring and practicing principals with whom I work the excellent articles from BNET (Business Network).
Tonight's remarks are from a timely and well-written article concerning the reprehensible events at Pennsylvania State University. Educators at every level will do well to learn some lessons from this negative example. About the crimes--and that is exactly what they are--John Baldoni, writing for Moneywatch, had this to say:
Who decides when the CEO or leader must go? That is a question that Penn State has faced for at least a decade in its decision about how long Joe Paterno should remain as its head football coach. Today, in the wake of a horrific child abuse scandal, the answer is clear: it is now! Paterno and the university president were fired late Wednesday.
Paterno followed the letter of the law in disclosing an allegation of child abuse but in failing to follow up on those allegation - as it would seem a man of his principle would - he and his fellow administrators allowed an accused sexual predator to remain free of investigation for nine years.
Mindboggling? No, heart breaking to the Penn State faithful - student, alumni, faculty, staff, administration and most of all to the children who were allegedly preyed upon by Paterno's former coach and rumored heir apparent.
The problem is larger than what Paterno did or did not do. Penn State seemingly acted more in the spirit of self-preservation than in child protection. But there is a pattern. The university, for decades, has put football, or especially Paterno, in a separate category, seemingly exempt from close scrutiny. And to be fair until now Paterno acted in an exemplary manner. He seemed beyond reproach: his players graduated; he donated $5 million to the school, most of which was used for a new library; and he was a genuine father figure to his players.
But there were cracks in the legacy. In 2004, the university president sought to have Paterno retire. But Joe Paterno paid his supposed boss no heed. And the university backed down and in the process, sublimated its rightful authority to his whims.
The lesson for boards of directors, university trustees and public officials is clear. Never allow one executive to loom larger than the institution he or she represents. Here are some suggestions:
Set limits on tenure. Make it clear that the time of service is measured in increments of three to five years. The contract may be renewed regularly but it must be done so with a clear ending point. That prevents leaders from staying on indefinitely.
Groom successors. A leader's legacy begins on the first day of service but it is cemented by the people he grooms to succeed him both as successors and as members of future leadership teams. A deep bench negates the feeling that we have only one person in charge.
Insist on accountability. Leaders who remain in charge are those that deliver the goods. They produce returns that enrich the fiscal and social well being of the institution. Included in accountability must be personal behavior. That is, how do they treat others - colleagues, employees, and other stakeholders. As the saying goes managers get things right; leaders do it the right way.
Will there be exceptions to these guidelines? Certainly. An exemplary leader can extend his length of service. This may be especially true if the institution - more than the leader himself -- could benefit from his leadership for an additional period.
A more serious problem occurs when the reputation of a long-serving and well-intentioned executive becomes so entwined with the reputation of the organization they become synonymous. This is exactly what happened at Penn State. Joe Paterno became the public face of the university.
In good times, that may serve the institution well, but when trouble strikes the institution looks weak and vulnerable, not to mention culpable for failing to hold the leader accountable.
Tonight's remarks are from a timely and well-written article concerning the reprehensible events at Pennsylvania State University. Educators at every level will do well to learn some lessons from this negative example. About the crimes--and that is exactly what they are--John Baldoni, writing for Moneywatch, had this to say:
Who decides when the CEO or leader must go? That is a question that Penn State has faced for at least a decade in its decision about how long Joe Paterno should remain as its head football coach. Today, in the wake of a horrific child abuse scandal, the answer is clear: it is now! Paterno and the university president were fired late Wednesday.
Paterno followed the letter of the law in disclosing an allegation of child abuse but in failing to follow up on those allegation - as it would seem a man of his principle would - he and his fellow administrators allowed an accused sexual predator to remain free of investigation for nine years.
Mindboggling? No, heart breaking to the Penn State faithful - student, alumni, faculty, staff, administration and most of all to the children who were allegedly preyed upon by Paterno's former coach and rumored heir apparent.
The problem is larger than what Paterno did or did not do. Penn State seemingly acted more in the spirit of self-preservation than in child protection. But there is a pattern. The university, for decades, has put football, or especially Paterno, in a separate category, seemingly exempt from close scrutiny. And to be fair until now Paterno acted in an exemplary manner. He seemed beyond reproach: his players graduated; he donated $5 million to the school, most of which was used for a new library; and he was a genuine father figure to his players.
But there were cracks in the legacy. In 2004, the university president sought to have Paterno retire. But Joe Paterno paid his supposed boss no heed. And the university backed down and in the process, sublimated its rightful authority to his whims.
The lesson for boards of directors, university trustees and public officials is clear. Never allow one executive to loom larger than the institution he or she represents. Here are some suggestions:
Set limits on tenure. Make it clear that the time of service is measured in increments of three to five years. The contract may be renewed regularly but it must be done so with a clear ending point. That prevents leaders from staying on indefinitely.
Groom successors. A leader's legacy begins on the first day of service but it is cemented by the people he grooms to succeed him both as successors and as members of future leadership teams. A deep bench negates the feeling that we have only one person in charge.
Insist on accountability. Leaders who remain in charge are those that deliver the goods. They produce returns that enrich the fiscal and social well being of the institution. Included in accountability must be personal behavior. That is, how do they treat others - colleagues, employees, and other stakeholders. As the saying goes managers get things right; leaders do it the right way.
Will there be exceptions to these guidelines? Certainly. An exemplary leader can extend his length of service. This may be especially true if the institution - more than the leader himself -- could benefit from his leadership for an additional period.
A more serious problem occurs when the reputation of a long-serving and well-intentioned executive becomes so entwined with the reputation of the organization they become synonymous. This is exactly what happened at Penn State. Joe Paterno became the public face of the university.
In good times, that may serve the institution well, but when trouble strikes the institution looks weak and vulnerable, not to mention culpable for failing to hold the leader accountable.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Whitewater Leadership
People have hobbies. It is my good fortune that one my friends spares me the expense, but none of the fun, of his hobby. As I hope to illustrate, sometimes what we do in our leisure may inform what we do at work, especially if your job involves leading or teaching others. And so it is with my message.
Jeff is a math professor at North Carolina State University. Jeff's wife, Maggie, works with my wife, Deb, in one of Wake County's excellent middle schools. Jeff and Maggie own a sailboat on which they invite Deb and I to spend time every summer.
Circumstances conspired against us this year such that last weekend was the first time we were able to drive down to the marina just south of New Bern, where Neuse River meets Core Sound and where is docked their boat. Coincidentally, it was also race weekend.
Jeff had asked me earlier if I would like to crew on the same boat he planned to crew. After consulting my gut instinct, hearing the prediction of some really bad weather, and remembering that I had never crewed in a race before, of course I said, "Yes."
As forecast, by the time Jeff and I arrived at Captain Dave's slip Saturday morning, the temperature was in the low 50s, leaden skies were turning to rain, and the wind was blowing 15 knots gusting into the 30s. Core Sound was a pallet of whitecaps. It was a good thing that Captain Dave had extra foul- weather gear.
Dave, in his late 60s, had already been joined by Bill, 71, and Conner, 82. Jeff, 50, was the baby of the crew. Since I fall much closer to Jeff's age than Dave's, I was feeling like a spring chicken among old birds.
Even with five men on board, I was told than we needed at least one more able body to be competitive. I would mentally remind myself of that remark many times during our four-hour trek through the rain and high seas.
I told Dave at the beginning that I knew a bit about sailboats having once owned a catamaran in my 30s. Even as I promised to be a quick study, I assured Dave that I could not be counted on to initiate as my experience was so long in the rear view mirror. Plus, I had captained, but never crewed, before.
If you have ever watched America's Cup on television, you saw skilled individuals working in perfect harmony, a veritable ballet of well-toned men working as one. That was not us.
What you would have seen in us was more like a mob. The only dancing you would have witnessed was us trying to avoid the sudden--but not entirely unpredictable--lurches of the boom on downwind reaches. The only tone you would have apprehended would have been Jeff, assuming duties at the fore, shouting "lazy sheet, lazy sheet," until crew released the rope connected to the foot of the jib on the leeward side allowing crew on the windward side to wench it down.
Sometimes the skipper wanted the sails "hard." Sometimes he asked us to "jibe the jib." We varied from "beam reaches" to "downwind runs" to "pointing." Sometimes I was asked to go "port" and other times "starboard."
At no time, however, was it advisable to "list" more than 15 degrees in this particular craft. I was assured that no matter how much the list, owing to a thousand pounds of lead in the keel, the center of gravity was sufficiently low such that we would "probably" not turn over. Good to know.
Conner, the oldster among us, tended the main sail at the stern, releasing tension on the main sheet to allow the wind to take the "traveler" to the other side when we tacked. In most ways, it was the position demanding the least athleticism. If I were 82, I would hope for such a job. That said, Conner was as agile as any of us.
When not busy with his chores, Conner coached me. "Put a couple of turns around the wench on the lazy sheet so you'll be ready for the next tack." "Watch for overlapping of the sheet." What did he say? All I knew was that, after several hours of wenching sheets, climbing the high side of the boat to be a human counterweight, and dodging errant swings of the boom, I was whipped.
Cold, wet, and exhausted, we beat the last leg of the race "DFL," according to Conner. I thought at the time that DFL was a Coast Guard term meant to initiate a search. Since there were no other boats in sight when I learned that we had actually--thank God--finished, what else could it mean?
Conner would coach me once again later that afternoon as he explained from the comfort of the clubhouse that DFL was an abbreviation for "Dead F'ing Last." Everything you've heard about the sailor and salty language is true.
So what did I learn about leading and teaching? Six things: 1) Sometimes unity of command is not only desirable; it is essential; 2) For many jobs, the only learning is learning by doing; 3) Physical health is a necessary but insufficient condition when faced with the likelihood of novel events; 4) Special language both bonds the team and makes for efficient action; 5) Dressing for the weather makes the undesirable tolerable; and 6) A sense of humor is often helpful and absolutely essential when the outcome you get is not what you sought.
Believe it or not, I would do last weekend all over again. I love a challenge. I love uncertainty. I love teamwork. I love competition. In that cold, wet ride in Core Sound on October 29, 2011, I got most of what I love. I hope you will try connect what I learned in my leisure last Saturday with what you do in your work everyday. Most of all, I wish you joy.
Jeff is a math professor at North Carolina State University. Jeff's wife, Maggie, works with my wife, Deb, in one of Wake County's excellent middle schools. Jeff and Maggie own a sailboat on which they invite Deb and I to spend time every summer.
Circumstances conspired against us this year such that last weekend was the first time we were able to drive down to the marina just south of New Bern, where Neuse River meets Core Sound and where is docked their boat. Coincidentally, it was also race weekend.
Jeff had asked me earlier if I would like to crew on the same boat he planned to crew. After consulting my gut instinct, hearing the prediction of some really bad weather, and remembering that I had never crewed in a race before, of course I said, "Yes."
As forecast, by the time Jeff and I arrived at Captain Dave's slip Saturday morning, the temperature was in the low 50s, leaden skies were turning to rain, and the wind was blowing 15 knots gusting into the 30s. Core Sound was a pallet of whitecaps. It was a good thing that Captain Dave had extra foul- weather gear.
Dave, in his late 60s, had already been joined by Bill, 71, and Conner, 82. Jeff, 50, was the baby of the crew. Since I fall much closer to Jeff's age than Dave's, I was feeling like a spring chicken among old birds.
Even with five men on board, I was told than we needed at least one more able body to be competitive. I would mentally remind myself of that remark many times during our four-hour trek through the rain and high seas.
I told Dave at the beginning that I knew a bit about sailboats having once owned a catamaran in my 30s. Even as I promised to be a quick study, I assured Dave that I could not be counted on to initiate as my experience was so long in the rear view mirror. Plus, I had captained, but never crewed, before.
If you have ever watched America's Cup on television, you saw skilled individuals working in perfect harmony, a veritable ballet of well-toned men working as one. That was not us.
What you would have seen in us was more like a mob. The only dancing you would have witnessed was us trying to avoid the sudden--but not entirely unpredictable--lurches of the boom on downwind reaches. The only tone you would have apprehended would have been Jeff, assuming duties at the fore, shouting "lazy sheet, lazy sheet," until crew released the rope connected to the foot of the jib on the leeward side allowing crew on the windward side to wench it down.
Sometimes the skipper wanted the sails "hard." Sometimes he asked us to "jibe the jib." We varied from "beam reaches" to "downwind runs" to "pointing." Sometimes I was asked to go "port" and other times "starboard."
At no time, however, was it advisable to "list" more than 15 degrees in this particular craft. I was assured that no matter how much the list, owing to a thousand pounds of lead in the keel, the center of gravity was sufficiently low such that we would "probably" not turn over. Good to know.
Conner, the oldster among us, tended the main sail at the stern, releasing tension on the main sheet to allow the wind to take the "traveler" to the other side when we tacked. In most ways, it was the position demanding the least athleticism. If I were 82, I would hope for such a job. That said, Conner was as agile as any of us.
When not busy with his chores, Conner coached me. "Put a couple of turns around the wench on the lazy sheet so you'll be ready for the next tack." "Watch for overlapping of the sheet." What did he say? All I knew was that, after several hours of wenching sheets, climbing the high side of the boat to be a human counterweight, and dodging errant swings of the boom, I was whipped.
Cold, wet, and exhausted, we beat the last leg of the race "DFL," according to Conner. I thought at the time that DFL was a Coast Guard term meant to initiate a search. Since there were no other boats in sight when I learned that we had actually--thank God--finished, what else could it mean?
Conner would coach me once again later that afternoon as he explained from the comfort of the clubhouse that DFL was an abbreviation for "Dead F'ing Last." Everything you've heard about the sailor and salty language is true.
So what did I learn about leading and teaching? Six things: 1) Sometimes unity of command is not only desirable; it is essential; 2) For many jobs, the only learning is learning by doing; 3) Physical health is a necessary but insufficient condition when faced with the likelihood of novel events; 4) Special language both bonds the team and makes for efficient action; 5) Dressing for the weather makes the undesirable tolerable; and 6) A sense of humor is often helpful and absolutely essential when the outcome you get is not what you sought.
Believe it or not, I would do last weekend all over again. I love a challenge. I love uncertainty. I love teamwork. I love competition. In that cold, wet ride in Core Sound on October 29, 2011, I got most of what I love. I hope you will try connect what I learned in my leisure last Saturday with what you do in your work everyday. Most of all, I wish you joy.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Budgeting is Leading
Opportunity has knocked. I am answering. Several weeks ago came the knock, not so much as a what but as a who. As is my practice, I enlarge my network as often as I can.
My newest colleague is Brian Clarida, clinical professor for the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Brian also happens to be part of the Distinguished Leadership in Practice central region cohort for which I teach.
So after a brief conversation during our last DLP face-to-face session in Chapel Hill and an email exchange, we decided to meet midway between Raleigh and Greensboro for Cracker Barrel coffee. And now it turns out that Brian is the impetus for a new thing in my life.
Although I have published some two dozen peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and monographs in my career, I have never authored a textbook. Now with Brian and long-time friend and former Wake County Schools principal, Jim Palermo, I am co-authoring a book we are tentatively calling, The Aspiring Principal's Primer to School Budgeting: Principles and Practices for Public School Leaders in Uncertain Financial Times whose first audience will be Brian's students.
I will confess that the subject matter did not immediately grab my attention. Budgeting is more an onerous practice than scholarly subject. Before ultimately getting Jim on board and saying "yes" to Brian, I was beginning to wonder how I might insinuate my favorite subject--and the recurring theme of this blog--into the narrative.
But then I remembered that the opportunity to lead lies within every task before us. In other words, budgeting is leading too. Let me tease you with a little preview of our book.
In Chapter One, "Introduction," we lay out our argument for a book on school budgeting in the first place, underscoring our practice as former principals with over a half-century of combined experience, and the need to revisit the importance of strategically stretching your dollars at a time when public school budgets have never been under greater pressure.
But we are only getting started. To provide context and build enthusiasm for what some may find a less-than-interesting (albeit very important) topic, we continue by articulating some big ideas in four more sections.
In "Public Schools Are a Public Trust," we remind aspiring principals that they are stewards of citizen's dollars. They must be spend wisely and strategically. At minimum, they must know and play by the rules or risk wearing orange jump suits and matching slippers if they don't.
"Budgeting is Leading" alludes to the 1980s computer simulation, Oregon Trail, wherein we argue that cooperatively planning and monitoring spending aligned with district and school goals is the way to arrive safely at your Oregon--improving student learning.
"Budgeting is Investing" is a section wherein we underscore the need to view available dollars as a way to invest in your teachers and students. Every dollar spent is attached to a future value. The employing board of education and taxpayers whom they represent expect and deserve a return on investment.
In "The Principal as Chief Energy Officer," we borrow from the work of management consultant, Tony Schwartz, who in re-conceiving the role of CEO, wrote, “the most fundamental job of a leader is to recruit, mobilize, inspire, focus, direct, and regularly refuel the energy of those they lead.”
As a form of potential energy, dollars are powerful stimulants to achieve all that Schwartz imagines. (Regular readers of this blog will recall a December 2010 entry wherein I introduced some Chief Energy Officers right here in Triangle-area schools. I commend it to you again.)
The remaining 11 chapters reviews the literature, surfaces best practice, and employs illustrative case studies to build competence and confidence in planning, executing, and monitoring a school budget. In examining topics such as transportation and child nutrition programs, we also spend some time creating common understanding around public school finance from the district perspective. Who knows where principals will wind up someday?
Brian, Jim and I are pretty jazzed about our little book-in-progress. We've divided chapter assignments, begun to share resources, agreed on Future-ready Leaders Now©, LLC as our own in-house publisher, and have created a time line for completion.
However the book turns out, the point I am making tonight is that leadership is an opportunity waiting for you around every corner. No task is too large or too small to ignore the power of inspiring and leading others to a preferred future, especially and particularly when the task is resourced with money.
My newest colleague is Brian Clarida, clinical professor for the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Brian also happens to be part of the Distinguished Leadership in Practice central region cohort for which I teach.
So after a brief conversation during our last DLP face-to-face session in Chapel Hill and an email exchange, we decided to meet midway between Raleigh and Greensboro for Cracker Barrel coffee. And now it turns out that Brian is the impetus for a new thing in my life.
Although I have published some two dozen peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and monographs in my career, I have never authored a textbook. Now with Brian and long-time friend and former Wake County Schools principal, Jim Palermo, I am co-authoring a book we are tentatively calling, The Aspiring Principal's Primer to School Budgeting: Principles and Practices for Public School Leaders in Uncertain Financial Times whose first audience will be Brian's students.
I will confess that the subject matter did not immediately grab my attention. Budgeting is more an onerous practice than scholarly subject. Before ultimately getting Jim on board and saying "yes" to Brian, I was beginning to wonder how I might insinuate my favorite subject--and the recurring theme of this blog--into the narrative.
But then I remembered that the opportunity to lead lies within every task before us. In other words, budgeting is leading too. Let me tease you with a little preview of our book.
In Chapter One, "Introduction," we lay out our argument for a book on school budgeting in the first place, underscoring our practice as former principals with over a half-century of combined experience, and the need to revisit the importance of strategically stretching your dollars at a time when public school budgets have never been under greater pressure.
But we are only getting started. To provide context and build enthusiasm for what some may find a less-than-interesting (albeit very important) topic, we continue by articulating some big ideas in four more sections.
In "Public Schools Are a Public Trust," we remind aspiring principals that they are stewards of citizen's dollars. They must be spend wisely and strategically. At minimum, they must know and play by the rules or risk wearing orange jump suits and matching slippers if they don't.
"Budgeting is Leading" alludes to the 1980s computer simulation, Oregon Trail, wherein we argue that cooperatively planning and monitoring spending aligned with district and school goals is the way to arrive safely at your Oregon--improving student learning.
"Budgeting is Investing" is a section wherein we underscore the need to view available dollars as a way to invest in your teachers and students. Every dollar spent is attached to a future value. The employing board of education and taxpayers whom they represent expect and deserve a return on investment.
In "The Principal as Chief Energy Officer," we borrow from the work of management consultant, Tony Schwartz, who in re-conceiving the role of CEO, wrote, “the most fundamental job of a leader is to recruit, mobilize, inspire, focus, direct, and regularly refuel the energy of those they lead.”
As a form of potential energy, dollars are powerful stimulants to achieve all that Schwartz imagines. (Regular readers of this blog will recall a December 2010 entry wherein I introduced some Chief Energy Officers right here in Triangle-area schools. I commend it to you again.)
The remaining 11 chapters reviews the literature, surfaces best practice, and employs illustrative case studies to build competence and confidence in planning, executing, and monitoring a school budget. In examining topics such as transportation and child nutrition programs, we also spend some time creating common understanding around public school finance from the district perspective. Who knows where principals will wind up someday?
Brian, Jim and I are pretty jazzed about our little book-in-progress. We've divided chapter assignments, begun to share resources, agreed on Future-ready Leaders Now©, LLC as our own in-house publisher, and have created a time line for completion.
However the book turns out, the point I am making tonight is that leadership is an opportunity waiting for you around every corner. No task is too large or too small to ignore the power of inspiring and leading others to a preferred future, especially and particularly when the task is resourced with money.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Eighty Years Young
Every Blue Moon or so, I give a nod to the idea that leadership begins at home. I am not alone in my belief that the leader in each of us has its genesis in how our parents treated us as children. Research suggests that teachers can have the same effect, but that is a theme for another blog.
No less-prominent figure than Sigmund Freud believed that strong male leaders were typically born of mothers whose combination of high expectations and preferential treatment destined the child, especially if he is first-born, to live up to the greatness envisioned by his mother.
As a first-born child myself, I have probably fallen far shorter of my own expectations than I have of my mothers, but I can assure you, she has more than lived up to mine. And she has been doing it for a very long time.
On Saturday, October 1, in the embrace of family and friends from as far away as Kansas City, Missouri and Cocoa Beach, Florida to as close as her next-door neighbor in Smothers Place Lofts in downtown Greensboro, my siblings and I threw a party for Mom, eighty years young and counting.
I add the "and counting" specifically in view of the fact that I am officially retired from the state of North Carolina while, as an employ of Guilford County Schools, she, twenty-one years my senior, continues to work full time. Now that's embarrassing. But that's Mom.
At Mom's suggestion, we rented Churchill's on South Elm, a private club on the main drag of the most liberal, blue-collar town in North Carolina and home of my alma mater. Phil Epstein, a fantastic jazz pianist and friend of sister, Bobbie, supplied two hours of music at no charge. Apparently with age comes privilege. As a party financier, I'm not complaining.
And we dined elegantly. Bobbie, friend Nicole Cofield, and wife, Deborah, prepared an eclectic spread, including garlic shrimp, caprice salad, and asparagus wrapped in prosciutto. I bought the wine, ten bottles of Eco Domini cabernet savignon-merlot blend and ten bottle of pinot grigio. Of course, the bar was open for folk seeking stronger spirits. And seek they did.
Twenty bottles of wine and two hours later, Mom was wearing out men--and women--half her age on the dance floor where a rhythm and blues band had replaced our pianist friend, Phil. At one point, there was a line waiting to dance with Mom.
We partied at Churchill's until about 11:00 pm, having started five hours earlier, and then resumed the festivities at my sister's condo. In short, a good time was had by all.
The backstory is that Greensboro has been in love with Mom since Spring 2005 when she move there to be closer to my family. Much to her disappointment, we soon left for Raleigh and my new job with Wake County Public School System. Thank God my sister, Bobbie, lives there to absorb Mom's energy in my place.
Deb and I are increasingly convinced that we need to leave Raleigh and move closer to Mom. Not so much because she needs us but because we need her. I know how strange that must sound. But here's the thing:
If you are a mother, God surely will have blessed you if one day your children feel as her children do. Mom is a leader not because she has graduate degrees nor because she is in a position of authority, but merely by being who she is. That is really all it takes to draw others to you. Come to think of it, leaders are always those who only be who they are. Are you being who you are?
No less-prominent figure than Sigmund Freud believed that strong male leaders were typically born of mothers whose combination of high expectations and preferential treatment destined the child, especially if he is first-born, to live up to the greatness envisioned by his mother.
As a first-born child myself, I have probably fallen far shorter of my own expectations than I have of my mothers, but I can assure you, she has more than lived up to mine. And she has been doing it for a very long time.
On Saturday, October 1, in the embrace of family and friends from as far away as Kansas City, Missouri and Cocoa Beach, Florida to as close as her next-door neighbor in Smothers Place Lofts in downtown Greensboro, my siblings and I threw a party for Mom, eighty years young and counting.
I add the "and counting" specifically in view of the fact that I am officially retired from the state of North Carolina while, as an employ of Guilford County Schools, she, twenty-one years my senior, continues to work full time. Now that's embarrassing. But that's Mom.
At Mom's suggestion, we rented Churchill's on South Elm, a private club on the main drag of the most liberal, blue-collar town in North Carolina and home of my alma mater. Phil Epstein, a fantastic jazz pianist and friend of sister, Bobbie, supplied two hours of music at no charge. Apparently with age comes privilege. As a party financier, I'm not complaining.
And we dined elegantly. Bobbie, friend Nicole Cofield, and wife, Deborah, prepared an eclectic spread, including garlic shrimp, caprice salad, and asparagus wrapped in prosciutto. I bought the wine, ten bottles of Eco Domini cabernet savignon-merlot blend and ten bottle of pinot grigio. Of course, the bar was open for folk seeking stronger spirits. And seek they did.
Twenty bottles of wine and two hours later, Mom was wearing out men--and women--half her age on the dance floor where a rhythm and blues band had replaced our pianist friend, Phil. At one point, there was a line waiting to dance with Mom.
We partied at Churchill's until about 11:00 pm, having started five hours earlier, and then resumed the festivities at my sister's condo. In short, a good time was had by all.
The backstory is that Greensboro has been in love with Mom since Spring 2005 when she move there to be closer to my family. Much to her disappointment, we soon left for Raleigh and my new job with Wake County Public School System. Thank God my sister, Bobbie, lives there to absorb Mom's energy in my place.
Deb and I are increasingly convinced that we need to leave Raleigh and move closer to Mom. Not so much because she needs us but because we need her. I know how strange that must sound. But here's the thing:
If you are a mother, God surely will have blessed you if one day your children feel as her children do. Mom is a leader not because she has graduate degrees nor because she is in a position of authority, but merely by being who she is. That is really all it takes to draw others to you. Come to think of it, leaders are always those who only be who they are. Are you being who you are?
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Invitations
A recent event is occupying my thoughts tonight. Its occurrence underscores for me the power that leaders unleash in others when they invite. It seems that the simple act of asking sparks a kind of kinetic energy that has the potential to move mountains, or at the very least, hearts and minds. The event in question: a visit to High Point University last Wednesday.
My friend and colleague, MJ Hall, asked me several weeks ago to collaborate with her and HPU administrators in planning a Summit. The Summit is to be funded by donations from HPU alumna interested in supporting the university's new Educational Leadership doctoral program to begin next year. Their generosity can only be applauded.
With the eventual ribbon-cutting of a new School of Education building, one of many edifices realized under the inspirational leadership of President Nido Qubein, the Summit promises to bring together education professionals, business leaders, and elected officials who will learn from and with each other over the course of one and one-half days on the magnificent HPU campus.
With School of Education Dean Mariann Tillery, Associate Dean Barbara Leonard, Professor Vernon Farrington, and Vice-President of Development Beth Braxton, MJ and I have a lot of work ahead of us. But we could not be more excited about the potential for launching what we intend to be a recurring event to enlarge the HPU national footprint around educational leadership, convene and catalyze a multidisciplinary community for improving education in a global economy, and expand leadership at every level. MJ has a big dream. That is why her invitation attracted me.
Triangle Leadership Academy clients and staff remember Dr. Hall as a consummate professional who brought from her teaching position at the the US military Defense Acquisition University near Washington, DC, a treasure trove of knowledge in human performance improvement and quality tools. Right out of the gate, TLA benefited from MJ's creating an Organizational Profile and implementing the Kaplan & Norton (1994) Balanced Scorecard approach for continuous improvement.
Although MJ independently consulted for the last several years while I continued to direct TLA, we maintained a personal and professional friendship. Only yesterday, she invited me to one of the American Society for Training & Development Forum webinars that she routinely hosts. It was not the first time. Last spring, MJ facilitated a "Reset Team" in re-imaging TLA's work amid the budget crisis. Two years ago, she led us in a day of strategic planning.
Which leads me to one observation and a return to my original theme. MJ Hall is one of the most adaptive, inventive, and visionary people that I know. She embodies everything we want of our 21st century future-ready students. Her generous gift to HPU can only add to the growing reputation of what was once a sleepy little college where matriculated my two educator uncles to an institution of higher education where world-class leaders incubate. I am honored to be part of the work.
Circling back to my thesis, I would not be working with MJ on this project and feeling as I do about it had she not invited me. She knew that, of her many associates, I might be best at translating her generic knowledge of organizational development into an invitation that the education community understands and appreciates. She asked; I answered.
With our new friends at HPU, we have started something big. And so I invite you to invite someone to something big. That's what leaders do.
My friend and colleague, MJ Hall, asked me several weeks ago to collaborate with her and HPU administrators in planning a Summit. The Summit is to be funded by donations from HPU alumna interested in supporting the university's new Educational Leadership doctoral program to begin next year. Their generosity can only be applauded.
With the eventual ribbon-cutting of a new School of Education building, one of many edifices realized under the inspirational leadership of President Nido Qubein, the Summit promises to bring together education professionals, business leaders, and elected officials who will learn from and with each other over the course of one and one-half days on the magnificent HPU campus.
With School of Education Dean Mariann Tillery, Associate Dean Barbara Leonard, Professor Vernon Farrington, and Vice-President of Development Beth Braxton, MJ and I have a lot of work ahead of us. But we could not be more excited about the potential for launching what we intend to be a recurring event to enlarge the HPU national footprint around educational leadership, convene and catalyze a multidisciplinary community for improving education in a global economy, and expand leadership at every level. MJ has a big dream. That is why her invitation attracted me.
Triangle Leadership Academy clients and staff remember Dr. Hall as a consummate professional who brought from her teaching position at the the US military Defense Acquisition University near Washington, DC, a treasure trove of knowledge in human performance improvement and quality tools. Right out of the gate, TLA benefited from MJ's creating an Organizational Profile and implementing the Kaplan & Norton (1994) Balanced Scorecard approach for continuous improvement.
Although MJ independently consulted for the last several years while I continued to direct TLA, we maintained a personal and professional friendship. Only yesterday, she invited me to one of the American Society for Training & Development Forum webinars that she routinely hosts. It was not the first time. Last spring, MJ facilitated a "Reset Team" in re-imaging TLA's work amid the budget crisis. Two years ago, she led us in a day of strategic planning.
Which leads me to one observation and a return to my original theme. MJ Hall is one of the most adaptive, inventive, and visionary people that I know. She embodies everything we want of our 21st century future-ready students. Her generous gift to HPU can only add to the growing reputation of what was once a sleepy little college where matriculated my two educator uncles to an institution of higher education where world-class leaders incubate. I am honored to be part of the work.
Circling back to my thesis, I would not be working with MJ on this project and feeling as I do about it had she not invited me. She knew that, of her many associates, I might be best at translating her generic knowledge of organizational development into an invitation that the education community understands and appreciates. She asked; I answered.
With our new friends at HPU, we have started something big. And so I invite you to invite someone to something big. That's what leaders do.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Who Needs Succession Planning?
Several years ago, the then Chief Executive Officer of Progress Energy unexpectedly passed away. Within days, the regional energy powerhouse introduced a new chief. How could that have happened so fast? The answer--someone had been groomed to take his place.
Presumably, the successor was also shadowed by a leader-in-waiting. In the view of many, the old line, "uneasy is the head that wears the crown," might be better replaced by "uneasy is the organization that lacks successors."
Succession planning has long been valued and practiced in the business world. In public education, not so much. I should know. Triangle Leadership Academy Director of Learning, Fran Riddick, wrote her doctoral dissertation on the subject.
Riddick's methodology compelled her to interview me and senior leaders in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Guilford, and Wake County school districts, inquiring of us whether, how, and for whom the three largest districts in North Carolina planned programs of leadership development and succession planning.
Riddick concluded that, "While all three districts have a variety of strategies in place, none of the districts have a comprehensive, written succession plan and corresponding evaluation." "None," she said. And that was when TLA was going full tilt. Whatever attention was paid to building school leader bench strength before the recession has definitely been attenuated since recent budget cuts.
But explaining inattention to leadership development and succession planing because of dwindling public dollars is really a red herring. Even three years ago when money was not as much an issue as it is now, Riddick's research suggests that there was a lack of systemic seriousness about who's next and what they need to get them to next. Why is that, one wonders.
Let us pose to the proverbial Man from Mars, beamed down to Anytown, USA, observing the apparent seriousness to districts growing their own leaders, the following multiple-choice test item:
School and district leaders are (a) expendable, (b) interchangeable, (c) ineffectual, (d) readily poached, (e) all of the above, or (f) none of the above. No, this is not one of those dreams where you are taking a final exam without having attended class all semester.
If you have spent a single day as a public school educator, you know the answer is (f). But if leadership matters, and if principals and other school leaders are becoming increasingly difficult to recruit at a time when we need more and more of them, how do we get the practitioners we need? In about the same amount of time it takes to quaff a hot venti mocha latte, we can get in our cars and visit some nearby models.
Progress Energy is but one local example of a company that plans for its successors. Principals participating in the NC Principals and Assistant Principals Association, Distinguished Leadership in Practice, recently learned in field trips to GlaxoSmithKline, Lenovo, Red Hat, and others that those companies also sustain programs of leadership development, enabling employees at every level to fill a pipeline to a pool of future-ready leaders.
Senior leaders at software giant, SAS, were most articulate. They said leadership development and succession planning was part of their organizational culture, embedded in their DNA. One is tempted to conclude that SAS, who in the last 36 years has increased profits and productivity every year, been named twice in the last five years as Fortune magazine's "Best Places to Work" and in the top ten for the last eight years, might teach public school educators a thing or two.
To paraphrase the Good Book, where schools lack visionary leaders the learners perish. You can buy a few but most you'll have to develop. And when you do, the leaders need to know that there is a pathway to their future in your district. Who needs succession planning? We do. Honk if you agree. Then ask me what research and craft knowledge suggest we do next.
Presumably, the successor was also shadowed by a leader-in-waiting. In the view of many, the old line, "uneasy is the head that wears the crown," might be better replaced by "uneasy is the organization that lacks successors."
Succession planning has long been valued and practiced in the business world. In public education, not so much. I should know. Triangle Leadership Academy Director of Learning, Fran Riddick, wrote her doctoral dissertation on the subject.
Riddick's methodology compelled her to interview me and senior leaders in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Guilford, and Wake County school districts, inquiring of us whether, how, and for whom the three largest districts in North Carolina planned programs of leadership development and succession planning.
Riddick concluded that, "While all three districts have a variety of strategies in place, none of the districts have a comprehensive, written succession plan and corresponding evaluation." "None," she said. And that was when TLA was going full tilt. Whatever attention was paid to building school leader bench strength before the recession has definitely been attenuated since recent budget cuts.
But explaining inattention to leadership development and succession planing because of dwindling public dollars is really a red herring. Even three years ago when money was not as much an issue as it is now, Riddick's research suggests that there was a lack of systemic seriousness about who's next and what they need to get them to next. Why is that, one wonders.
Let us pose to the proverbial Man from Mars, beamed down to Anytown, USA, observing the apparent seriousness to districts growing their own leaders, the following multiple-choice test item:
School and district leaders are (a) expendable, (b) interchangeable, (c) ineffectual, (d) readily poached, (e) all of the above, or (f) none of the above. No, this is not one of those dreams where you are taking a final exam without having attended class all semester.
If you have spent a single day as a public school educator, you know the answer is (f). But if leadership matters, and if principals and other school leaders are becoming increasingly difficult to recruit at a time when we need more and more of them, how do we get the practitioners we need? In about the same amount of time it takes to quaff a hot venti mocha latte, we can get in our cars and visit some nearby models.
Progress Energy is but one local example of a company that plans for its successors. Principals participating in the NC Principals and Assistant Principals Association, Distinguished Leadership in Practice, recently learned in field trips to GlaxoSmithKline, Lenovo, Red Hat, and others that those companies also sustain programs of leadership development, enabling employees at every level to fill a pipeline to a pool of future-ready leaders.
Senior leaders at software giant, SAS, were most articulate. They said leadership development and succession planning was part of their organizational culture, embedded in their DNA. One is tempted to conclude that SAS, who in the last 36 years has increased profits and productivity every year, been named twice in the last five years as Fortune magazine's "Best Places to Work" and in the top ten for the last eight years, might teach public school educators a thing or two.
To paraphrase the Good Book, where schools lack visionary leaders the learners perish. You can buy a few but most you'll have to develop. And when you do, the leaders need to know that there is a pathway to their future in your district. Who needs succession planning? We do. Honk if you agree. Then ask me what research and craft knowledge suggest we do next.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
The Competency of Developing Leaders
I have a teaching tool that serves my adult learners well. I wish I had thought it up, but I didn't. Credit SREB with "Learning Journal," a single piece of paper with three shapes and three questions. In a square appears "What squares with my thinking?" In a circle appears "What's rolling around in my mind?" Inside a triangle is "What must I change?" Feel free to use it. Just credit SREB.
Although I do not use the Learning Journal in every time I teach, when I do, I provide 5-10 minutes at the end for students to reflect on what they saw and heard that affirmed, challenged, and spurred personal change. I review responses to help me know what to do next. Completing the Journal is non-threatening, open-ended, promotes higher-order thinking, and affirms personal responsibility--most of the qualities a good assessment should exhibit. Oh, by the way, no grades.
The reason I bring it up now is because of an extraordinary remark one of my Gardner-Webb University Master of Executive Leadership in Schools students recorded after our first class. That's what's been rolling around in my mind for nearly four weeks. Here's what happened:
I put students in small groups to review the NC Standards for School Executives, including the 21 competencies adopted by the State Board of Education as necessary for effective principals. I informed students that we would deliberately practice the 21 competencies as appropriate. Since the Department of Public Instruction ultimately assesses candidates' qualifications based on their performance in the competencies, that only makes sense.
A sample of competencies includes Communication, Change Management, Delegation, Emotional Intelligence, Systems Thinking and Technology. An entry that seems never to get noticed, even among experienced principals, is Environmental Awareness. Defined as "becomes aware and remains informed of external and internal trends, interests and issues with potential impacts on school policies, practices, procedures and positions," that oversight is particularly troublesome. Wake County might have been spared the last two years of turmoil had senior leaders been more considerate. But back to my class.
This is what my student wrote in his Learning Journal circle: "Why isn't leadership development one of the 21 competencies?" I could have responded that developing leadership is more a practice than a competency. I could have said that it is already embedded as a philosophical foundation of the standards. I could have said a lot of things to disabuse the precocious young man from the need to think "above his pay grade." But I didn't.
Truth is, I sort of agree with him. And I was particularly happy that he was asking the question. I learned long ago that the purpose of leadership is to develop leadership. Whether it is a competency or not, I don't know. In my mind, helping people become more effective, promoting personal and social responsibility, and building community are pretty important tasks. I think that's what leaders do. At least that's what those who have most influenced me have done. And it truly is a skill set whose elements are subject to deliberate practice.
In the final analysis, I think developing leadership is too important to be called a competency. It may be more broadly conceived as a return on investment of all the good things in your life that would not have happened without someone's intervention. It's a give-back. On the other hand, developing leadership may be a kind of pay-it-forward, a gift for your children, their children, and for generations to come. Whatever it is, it's my job--and yours.
Although I do not use the Learning Journal in every time I teach, when I do, I provide 5-10 minutes at the end for students to reflect on what they saw and heard that affirmed, challenged, and spurred personal change. I review responses to help me know what to do next. Completing the Journal is non-threatening, open-ended, promotes higher-order thinking, and affirms personal responsibility--most of the qualities a good assessment should exhibit. Oh, by the way, no grades.
The reason I bring it up now is because of an extraordinary remark one of my Gardner-Webb University Master of Executive Leadership in Schools students recorded after our first class. That's what's been rolling around in my mind for nearly four weeks. Here's what happened:
I put students in small groups to review the NC Standards for School Executives, including the 21 competencies adopted by the State Board of Education as necessary for effective principals. I informed students that we would deliberately practice the 21 competencies as appropriate. Since the Department of Public Instruction ultimately assesses candidates' qualifications based on their performance in the competencies, that only makes sense.
A sample of competencies includes Communication, Change Management, Delegation, Emotional Intelligence, Systems Thinking and Technology. An entry that seems never to get noticed, even among experienced principals, is Environmental Awareness. Defined as "becomes aware and remains informed of external and internal trends, interests and issues with potential impacts on school policies, practices, procedures and positions," that oversight is particularly troublesome. Wake County might have been spared the last two years of turmoil had senior leaders been more considerate. But back to my class.
This is what my student wrote in his Learning Journal circle: "Why isn't leadership development one of the 21 competencies?" I could have responded that developing leadership is more a practice than a competency. I could have said that it is already embedded as a philosophical foundation of the standards. I could have said a lot of things to disabuse the precocious young man from the need to think "above his pay grade." But I didn't.
Truth is, I sort of agree with him. And I was particularly happy that he was asking the question. I learned long ago that the purpose of leadership is to develop leadership. Whether it is a competency or not, I don't know. In my mind, helping people become more effective, promoting personal and social responsibility, and building community are pretty important tasks. I think that's what leaders do. At least that's what those who have most influenced me have done. And it truly is a skill set whose elements are subject to deliberate practice.
In the final analysis, I think developing leadership is too important to be called a competency. It may be more broadly conceived as a return on investment of all the good things in your life that would not have happened without someone's intervention. It's a give-back. On the other hand, developing leadership may be a kind of pay-it-forward, a gift for your children, their children, and for generations to come. Whatever it is, it's my job--and yours.
Friday, September 9, 2011
To Better Futures
Some say it's what makes us human, the search for a meaningful future, that is. As much as we are learning about non-human mammals with a brain-to-body ratio approaching our own, scientists still lack evidence suggesting that porpoises or primates dream of a better future. We do.
In preparing last month to work with two Wake County Renaissance Schools--schools re-populated with new teachers and principals specifically hired for their potential to improve flagging student performance--I had occasion to re-read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. The book's message took center stage when I prepared staff to re-image their school's vision statement. As I'll demonstrate, Man's Search for Meaning is really about leading the future.
I once read that tomorrow is "a highly-probable event." Supposedly, if you write .9 followed by nine nines, that is the probability that you will wake up tomorrow morning. But once awake, will tomorrow and all the tomorrows after that be the future you prefer? What would be the difference in outcomes that matter of our living aimlessly versus our intervening to make a most-improbable thing possible in the face of most-challenging circumstances?
If we are leading both our lives and our organizations responsibly, Frankl suggests, the choice between indifference and intervention may not be so hard: "It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future . . . And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task" (p. 73). Who is this Viktor Frankl anyway?
An eminent psychotherapist who also happened to be a Jew working in Vienna in the middle half of the 20th century, Dr. Frankl was a survivor of Hell on Earth--the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. Jews captured who were not killed immediately were forced into labor. Most laborers died.
It was not the work, however, that killed men compelled to endure mind-numbing, bone--bruising, sixteen-hour-days; rather it was the inability to work brought on by psychological resignation. Malaise led to physical illness and even self-induced starvation. If a man couldn't or wouldn't work, the Nazis had no use for him. In a sense, such a life was more given than taken. But not everyone succumbed.
Early in captivity, Frankl made a conscious decision that he would live if he could. Only a few men joined him in that decision. But why would he or they chose life under such brutal, uncertain circumstances? The answer: to do something yet undone. A consummate healer of the mind, the undone thing and compelling future that Frankl imaged for himself was one in which he was addressing his peers on the psychology of the concentration camp. Imagine that.
What seemed to be working for Frankl, he noted, appeared to be true of everyone who survived. Whether a book yet to be written, a loved one with whom to reunite, or a dutiful act yet to be rendered, finding what meant most in each man's life, as demonstrated by what and for whom his undone act represented, literally meant the difference between life and death. What are our dreams of a better future? Here are a few of my own as a citizen and a professional:
Standing at the edge of the ten-year anniversary of the most horrific act of terror ever to victimize citizens of the United States, I want our political and faith leaders to fix our mind on a better future, a preferred future where such acts are rendered unnecessary even by our nation's most ardent critics. I want a nation where a job is available for everyone who needs it. I want to be part of a people who care for one another. And I want us to be responsible for whom we vote in seeking that preferred future.
Professionally, I want a future where my Gardner-Webb and North Carolina State University students who are just now taking the first steps in school-leader preparation become the wise principals we need in our public schools. I want a future where every learning professional with whom I am working use research and craft knowledge to improve students' life chances, turning possible futures of hopelessness into preferred futures of societal contribution.
Nearing death at 92 yet still actively teaching, Frankl was asked to express in one sentence the meaning of life. He wrote on a piece of paper, folded it, and asked his students to guess what he had written. After no more than five seconds, a young man confidently responded, "The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs."
"That was it exactly," said Frankl later. "Those were the exact words I had written." I urge the leader in you to consider the same.
In preparing last month to work with two Wake County Renaissance Schools--schools re-populated with new teachers and principals specifically hired for their potential to improve flagging student performance--I had occasion to re-read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. The book's message took center stage when I prepared staff to re-image their school's vision statement. As I'll demonstrate, Man's Search for Meaning is really about leading the future.
I once read that tomorrow is "a highly-probable event." Supposedly, if you write .9 followed by nine nines, that is the probability that you will wake up tomorrow morning. But once awake, will tomorrow and all the tomorrows after that be the future you prefer? What would be the difference in outcomes that matter of our living aimlessly versus our intervening to make a most-improbable thing possible in the face of most-challenging circumstances?
If we are leading both our lives and our organizations responsibly, Frankl suggests, the choice between indifference and intervention may not be so hard: "It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future . . . And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task" (p. 73). Who is this Viktor Frankl anyway?
An eminent psychotherapist who also happened to be a Jew working in Vienna in the middle half of the 20th century, Dr. Frankl was a survivor of Hell on Earth--the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. Jews captured who were not killed immediately were forced into labor. Most laborers died.
It was not the work, however, that killed men compelled to endure mind-numbing, bone--bruising, sixteen-hour-days; rather it was the inability to work brought on by psychological resignation. Malaise led to physical illness and even self-induced starvation. If a man couldn't or wouldn't work, the Nazis had no use for him. In a sense, such a life was more given than taken. But not everyone succumbed.
Early in captivity, Frankl made a conscious decision that he would live if he could. Only a few men joined him in that decision. But why would he or they chose life under such brutal, uncertain circumstances? The answer: to do something yet undone. A consummate healer of the mind, the undone thing and compelling future that Frankl imaged for himself was one in which he was addressing his peers on the psychology of the concentration camp. Imagine that.
What seemed to be working for Frankl, he noted, appeared to be true of everyone who survived. Whether a book yet to be written, a loved one with whom to reunite, or a dutiful act yet to be rendered, finding what meant most in each man's life, as demonstrated by what and for whom his undone act represented, literally meant the difference between life and death. What are our dreams of a better future? Here are a few of my own as a citizen and a professional:
Standing at the edge of the ten-year anniversary of the most horrific act of terror ever to victimize citizens of the United States, I want our political and faith leaders to fix our mind on a better future, a preferred future where such acts are rendered unnecessary even by our nation's most ardent critics. I want a nation where a job is available for everyone who needs it. I want to be part of a people who care for one another. And I want us to be responsible for whom we vote in seeking that preferred future.
Professionally, I want a future where my Gardner-Webb and North Carolina State University students who are just now taking the first steps in school-leader preparation become the wise principals we need in our public schools. I want a future where every learning professional with whom I am working use research and craft knowledge to improve students' life chances, turning possible futures of hopelessness into preferred futures of societal contribution.
Nearing death at 92 yet still actively teaching, Frankl was asked to express in one sentence the meaning of life. He wrote on a piece of paper, folded it, and asked his students to guess what he had written. After no more than five seconds, a young man confidently responded, "The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs."
"That was it exactly," said Frankl later. "Those were the exact words I had written." I urge the leader in you to consider the same.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Deliberate Practice and World-Class Leaders
Bill Gates. Meryl Streep. Kobie Bryant. They're not like us, are they? Forgetting wealth and concentrating for a moment on talent, if you believe they came into the world genetically predisposed to become the world-class leaders in business, acting, and sports that they are now, you would find not one scintilla of evidence to back up your belief.
"But what about Mozart?" protests the musician in me. Well, according to recent research wherein was discovered that the composer routinely and with some serious mental butt-kicking revised one manuscript after another. musicologists find that Wolfie was a mere mortal, not the demigod who but penned to paper the music he heard full-blown in his head as had been alleged for over two centuries. What, then, is the font of Mozart's ability?
As it turns out, the origin of extraordinary performance in music or any field is not as mysterious as we might like, or have been led, to believe. But neither is it just hard work.
According to Geoff Colvin, author of Talent Is Overated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else? while Kobie and Wolfie are not like us, had we trained in ways and under similar circumstances as they did, although we could not have been them, we may have been serious contenders to their crown.
Students of Triangle Leadership Academy's workshop, Influencer©, know that improving any ability is a function of deliberate practice, that is, understanding the elements of ideal performance, designing strategies to reduce the gap between one's current and the ideal performance, and then deliberately practicing for mastery. For a program developer who earns his living in the belief that people can improve practice, that is great news.
I am thinking of an earlier conversation today with Matt Olhson, new assistant professor at North Carolina State University and coordinator of North East Leadership Academy (NELA). I am working under contract with North Carolina Principals and Assistant Principals Association to develop and deliver for NELA sessions of leadership training to its 21 aspiring leaders. The cohort is comprised of teachers in some of the least-wealthy counties in North Carolina. But they are hungry to learn.
Beyond motivated learners, the good news is that Matt and the NCSU recipients of this Race-to-the-Top funded program have assembled a team of developers, teachers, coaches, and mentors who understand the importance of deliberate practice. And frankly, we are aided and abetted by the new North Carolina Standards for School Executives which spells out the 83 practices about which we can be deliberate.
There is much to celebrate about NELA. So, too, when I read in the News and Observer last Sunday that TLA staff taught or otherwise worked with all 10 Wake County professionals currently nominated as Principal or Assistant Principal of the Year, I am profoundly gratified. I am also reminded that world-class school leaders like those nominees and the 26 recently-named Wake County principals are made, not born.
We know what the leadership ideal is. Whether you teach, coach, develop curricula, or support public education from another profession, let's bridge the performance gaps with deliberate practice.
"But what about Mozart?" protests the musician in me. Well, according to recent research wherein was discovered that the composer routinely and with some serious mental butt-kicking revised one manuscript after another. musicologists find that Wolfie was a mere mortal, not the demigod who but penned to paper the music he heard full-blown in his head as had been alleged for over two centuries. What, then, is the font of Mozart's ability?
As it turns out, the origin of extraordinary performance in music or any field is not as mysterious as we might like, or have been led, to believe. But neither is it just hard work.
According to Geoff Colvin, author of Talent Is Overated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else? while Kobie and Wolfie are not like us, had we trained in ways and under similar circumstances as they did, although we could not have been them, we may have been serious contenders to their crown.
Students of Triangle Leadership Academy's workshop, Influencer©, know that improving any ability is a function of deliberate practice, that is, understanding the elements of ideal performance, designing strategies to reduce the gap between one's current and the ideal performance, and then deliberately practicing for mastery. For a program developer who earns his living in the belief that people can improve practice, that is great news.
I am thinking of an earlier conversation today with Matt Olhson, new assistant professor at North Carolina State University and coordinator of North East Leadership Academy (NELA). I am working under contract with North Carolina Principals and Assistant Principals Association to develop and deliver for NELA sessions of leadership training to its 21 aspiring leaders. The cohort is comprised of teachers in some of the least-wealthy counties in North Carolina. But they are hungry to learn.
Beyond motivated learners, the good news is that Matt and the NCSU recipients of this Race-to-the-Top funded program have assembled a team of developers, teachers, coaches, and mentors who understand the importance of deliberate practice. And frankly, we are aided and abetted by the new North Carolina Standards for School Executives which spells out the 83 practices about which we can be deliberate.
There is much to celebrate about NELA. So, too, when I read in the News and Observer last Sunday that TLA staff taught or otherwise worked with all 10 Wake County professionals currently nominated as Principal or Assistant Principal of the Year, I am profoundly gratified. I am also reminded that world-class school leaders like those nominees and the 26 recently-named Wake County principals are made, not born.
We know what the leadership ideal is. Whether you teach, coach, develop curricula, or support public education from another profession, let's bridge the performance gaps with deliberate practice.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Something About Maxine
"I'm a talker," she said.
"Okay, I'm listening," I thought. And I am glad I did.
Now folks, you know that it doesn't take an advanced academic degree to appreciate that the world is full of people who don't mind speaking their mind. And Maxine did. Less prevalent, however, are people who have something worth saying. And Maxine did.
Today I had the privilege of facilitating a session on Developing Your School's Organizational Identity at Wilburn Elementary School in Raleigh, North Carolina. It is there that I met Maxine Weakly.
Although I find it increasingly redundant to differentiate, Maxine is a teacher and a leader. Our after-the-session conversation convinced me that Maxine is someone who both talks the walk and walks the talk. I expect that she looks for the same thing in others, including her students.
Admittedly I enticed Maxine to share more about herself with me because of comments she made in her Kiva activity. In a re-enactment of an ancient Native American ritual, Maxine joined her Kiva colleagues in a circle of representing teams of teachers and teacher assistants. There in the circle they talked about the values they identified important to their work at Wilburn.
As staff talked, words like "creativity, integrity, and respect" naturally surfaced. Just when the conversation started to subside, Maxine, who had already more than adequately represented the thoughts of her team, asked the group if she may tell us a story. Permission more assumed than actually granted, Maxine regaled the room with an account of a friend's nieces visiting from her country of origin, Jamaica. No one regretted it.
"I had to bring the little girls to school," Maxine said.
And oh, Maxine continued, how these pint-sized scholars fell in love with what they saw--computers, books in the library, bright lights, washrooms--things we all take for granted. The value Maxine most wanted to remind her colleagues of was "gratitude." She suggested, too, that it was also worth teaching students. What a revolutionary!
Maxine, I learned, is a hoarder of all things useful for Jamaican schools. Reportedly, her classroom is laden with boxes of paper, pencils, markers, spiral-bound notebooks and other supplies bound for that Caribbean island nation known more as an importer of honeymooners than as an exporter of high-performance learning organizations.
Anyway, I told Maxine that I might be able to "hook her up" with potential donors. So here is my two-part ask: Part one, if you can help some very needy kids in Jamaica, let me know, and I'll have Maxine get in touch with you.
Part two, if you are an educator or a parent, do yourself and our nation a favor and remind your children that, at worst, they have things better than 90 percent of the rest of the world. Gratitude is an always-appropriate value. Something about Maxine reminds me to tell you.
"Okay, I'm listening," I thought. And I am glad I did.
Now folks, you know that it doesn't take an advanced academic degree to appreciate that the world is full of people who don't mind speaking their mind. And Maxine did. Less prevalent, however, are people who have something worth saying. And Maxine did.
Today I had the privilege of facilitating a session on Developing Your School's Organizational Identity at Wilburn Elementary School in Raleigh, North Carolina. It is there that I met Maxine Weakly.
Although I find it increasingly redundant to differentiate, Maxine is a teacher and a leader. Our after-the-session conversation convinced me that Maxine is someone who both talks the walk and walks the talk. I expect that she looks for the same thing in others, including her students.
Admittedly I enticed Maxine to share more about herself with me because of comments she made in her Kiva activity. In a re-enactment of an ancient Native American ritual, Maxine joined her Kiva colleagues in a circle of representing teams of teachers and teacher assistants. There in the circle they talked about the values they identified important to their work at Wilburn.
As staff talked, words like "creativity, integrity, and respect" naturally surfaced. Just when the conversation started to subside, Maxine, who had already more than adequately represented the thoughts of her team, asked the group if she may tell us a story. Permission more assumed than actually granted, Maxine regaled the room with an account of a friend's nieces visiting from her country of origin, Jamaica. No one regretted it.
"I had to bring the little girls to school," Maxine said.
And oh, Maxine continued, how these pint-sized scholars fell in love with what they saw--computers, books in the library, bright lights, washrooms--things we all take for granted. The value Maxine most wanted to remind her colleagues of was "gratitude." She suggested, too, that it was also worth teaching students. What a revolutionary!
Maxine, I learned, is a hoarder of all things useful for Jamaican schools. Reportedly, her classroom is laden with boxes of paper, pencils, markers, spiral-bound notebooks and other supplies bound for that Caribbean island nation known more as an importer of honeymooners than as an exporter of high-performance learning organizations.
Anyway, I told Maxine that I might be able to "hook her up" with potential donors. So here is my two-part ask: Part one, if you can help some very needy kids in Jamaica, let me know, and I'll have Maxine get in touch with you.
Part two, if you are an educator or a parent, do yourself and our nation a favor and remind your children that, at worst, they have things better than 90 percent of the rest of the world. Gratitude is an always-appropriate value. Something about Maxine reminds me to tell you.
Friday, August 12, 2011
The Creation of Settings
Birth is difficult. Of course I have no experience with human birth except as husband to a wife who bore him three children. To be only present during the births was difficult enough. I have nightmares still about the arm nearly torn from its socket by the wild woman occupying my wife's body who, in the throes of birthing, cursed the ground upon which I walked. A nearby sailor actually blushed.
No, what occupies my mind this evening is milder stuff, but not by much. The short of it is that I am midwife to what educational leadership consultants like me call, "Developing Your School's Organizational Identity," fashioned after a monograph of the same name written by Joe Peel.
The client is Brentwood Elementary Magnet School of Engineering, one of four "Renaissance Schools" in Wake County receiving Race-to-the-Top funds. Its staff has been hired from all over the United States. One teacher-couple I met today moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to cast their lot with Brentwood. Jennifer and her husband may be distal examples but are far from unusual in their willingness to invest in something extraordinary. Every teacher I met was cut from the same cloth.
Specifically, my task is to help leadership and staff create mission, vision, values, and belief statements, public agreements that both will guide their work and inspire the school community. What we embarked upon today was nothing short of the creation of a setting.
As I worked with principal Ken Branch, assistant principal Eric Fitts, and administrative intern Rob Epler, I was reminded of a school where I was once principal that also embarked upon a curricular innovation and particularly of my doctoral studies some 20 years in the rear view mirror.
Graduate students fortunate enough to study with Dale Brubaker, Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, will recognize in the title of this blog partial citation of a book by Seymour Sarason of Yale University. The Creation of Settings and the Future Societies. In an especially instructive chapter titled, "The Socialization of Leaders," Sarason writes:
"It is highly unusual for a new principal to leave his school in February or March, but in my experience it is not that unusual for a principal to want to leave. . . . Once this becomes recognized and the creation of new settings begins to receive the systematic study and clinical attention that the consulting industry (in and out of the university) gives to chronologically mature, malfunctioning settings, readers will not have to be convinced that creating a setting is and has to be an obstacle course true of the beginning as it is of any subsequent period (p. 204)."
In a later passage, Sarason writes about the wisdom required of the leader of a new setting, "wisdom that acknowledges reality without sacrificing dreaming." Together, and for me, these passages encapsulate everything that Ken and the principal of every reconstituted school is facing. A beginning is a delicate thing, a thirsty seedling in a scorching sun. Ken and his team are those practical dreamers of whom Sarason writes, but without adequate nurturing, no one can predict success for the school.
My experience suggest that here is what can be predicted: If Ken, Eric, and Rob will want to be at Brentwood in March, they will need the abiding assistance of central-service staff to support the learning agenda of the school. Similarly, leaders both administrative and teaching will need trust from the school community, including parents and business partners.
Looking from the outside in, I firmly believe that the necessary foundation for trust is now being laid, demonstrated in no small part by the way the faculty conducted itself during my session. I am looking forward to future work with the Brentwood Elementary Magnet School of Engineering and to witnessing the successful creation of a setting. Godspeed, friends.
No, what occupies my mind this evening is milder stuff, but not by much. The short of it is that I am midwife to what educational leadership consultants like me call, "Developing Your School's Organizational Identity," fashioned after a monograph of the same name written by Joe Peel.
The client is Brentwood Elementary Magnet School of Engineering, one of four "Renaissance Schools" in Wake County receiving Race-to-the-Top funds. Its staff has been hired from all over the United States. One teacher-couple I met today moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to cast their lot with Brentwood. Jennifer and her husband may be distal examples but are far from unusual in their willingness to invest in something extraordinary. Every teacher I met was cut from the same cloth.
Specifically, my task is to help leadership and staff create mission, vision, values, and belief statements, public agreements that both will guide their work and inspire the school community. What we embarked upon today was nothing short of the creation of a setting.
As I worked with principal Ken Branch, assistant principal Eric Fitts, and administrative intern Rob Epler, I was reminded of a school where I was once principal that also embarked upon a curricular innovation and particularly of my doctoral studies some 20 years in the rear view mirror.
Graduate students fortunate enough to study with Dale Brubaker, Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, will recognize in the title of this blog partial citation of a book by Seymour Sarason of Yale University. The Creation of Settings and the Future Societies. In an especially instructive chapter titled, "The Socialization of Leaders," Sarason writes:
"It is highly unusual for a new principal to leave his school in February or March, but in my experience it is not that unusual for a principal to want to leave. . . . Once this becomes recognized and the creation of new settings begins to receive the systematic study and clinical attention that the consulting industry (in and out of the university) gives to chronologically mature, malfunctioning settings, readers will not have to be convinced that creating a setting is and has to be an obstacle course true of the beginning as it is of any subsequent period (p. 204)."
In a later passage, Sarason writes about the wisdom required of the leader of a new setting, "wisdom that acknowledges reality without sacrificing dreaming." Together, and for me, these passages encapsulate everything that Ken and the principal of every reconstituted school is facing. A beginning is a delicate thing, a thirsty seedling in a scorching sun. Ken and his team are those practical dreamers of whom Sarason writes, but without adequate nurturing, no one can predict success for the school.
My experience suggest that here is what can be predicted: If Ken, Eric, and Rob will want to be at Brentwood in March, they will need the abiding assistance of central-service staff to support the learning agenda of the school. Similarly, leaders both administrative and teaching will need trust from the school community, including parents and business partners.
Looking from the outside in, I firmly believe that the necessary foundation for trust is now being laid, demonstrated in no small part by the way the faculty conducted itself during my session. I am looking forward to future work with the Brentwood Elementary Magnet School of Engineering and to witnessing the successful creation of a setting. Godspeed, friends.
Friday, August 5, 2011
In the Game
Readers of this blog know that I officially retired from the employment of Wake County Public School System and the North Carolina Teachers and State Employees Retirement System, June 30. For six years, I had the enviable position of director and then executive director of Triangle Leadership Academy (TLA). So what is my point in writing after a month-long hiatus?
Students in recent cohorts of the NC State University Master of School Administration program in which I taught know that one of my favorite books for aspiring professionals is Chris Matthews' The Hardball Handbook: How to Win at Life. Chocked full of lessons learned from his many years as a congressional aide and political journalist, Matthews says to win the game you must be in the game.
I would suggest that for the last six years we have been winning the school leadership-development game. Our leadership pipeline filled positions, our programs improved professional practice, and as a result student learning improved. It is important to remember, however, that we were winning the game because we first found a way to get into it by leveraging public-private resources.
Never numbering more than four full-time professionals, TLA staff were joined by scores of contractors, subject matter experts, and organizational partners to serve educational leaders cumulatively experiencing our training and development products and services nearly 20,000 times. Margaret Meade was right about the power of a small, committed group to change the world.
Looking ahead, most of you know that, as a leadership development service provider, TLA is morphing into a subsidiary of Wake Education Partnership, the local education fund for Wake County Schools. In the wake of my retirement, I hope to continue serving as a kind of leadership training & development director under contract with the Partnership.
Although many rivers remain to be crossed before an official launch, business acquaintances of Partnership president Steve Parrott say that if it is to be done, he can do it. Meanwhile, I am delivering on contracts with the Partnership around re-imaging Race-to-the-Top-funded schools' organizational identity and planning training in other schools using VitalSmarts and SREB products.
In addition to contracts with Wake Education Partnership, I'm also developing and facilitating programs of professional learning for school administrators with the NC Principals and Assistant Principals Association, working as an adjunct professor with Gardner-Webb University School of Education, and preparing to facilitate online learning for school leaders with SREB. And as you may have noted, I am continuing my blog under a new banner.
I hope you will be inspired to forward the blog to your colleagues and weigh in as the spirit leads you. Our cause and our conversation is way too important to leave the game now.
Students in recent cohorts of the NC State University Master of School Administration program in which I taught know that one of my favorite books for aspiring professionals is Chris Matthews' The Hardball Handbook: How to Win at Life. Chocked full of lessons learned from his many years as a congressional aide and political journalist, Matthews says to win the game you must be in the game.
I would suggest that for the last six years we have been winning the school leadership-development game. Our leadership pipeline filled positions, our programs improved professional practice, and as a result student learning improved. It is important to remember, however, that we were winning the game because we first found a way to get into it by leveraging public-private resources.
Never numbering more than four full-time professionals, TLA staff were joined by scores of contractors, subject matter experts, and organizational partners to serve educational leaders cumulatively experiencing our training and development products and services nearly 20,000 times. Margaret Meade was right about the power of a small, committed group to change the world.
Looking ahead, most of you know that, as a leadership development service provider, TLA is morphing into a subsidiary of Wake Education Partnership, the local education fund for Wake County Schools. In the wake of my retirement, I hope to continue serving as a kind of leadership training & development director under contract with the Partnership.
Although many rivers remain to be crossed before an official launch, business acquaintances of Partnership president Steve Parrott say that if it is to be done, he can do it. Meanwhile, I am delivering on contracts with the Partnership around re-imaging Race-to-the-Top-funded schools' organizational identity and planning training in other schools using VitalSmarts and SREB products.
In addition to contracts with Wake Education Partnership, I'm also developing and facilitating programs of professional learning for school administrators with the NC Principals and Assistant Principals Association, working as an adjunct professor with Gardner-Webb University School of Education, and preparing to facilitate online learning for school leaders with SREB. And as you may have noted, I am continuing my blog under a new banner.
I hope you will be inspired to forward the blog to your colleagues and weigh in as the spirit leads you. Our cause and our conversation is way too important to leave the game now.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
En Route
I've been thinking a lot lately about my six years working with Triangle-area districts and schools. The obvious explanation has its roots in my imminent retirement, of course, but it goes deeper. Here's the thing: most people with whom I have worked were en route to something or somewhere else.
Take, for example, the way I spent yesterday. As a networking and learning opportunity, we convened Wake County School professionals from two cohorts of what we called Aspiring Principals and later, Aspiring Administrators, Leadership Institute. We billed it "Revisit, Review, Renew."
The event was co-designed and delivered by Gail Ostrisko who is licensed to facilitate and coach people who have engaged in the online self-assessment of The Highlands Ability Battery. I have previously written about the assessment and will not reiterate here its intended outcomes.
What is important to know now is that, since we did not know Gail when we implemented Aspiring Principals Institute I, we invited only Institute II and III participants who had taken the Highlands, this both to follow up on and take a deeper dive into what it means to deploy one's natural strengths and abilities as a leader.
Knowing, however, that in Institute I we had many professionals who had been appointed principal and that these individuals represented a kind of "step ahead" group with which aspiring principals could relate, we invited them to serve on a panel to talk about their experiences. Volunteer panelists included Malik Bazelle, Lisa Cruz, AJ Muttillo, and Eloise Sheats.
We are indebted to Malik, Lisa, AJ, and Eloise for outstanding leadership within their school communities and for their contribution to leadership succession planning in Wake County Schools. What I have come to view as a major take-away of the panel discussion is the questions posed by the audience, most of whom were hoping one day to be what they panelists already were--principals.
Following an introduction by each principal--where they led, how long they had been there, a brief sketch of their school community, a strength that has served them well, and finally, one thing that would be different if they had known on the first day of the job what they know now--I posed questions written on index cards that originated with the audience. By thematic clusters, here is what our aspiring principals wanted to know:
Cluster One: Was it difficult to trust the people around you when you first became a principal? What was most challenging as a new principal?
Cluster Two: How did you learn the budget process? Was training provided? How did you manage the budget at first?
Cluster Three: How long did it take you to become a principal? How many schools did you apply for before you got a position? Please tell us about a strategy for obtaining the principalship?
Cluster Four: How do you promote the leadership growth of your assistant principals while ensuring the school operates as a well-oiled machine?
Cluster Five: What has been the most rewarding aspect of your job? Are you happy that you are a principal?
Aren't those amazing questions? If Wake County Schools or for that matter, any public school district, has an interest in growing its own leaders, I would hope the superintendent and members of the board of education can read between the lines of those questions, so to support and capitalize on professionals who already know the culture, assuming the indigenous culture matters.
As both former principal and life-long learner, I judge the quality of leaders by the questions they pose. If one is en route to somewhere or something else--and leaders always are--I would hope the quality of questions principal aspirants across the entire Triangle are at least half as good as the ones on the minds of our Leadership Institute participants at our Wednesday event.
In actuality, everyone of us is en route to somewhere else. I have often said, at minimum we are each leading our own lives. What are you asking yourself? With whom do you expect to make the journey? What awaits you at the other end? When you arrive, will you be happy? God speed to each and every one of you who reads this blog. In some way, you are all going with me.
Take, for example, the way I spent yesterday. As a networking and learning opportunity, we convened Wake County School professionals from two cohorts of what we called Aspiring Principals and later, Aspiring Administrators, Leadership Institute. We billed it "Revisit, Review, Renew."
The event was co-designed and delivered by Gail Ostrisko who is licensed to facilitate and coach people who have engaged in the online self-assessment of The Highlands Ability Battery. I have previously written about the assessment and will not reiterate here its intended outcomes.
What is important to know now is that, since we did not know Gail when we implemented Aspiring Principals Institute I, we invited only Institute II and III participants who had taken the Highlands, this both to follow up on and take a deeper dive into what it means to deploy one's natural strengths and abilities as a leader.
Knowing, however, that in Institute I we had many professionals who had been appointed principal and that these individuals represented a kind of "step ahead" group with which aspiring principals could relate, we invited them to serve on a panel to talk about their experiences. Volunteer panelists included Malik Bazelle, Lisa Cruz, AJ Muttillo, and Eloise Sheats.
We are indebted to Malik, Lisa, AJ, and Eloise for outstanding leadership within their school communities and for their contribution to leadership succession planning in Wake County Schools. What I have come to view as a major take-away of the panel discussion is the questions posed by the audience, most of whom were hoping one day to be what they panelists already were--principals.
Following an introduction by each principal--where they led, how long they had been there, a brief sketch of their school community, a strength that has served them well, and finally, one thing that would be different if they had known on the first day of the job what they know now--I posed questions written on index cards that originated with the audience. By thematic clusters, here is what our aspiring principals wanted to know:
Cluster One: Was it difficult to trust the people around you when you first became a principal? What was most challenging as a new principal?
Cluster Two: How did you learn the budget process? Was training provided? How did you manage the budget at first?
Cluster Three: How long did it take you to become a principal? How many schools did you apply for before you got a position? Please tell us about a strategy for obtaining the principalship?
Cluster Four: How do you promote the leadership growth of your assistant principals while ensuring the school operates as a well-oiled machine?
Cluster Five: What has been the most rewarding aspect of your job? Are you happy that you are a principal?
Aren't those amazing questions? If Wake County Schools or for that matter, any public school district, has an interest in growing its own leaders, I would hope the superintendent and members of the board of education can read between the lines of those questions, so to support and capitalize on professionals who already know the culture, assuming the indigenous culture matters.
As both former principal and life-long learner, I judge the quality of leaders by the questions they pose. If one is en route to somewhere or something else--and leaders always are--I would hope the quality of questions principal aspirants across the entire Triangle are at least half as good as the ones on the minds of our Leadership Institute participants at our Wednesday event.
In actuality, everyone of us is en route to somewhere else. I have often said, at minimum we are each leading our own lives. What are you asking yourself? With whom do you expect to make the journey? What awaits you at the other end? When you arrive, will you be happy? God speed to each and every one of you who reads this blog. In some way, you are all going with me.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Hate the Sin, Not the Sinner
I put it off long enough. I'm starting to clean out my office. My goal is to look at bare walls and bookshelves no longer than I absolutely have to, so the packing of the last item must be meticulously timed with the savoring of the last minute come the end of the month and my tenure here.
Not surprisingly, my slow and steady hand is surfacing one professional treasure after another. An inscribed pen here, a photograph there, a hand-written thank-you note from a principal beneath a stack of memos--all rememberances of my six years in the Triangle. Sometimes my treasures are less personal. Take today, for example.
Before me is a copy of an article from Educational Researcher, one of the American Educational Research Association periodicals to which I subscribe. As for why you should care, understanding this article and its implications promises to help you focus on what matters most in attaining sought-for outcomes, whether improving student learning or moving product.
The article by Mary M. Kennedy is titled, "Attribution Error and the Quest for Teacher Quality." In it, Kennedy evinces the ways researchers and policymakers overestimate the influence of personal traits and underestimate the influence of situations on observed behavior of teachers.
Kennedy argues that it is teaching quality, not teacher quality, to which we must attend if we are to appropriately account for improvement in student learning. The parameters of teachers' work--including schedules, instructional materials, and assignments--combined with students, school incursions into classroom life, and reform clutter are a few of the situational variables over which teachers have little or no control. My teacher wife reminds me nightly of the many things that cause her to be grading papers and planning lessons at our dining room table rather than at her teacher's desk.
Yet reasonable people firmly believe that "good teachers" may be evaluated for their caring personality, credentials, licensure test scores, skill sets, and personal values without giving a moment's notice for all the things outside the teacher's control that may also bear on performance. Situations matter.
Without treading deeper into Kennedy's weeds, I want to invite you to consider people you lead or manage. Are they resourced with what they need to do the job? Do workplace rules and routines facilitate or hinder job performance? What degree of autonomy do workers have in attaining expected outcomes? Are other workers enabling or disabling individual job performance? Students of TLA understand such questions as a search for sources of influence.
Bottom line: If you want to improve workplace quality and organizational outcomes, It's time to look beyond the worker to the working situation itself. Enable the worker, provide social supports, and structure the job to maximize what you want. Hate the sin, not the sinner.
Not surprisingly, my slow and steady hand is surfacing one professional treasure after another. An inscribed pen here, a photograph there, a hand-written thank-you note from a principal beneath a stack of memos--all rememberances of my six years in the Triangle. Sometimes my treasures are less personal. Take today, for example.
Before me is a copy of an article from Educational Researcher, one of the American Educational Research Association periodicals to which I subscribe. As for why you should care, understanding this article and its implications promises to help you focus on what matters most in attaining sought-for outcomes, whether improving student learning or moving product.
The article by Mary M. Kennedy is titled, "Attribution Error and the Quest for Teacher Quality." In it, Kennedy evinces the ways researchers and policymakers overestimate the influence of personal traits and underestimate the influence of situations on observed behavior of teachers.
Kennedy argues that it is teaching quality, not teacher quality, to which we must attend if we are to appropriately account for improvement in student learning. The parameters of teachers' work--including schedules, instructional materials, and assignments--combined with students, school incursions into classroom life, and reform clutter are a few of the situational variables over which teachers have little or no control. My teacher wife reminds me nightly of the many things that cause her to be grading papers and planning lessons at our dining room table rather than at her teacher's desk.
Yet reasonable people firmly believe that "good teachers" may be evaluated for their caring personality, credentials, licensure test scores, skill sets, and personal values without giving a moment's notice for all the things outside the teacher's control that may also bear on performance. Situations matter.
Without treading deeper into Kennedy's weeds, I want to invite you to consider people you lead or manage. Are they resourced with what they need to do the job? Do workplace rules and routines facilitate or hinder job performance? What degree of autonomy do workers have in attaining expected outcomes? Are other workers enabling or disabling individual job performance? Students of TLA understand such questions as a search for sources of influence.
Bottom line: If you want to improve workplace quality and organizational outcomes, It's time to look beyond the worker to the working situation itself. Enable the worker, provide social supports, and structure the job to maximize what you want. Hate the sin, not the sinner.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Learning, Leadership, and Legacy
We are nearing the end, my friends. No, not in the sense that The Reverend Camping's feckless prediction last Saturday meant. What we are nearing the end of is not the world but of Triangle Leadership Academy as we know it. But we are not sad.
Having successfully navigated the fifth stage of grief weeks ago, Donna Scanlon, my loyal and extraordinarily able program assistant, and I are actively engaged in transitioning both organizationally and personally. Beyond the tying of loose ends, the taking stock of assets, the reconciling of financial statements, and the predictable executive director recommendations, we are thinking about three things--learning, leadership, and legacy.
I am reminded of the first thing--learning--this week inasmuch as I have been assessing the last assignment of the last NC State University-Triangle Leadership Academy-sponsored Master of School Administration cohort. The current cohort is the eighth one to matriculate since 2002. Approximately 150 professionals, most of whom are still in Wake County and three-fourths of whom have been promoted to principal or assistant principal, have benefited from our attention. Yes, we believed in "growing our own." And it has worked.
As part of the cohort program, Joe Peel and I had the privilege of augmenting the standard course of study through a series of Leadership Seminars, typically convening every month on Monday evening. Among many topics, including Crucial Conversations and Facilitative Leadership. we explored Becoming An Authentic Leader, Designing Quality Lessons, Leading and Learning Through Teams, and since my tenure, a course I called Career Management 101.
One of the texts of the course is the national bestseller, The Hardball Handbook: How to Win at Life by noted political commentator, Chris Matthews. I typically ask students to choose two of the 25 chapters and respond to end-of-chapter questions that I wrote. The similarity of their choices is striking.
"How do you know when you are listening?" "What will you do when you learn that the person sitting next to you in class is interviewing for the same position as you?" and "How do you nurture your circle of professional friends?" are perennial favorites. The choices reveal a sense of immediacy, that landing that all-important first job will be not only a function of how well they have learned academic content, but of how well they have learned to navigate the white water of organizational politics.
The second thing I am reminded of tonight is leadership. We spend a lot of time at TLA teaching the difference between management--the efficient discharge of tasks known and settled--and leadership--the transactional, and sometimes transcendent, act of walking beside someone to a place they would otherwise never go alone. Management is about complexity. Leadership is about change.
But here is an insidious truth for principals: If you believe your superior knowledge of effective teaching will arouse, inspire, or instruct your staff to teach effectively in the face of challenge, you are doomed in your belief and sabotaged by your superiority. Attention must be paid not only to result, but to process and relationship as well.
In the end, leadership involves people, caring about them, wanting to be with them, hurting when they hurt, celebrating their accomplishments and life-cycle events, loving them enough to expect the best of them, and supporting them in achieving it. Leadership does not shout out in anger, wag its finger in the aftermath of failure, or shake its head in the face of best effort fallen short. Instead, it teaches.
Leadership asks questions, listens, and as a last resort suggests what the follower might do based on the leader's experience, experience which can never be an exact analog of the current circumstances. Hence leadership balances confidence with humility.
Leadership avoids obligatory language like" must, should, need to, and you had better, "language that robs initiative and personal responsibility. Instead it uses language that inquires and empowers. "I wonder how a different result could have been achieved?" "What question would be the best one to answer now?" "What can I do that will most likely ensure that you have everything you need to succeed?"
At TLA, we have tried very hard to teach this kind of leadership. It's never about a person or a position, but about a set of practices teachable and learnable by anyone at any level. So this leads me to legacy, the last thing that's on my mind tonight.
What would we like to be remembered for? On a personal level, all the MSA cohort members who matriculated through our Monday night leadership seminars and our participants in our Aspiring Administrators Leadership Institute have already reminded me in a book of notes from every one of them that TLA changed their lives. It is on my to-do list to write a personal thank-you note to each person. Believe me, they are leaving as much a legacy in my life as me and TLA staff and consultants are leaving in theirs.
Gandhi famously said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." If there is something of the Leadership Academy that we have known for the last six years, and really for Wake County, for the last 12 years, it will be that people we have touched act on Gandhi's words.
TLA is not ending. It's just beginning anew. After a few months of our existence as a regional entity, Joe Peel started calling us "a sophisticated leadership consultancy organization." So like the end to which good consultants all aspire, ladies and gentlemen, we have succeeded in working ourselves out of a job. That's a good thing.
Having successfully navigated the fifth stage of grief weeks ago, Donna Scanlon, my loyal and extraordinarily able program assistant, and I are actively engaged in transitioning both organizationally and personally. Beyond the tying of loose ends, the taking stock of assets, the reconciling of financial statements, and the predictable executive director recommendations, we are thinking about three things--learning, leadership, and legacy.
I am reminded of the first thing--learning--this week inasmuch as I have been assessing the last assignment of the last NC State University-Triangle Leadership Academy-sponsored Master of School Administration cohort. The current cohort is the eighth one to matriculate since 2002. Approximately 150 professionals, most of whom are still in Wake County and three-fourths of whom have been promoted to principal or assistant principal, have benefited from our attention. Yes, we believed in "growing our own." And it has worked.
As part of the cohort program, Joe Peel and I had the privilege of augmenting the standard course of study through a series of Leadership Seminars, typically convening every month on Monday evening. Among many topics, including Crucial Conversations and Facilitative Leadership. we explored Becoming An Authentic Leader, Designing Quality Lessons, Leading and Learning Through Teams, and since my tenure, a course I called Career Management 101.
One of the texts of the course is the national bestseller, The Hardball Handbook: How to Win at Life by noted political commentator, Chris Matthews. I typically ask students to choose two of the 25 chapters and respond to end-of-chapter questions that I wrote. The similarity of their choices is striking.
"How do you know when you are listening?" "What will you do when you learn that the person sitting next to you in class is interviewing for the same position as you?" and "How do you nurture your circle of professional friends?" are perennial favorites. The choices reveal a sense of immediacy, that landing that all-important first job will be not only a function of how well they have learned academic content, but of how well they have learned to navigate the white water of organizational politics.
The second thing I am reminded of tonight is leadership. We spend a lot of time at TLA teaching the difference between management--the efficient discharge of tasks known and settled--and leadership--the transactional, and sometimes transcendent, act of walking beside someone to a place they would otherwise never go alone. Management is about complexity. Leadership is about change.
But here is an insidious truth for principals: If you believe your superior knowledge of effective teaching will arouse, inspire, or instruct your staff to teach effectively in the face of challenge, you are doomed in your belief and sabotaged by your superiority. Attention must be paid not only to result, but to process and relationship as well.
In the end, leadership involves people, caring about them, wanting to be with them, hurting when they hurt, celebrating their accomplishments and life-cycle events, loving them enough to expect the best of them, and supporting them in achieving it. Leadership does not shout out in anger, wag its finger in the aftermath of failure, or shake its head in the face of best effort fallen short. Instead, it teaches.
Leadership asks questions, listens, and as a last resort suggests what the follower might do based on the leader's experience, experience which can never be an exact analog of the current circumstances. Hence leadership balances confidence with humility.
Leadership avoids obligatory language like" must, should, need to, and you had better, "language that robs initiative and personal responsibility. Instead it uses language that inquires and empowers. "I wonder how a different result could have been achieved?" "What question would be the best one to answer now?" "What can I do that will most likely ensure that you have everything you need to succeed?"
At TLA, we have tried very hard to teach this kind of leadership. It's never about a person or a position, but about a set of practices teachable and learnable by anyone at any level. So this leads me to legacy, the last thing that's on my mind tonight.
What would we like to be remembered for? On a personal level, all the MSA cohort members who matriculated through our Monday night leadership seminars and our participants in our Aspiring Administrators Leadership Institute have already reminded me in a book of notes from every one of them that TLA changed their lives. It is on my to-do list to write a personal thank-you note to each person. Believe me, they are leaving as much a legacy in my life as me and TLA staff and consultants are leaving in theirs.
Gandhi famously said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." If there is something of the Leadership Academy that we have known for the last six years, and really for Wake County, for the last 12 years, it will be that people we have touched act on Gandhi's words.
TLA is not ending. It's just beginning anew. After a few months of our existence as a regional entity, Joe Peel started calling us "a sophisticated leadership consultancy organization." So like the end to which good consultants all aspire, ladies and gentlemen, we have succeeded in working ourselves out of a job. That's a good thing.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
What's In a Name?
You've all read them. The articles documenting the most favored names of the year. Brittany's out. Emily's in. Jason's hot. Juan's not. Alarming parents of the so-called helicopter generation (as if they needed more to fret over), psychologists are beginning to learn what indigenous cultures have known for ages. Names matter. I'll circle back to the issue in a minute.
First, there is the issue of a late Friday blog. I am posting late this week because I knew what Saturday held in store for what I, and by extrapolation you, might learn. As I write, I sit on the balcony of Mom's downtown Greensboro condo, basking in the dimming light of a warm spring evening and replaying what I had envisioned would be and was a successful day facilitating a meeting.
Several weeks ago, my wife, a Family and Consumer Science teacher in Wake County, volunteered my service for her colleagues. "He's great!" Deborah told them. "And he's free." That's all it took.
From that declaration came the first of several phone calls with Dr. Jane Walker, Professor at North Carolina A&T State University. Jane was to convene a think tank of professionals who practice under the big umbrella of what used to be called "Home Economics."
I say "used to be" because, like every public endeavor, home economics is influenced by society and politics. Caught in a vice of high-stakes testing and girls aspiring to be less June Cleaver and more Madonna, practitioners and policymakers in the 1990s came to believe that sewing, cooking, and childcare, as courses of study, were either inadequate, irrelevant, or both.
Welcome then to Family and Consumer Sciences. The revised curriculum began to feature new and updated content, including financial literacy, interior design, culinary arts, early childhood education, to name but a few. As it turns out, however, the name change failed to quell critics or inspire supporters, because it failed to cure the underlying problem--lack of a professional brand. Tackling that problem, at least in North Carolina, was the major purpose of the meeting today.
Planning with Jane and aided and abetted by the practices we teach in Triangle Leadership Academy, my job was to design and deploy an agenda that would give members of the think tank an opportunity to collectively identify the issues of societal interest facing families and children; identify how they were intervening in those issues from role-alike perspectives, ranging from education at every level to support from every level; identify the challenges and supports to intervention; identify vision themes and bold steps to achieving those elements; and finally build an action plan to create ownership and accountability.
Among the luminaries present was a past US House of Representative official, college deans and professors, a marketing consultant, public school teachers, and representatives of national and regional support organizations. Their energy was infectious and their ideas nothing short of inspirational.
No one suggested that the name of the field should be changed again, only that they work to integrate the pieces and parts into a whole and create a uniform message for every audience, parents to policymakers. It was very gratifying to be part of the work of these leaders. It should also remind all of us that it is a major task of leadership to brand the products and services for which the leaders are responsible.
What's in a name? The stories you remember when you hear the name. Make your names good ones.
First, there is the issue of a late Friday blog. I am posting late this week because I knew what Saturday held in store for what I, and by extrapolation you, might learn. As I write, I sit on the balcony of Mom's downtown Greensboro condo, basking in the dimming light of a warm spring evening and replaying what I had envisioned would be and was a successful day facilitating a meeting.
Several weeks ago, my wife, a Family and Consumer Science teacher in Wake County, volunteered my service for her colleagues. "He's great!" Deborah told them. "And he's free." That's all it took.
From that declaration came the first of several phone calls with Dr. Jane Walker, Professor at North Carolina A&T State University. Jane was to convene a think tank of professionals who practice under the big umbrella of what used to be called "Home Economics."
I say "used to be" because, like every public endeavor, home economics is influenced by society and politics. Caught in a vice of high-stakes testing and girls aspiring to be less June Cleaver and more Madonna, practitioners and policymakers in the 1990s came to believe that sewing, cooking, and childcare, as courses of study, were either inadequate, irrelevant, or both.
Welcome then to Family and Consumer Sciences. The revised curriculum began to feature new and updated content, including financial literacy, interior design, culinary arts, early childhood education, to name but a few. As it turns out, however, the name change failed to quell critics or inspire supporters, because it failed to cure the underlying problem--lack of a professional brand. Tackling that problem, at least in North Carolina, was the major purpose of the meeting today.
Planning with Jane and aided and abetted by the practices we teach in Triangle Leadership Academy, my job was to design and deploy an agenda that would give members of the think tank an opportunity to collectively identify the issues of societal interest facing families and children; identify how they were intervening in those issues from role-alike perspectives, ranging from education at every level to support from every level; identify the challenges and supports to intervention; identify vision themes and bold steps to achieving those elements; and finally build an action plan to create ownership and accountability.
Among the luminaries present was a past US House of Representative official, college deans and professors, a marketing consultant, public school teachers, and representatives of national and regional support organizations. Their energy was infectious and their ideas nothing short of inspirational.
No one suggested that the name of the field should be changed again, only that they work to integrate the pieces and parts into a whole and create a uniform message for every audience, parents to policymakers. It was very gratifying to be part of the work of these leaders. It should also remind all of us that it is a major task of leadership to brand the products and services for which the leaders are responsible.
What's in a name? The stories you remember when you hear the name. Make your names good ones.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Club Ed?
I know. I shouldn’t let it get to me.
Most of you know that I last lived in Greensboro and my mom calls it home still. When I visit her at her downtown condominium, I invariably stroll the Elm Street sidewalks and stop at one of the many newspaper stands to pick up whatever is free--Auto Trader, Apartment Finder, Boomer. They have it all.
Last Sunday, I found myself reading Carolina Journal. I think it is a spin-off of the right-leaning Rhino Times. I wish I had never seen the Carolina Journal. I wish in particular I had not read an article in the Education section by writer, David N. Bass, Associate Editor. Here’s the title that caught my eye:
“GOP Budget Plan Would Close Plush ‘Club Ed’ Training Center.”
To what NC “training center” was Mr. Bass referring, I wondered. I’ve been in the professional learning business for quite sometime but I’d never encountered such a place, especially in my home state.
As you may infer, “Club Ed” is a not-so-obvious reference to Club Med of jet-set fame. I soon learned, however, that the writer was describing the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching, NCCAT, the same facility where as a SERVE program director, I annually convened the Southeastern State Teachers of the Year Advisory Committee.
So I’ve been to the Cullowhee, NC facility many times. In my ignorance, however, I never realized that my sans-TV, single-bulb-lamp, twin-bed, bring-your-own-linens accommodations were as elegant as they now seem to be. It is true, however, that each room had its own bathroom--with a shower. The extravagance. The horror.
The other thing you should know is that NCCAT, brainchild of Governor James B. Hunt, serves the professional development needs of over 5,000 teachers annually. Typically delivered in five-day sessions, the learning focuses on artistic, cultural, and historical topics including among others pottery, global warming, and holistic health.
As it turns out, some members of the NC General Assembly want to cut from the budget what Mr. Bass calls “lavish accommodations” featuring “rambling stone buildings, and finely manicured landscaping [that] could be mistaken for a upscale mountain retreat.”
Mr. Bass writes that NCCAT boasts “an idyllic lake, nature trails, and gardens complete with picnic tables, benches, and fountains.” It has a “computer lab, indoor amphitheater, library, a health and wellness facility, and an extensive art collection.” Meals are also served “in a multilevel dining room that looks out on the gently rolling Appalachian Mountains.”
Well, that’s true. In fact, all these things are all true. The other thing I remember is that the teachers from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina were all envious of what North Carolina had in NCCAT. North Carolina has been the envy of southeastern states in more ways than one. But I fear we may be poised to experience a self-inflicted wound, recovery from which will be long in the making.
What, I would ask Mr. Bass, do our public school teachers deserve? Would pup tents and beef jerky be the sort of reward for the work we ritualistically implore high school students to take up in the cause of common schooling for a democratic society? What exactly is your vision of public education and professional learning, Mr. Bass?
Folks, I could go on and on with this topic. But I cannot apologize for valuing our public school teachers and suggesting that eliminating funding for NCCAT is so ill-advised, it is not even funny. NCCAT is symbolic of all that is good, decent, and frankly, sane, about recognizing teaching and teachers as the economic driver of our economy that it is.
Whether you are a business person or an educator, you should be concerned about this ill-advised proposal from where-ever it comes. Speak up or sit down. There’s no in between. “Club Ed,” no, but it should be and we should be standing in line to fund it.
Most of you know that I last lived in Greensboro and my mom calls it home still. When I visit her at her downtown condominium, I invariably stroll the Elm Street sidewalks and stop at one of the many newspaper stands to pick up whatever is free--Auto Trader, Apartment Finder, Boomer. They have it all.
Last Sunday, I found myself reading Carolina Journal. I think it is a spin-off of the right-leaning Rhino Times. I wish I had never seen the Carolina Journal. I wish in particular I had not read an article in the Education section by writer, David N. Bass, Associate Editor. Here’s the title that caught my eye:
“GOP Budget Plan Would Close Plush ‘Club Ed’ Training Center.”
To what NC “training center” was Mr. Bass referring, I wondered. I’ve been in the professional learning business for quite sometime but I’d never encountered such a place, especially in my home state.
As you may infer, “Club Ed” is a not-so-obvious reference to Club Med of jet-set fame. I soon learned, however, that the writer was describing the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching, NCCAT, the same facility where as a SERVE program director, I annually convened the Southeastern State Teachers of the Year Advisory Committee.
So I’ve been to the Cullowhee, NC facility many times. In my ignorance, however, I never realized that my sans-TV, single-bulb-lamp, twin-bed, bring-your-own-linens accommodations were as elegant as they now seem to be. It is true, however, that each room had its own bathroom--with a shower. The extravagance. The horror.
The other thing you should know is that NCCAT, brainchild of Governor James B. Hunt, serves the professional development needs of over 5,000 teachers annually. Typically delivered in five-day sessions, the learning focuses on artistic, cultural, and historical topics including among others pottery, global warming, and holistic health.
As it turns out, some members of the NC General Assembly want to cut from the budget what Mr. Bass calls “lavish accommodations” featuring “rambling stone buildings, and finely manicured landscaping [that] could be mistaken for a upscale mountain retreat.”
Mr. Bass writes that NCCAT boasts “an idyllic lake, nature trails, and gardens complete with picnic tables, benches, and fountains.” It has a “computer lab, indoor amphitheater, library, a health and wellness facility, and an extensive art collection.” Meals are also served “in a multilevel dining room that looks out on the gently rolling Appalachian Mountains.”
Well, that’s true. In fact, all these things are all true. The other thing I remember is that the teachers from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina were all envious of what North Carolina had in NCCAT. North Carolina has been the envy of southeastern states in more ways than one. But I fear we may be poised to experience a self-inflicted wound, recovery from which will be long in the making.
What, I would ask Mr. Bass, do our public school teachers deserve? Would pup tents and beef jerky be the sort of reward for the work we ritualistically implore high school students to take up in the cause of common schooling for a democratic society? What exactly is your vision of public education and professional learning, Mr. Bass?
Folks, I could go on and on with this topic. But I cannot apologize for valuing our public school teachers and suggesting that eliminating funding for NCCAT is so ill-advised, it is not even funny. NCCAT is symbolic of all that is good, decent, and frankly, sane, about recognizing teaching and teachers as the economic driver of our economy that it is.
Whether you are a business person or an educator, you should be concerned about this ill-advised proposal from where-ever it comes. Speak up or sit down. There’s no in between. “Club Ed,” no, but it should be and we should be standing in line to fund it.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
The Social Compact
I love my son, Chris. It is true that he is taking the "scenic route" through college, but just when I start to stew about it, he hands me a book he is studying in one of his classes and says, "Dad, I think you will enjoy this." He is nearly always right. There is as usual a leadership lesson hiding in the narrative I hope you now feel enticed into reading.
The book Chris handed me last Sunday was one expounding ideas most educated people have learned something about but which has regrettably fallen from the national conversation. The book my son gave me was Basic Political Writings by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Educators generally encounter Rousseau in undergraduate school where professors connect him with the progressive or child-centered movement in schools today. Others, like my Chris, learn Rousseau in philosophy class.
What is important here and now was re-inserted recently into the language by President Obama, although I doubt one in a thousand people could identify in his remarks the writer from 18th century Geneva. The phrase is "social compact."
The "social compact," according to Rousseau, has its basis in nature where liberty is the natural state. As Rousseau observes, "men have reached the point at which the obstacles in the way of their preservation in the state of nature show their power of resistance to be greater than the resources at the disposal of each individual for his maintenance in that state." In other words, life is too complicated to go it alone.
But in agreeing to associate, Rousseau says we can preserve the state of nature because "each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody; and as there is no associate over whom he does not acquire the same right as he yields other over himself, he gains an equivalence for everything he loses, and an increase of force for the preservation of what he has."
So, "each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole." Were all that true. I have never seen our nation more divided and that saddens me. But I guess that is why Chris' class is called "Political Theory."
When I think, however, about the more than 1200 hours of face-to-face training that TLA offers, and the work of our consultants and principal network facilitators, I am rewarded by the extent to which we have built corporate capacity and received everyone as part of the whole. In my opinion, everyone is or can be a leader, regardless of job title, rank, and rate of pay. So how does our social compact show up?
TLA staff and consultants honor the general will in every group with whom we work though planning, delivering, and following up; we teach our customers how to facilitate agreement, maximize appropriate involvement, make conversation safe, hold people accountable, and search for sources of influence to increase the effective and quality of worklife for all within their circle of influence.
Most of all, we advance our social compact by living our mission statement: Changing leadership from the power and position of the few to the skillful collaborative practice of the many. I guess this sounds like bragging, but as the old fellow said, "It ain't braggin' if it's fact." I appreciate our association and wish you well in your others. What we have made, we made together. I think Rousseau would approve.
The book Chris handed me last Sunday was one expounding ideas most educated people have learned something about but which has regrettably fallen from the national conversation. The book my son gave me was Basic Political Writings by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Educators generally encounter Rousseau in undergraduate school where professors connect him with the progressive or child-centered movement in schools today. Others, like my Chris, learn Rousseau in philosophy class.
What is important here and now was re-inserted recently into the language by President Obama, although I doubt one in a thousand people could identify in his remarks the writer from 18th century Geneva. The phrase is "social compact."
The "social compact," according to Rousseau, has its basis in nature where liberty is the natural state. As Rousseau observes, "men have reached the point at which the obstacles in the way of their preservation in the state of nature show their power of resistance to be greater than the resources at the disposal of each individual for his maintenance in that state." In other words, life is too complicated to go it alone.
But in agreeing to associate, Rousseau says we can preserve the state of nature because "each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody; and as there is no associate over whom he does not acquire the same right as he yields other over himself, he gains an equivalence for everything he loses, and an increase of force for the preservation of what he has."
So, "each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole." Were all that true. I have never seen our nation more divided and that saddens me. But I guess that is why Chris' class is called "Political Theory."
When I think, however, about the more than 1200 hours of face-to-face training that TLA offers, and the work of our consultants and principal network facilitators, I am rewarded by the extent to which we have built corporate capacity and received everyone as part of the whole. In my opinion, everyone is or can be a leader, regardless of job title, rank, and rate of pay. So how does our social compact show up?
TLA staff and consultants honor the general will in every group with whom we work though planning, delivering, and following up; we teach our customers how to facilitate agreement, maximize appropriate involvement, make conversation safe, hold people accountable, and search for sources of influence to increase the effective and quality of worklife for all within their circle of influence.
Most of all, we advance our social compact by living our mission statement: Changing leadership from the power and position of the few to the skillful collaborative practice of the many. I guess this sounds like bragging, but as the old fellow said, "It ain't braggin' if it's fact." I appreciate our association and wish you well in your others. What we have made, we made together. I think Rousseau would approve.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Training "Stickiness"
Bear with me. I will tell you now that this blog would be even better if I were to show you a graphic. If, however, you are willing to use your imagination, I promise that the end of your imagining will be an understanding of why what we in professional learning call, "hit and run" training, rarely works.
So imagine a three-row, three-column table. Titles on the rows are the people involved in training--the trainer, of course, the learner, and the learner's manager. At the top of each column, envision the phases of training--before, during, and after. So far, so good.
Next imagine that we asked a thousand people to list possible actions, including analyzing performance gaps between current and ideal, planning, goal-setting, presenting, evaluating, and generally engaging in conversation around the training. Now put these actions into a survey and ask people to respond to the importance of each action taken at the various training phases by the various actors.
In terms of making the training "stick," what do you think is the rank of probable impact by phase and actor? If you are a trainer, you would like to think that the number one most important thing is actions taken by you, the trainer, during the training. You would be wrong. In the nine cells of the three-by-three table, trainer actions during training is not even in the top one-third of probable impact.
The number one predictor of effective training is (drum roll here) action taken by the trainer's manager before the training. Number two in impact is action taken by the trainer before the training. Number three refers to the manager and what he or she does after the training. Finally in a distant fourth place comes the trainer during the training. Interestingly, action taken by the learner falls into the bottom half of all impacts.
I wish I had conducted the research that exposed what I had suspected all along. Instead it was VitalSmart's social scientists whose work has resulted Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, Influencer, and soon-to-be released, Change Anything. In my experience, confirmed by research, training works best when it is embedded in organizational change and human performance improvement. Someone must lead the improvement and, generally, those someones are the managers.
In the last several months, we have featured in the TLA Monthly Update training results in three TLA intensive site schools, Forest Pines Drive Elementary School, Baucom Elementary School, and Lufkin Road Middle School in Wake County. In each case, the principal and TLA staff sat down and talked about how our training products could help their school. In one case, we customized training by designing it in-house.
In the other schools, we used proprietary products. But in every school, the principal participated in the training, talked with staff in between training sessions, and led conversations around the hoped-for change. After the event, TLA staff talked with the principal about what had happened and what might happen next. Is anyone now amazed that the staff in all three schools report that their improvement efforts have taken root?
I promised that you would leave understanding why "hit and run" training rarely works. If in the future TLA eliminates "open enrollment" training where folk come as they will and leave thinking that something significant has happened, you will understand why. Time is too short, resources too scarce, and our cause too important to be wasteful.
So imagine a three-row, three-column table. Titles on the rows are the people involved in training--the trainer, of course, the learner, and the learner's manager. At the top of each column, envision the phases of training--before, during, and after. So far, so good.
Next imagine that we asked a thousand people to list possible actions, including analyzing performance gaps between current and ideal, planning, goal-setting, presenting, evaluating, and generally engaging in conversation around the training. Now put these actions into a survey and ask people to respond to the importance of each action taken at the various training phases by the various actors.
In terms of making the training "stick," what do you think is the rank of probable impact by phase and actor? If you are a trainer, you would like to think that the number one most important thing is actions taken by you, the trainer, during the training. You would be wrong. In the nine cells of the three-by-three table, trainer actions during training is not even in the top one-third of probable impact.
The number one predictor of effective training is (drum roll here) action taken by the trainer's manager before the training. Number two in impact is action taken by the trainer before the training. Number three refers to the manager and what he or she does after the training. Finally in a distant fourth place comes the trainer during the training. Interestingly, action taken by the learner falls into the bottom half of all impacts.
I wish I had conducted the research that exposed what I had suspected all along. Instead it was VitalSmart's social scientists whose work has resulted Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, Influencer, and soon-to-be released, Change Anything. In my experience, confirmed by research, training works best when it is embedded in organizational change and human performance improvement. Someone must lead the improvement and, generally, those someones are the managers.
In the last several months, we have featured in the TLA Monthly Update training results in three TLA intensive site schools, Forest Pines Drive Elementary School, Baucom Elementary School, and Lufkin Road Middle School in Wake County. In each case, the principal and TLA staff sat down and talked about how our training products could help their school. In one case, we customized training by designing it in-house.
In the other schools, we used proprietary products. But in every school, the principal participated in the training, talked with staff in between training sessions, and led conversations around the hoped-for change. After the event, TLA staff talked with the principal about what had happened and what might happen next. Is anyone now amazed that the staff in all three schools report that their improvement efforts have taken root?
I promised that you would leave understanding why "hit and run" training rarely works. If in the future TLA eliminates "open enrollment" training where folk come as they will and leave thinking that something significant has happened, you will understand why. Time is too short, resources too scarce, and our cause too important to be wasteful.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Change
It's true. People hate change. I believe, however, that it is not so much that they hate change as it is that they hate being changed. What's the difference, you ask? In one case, change is a planned choice; in the other, change is thrust upon them. What does this mean for leadership?
In my mind, the leaders' challenge is to help people understand that without change, whether in the course of a human lifetime or the life of an organization, there is no growth. All nature intends on change, the movement from one state to another. A child is born, matures under the love of his parents, grows to adulthood, and leaves his parents who themselves continue to mature.
Deb and I went to Meredith College last night to hear a lecture by legendary choreographer and writer, Twyla Tharp. Seventy-years young, in her heyday Twyla worked with the best--Balenchine, Paul Taylor, Joffrey Ballet, Martha Graham. Her work has been an inspiration for people the world over. Here is what Tharp said about change: "The only thing I fear more than change is not changing."
You need not know much about dance (and I do not) to appreciate the wisdom of Tharp's confession. If at the end of the lecture, I had been as brave as the young women of Meredith College who came to the microphone to engage the artist, I would have said,
"Ms. Tharp, you have no cause to fear not changing. It is already happening despite your feelings. Get over it." There are things one may do, however, to habituate ones' self to "getting over" change. Chief among them is to periodically and dramatically get out of your comfort zone by initiating change.
For example, last Sunday morning, I ran Raleigh Rocks, one in a series of half-marathons sponsored by numerous corporate interests across North Carolina. That was the first time in my life--but probably not the last--that I have run that far. And I finished in less time than I had predicted--a "blazing" sub-10-minute mile that put me over the finish line in just over two hours. Not bad for an old guy.
For my personal victory, I have many people to thank--my trainer, colleague, and fellow Gold's Gym member, Ashley Lindsay; the unknown runner whom I picked out of the sixteen hundred-man field to pace me; Deborah, my wife and soul mate who fueled, comforted, and followed me on her bike during my longest training runs; Jim Palermo who drove from his North Raleigh home early Sunday morning to cheer me on halfway through the race. No leader stands (or runs) alone.
I continue to appreciate the readers of this blog who wish me well in my imminent change--retirement. Whatever comes next, I am ready. I have a lifelong habit of pushing myself out of whatever comfort zone in which I find myself. I am not unlike the change haters, but unlike the change haters who become paralyzed in their fear, I have learned to embrace it through practice. Maybe I will see you at Raleigh Rocks next year--or not. The choice, as always, is yours.
In my mind, the leaders' challenge is to help people understand that without change, whether in the course of a human lifetime or the life of an organization, there is no growth. All nature intends on change, the movement from one state to another. A child is born, matures under the love of his parents, grows to adulthood, and leaves his parents who themselves continue to mature.
Deb and I went to Meredith College last night to hear a lecture by legendary choreographer and writer, Twyla Tharp. Seventy-years young, in her heyday Twyla worked with the best--Balenchine, Paul Taylor, Joffrey Ballet, Martha Graham. Her work has been an inspiration for people the world over. Here is what Tharp said about change: "The only thing I fear more than change is not changing."
You need not know much about dance (and I do not) to appreciate the wisdom of Tharp's confession. If at the end of the lecture, I had been as brave as the young women of Meredith College who came to the microphone to engage the artist, I would have said,
"Ms. Tharp, you have no cause to fear not changing. It is already happening despite your feelings. Get over it." There are things one may do, however, to habituate ones' self to "getting over" change. Chief among them is to periodically and dramatically get out of your comfort zone by initiating change.
For example, last Sunday morning, I ran Raleigh Rocks, one in a series of half-marathons sponsored by numerous corporate interests across North Carolina. That was the first time in my life--but probably not the last--that I have run that far. And I finished in less time than I had predicted--a "blazing" sub-10-minute mile that put me over the finish line in just over two hours. Not bad for an old guy.
For my personal victory, I have many people to thank--my trainer, colleague, and fellow Gold's Gym member, Ashley Lindsay; the unknown runner whom I picked out of the sixteen hundred-man field to pace me; Deborah, my wife and soul mate who fueled, comforted, and followed me on her bike during my longest training runs; Jim Palermo who drove from his North Raleigh home early Sunday morning to cheer me on halfway through the race. No leader stands (or runs) alone.
I continue to appreciate the readers of this blog who wish me well in my imminent change--retirement. Whatever comes next, I am ready. I have a lifelong habit of pushing myself out of whatever comfort zone in which I find myself. I am not unlike the change haters, but unlike the change haters who become paralyzed in their fear, I have learned to embrace it through practice. Maybe I will see you at Raleigh Rocks next year--or not. The choice, as always, is yours.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Out of the Blue
I'm sure it's happened to you. You come to work, seat yourself, fire up your computer, become momentarily stunned by the screen full of unread messages, steel yourself for the long slog, then wham! Out of the blue, you get a phone call.
If you have taken FiSH training with Triangle Leadership Academy, you know what to do. The person on the other end of that phone line becomes your total focus as the rest of the world recedes. That person is a customer. You are already excited about someone whose day you are about to make. You are ready to catch the potential and release the energy. You smile first then pick up the receiver.
If I had nothing of significance to report this evening before I answered that telephone call this morning, I certainly found then exactly what I needed to share now. My out-of-the-blue moment came when a voice on the other end of the line said,
"Hello, Dr. Bingham. This is Mary May from Stanford Middle School in Orange County. You probably don't remember me but I took Facilitative Leadership with you a little over a year ago. I remembered that you were once a band director and I have a problem that relates both to that and an upcoming meeting that I need some help with."
"Mary, of course I remember you. How have you been?" I said. I honestly did remember Mary and when she started to relate how she had been using the FL tools in her role as President of the North Carolina Bandmasters Association, I realized that my impression of her as an extraordinarily intelligent professional had not been in error. After some small talk, she drilled down on her problem.
It seems that since my trading the band room for the principal's office nearly 25 years ago, some things have not changed. Apparently, the instrument used by band contest adjudicators remains imperfect and of minimal value in helping new and struggling band teachers convey to their students what really matters in quality performance. Yet some directors have been rewarded by the imperfect system through high ratings at the annual contest. Guess who is opposed to change?
"How can I get all the directors to understand that we need to adopt an adjudication instrument that serves both directors and students well? Mary asked.
Can you see yourself in Mary's shoes? If you substitute "directors" for your employees or stakeholders and "adjudication instrument" for the thing standing between you and success, you will relate instantly. How indeed do you get people to change? At that moment, I was wishing Mary had also engaged in one or more of our VitalSmarts offerings, for example, Influencer training.
Without going into further detail, I assured Mary that she had tools sufficient for the task, asked her a series of questions to surface what she already knew, and offered to review an agenda she was planning for her next meeting. I think she felt better. I know I did.
This experience affirmed in a single setting the value of our work, you and me, in this thing called Triangle Leadership Academy. I have heard from many "Marys" in the last six years, and I am grateful to have been in a position to help them all.
What downstream impact on teachers not in training and families and students of those teachers remains uncertain. What we do know is that since becoming a regional leadership development consultancy, we have enjoyed 15-20 thousand customer touches. Donna is still crunching the numbers. Some days, it's good enough just to know that, out of the blue, Mary called.
If you have taken FiSH training with Triangle Leadership Academy, you know what to do. The person on the other end of that phone line becomes your total focus as the rest of the world recedes. That person is a customer. You are already excited about someone whose day you are about to make. You are ready to catch the potential and release the energy. You smile first then pick up the receiver.
If I had nothing of significance to report this evening before I answered that telephone call this morning, I certainly found then exactly what I needed to share now. My out-of-the-blue moment came when a voice on the other end of the line said,
"Hello, Dr. Bingham. This is Mary May from Stanford Middle School in Orange County. You probably don't remember me but I took Facilitative Leadership with you a little over a year ago. I remembered that you were once a band director and I have a problem that relates both to that and an upcoming meeting that I need some help with."
"Mary, of course I remember you. How have you been?" I said. I honestly did remember Mary and when she started to relate how she had been using the FL tools in her role as President of the North Carolina Bandmasters Association, I realized that my impression of her as an extraordinarily intelligent professional had not been in error. After some small talk, she drilled down on her problem.
It seems that since my trading the band room for the principal's office nearly 25 years ago, some things have not changed. Apparently, the instrument used by band contest adjudicators remains imperfect and of minimal value in helping new and struggling band teachers convey to their students what really matters in quality performance. Yet some directors have been rewarded by the imperfect system through high ratings at the annual contest. Guess who is opposed to change?
"How can I get all the directors to understand that we need to adopt an adjudication instrument that serves both directors and students well? Mary asked.
Can you see yourself in Mary's shoes? If you substitute "directors" for your employees or stakeholders and "adjudication instrument" for the thing standing between you and success, you will relate instantly. How indeed do you get people to change? At that moment, I was wishing Mary had also engaged in one or more of our VitalSmarts offerings, for example, Influencer training.
Without going into further detail, I assured Mary that she had tools sufficient for the task, asked her a series of questions to surface what she already knew, and offered to review an agenda she was planning for her next meeting. I think she felt better. I know I did.
This experience affirmed in a single setting the value of our work, you and me, in this thing called Triangle Leadership Academy. I have heard from many "Marys" in the last six years, and I am grateful to have been in a position to help them all.
What downstream impact on teachers not in training and families and students of those teachers remains uncertain. What we do know is that since becoming a regional leadership development consultancy, we have enjoyed 15-20 thousand customer touches. Donna is still crunching the numbers. Some days, it's good enough just to know that, out of the blue, Mary called.
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