Tag Archives: leadership

The Thoughtful Ones

“We pay too much attention to the most confident voices- and too little attention to the most thoughtful ones.

Certainty is not a sign of credibility.

Speaking assertively is not a substitute for thinking deeply.

It’s better to learn from complex thinkers than smooth talkers.” ~ Adam Grant

Of course confident voices can also be credible voices. One can speak assertively and still think deeply. A complex thinker can also be a smooth talker. This isn’t a dichotomous contrast but rather a recognition of why we should pay attention to a confident voice. Or, when to seek out the opinion of someone not as in the limelight or as extraverted, yet thinks deeply.

There are too many confident people in the world that are loud but not worth listening to. This is the group to be worried about: The shallow thinkers that are vocal and garner more attention than they deserve. Seek out the deep thinkers and pay attention to them no matter their inclination to be assertive and heard.

Nobody told me

Nobody told me that there would be days where all I do is go to meetings and deal with emergent issues. Or how important it would be to deal with these emergent issues immediately. Nobody told me that my priorities would be whatever other’s priorities are, and that my priorities would take a back seat on my to-do-list truck of things that need to get done.

But that is the job. It’s about getting everyone on the same truck, going the same direction, while emergent issues come at you from any and every direction. The biggest challenge: making sure you have enough gas in the tank… both metaphorically and literally.

Nobody told me there would be days like these. Strange days indeed!

Challenging Advice

Cal Newport, author of several books including, Deep Work – Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, was on the Sam Harris podcast. I listed to it over the past 3 days and a couple interesting things were discussed.

First of all, Cal has no social media profiles, despite studying social media as part of the research work he does. While I think that’s interesting, I don’t think that I’d want to do that myself. I have drastically reduced my time on social media over the past few years, with time on all sites going down significantly to barely a few minutes a day… other than Tiktok which I will spend up to 30 minutes maximum a day Monday to Thursday, and longer on weekends. Tiktok is more like television to me than social media because I don’t spend any time trying to look at my specific network and let the algorithm decide what I watch next. I watch almost no television and consider TikTok an alternative option to the TV. But while I’ve lowered the social of social media use, I’m not ready to delete or ignore the accounts I have.

The second thing Cal said was that he refined his ideas around doing Deep Work to:

  • Do fewer things;
  • Work at a natural pace; and
  • obsess over quality.

This sounds great! It’s just not workable in most jobs. If I had a job where I could do this, I’d never want to retire. But the reality of my job, and many other management jobs, is that I simply don’t have that luxury.

I want to do more things, because most of the time I spend on things I need to do rather than what I want to do. My pace is often dictated in a reactionary way, rather than a pace I actually choose. And while quality really matters, I’m often working on timelines that force me to do what’s necessary and then move on.

I’ve discussed this before, the challenge of doing ‘what you need to do’ consumes so much time and energy that there is little of either left for doing ‘things you want to do’. And so it’s not easy to take Cal’s advice. While it is laudable, it’s not realistic to try to achieve. I think writers and artists and similar creative endeavours can aspire to do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality, but most people simply don’t have the luxury to do so. Still that doesn’t mean these things aren’t desirable… I just don’t know anyone who works at a school that can say these are attainable goals.

Days without scripts

One of my favourite quotes about school leadership comes from Gary, a VP that I had early in my career. He shared this with me after a typically crazy day at our middle school, “Being a Vice Principal is only a 3 to 4 hour a day job… the problem is that you get almost none of it done between 8:30am and 4pm.”

Yesterday afternoon was like that. The over-the-top moment came when someone driving out of the side street, across from our school parking lot, missed her turn, drove into our parking lot, and collided with 2 parked cars. Then she tried to leave the scene yelling that we had a picture of her license plate and no, we didn’t need to see her driver’s license or insurance. After she couldn’t get her car off the curb, she left on foot.

Fortunately that’s when the police arrived and she was apprehended. Speculating, based on how fast she was going, how far off of her intended direction she ended up, trying to leave the scene, and her irate behavior, I think she was was probably inebriated.

Just another normal day at school. No, I’m not saying bizarre parking lot accidents happen all the time, but rather the totally unexpected does. One minute you are working on a task and your day feels quite typical, and the next your entire day is turned upside down by an unexpected issue or event.

It’s the small part of your contract that this falls under: “Other duties as assigned.” Except these emergent issues aren’t really assigned as much as thrust upon you. It’s the leaky pipe sending water gushing down a wall. It’s the messy clean up during the hours in the day when you don’t have a custodian in the building. It’s the student missing from a class. It’s just about anything except the thing you thought you were going to do. Plans go out the window, you go off your planned script, and the issue in front of you builds a new agenda.

…and the days ends with you either staying later than you had hoped, taking work home with you, and/or moving things from today’s ‘To Do’ list to tomorrow’s.

“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” ~Robert Burns

The limits of goals

Listen to this podcast of Adam Grant interviewing Emmanuel Acho. Emmanuel shares this quote, without identifying the source and Google hasn’t helped me find it:

“Reaching a goal is the penalty you receive for setting one.”

Soon after, Adam Grant summarizes,

“You like goals on tasks but maybe not goals in life. If I am working on a specific project or if I’m trying to build a specific skill, fine, give me a target I will work towards it, I will grow because of it. But having a goal from my life, that’s where the penalty really hurts by limiting myself.”

Emmanuel then talks about setting objectives rather than goals:

”An objective is energy aimed in a direction… so I want to aim my energy in a direction without any limit.”

I have never been big on goal setting. I think it’s too easy to set goals that are underwhelming and achieve them than it is to truly step out beyond expectations and do something amazing. I think goals impose self-created roadblocks that aren’t there before the goals are set.

That doesn’t mean you don’t dream big. It doesn’t mean you don’t work hard. On the contrary, you arrive for new heights all the time, you just don’t create false end-goals that prevent you from going beyond.

Goals have a purpose, but they should not be your purpose. Your purpose should be greater than the limits goals place on you.

Priorities Versus Motivation

“Get your priorities straight.”

That’s a term you’ve probably heard at some point in your life. But more than likely it means, ‘your priorities don’t match mine.’ The thing is, it’s hard for people to all have the same priorities at the same time. Sure sports team members all want to win a game, but a player in a defensive position moving too far forward trying to score could jeopardize giving up a goal.

Even when the goal is the same people in different roles need to have different priorities. It’s easy to project your priorities on other people, much harder to recognize other’s priorities when they don’t match yours. Even when the motivations are the same priorities can be different. At this point, what’s more important, the priorities or the motivation? I think more often than not people look at what they think others prioritize and lose track of what the motivation is for their actions, and that creates unnecessary conflict.

‘A’ Game

I had a conversation with a colleague in another district yesterday. I was thanking him for suggesting a great book I’m listening to. We talked about the unique nature of our jobs and he said something that hit a chord with me. He said that while he likes his job as an online school principal, and how unique the challenges are, he’s tired of feeling like there are too many things that come at him at once to give his ‘A’ game all the time. He mentioned that it feels like the best he can do is a ‘C’ or a ‘C+’.

He said, “But that’s not how I like to operate. When I was a teacher I had a lot of control about what my day looked like. Sure, I couldn’t bring my ‘A’ game to every single thing I did, but most of my day was determined by me, and I could regularly bring my ‘A’ game. I can’t do that in this job even though I want to.”

I totally get it. It’s like this job is a juggling act and every time you think you can put on a good show, someone adds one more ball to the balls you are juggling. You looked and felt confident juggling 4 balls, and suddenly you are fumbling with a 5th. Just as you feel good about the 5th ball, a 6th is thrown in. You spend more time picking up the balls than you do juggling. A juggler isn’t showing you their ‘A’ game when they are picking balls up off the floor.

My colleague and I both agreed that we like our jobs, and we want to stay where we are, but lamented about our ability to have control over our days… to decide at the start of the day how many balls we were going to juggle that day. I think that’s something every principal feels and understands. We like our jobs, we just wish we could bring our ‘A’ game to it a little more often.

Student led tours

After a long period without visitors to our school, we are slowly starting to get people visiting to learn more about Inquiry Hub again. When guests do the tour, I don’t go with them. I greet them, introduce them to a student, send them on their way, and encourage them to ask their tour guide and other students what it’s really like at the school. I’ll sometimes joke, like I did yesterday when I said, “Claire will show you around and after I leave you she can give you real dirt on the school.” Claire, in grade 11 and wanting to give tours since her no-visitor-mask–and-stay-separate-pandemic-grade-9-year, played right along, joking about how horrible it is to go to the school. Good for a laugh to break the ice and start the tour off relaxed.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t give Claire pointers to talk about, but there is no script. I want to make sure she talks about the inquiry courses, the supports provided, and the schedule, but I honestly don’t know exactly what Claire shared with the visitor. She gave her version of the school not mine.

And inevitably, whether it was Claire, or any of my previous guides, when the visitor comes back to the office, I hear what an amazing ambassador my tour guide was. I also encourage visitors to talk to other students about the school and their projects, and I know when they took my advice because they tell me they did ask, and how great our students are.

I had a similar experience as a visitor at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, and High Tech High in California. Both with engaged students, passionate about their schools, giving me the tours, and me talking to random students that would answer my questions.

The reality is that the tour would not be as good if I tried to provide the narrative. It wouldn’t be as authentic. Do the students miss sharing anything important? Probably. But visitors will ask questions, and learn what they need to, or they can ask me after the tour. But the magic happens when students are trusted to be the ambassadors and not just presenters… and when they are trusted to lead, without an adult present. After all, isn’t it their school?

The struggle is real

This is the time of year that I really struggle to find balance. School startup is over but the pace of the new year hasn’t slowed. Emails are pouring in faster than I can manage them. My desk is a mess… and it seems that most of my days are filled with priority ‘must do’ items and almost no ‘want to do items’.

I’m managing more than leading, and I come home exhausted. It’s hard to keep the motivation going when it feels like momentum is swaying against you. Worse still, I’m writing this past my bedtime because I can’t fall asleep and so figure that I should get this out of the way and sleep in a bit later… if I’m up I may as well be productive.

I’ll keep my healthy living routine going, and try to get to bed earlier tomorrow. I’ll block a bit of time to get a little scope and sequence to the rest of my week. And, I’ll take care of a few big priorities that I know will ease the pressure I’m feeling. The challenge is that schools can throw a wench into the best laid plans and completely disrupt the machinery of the day.

Sometimes you just have to struggle through, knowing that things will eventually ease up. Until then it’s go, go, go. And on that note, I need to go to sleep!

I teach leadership not followship

It was my second year as a teacher and my Vice Principal pulled me aside late in Semester 1 and asked me if I’d be interested in teaching a couple leadership classes instead of Physical Education as my electives in Semester 2. I think another teacher was slated for this and it was a change he wanted to make. He told me that it would be a great opportunity for me because I would co-teach it on Day-1 with an experienced teacher, and then on my own with another class on Day-2. He made it seem like I’d be doing him a favour saying yes, but I thought I was the one getting a golden opportunity offered to me. And it was!

The teacher I got to work with was Dave Sands. Dave became my first mentor, and to this day one of my most valued friends. We meet weekly for walks and today we were talking about old times and I brought up how much this opportunity transformed my teaching career. I ended up doing my Masters thesis on Student Leadership, and a large part of my leadership philosophy was developed from this opportunity.

“I teach leadership, not followship.” 

This was a quote Dave often said to students. It was the mantra of the course, and something not just said, but lived. Dave would run activities and lessons that encouraged students to pull the lesson out on their own. And whenever there were activities run by the class, they were authentically student run. There would be a prompt, “Here’s what we need to do,” or “Let’s plan this event,” then students would design the activity or schedule, then after the event there was always a reflection afterwards.

Students ran the events. Students stepped up, tried new things, succeeded and sometimes failed… but they always had ownership, and always learned from their experience. When Dave left, it left a void that I felt I couldn’t fill on my own. I distributed the leadership of student leadership across other teachers and we developed an out of the schedule leadership program that about 1/3 of the Grade 8’s signed up for each year. As it grew, so did the distributed model of giving others leadership over different aspects of the program.

From my Master’s paper:

“Leadership is getting others to do what the group needs to get done, Because they want to do it.” …

A Working Definition of Leadership

Before being able to investigate what meaningful student leadership is or can be, there needs to be some consideration as to what leadership itself is. It is evident that any currently usable definition of leadership would in fact be very different than a usable definition from only thirty years ago. Senge (1990) sees the traditional leader of the past as the charismatic decision maker and/or the hero. In this view, myths of great leaders coming to the rescue in times of crisis perpetuate the view of leaders as heroes, and “they reinforce a focus on short-term events and charismatic heroes rather than on systemic forces and collective learning” (p. 8). Senge sees current leaders in a different light, he sees them as, “designers, teachers, and stewards. These roles require new skills: the ability to build shared vision, to bring to the surface and challenge prevailing mental models, and to foster more systemic patterns of thinking” (p.9). These new skills require leaders to be thinkers and learners.

The quote I started this paper off with is an adaptation of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s quote, “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” I adapted this quote several years ago to better fit with the times as well as to fit with my own ideas of shared leadership. The focus on a ‘top-down’ leader in Eisenhower’s quote was very appropriate for its’ time, however, today it is more fitting for a leader to be concerned with the group’s or team’s goals.

The quote, subtly but poignantly reworded, states, “Leadership is getting others to do, what the group needs to get done, because they want to do it.” Within this quote there is: a suggestion of influence, getting others to do a task; a suggestion of service, aiding the group rather than just the leader; a suggestion of inclusion, doing what the group wants; a suggestion of teamwork, working within a group; and, a suggestion of motivation or inspiration, getting people to want to assist you or the group. A lot of literature on student leadership focuses on the first three points, influence, service and inclusion. Literature focused specifically on either teamwork or motivating others, as principal themes, tends to relate to managers, primarily in the realm of business and not nearly as much in education.

In considering a definition of leadership that functions well when considering student leadership in a middle school, I think that leadership pertains to getting students to be of service to others, while teaching them to effectively influence and motivate others. This can be successfully accomplished when students work in inclusionary groups or teams that create and take advantage of opportunities to act as servant leaders.

Creating leaders, not followers. That’s the underlying lesson. Too often leaders run activities such that they are the lead and those around them follow. “Students we need to… and we need people in the following roles… and here is the ‘to do’ list… and …and …and.”

It’s more than just a subtle shift to change this to providing students with an authentic leadership opportunity.

Prompt: Here is the task/activity/opportunity. How shall we do this?

Activity: Authentically planned and organized by students.

Reflection: How did it go? What went well? What could have been better? What would you do differently if we did this again?

Empowering students. Letting them lead. Teaching leadership, not followship.