Tag Archives: leadership

Surface tension

Have you ever seen a water balloon being popped in slow motion? The ballon is punctured and shrinks to its pre-blown up size leaving, for a brief moment, the water in the shape of the balloon.

After the balloon is gone, surface tension holds the shape, keeping the memory of the ballon even if for the briefest moment, only visible in slow motion.

How many places in our life do we let surface tension linger?

A frustrating tone is shared, and instead of a calm response, surface tension lingers and frustration is returned.

Concern. Anger. Greed. Envy. Distraught. These are all things that can hold surface tension. They can keep their shape even when there is nothing left to hold them in place.

It’s easy to see on the outside, when others are holding on to it. It’s hard to see on the inside, when the tension is on our surface.

We can try to keep the tension or we can help it dissipate. A pause and a deep breath can help. But trying to fix things doesn’t always help. You can’t stretch a popped balloon back around the water ballon. You can help to catch the falling water.

Our reactions can keep surface tension, or they can let that tension go.

A conversation about culture

I had a great conversation last night with colleagues, Principals and Vice Principals, at our Professional Development Dinner. We broke into table groups based on the books we had read, or in my case listened to. Culture Code is a great book, and one that I listened to while on my treadmill this summer. I really enjoy audio books but this is one that I wish I had a hard copy of. It is filled with gems of ideas, but I didn’t bookmark them and it is too hard to go back in an audio book to find specific sections unless they were bookmarked.

Luckily for me, the book was just a launching point to a great conversation. I tried to summarize some key ideas at the end of the talk and this was what I came up with. I’ll start with a quote Bryan shared with us, (I’m not sure of the source):

“You have to belong to a place before you can transform it.”

We talked about the challenge of coming into a place as a new leader and how people need to feel safe before they are willing to trust and work with you. Until you build a relationship it is challenging to meaningfully lead and offer up your strengths. We also discussed 5 other ideas that we thought were really important:
  1. Agency – We all want to have agency and feel empowered. If we don’t help to give others agency, they won’t feel valued.
  2. Listen! Be present – Give people your full attention. This is especially important when someone comes to you with something that is urgent to them, even if you don’t think it is urgent.
  3. Listen! Rather than solve – Don’t try to fix or share a similar example. Coming from a teacher background, we all want to help fix the situation, we all have experiences that are relatable, but we should start by truly listening and recognizing that it is better to be heard than to be related to. 
  4. Show vulnerability (as a colleague and a leader). Be willing to say ’sorry’ and to let your staff know that you don’t know everything. 
  5. Willingness to go to the hard places. It’s not enough to gloss over things and hope they go away, or to make decisions because they are popular. 
 
Final thoughts:
Culture doesn’t develop on its own, and if it does, it’s probably not the culture you want. Building a good culture can be a slow process and yet destroying a good culture can happen very quickly. We had a great conversation at our table and I am glad that I work with an amazing group of leaders who have made these kinds of conversations part of our learning culture.
Ben-Horowitz-Leadership-Quote

Tough Leadership Decisions

Here is a great quote by Ben Horowitz on the Tim Ferris Podcast:

“One of the most important kind of leadership skills:

…If you make decisions that everybody likes all the time, then those are the decisions that they would make without you. So, you are not actually adding any value… Almost by definition a lot of the most important decisions end up being ones that people don’t agree with, don’t like, and are difficult, and cause people not to like you, at least for a while.”

I’ve shared before that “As a leader if we don’t have relationships where we can go to the hard places, then we aren’t being the best leaders we can be.” The Horowitz quote adds a whole other element to this. We really are not being leaders if we are only making decisions that would happen without us. If that’s not what we are doing, then we will obviously be making decisions that not everyone will approve of. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we don’t try to create a common vision, and it doesn’t excuse us from treating everyone as team members who can contribute to that vision… but sometimes we need to make hard, unpopular decisions.

Something that I can critique myself on, and that others might be able to empathize with, is that sometimes I delay those hard, uncomfortable conversations or redirections for too long. I spend too much time trying to get everyone on board with a new idea, or I walk on eggshells leading up to the shift. One thing we do need to recognize is that sometimes our decisions can affect others far more than they affect us, and so the readiness for change is not always evenly distributed. Resistance can come from unexpected places, and ripple in unforeseen ways. This isn’t always because of poor leadership or communication, but rather something we need to respond to after making tough leadership decisions.

Change is hard to lead. These 3 images (and the accompanying blog post) examine the challenges of embracing change, resisting change, and also inspiring change.

But as Ben points out, even when we work hard to inspire change, sometimes we have to make unpopular decisions, ones that not everyone will agree with. At that point, you aren’t going to win a popularity contest, and you aren’t necessarily going to be inspiring. But it is in these moments that you’ve got to decide if it is more important to go to the hard places of making such decisions, or if you would rather do something that could be done without you there as a leader?

I think truly great leaders define themselves when they are making tough leadership decisions, rather than when they are making popular decisions. Although when it is you that has to make those decisions, it doesn’t feel always feel great. Ben continues in the podcast to describe this feeling as ‘running towards the darkness’. When you are making tough, unpopular decisions you can feel alone and uncertain, but that’s probably better for your organization than yielding to decisions that are easier to make, but less likely to have a favourable outcome.

Ben-Horowitz-Leadership-Quote

Between a Rock and a Hard Place (and…)

The origin of the idiom ‘between a rock and a hard place’ can be found in ancient Greek mythology. In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus must pass between Charybdis, a treacherous whirlpool, and Scylla, a horrid man-eating, cliff-dwelling monster. Ever since, saying one is stuck between a rock (the cliff) and a hard place (the whirlpool) has been a way to succinctly describe being in a dilemma. (source)

There is a simple strategy that I often use, both for myself and when working with students, that seems to help when I/they are stuck ‘between a rock and a hard place’. The strategy is to find a 3rd choice. The interesting thing is that the 3rd choice doesn’t have to be great, it can be worse than the other two, but it does something tricky to your brain. When you have to choose between two tough choices, you can think of it as a scale, and you weigh things on either side. The problem is that you think of one side and add weight, then you think of the other side and you add weight there too. Your brian does this indecision dance between the two tough choices, never really allowing you to pick one over the other.

Sometimes, by seeking out a 3rd option, you can discover something you would not have thought of when putting yourself in a dichotomy. However, if you are truly stuck between a rock and a hard place, you probably don’t have a good 3rd option and so the 3rd option is often even worse.

When you add a 3rd (undesired) choice, you can no longer look at the problem as if it is on a scale. The extra option becomes a comparison point for the other two choices. So what your brain does is that it weighs your original two options against the new option, instead of against each other. When this happens, one of those options will often seem better than the other, in a way that comparing just the two on their own didn’t.

When dealing with students, this also helps give them an ‘out’. Often a student is choosing between doing the right thing which is uncomfortable, or accepting a consequence. In this situation, it might seem logical for a kid to make the ‘good’ choice. However, an oppositional student, or a student that is embarrassed, might actually choose the more painful choice. It’s not like they are actually choosing it, they are choosing not to do the thing you want them to do as an act of defiance. A third choice takes away the oppositional response. Now they have to weigh three things, and the better choice looks significantly better than the other two.

So the next time you are stuck between a rock and a hard place, you can torture yourself with a tough and unclear decision, you can avoid the problem altogether (knowing full well that it won’t go away), or you can come up with a 3rd choice to help you decide… it’s up to you!

Empowering students

Inquiry Hub is a small school. We don’t have a lot of grads, but we have grown enough that we need to switch venues for our Annual/Graduation. We run this event together, for our entire school community, so that our grads have a full auditorium at their ceremony.

For this special event, the presentations and entertainment are organized by our students and teachers together. At the event, our students run the show, with teachers handing out awards, and students providing the entertainment. Last year we packed the small auditorium, and with 8 more grads this year, the search for a new location began.

Two of my grads did the research and presented me with a couple options. We started inquiring about dates and costs, and by ‘we’, I mean my students did, presenting the final suggestion to me. My job, pay the deposit and set up the first technical visit.

That visit was today. We looked at the stage set-up, I shared my thoughts and ideas, and while a few were taken, a few weren’t. When the meeting with the booking coordinator was over, we thanked her and she said, “It’s funny, this whole time, until you came in today, I thought I was corresponding with teachers.” She had no idea that all the setup and communication (other than me joining in to sign the papers and pay) was done by students.

I thanked her and told her that these students, Jazmine & Antoni, would continue to be her main contacts for the event, other than final payment. The first 5 minutes of the drive home, the car ride was silent, while these two students made notes on their phones.

The one big realization that I needed to remind them of was that unlike last year, they would be in grad gowns in the front seats, and other students would have to work back stage. They assured me that the 2 students that were being groomed last year were ready to take on the challenge, and they were not available today or they would have joined us. I guess I should have known that already, but if I didn’t trust them then I wouldn’t really be empowering them.

I’m not pretending that there won’t be a lot for myself, my teachers, and my PAC (Parent Advisory Council) to do, to ensure that the event goes smoothly. But, I also know that what will make this celebration extra special is that it will look and feel like it was student run, with a level of quality that surpasses what you’d expect from a student run event. Why? Because when students feel truly empowered, they shine.

The Vampire Rule for Email

I apply a key vampire rule to give my staff a break from work emails.

After 6 PM staff only get emails from me if the email is invited in. In other words, if they have asked me a question and want an answer, then a response has been invited. But if that invitation for a response isn’t there, I delay email delivery until the next morning.

So like a vampire at the front door, I can’t enter (with email) if I have something to share that is not initiated (and therefore invited in) by my staff. New topics are set to be delivered early the next morning.

From dinner time on, and on weekends, the vampire invitation rule applies for my outgoing emails to staff.

Email Workflow- A Generic Response

Email can be overwhelming. Here is something I’m thinking of trying. I plan to make this one of my email signatures, so I just have to select the signature, when appropriate, and hit ‘send’… Then move on.

Please help me make it better!

– – – – –

Greetings,

This is a generic email response to your email below. I receive over 150 emails a day. In my role, running 3 schools, I spend a lot of time away from my desk. This is one of my attempts to direct more of my energy towards my students and teachers, and other parts of my job that should matter more than responding to emails.

If you are receiving this email, please know that:

  1. I read your email.
  2. I thought you deserved a response.
  3. I’m not interested in pursuing what you are offering, or following up on this matter beyond this email.
  4. I am not interested in a response to this email.

Please accept this email with the positive intent with which I sent it… an opportunity to politely respond, while also minimizing the onslaught of emails and email conversations that I receive daily.

Regards, Dave.

Think Good Thoughts, Say Good Words, Do Good Deeds. 

– – – – –

Objective: Reduce interactions

• If I don’t respond, I get a follow-up email.

• If I do respond, I get a follow-up response… even a ‘Thank you’ means one more email to look at.

What do you think? Also, what other email strategies work for you?

Beyond Good ~ Seth’s Blog: Moving beyond teachers and bosses

We train kids to deal with teachers in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to work on. Figure out how to say back exactly what they want to hear, with the least amount of effort, and you are a ‘good student.’

We train employees to deal with bosses in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to do. Figure out how to do exactly what they want, with the least amount of effort, and the last risk of failure and you are a ‘good worker.’

via sethgodin.typepad.com

Good enough is not good enough!

So many things about the structure of our schools today promote this… promote the next generation of worker bees who drone on and do ‘what needs to be done’ instead of ‘what’s possible’.

How do we UN-standardize our schools?

It starts with the smallest of points…
“A paragraph ‘needs’ to have 5 sentences.”
… Which produces a class full of mediocre 5 sentence paragraphs.

To the biggest of points…
“I can’t“
… Whether this is a response from a teacher or a student.

As Seth says at the end of his post: “The opportunity of our age is to get out of this boss as teacher as taskmaster as limiter mindset…”

What are our students capable of if we foster their creativity and get tests and curriculum and scheduled blocks and ‘busywork due the next day’ out of the way?

How do we move beyond educators as taskmasters?

Good enough is not good enough!