Think about the school leadership training you received. Maybe you were taught to write a vision statement, create a strategic plan, and craft SMART goals. Maybe the training said you needed to get in the classroom more? Look at more data. Or give better feedback to teachers with that perfect script of hard conversations. This was the way to get everyone on board and moving together, with purpose, toward the goals you set.

That’s what a school leader does.

The post Why School Leadership Fails but Buildership® Works appeared first on Mindsteps Inc..

As educators, we’re constantly learning. And yet, with all the options for great PD out there, how do you streamline your own professional learning so that it’s right for you. In this week’s article, we share 6 ways to take the overwhelm out of your PD experience and get what you really need.

This is a topic near and dear to my heart especially as we’ve looked at how we deliver professional learning here at Mindsteps. One of the critical changes we’ve made is to make PD much more personal. That means that in every workshop we create, we build in opportunities for you to apply what you are learning immediately to your own practice, using your own materials. That way, you know exactly how to use what you learn in your own classroom and can be sure that you’ll make a huge impact with your students as a result.

(NOTE: click here if you want to schedule a PD session at your school or organization this year​​).

It’s all about cutting through the fluff and designing a PD experience that actually matters.

Here are six ways to cut through the fluff and get the most out of your professional learning.

• Purge your files. Those handouts you’ve been saving from workshops of yore? Those PowerPoint slides you’ve been holding onto? It’s time to send them to the recycle bin. The truth is, if you haven’t looked at them by now, you won’t read them. Ever.
• Select an area to work on and then stick with it. There is much to learn about teaching and instructional leadership. If you try to learn it all at one time, you’ll only overwhelm yourself. So, choose an area of focus for the school year. Do you want to get better at planning rigorous lessons? Are you face with new standards and really need to focus on understanding and teaching them? Has your system instituted a new teacher evaluation system and do you need to get good at implementing it? Pick a focus and stick to it.
• Think about how you learn best. Do you learn best by watching others? Working with a coach? Reading a book? Watching a video? Going to a workshop? Determine how you will learn best and invest in that learning format.
• Schedule it. Set aside time each week to learn and take action on what you are learning. It can be as little as 15 minutes but it will make a huge difference in your teaching.
• Make yourself a priority. We know you’re under a lot of pressure right now. But you deserve to invest a little in yourself. Your professional growth is important to your job satisfaction, your effectiveness, and most important, to your students.
• Don’t expect yourself to do it all immediately. It’s okay if it takes you weeks or months to work through the content and implement it in your classroom. Take your time and work at your own pace.

​

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I have sat through my share of really bad PD. In fact, I got really good at being able to tell whether a workshop was going to be useful within the first 5 minutes and if I determined that I wasn’t going to get anything out of the workshop, I would quickly tune out. I even carried a “workshop survival kit” with things I could do to surreptitiously occupy myself while pretending to participate. I thought I was being polite and more than a little clever, but really, I was wasting valuable opportunities to learn.

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​Sometimes as educators, we go so immersed in the world of education that we miss out on the larger conversations going on around us. So each year, I search for non-education books that I believe have HUGE implications for the way we think about education and particularly our roles as Builders.

This year’s list is a doozy, from a book that has significantly changed the way that I think about my work and purpose in the world, to a book that dramatically altered how I approach dealing with toxic cultures, to a book that has highlighted for me the power of defining moments. This list of non-education books has HUGE implications for the work that we do.

The Big Leap

by Gay Hendricks

Summary: I really don’t remember how I came across this book. Oh wait a minute. Yes I do. I heard someone reference it on a podcast interview I was listening to. I was curious so I bought the book the next day.

From the moment I started reading it, I grabbed my notebook and furiously started scribbling notes. There is so much good stuff in this book!

It starts out by talking about how most of us has an upper limit problem, meaning that we often self-sabotage our success because we have an idea in our heads of just how successful we’re supposed to be. When we exceed that limit, it’s uncomfortable to us so what we do is that we subconsciously sabotage our success.

Well we could stay there all day but there’s more.

You see we all have what he calls a zone of genius. That is where we are our best selves and we do work that we were uniquely gifted to do. Hendricks argues that we should be spending the majority of our time in our zone of genius.

But there are also the zones of excellence, competence, and incompetence and more often than not, we tend to spend our majority of our time doing work at which we are competent or excellent but that does not represent our zone of genius.

Why I Love it: ​Trust me, this book is really eye-opening and helping us realize what is really our zone of genius and showing us how to re-orient our lives and operate more fully in our zone of genius and banish those upper limit problems for good. So I am going to devote an entire ​podcast to this sometime in the near future.

Implications for Education: I see so many educators who are so used to operating in their zone of competence or even their zone of excellence, but rarely operating in their true zone of genius and ​I honestly think this is the reason so many of us are so overwhelmed and dissatisfied with our jobs right now. I see this all the time in my life where I am doing something inside of my zone of excellence but not my zone of genius​. That stopped me in my tracks right there and it has stayed with me ever since.

Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change 

by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, & Al Switzler.

Summary: The authors are part of the Vital Smarts Community that brought us the classic book Crucial Conversations but I have to tell you that this book is much better than Crucial Conversations.

It’s about how to lead a change effort. In particular it’s about how to change people’s behavior and I almost didn’t include this book on the list because the strategies they talk about in this book are so powerful that in the wrong hands, it could really be dangerous.

I’m serious. This book breaks down exactly how to achieve rapid, profound and sustainable behavior change. Think about that. You could literally change people’s behavior and change your organization with a few simple tools.

The tools they use are what they call the 6 sources of influence and as soon as I read them, I got excited because they align so well with the will skill continuum that I teach. I told you this book was brilliant.

They break down each of the six sources of influence and show you how they work and how you can leverage them to create behavior change. It’s fascinating. The authors use stories from real life change efforts to illustrate their point and they back up everything with tons of social science. Their writing style is engaging and their stories are fascinating. They make everything so plain so obvious that it’s a fairly easy read even though they are dealing with some pretty heavy stuff.

Why I love it: Can I tell you I LOVE this book. I mean when I first read about the 6 sources of influence, it literally blew my mind! It was so clear, it made so much sense. I thought, this is the key to changing culture right here. In fact, it heavily influences how I teach about culture.

Implications for Education: The implications for education are HUGE. This book not only breaks down how to have more influence over those you are building, it shows you exactly how to shift your culture so that the people in your culture consistently move towards your goals. If you are struggling to move your culture forward or if you have a big goal but seem to be getting no where fast, you need this book. I am going to do an entire ​podcast on it in just a few weeks. It’s that important.

Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less

by Sam Carpenter

Summary: Sam Carpenter was the owner of a service business but he was totally burned out. His business was failing, he was working long hours just to keep things afloat and he needed to do something different. Sound familiar? So he figured out a way to develop systems in his business and once he did, he went from a literal 80 hour work week to working ONE hour per week while multiplying his revenue 20-fold.

This book is about how he did that and how we can use systems to significantly lighten our workload while still making our organizations more efficient and effective. His big argument which I happen to agree with is that any organization is simply a collection of interconnected systems. If you have a mediocre to failing organization, it’s because you have mediocre or failing systems. Once you understand that, then you know that if you want to change your organization, you need to look at and change the systems within the organization.

The good news is that establishing and optimizing systems is really an uncomplicated process. Carpenter lays out the exact steps, gives great examples, and shows you how to develop the right systems you need to build a more effective organization and save yourself a TON of headaches in the process.

Why I love it: What really resonated with me about this book is the shift in perception it gave me. I mean think about it. If an organization is simply a collection of systems, then if my organization is not doing well, I can find the system or systems that are the cause fix them and my organization runs better. I love the simplicity of that.

Here’s something else that I’ve been thinking about ever since I read this book. He says that rarely do organizations have a people problem. If you think you have a people problem, look at your systems and almost always will you find a flaw in the system somewhere that is causing the people problem. Fix the system and you fix the people problem.

I mean I LOVE that. That resonates with me as a builder because the big excuse I hear over and over again is that people think that they cannot move their schools unless they get rid of certain people first.

For years I’ve been saying, no you CAN move your school with the people you have. Don’t let the people in your school hold your vision hostage. But now, after reading this book I can show them exactly what I mean. Any time I work with a school and they show me a people problem, I can show them a flaw in their system that if fixed, would make their supposed people problem obsolete.

Implications for Education: To me, that’s the biggest take away I got from this book and the implications go beyond just a people problem. Your entire school is a collection of systems. If something is not working in your school it means that there is a flaw in one or more of your systems. Fix the system and you fix your challenge.

Here’s something even more interesting. A lot of times we are experiencing overwhelm or fatigue because instead of having a system for something, we are making things up every single time. Think about it. Most of the time our discipline issues are very similar. In fact, I would argue that 80% of our discipline problems in school can probably be divided into 3 or 4 types of issues. And yet, every time a student is referred to the office, we make up our process from scratch.

Guess what else. Every year, many of us make up our summer leadership team meeting agenda and process from scratch. Or, we make up each and every staff meeting agenda from scratch. Or we create every post-observation conference from scratch. What would happen if we had systems in place for these types of things, systems that could run WITHOUT our direct involvement. Uh oh. I said something blasphemous.

You see leaders tend to be super-heroes. They are the system in their schools. That’s why so many of you are so exhausted right now. Builders build systems and they make the SYSTEMS the heroes. When you do, you not only make your school run better, you actually free up more time and space for you to operate inside of your zone of genius each day. 

An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization 

by Robert Kegan and Laura Laskow Lahey

Summary: This next book was recommended to me by someone I met at this year’s ASCD Annual Conference. As soon as he told me about it, I downloaded it on my kindle. Here’s the first paragraph of the book:

“In an ordinary organization, most people are doing a second job no one is paying them for. In businesses large and small; in government agencies, schools, and hospitals; in for-profits and nonprofits, and in any country in the world, most people are spending time and energy covering up their weaknesses, managing other people’s impressions of them, showing themselves to their best advantage, playing politics, hiding their inadequacies, hiding their uncertainties, hiding their limitations. Hiding.”

The rest of the book explains a new model for how organizations can create an “everyone culture” where the entire organization is an incubator for people’s development.

Why I love it: Now this book is not as easy to read as some of the other books on this list but it made it to the list for two very important reasons. First, one of the underlying messages of this book is this: Get over yourself. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. Create a culture where others feel safe to be vulnerable as well so that everyone in the organization can become a better version of themselves. I mean how can you not love that message. It’s something we all need to hear, especially in schools right now.

Implications for Education: The second reason this book made the list was chapter 6: Uncovering Your Biggest Blind Spot. This chapter uses something called the Immunity to Change Map and by the way, don’t you just love that title, the Immunity to Change Map. Anyway they use this map to help you figure out your own personal blind spots that are keeping you from being your best self as a builder.

What I love about this map is that it can also be a great tool for helping you understand the blind spots in your school. They describe it as having one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. In other words there are a lot of times when we as a school say that we want to change but we having competing hidden agendas and hidden commitments that put the brakes on our progress and keep us from reaching out goals. 

The Power of Moments 

by Chip and Dan Heath.

Summary: The Heath Brothers have done it again. If you loved Switch (which is in my personal top 100 most influential books) then you are going to love The Power of Moments. In typical Heath brothers style, they examine the idea of what makes a moment a defining moment and then use research and engaging stories to explain how to deliberately create defining moments. It’s really an enjoyable and insightful read that challenges your thinking. I found the book really inspiring.

Why I love it: Okay, I’m gushing a bit here. Can I tell you that I love these guys? I think it’s because like them I adore Malcolm Gladwell. I mean how can you not love anyone who loves Malcolm Gladwell? Come on.

Implications for Education: But seriously, as I was reading this book, I thought about the HUGE implications it has for educators. How often do we intentionally create meaningful moments for our students? For that matter, how often to we intentionally design meaningful defining moments for teachers? I mean think about that. What would happen to your school culture if you intentionally created powerful, positive, defining moments around the things that reinforced your core values?

I don’t know about you but my mind is already racing so much so that I’m going to do an entire ​podcast around this.

Okay, enough gushing. 

Organize Tomorrow Today: 8 Ways to Retrain Your Mind to Optimize Performance at Work and in Life

by Dr. Jason Selk and Tom Bartow.

Summary: One of the biggest complaints I hear from most administrators and instructional coaches is that they never have enough time to do what really matters in their jobs. Well this year, an entrepreneur friend of mine told me that this book was one of the most influential books he’s ever read and since he’s so successful, I had to read it.

It’s written by two top performance coaches and they talk about how to achieve what they call extreme success. They argue that doing more is not the answer. Instead, they walk you through how to achieve more by doing less. Sounds almost too good to be true doesn’t it?

But they do deliver. The book is organized by 8 strategies none of which are particularly earth shattering, but they do offer a slightly new twist to many of them. For instance, they argue that we should stop making “to do” lists. Instead, each night before we go to bed, we should figure out which item on our to do list is most important and make sure that we get that thing done first. Again, Covey told us this years ago, but their twist I think works particularly well for busy school builders is that we usually have more than ONE thing that is important to accomplish each day. So what they teach is that you write down your 3 most important tasks each day and then you figure out which one is the MUST do task and you do that first, before you do anything else. And, by deciding that the night before, you give your subconscious mind time to process that task while you sleep. So, you wake up the next morning with an extra boost, more prepared and more ready to accomplish that task.

​Why I love it: I chose this book because I like the really practical suggestions they offer for busy professionals. They argue that busy has for far too long been used as a substitute for productive and I see that a lot in schools. We’re really busy but at the end of the day, how productive were we? What did we really accomplish.

​Their focus is on helping you be productive instead of busy. They also argue that we need to seriously simplify things. I love that. I think many of us and that includes me for sure, we make things way more complicated than they have to be. I’ve been on a simplification kick lately and I have to say, every time I simplify my life or my work, I am exponentially happier.

​Implications for Education: So this is a great read for busy educators who are doing way too much. If you are overwhelmed and becoming more so, then this book can help you take a good look at how you are spending your time and help you find ways to multiply time and operate at your best and get more of the important things accomplished each day. 

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You won’t be a master teacher on your first day, or your first week, or even your first year. You will have moments that are masterful, but true mastery is consistent and seamless. It takes time to get there.

Don’t let that discourage you.

​You were probably a good student yourself and are used to “getting” things right away. You got good grades in your classes and were excited about finally getting to implement everything you learned in your own classroom. You spent weeks preparing, anticipating your students and the cool things you would help them learn.

​But on your first day, or your first week, or your first month, things deviated from your plans. You hit a snag or encountered a challenge they didn’t teach you in school. You make a mistake or two, or maybe ten. You felt awkward and unprepared, maybe even a little overwhelmed. Back in your teacher prep program you had no idea how much you didn’t know.

It may feel like you’ll never be a master teacher, never walk into a classroom and instantly sense exactly what you have to do to help students learn. It may feel like you will never get your classroom completely organized and all your students learning at the exact same time. But if you put in the work, it will happen. It just may not happen on your schedule.

[Note: Get your own copy of You Can Do This, or purchase copies for your new teachers this year by clicking HERE.]

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1. We are grateful for your bravery. In today’s political climate, I have become convinced that good teaching is a singular act of bravery. To teach to the students instead of to the test, to continue to make children feel safe even if your job is not, to do what is right instead of what is expedient or fashionable requires a special brand of courage. Thank you for teaching courageously.

2. We are grateful for your commitment. Teaching isn’t easy. Many of you knew that before you took the job and you stayed any way. You love your students and are committed to their success and you won’t give up at the first sign of trouble. Thank you for loving our children and our profession enough to stick with it even when things get rough.

3. We are grateful for your tenacity. When students don’t get it the first time, you try again. And again. And again, until they do get it. You don’t give up; you figure it out. Thank you for persisting with every child until he or she is successful.

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All of us can use a little advice. But there is a lot of bad advice out there. Below are the top 5 worst pieces of advice given to teachers we’ve heard.

Bad Advice # 1: You Need a Teaching Make-Over. Whenever you struggle in one area of your teaching, it is tempting to attempt a radical overhaul. In fact, your mentor or whatever teacher advice book you’ve turned to in desperation may have even suggested an “extreme make-over” as the solution to your problem. Even if it’s true and you could use a make-over, it’s not likely that it will happen over night or require as huge a change as you think.

But, rarely is a radical overhaul needed to fix even the most major problems in your practice. In fact, I have supported thousands of teachers as a coach and mentor and I have never met one teacher who would have benefited from an extreme make over. Sure, many of them needed to make major shifts in their practice, but whenever they tried to make more than one or two shifts at a time, their entire practice would fall apart. I’ve learned that you need to make one shift, and get used to that one, before you make another. Over time your practice will radically improve, but it has to happen one small move at a time.

Bad Advice #2: You need a bag of tricks. This one has been around for a long time and has survived largely because it has a ring of truth to it. It’s true that every teacher needs a collection of tried and true strategies, activities, and lessons. But, I hate to tell you this: at some point, your bag of tricks will let you down. If we apply those “tricks” indiscriminately to our students, we are not only doing them a huge disservice, we are doing a disservice to ourselves instead. Here’s why.

Relying on “tricks” keeps us from developing a fully-evolved approach to teaching. It keeps us focused on pulling the right trick out of the bag versus developing and operating by a set of principles that govern our practice.Not only that but relying on a bag of tricks limits you. One of my favorite sayings is “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” That’s the main problem with depending on the tricks in your bag. If you only have a few tricks, you tend to treat everything that arises in the classroom with the strategies you have. If you meet a new challenge for which you have no trick, you will try to use the only tricks you do have, whether or not they actually are best for the situation.

Bad Advice #3 -You just need to work harder. Teaching is a tough job, especially at first. You are probably working as hard as you can. So, when someone tells you that the answer to your early teaching challenges is to work harder, it’s hard not to become discouraged.

You will work hard as a teacher. That’s the nature of the job. But, there is usually a better, easier way to do most of what you will be asked to do as a teacher. The virtue isn’t in the hard work itself; the virtue is in working hard at the right things.

Bad Advice #4-All you have to do is… Any time advice starts out with “All you have to do is…” look out. Typically you’re in for a very pat and canned solution that worked (or not) for someone else but may not work for you. That’s because this phrase is flip. It immediately oversimplifies your situation and ignores all nuance.

There are no quick fixes in teaching, no magic cures or miracle methods. What may have worked amazingly for someone else may not work for you. Anyone who starts his or her advice with “all you have to do is…” hasn’t taken time to understand your situation, your own style of teaching, or the unique nuances of your classroom.

Bad Advice # 5: Fake it before you make it. A lot of teaching advice out there asks you to mask your personality in order to be successful. They suggest that you must “Fake it before you make it” whether that means pretending to like children you really dislike, feigning proficiency in an area where you are struggling, or affecting expertise to your colleagues or supervisors when they come to observe.
I understand why people suggest that you fake it until you make it. When you’re nervous or intimidated, or unsure, it feels better to fake confidence, or surety, than admit that you are afraid and risk being vulnerable in front of your students for fear that if they sense any weakness, they will take advantage and eat you alive. But vulnerability isn’t the same as weakness. Vulnerability, when done right, can actually be a very strong position to take with your students.

Faking it makes you hide from discomfort. Vulnerability forces you to lean into discomfort and ultimately master it. Faking it is about hiding from the risk that is teaching. Being vulnerable is about taking the risk. And when your students see you fighting and learning and getting better at teaching each day, they learn something important. They learn that it is okay to take risks themselves. They learn that your classroom is a safe place to learn, to make mistakes, and to try again. They learn that it’s okay to be themselves because you’ve already shown them yourself, your true self.

At the end of the day, it’s your classroom. Yes, you have standards to meet, observations and evaluations to survive, test scores to gain, and an intense amount of scrutiny from your students, their families. I’m not suggesting that you go rogue and do your own thing in spite of the expectations of your supervisors and your district. I’m also not suggesting that you ignore the advice that’s out there. Some of it is pretty good and will save you a lot of trouble in the long run. I am simply suggesting that you sift every bit of advice through your own growing understanding of your students, and your own developing teaching style and do what is best for students. A friend of mine always says in his workshops that participants should adapt, not adopt his advice. He’s right. The best thing to do with advice -- good or bad -- is to test it with your gut, and adapt it to make it work for you.

What's the worst advice you received as a teacher? Share below.

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For the last 10 years or so, I have presented at every ASCD Annual Conference and this year was no different. What was different was that my schedule was unusually packed. I went non-stop all day every day starting Thursday (Except for Saturday which I never work) and as a result, I didn’t get a chance to go to many other sessions while I was there.

I was worried that I might not have any gems for you this year but boy was I wrong. Something really surprising happened to me at this year’s conference that taught me a HUGE lesson -- one that I will not soon forget.

On the last day of the conference in my last session, a young woman came up to me afterwards and introduced herself.

“You probably don’t remember me but I was in your English class many years ago,” she began.

I looked at her and she seemed vaguely familiar. “What’s your name?” I asked.

She told me her name and immediately I remembered her. I let out a little yelp of delight and threw my arms around her. “I can’t believe this!” I exclaimed. “I talk about you all the time.”

She looked surprised. “Really? What do you say?”

I motioned for her to sit down. “I tell people that you were the only student who ever failed my AP class and that’s because you tried to fail on purpose.”

She grinned and nodded. It was true. She did. And for the next hour, we sat and talked about what happened all those years ago, and what her life has become since then.

It was a fantastic conversation and I am so proud of the young woman she’s become.

On the flight home, I thought a lot about her and what happened when she was in my class.

Have you ever wondered if the decisions you are making in the classroom are the right choices?

You see, I took a risk on her many years ago and chose to do something unorthodox. When she failed my class, she went to summer school and easily earned the missing credit. When she returned to school the following fall, I insisted that she retake the class with me anyway.

I took a hard stance, one that couldn’t be supported by our school policy. Initially, she fought me, her mother fought me, and my principal at the time advised me to let it go. But, I argued passionately for why she should retake the class even though she had already earned the credit. Although I hadn’t and perhaps wouldn’t for any other student, I dug in my heals. I knew I had no ground to stand on and I risked getting struck down by the district. I really don’t understand why I made such a fuss, other than I just believed it was the right thing to do. And, after weeks of going round and round, her mother finally agreed.

I poured into her over that semester she spent with me and she thrived. Then she graduated and moved on with her life and although I was still pretty convinced that I had done the right thing, part of me always wondered if I had gone too far.

Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever made a decision that you thought was the right thing to do but secretly wondered if indeed it was? Have you ever gone out on a limb for a student and then worried whether it made any difference?

I did almost 20 years ago, and for the intervening years, I always wondered if I had done the right thing. Then, my student walks into my session and she’s this amazing young woman and an incredible teacher and she tells me how much that time I chose to take a chance on her, made a critical difference in her life, and suddenly, it all makes sense.

So, if you’re wondering right now whether taking a chance on a kid will pay off, I want you to know that it will.

If you want to try something unorthodox, but you’re worried that you won’t get supported even though you know in your bones that it’s the right thing to do for your student, I want to encourage you to insist anyway.

In the face of increasing regulation and policies that govern every aspect of our practice, it’s easy to to ignore what your gut is telling you for fear that you won’t get supported or you’ll be told to stay in your lane.

But please hear me when I say this. Trust. Your. Gut.

Do the right thing for a kid, even though it’s hard.

Because here’s what I know to be true: As educators, we have a sacred trust. It is our job -- no it is our duty --to act in our students’ best interests always, even if it means taking a risk or putting ourselves on the line.

So take a risk on a student.

I can tell you from experience now that doing so is totally worth it.

If you were at the ASCD Annual Conference this year, I’d love to hear what some of your big takeaways are as well. Let me know below.

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​​I find that at the root of feeling overwhelmed are actually one or more of these three common mistakes:

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