Teacher Leader Coach

I use bottom in quotes on purpose. Too many “professionals” feel too self important to recognize the support staff that makes any organization truly run. It struck me in a fictional book I was listening to where every character had a name, except for a cameo by the custodian. The character had lines, and in his cameo performed a pivotal action. But the author didn’t take the time to even provide a name. Why is it that this character was nameless? Who are the "nameless" people in your organization? I bet many of them are just as critical to the success of your organization as some of your top executives, teachers, sales people, marketing, or accounting personnel. Find out who the custodian that won't let good enough be good enough. The IT guy that can get anything back on line, and teach others how to also. The administrative assistant that keeps everything organized and communicated, greeting customers in a way that makes them want to wait on hold. Touch base with the dep...

After listening to Rene Rodriguez discuss how to " Amplify Your Influence " on the One Thing Podcast , I listened to his audio book. The timing was great as I was preparing to give a presentation to my staff in which I was hoping to influence as many of them as possible to make some major transformational change. Rene's message for his formula are Frame + Message + Tie Down. The frame is the frame of reference for which your audience should be ready to hear your message. Without this, each audience member will bring their own life background to your message, and therefore interpret it in multiple different ways than you want them to. The message is then obviously your point, but he brings multiple good ideas about how you speak, how you appear, how to engage the audience in the message. The Tie Down is the final takeaway you hope they learn.  I had not crafted a solid frame in my presentation, I was just ready to jump to my message. I actually had the frame buried within ...

A local high school baseball coach tells players their team needs teammates, not friends. A friend makes us feel better about ourselves, while a teammate is concerned with improving us. A teammate is looking for what we can do to improve ourselves and the team. Friends often don't want to hurt our feelings and can hide what we need to hear so as not to upset us. Being a leader means forming relationships with the people we are in charge of and being there for them when they need us. We may be friendly and even friends with the people we lead. But there must be a line where both parties understand that the friend hat is coming off and the teammate hat is going on. Clearly defining these roles is critical for guidance to be given and heard. When working with someone in any relationship, it is perfectly fine to tell them the role we are currently operating in or ask them what role they want you to play. These roles may be a sounding board, venting chamber, advice giver, shoulder to cr...

Anyone with any shred of self-awareness and ambition has dealt with Imposter Syndrome. From being a kid on a sports team or in a play performance, to a student in a high level class, to professionals moving into new roles. Often the highest achievers suffer from the most amount of Imposter Syndrome. This is that feeling that despite all we have achieved in our life in education, degrees, promotions, and accolades, we feel that we don't belong in the role we find ourselves playing at the moment. I would argue that anyone who has not suffered from Imposter Syndrome at some time has either never really challenged themselves, or lacks any amount of self-awareness of their own abilties. Feeling like we don't belong is one of the hardest emotions to deal with, as we all want to feel like we are part of a community and will bring value to it, and that our thoughts and words matter. I think it is important for people to acknowledge when we are having these thoughts, and to step back an...

Recently I've spent some time working with a new administrator. This person is talented, knowledgeable, innovative, caring, and energetic. I am very excited to be able to work with them as a colleague, and learn and grow beside them. I am also in a position to help mentor this new leader as they begin their journey, taking over a division of great people who lost a leader they cherished in a time of upheaval in our organization. This is a daunting psychological task to overcome. When asked about what would make this a successful year, the new leader stated that building relationships with their staff was paramount to their success. And I whole heartedly agree! We cannot be leaders without followers, and people will not willingly follow a person they don't trust or respect (and hopefully like as well). They are going to take the approach of listening and learning as much as possible, which again I think is a great plan. But there is also the piece that this new leader is going t...

On The One Thing Podcast Episode 412 , the guest Rene Rodriguez  mentioned around the 51st minute that "If you can do the things today that most people aren't willing to do, there will come a day soon where you're able to do the things that others cannot do." Hearing this reminded me of an article I read several years ago about the Common Denominator of Success , and it is one that we have a specific group  of students in our building read each year. The article starts with the quote, "The common denominator of success - the secret of success of every man who has ever been successful - lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do." This comes from the work of Albert E.N. Gray presenting to the National Association of Life Underwrites at their 1940 convention, which explains only using the male pronouns, but besides that point is completely salient today. No matter what innovations have come to our work, sport, ...

When starting to write daily 63 days ago, my intent was to write about incorporating the 3 P's of The One Thing system into education. How can we bring our Priorities and Purpose to be as Productive with students as possible. At some time this morphed into thoughts on leadership as I am an educational leader, and I try to see all things that I do (parenting, teaching, administrating, coaching) through the lens of leadership. I have never been a person to keep a diary or journal. Even keeping my daily planner throughout my years as a student was a massive struggle. Creating something to write about daily, and actually putting my fingers to the keyboard each day has turned out to have some amazing benefits. One benefit has been the confidence to write. I do not think of myself as a writer, but I do have lots of thoughts on a regular basis. Without writing them down, the thoughts would be fleeting and I would not end up capturing them. Then at some point in the future, that idea would...

During a psychology class while working on my leadership certification, I was exposed to the concept of the Johari Window. It has been one of the enduring concepts in my mind, and provides great insight into knowing how to lead individuals. Developed in 1955 by  Jo seph Luft and Harry Ingham  (emphasis added to show where the name of the model comes from), it helps to explain the way that all of us are aware of ourselves. There are lots of areas of our own makeup that we are both aware of an unaware of, and same for others knowledge of us.                                          The top left box (quadrant II for the mathematicians out there), is the open pane of glass, where certain aspects of our personalities are clear to everyone. Generally there is little discovery to be had here, and it is easy for all parties to identify strengths, weaknesses, likes a...

Scott Jeffrey Miller is the host of the On Leadership podcast , along with being a prolific author and many other roles after serving in Stephen Covey's corporation for 30 years. He has written a new book on mentoring, The Ultimate Guide to Great Mentorship  which discusses 13 roles that mentors take on with mentees. In Chapter 3, he discusses being an "absorber," using empathic listening to hear and understand what your mentee is telling you. Many of us as leaders are not natural listeners, we are doers, talkers, agenda setters, advice givers, direction providers, and on to the next task. Listening well is not a skill many of us have, but all of us need. He references that Stephen Covey would say, "Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply." But the silence after the mentee speaks is critical for so many reasons. It allows us as the listener to process what was said, it allows the mentee to think about what th...

The remaking of a team can be exciting with the addition of new voices, ideas, and experiences to add to the mix. However, new team members are also jumping into existing projects, ideas, names and special vocabulary, inside jokes, and long established routines with little to no knowledge of the background that led to all of those situations. The on-boarding is critical, but has to be done in a way that recognizes what the new people are offering, and catches them up to speed on existing circumstances without talking down to them. It is important when bringing in new people to try and avoid using special vocabulary or acronyms that leave the new person confused. This can even happen to veteran people who have not been involved in an ongoing project, but the people who have been come to report out. Just this week we had two people talking in depth about the CCRI, and things I needed to do related to those letters. I could reason through that the CCR stood for College Career Readiness, b...

The " Portrait of a Graduate " got me to think about the "Portrait of a Teacher" as the group of people that I lead. Those thoughts today led me to think of the "Portrait of a Leader." One thing that as a white male leader I am grateful for, is that the Portrait of a Leader no longer simply looks like me. I firmly believe that the leadership of an organization needs to be as diverse as the people they lead in the organization and serve through the organization. I also believe that the leadership team needs to have a variety of backgrounds and skills so that the resources can be pooled together for the betterment of everyone. A leader needs to have conviction in their decisions, and be able to communicate timely information in clear and concise language of why the decision was made, what problems it is trying to solve, what consequences may happen as a result of the decision, and a commitment to tracking the results. But that decision has to be made collabo...

The organization where I help lead is embarking on a new strategic planning cycle as our current plan has reached its shelf-life, and there are several people in new leadership roles within the district. Part of the plan for our organization as an educational institution is to develop a "Portrait of a Graduate." This immediately got me dreaming of what this image would look like, and a Picasso type painting was forming in my head. I was picturing a multi-skin toned individual, with half of a graduation cap and half of a hard hat, wearing a suit and a military uniform. This person has a laptop and a paintbrush, and is possibly in a wheel chair while crossing our stage to receive their diploma. I truly hope that what we come up with is as diverse as the image in my head, as we need to continue to serve all students in our mission to help them "Leave with Purpose."  This then got me to think of portraits of other roles. As I am a leader of teachers, I began to envision...

If the main point of assigning nightly work for students to do is to help reinforce their learning, then what they do with this work should be guided by us, but up to them on how far they get and when. If it is for them to advance the work (such as completing a reading prior to a class discussion), then students should be given the information in advance to be able to plan their time accordingly. Provide students with enough time, plus a little buffer, to get the assignment completed, but thread the needle so that procrastination can't really be an option. Taking the concept first that the homework is there to reinforce the learning, as suggested start the next day with a few directed questions that make each student answer. I prefer to have students in small groups, standing by a vertical surface to answer. Other key strategies that can be used are ideas such as individual journaling, small group discussions, or a technological tool such as PearDeck or PollEverywhere . The key fo...