Lead with Two Rules: Feeling Good and Feeling Safe

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_00:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program today Dr. Rhonda Rose. Rhonda is an educational speaker who coaches principals, district leaders, and administrative teams in the complex and ever-changing work of leading schools. a past state middle school principal of the year. Rhonda has served as a central office leader and has taught at the university level. And she's the author of The Deliberate and Courageous Principal, which we're here to talk about today.

[00:39] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:41] SPEAKER_00:

Rhonda, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:43] SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much, Justin, for having me today.

[00:46] SPEAKER_00:

Excited to speak with you as a fellow former principal and fellow Solution Tree author. Let's talk about the principalship. Why is it so important, as you say in the title of the book, for principals to be deliberate and courageous?

[00:59] SPEAKER_01:

Justin, I think in the Solution Tree team was very deliberate and intentional in choosing that title. The book is not just for principals. It's really for any leaders in the school or at the district level. But the book is divided into two parts. And the first part is about the actions that we take, five essential actions. And the adjective deliberate was chosen to represent those five actions.

[01:28]

And then the second part of the book is on five essential skills or principles. And I simply, Justin, from my experience and now getting to coach principles, know it takes courage to use those skills in order to have the actions actually occur within the building. So thus the title of the book.

[01:51] SPEAKER_00:

Let's talk first, if we could, Rhonda, about the importance of taking action, which is one of the four leadership actions. You contrast taking action with simply being busy. And I think all administrators, all school leaders would say, well, of course I'm busy. I am busy all the time. I'm much busier than I want to be. What's the difference between being busy and taking action from a more strategic standpoint?

[02:13] SPEAKER_01:

I think, Justin, taking action comes back to we're going to be proactive. We're going to set as best we can the agenda for the day. And then when we're just being busy all the time, it's all reactionary. So really that action four on action. taking the time. And I spend a while there and divide it into our students' time by the principal really looking at the schedule of each child to make sure that the needs are being met.

[02:40]

And then we look at every single adult in the building. So we're looking at our teachers, the way they're spending their time. Do we have their schedules built right? And then I also spend time on a Our non-certified people in the building, our instructional aides, the health aide, the front office secretary, our bookkeeper. I think all of those people play such an important role in the building and developing that culture around, hey, this school is all about learning. So we talk about their time even now.

[03:12]

within the school. We set a semester goal for each one of them too. Sometimes I think principals I've worked with are like, Rhonda, are you kidding me? It's hard enough to talk about the semester goals with my teaching staff, but we try to incorporate every single adult and how they're using their time within the building. And then of course, I'm building to the principal's time time and is most of that time within the classroom. So if we say that our mission, our goal, our vision is all about students learning at a high level, then we've got to be inside classrooms actually seeing instruction, supporting that instruction, and helping where we need to.

[03:55]

That's the difference I'm trying to make, Justin, with, hey, are we really taking action with everybody's time? Or are we just being busy, walking in every day and reacting to everything that occurs?

[04:09] SPEAKER_00:

there's a real tension there, isn't there? Because all of those impositions on our time or demands on our time from other people, you know, to some extent they are the work, right? There, there are things that need to be done. You know, people aren't typically coming to us to share the latest celebrity gossip. Like they need things that, you know, that we have to decide, like, how am I going to support this person? How am I going to answer this question?

[04:29]

How am I going to get them what they need? But at the same time, it would be an abdication of our leadership responsibility to only support respond and react and spend our time on things that other people want us to spend our time on. Talk to us a little bit about the proactive side of that. What obligation do we have as leaders to be our own filter for those demands on our time? Because certainly other people will keep us busy long before we could ever get to our own priorities. You could spend an entire career reacting to the issues that other people bring to you.

[04:58]

So how do we get proactive?

[05:00] SPEAKER_01:

And we can spend an entire career doing that. And Justin, you know, I hate to admit, but this is true. I spent about the first year reacting. And I think I speak about this early on in the book. I continually had that imposter syndrome feeling like, wait, am I doing the right stuff? Am I doing what's important?

[05:19]

And I think that's why when I went to do my doctoral research, it was qualitative research. And this was toward the end of my career when I got the doctoral. And I wanted to go visit schools. This happened to be in the state of Indiana that had high poverty, but also had high achievement. Now, we were looking at the state test, but I got to go visit them on what they were actually doing. So I want to come back to action one.

[05:45]

This is I'm going to lead up to this. How do we be proactive? Action one is all about the principal trying to be that instructional leader. So, you know, I'm going to come back to those four essential questions of our PLC. But do we have the tiers built, et cetera? Is right effective teaching happening inside every single classroom?

[06:07]

So then chapter two, which is actually my favorite, is this. If the actions are about being competent and the skills are about being caring, and I use a lot of different people, like a lot from the business world on the caring side. There's Pat Lencioni's work. There's some of Peter Singay's work and Simon Sinek's work. But I guess I propose this to be proactive. My number one strategy would be build your systems principles.

[06:34]

And it took me maybe two and a half years. So I started writing this big list of everything I was responsible for besides being in the classrooms, right, with teachers and kids. I'll never forget. It was on a pink legal pad at Scribner Middle School, where I was the principal for almost a decade. And I had 72 things, Justin. Now, like I'm talking about back to school night with parents, okay?

[06:58]

New teacher induction, school safety. You can just make your list of all these things we're ultimately responsible for. And so chapter two talks about let's get those systems built. Let's take the decision fatigue off of us. And then every year as those systems come up each month, we will run the system, make it better if we can, but then our attention can flow faster. from the systems every single year and keep us focused back on our kids learning at high levels in this building.

[07:33]

So I use two resources there. It's build the systems list. And then I kind of call it a principal playbook where we talk about, okay, for the next 90 days, for just this semester, what are the big things we're going to be doing within the building? I don't know if that answers your exact question, but if I'm going to be proactive as a building leader, I've got to have these systems built as best I can. And then I'm just going to make them better and better and better every single year.

[08:03] SPEAKER_00:

I remember my friend Frank Buck talks about the importance of just keeping track of the different details and plans and documents related to school events, like you said. And he has a good folder system that he teaches for doing that. And I love what you said about the mental bandwidth, the cognitive bandwidth. that gets freed up when we're not just running around in a panic all the time to keep up with the school events, that we can actually devote that bandwidth to the highest level leadership work that needs our attention at that time.

[08:31] SPEAKER_01:

And another, Justin, one of the actions, number three, is really building a strong leadership team, a guiding coalition, whatever phrase your school's using around us. So the principal herself is not having to build all the systems. I'm going to use my people. And they can build a few of those for us. But I think Tina Bugren talks about, watch out on this decision fatigue. And that's what we're doing.

[08:54]

We're strengthening every single system we've got to bring us back. I can remember, Justin, when you talk about being reactionary. My very first year as a principal, I thought, I'm going to really build trust with people. We all know how important that is. So I would do my morning walk around the building and had one of those little stenographer pads that you could, journalists would use them. And any teacher that needed anything, I would have my pen and I would, oh, great.

[09:17]

I'm going to get that for you. I'll get back to you. Because I thought if I respond and react to what they need, then I'm going to be building this trust. And it probably took one semester for me to realize I was doing a lot of things for them that they could have been doing, and I quit carrying the pad. And then I would respond to teachers and say, hey, listen, email me, tell me what you're thinking of to solve that, and I'll get back to you. Most people don't, but just cleaning out everything so that you can stay focused on that main work.

[09:49]

That work is difficult enough. right? Just making sure that our instruction is at high rigorous levels, that every single student in the building is learning it. My goodness, that's tough work.

[10:02] SPEAKER_00:

I was thinking about the little notepad that I carried when I was a head teacher, like dean of students at the elementary level before I became a principal. And I have to say, like, if you want to demonstrate competence and build trust, like when people ask you to do something, write it down and then do it. And that puts you immediately in the top 1% of, you know, of people. But I hear what you're saying as you shift into a senior leadership role, there's that tension between, you know, I can't always just be doing things that other people ask me to. I have to have a vision. I have to protect that vision or else it's going to suffer from the competition of everybody else's priorities.

[10:37] SPEAKER_01:

Yes, it will suffer from the competition. That's a lovely way to put that. And what I do think, I believe this truly, Justin, Action One talks about setting the vision for the year to use that as a motivational tool. I sincerely believe that once teachers do have some trust with their leader, and once they do realize, wow, she's all about student learning and helping us, then it's lovely to watch them begin to take care of things on their own because they know where the focus lies in that building. And once there's a little bit of result and the momentum comes and achievement is rising, then it's just a lovely thing.

[11:18] SPEAKER_00:

I love what you said earlier about involving all staff in that. We tend to maybe devote 90% of our thinking about instruction to teachers, right? We focus on helping teachers improve, teacher PLCs, teacher professional development, getting into classrooms. Talk to us a little bit about how we can clarify the essential work, as you say in chapter two, in a way that reaches the rest of our staff. In a lot of schools, teachers are only half of the staff or even less. How do we get the rest of the team on board with that vision for learning?

[11:47] SPEAKER_01:

So I think it was Becky Dufour who said this way back for me in the late 90s, clarity precedes competence. So you know how we're doing that with our teachers, right? We're setting those instructional goals, boom. So I think when I'd read one of Pat Lencioni's book on the ideal team player is where that idea came to me of let's include every adult in the building. So Justin, now...

[12:11]

I always get nervous on this part because there was one gentleman, I'll never forget it, in a conference session I was leading. And afterwards, he came up to me and he was very upset, like, who's got time for this, Rhonda? I don't even have time to set goals with teachers. And I thought, oh, I know it's a lot. But once those people really feel like they're part of the team, Justin, I think it's a game changer for culture. OK, so I divided that up into we call them instructional aids.

[12:39]

OK, so we got rid of the special ed aid like for grade six or one for grade seven and one for grade eight. And we determined we're going to meet the needs of our kids. So in the building where I was, we had some extreme needs of kids not reading at grade level. So we took half of our aid and we got them trained. Or let me say it this way. They did the professional development with me as the principal and our English staff, right?

[13:05]

And the special ed staff. And Justin, as long as they were being overseen by a teacher, they were running small groups within the building, right? Of small guided groups. We assigned certain students to them to oversee, run the guided groups. And so their goal each semester was tracking that data. And then we had the other half of the instructional aides were math.

[13:26]

But let me tell you the story of our health aide. You would never find a kinder woman in all of the universe, Susan. Oh, my goodness. But any student that came to her, Justin, she would let them in the health office and they could stay most all day. If you needed to, just stay in there all day. She did not want to hurt anyone's feelings and make them go back to class.

[13:48]

So we knew we got to set a goal with Susan. So our goal was this. Susan, we're going to change some things in the building. No student is allowed to come to the health aid office unless they have a pass from a teacher. So between classes, when they would all sneak in there, you know, middle school kids, Justin. All right.

[14:06]

We're like, no one is sneaking in between classes. You're going to have to be, you know, quote, mean enough to send them on to their teacher and get a pass. OK, that cleaned up a lot of it. Then here's her goal. Susan, track the kids coming in here. Because we need for you to understand we got to have them back in class or we're doing a lot of makeup time from that.

[14:27]

So Susan started actually tracking the times each period that kids were in there and how quickly she was turning them and getting them back into class. It may not sound like anything, but once she realized, Susan, you're vital to us. We need you. We got to get kids back in class. Then she did it. and was thrilled to do that.

[14:50]

Let me tell you this other one. Barbara was the name of my secretary, the principal secretary. Well, the principal before me, Dave, incredible man. He loved to have all of his messages, every single one of his phone messages on those little pieces of paper and put on his desk. Okay. Well, there are tons of them by the time you've been out in the building.

[15:08]

So Barbara, here was her goal. Barbara, We're going to set a goal this semester, okay? Every single call that you can take off of me, let's track it. However you want to track it. You just track it on this date, so-and-so called, and I sent them to the eighth grade counselor, or I sent them to district. And she was thrilled with the number of calls.

[15:26]

And Justin, in a nine weeks time, listen, we're over way over a hundred calls. And what that did for me as a leader was, oh, it was so wonderful. But I think to bring this back around, Justin, Every single adult in the building, when they have a clear vision, vision like, okay, wow, we are all about learning here. And I matter in that. My job matters. And then the principal sets a goal.

[15:57]

Now, I only met with them twice each semester, right? Once in the beginning and then once at the end so they could present their data. But Justin, they would come to me, I don't know, two or three times like, I can't wait to show you the data. You know, I'm doing better. I hate to say, Justin, I was maybe four or five years in as a principal before I read that. and started incorporating that.

[16:18]

But I think it's a game changer.

[16:21] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And just the attention, I think, can make a huge difference for people who are used to feeling kind of extra, feeling kind of peripheral in the school. To be involved in goals that matter to the principal, I think, is a big sign of trust. Absolutely. Let's talk a little bit, if we could, about conflict and some of the tensions between different, you know, maybe multiple good things. As you said, in the story of the health aid, you know, it's good to care for students.

[16:47]

It's good to show that we care about them. But every good thing is probably in tension with other good things. And in this case, it was time in class, actually learning versus being in the nurse's office. I'm struck by the importance of relationships and how When people don't have goals, as we just talked about setting goals, often people decide what to do in order to kind of keep the people around them happy. If a particular aid is spending time on something because, you know, somebody wants them to, you know, how can we think about some of those tensions between maybe multiple good things and even the conflicts that arise when people have different priorities and want maybe multiple good things to happen that are in tension with one another?

[17:29] SPEAKER_01:

I think the multiple good things is an essential conversation that happens within the beginning of that semester. And we're going to come back around to clarity. So there is clarity for, yes, the school-wide goals. And then you're breaking that down by departments. OK, now in an elementary, that might be literacy. Here's where we're going.

[17:51]

Here's where we're going in numeracy and math. In the middle school, I would break that on down into science, social studies, every department. And then teachers set their goals off that. OK, so we all have good. Here's where we're going. When we get to Justin, our teaching and our instruction, even if we set the essential targets.

[18:10]

Right. And then when we see we're not getting good results. Here comes some really good conflict on what are we going to do about that? Surely to goodness, I don't have to change the way I'm teaching that, do I? Right? And in the book, Justin, on conflict, let me think here.

[18:26]

That's chapter seven. It's one of my favorite. And I bring up four things to try to reframe conflict. And people always comment to me like, Rhonda, I can't believe you didn't know that. But the first point that I make, Justin, is Conflict. Be ready.

[18:41]

Conflict is always going to be with you as a leader. Justin, I did not know that as a young leader early on. I thought I'm going to be kind to people. I'm going to set high expectations, but I'm going to support them and love them through it. And it'll all go well. All right.

[18:56]

And then I learned not so much with everyone. So I think I had to learn, listen, if you are continually nudging the school forward, there should be conflict. And then Pat Lencioni uses that term up. And if there's not conflict, if everything seems to be smooth sailing, then go mine for it. You better go find it. Right.

[19:18]

Because something's not being followed, etc. The analogy I like to use in that is just the swimming pool analogy where a lot of times as educators, we sit down here in the baby into the pool. We're like, you know, right on the steps. Half of our body is in the nice, cool water. Half of our body is up here and we're just being nice to everybody and getting sun. And I think we need to swim on out.

[19:41]

to that almost that deep end where the real work, the real conversations, which are difficult, but absolutely necessary, have to happen. I use that as part of the conflict because we've got to build trust, I think, by having those difficult conversations that are circling around the conflict. I guess the only other thing I'd want to throw in there, Justin, is I think I talk about undiscussables. in the book. But that's one thing we don't ever want to create within our buildings as a principal are these topics that become undiscussables for our staff. I know when I was working, and this goes back way back when I was teaching, and we worked for one principal, I'll never forget, we tried to keep bringing it up in our leadership to, hey, could we talk about the bell schedule?

[20:30]

There are too many minutes between passing, could we? And we learned he would get so upset and I guess it was going to be a lot of trouble to call the ABLE alarm system and change it all. We learned as his teaching staff, this is undiscussable. Do not bring it up. So in that chapter on conflict, I want staff and I want us as leaders to know there are no undiscussables. We can talk about any topic.

[20:58]

We're going to disagree at times and that's okay, but we're going to move forward with the vision of this school. So there's a lot under conflict. I think you talk about those high impact conversations and I think I refer to them as real dialogues that occur in within a building to solve some of the conflict, but at the same time, build intensive trust. When your people know, yep, she's addressing it. That's an issue. She's addressing it.

[21:28]

Then we build so much trust with people. I rambled on that one, Justin. I love the conflict part. I love that part.

[21:37] SPEAKER_00:

Very well said. Let's talk a little bit more, if we could, about some of the skills around that. The second part of the book is all about skills. And sometimes we feel like we would rather not address a conflict if it's going to draw on skills that we're less comfortable with. What do you see as some of the central skills for leaders to be deliberate and courageous, to raise the right conflicts, to address them, to bring up those things that maybe people have been hesitant to address, but that need to be addressed to improve student learning? What are the skills that kind of go into that that you talk about in the book?

[22:07] SPEAKER_01:

So the skills, and I'm going to hit these briefly, but the five skills that I bring up kind of summarizing for me and my experience, the ones that were most important to me and still are in my leadership, that first one on building relationships, which ultimately comes to building trust. I think I'll come back to that in just a second. And then it is reframing conflict so that we don't look at it as a negative and then holding people accountable. And Justin, I find that that seems to be the hardest one for many of our leaders. But I come back to if we've really clarified the work up front, oh my goodness, the accountability is so much easier. so much easier.

[22:50]

So we really talk about holding each other accountable. I don't think we can expect our staff to hold each other accountable if we're not doing it ourselves as the leader. So I talk about that. The fourth skill is about leaning positive. And Justin, this one really surprised me because I struggled with that as a leader. I think I know that From the brain research, our brains have a negative bias.

[23:15]

But when good things would happen, great, I keep moving along. But if one bad thing happens, then I just Velcro onto that. So through the years, I share in this chapter, it's chapter nine, about six research-based strategies that helped me as a leader lean positive. What's interesting to me, Justin, is through Solution Tree, this has been the number one request from people. Like, we don't want to hear you talk about learning. Would you just come and talk to us about how to stay positive on those six strategies?

[23:49]

And honestly, editor Amy was like, we're not going to keep all six of these. No way. That's way too many. We're going to send it out to your reviewers. We'll see which are the top three and we'll only keep those. And then Justin, there was such a I guess, high interest in that.

[24:04]

They kept all six of those. So that's what that entire chapter is about. We know the emotions of the leader trickle down within that staff so that when that skill is all about that. And then the final skill I talk about briefly, very briefly, is just about turning inward as a person. How can I get better as a human being and as a person so that I can serve these people who are working here with me better? So I love all that part too.

[24:33]

But let me go back to just one. Then I promise I'll quit rambling. But on that first skill of building relationships with people, and of course I go into trust Two things that strike me there, Justin, and it's such a simple thing of, hey, be reliable so that when we say to a staff member, a teacher or any staff member, hey, I'm going to do this, just having that clear understanding of how important it is to do that for our people. I had to learn to quit saying it as much, right? Because I was saying I was going to do too much and it was almost impossible for me to do what I was saying. So I had to learn that back it off.

[25:11]

back up. And then when I do say that to someone, I'm going to do it. If for some reason I can't do it, like if I say, I'm going to be in there for an observation, right? I'm going to go to that person afterwards beforehand, if I can, to apologize, to say, I'm sorry, I didn't make it. Here's exactly what happened. Let's reschedule.

[25:30]

Just that whole reliability piece. And the second piece in there is a piece on Watch out when we criticize or we use the fundamental attribution, which is when leaders, let's say I'm in a meeting and someone is absent. Let's just call him Herman. And then I, as the leader, start picking on Herman. Like, you know what, Herman, he wasn't here last time either. I feel like he's being lazy.

[25:55]

He says he's at his kid's doctor appointment. I don't really know if he is. etc. I'm hitting the fundamental attributes of that teacher, right? Now, if it's me, and I can't be at the meeting, then I'm just going to say, No, I'm sorry, my child is sick, I can't make it. I think the trust that is lost when leaders cut on our own people, I don't think we can make up for it.

[26:18]

So I spend a little bit of time on that in building relationships to realize how critically important that is. Our people know, uh-oh, if she's talking bad about him when he's not here, I bet she talks about me too. So sometimes I feel like Justin, those seem like minor little things in leadership, but I think they have huge impacts on the success that we get. That's some of the skills.

[26:46] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I love what you said there about being more selective about what you commit to so that you can actually follow through on the commitments. Because the people-pleasing tendency that I think we all have is to say yes to everybody and then let them down when we find out we don't actually have time to do everything we committed to. And as you said, that's the opposite of how you build trust. We want to commit to less, do the things that we commit to, and really exercise that kind of control over our own agenda that is the difference between being proactive and reactive as we've been talking about. So the book is The Deliberate and Courageous Principle, 10 Leadership Actions and Skills to Create High Achieving Schools. Rhonda, if people would like to find you online or get in touch with you, where are some of the best places for them to go?

[27:30] SPEAKER_01:

You can find me on Twitter at Dr. Rhonda Rose. It's R-O-O-S. My email, Justin, I'm happy to share that, is Rhonda R-H-O-N-D-A dot Bluebird. Rhonda dot Bluebird at Gmail. And RhondaRose.com has some information there too.

[27:51] SPEAKER_00:

Rhonda, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.

[27:54] SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much, Justin.

[27:56] Announcer:

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