[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_01:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by Brian Goodwin. Brian is the president and CEO of McRell International, a nonprofit school improvement organization that seeks to harness the power of curiosity and inquiry to empower all learners through rigorously researched professional learning and coaching services for school systems worldwide. Brian is the author of numerous books, including Balanced Leadership for Powerful Learning, which we're here to talk about today.
[00:41] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:43] SPEAKER_01:
Brian, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thanks, great to be here. Well, being a balanced leader or having balance in leadership is something that I think we've all felt the need for. But as you put this book together, what needs were you responding to in the profession when it comes to the need for balance?
[01:00] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah. So the book itself comes from an earlier research study. I think a lot of principals may be familiar with it. It was called School Leadership That Works. And so we were looking at decades of research trying to figure out what is the correlation between principal behaviors and student achievement? And so from that came a bunch of responsibilities, right?
[01:20]
And so the way we thought about those responsibilities and really what's emerged over time for us is that as a leader, so there's a cluster of responsibilities that are around being that visionary, right? Helping people see where are we going, right? Sometimes also seeing how things on the other side of this change effort, how they're going to be better, right? So we can all kind of picture that visionary leader. But we also saw a cluster of responsibilities that are really more around that kind of team builder, that connector, people, leaders who understand kind of the undercurrents of what's happening and make people, you know, create an esprit de corps, like create a really cohesive team. And we've all seen leaders who do that really well.
[02:01]
Yeah. We also then saw a cluster of responsibilities that emerged from the research that were really around being that kind of intellectual leader. We call it a learner, right? Being able to think about what's happening in my field, what's happening in my school, getting input from lots of folks, being really kind of that intellectual leader. And we can picture leaders who do that really well. And then we also found a cluster of responsibilities around Being the person who's able to kind of set a direction and say, here's where we're going.
[02:32]
Here are the non-negotiables. Here's the timeline. Here's what I expect from everybody. Being kind of more of a director, right? And we can picture leaders who do that. The point of balanced leadership is that Actually, as a leader, you've got to do all four things.
[02:46]
You can't just say, I'm the visionary, so just get on board with my vision or say, I've given you directions. How come you're not following them? So that is really the idea of being a balanced leader is recognizing that... Your folks in your building need you to be all four of those roles.
[03:04]
And here's the thing. Nobody really comes into the position great at all four of those things. We tend to have one or two that maybe we're really good at. And what that means is that as a leader, you need to figure out how to lean into things maybe that you're not good at or lean on other people to help you fulfill those roles in your school. So that's the concept of being a balanced leader.
[03:25] SPEAKER_01:
Well, I appreciate the way you lay that out in the book. And we should say this is a very tool-oriented book. It's kind of a large format with lots of tools and charts that people can reference. What do you say to the refrain that we hear often from school leaders, and probably that we made ourselves as educators, that this just feels like a lot of responsibility, like the sense that school leadership seems to grow and grow and grow with each passing year and each passing wave of reform. How do you approach that issue of just overwhelm and just the sheer scope of the responsibilities that school leaders face?
[04:02] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, I mean, it's a huge issue. So, you know, a couple of things in that. And I know, you know, that we've talked for a long time about sharing leadership. I think one of the ways that we identify this is also it isn't just simply tasks. Yes, you should delegate tasks. Make sure you've got somebody on board who can maybe focus more on some of the day-to-day operations or whatever it might be.
[04:23]
But it's also sharing those responsibilities. So maybe there's someone on your team that you know is a really great communicator. It's going to be their job to talk to people, make sure people are on board, that kind of stuff. I think the other big piece, and we write about this a lot in the book, is also using research to identify high leverage things, right? Things that identifying focus or improvement efforts that you would say, these are, I can draw the line between this and student learning. Because so often we look at schools improvement plans and literally see dozens of things that they're trying to get done.
[04:59]
And sometimes that's maybe for the benefit of the central office, right? It's kind of a shock and awe thing. I'm gonna show you how much I'm doing. But nobody can, you know, you can't honestly stand in front of people and say, okay, folks, if we get these 42 things done, I think we'll be okay, right? You have to get the focus down to one or two really important things. And that's where I think being that intellectual leader and saying, what are the things that we know in this school are going to have a high impact on our kids?
[05:24]
And so it's also not having self-inflicted wounds, right? Not adding more to your plate than you need to by being really clear and focused. You're always better off doing a few things well than a bunch of things poorly.
[05:36] SPEAKER_01:
I wonder if we could talk a bit about focus because it seems very appealing to have a singular focus or at least a very short list of areas to focus on. But the rest of the world does not seem to agree, or at least the rest of the world will be okay with that as long as it's their particular focus that we prioritize and make our own. How do leaders respond to multiple stakeholders with varying types of power? We've got parents, we've got school board members, we've got funders, we've got people who give us grants, we've got the feds. We have all these different stakeholders who want our singular focus to be their thing. What are some of the tools or strategies that you recommend in balanced leadership for really making that an actual singular focus for staff, even though publicly we might have 10?
[06:28]
you know, for different stakeholders.
[06:29] SPEAKER_00:
You know, I think sometimes it is the question of coming back to what's the impact this is going to have on student learning, helping everyone understand that our job is student learning. That's job number one. And so, and we've also done something else in the book and in our work, we've created what we call the what matters most framework. And so we were able to say, here's the five key leverage points that are most important in any building. And it's things, they won't surprise you. It's things like, Having a challenging and engaging instruction for kids, right?
[07:02]
And actually the third piece of that is intentional. Having teachers understand why they're doing what they're doing. We know that's probably front and center. Also then having a curriculum that's...
[07:12]
We call it curricular pathways to success, so that you have a clearly aligned curriculum, but that there's opportunities in there for kids to find their own interest. That's the second piece. And that's really the core. So a lot of times it's like saying, how much are we addressing the core of what we know is really important? Because let's get that right. So the core we know, although it is not always enough, right?
[07:33]
We know that there are kids who come to school with extra needs. Maybe they're a little bit behind. Maybe they need additional supports. So we talk about whole child supports. And so that's kind of a third big piece. And then we think about what's the culture of the school that we're going to wrap around this?
[07:47]
What's the high performance school culture? And then ultimately, like the outer ring for us, we have a whole diagram of this. The outer ring is that data driven, high reliability system. So we are always looking at data. So an activity that we have schools do oftentimes is put all the things you're trying to do on a post-it note and then put it on one of those five key leverage points. And sometimes you start to see, oh, things do actually kind of cluster together.
[08:12]
And maybe it's one big thing we're still trying to address in lots of different ways. And we can get some more clarity about that as well. And helping people kind of draw that line of sight back to what is the impact on student learning? And if that becomes...
[08:25]
If it's hard to draw that line, we might say, well, that's a nice to have, but it's not a need to have. That's an activity I think that can be really powerful for school teams to come together and start to look at what all are we trying to get done here, visually speaking, right? You can see it on a flip chart on the wall and go, oh my goodness, this is too much stuff. How do we pare it down to what's really, really important for us right now?
[08:46] SPEAKER_01:
That speaks to the issue of coherence, right? That if we have different pieces like curriculum, instruction, assessment, culture, that are part of a coherent whole that we can make sense of, that's not going to create the same sense of overwhelm that often teachers complain about and school leaders get overwhelmed with when it comes to just multiple unrelated competing initiatives that pull us in different directions.
[09:12] SPEAKER_00:
You know, another thing, Justin, that we find is helpful is it's also to help people think about there are early on in any kind of improvement effort. There are certain routines we want to get in place. We kind of start there and we make sure those are consistent. And then we move into more professional expertise and developing deep knowledge. And then we get to innovation. And what that can do also is to help people say, like, because you may have teachers coming and say, I want to do this really cool whiz bang, whatever it might be.
[09:36]
I want to flip my classroom. I guess right now everyone is flipping their classrooms. But in the past, you might have had people say, I want to do this really, really cool, awesome thing, or we should be doing X, Y, Z. And that can also help you say, we'll get there. But that may be a two or three year kind of commitment. But right now we need to focus on X, Y, Z.
[09:54]
And so that's also really kind of a powerful way to help people understand that. I like to think about it almost like playing jazz music. You can't play jazz until you learn your chords and scales. There are sometimes in a school, we just need to get these routines down. We need to have a consistent curriculum. So let's follow that first before we start getting really fancy with it.
[10:13] SPEAKER_01:
So Brian, we're recording this in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. And of course, people may be listening to this far into the future. But we have found ourselves being forced to make many changes, whether it's due to virtual learning or students learning under different circumstances at different times. And yet, even in a normal year when the circumstances are not changing very dramatically, it seems like we always have several dozen things that we're responsible for changing at once. When it comes to managing change, and again, as you said, being that intellectual thought leader for the school, what are some of the big pieces that leaders need to keep in mind?
[10:56] SPEAKER_00:
I think one of the big ideas is that change lies in the eye of the beholder. So we talk about understanding what kind of change people are experiencing. So the same change can be experienced really differently to different people. So maybe even right now, this idea of going online and doing more digital learning, I think you probably have teachers who...
[11:18]
I have always been thinking about student centered learning and they may be a little bit jazzed actually like, Oh, I finally get to do what I've always wanted to do. I'll do more project based learning. I'll have more like flip classrooms, all that stuff. You've got other teachers who are panicked saying, I still can't figure out how to bring my zoom up or, or mute the kids or whatever. Um, And so one of the things we find that when you're so we talk about first order change is where people feel pretty much like I know what to do. I understand why I'm doing it.
[11:47]
There may be still some difficult things here, but I also feel like this makes sense to me. It makes sense to where we are as an organization. That's a first order change. The second order change is where people start to say, there's four things that happen. And in a moment, I'll show you how they actually tie back to those four roles of a leader. But a second order change is where people are saying, this doesn't really square with my ideals and beliefs.
[12:11]
I don't understand in my heart why we're doing these things. Or I think this is bad for kids. You might hear people say that. They also may resist change if they're saying, boy, this is really upending our norms. This is not how we operate, right? Maybe it's like you're asking teachers to deprivatize their practice and have other people in their classrooms, you know, oh, the horror.
[12:33]
You may also have teachers, people resist if they simply don't know what to do. Like there's a whole bunch of knowledge and skills here that I am not familiar with. And you may be hearing that right now with teachers saying, I don't know how to do any of this digital stuff. The other piece then is when people really don't understand the purpose or the why, they may push back also if they feel like I never got any input into this. And I think we're all experiencing that, right? Nobody asked, can we have coronavirus, right?
[13:01]
So I think we're all feeling a little discomforted. So as a leader, what you need to be thinking about is, okay, how do I help people understand? I like the way, honestly, William Bridges puts it. It maps really nicely onto these four roles of leaders. Help people understand the vision. And I think right now it's also saying how, you know, it's not just we're trying to cope.
[13:21]
How might things actually be better on the backside of this? How might we rethink some learning for kids and their experiences and create something honestly that's better? Also help them understand the purpose. If we're doing these things or if we have these kind of protocols for safety, here's why. A phrase I picked up a long time ago is never give a what without a why. So do make sure you're explaining the why.
[13:42]
And then also, if you're changing people's norms and you're just going to say that, look, our PLCs are going to look different now. We're upending norms. I get that. But here's the new norms. Here's the new expectations. And then finally, really do provide people with the knowledge and the skills they need to be successful because that'll also create more of a sense of efficacy where, okay, I got that done.
[14:04]
What's next, right? So I think we're all experiencing, I think, what I would call, you know, it's the mother of all adaptive challenges right now as we navigate this. And it's really important that leaders think about, okay, Am I giving my team, my organization, all of the supports they need to make it through these personal transitions?
[14:25] SPEAKER_01:
Well, I appreciate your acknowledgement of changing norms under changing circumstances because so often we just assume that other people feel the same way we do or recognize that shift the same way we do. But sometimes we need to actually say, right, this is a new norm that we are shifting to. And people may need to hear that from us more directly than we might think. The other big thing that comes to mind, based on what you just said, Brian, is this idea of intentionally stopping things that we are deciding together to no longer do. Because we never seem to do that in our profession. We always add new things.
[15:04]
Change is more. Change is never different. You know, we always pile on more. And I think this is a time when, you know, we probably feel the pressure. We probably hear it from staff. But I think we really need to take it seriously.
[15:16]
The need to stop doing some things that no longer fit.
[15:21] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, that's so important. And that's part of the focus piece, too. It isn't just focusing more. It's creating your stop doing list of things that it's really hard to do because there is a reason you did it in the first place. And so part of it's also saying. hey we actually got that done right so we can stop doing it because it's maybe it's accomplished or maybe just the world has shifted on us and that's no longer an emphasis and also if if we can't draw a line between that whatever we're trying to do and student learning and we can't make that explicit then then maybe it's time to drop it because there's there's this other list of five things or three things that are so important We can't do everything.
[15:56]
So, yeah, you're absolutely right. You've got to create a stop doing this as well. I think that's happening for a lot of schools right now. And maybe we'll realize there are some things that we were doing all along. It's like, you know, that wasn't all that important, really. It was just something that happened over time that we never let go of.
[16:11] SPEAKER_01:
And I think this is the time to really get that input from staff because, you know, teachers know, teachers have that sense of, you know, what are we doing that really is essential for our students that we need to double down on and recommit to versus what's everything we've ever done in the past that may no longer fit our current situation. And you talk in the book about developing a purposeful community and creating this sense of investment in student learning. What are some ways or some tools that leaders can use to tap into that sense of collective commitment, right? Because this is not something that, as you said earlier, only needs to come from senior leadership. This is something that is shared. So how do we tap into that?
[16:54] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, and we talk about in the book, and I'm sure people have seen Simon Sinek's TED Talk on Start With Why. I think that's a great place to begin. We have tools and exercises that are in the book and some of our other materials, too, where you can actually begin with that conversation about why did you get into this profession in the first place, right? We all could have done something different with our lives. And yet we've chose this. Sometimes that's a really powerful conversation.
[17:20]
And then the follow up with the question about what is it you want to see for every student? Maybe you're thinking about 20 years from now, they turn up on my Facebook page or I see them on the street or something. What I want them to recall about me. And what kind of experiences am I trying to provide? What I find when we do this is that it's fascinating that we come together on certain things. People will start to say, yeah, I want them to be engaged.
[17:46]
I want them to feel like they've got their interest or tapped into their interest. And so it starts to become clear that we actually all are trying to accomplish the same things. And then from that, you can say, okay, if this is our why, if this is our moral purpose, How do we accomplish that? And so it's building out from the why in the middle of the circle to say, okay, now maybe the how becomes our norms, our shared values. And then we get to what are we really trying to accomplish? And so that's really powerful because we all...
[18:15]
We're more likely to change if we see that we're doing something that's bigger than ourselves. And certainly it's more motivating to feel like I'm doing something that's going to really help my kids. I'm not just putting out fires or trying to navigate what's a really difficult time right now. But coming back to that moral purpose can be. It may seem like we just need to do so many things and we have so many fires to put out. But I think pausing, you mentioned earlier, Justin, pausing and saying, let's come back to what our center is here, what our moral purpose is.
[18:45]
I think that's really important right now.
[18:47] SPEAKER_01:
I want to address, if we could for just a moment, the role of district-level leaders who often are the evildoers who give everybody else more work to do, but who really are trying to be that moral leader, that intellectual leader, and unite people across different school sites around some of those essentials and some of those core purposes. How can senior leaders who, you know, in one sense serve one organization, but in another sense are reaching into, you know, multiple schools that each see themselves as, you know, as somewhat autonomous organizations? How do we build that sense of collective commitment and shared purpose across organizations? Because I feel like so many...
[19:32]
central office leaders in particular now are, are being seen as, you know, mandate givers and, you know, the mandates are just things we have to do that we don't really need to, that don't really help our kids, but we'll get in trouble if we don't do them. So we have to do them. How do we recast that role of the central office leader to really be at the heart of what we've been talking about today and not in competition with it?
[19:52] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, that's such a good question. Um, You know, we like to think about the most powerful way to go about change is inside out change, meaning that you start with what's in people's hearts and minds and you build from that. And so I think a powerful role for central office staff is to say we want to actually make whatever change we're engaged in be intrinsically motivated. So it's partly that answer also that don't give a what without a why, explain why we're doing this. and ignite people's sense of moral purpose. This is something that we saw going on actually in Melbourne, Australia, where they united people around this idea of we want every student to be literate, numerate, and curious.
[20:31]
And the curiosity thing is what really took off because people said, oh man, if I could have my kids curious, everything gets more joyful and easier. So I think as leaders, it's also not just being that top-down leader, but trying to inspire people as well. and one key step along the way for inside out change is also identifying bright spots i think what central office staff have the ability to do is as you said peer into other schools and see hey here's something really amazing that's happening i want to share that with you we know the power of vicarious experiences seeing somebody else doing something effectively And especially if it's somebody down the road, it feels so much more applicable than like, hey, I read something in a book that I think you should do. So I think that's also a role that central office staff can play is like, how do we get change to happen from the inside out that's intrinsically motivated for everybody?
[21:21]
Because we understand where we're trying to go as an organization.
[21:26] SPEAKER_01:
Well, Brian, if you could wave a magic wand and get school leaders everywhere to implement one idea from balanced leadership for powerful learning, what would that be? What one action would you have people run with?
[21:39] SPEAKER_00:
Wow, that's a really good question. I think it's probably, you know, we had touched on this idea of inside out change. And I think it's what that really means is also ultimately helping teachers really be real professionals, right? So what does a professional do? Well, a professional diagnoses and solves problems, right? So it's kind of moving beyond just solutionitis.
[22:01]
Let's go to Here's the reading program. You all need to do it. Just saying, I really want to develop people's expertise in my school so that together we're operating as professionals. I think for me that if we could do that across the profession, I think we would really change it too. Moving beyond programitis towards more like, let's think about, let's become true professional. Let's develop professional expertise so that together we're diagnosing and solving problems.
[22:28]
And that will lead us to more ingenuity, more innovation so we can begin experimenting and creating some of these breakthroughs because honestly I think that's where we are right now. We're not going to navigate this current crisis by just finding some off-the-shelf solution. We're going to have to come up with really innovative, inspiring ways to teach kids during this crisis that I think will carry us forward to what schooling looks like afterward.
[22:53] SPEAKER_01:
So the book is Balanced Leadership for Powerful Learning, Tools for Achieving Success in Your School. Brian Goodwin, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. Thanks for having me. It's been a blast.
[23:04] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
