[00:01] SPEAKER_01:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.
[00:06] Announcer:
Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.
[00:15] SPEAKER_02:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by my good friend, Daniel Bauer. Daniel is the founder of Better Leaders, Better Schools, where he hosts the most downloaded podcast for school leaders, as well as his Better Leaders, Better Schools, Mastermind for School Leaders. And he's got many fabulous leaders in that from all over the world. Daniel is also the author of the new book, The Better Leaders, Better Schools Roadmap, Small Ideas That Lead to Big Impact, which we're here to talk about today.
[00:45] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:47] SPEAKER_02:
So Daniel, welcome back to Principal Center Radio. How are you today?
[00:50] SPEAKER_00:
I'm fantastic. If you could see me, I have the biggest grin on my face because I love connecting with you, Justin, on your show or having you on my podcast. And this is just an absolute pleasure. So thank you for having me on the show.
[01:02] SPEAKER_02:
Well, likewise, and the feeling is mutual. It's been great to connect with you over the years and to see your ideas for this book take shape and to see the conversations that have led to this book. The book is subtitled Small Ideas That Lead to Big Impact. And I wonder if we could start with that idea of small ideas. You and I have both been school leaders. We have both seen both the big and the small actions that leaders take that make a difference.
[01:29]
So talk to me a little bit, Daniel, about why small ideas are kind of at the heart of the roadmap.
[01:36] SPEAKER_00:
Sure. You know, I think when I started writing the book, I wasn't sure how I was going to come together, to be quite honest. And the inspiration comes from Seth Godin's Stop Stealing Dreams. So people are familiar with Seth's work. He writes in this punchy style. It's easily digestible.
[01:53]
But within a very short, what could be considered a blog post or a chapter, he'll really add the value, right, and add the impact that's there. So In Stop Stealing Dreams, he welcomes the reader to criticize his work or write their own version of their education manifesto. So I did Stop Stealing Dreams 2.0, which is really what we're talking about today. And I just wanted to really give people a sense of maybe the wide breadth of experience that I've had. I've You know, you and I have talked to hundreds at this point of school leaders on both our podcasts, and you learn a lot from those types of conversations, let alone the experience that we had within leading different schools.
[02:38]
So there's a menu of ideas that people can enjoy. And even if they take action on just one, I think it'll lead to big impact that they want to see within their schools.
[02:49] SPEAKER_02:
Let's get right into it then. So these small ideas, you know, and some of them are not very small, honestly, some of them are pretty big picture ideas. But I love the way that you encapsulate them and approach them in a way that is concise, and that is actionable, and that gets people thinking, but also gets people thinking about how to change their practice without hundreds and hundreds of pages of, you know, appendixes and things like that. So thinking in terms of some of the higher leverage ideas that people will find in the book, what stood out to you as you started to pull together the Better Leaders, Better Schools roadmap as some of those key ideas that people needed to hear first?
[03:28] SPEAKER_00:
Well, one of them is easily just a mindset shift of thinking about everything, resources, your time, what you bring to the table in terms of abundance versus scarcity. And this is something that I love to talk about because. In some respects, if I looked at you, Justin, or if I looked at Jethro Jones, a transformative principal, Will Parker and the work that he does, I could see you all as competitors. Right. And I guess on some level I do. But on a bigger level and a more important level, I see you all as collaborators.
[04:02]
Right. And I consider you all friends. And the way I think about it is if if I looked at what I want to accomplish with what I'm doing with the show or the book or whatever. And I saw everybody as competition and that there's a finite amount of people that would read or, you know, even talk about from a business point of view, money that they would spend on a book. Then there's just there's clearly winners and losers. I don't like playing that game.
[04:27]
I like playing a game where there's all winners. And so if I look at you all as friends, as collaborators, if I have an abundant sort of mindset and that we could all win by collaborating together, then I think our collective effort in terms of serving school leaders is will be that much bigger and greater. And so that's just, you know, that's something that I consider and something that I talk about within the book. So I partner with you on projects. I partner with Jethro on different projects, too. And I think, you know, if you asked me five years ago or even definitely 10 years ago, you know, the mindset I would bring to our relationships, I'd say, I'm trying to destroy those guys.
[05:05]
You know, I would figure out how can I bury them? And that's a terrible approach to it. But it's not natural for me. I learned it from my mentor, Aaron Walker. And a real quick anecdote there is he's grown a number of businesses into multimillion dollar, very successful businesses. And one of the stories that he likes to share is when he had a construction company in Nashville, Tennessee, he was the number one construction firm.
[05:31]
Now, he gathered all the construction guys together in Nashville. And again, they could compete or they could collaborate and they would share the best resources. They talk about the best way to secure bids, new neighborhoods, all this kind of stuff. But the point is, is that they rallied together. And even when they had to buy materials and that type of thing, they all need different types of wood for the frames of the homes. They bargained collectively together to negotiate the best prices available.
[05:59]
So rather than trying to stamp each other out, they lifted each other up, shared best practices, and everybody won. All their businesses grew. And then everybody that was looking for a beautiful house in Nashville found the ideal house that they were looking for. So that's an example of the mindset shift I'm talking about. And we see this in schools as well. We might be marketing and competing for some of the same students, especially if you are you know, a private school or a charter.
[06:29]
When you think about test scores, too, even within the district or the grade level, you know, consider how you are building, I guess, models where everybody has to compete to win and that there's clear winners or losers. Or where are there ways that we can collaborate so that actually everybody wins at the same time?
[06:49] SPEAKER_02:
I love that. And I think about innovations as being one of those points where every school wants to have some things that are distinctive about their school. And there's a temptation to want to make those proprietary and unique. But if you look at the schools that are improving the fastest, that have gone the farthest, often it's not that they're doing something completely on their own it's that they are the best example in a rich field of schools that are doing that particular thing so you could look at any curriculum you could look at any professional development initiative like professional learning communities you know probably the best school that's doing professional learning communities did not do it in isolation by themselves. We like to think of our school as kind of the only one that we need to think about. We're focused on our students, our teachers, our community.
[07:39]
But the reality is that so much of what we're doing, we draw those ideas from the field, from the profession. And even if our colleagues out there around the country, around the world, are not directly either competing or collaborating with us. I love what you said about how can we all get better when we see each other, not necessarily from a scarcity mindset or as competition, but as people that we can collaborate with and people that we can share ideas with. And I think your mastermind group is a terrific example of that sharing.
[08:13] SPEAKER_00:
You know, at this point, we have a pretty diverse group that works with me. But currently, Justin, there's school leaders from eight different countries around the world. So luckily, our mastermind meetings are virtual. We meet in a Zoom room and we meet weekly on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. And depending on where you're at, you know, that time zone is going to be different. But that's the beautiful thing about innovation and technology is And, you know, just to add on to that sort of idea, too, in the book, I talk about Jesse Cole, who's the president of the Savannah Banana baseball team.
[08:46]
Now, who knew that there's college summer baseball leagues? There are. Nobody cares about them, right? Like, at least nobody I know cares about those teams. But what Jesse did with the Savannah Bananas that I think is important to touch on here is that You could become a category king or you can give away, you know, how the sausage is made. But it still doesn't matter because how you do it, your voice, the spin that you put it on, the personality.
[09:14]
that you bring to the table and infuse within your organization, that's going to resound and connect with different types of people. So I remember way back when, when Jethro Jones launched his mastermind, it was literally the same week that I launched mine. And I thought for about five minutes, you've got to be freaking kidding me. Like I'm going to kill this guy. This guy is saying he was my friend. What is he doing?
[09:36]
I'm trying to coach school leaders. And after that five minute, you know, sort of toddler fit that I threw, I thought about it. I took a bunch of deep breaths and I considered the vast amount of school leaders that exist around the world. Even if I had all the systems and processes and an incredible global team, you know, and had like a Fortune 500 company or something, I still wouldn't be able to serve all the school leaders around the world. So I had to take some of my own medicine. And this was three years ago.
[10:08]
So it wasn't as developed yet. But back then I had to think, breathe. OK, there's more than enough to go around. And if I help Jethro succeed, if I work with myself, then we'll all win. So it goes back to that. abundant sort of mindset.
[10:23]
The other thing too, is I did a really fun interview with Jennifer Gonzalez and we were thinking about how to increase the value of her show, The Cult of Pedagogy. And we came up with a podcast upgrade. So people can go to my website, betterleadersbetterschools.com forward slash toolkit. And I give away, I think it's like a 15 page document of how to start your own mastermind. So I'm welcoming people to sort of, quote unquote, compete with me.
[10:50]
But that's because I know they can't do it like I do it. They're going to do it like they do it. And that's going to respond with some people, not with others.
[10:57] SPEAKER_02:
And that's totally OK. And I want to draw a connection there between that idea that, you know, only I can do X versus others. other people kind of having their own approach. And I think within a school as leaders, we tend to kind of feel the same way, right? That there are certain things that only I can do. And if I ever let go of those or delegate those to someone else, then it's just not going to work.
[11:21]
And I know you have a chapter in the book on working with your team and developing people and trusting people. Talk to me about how you see that showing up for school leaders who maybe feel like what they're doing, they're doing well. But of course, there's always too much to do. How do we kind of let go of that false belief that only we can do all of the things that we're doing? How can we bring out the strengths of our team?
[11:46] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, we'll go to the school leadership series in Google or Google rule number six and And then you'll get over yourself pretty quick. The punchline to that story, it's a beautiful story. I want you to go back and listen to it. But basically, get over yourself. Don't take yourself so seriously. And I think that's the key with delegation is, you know, you do have to look at all your tasks.
[12:09]
So if I was to give a little bit of free coaching here for the listeners, Principal Center Radio is that, List everything you're responsible for as a school leader. Get it all on one page. And from there, I want you to consider all those tasks and rank them one, two, or three. One is only the things that you can do. Two is I thought only I can do it, but maybe I could give that away. And then there's threes, which are absolutely I know for a fact I can give this away.
[12:39]
I just haven't yet for whatever reason. So rank it one, two, or three. Then I want you to go through all those tasks and actually think about the energy that the task gives you. There's things that light you up. So promoting others, maybe on social media and talking about the great things happening in the classrooms. Maybe that gives you a lot of energy.
[12:58]
So you'd put that as green or giving energy. Then there's tasks that neither give you energy or take away energy. So that's sort of in the middle. And then there's energy sucking activities. And maybe that's paperwork, administrative stuff, signing checks, whatever it is, it's going to be different for everybody. So we've identified the things that only you can do, the type of energy.
[13:20]
And then the last step I want you to take is to just estimate how long does that task take to complete? And then give yourself a constant. So if it's $200 an hour, 50 bucks an hour, it doesn't matter. But take the average amount of time that you spend within a week or a month, just pick and then divide that by the total amount of time that you quote unquote pay yourself. And you're going to get a sense of how much that activity costs. So now you sort of have every task that you are responsible for and you can triangulate which ones only you can do, what you thought you could do but could probably give away, what you could give away, the different levels of energy and how much that task might cost for you to do.
[14:01]
From there, make some informed decisions and start getting stuff off your plate. I think the lowest hanging fruit in this example would be things that you know you can give away, you just haven't yet, and then things that either cost a lot for you to accomplish or things that suck your energy. And that would be the first step to getting stuff off your plate. The last thing I want to say in terms of delegation, a lot of times we think that we can do it better or you get a final product and you're like, that is not what I asked for. This is complete garbage. And what I find is the biggest reason for the failure, quote unquote, within delegation is that adequate training was not provided.
[14:41]
So delegation doesn't mean, OK, I don't want to do this or I don't have time for this and I'm going to give it to this other person. It means partly that. And then what is the robust training system that I'm going to come up with so that this person can be successful and meet sort of my expectations for the completion of this project? If you do all of that, you're going to free up yourself to be able to focus on the bigger picture items. and actually be able to do some things that you've always put off and never had time for as well.
[15:11] SPEAKER_02:
Very well said. I feel like so much of what we inherit as our work, we see as kind of set in stone and sacred, like, well, these are the duties of the principal, I can't change them. And of course, of course, we can, you know, those were gradually created over time, maybe with no master plan in mind. And certainly we as leaders can can identify the strengths of our staff. And I know you talk about doing disk profiles and the personality assessments that can help people identify their strengths and other people's strengths. But I think there's also this fear that if I stop doing something, any particular thing of the million things that I'm doing as principal, then people will lose respect for me, or they'll think I'm being lazy, or I just won't really be seen as a leader anymore.
[15:58]
And you use a very powerful phrase in chapter four of the book. You say, the more power you give away, The more power you have.
[16:08] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, I really I like that line a lot, too. And it comes from an idea that we read within the mastermind, this beautiful book called The Go-Giver Leader. And in that book, I don't want to summarize the whole thing, but there's a guy who comes in and his whole role is to acquire this new company. Right. It's a smaller furniture company. And this larger acquisition company wants to take them over.
[16:32]
And so the guy basically thinks just by steamrolling everybody and saying we have the money and the manpower behind us and you guys will sell your company that he's going to gain the influence needed for this final vote. But what he quickly realizes is that basically everybody thinks he's a big jerk and he's not getting the influence despite all the money and manpower that this acquisition company brings to the table. So long story short, he learns that by developing relationships. And I think they might use the metaphor of pushing a rope as opposed to tugging on a rope. But the whole point is that he gives away power. He builds relationships.
[17:10]
And all of a sudden, he has incredible power and incredible influence within the organization. And that larger acquisition company actually ends up being able to buy the smaller furniture company. And of course, it It ends well in a fairy tale style. So but it's a good paradox. It's a good metaphor to consider because I think, you know, there's inherent power that comes with the title. But is that the kind of power you want to yield?
[17:35]
Or is it the power that because people trust you, they believe in you, right? They know you have their best interests at heart. that you're able to get things done. What kind of leader do you want to be?
[17:46] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah. And I think back to one of the teachers that I worked with when I was a middle school teacher, we had a particular special ed teacher who taught kind of a self-contained class, mostly students on the autism spectrum. And one of his kind of extra duties that he had taken on and that the principal had entrusted him with over a long period of time was was basically all staff professional development. You know, anytime there was a school improvement meeting, a strategic planning kind of meeting, a kind of whole staff professional development, he was ultimately kind of the point person for that. And the principal was still the principal, but had no qualms about allowing this particular teacher to take the lead on those big school improvement initiatives. And you think, well, school improvement, surely that's something the And I can tell you, it's not, you know, if you know your team, if you know their strengths, if you know your strengths, then you can you can make those I don't want to say delegate because I don't think it's quite delegation.
[18:47]
I think it's more along the lines of creating teamwork that matches people's talents and matches people's passion for how they want to contribute. I love what you said about giving power away. You know, the more you give away, the more you actually have.
[19:01] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, and I just, I so appreciate your point. Just if you know your people at such a deep level that you put them in positions where they could experience success and win, you know, what else won't they do for you, you know? And even if that means they end up leaving your school, you know, but if they leave and talk about how you developed them and the capacity and the opportunity that they had working with you, I guarantee that you're going to get, you know, so many more interested applicants that could absolutely fill That spot and then other spots that you have, you know, openings for just because you're the type of organization that people run to. Right. That they just absolutely want to, you know, engage in and work for.
[19:43] SPEAKER_02:
Absolutely. And I love what you said about setting people up for success. And I think that maybe right there is a big part of the difference between just delegating something that you don't want to do or that you feel like you're too busy for and actually empowering someone else to succeed to a higher degree than maybe you could personally with that because it's a good fit for them because they're the right person for that work. And not just kind of dumping it on their lap and saying, well, you're good at X. Why don't you do that instead of me? But I love what you said about setting people up for success.
[20:12]
So Daniel, you have a chapter on empathy in the book. Talk to me a little bit about why empathy matters for school leaders.
[20:19] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, you know, I mean, empathy is something that I think everybody needs a dose of. And we're about to read Emotional Intelligence 2.0 within the mastermind because that's an area where I want to grow as well. You know, there's many things that you can do in terms of increasing your understanding. But essentially, if you can understand somebody else's perspective, right, what's going through their mind, how are they experiencing this situation or this potential conversation or whatever, you're going to grow, you know, as a leader. And I talk about this powerful experience I had as a undergrad student where our professor was teaching us to be teachers.
[20:55]
She lined us up. shoulder to shoulder. And I think the activity was called walk a mile in my shoes. And she literally would just read these sentences like I have a family member who's been incarcerated, right? Or I've been pulled over by the police because of the color of my skin and all these other types of things. Like maybe you missed rent one month and had to move in with in-laws or friends or whatever.
[21:18]
And so what happened was if you would answer that statement in an affirmative, then you took a step backward right and if you did not uh connect with that statement you stayed where you were and after 10 minutes of shoot even five minutes of reading these statements she had us open our eyes we all had our eyes closed and you look around and very quickly instantly you could see your privilege right and as a white male that became just increasingly clear the amount of doors that were open for me and the opportunities that i had Just because of where I was born and what I looked like. It had nothing to do with my merit or work ethic and that kind of thing. So that was a good activity to go through. There's a bunch talked about within the book, you know, and I think the kernel of truth, if you do that activity or another one.
[22:08]
It's just how can I understand what people are going through at a deeper level? Because quite honestly, when we build a presentation, when we think about a meeting or anything, a lot of times the natural thing to do. So it's OK if you do this. I do it as well. I think from my point of view and how I would like to do it and how I would like to receive it. But going back just into the dis profiles and setting people up for success and that sort of thing.
[22:34]
You need to understand your people. How do they receive messages? What has been the context of their life and what they bring to the table and to your school? And by understanding that at just a little bit of a deeper level, you will be able to empathize that much greater. I think it will exponentially increase your ability to empathize. And if you can empathize with your people, that builds trust, that builds influence.
[22:56]
And it's sort of we've gone all the way around in terms of giving power away in order to receive it.
[23:00] SPEAKER_02:
So the book is The Better Leaders, Better Schools Roadmap, Small Ideas That Lead to Big Impact. Daniel, if people want to learn more about you and your work, more about the book or more about the Better Leaders, Better Schools Mastermind, where's the best place for them to go online to find you?
[23:16] SPEAKER_00:
I think since we're talking about the book, Justin, go to betterleadersbetterschools.com forward slash roadmap. And there you can get the first chapter for free as a download, as well as the resource guide that comes with the book. Or you can check it out on Amazon and invest. But if you want to taste before you buy the whole meal, that would be the safest bet.
[23:37] SPEAKER_02:
Well, Daniel, it's been so great to speak with you again. And I just want to thank you for joining me on Principal Center Radio.
[23:42] SPEAKER_00:
It's always a pleasure to be here, Justin. Thanks for inviting me.
[23:45] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
