The Secret to Transformational Leadership

[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.

[00:14] SPEAKER_00:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Dr. Quinton Shepard. Dr. Shepard has been a superintendent in three different states for the last 18 years. He's previously served as a high school principal and elementary principal, and he's the author of the new book, The Secret to Transformational Leadership.

[00:33] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:36] SPEAKER_00:

Quinton, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:38] SPEAKER_01:

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

[00:39] SPEAKER_00:

So I'm excited to talk about some of the language that we use to discuss leadership. And language is a big theme in the book. Why does the way we think about leadership and the way we talk about leadership matter so much?

[00:54] SPEAKER_01:

I think it matters now more than ever. And it's become abundantly clear to me just watching people over the last probably decade to 15 years and people who want to like manifest real change in their districts sometimes fall flat on their face for reasons that kind of stymie all of us. We're like, well, what went wrong? They were well-intentioned, they meant well and so on and so forth. And it became abundantly clear to me anyway, that the language that we were using to enact change was actually working against us. It wasn't our fault.

[01:25]

We just really didn't know any better. So much of the language that we learn as leaders is, is very transactional in nature. Most leadership books on the market are kind of based in this notion of power and hierarchy, right? Because that's how leadership has been defined for generations and generations and generations. But there's this fundamental shift that's happened in society. And there's lots of reasons why this has happened.

[01:48]

But really within the last 10 years, this massive shift has taken place. And when a leader steps forward and wants to do transformational work, or adaptive work, and they use transactional language, they're sending a conflicting message to their community. And when they dive into that transformational work, the community is very quick to judge those leaders accordingly. And oftentimes they don't judge them well. They're not highly regarded. And so I think that just simply paying attention to language was the first step for me.

[02:18]

And then sort of defining out, well, if we can't use these words or this phrase, what words or phrases could we use to have the desired impact that we're trying to have on our schools and our communities.

[02:30] SPEAKER_00:

Well, let's get into some of the specifics here, because you outline a number of different shifts, and each chapter is, in fact, organized around a shift from not only how we talk about the work, but how we think about it, how we approach it. And the first is shifting from a focus on competence to a focus on compassion. What does compassion mean to you? And explain that shift a little bit for us.

[02:53] SPEAKER_01:

So compassion, if you break the word down, passion is to suffer and compassion is to suffer with. It's a little bit like empathy. Sometimes that gets confused. Folks say, oh, that just means being an empathetic leader. That's not it. Empathy is having these feelings for another person, but compassion requires empathy plus action.

[03:11]

Like I want to do something about it. Now, let me talk about the shift from competence to compassion. So competence frameworks in schools have been in place for a long, long time. but they've become especially strong in the last 40 or 50 years. Everything that's associated with No Child Left Behind, a nation at risk prior to that, is this notion about grading schools and grading school leadership and grading teachers and literally grading them for their competence. And parts of what we do, we absolutely should be graded on our competence.

[03:41]

But my firmly held belief is that we should be graded on our competence when it comes to things that are complicated. right? Complicated things have one right answer and one right way to do it. Putting together a bond defeasement schedule, for instance, is complicated. For a principal, putting together a schedule is complicated. Parts of it are very complicated.

[04:02]

There's one right way to do it and you have to do it right or kids are not able to get the classes and teachers don't get where they need to be, right? And so you should be judged on your competence in being able to do that or having somebody on your staff who can do that. I'm totally fine with that. But other elements of what we do in the leadership realm are not complicated. They're complex. Complex do not have one right answer.

[04:23]

They are inherently unknowable. Which is the best teacher to teach a group of students who are under-motivated and struggling in class? That's not complicated. That's actually complex. It's hard to know based on which teacher and what group of students and so on and so forth. In the world of the superintendency, when's the best time to run a bond campaign?

[04:43]

What amount is the right amount? What schools should be closed and when should schools be open? On and on and rezoning boundaries. These are all complex issues and inherently unknowable. That's where competence breaks down. Because if it's unknowable, then everyone who has an opinion has access to information and has the ability to back up that opinion.

[05:02]

And if the leader is using competence-based language, then they're saying to the community, if you don't agree with me, please judge me as being wrong. I'll use a very, very prescient example that we've all experienced here in the last year and a half. What is the best way to educate kids during a pandemic? There is no right answer for that, right? It's inherently complex. And if the leader chose to go after this as a complicated problem, then they created some plan and they trotted it out to their teaching staff or their community.

[05:31]

And they said, basically, please judge me. Give me an A to an F. How did I do on this plan? And the community often judged these leaders harshly. Some of them found themselves out of a job as a result of it. But compassion, suffer with, means that you go to the community before you have a plan, before you have decided what you're going to do.

[05:47]

And you say, here's this thing I'm struggling with. Tremendous amounts of vulnerability. I'm struggling with this and I know there's not one right answer. And you have got to understand there's not one right answer either. But I do believe that if we bring a bunch of really smart people together and have an educated conversation about this, that we can figure out what's best for our kids and for our teachers. That's the heart of compassionate leadership.

[06:10]

And folks, and incidentally, when you use this language, folks are much less likely to grade you Because they're not going to grade themselves, right? When folks have had an opportunity to have their own voice heard in the process, then they're less likely to say, well, I did a horrible job on this. I'm going to give myself an F. They're going to say, no, this is the best plan that I could have possibly put forward. This is A plus work. Let's get after it.

[06:32] SPEAKER_00:

I think of this in terms of the Hippocratic Oath for instructional leaders. We've heard in the medical world, they have the Hippocratic Oath of do no harm. And I think our Hippocratic Oath as instructional leaders needs to be about understanding, making sure that we're understanding a situation deeply and fully and with other people before moving forward. And I think of it in terms of Covey's seek first to understand, then to be understood. I think that's really our Hippocratic Oath here. And I loved in the book, you talked about a situation where I think when you were new to the Victoria Independent School District, where you actually approached a tax increase in that way.

[07:09]

What did you do to get the community on board? You know, you're the new guy, you're new into town. This is right after Hurricane Harvey. How did you get people to participate in that process?

[07:19] SPEAKER_01:

So we used lots of different tools. Some were digital. I'm a big believer that you've got to approach this from several different angles. So we used a digital tool. At that time, it was ThoughtExchange, the tool. We still use that today, that tool to solicit feedback.

[07:33]

That's a crowdsourcing software. The reason that's important to me to have a digital tool is because How egocentric of me to assume that people are going to make time out of their schedules to come visit with me when I say it's convenient for me. That's just inappropriate. I want to hear people's voices wherever they are, whenever they are, and whoever they are. So I just sort of envision somebody sitting in their house watching America's Funniest Home Videos and like they want to talk to the superintendent. By golly, they better be able to talk to the superintendent.

[07:59]

So we try to create that process. But essentially what it allows folks to do is everybody gets to share their thought. Whatever it is, nothing's up when it's share your thought about this particular question or this topic. And then you get to rate the thoughts of others. And so what you're doing is crowdsourcing good ideas that come to the top of everyone's mind. And so we went out and we said, well, what questions do you have about this?

[08:18]

What do you want to know? And we tried, we endeavored to answer all of those questions, especially the ones that rose to the top, because we knew that was what was on the community's mind. We also then scheduled public forums, as you might imagine. And we went into those public forums not with a decision that we were trying to convince people that this was the right thing to do for our community, but putting this in front of the community, this potential tax increase and saying, what are your thoughts? What ideas do you have? What suggestions do you have?

[08:43]

What questions do you have? Are there other ways to look at this problem or other ways to solve this problem that we haven't thought of? And we were open to all of that. We ran several community forums and we had the local, you know, obviously television and radio and newspaper there. And we just generated this massive community-wide conversation in the space of about a month. And It was relatively new in my tenure, but we had thousands and thousands of points of interaction around this topic.

[09:07]

So when we finally made the decision, it wasn't that everybody stood up and applauded and said, yay, hooray, we're going to raise our taxes. But nobody said, you didn't give me a chance to be heard. And that was really important to me is that we created space. for every single voice to be heard if they so desire.

[09:25] SPEAKER_00:

So I think one of the challenges that often makes us pull back from engaging with our community that way and listening is that if we hear people's ideas, if we hear people's input, and then we don't do what any particular person wants, right, and then people have lots of ideas, we're not going to do exactly what any one person wants probably most of the time. I think we're always afraid of the blowback of, well, why did you even ask my opinion if you're not going to do it? If you're not going to take it seriously, you pretended to hear me, and then you went and did what you were going to do anyway. How do you look at that accusation of, oh, that was just phony listening, and you just did what you were going to do all along? Do you ever hear that from people? And how do you frame that for yourself?

[10:05] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And it's actually happened to me a couple of times. You can't get into this work without recognizing that this will happen to you. Leaders, if you enmeshed in this competency framework, then you think to yourself, oh, they're going to put something out and I'm not going to be able to do it. And then they're going to judge me harshly and so on and so forth.

[10:20]

And it's just like downward spiral. And the last thing you want to do in that space then is to be vulnerable. But what I've discovered is that if you stay vulnerable, if you remain vulnerable through that experience, it's an opportunity for tremendous, tremendous growth with the community. And so let me give you two very concrete examples about how this works. One was when I was strategic planning in a previous district. And one of the ideas that started to resonate with the community was about going one-to-one and becoming a one-to-one district.

[10:49]

And at the time we had set up none of the infrastructure to do that. None of the funding and financing and resources and training for staff and so on and so forth. But like this idea really took root and it ended up being one of the top three, four ideas that the community put forward that we should build into our strategic plan. Had I just retreated, right? And said, oh, no, no, we're not going to do that. You're right.

[11:10]

It would have ended horribly. But what I felt was this is a great teaching opportunity. This is a great opportunity for me to go to the community and say, hey, like we haven't been preparing for this is a wonderful idea. But professional development for staff and resources and infrastructure and devices and on and on and on and on. We have some policy things we need to work through. Let's have a conversation about this as a district and see if we can find a way to move forward because it's clearly something you want and we're just not ready for it.

[11:35]

Another example where this happens has happened a couple of times to me, and I think it's fascinating, fascinating to do this. If you take a group of adults and you put them in a room together and say, I'm really interested in safety and security for our kids, what would you have me focus on? Uniformly, we'll always say the same thing. Bulletproof, glass resistant, windows and man traps and alarms. And I'm exaggerating when I say razor wire and like everything else that makes the hardscape get a little bit stronger, a little bit harder, right? Because that's safety and security.

[12:07]

I think it's fascinating. I've done this several times. It happens in every community. But then if you ask the exact same question with the exact same words to students and you say, what would you have me focus on when it comes to safety and security? Students will say things like mental health, emotional well-being, counseling services. They'll say something completely different.

[12:29]

And I've run these exchanges and focus groups before And then simply just say to my community, I think this is interesting. What do you think we should do about it? And you want to talk about a massive learning campaign? It's just an amazing experience. And here's the reason why. There's a flip that happens.

[12:48]

Anytime I ask your opinion about anything, I'm begging you, I'm demanding you, as a matter of fact, to be closed and knowing. You're closed-minded and you know the answer. So what should I do when it comes to safety and security? You have an answer for that. I'm telling you, you should be closed minded and you should tell me what the answer is. Right.

[13:05]

And that just honors the person that honors you as an individual. And everybody should be honored that way. That's what we want. But then if I can introduce you to somebody else's thought, and especially if it resonates with you, when a kid says something different, well, then you move, you walk through an imaginary doorway from closed and knowing to open and learning. Now, all of a sudden you're open minded and you're learning something new. Well, that's interesting that the kids feel that way.

[13:30]

And maybe your judgment call is they're totally wrong, but maybe you also say to yourself, what if they're right? And that's where the magic happens. That's where leadership, that's transformational leadership to the highest degree.

[13:41] SPEAKER_00:

So you're not only engaging with people's ideas, you're getting them to engage with each other's ideas. You know, you're not just listening to parents and saying, what do you think we should do? You're coming back to them and saying, here's what you said you thought we should do. And here's what your kids said they thought we should do. What do you think about that? So there are multiple opportunities to engage with the ideas.

[14:01]

Is that right?

[14:03] SPEAKER_01:

That's right. And you layer it depending on, you know, depending on how you want the process to play out. When we did our pandemic response plan, as an example, knew that you know you have to have some expertise in teaching to be able to make a pretty strong pandemic response plan so we went to our teachers first and i did a mega zoom we had 700 teachers on a zoom call and we ran a town hall forum type event focus group under that and then some another crowd exchange thought exchange after that and then after we had created a draft of a plan with those 700 teachers we then did a mega zoom with kids middle school and high school kids i think there were four or five hundred kids i'm assuming that was crazy But did the same thing. We said, how do you respond to some of this language? What did we leave out? What should we add?

[14:41]

And so on and so forth. We harvested all that language and came up with the second version of the plan. Then we went to the parents and asked them the same questions. Like, what are you concerned about when it comes to back to school? So by the time it was done, we had literally thousands and thousands of pieces of input. And quite literally, my community wrote the pandemic response plans.

[15:01]

And so, again, when I took it out to the community, I didn't have to worry. You've said the word engagement two or three times. I didn't have to worry about anybody engaging with the plan. That was a word that I just it no longer connects with me in any way, shape or form. Neither does buy in because my community had ownership. They own that plan.

[15:17]

They had written that plan. They knew they had written that plan. So they don't have to engage with it. They owned it.

[15:22] SPEAKER_00:

And of course, this has a massive impact on the culture and climate of your organization. You say something interesting pretty early on in the book that I wanted to touch on. You say your organizational culture is approximately five years behind your climate and your policies, politics, and structures are approximately five years behind your culture. Explain to us a little bit, if you could, that relationship between climate and culture and structure. I found that fascinating.

[15:54] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's been something that I've just noticed. It's been a career as a superintendent in many districts and watching my peers and colleagues that have come to realize that these things, they actually, it's like seeing the ball bounce more than once. Yeah, like your climate is your ball bouncing right in front of your face. And there's certain things that are happening that become daily events, but it's just climate. It's not actually a part of your policy. It's just, these are the frequencies.

[16:16]

These are the words that people use, right? And they talk about things and they become actions, right? And then the actions over time get enmeshed in culture. And it's really important that none of this is a value judgment. This is the utmost of compassionate leadership. Your climate is your climate.

[16:36]

It's just how things are rolling. And as a principal, I can remember the daily climate being something that's just there. It's all around you. It's like a fish swimming in water. But over time, the language and the words and the actions and so on and so forth, it just becomes your culture, right? And now when you bring in new people into the organization, they enmesh within this culture and it becomes the lived experiences of the group.

[16:59]

And I think a lot of folks have spoken about this to some degree about climate begets culture. But then the big connection point to me was culture actually begets policy. And so we put into policy those things that we believe and we put them in policy in really strange ways sometimes that are ultimately not helpful to what it is that we're trying to do in our communities. As a concrete example of what I'm talking about, you can open up any policy manual for just about any school district in the country. And somewhere along the lines, you will see policy references to hierarchies. Like there's certain committees that make certain decisions in certain ways and certain orders.

[17:37]

And that is nothing but a nod to power structures. So it's power and hierarchies again. And that's what policies do. They enact power. But the problem is that by doing that, you're assuming that every single problem is complicated. Because when you have a complex issue, let's talk about one that's nationwide right now, a complex issue like equity.

[17:57]

or social emotional learning or transgender issues, depending on what community you live in, if you perceive this issue to be complicated and your policy manual is set up that way, then you've basically said this is a hierarchical decision and there's one right answer. And to which my response would be, good luck. I talk about being totally obtuse to climate and culture, but because policy is so far behind both of those, Most policy manuals won't be rewritten in a way that actually serves their communities for another five, six, seven years, which is crazy to me. And so part of my conjecture is that we should actually think differently about how we do governance and policy as well. We should actually just be very upfront with if things are complicated, this policy manual stands as an operating procedure of how we should be doing business.

[18:48]

But if it's complex, we should go to our community first. And that was, I think as a superintendent, one of my proudest moments over an 18 year career is when I came to Victoria, we actually put that in policy. We talked about complicated versus complex and when it's a complex issue, we'll go to our community first. So we said, this is simply how we do business.

[19:07] SPEAKER_00:

I know you explained this earlier, but just to recap the distinction there, you said for something that's complicated, there kind of is one right answer. It might not be easy to get to, but it's kind of a fairly straightforward solution. But if it's complex, there's inherently no right answer. We have to kind of figure that out together.

[19:24] SPEAKER_01:

Let me give an example at the building level or campus level for a principal. So climate, culture, and policy. And then let's think about how do we hire a principal or an assistant principal? We typically approach that, at least we always have historically in my estimation, we've approached that as complicated. We put in powers and hierarchies and teams, and there's a team that gets to interview and we set out a job description and recruit the person into it and so on and so forth. But it assumes that there's just one right way to do it and that there's one right answer for the person who should be leading the campus.

[19:56]

But what if we were to flip that paradigm? What if we were to say, no, actually hiring a principal is incredibly complex and there isn't one right answer. There's lots of different leadership styles and lots of different needs for the campus. And so we start first with the teachers and say, what do you desire in your next leader? Right. And ask the parents, what do you desire in the next campus administrator for this school?

[20:17]

then create the job description, right? And if you flip the script that way, but here's the rub. Our climate and culture and policy are not designed to do that. Our climate, culture, and policy have a very scripted top down. We set up the structures and this is how we do the interviews and who gets to control what, who gets to make what recommendation. And those things are lived out.

[20:40]

They become our policies. And unless we're willing to address them directly, I don't know that they change.

[20:45] SPEAKER_00:

I wanted to touch on something you said about hiring and about deciding who should remain in your organization and in what roles. You said something that at first sounded backward, but then when I realized why you had it that way, it made total sense. You said you don't want any leaders in your organization that you would not want to work for. Take us into that and talk to us a little bit more about hiring, because I think that's such a key thing, especially when we're looking at any kind of cultural change.

[21:14] SPEAKER_01:

So it's easy to look at the skills and history of a person and their experiences and so on and so forth. And it's important. Don't get me wrong. Those are really important factors. But at the end of the day, there's this hard to quantify thing about someone as a leader. And there's different ways to wrap your head around it.

[21:33]

Some folks, they want to talk about affability or how engaging they are, charismatic, if you will, or these hard to define terms. And so I needed something, some metric in my head that was like pretty clear cut, like just pretty clear cut. I don't want to get this. Well, I kind of feel this way and I kind of feel that way, but it essentially boiled down to, and there was two reasons I did it, but one was, was strictly for hiring. Like, is this a person I would want to work for? Is there something in this person that like, I know for a fact I could learn from them and I'm being encouraged and inspired and challenged and motivated and, If the answer is yes, then I want to be around that person.

[22:12]

And I want my teachers to be around that person. And I want my students to be around that person. The other part is a little bit more personal, but it also applies here. And that is that I've spent most of my adult life genius watching. That's just what I call it. Everybody has a genius.

[22:26]

It's a way for me to stay humble. It's a way for me to stay always on the lookout for potential. Potential just drives me. I'm interested in people's potential. I'm interested in organizations' potential. I just love...

[22:38]

potential in any form. And so I just started, you know, spending most of my adult life looking for people's genius. And it sounds like, oh, yeah, that's cute. But no, like, I really mean it. Everybody has a unique genius. And the challenge for me and for you and for every one of us walking around is to discover that genius in others, and then not be afraid to say it, name it, call it out.

[23:02]

One of the things that we've started doing here in Victoria ISD is whenever I get the chance to introduce an administrator, I always start by introducing them by their genius. So it was just naming their genius in front of a group and how I see it play out and how special it is and how important it is. And then, and then I eventually get to their name, which is kind of part of the introduction. That's always important, but just naming and identifying the genius because In a perfect world, how cool would it be if a principal was introducing teachers to their teams based on their genius? We hire a new teacher and as you bring them in, you introduce the team based on their genius. And how profoundly moving would it be if a teacher was doing that with kids in their classroom?

[23:44]

And so genius watching and identifying genius is key to me. And that's part of this, would I want to work for this person? Because once you see someone's genius for what it is, it's really easy to get excited about people and their potential.

[23:59] SPEAKER_00:

So let's talk a little bit about the structure of the book, if we could. And I definitely want to encourage people to check it out for themselves. Each of the nine chapters is organized in a particular way. And I wonder if you might kind of explain that to us and tell our listeners what to expect when they pick up the book.

[24:13] SPEAKER_01:

So each chapter is designed to take you through that door that we spoke about earlier, from closed and knowing to open and learning. And so it's a movement from a word or phrase. So we specifically identify a word or phrase, which is really a concept. And so it's a movement from to something different. So as an example, it's a movement from seeing the world as complicated to seeing the world as complex. It's a movement from competent to compassionate, right?

[24:43]

And again, these words are important. And I try to give very specific examples of where we use those words in places where we're trying to lead change. But more importantly, I'm encouraging the reader to dig deep within themselves and recognize that there's actually a concept here that really, really matters. And it's more than just those one or two words, but it's actually the entire language that supports that. And it's a movement from transactional to transformational, hence the secret to transformational leadership. And so as I was writing this book, I realized that it might be more powerful and impactful for leaders to hear from other leaders or hear about other leaders that, you know, this isn't just a Quentin Shepard, you know, thing going on here, but it's like, this is actually happening in the real world.

[25:28]

And the reality is leaders, you know, across several industries are in different places on their learning trajectory in this world. So Sarah Williamson and I decided it would be really powerful. to have these vignettes of leaders at different points along their journey that kind of support the concept that's written in the chapter. So at the end of every chapter is one of these leadership vignettes that she has helped write and help draw those out of those folks. And this project couldn't have been done without Sarah. And I think they just add deeper value to folks so that they know that they're not alone.

[26:00]

I wrote this book for with several audiences in mind, sitting leaders, of course, people who are sitting there saying, gosh, I think we could be doing it differently or maybe even doing a little bit better, those folks in mind. But I also had leaders in mind that are not yet in those positions. Maybe they're leaders in their classrooms, ready to ascend into school leadership positions or thinking about it even. And I want for them to know that there's this really interesting, growing phenomenon, space of leaders who are genuinely doing it differently. And in a way that's not just powerful, but just really inspiring. And I thought if they could hear some of those stories that it might encourage them to take that next step.

[26:39] SPEAKER_00:

We've got to make sure that we're always learning from the best in our profession, but also in other professions. And I know you pull in vignettes from healthcare and the corporate world and leaders in all kinds of different places. So the book is The Secret to Transformational Leadership. Dr. Quentin Shepard, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.

[26:59]

Thank you, sir. Have a great day.

[27:00] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.