Be More Toddler: A Leadership Education From Our Little Learners

[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 be joined today by Emma Turner. Emma is a former primary school teacher and was one of the first co-heads of a primary school in the UK. And she currently serves as the research and CPD lead for the Discovery Schools Academy Trust in the UK. And she's the author of the new book, Be More Toddler, a leadership education from our little learners.

[00:41] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:44] SPEAKER_00:

Emma, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:45] SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for having me. It's a delight to be here.

[00:48] SPEAKER_00:

So in Be More Toddler, you share the idea or perhaps the metaphor that as leaders, we have a lot to learn from our youngest learners.

[00:57] SPEAKER_01:

The core of it was that you mentioned that the co-headship, but during the co-headship sort of period, I had three babies in five years. And so I spent a lot of time kind of in and out of the school on maternity leave. And I suddenly realized that one day, after bumping into a former colleague, that he was saying, oh, you were always going to do this, you were always going to do that, you were always this, you were always that. And I suddenly realized he was talking about me in the past tense, constantly. Like, now you've had the babies, you're kind of a nobody. And then I did a little bit of digging and found out that the biggest demographic to leave the teaching profession is women aged between 31 and 40.

[01:36]

So I thought, actually, I could step out of the leadership game now really easily, but actually what I really need to do is step up. And at the time when I met this former colleague, bumped into him, it was actually at a soft play center and I was in the ball pit with my three children, the eldest being five and another two year old and a newborn there. And I looked at my two year old and I thought, my gosh, she was so determined, so resilient, didn't care about anything, throwing herself into every single challenge that was there. was just like some kind of learning machine. And I thought, you know what? I just need to be a little bit more like you.

[02:11]

I need to be more you, be more toddler. And kind of the idea came to me. And then the more I looked at them, the more I thought, you change everything. As a kid, when you have a child, your entire life changes. The way you eat, where you go, where you sleep. I say sleep loosely because none of my kids ever slept.

[02:33]

But they completely changed. transform whole scale change in a household. And they do that when they can't even speak and they can't even use a toilet. So I was like, what is it that you do that means you can affect whole system change in that way? And through observing what they did, and I'm not talking about throwing tantrums and lying on the floor and kicking and screaming, but actually the things that they do are incredibly clever. And if you replicated them, in an institution and you were more toddler, then leadership actually becomes really straightforward and really simple.

[03:09]

So it came from almost stepping out the leadership game to realizing that actually the thing that was going to make me step out was the biggest gift because it gave me a complete insight into what I needed to do.

[03:22] SPEAKER_00:

So certainly we don't want to be the kind of leaders who get our way by throwing a fit, by maybe not throwing ourselves on the floor, but certainly throwing our weight around and kind of bullying our way to the results we want. We don't want to be that kind of leader. What are some of the kind of surprisingly proactive and positive traits you saw in young children that we can learn from as leaders?

[03:45] SPEAKER_01:

The first thing I'll talk to you about is chocolate and celery. Because we have these little things for chocolate buttons over here, little tiny bags of little chocolate drops. And every parent has them. Every parent uses them in moments of crisis. Just take those for a minute, kids. And my daughter had got a packet of them in the post office queue one day.

[04:06]

And I was trying to take them off her, and there was absolutely no way that she was giving up those chocolate buttons. They meant the world to her. There was absolutely no way on earth that she was parting with them. And I thought, in leadership, that's the first thing to realize. Find out what you're going to hold on to. What do you really believe in?

[04:26]

What do you really want? What are you going to give up for absolutely nobody? What your moral purpose, that kind of righteous indignation, what do you stand for as a leader that you are happy to fight for? And then the flip side of that is celery. Now, it doesn't matter what I do with celery with my three kids, the way I chop it, blend it, fricassee it, whatever. They are very different children, but they are united in their absolute hatred of celery.

[04:53]

It's like, no, mom, this is not for us. Don't try and fool us.

[04:57] SPEAKER_00:

And I'm with them 100%. I just have to say I'm with them 100% anti-salary.

[05:02] SPEAKER_01:

It's a stringy devil of a veg. But the flip side of that, you see, is saying what you're going to say no to, what you will not tolerate. So find out what you believe in. Find out what you absolutely will not stand for. And then use those two things as a filter for all of your decision making as a leader. As soon as you've done that, as soon as you know what you're about, then the whole of leadership becomes a hell of a lot easier because you are guided by these absolute principles that you are absolutely resolute in.

[05:32]

So the first thing was chocolate and celery. I talk a lot as well, I've mentioned moral purpose, it's about emotional buy-in as well. If you think about the labour of looking after children you spend a disproportionate amount of time having yogurt poured on you or being some child is sick on you and doing all manner of unspeakable things but you still do it because you absolutely love the work so one of the things about being a great leader is creating a place an organization where people love to do the work when they have got that emotional buy-in and it's normally when they're aligned with your chocolate and your celery they're kind of They know exactly what the institution stands for and they're aligned with it. And that's why they want to come in and work there. And then another thing that toddlers do is that they ask for help.

[06:25]

They are learning machines because they ask for help all the time. And I talk about the monster under the bed. And just the other night, my middle one had a nightmare about being eaten by a wizard. Now, they didn't lie there and go. do you know what? I'm just going to deal with this by myself.

[06:43]

I'm not going to tell anybody. I'm just going to work through this on my own in the night. And it wasn't, it was like, mommy. And it's something in leadership that we don't do enough is that we don't, when things are scary, when things are difficult is actually reach out and ask, ask people for help because too many people see themselves in a leadership role as having to be the person that has all the answers and knows exactly what to do. So it, Being more toddler is being prepared to be vulnerable and prepared to ask for help and prepared not to have all the answers. And when things get scary, and they do in leadership, it might be a terrible incident with a child, a really aggressive parent.

[07:26]

It might be a new... kind of program that you've got to implement in your school that you just don't understand. It might be a human resources or employment law problem, but there are moments when things are really scary. The worst thing to do then is to think, I'm just going to do this by myself.

[07:47]

The best thing to do is to find the expert, find the person to help you, and find from your networks and your kind of extended support networks, somebody to come and help you sort that out. So they're kind of the first three things. Seek help, find your salary, Find a chocolate button to line all of that. That could go on for hours about hundreds of things that toddlers do.

[08:09] SPEAKER_00:

I love it. No, let's talk about some more of those because, you know, I think we've all had that experience as leaders of, you know, thinking about the situation in front of us, whether it's, you know, a team of adults who work together and maybe aren't getting along or a problem that's being brought to us. We've all had that moment as parents and as leaders of thinking, you know what? My kids say the exact same thing to me. What do I say to them? Or what do...

[08:33]

You know, we've had that experience of interpreting the behavior of other adults like the behavior of children and seeing some of those same patterns. But I love that you're actually flipping this and you're actually saying that the wisdom sometimes is in the young children. We see that wisdom in how they're doing. Let's talk about some more examples. Yeah, definitely.

[08:52] SPEAKER_01:

Another one is my two of my children, two of the girls. It was to do with a boiled egg. The very first time I gave my eldest daughter a boiled egg was after a morning of learning how to catch. She was only about 18 months old. And I gave her this boiled egg and I turned around to do something at the sink and this egg just flew past my head and smashed onto the wall. And I was like, oh.

[09:15]

And that was the first indication ever that she was going to be an amazing athlete. And then the second time I ever tried with a boiled egg was with my middle daughter who And I thought, right, I'm going to show her. You don't throw it. I was like, you put the spoon in and you eat it like this. And it's all going to be very nice. Turned around again, make myself a cup of tea.

[09:35]

And I said, how are you getting on with your egg? Do you like it? Is it nice? And she said, I really like it, mummy. I don't like the crunchy bits. Crunchy bits.

[09:47]

She started eating the shell. And I thought to myself, actually, in terms of leadership, This is a really good lesson for me because it's about knowing your teams. Know the strengths and weaknesses of your team, get to know them and also recognise that every time you think you've got it licked and you've sorted out a problem, just be aware that you're going to get wrong footed at whatever stage. And also recognise that even when things go wrong, like the egg that flew over or the other one that ate the shell, actually, That's a really good indication of developmental or training needs or strengths or achievements. So it's kind of keep your eye out for that. The other one is about Santa, my middle daughter, who one year decided that she didn't like Santa.

[10:37]

She didn't like Father Christmas. There was no way he was visiting our house or leaving any presents or anything. it was about not being afraid to be unpopular because i don't know if you've ever tried to avoid father christmas in december when you've got two small children but it's like trying to avoid oxygen it's just it's everywhere and every time we turn a corner in a shopping center or in in supermarket there would be a father christmas and she would just freak out completely and be like usain bolt she was just gone it's like no it's santa it's the man in red i don't like him And so resolute was she in her hatred of Father Christmas that we had to not put any presents anywhere near her bedroom. And in the morning when she came down and saw the presents under the tree, she actually said, I'm not touching them because he's touched them.

[11:28]

And she genuinely didn't open them at all. And we had to keep them for her birthday and like re-gift them because she refused it. But the thing that I learned from her was don't be afraid to be unpopular. She was not swayed by anybody. It didn't matter how many times people said, oh, it's all right, Santa's lovely, Father Christmas is nice. She was like, it's not for me.

[11:52]

This is not what I want. And sometimes in leadership, especially if you start in a new leadership role, when things have always been done in a certain way and you can see that it needs to be done differently or could be improved, a lot of the time you may be perceived as being particularly unpopular. But actually... be guided by your chocolate buttons, be guided by your celery, and know that you may be unpopular for a while, but actually this is what you really believe in and you're absolutely clear about this is what's going to change.

[12:22]

So when you're having one of those days where you're thinking it would be so much easier to just go with what everybody else thinks rather than what I know is right, it's channeling that toddler thing of I don't like Santa and I don't care.

[12:37] SPEAKER_00:

I love it. And I have to admire the persistence because, you know, for a kid to say, I'm not even going to open my presents, you know, you're going to have to, you know, sneak these back to me when it's my birthday or something. I mean, staying the course over a long period of time when other people are telling you you're wrong, when other people are resisting, you know, that is a degree of persistence and sticking to your guns that we could all learn from. Absolutely.

[13:04] SPEAKER_01:

And the other thing is toddlers are so honest. They've got no filter. And I'm not saying that we have no filter as leaders, but one of the things that they're not afraid to do is to call out negativity either. I spend my time basically being a sibling referee. I just feel like I should have a t-shirt that just says sibling referee, a name badge or something. But they are not afraid to say when something is wrong.

[13:27]

You know, they, and we spend so much of our time with adults saying, oh no, it's okay. Don't worry about it. No, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. And actually a lot of the time it's not fine.

[13:35]

But toddlers will be the first to say, this isn't right. They're being mean to me. This doesn't feel right. That's not fair. They talk about fairness a lot. And in leadership, we can learn from toddlers that actually we need to be fair in what we do.

[13:51]

We need to be fair in our expectations. We need to be fair and make sure that we have representation from a wide range of voices to make our decisions informed and therefore fair. And if things are wrong, Even if they're difficult to challenge, we should be like a toddler who stands up in the middle of the restaurant and says, that's not fair, that's not right. We have a duty as leaders to be that person who says, hang on a minute, that really isn't fair, that really isn't right. But it's very difficult sometimes to do that. So it's kind of channeling that, it's being mean to me mentality and doing that in your leadership role as well.

[14:32] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely, both the recognition of fairness and the willingness to confront it and to raise the awkward issues. Sometimes we'd rather people just kind of let things go, and we don't want to confront people, but often is precisely what we need to do. Let's talk a little bit, if we could, about well-being. I know you have a section on keeping ourselves in a healthy state. What are some of the lessons that you've learned from young children on that front?

[14:56] SPEAKER_01:

They prioritize well-being. They prioritize the basics. Sleep, food, play. That's all they're interested in. Well, apart from sleep and mine. Although, to be fair, there is no child that will not go to sleep when they're genuinely exhausted.

[15:14]

They will sleep. And even now, he's just turned four, actually, my youngest. Even now, he'll just say, I'm tired, mummy. And he'll go and lie down on his bed and play with his dinosaurs or just stare at the ceiling for a bit. Because they know when they've had enough. And they know when they need a rest and they know when they need to sleep.

[15:34]

Or they go, I'm tired, I can't walk any further, I'm just shattered. Whereas adults, we just push and push and push and push and we don't rest. I mean, there are always going to be periods of busyness in a job, but they should be pinch points. They shouldn't be the norm. That shouldn't be your default setting. And then if you're constantly cutting sleep when you're in these busy periods, it's a bit like, plane flying through a thunderstorm and with all the turbulence and then the pilot going I know what to do let's cut the engine actually we need to really prioritize rest and sleep because it's not it's not unusual that you wake up the next day and things seem better over it like most people's parents will say things will look brighter in the morning things will look better tomorrow go and sleep on it and and we don't do that we say i must not sleep i must work till three o'clock in the morning and then get up at five and then wonder why i feel terrible um and the next thing that they do is they eat properly and if you have small children in the house you just know you're part human part vending machine it's just like snack constantly um

[16:48]

But what we do for our children, we give them nourishing, well-balanced food. When we're stressed and busy as adults, we eat rubbish. We just eat junk. And we eat it at stupid times and then wonder why we feel terrible. And then the third thing that we don't prioritize is we don't prioritize play.

[17:10]

If you constantly are on, you are eventually going to burn out. And it's so important to step away and reconnect with the people and the things that give you that kind of restorative balance. Now, whether that be a spouse, your children, the dog, playing sport, religion, whatever it is that kind of nourishes you, you need to do it because you can't constantly give everything and then expect to function. Also, the more you play, the better teacher you are as well, because you bring something more of yourself to the classroom. Nobody, no child wants to say to you, oh, Mr. Turner, what did you do at the weekend?

[17:57]

Well, I planned for 14 hours and I stayed up and I filled in a spreadsheet. They want to hear, oh, I went to watch this game or I went swimming or I went for a run, I went for a walk with my dog, I went to visit my mom. You know, they want to hear about you as a person. And we also forget as leaders that we are modelling ourselves. our expectations so if we are first in last out constantly working our employees will think that's what we have to do here and worse than that our students will look at us frazzled short-tempered you know eating rubbish food looking like death and think that's what being an adult's like that's not a that's not what we want to do we want healthy happy no kid no toddler will ever say to you I can't possibly come and play with the blocks because I'm busy mastering this spoon. Just leave me be.

[18:45]

They just play constantly.

[18:48] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And, you know, even if the conditions aren't, you know, always as nice as we would like them, you talk in the book about just getting out into nature. And this morning my kids were playing with their cousin and they were going to go jump on the trampoline, but it was pouring down rain. They opened the door and out of nowhere, pouring down rain. They said, okay. And they went anyway.

[19:08]

And they jumped in the rain and came back in and changed their clothes.

[19:13] SPEAKER_01:

No such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes. Just wrong clothes. And we I mean, in the UK, our weather is notoriously awful most of the time anyway. So if you if you stayed in constantly when the weather was bad, you'd just be like 365 lockdown like we are at the moment. But yeah, just getting out there and it's subtle things. And a lot of well-being books talk about the importance of connecting with the outdoors and noticing the small seasonal changes that are going on.

[19:43]

that kind of ground your thinking and remind you that there is more to life than the job. It's just a bigger picture. There's a whole world out there. We talk about wellbeing for children and needing outdoor time, but we don't prioritise it as adults. And there's so many simple ways in leadership to do it. Have a walking meeting, you know, just walk and or walk to the shop to get your lunch or just go outside and stand outside on the playground with the kids for 20 minutes, you know, at lunchtime and connect with the people you're serving, you know, I don't think I can overestimate how important being outdoors is.

[20:19]

It just makes you feel so much better because otherwise you live in this kind of blue light, false world, falsely lit world. If you get up in the dark, you drive to work in the dark, you work in an office with artificial lights until it gets dark again, then you drive home in the dark and you go and look at more devices and then you go to bed and not sleep. Because you've been looking at your devices all day.

[20:39] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, got to get outside and look up, you know, look up not just from our devices, but look up at the sky and see that there is a bigger world out there than just the emails that are hitting us.

[20:49] SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. And if you've ever tried walking anywhere with a toddler as well, you can't walk quickly because they want to show you everything. Every snail, every blade of grass, every leaf, every discarded cigarette butt, you know, anything. They delight in absolutely everything. And it's that slowing down and just taking it all in and just walking. walking slowly and existing that's so important.

[21:11]

And we relegate it. We constantly relegate it. And it really should be right up at the top there.

[21:17] SPEAKER_00:

So the book is Be More Toddler, a leadership education from our little learners. So Emma, I understand you also have a podcast. Tell us just briefly about that and where people can find that podcast.

[21:29] SPEAKER_01:

Ah, right. Yeah, we've just started to do a podcast. I say we because it's me and my co-host, Mr. Tom Sherrington, who over in the UK, is an extremely well-known educator, author of multiple education books, and somewhat of a king of education over here. And we've just started to do a podcast, which is Mind the Gap, making education work across the globe. And we're trying to interview guests who provide an opportunity for Tom and I to kind of debate our standpoints, because I'm primary, so that's age four to 11, and Tom's secondary, so 11 to 18.

[22:03]

So we come from very different parts of the sector. We have some quite different views on what constitutes good education or, you know, what education should be doing. So we debate a lot with the guests and it's a just different sort of format because it's a video format. So you get like a view into mine and Tom's houses as well as our minds. But we've got some great guests. We've had Richard Gerber on, who's an international educationalist who's based in the UK.

[22:29]

And the next one is out with Peter DeWitt. And then we've got Dame Alison Peacock, who's the CEO of the UK's Chartered College of Teaching, who's coming on as well. So we've got quite a lineup so far.

[22:40] SPEAKER_00:

Fabulous. So Mind the Gap, making education work across the globe and available on YouTube, right? Yeah. Well, Emma, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.

[22:49] SPEAKER_01:

It's lovely, Justin. Thank you very much.

[22:51] Announcer:

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