[00:01] SPEAKER_02:
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_01:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome back to the show Jennifer Abrams. Jennifer is an author and independent consultant who works with educational organizations, healthcare organizations, all kinds of different groups of people who need to work together, who need to communicate, and who need to have hard conversations. And we've previously discussed her earlier book, Having Hard Conversations, and we're here today to talk about her new book, Hard Conversations Unpacked, the who's, the when's, and the what if's.
[00:48] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:50] SPEAKER_01:
Jennifer, welcome back to Principal Center Radio.
[00:52] SPEAKER_00:
Delighted to be here, Justin. Thank you for having me.
[00:55] SPEAKER_01:
Great to speak with you again. And I know we run into each other at conferences quite a bit. And you get out there to conferences, to schools, to hospitals, and all kinds of different places where people are having these conversations. And this is one of those things that I hear from our readers and our subscribers all the time is, I'm in this new role. I am the principal now and I can't pass the buck on this. I have to actually go and talk to this person about this tough issue.
[01:22]
And I wonder, as you work with school leaders, what are some of the tough issues that are the toughest for us to bring up? And what's tough about them? What's hard about these hard conversations?
[01:32] SPEAKER_00:
I think what is sort of as a background to it is that new administrators, new teachers on special assignment, new administrators on special assignment, new assistant principals, as I share in the work that I do around the country and around in other countries, I think that we have credentials in how to teach students. And we did not in our administrative credential programs or in our other kind of preparation for doing this work, get a credential on how to talk effectively to adults. And that, I think, isn't something to be ashamed about. I just don't think we absolutely, we never got it. And we get into these positions because we're quite expert at certain things that we do. We really want to lead and make an impact.
[02:20]
And this is a skill set that isn't in toolkit. And so the question is, it's hard because we don't have an expertise in it. We didn't have a lot of study around it. And so that initially makes it hard. Culturally, education does not want to consider itself having hard conversations and being a tough group or the nurturing group of people. And so that doesn't really kind of resonate.
[02:48]
I've got people who say, You know, I see myself as a person who wants to grow others. I really believe in coaching and support. And then the role, as you're mentioning, of principal or of leader does ask us to move into positions or moments where we have to be more directive or more assertive and we just don't have the skill set behind that. And yet it's a moral imperative. that we speak up and it's actually an obligation based on the position so it's hard for a number of reasons including other pieces which are the other person you might really be younger than the person you're talking to. You're discussing something really challenging with a veteran.
[03:34]
You know, I got the new principal position and now I got to talk to somebody who's been there 30 years and they might have been taught me if I'm working in a smaller place where I don't have to. I was talking to a 25-year-old yesterday who didn't have sort of the content area expertise that she was having to go in and look at and how does she not kind of come up against, you don't know my content and you're so young you could have been my child. So there's a lot of reasons why it's challenging and yet there is a set of skills, not the instructional pieces. That's sort of a prereq. We got to actually really know our stuff, know what we're looking for, and be able to speak thoughtfully and cogently about that.
[04:26]
But there's also the work that I do around sort of the language. How do you think through how you're going to say it? How do you do it in a humane and growth-producing way so that it, although a hard conversation, it is a more effective conversation?
[04:40] SPEAKER_01:
Well, and I'm glad you mentioned that last part there, because I think so often we feel as leaders that when we have the content expertise and when we have the authority, that that's all that's needed. And I found myself developing this skill and practicing this skill and actually did have quite a bit on this topic from Carolyn Gellerman at the University of Washington. on hard conversations. And I recognize that that's extremely rare. I think that's a good point that often we don't get that experience. But I would have these conversations rather carefully as a 26-year-old new principal talking with veteran teachers, some of whom had been at the school longer than I had been alive, teaching in the same classroom longer than I had been alive.
[05:18]
And I was careful about it. And I would see my colleagues get raked over the coals by their staff and complained about and kind of backstabbed. And I realized some of what was happening was that they had the expertise that I lacked, they had the experience that I lacked. But what they didn't have is a pass on that thought process, that planning, and that deliberate caution about how we talk to other adults, especially about tough things. And I realized that that caution actually saved me on many occasions from a situation kind of blowing up.
[05:53] SPEAKER_00:
I completely agree. I think that when you call it careful, I would call it sort of the same thing. Think before you speak, which feels to me as people would say, well, of course I got in this position. I am thoughtful. I think before I speak, I'm talking about really thinking before you speak. What do I want to talk to that person about?
[06:14]
Have I articulated it in a way that is professional? I talked to a gentleman a couple of weeks ago and I know he was being somewhat facetious, but he said, can't I just tell the person they're a hot mess person? And I said, no, that's actually not in the standards or in the job description. But that's what I really want to say. I said, well, what exactly do you want to speak to? Are you very clear that these are the issues you want to take a look at?
[06:41]
Are they on the person's plate as expectations? Do you want to have a clarifying conversation ahead? If the person says to you, well, what do you want me to do about it? Are you prepared to actually offer suggestions or directions? in a way that is at a developmental level so the person can hear those? Are they clear?
[07:06]
What if the person says to you, well, what are you going to do on your end to support me as the leader? Those are things that I speak to in the first book, Having Hard Conversations, and then I really go in as a deeper dive into the second book, Hard Conversations Unpacked, because it's the stuff that we sometimes don't have time to think through that really does put as you mentioned, your colleagues into a harder position because people will get defensive. But it's also that we really don't think that adults need it sometimes. Like we hired them. They're the adults. They should know better.
[07:41]
And I think that the question really is, you know, how do we do that thoughtful thinking prior to the conversation so that when the conversation happens, we are able to stay cognitive and not go, in this political arena. When they go low, we go high. We want to stay high. We want to be thoughtful and cognitive. And that will continue to have us be respectful of their thinking and for the people not to see us going, you're a hot mess, you're a drama queen, you're terrible to work for or with. That's just not appropriate.
[08:21]
So how can we do it more effectively?
[08:22] SPEAKER_01:
It's funny you say that because in my workshops on writing powerful teacher evaluations, often there's a sense that administrators bring of righteous indignation. When we have someone who is just really doing a terrible job or really acting inappropriately, and it's our job to confront that, You know, we are emotional about that. We don't go into that primarily in a cognitive problem-solving mode. I mean, we are upset and outraged that someone is doing this to our students, that they are not taking their work seriously enough or just not good enough at it, and this has perhaps been ignored for a long time. So there's a sense of moral outrage that we bring to those conversations that often is a very poor match for the person on the other side of the table. You know, it just...
[09:05]
You know, it does not connect with them. It does not obtain the desired results. And I think it's exactly what you said. We have to think through who is this other person? What do they need from me? What's going to happen when they hear these words from me?
[09:19]
And in teaching administrators to write effective teacher evaluations, one of the things that I encourage people to do to deal with that emotion is to say, just write the hot mess draft. You know, if you feel like she is a hot mess, write that for yourself. Don't send it. Don't put it anywhere. But write that first draft for yourself and then calm down and then look at it and say, does that actually line up with the standards? Like you said, do we have a standard for whatever it is that I'm upset about?
[09:47]
And if not, maybe that's a style difference. Maybe that's a generational thing. Maybe I need to let that go. And then I can find the piece that I need to zoom in on and actually talk about instead of getting distracted and mad about something that I can't actually hold someone accountable for or help them improve.
[10:03] SPEAKER_00:
I totally agree. I think that the emotion is true, and it isn't that you shouldn't have a sense of moral outrage. It's a very painful thing to discover that people are not doing what is best for children. It isn't probably the best thing to scream and yell, but to then consider, right, where is the person Why might they be doing this? Not to just go, fine, now I'm just going to care for them. Are you saying now we're going to care for the adults and not care for the kids?
[10:37]
I'm here to care for the kids. Not just to let them have a bye and just care for the adult. I think that we need to care for the adult, understand where the adult's coming from, figure out what's helpful, and then hold them accountable to the professional expectations. I think that caring in our language, care in our thought process to be more considerate and helpful as we have a conversation, the care comes out linguistically and in our critical thinking ahead of time. And then the accountability can also come out in the expectations, the benchmarks, the performance standards, so that we can be better able to do both care and accountability in our talk.
[11:23] SPEAKER_01:
And that can come back to us too. I mean, I think that's something that we can ask our staff to do for us, you know, hold us accountable, and help us keep our commitments. And, you know, if we are not upholding our end, you know, we don't want it to just be that the person who has the most power is able to hold others accountable, but not, you know, not have that same benefit go the other way.
[11:42] SPEAKER_00:
I speak to, in my last newsletter, I do a newsletter voice lessons which you can check out at www.jenniferabrams.com, but I did my voice lessons this past month that I put out yesterday that I was not my best adult self and I was doing a workshop on identity safe classrooms and I was tired and it was a Friday and I had been traveling and it wasn't my time zone. I wasn't creating an identity safe space for a particular person in the workshop. Now, that is a participant to a workshop presenter. And there's a status power issue dynamic.
[12:18]
I'm standing, he's sitting. That feels to me somewhat like sometimes teachers to administrators. And by God, I was not saying something in a humane way. And he called me on it. And that's happened. And I have to really be responsible for how I said something because it did change the culture of For him or the climate for him in that workshop that happens all the time in schools and instead of going to the people the adults that we are frustrated with we go and we gossip about them in the parking lot and we say I can't believe that they're like that and I can't believe that so and so doesn't handle that and I can't believe that.
[12:57]
They're in my grade level, and I don't feel like working with them. But nobody ever, as the other person, the other adult, actually calls them on it. It isn't just the responsibility in many situations to speak up and to find our voices around what matters. It's not just the responsibility of the administrator. So that's a whole other kind of conversation of how do we have a collective responsibility to do that? But also, how do you actually do it?
[13:28]
And that requires the skill set that I've just been speaking about. And one woman in a lovely independent school in Duluth, Minnesota, as I was working with the entire staff, okay? The entire staff is in the room. We're doing some work on trust and collaboration and then hard conversations, said to me, it never occurred to me that I was here to do work as effectively with adults as you brought to our attention. I always thought I was here for the kids. And now you're telling me that I have to figure out how to be a better communicator with adults.
[13:59]
And I said, it will make a tremendous difference in the climate and in student achievement if you actually are more humane and growth producing in your PLC, collaboration team, you know, anything. And she was very vocal about it. She said it in front of her head of school. She said it in front of her principal. She said, it just never occurred to me this was my job. And the answer is, you bet it is.
[14:21] SPEAKER_01:
Well, what are some of those issues that we need to think through? Some of those what-ifs that if we want to have a humane and, as you said, growth-producing conversation with someone else, and we don't necessarily know how they're going to react, especially if we're new to a school or we have a new staff member, and then we have that first thing come up that we've got to talk about. What are some of the what-ifs that we need to think through as a planning step? Because it's very tempting to kind of grab the verbal baseball bat and walk down the hall and deal with it. But what you're saying is, you know, we've got to really think through this. What do we need to think through?
[14:54]
What questions do we need to ask ourselves?
[14:56] SPEAKER_00:
The first thing that I come to that I think is really critical is it's based on a quote by I think it's Blaine Lee in my book. All conflict is the result of violated expectations. And so you are morally outraged or you think it should be going this way or that way. I really want you to step back and ask, does everybody know what the expectations are? That is the first piece. And if you think that somebody goes, well, I'm new, I don't know.
[15:30]
Okay, then you better review the expectations so that everybody's two feet in the present. So as a new administrator, I would make sure that everybody, 20-year veterans, 30-year veterans, custodians, secretary, you name it, are we all on the same page with regard to our job description, how we're supposed to be talking to each other, what the email etiquette is, And then if we aren't, we need to have clarifying conversations, not hard conversations. That I think trips people up because people are like, I never knew that this was important. Nobody told me that this was something I had to do. And then it's like, there was no certainty. There was no transparency.
[16:13]
And now you've doubled the problem because it's not just about the content. It's about communication from administration.
[16:19] SPEAKER_01:
Right, because we've redefined a communication problem that we're responsible for as an accountability problem in terms of the other person's behavior, and we've gotten that backwards.
[16:30] SPEAKER_00:
Yes, and I completely think that that's just a big issue in schools. And then we make them wrong, and it wasn't their wrong to begin with. The second thing is people will be triggered, and this is my cognitive crush, David Rock, R-O-C-K. He wrote a book called Your Brain at Work, and he's got some great stuff on the web that you can get for free, downloadable, about where people get triggered and how human beings are either in a threat situation situation or a reward situation. And hard conversations are threatening. So how have you been capable of honoring adult concerns?
[17:15]
And he's got an acronym for this. He's got the SCARF acronym. If you're working with a veteran, S in SCARF, status is something that they're going to be very frustrated that you don't acknowledge. And so how might you actually modify the language and honor the status and the veteran-ness and the institutional history and the capacity and be two feet in the present? Do you see what I'm saying? It's like that's a status piece.
[17:46]
Some people don't like when people muck with their certainty. Is this a person you're talking to about certainty, the C? Maybe people don't like that you're going to tell them they have to do something. They're going to feel straightjacketed, and that's their concern around their autonomy. How can we verbalize what we're saying with a sense of autonomy? Some people might be very concerned that you are making them an outsider, and they're very concerned about their relatedness.
[18:11]
Is it just them that's being called out? Where's the belonging? Do you still love me relatedness kind of thing? And then some people who work in states that have unions, will say, well, this isn't fair. This wasn't in, and that's the F, fair. Just the S, C, A, R, and F of things is something to be mindful of.
[18:32]
It's human to get triggered or incited around those things. There are just so many things you should be aware of in adult learning and in adult communication, and those are just two. Have I had a clarifying conversation and Is one of these SC, status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, or fairness going to be triggered? And how can I modify? And there are then so many other ways. We can continue, Justin, on they're going to say things to you.
[19:03]
What if that happens? Because that's really always a concern. Not so much. People are not that interested in them being thoughtful about it. They're like, but what if they yell? And I'm like, OK, we'll have an answer for that.
[19:15]
But they won't yell as much if you've actually thought through what you're going to say. You have to be very on top of it on your end, and yet then people might still kind of be wounded, and there's ways that we can address that too.
[19:34] SPEAKER_01:
So clarity and scarf, status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. I love that because I was thinking back to a situation that I dealt with at the end of my first year as a principal. And the kindergarten team, hi, if you're listening out there somewhere, the kindergarten team had been together for, I want to say, at least 10 years. And collectively, without adding anyone's age, I think they'd probably been teaching over 60 years between the three of them. And we actually had four kindergarten teachers, one of whom I had hired that year because we had an extra, you know, kind of a bubble at kindergarten that needed to move up. So we needed to move a kindergarten teacher up to first grade.
[20:09]
So at the end of the year, I wanted to be rational about this. I wanted to make a decision that made the most sense just in terms of the factors that were right in front of me. But I didn't consider status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, fairness. And I didn't ask myself, how is it going to feel to the three teachers who've been together 10 years when I ask one of them to move up to first grade and just assume that that's the best thing? And the criteria that I had in my head made total sense to me, you know, had a particular skill in dealing with certain issues and bilingual and all these things, you know, that just made so much sense. But I didn't realize, you know, you're breaking up a team that's been together for a decade.
[20:47]
And you are changing, you know, someone's, you know, entire career without even asking them their opinion.
[20:54] SPEAKER_00:
Relatedness, certainty, fairness, you got it. You triggered every adult.
[20:59] SPEAKER_01:
Really did. Yeah.
[21:00] SPEAKER_00:
And you heard it, and they came back at you with those concerns. And that was something you could have anticipated. And I totally understand why you wouldn't, because you had the best interest of the school and the students. in your mind. So that's totally true. That's true.
[21:20]
And the adults are part of the process and we need to honor, and that's what I think this new book does, honor that the adults are really also going to be a piece to this puzzle and that we need to help them as much as do the work on behalf of the students.
[21:36] SPEAKER_01:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think there was there was an issue where we were looking at as a looping situation and one class seemed like they would benefit from looping more than any of the other classes. And that was going into my thinking. But to their to their credit, you know, despite the fact that I just kind of dropped this on everybody.
[21:53]
To their credit, I know they were extremely upset, but they were also extremely professional about it. And we actually did make a different change that turned out to be tremendous and moved the newer teacher up to the next grade level. And that worked extraordinarily well. So I can't take any credit for that at all. But to anyone out there who is facing potentially, you know, a situation like that where, you know, you're not sure how people are going to react. Boy, I love that acronym.
[22:18]
And who is that from that you said?
[22:19] SPEAKER_00:
David Rock, I bet it's like davidrock.org or something. But he is an author. I think he bases himself in New York and in Sydney. And he is a cognitive crush I have because he's just so smart. And that's what I call those people.
[22:33]
My cognitive crushes, my authors I follow. So David Rock and the main book. But you can get an article on this online as well, SCARF, S-C-A-R-F, capitals. His main book is Your Brain at Work.
[22:48] SPEAKER_01:
Great. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. Well, Jennifer, I wanted to ask as kind of a final question here. For leaders who are perhaps entering a new school, entering a new district, or becoming a principal for the first time, we can look at people who've been in this work for a decade or more, and we kind of call them the grizzled veterans, and we kind of laugh at the thick skin that we know that people develop. What are some things that we can do to kind of prepare ourselves for the feedback that we are going to get for the uh, the mindset that we need to adopt to have these hard conversations with people, but also to be on the receiving end of them. Uh, what are some steps that we can take to prepare ourselves as leaders to be effective participants in these conversations?
[23:34] SPEAKER_00:
I so appreciate the question because I think that that's the thing that I get so much feedback on. You have to build up your emotional bandwidth, your emotional stamina to do this because resistance will come to you so much. And I've got, um, Just two things, just some quotes and then two ideas. One is that Alain de Botton, whose writing is just so amazing, he said, one of the greatest gifts is that of being good at disappointment. Having non-persecutory, speedy, resilient, emotional digestion. Like you got to let stuff go.
[24:12]
And how do you let it go so that you can really keep going? And Heen and Stone will say, others views of you are input, not imprint. Input, not imprint. So you got to always know that you're going to build up your emotional stamina. It's input, not imprint. Don't take it on.
[24:35]
I would suggest to you to reread Martin Seligman's book on learned optimism. You got to have a mindset of, okay, that was one moment. It isn't global. That was one moment. I'm not a terrible person. You got to actually have some mindset questions to ask yourself.
[24:55]
You got to live Carol Dweck's work on mindset and being in a growth mindset. I think about Amy Cuddy and her Wonder Woman poses and her book on presence and how we can, if we're anticipating hard conversations, how we can physically prepare for that. But I just think about the idea of friend failure, don't become it. Do you know what I mean? Like you're not the moment. You gotta figure out how to not be Velcro, I guess, and let it stay with you.
[25:26]
And the more you do it, I will promise you, your emotional stamina will increase just like working out. You will get stronger and you will do even better work on behalf of the students, which is your main goal anyways. And you won't feel as, you know, emotionally drained because it will grow your strength in this category or in this skill set. It can be done.
[25:51] SPEAKER_01:
Well, Jennifer, thanks so much for joining me again on Principal Center Radio. And again, if people want to find our previous interview, that's at principalcenter.com slash radio. And Jennifer, if people want to find you online, where is the best place for them to go?
[26:04] SPEAKER_00:
To my website, thanks for asking, jenniferabrams.com, and they can find connections to my books, some videos, my newsletter that I blog on monthly. You name it, it's all there, www.jenniferabrams, two Ns in Jennifer, and Abrams is A-B-R-A-M-S, jenniferabrams.com. Thank you for having me, Justin.
[26:26]
Great to talk to you.
[26:26] SPEAKER_01:
Great to speak with you again. Thanks, Jennifer.
[26:29] SPEAKER_00:
Thanks.
[26:30] SPEAKER_02:
And now, Justin Bader on high performance instructional leadership.
[26:34] SPEAKER_01:
So high performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Jennifer Abrams? One thing that really stands out to me is the importance of being clear with yourself on the expectations that you've set of other people. And I think there's no more powerful way to get feedback on what expectations you've clarified and you've set with your staff than to be in classrooms. If you find out that someone is not meeting one of your expectations, you might be tempted to march down the hallway with the verbal baseball bat and correct that situation by having a talk with that person. And as Jennifer mentioned, often the problem is not that the person needs to be held accountable. The problem often is that we have not set expectations and communicated them clearly and if you spend time every day in classrooms if you get around to say three classrooms a day you're going to very quickly get a sense of the expectations that people are working under because you're not just going to see
[27:32]
the people that you're visiting for some reason because there's a problem, you're going to see everybody. And you're going to see, wow, I thought this was a school-wide expectation that we're doing this thing that is bothering me right now. But as I've gotten around to different classrooms, I realize that no one is doing that. And I think often we labor under the illusion that people are doing things that we used to do a long time ago or that we mentioned in passing one time and expected people to pick up. And often clarification is needed. And there's no better way to learn that that clarification is needed than to see firsthand what's happening in classrooms every single day.
[28:07]
So I want to challenge you this year to get into classrooms every day, three a day. I want to challenge you to get into three classrooms a day. And if you do that, you will get into approximately 500 classrooms over the course of the year. You'll get into each teacher's classroom approximately 17, 18 times, depending on the exact number of teachers you have. And you will know so much more about what's happening in classrooms. I have a free program to help you do just that called the Instructional Leadership Challenge.
[28:38]
We have had more than 5,000 people from 50 countries around the world go through that program. You can sign up at instructionalleadershipchallenge.com and get started.
[28:48] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
