[00:01] Announcer:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.
[00:13] SPEAKER_01:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Patrick Ledin, Ph.D. He has benefited from both hands-on leadership and management experience in the military as well as the corporate world. And he is an associate professor at Vanderbilt University as well as founder of the Ledin Group. And he's the author of The Five-Week Leadership Challenge, 35 Action Steps to Become the Leader You Were Meant to Be.
[00:41] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:44] SPEAKER_00:
Patrick, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Oh, Justin, so glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:48] SPEAKER_01:
Well, I'm a huge fan of books that get people to take action rather than sit on a shelf, but books that actually get people to get up and do things. What in your professional career prompted you to write this particular book in this particular format of challenging people to take action and become the kind of leaders that they were meant to be?
[01:07] SPEAKER_00:
Well, Justin, I'd say that I am very much, as well as you, a fan of books that ask you to take action. And I think that there's something inherently exciting about taking a challenge, challenging yourself to do something. So I wanted to kind of latch on or build on that idea of, can you step up and take on a challenge and see how it can allow you to improve over time? Actually, my doctoral dissertation work was on how do you...
[01:32]
change human behavior, specifically what can instructors or facilitators do in workshops or sessions or delivery of content that'll help inspire people to have at least behavioral intentions to change their behavior. So I looked at a number of things, including like clarity, content, clarity of delivery, humor, immediacy, breaking down that psychological distance between yourself and the student or participant. But in the end, the one variable that had the greatest predictive capability when it came to changing people's behavior, or at least changing their intentions to change behavior, came back to relevance. Can I make this content relevant to people? And I think if you challenge people to step up and then you make the content as relevant as possible by allowing them to reflect on themselves and see how they can apply it, you've got a much better chance of actually helping people to improve on their own journey.
[02:21] SPEAKER_01:
So Patrick, you kick things off in the book talking about mindset. Why is mindset so important for leaders?
[02:28] SPEAKER_00:
You know, Justin, mindset is such a critical thing for all of us because how we see things, how we view things in the world often directly impacts our behaviors. And then our behaviors tend to typically drive our results. So a lot of times when we talk about we want to change the results in something, we often immediately focus on behaviors, like start doing more of this and you'll get more of that type of thing. But the reality is if you want it to be sustained over time, if you want to create a new habit or really buy into something, you really have to step further back than just your behaviors. You need to look at how you're looking at the world. And Hiram Smith, who was well known for creating the Franklin Planner, which some people listening to this podcast might remember a Franklin Planner.
[03:07]
Those of you who don't know, picture a pre-smartphone tool where you would write down your tasks and your calendar items and your notes and your contacts, all that in a binder that you would carry around all day. But Hiram Smith referred to this as the idea of a belief window. And he said that all of us, whether you're actually wearing physical glasses or not, all of us wear a pair of glasses. And on those glasses are things we believe about the world, are things we believe about other people. And we constantly look at the entire world around us through those glasses. And occasionally, you know, we need to step back and take those glasses off and look at them and say, are those things that I have written on my belief window on my glasses, are they accurate?
[03:46]
And I think it's especially critical when you're stepping into a formal leadership role or you're choosing to lead yourself more effectively, the ability to step back and just take a look at the lenses you're looking through. Because a lot of people are really good individual contributors. I'm sure that people listening to this podcast may know some great teachers in the classroom or people who just excel in the role they're at. But there's a difference between being a great individual contributor and being an effective formal leader. And part of it is how you look at the role of a leader. That's why I start with mindset.
[04:15]
So I start talking about things like understanding the importance of focusing on things you can influence as opposed to everything else. There's lots of stuff out there in the big bad world that'll drive us crazy sometimes, but most of us aren't going to do a lot about those things, at least not today. So you can care about those things, but you can take action against things that are going on in your world. Or the idea that as a leader, you get things done with and through other people. And for some people, it's kind of like, I'm glad I had this formal leadership role, but now I have to work with people. Are you kidding me?
[04:44]
But that's the reality of it. So what I try to walk through is 10 different mindsets of a leader in hopes that people will not only understand the mindset, but then assess where they stand right now and see what they can do to make incremental improvements in areas where they might be struggling or build on strengths that they already have.
[05:00] SPEAKER_01:
Love it. I think that perspective on leadership is so critical because I hear sometimes from people who had principal preparation programs that prepared them to become assistant principals and principals and central office leaders. And it seems like in some cases, what people are getting is that high-level leadership stuff. But if that's missing and the most people come away from their training with is, here's how to do a schedule, here's how to do a budget, some of those lenses might be hard for us to even recognize that they're wearing and hard for us to take off and put on in order to deal with the challenges that we face.
[05:34] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, because in those instances, they may be getting management skills how to run a schedule, how to do these things, how to turn in time cards, whatever it might be. But that's different than necessarily a leadership skill in developing your leadership capacity. And I think it's really critical as you step into roles. And I should say on the front end, Justin, that I wrote the book not just for people who are in formal leadership roles. I wrote the book because I believe all of us are leaders, regardless of your title. In fact, it sounds kind of corny, but a title doesn't entitle you to anything.
[06:03]
So it really becomes, are you willing to step up and lead yourself, influence other people, and have a bigger impact on the world than you might currently have?
[06:12] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah. And I think that's a message that we all need to hear periodically. But I think especially for people who are looking for a new position, and some of what I help people with is when they're seeking a new position, it's not just getting the title. It's not just landing the job. It's becoming the kind of person who will be successful in the job. And I think...
[06:32]
It shows up in the hiring process when someone has done that work first, to become the kind of leader that will succeed and then be able to demonstrate that in an interview is much easier than faking it or trying to get the job some other way. You talk a lot in the book about different pitfalls that... leaders face. And one that was especially interesting to me is the idea of the elephant in the room.
[06:56]
And I think any leader who has moved into a new organization or into a new role within the same organization has discovered that there always seems to be an elephant in the room. How does that show up and what can we do?
[07:09] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, I know. Darn it, right? It's It's kind of stinks that they're always there, but that they are there. And the reality is as a leader, the expectation is that you'll step up and address them. And actually in the book, Justin, just so folks know, it's 35 action steps, as you said, they're wrapped around 35 days. So there's 35 days of reading and the intent is spend 10 minutes on yourself every day.
[07:31]
And when you open up each day, you'll see the kind of the title. So you mentioned the addressing elephants, that's day 32. And day 32, we're in this area around performance. OK, I've got my goals set. I've got a plan. How am I going to perform?
[07:43]
And I say, watch out for this obstacle that is these elephants. And I tell a story in every day. So I tell this two or three page story to hopefully bring the idea to life. And some things are stories that were myself, what I experienced as a leader or in different leadership roles. Some are leaders that I've observed. I have been very fortunate to travel the world and work with leaders everywhere.
[08:03]
literally all over the world. And because of that, it's taught me a lot about what works and what doesn't work. In this particular one, when it deals with addressing elephants, sadly, I'm telling my own story about some elephants. I did an elephant that I didn't address. And what I was sharing in the story is that back at this time, my wife and I owned a company and we had offices in a few different states. And one of the areas was Washington, D.C.,
[08:27]
And I was out in Washington, D.C., and the team out there was having a meeting. And there were other teams from our company that were joining from other locations. So you can imagine we're sitting around a conference room, there's a speakerphone in the middle of the room, and we're kind of doing a check-in, what's going on Monday morning type of conversation. And I noticed during the conversation that somebody who actually is in the Washington, D.C. office was on the speakerphone.
[08:51]
But I really didn't think that much about it. I figured he probably had a personal obligation that morning or he was going to a client meeting or for some other reason he wasn't in the room. After the meeting was over, I'm walking back to my office that I had in Washington and I pass his door and his door is open, the lights on. So I think, oh, he's here now. I'll say hello. I knock on the door, poke my head in, little pleasantries like we often have.
[09:13]
And then I said, oh, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad I had a chance to see you. I didn't know if I'd see you this morning because you weren't in the room. And he responded. He said, yeah, I'm not that much into the teamwork and collaboration like everybody else is around here. And that's like a flashing yellow light, what are you going to do about it, Patrick, moment.
[09:27]
Because our whole business is about collaboration and communication and teamwork and projects. And he says that right to me. And what do I do? Nothing. I look at him and go, oh, okay. Have a good day or whatever.
[09:38]
And I close the door and walk away. And later on, I'm thinking, what the heck? Why did I let that happen in that moment? That's a baby elephant right there. It's not going to get better. And guess what?
[09:49]
It didn't get better. Two or three weeks, I started hearing from other people saying, hey, so-and-so isn't involved in the project meetings, and so-and-so isn't doing this. So my point is, as I'm walking through addressing elephants, is saying, okay, we all have elephants that we know about. Maybe we just don't talk too much about them. And I'm encouraging people to step up and address them. Like I didn't do that day.
[10:10]
And I run through four different reasons you want to address them. So I say like, one is that little things become big things. So these little elephants might be cute when you see them in a safari photograph, but the reality is when you have a 14,000 pound pack and I'm walking through your office or your school or whatever it might be, that's a problem. I also talk about how as a leader, it's really easy to say when you see something that's not right or needs to be addressed or in the situation with this one gentleman that I mentioned, it's really easy to go, well, I'm really busy. I've got to get to another meeting. I've got to do something else.
[10:38]
And I just want people to think about you're not too busy. This is your job. Dealing with these issues when they come up is your job. Another one is the idea that I can't address an issue if I don't know what right looks like. So I need to invest the time in knowing what it looks like to do things right. I need to understand in my situation, like what does collaboration look like?
[10:59]
And how do I make sure that people are on board with that? And then the fourth thing is I need to be able to give feedback. And some of us don't like to give feedback sometimes. And the reality is We have to learn how to do it. So I talk about the importance of giving feedback that's specific, that's timely, and it's also put into context. So for me to say to him, it isn't just you missed a meeting one time.
[11:20]
That's not the problem. The problem is this is the type of organization we're looking to build. And if it continues down this path, here's the problems we're going to run into. And then I kind of turn the page from there and I say, all right, now here's some questions for you. What are the elephants in your midst and what are you going to do to step up? So that's like an example of how one day plays out.
[11:36] SPEAKER_01:
I love that structure where there's a fairly short section and you said a story and then a reflection and action item. And this is kind of written almost like, you know, it's not a workbook, but written to be reflective in the sense that each chapter does ask people to think about some questions. There are questions at the end of each chapter, a little bit of space to do some journaling.
[11:56] SPEAKER_00:
I kind of look at it, it's like a nightstand book. You keep it by your nightstand and read it maybe before you go to bed or when you get up in the morning or something that you keep close to your desk when you show up at work every day. Maybe just take 10 minutes and invest in yourself.
[12:07] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I love it. Five weeks, 35 days, 35 chapters.
[12:10] SPEAKER_00:
I can tell you, Justin, that people are not doing it in 35 days. When I actually put it out, folks listen to this. They understand. They design coursework and they design content. And you think this is how the world's going to embrace it. And then you put it out there and students or users start to use things and maybe they do it differently than you expect.
[12:27]
So in the back of the book, there's actually a schedule that says if you're going to do it seven days a week, here's the schedule. Five days, four days. I have a group in Haiti. They're doing it one lesson a week for 35 weeks. And I wouldn't say I'm fully agnostic on it. I mean, I really do like the idea of doing it every day because I think it builds a habit.
[12:44]
However, it's just like going to the gym. You know, you're better off to go to the gym two days a week. Yeah, then not at all. Absolutely. So that's the idea.
[12:52] SPEAKER_01:
Now, I want to talk a little bit about this idea of setting aside a little bit of time to get better on a consistent basis, whether that's seven days a week, five days a week, whatever. I feel like there are so many pressures on school leaders' time. There is so much else that needs to get done right now, has to get done today. It really creates a difficulty for leaders who want to be proactive and really carve out time to do something that's not necessarily urgent. As far as I know, the book doesn't get up and bite you if you don't pick it up. from your nightstand at any given day.
[13:24]
What's your perspective on that for leaders who want to succeed, but really feel that pressure of the urgent, that tyranny of the things that have to get done today?
[13:32] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, there are more things that you could do than you have time to do, right? I mean, you would fill up, left unto itself, there would be gravel filling every day of your life, every evening of your life, every weekend of your life, you would be full of things. I like the idea when it comes to thinking about time and how we manage our time these days, that the challenge really isn't time management. Because historically, it was kind of a time management thing. Like, how do I wicker things into my schedule type of discussion, regardless of what was urgent or important or whatever it might be? How do I get things into my schedule?
[14:06]
But nowadays, these devices have ability to jam everything into our schedule. And because we have people that will have access to our calendar, they can build all sorts of things into our schedule as well. So jamming things into every waking hour of the day isn't the biggest challenge. The biggest challenge is threefold. One is decision management. We have so much information coming toward us these days that we have to make decisions about.
[14:28]
And the same thing for principals, for administrators, for people in the classroom, they have more information coming toward them every day that they need to make choices about than probably any other person doing that similar role in the past. The second thing is our attention's constantly under attack. And you and I are chatting right now, Justin, and I still have my cell phone not that far away. And if it goes off, yeah, it's muted, but I can see it in the corner of my eye. So we have people handing us stuff constantly. And then the third reality is that because of the first two, because of decision management issues and because of attention management issues, we have an energy crisis.
[15:02]
People are just outright tired and worn out. And it's not just a flippant thing to say. They really are. They're getting less sleep. They're not taking as good care of themselves. Going through the whole global pandemic has certainly turned everybody's lives upside down.
[15:15]
And certainly people listening to this podcast, their lives have been turned upside down. And because of that, they're exhausted. So it really makes sense. If I have so many decisions I need to make every day, and if my attention is being pulled in a myriad of directions, and I'm worn out, yeah, it's really hard to figure out how do I get 10 minutes carved out to do anything. But I think if you reverse the conversation a little bit and you say, okay, the problem is these three areas, the one thing you can control, you can find 10 minutes if you think it's important enough. So the idea of saying to yourself, you know what, there's so much stuff that is pulling at me in multiple directions, but what would it look like if 10 minutes a day was invested for 35 days?
[15:53]
Where would I be 35 days from now that I'm not at right now? And I think one thing we've learned over the course of the last 18 months or so is that none of us know what life is going to look like in 35 days. I mean, every time we think we're going to get past the pandemic, we're not. Or every time, whatever it might be, something new pops up. And that's just the way of the world. So the idea being is if I can invest 10 minutes of myself for 35 days, I may not know what the world will look like in 35 days, but I know I'll be in a better position to tackle it.
[16:19] SPEAKER_01:
But I think that touches on an issue that leaders face when they go from being a technician or a frontline person or a primary doer of the work to someone who manages the work. As people who are on the front lines, like if you're a classroom teacher, you plan your lessons, you grade your papers, you teach your students, and there's answer emails from parents, things like that. There's a ton to do, but there's not that same... Triage process in that same kind of having to choose what to do, choose what to spend your time on.
[16:48]
And I think one of the things that catches leaders off guard and you talk about the touch on this in a number of different chapters is that that you do have to choose. You do have to decide what is going to get your attention today and what's not. And I remember as a when I was kind of a dean of students. realizing when I was being targeted by a salesperson and that I actually didn't need to give that person my time and I did need to prioritize that shift from I'm just going to do whatever's in front of me because that's what I have to do to I'm actually going to put up some boundaries, put up some buffers and say, okay, I actually have to be the one to carve out that time. So if I'm going to have ten minutes to grow my own leadership because I set aside that time before I went to bed, That same strategy is also what's going to allow me to get my most important work done of putting up the boundary and deciding here is what I need to get done today and here's what I don't.
[17:38] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, because all day long, Justin, we're training people. We're teaching people how to interact with us. And if we don't put boundaries in place, if we think, well, I'll just answer this email Saturday at 2 a.m., I'll just take care of this, I'll just take care of that. Whose fault is that?
[17:53]
Right. It's not the person who sent you the email. It's the fact that you responded right away. You're training them to expect that you're going to do those type of things. And then later on, we get mad because people are doing it to us. It's like, but we did it to ourselves.
[18:05]
So putting boundaries in place. I mean, people actually respect that when you say to them, You know what? First thing I do when I get to work every day is I spend 10 minutes investing in myself or whatever it might be. Here's what I'm going to do. Here's how we're going to run the meeting. And you stick to that.
[18:18]
People say, okay, Justin's disciplined. Justin follows through on things. In fact, sometimes they might say, well, Justin's got this discipline, but so-and-so over there doesn't. So I'll go get that person to do it. And they'll figure out somebody else will go do it. So some of those things will just go away.
[18:32]
I know... Myself, even with students at Vanderbilt, I'll have students come up and they'll say, can I talk to you about XYZ? I'll say, absolutely. Here's my office hours.
[18:43]
Some students will show up for the office hours and talk about XYZ. Others won't because that little structure of saying, here's when I'm available to have those conversations. Sometimes people go, that barrier of entry is too high. I'll just go find somebody else. Now, I'm not saying I purposely do that to avoid being with students. I like to spend every waking moment I can with students.
[19:02]
But just making sure that people are willing to step up to and say, okay, this conversation is worth enough to travel to your office and have it, I think is a really critical thing.
[19:12] SPEAKER_01:
I love that. I think that's, that's so critical. And I think for school leaders, this is just kind of a, kind of a freebie from, from my world a little bit, you know, just being in classrooms frequently throughout the day, you know, being out of the office for 10 or 15 minutes at a time serves that purpose for people. You know, if somebody pops in and says, Hey, you know, is he available? Is she available? If you're always available, then lots of problems are going to come into your lap.
[19:33]
And if you're never available, then you're gonna put off those problems and not deal with them. But if you're kind of available, if you're semi-available, and like you said, just have that little bit of a filter that makes people stop and think, okay, do I wanna come back during office hours or do I wanna wait 15 minutes till the principal's done with classroom visits and then get my issue taken care of? Like that can make such a difference.
[19:52] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, well, the reality is a lot of times when you put that little space in there, people oftentimes figure it out on their own sometimes without having to come to you. And in doing so, they've learned something They haven't created a dependence that wasn't necessary in the first place. I think that's really incredible. There was this corporate training video years ago. This is like speaking about what I watch in life. There was this corporate training video years ago where it showed an office space on a floor, kind of in a nondescript business building, and in the center of it was a glass office That was clearly where the leader was.
[20:24]
The leader is sitting in the office and other people are working around the leader's office. And throughout the day, different people come into the leader's office with a monkey on their back and take the monkey off and leave it in the person's office. And at the end of the day, the entire floor is dark except for that leader's office. And there's about 20 monkeys jumping all over the place. And obviously, the takeaway from that is all day long, that leader was taking on those monkeys from the people. And at the end of the day, now the leader's not going home.
[20:51]
Things are not being done effectively. And you might imagine that person's heading toward a quick case of burnout. So the ability sometimes to say, you know, I'll help you in any way I can. I'll give you advice. I'll give you counsel. I'll give you direction.
[21:04]
But I'm not going to own that for you is a really critical thing. And that involves... leaders to kind of look at situations and say, okay, what's the character of the individual? What's the competence of the individual?
[21:14]
What's the risk if we fail on this thing? And then figuring out how engaged or not engaged you need to be.
[21:20] SPEAKER_01:
Very well said. So in week four, Patrick, you talk about creating plans and have a number of different chapters on planning and making plans. I think for a lot of us, especially at the beginning of the school year or during those busy seasons, we almost get a little bit cynical about making plans because we just expect them to be disrupted by the fire department or whatever might come up. What do you see as the value of planning, especially when we can't control how the day goes beyond a certain point?
[21:51] SPEAKER_00:
A friend of mine years ago told me that a plan is nothing more than an agreed upon starting point for future change. I think that's really true, right? So having plans, having contingencies, knowing some of these things are going to happen. In fact, there's probably some people that listen to the podcast that because they've been through a few school years, they kind of know how things play out. And they realize if I figure out every plan to the nth degree, it's never actually going to get that far. So I can pull back a little bit.
[22:18]
So I have some flexibility for the fire drills and things like that. But I think there's a lot of value in planning itself. whether you're on a team and you're an administrator working with a team of leaders and you're coming up with some plans about goals we want to achieve and how are we going to go about doing those, having that shared mindset as a group is really critical. And also as an individual, I know for me when I'm planning my lesson plans for the semester, just thinking through all of those things I know they're not going to all play out exactly because stuff's going to change. And one of the classes I teach is marketing. And I encourage students to bring in things that they see out there in the world.
[22:52]
Well, sometimes those things come in and they put an ad on. Somebody shows an ad in class. We start talking about that. Yeah, I lose a portion of what I'm going to talk about. So I want to build in that flexibility. But also...
[23:03]
The idea of just going through in the planning process just constantly ups my game. It constantly makes me think of all the things that could happen. It also reminds me of the things that I did historically that went well and make sure I captured that annotation and also things that didn't go well. Because I don't know about your listeners, but I know when I walk into a classroom, sometimes there's times where I'm like, I am going to kill it today. This is like the best lecture ever. And then I walk out afterwards and go, what happened?
[23:29]
That was not what I expected it to be. Or vice versa. There are times where I walk in and I go, this is what I'm a little uncomfortable with. The reading was a little heavy or something. And then you go in and go, that was like a great discussion. So I think there's the reality of how things play out, but then there's also that preparation piece.
[23:44]
And I don't think skipping over plans is a smart thing for anybody to do.
[23:48] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I love the way you put that because it frames the possibilities, but we still live in a world where we need to be flexible. But if we have something specific to be flexible about, yeah, we're going to be much more successful. So the book is The Five Week Leadership Challenge, 35 Action Steps to Become the Leader You Were Meant to Be. And Patrick, if people want to learn more about the book, more about your work that you do, where are some of the best places for them to go online to find you?
[24:17] SPEAKER_00:
Okay, so online, the book's available, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, everywhere else. In fact, if they walk into a bookstore, it's available there as well, which is kind of exciting. And you can learn more about this particular book at fiveweekleadershipchallenge.com. It's the number fiveweekleadershipchallenge.com.
[24:32]
And if they go there, there's actually a free assessment. People can fill out the assessment, answer about 13, respond to about 13 statements. And we give you a free email response that tells you, hey, here's what your survey told you. And here's some things you might want to check on our website because we have lots of free tools and I host a podcast. I've had some great guests. You can listen to clips of that or also just read some articles.
[24:53]
It's called The Leadership Lab with Dr. Patrick Ledin. And as far as leadership voices go, I've had some really great ones, like the authors you would know, like Patrick Lencioni or Stephen M. R. Covey or Robert Cialdini. They've all been on the podcast, as well as I'm a big advocate that we can learn about leadership from a wide range of voices.
[25:11]
So I have like MLB shortstops or professional mountain climbers or all different people to come in and just talk. about what they've learned about leadership.
[25:18] SPEAKER_01:
Check out the Leadership Lab podcast. And Patrick, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.
[25:24] SPEAKER_00:
My pleasure, Justin. If I could do anything to help you or your people, don't hesitate to ask.
[25:28] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
