Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong—The Forty-Hour Principal

[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 Baeder. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] Justin Baeder:

I'm your host, Justin Baeder, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Steve Zonoval and Dave Armstrong, authors of The 40-Hour Principle, Provocations for the Discerning Educator.

[00:27] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:29] Justin Baeder:

Steve and Dave, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:32] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

Hey, thanks very much for having us, Justin.

[00:34] Justin Baeder:

Well, let's start with one of the provocations that's right in the title of the book. The very idea that this can be a 40-hour job, I think is pretty challenging to a lot of people. And you actually began this work as part of sabbaticals that you both took, which again, to many of our listeners will be a shock that that's even a possibility that we'll have probably lots of people trying to move to New Zealand now to get in on this sabbatical setup. But talk to us a little bit about the research project and what you discovered and what some of the key insights have been.

[01:02] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

Dave and I, we're actually in New Zealand. So in the South Island of New Zealand, the beautiful country of New Zealand in a little port town called Timaru. And Dave and I have both been in education for about 30 years. I became a principal when I was about 26 and been thinking a lot about the number of hours that we actually put into the job. And it's sort of pretty crazy. I'm sure it's just exactly the same in America that it is here in New Zealand.

[01:28]

we have horror stories of people. The job becomes the lives basically. And I just remember sort of growing up in the 1970s and people used to talk about this idea about the 40 hour work working week. And that that's what you'd be doing. You would be going to work and you'd be working for 40 hours. You'd arrive at eight, leave at five.

[01:45]

That would be it. And, uh, To sort of find when you get into principalship and it's so much about caring and sharing and guiding and leading, that it's not actually a 40-hour gig at all. For some people, it's 80 or 90 hours. And luckily for me, it's not that. But we just started talking and thinking, well, we need to get some ideas around because that's just so unsustainable and completely unrealistic. And we're talking about people's lives.

[02:13]

Dave?

[02:13] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

Yeah, so we both came to this, we call it the 40-hour project now because it's sort of taken legs of its own and a lot of people interested in the work. But we both came to it from a similar but slightly different place. So in New Zealand, if you've been in a position for a wee while, you can apply for a sabbatical. And as part of the sabbatical, you do a study task of some sort. So there's some form of research. as well as the implication of sabbatical, which is rest.

[02:42]

Now, both Steve and I just by accident had a very similar topic. His was around recovery rate. How did some principals, school leaders, recover efficiently and quickly from stress or trauma? And mine was similar but slightly different, which was why are some people long-lasting in the job? Why do some people have longevity? Why do others burn out in a glorious burst of color and unhappiness quite quickly.

[03:08]

So I guess we were looking at principal wellness as a topic. And so we decided to collaborate. We both work in the same small town. It made sense. And the 40-hour principal book was a result of that collaboration. But What's happened now is that the project's gone way past the book.

[03:25]

And we have a weekly blog, for instance, and these days we talk to various groups around some of the themes that drive it.

[03:31] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

Yeah, totally. So writing every week, that's great. It's actually really, really quite mindful as a principal, actually sort of writing down your thoughts. And then it's also nice getting the feedback from people around you about whether you're on the money or not. And normally we are. And sometimes I think we get it a little bit wrong, but...

[03:48]

There's a real, real need in principalship and leadership as a whole to just rethink how we do our role. I sort of think it's almost dinosaur thinking that we've had in the past, isn't it?

[03:59] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

That's a good point, Steve. We actually, in the early days, it sometimes still happens depending on supply, but we sent a little dinosaur out with each of the books. And the hope that people would pop it on in a visible place around their office, maybe your home, and just see it and remember that. I mean, the reality is what we do was largely constructed well over 100 years ago, maybe 200 years ago in some countries. I mean, the shape of it hasn't changed a lot, but the demands of the job have really changed. And this is where we're trying to challenge the status quo.

[04:30]

the typical picture of a school leader who does nothing but serve their school is not a picture that's sustainable for most people it's not a true reflection of how people's lives are going it's a public persona that doesn't match up with the reality so one of the things that we discovered in a sabbatical was that there's an awful lot of people in the role who are basically acting And it's not the best place for them to leave from, and it's certainly not the best place for them personally.

[04:57] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

No, I agree totally. So just thinking about the dinosaurs, we've even got T-shirts that have got dinosaurs on them. So when we do our speaks, does that make sense? No. So when we do our speeches from time to time, we're presenting somewhere, we sort of rock on up with our dinosaurs on our T-shirts, and a nice way to sort of break the ice a bit, I guess. Yeah.

[05:16]

But, yeah, it's definitely been an interesting sort of journey, and my sort of little... bit of research. We sort of talked to maybe 150 different principals throughout New Zealand. And I was really interested personally in these principals who have got broad shoulders.

[05:30]

They say, oh, I've got broad shoulders. I can get through it at anything. And then you've got other principals who are falling apart in their cars on the drive home every night, pull over on the side of the road and have a bit of a cry. I'm sort of halfway in between. I've only got four minutes to travel home, so I haven't really got time to have a cry on the way home. But, you know, I certainly still feel it.

[05:49]

And we go through stressful situations every single day. We arrive at school, we don't know when the next stressful situation is going to happen. In some ways, I used to sort of think sort of terrorists coming into your school. You just don't know when it's going to happen. And maybe that's not so very PC to sort of talk about it in that way. But it's a bit like that, isn't it?

[06:08]

You just don't know what's going to happen in your day. And you need to actually roll with it and be able to pick yourself up and get going again for the next day.

[06:17] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

Yeah, I agree with all of that, Steve. I think for me, what drives me to keep having an impact in the project work is that there's a whole heap of really good people, really good-hearted people who work really hard. They have a real service ethic in education. There's some of that vocational type thinking still out there, but actually under it all, behind the suit, if you like, are just normal people. And the parts of the job that have grown increasingly more complex are often the parts now that create unreasonable stress on people. So we are a wee bit unique, we think, in the education space at the moment.

[06:54]

There's a lot of talk about wellness. In New Zealand, they call it whāora around the world, but most people still come from it first from a professional angle. So we're coming from it from a personal angle, we're people doing a job. And I guess the professionalism is that a well person, a happy person, an energized person is the best version of themselves as a professional education leader. So we've got two strings to our bow, but we come from the person position first. Yeah.

[07:23]

And that's often a bit surprising for people.

[07:25] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

Yeah, it's the old cliche, isn't it? That we're flying the plane, aren't we? We're the pilots on the plane. And if the plane's going down, the first person who really needs to get the oxygen is actually the pilots of the plane. You've got to actually put the oxygen mask on, look after yourself and actually land the plane with everyone still surviving. And that's really what it is.

[07:43]

It's about personal well-being, looking after yourself, finding those boundaries and and making sure you stick to those boundaries. So I work really, really hard. When I leave school, I leave school. As I drive out the gates, that's the boundary. And so at home, I try really, really hard not to check out emails or check out anything to do with school. I do things which are important for me outside of school.

[08:07]

I'm in a band, but I've got a loving family as well and put heaps and heaps of energy into them. And that's what life's all about. Your school isn't everything. It's not your whole life. It's just part of your life. And I think we let the stresses of the job and the pressure of the job just take over.

[08:25]

So it is our whole life. But if you do that, then you're actually not bringing a very balanced ideal to your role.

[08:33] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

Yeah, I'd like to pick up on that comment briefly, and we've got to let you have a chance to talk to Justin about the question. Balance is where it's at. So, yep, we're all doing important work, right? We're working with people. So we're not selling toasters. We haven't got the latest widget that you can download for $1.50.

[08:49]

We're actually hands-on with real human beings. That means we need to be good at what we do. And the model at the moment in many places that we have seen is not a sustainable model for the person. So we chuck out provocations, don't we, Steve? So we'll put some stuff out there every week. Every week we write a blog post and we chuck it out.

[09:10]

And sometimes it's a bit confronting for people. And the reason for that is we want them to actually sit back and go, I could do this differently. I actually have the power in my hands today to do this differently and we would suggest better.

[09:23] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

So, yeah, I mean, we're not actually gurus. We're still doing the job. So the provocation part is so important, isn't it? Making people think, well, yeah, I could take a little bit of this and I take a little bit of that. Dave and Steve aren't telling us how to do the job. They're just trying to help people think about the job differently.

[09:40] Justin Baeder:

It seems to me that it's kind of snuck up on us that this job is so overwhelming now. And I think there's been a lot of research attention to this issue of stress and burnout. And as you said, we never know what's coming. We never know when we're going to have to deal with a crisis or a stressful situation. And we tend to think of it as an occupational hazard, right? Like if you're a carpenter, you expect you're going to smash your thumb with a hammer every once in a while.

[10:03]

If you're a plumber, you're going to get dirty. If you're a principal, you're going to work extremely long hours. You're going to deal with stressful situations. What's wrong with that kind of dinosaur thinking that it just has to be this way? Help us think differently about the profession as something that actually could be, if we choose to make it, a 40-hour profession.

[10:22] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

All right, that's a really good question. I'll kick off for a starter. Got some thinking on that. 40 hours is an aspirational position. 40 hours was the mythical, the classical fabled working week, as Steve said earlier. We're not suggesting that in most cases you can fulfill all your principal responsibilities within 40 hours, but we're suggesting that it's much better to aim towards 40 than it is towards 80.

[10:49]

Because you lose all balance. In fact, I would suggest that you start to lose balance as a human somewhere around the sort of 60-hour mark. Because if you actually do the math, you'll find that you don't have time for anything else except for work. And that doesn't let you be a complete person. So the issue is that as the complexity of the job has grown and the model that we've got is the same, the only response has been to work harder and longer. So as technologies come in, We're fully contactable 24 hours a day.

[11:20]

If you let yourself be, the response has been to just pile on hours and workload to the people doing the leading. But that's crazy because it's counter to what we know about human biology. Somebody who doesn't have time to exercise doesn't stay well. Someone who spends 10 plus hours a day in a chair doesn't stay well. And somebody that doesn't have time for passion, hobbies, and family, and all those things, is a version of themselves that's not the best. And yet on the public face, we're saying, wow, you're the leader.

[11:51]

You're the person standing at the front. You're hopefully inspiring the community that we work with and you're guiding them. But actually behind that is a person who's not functioning in a healthy way.

[12:01] Justin Baeder:

Yeah.

[12:01] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

And that's systemic, isn't it? That's the shape of the job, not the shape of the person.

[12:06] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

Yeah. I think, too, you talk, Justin, about how things have sort of crept up on us. I'm sure it's the same in the States as it is here in New Zealand. In New Zealand, we have this sort of theory that everything is education can almost solve everything. And it's the easiest way to actually solve social ills is to put some extra pressure on the schools to actually solve these social ills and do it on the smell of an oily rag, basically, because there's never enough money in education to get through. So schools, principals, we keep on getting loaded by government to really sort out social issues.

[12:41]

Even in a little place like Timaru at the moment, there's the startings of a meth epidemic, and we're starting to see meth babies coming through. And they're a completely different kettle of fish, aren't they? We just haven't been trained to actually sort of deal with these social types of issues. And it's no longer about education. It's actually about How are we going to actually fix these people if there's even a fix for them? And that's a huge pressure because we've never been trained for this.

[13:07]

We've actually really got to embrace that and actually work with that. But at the same time, we really need to look after ourselves as well. So it's talking about, Dave talked about exercise, connecting with people, connecting with your people. finding time to actually have what I call me time, which is just time where you actually do the stuff that you want to do. So I talked about before that I'm in a band. So yeah, like my me time is band practice every Thursday night.

[13:33]

And we just have a great time. Don't think about school at all while I'm playing some pretty heavy chords. And Dave's got his me time too, playing tennis and thrashing around all over the place on a mountain bike.

[13:46] Justin Baeder:

Yeah.

[13:46] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

It's really, really important that you do that sort of stuff, that you actually, if it means even scheduling time until you have your me time, then it has to happen.

[13:55] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

Here's a provocation in that line, if you like. So we work in a job with no, we're on a salary in New Zealand. So we're not working an hourly rate. I'm sure that's the same in most places. So in effect, our job never ends, as in we're never actually 100% off the clock, according to, say, a working contract. But that also implies that all of the time in the day is also potentially work time or time that would be recovery, good for yourself, good for your family, that sort of thing.

[14:26]

And as a provocation, what would be wrong with going for a run in a lunchtime three times a week? As a provocation, what would be wrong about heading out of your school as the last student left relatively regularly to go and work on something to do with yourself and keeping yourself well? Because behind the scenes, after the students have left, after the parents have gone home, all that sort of stuff, many, many school leaders are still working. They're working on site or they're working at home. That's a difficult idea for people to grasp that you don't have work time and personal time in a job like we have. You just have time.

[15:05]

And with that, there's actually a huge possibility to do the job differently. You've just got to give yourself permission. But we've got lots of strategy like that. We've got a mixture of tactics, provocations and tactics. We've got some ideas, smarter people than us have come up with to solve these dilemmas. So it's not all doom and gloom.

[15:24] Justin Baeder:

It sounds like there's really a philosophical issue that we have to touch on. That is the idea that we cannot personally fix every problem in education, much less in society more broadly, simply by working more hours. And as the challenges we face grow, we've often responded by simply working more hours, by putting in more effort. But there's a point of diminishing returns. As you said, when we start to get beyond 60 hours a week, there's simply no more time. You cannot have a personal life.

[15:49]

Certainly many, especially high school administrators will attest to how much of a personal life you can actually have when you are working those 60, 70 hours a week. And it's not necessarily better for students, right? Because I feel like we feel a sense of guilt. And I feel like a lot of our listeners would have a sense of guilt if they were in a band, if they did have a mountain biking hobby. The idea that I would have personal time almost feels like a betrayal of our mission, our obligation to serve students. If we don't accept, you know, pause for a who is capable of doing this job in order to do this job.

[16:25]

I can't just be a principal 100% of the time and be a healthy person. It sounds like that's kind of at the heart of your argument here, that there's like a wellness principle that needs to be at the center of leadership and not just a kind of a sacrifice paradigm. I feel like our default stance is one of sacrifice all too often. Is that an example of the dinosaur thinking that you're talking about, this idea that we have to be martyrs? Yeah, definitely.

[16:48] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

We've got another teacher that says, be slacker better. And it offends the life out of people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is the idea that as principals, we're all really, really good people and we all want to do such a great job. But really, we're saying you actually got to cut yourself a bit of slack.

[17:07]

You've got to cut yourself a bit of slack. And that might go against your moral high ground or whatever. But you actually have to look at how you could slightly be slacker better, not slacker in other people's minds, but slacker in your own mind. And so you're actually fighting your own mentality in your home. Look, actually, if I've done enough, go home. And as a leader, no one else is going to tell you that.

[17:32]

Your DP or your teachers aren't going to tell you. They're already in their own stuff. You've got to tell yourself. And so you need to be start thinking about being slacker better and thinking how you can make your time. And there's natural sort of ups and downs in your job where some weeks you could probably get close to 40 hours a week if you really, really thought about it. because there might not be so many meetings.

[17:57]

In other weeks, that's going to be just impossible. But I reckon I sort of head around sort of 48, 50 hours a week, depending on what's going on. And some weeks, yeah, sometimes I do go home at three o'clock and I go home thinking, man, I've done a great job today.

[18:12] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

See, this is a critical point in understanding because it's all about giving yourself permission to do the job differently within the constraints of what you need to do to be effective. It's all about your own perception. So we're in this box, if you like, that was invented many, many years ago. But the way you actually do your job, you've invented that yourself. So it's a construct. So I was talking to a group of principals last week, and some of them were relatively new.

[18:43]

And I challenged them to think about the fact of how do they know how to be a principal? And that just hung there with them. How did they know? And actually, when you unpick it, there was no rule book. There was no playbook, if you like. They just made it up.

[18:59]

And each of them had made it up slightly differently. They'd looked around and decided what sort of clothes principals wore. They'd had a bit of a stab at what time they should be on site in the morning, because that's not in their contracts. They decided when they'd go home. They decided how much work they'd do at home. They made all those decisions, but in their mind, they were being a principal.

[19:21]

And it was quite different. And when we unpicked it, people had very varying ideas of this stuff. They were just arbitrary made up. So the challenge is to actually step off the hamster wheel, we often call it, isn't it? The busyness of life, which is what a sabbatical does for you. Because by the way, Well, a sabbatical has a study task in New Zealand.

[19:40]

It also has a lying on the beach and looking at the sky part too. And make some clear calls on the bits of your job that you can give yourself permission to improve for the benefit of being well as a person. Yeah.

[19:54] Justin Baeder:

Well, see, I couldn't say it, but I think one of the reasons we hold ourselves to such a high standard in terms of work output of work hours of being available and being reachable at all hours is that we want to set a good example for our staff. Right. But I feel like that cuts both ways as well. What do you feel like is the obligation on the flip side to set an example of those boundaries for teachers?

[20:17] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

That is so true. And it's double-edged sword too. You did write that. You've got your own perceptions about how you do the job. And then your teachers also have a perception about how you should do the job as well. And their perception is often that the principal will be working the hardest and the longest and will be dealing with all the tricky things.

[20:35]

You definitely have to set standards, but you can also set standards by sitting down with your staff and talking about what wellbeing looks like as a collective experience. and what wellbeing looks like through the culture of your school. So sitting down at the very beginning of the year and sort of just talking about what you think your expectations of wellbeing might look like, and not just saying it, but actually listening from your staff too, and hearing what their expectations are, and then actually building up some sort of almost a social contract with your staff. That's the way forward rather than some archaic way of saying thou shalt leave at this time and you must do this by this time. Yeah.

[21:17] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

See, we often run into principals who say stuff like, hey, but if I'm going to head away at like relatively early in the afternoon, what are my teachers going to think? And then they'll go, holy heck, if I go for a run at lunchtime, what's Mrs. Smith who sees me down at the park running? What's she going to think? And yeah, Part of being a professional is to trust that you've been ethical as well. So by letting the mythical Mrs. Smith judge you, who doesn't know anything about the hours you're working or how productive you are, or a teacher who might see you go...

[21:51]

they have no idea really in real life whether you're off to a meeting or whether you're off to pick up your kid from school. Your head that's worrying about those things. But I'm with Steve. I think you need to be upfront with your staff about what is happening. And you also need to have equity in this because if it's okay for you to work flexibly within the bounds of your responsibilities, I would suggest it's definitely okay for them to do the same. And that's around trust.

[22:19]

And a school with a lot of rules, a lot of, rules about structure and things, there's definitely work to be done there around trust. And that's something that's really important in a high-performing school.

[22:29] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

Yeah, totally. Trust is the big thing. It's really a talk about culture, isn't it? And about how you show that trust. Heaps and heaps of books out there about high trust and what that actually means. It's so crucial.

[22:41] Justin Baeder:

So take us into the nature of the book a little bit and talk about the blog and what people can find there.

[22:47] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

It's a collection of short anecdotes. So the book is very short. As part of a sabbatical in New Zealand, you have to write a report. Well, Steve and I are not big on reports that nobody's going to read. So we decided to put the book together as a way of doing the report without actually doing the report, if that makes sense. So it's got anecdotes and stories in it.

[23:06]

But I guess if you could ask something, what we're doing now is that we're putting up at least as good a material, sometimes better, weekly on the 40-hour blog site. And what we're trying to achieve is we're trying to get people into the conversation. We post once every week, and we've got a huge number of people that follow us now and building. So the book is a mixture of questions, anecdotes, and little short stories. You can chop this book in a solid morning over a coffee, no problem.

[23:35] Justin Baeder:

Yeah. So the book is The 40-Hour Principle. And Steve and Dave, if people want to learn more about the book, maybe order a copy and follow along with your weekly blog posts, where's the best place for them to go online?

[23:47] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

A simple search, Google search will take you straight to us. If you search for The 40-Hour Principle, we'll come up at the top because clearly there's not many results that have 40 hours in the word principle at the same time. That'll connect you with both the book if you wanted to see one of those, but it'll also take you to our website. And if people want to contribute to this project, then the very best thing that they can do for the project is to follow our blog. And we've got a whole lot of information and ideas and provocations that come out once per week.

[24:20] Steve Zonnevylle & David Armstrong:

We're also on Facebook as well. That's always a good way of getting our weekly blog. But receiving it by email weekly is always a good way as well. Subscribe and get involved in the conversation. Let's turn this thing around.

[24:31] Justin Baeder:

And so the website is 40hourprincipal.com. The book is The 40-Hour Principal. Steve and Dave, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure. Our pleasure.

[24:40]

Thank you. Thank you.

[24:41] Announcer:

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