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[thrive_toggles_group”][thrive_toggles title=”Transcript” no=”1/1″] Justin Baeder: Welcome thank you, everybody, for being here. Very excited to have this chance to chat today. We’re talking about Time For Change with Dr. Anthony Muhammad and we are Dr. Justin Baeder: We’ve already done an interview about the book. We’ve spoken previously for Principal Center Radio and had a great interview there. So thank you very much, Dr. Muhammed, for joining me again to go in-depth on some of these important issues around transforming school culture, transforming school performance. And very excited to go a little bit deeper on some of these topics so thank you so much for being here.
Dr. Anthony Muhammed: Thanks for having me it’s a pleasure. I enjoyed your show and also congratulations on the latest book so honor to have an opportunity to interact with you.
JB: Well, thank you very much! And I see we have a great group of participants today our roundtable members tuning in and some guests. And the way that this is going to work in terms of asking questions—I don’t want to surprise anybody by putting you on webcam if you’re commuting or whatever you may be doing this time of day. So what we will do is use the chat to indicate if you have a question and then I will just promote you to a panelist the same way I did with Dr. Muhammed so just let me know in the chat if you’d like to ask a question—if you would like to ask a question, but not get on video please let me know and I can ask that question for you. Just type that out in the chat but for the maximum fun, we like to have people come on video and turn on their webcam and ask their questions out loud. So just let me know if you’d like to do that I can hit the button and hopefully it will work a little bit more smoothly next time. So let me know and we will get into the deeper issues of bringing about change in schools.
So Dr. Muhammad, thank you again for being here. Just by way of introduction you are the author of numerous books including Transforming School Culture, Overcoming the Achievement Gap Trap, and the book we’re here to talk about today is Time for Change—which focuses on four essential skills, three investments, and one that you described as a return on investment. I wonder if we want to start by talking a little bit about your experience as a school principal and then your experience with some of the schools that you’ve worked with as a consultant over the past decade to bring about some of those same types of changes. So give us a little bit of context here for your work that went into this book.
AM: Sure, I had the pleasure to serve as a site-based leader for 11 years. I spent two years as an assistant principal and nine years as a principal at two different schools. And leadership—school leadership as the Wallace Foundation study proved—is ultra important to the growth of an institution. You can have a great classroom you can have a great but to have a great school you really need a person, a group of people as a leadership team, kind of leading the way. There’s always pockets of excellence, but to do it systemically you really need visionary and effective leadership. My experience as a leader was unfortunately like many it was trial and error and human beings aren’t really good to do experiments on.
So the more we can kind of mitigate some of the probability of missteps because students don’t get a do-over—you only go to sixth-grade one time, you know, you’re only a ninth-grader once. So my experience as a leader was a success but there were some struggles and part of what motivated Dr. Cruz and me to write this book is that leadership is a totally separate skill and we tend to make the assumption in education that just because someone is good as a teacher— you may be a great literacy instructor, you may be a great coach—the assumption is that those skills translate into supervising people to do the same job. And the prevailing research in business and leadership is taught that people who are naturally good at something are probably the least qualified to lead somebody else, because of when a person has a natural gift in something they tend to not develop certain important leadership characteristics like patience, like good communication, being precise. When something comes easily to me the assumption is it’s going to come easily to people that lead. So that leads to a little hubris, a little impatience.
So parts of my job as a teacher that came easy to me, I was pretty impatient and I had to learn the hard way through some resistance through some uncomfortable moments with teachers that I supervise because I wasn’t mature enough yet to understand that leadership is a specific skill. So as a consultant—I think I figured most of it out as a principal through hard knocks—so as a consultant as I went into the field where I was a champion of the PLC process and we had experienced great success at my former school. We were the first urban school my honored as a model PLC and the assumption was that everybody, when I walked in everybody, would love PLC the way did I do. And I had a very rude awakening that no that was more of a fallacy than a reality. And Dr. Cruz and I found that the skill level of the leader or leaders was very important to the PLC process—or any effective process for students being embraced by their subordinates was the skill level of the leader of certain characteristics that they had. And from my Transforming School Culture study if you get a chance to reach after seven identified four gaps that prevent people from embracing a collective change agenda. This book is an expansion of chapter 7 and Transforming school culture and really given some insight on huddle leaders develop their skills to help people overcome those gaps or those needs so you can get consensus for the benefit of students? So that’s probably the best analysis I can give you.
JB: Thank you. Very helpful. And the point that you made about the curse of expertise like the things that come naturally to you are things that we tend to be impatient about with other people right? And I definitely saw that as a principal in Seattle yes when I would see just the impatience of principals who were literacy experts. You know, I worked with a lot of elementary—I was an elementary principal so most of my immediate peers were elementary principals and I would see just a tremendous impatience among the principals who had been literacy coaches—which I mean they were instructionally some of the strongest principals but also had the most learning to do to figure out how to get other people on board with the changes that they in their mind it was crystal clear they knew exactly what they wanted literacy instruction would look like that was a big focus for the district to get students reading on grade level. And sometimes it would seem like they were in a hostage situation where they had kind of taken all the other staff prisoner and they were not going to let anybody go until they had their way. And that patience and that figuring out, “okay how do I actually bring people on board with this?” was a little bit more of a challenge. So I’m thinking about our roundtable group of superintendents who are in that boat of needing to carry out the work of change through principals, right?
And I think so many programs are sold as this just kind of handles itself, right? This program runs itself, you know, you make the decision you invest and boom the staff will run with it and students will benefit. But I think anybody who’s been in this business a long time knows that as you said exactly what you said, you know, leadership is make-or-break. and the way that a principal approaches a change really has a huge impact and you give an example in the book of a principal who stands up at a faculty meeting and says, so I know I’m really sorry to have to share this with you but the district is requiring us to do whatever what the staff members pick up what a faculty picked up from a principal who says so I have some bad news for you the district wants us to…whatever?
AM: Yeah that specific scenario that you mentioned is a subcategory of the skill of building trust and Dr. Cruz and I break down trust into two components which are empathy and credibility. And part trusts often people mistake the term trust for likability. I can trust somebody I dislike and I can dislike somebody that I trust—they’re very different affability versus reliability are very different. So often a leader will pander to people and what they think that inhibitions are they’re there their desires are to get them to like them, but simultaneously while they’re pandering to be liked they’re losing trust. And we cite several studies in the book about why trust has a much greater impact on the ability to lead than being liked.
And trust is synonymous with reliability so when a person is trying to become trusted you have to become credible. I like to use to Jim Collins example of the bus. The bus has a bus driver and I might think it’s a good bus but I’ve got to trust you as a bus driver. And I want to know are you a good person you care about me as a person? That’s the empathy piece and can you drive? are you are you credible? are you competent? So when a leader stands before teachers or anybody a superintendent stands in front of principals whoever is in the positional Authority at that time and acts as if they’re in a hostage situation or they’re somehow being forced to do something that they really don’t agree with intellectually or morally or professionally, what they’re showing is that I’m giving you permission to disengage. And it’s an issue of bad body language posture they’re not saying it directly, but their body language and the posture is saying more than what’s coming out of their mouth.
So I show a clip by Colin Powell on leadership and he said he was taught in the infantry school when he was becoming an officer he was told by his commanding officer that if you’re cold you can’t appear to be cold. if you’re hungry you can’t appear to be hungry. if you’re sleepy you can’t compare to be asleep because if you’re cold tired hungry and sleepy then the soldiers have permission to be cold tired hungry and sleepy. So if you want them to follow you into a foxhole around a dangerous corner your behavior dictates what they have permission to emulate. So when a principal does that I might think he’s a nice or she’s a nice person but I don’t trust them because if you’re asking me to do something that you don’t embrace then what would you expect my level of investment to be if you’re not invested in it? so whatever the leader does either builds trust or undermine truck undermines trust.
And if you want to be considered ethical then what you do has to align what your strong core values and I’d even respect you more if you said we are in negotiation with central office and we’re working on some things I think that is good for the district but they’re not quite complete yet, I’m going to get back with you because I want to be able to strongly support whatever the district askes us to do I’d respect you more if you said that then to almost in a political fashion. that’s one of the reasons people have problems with politicians they come off as disingenuous
JB: Yeah and I think that’s a situation where we don’t necessarily want to say to principals, hey you know tell us what your staff thinks and if they don’t like the idea we’re not going to do it you know because every idea is going to have pushback any change is going to have pushback and we’re not saying you know go get the feedback from your staff and if it’s not 100% positive we’re gonna can the whole thing but the authenticity of belief or understanding and being on board you know I feel like the the the weakest presentations of the district mandate by principals come from those situations where the principal does not personally understand well and other than just the details of here’s what you need to so let’s soccer if we could about the end. Go ahead.
AM: And what I like to do in scaling this up is that central office has to take some culpability there as well if principals are responsible for teachers and teachers are responsible for students the district office has to do more than just dictate we see kind of the impact of leadership skill it suffers the farther you move up the system. Classroom teachers have typically had really good relationships with kids then it kind of in wanes as you move to the principalship to central office. And the state and government they’re the most ineffective. So you seem that the further you get away from the classroom the level of culpability or responsibility for guiding people, people tend to relinquish that responsibility the further you go up it should be the opposite but if the state wants to pass a new teacher evaluation system they have a responsibility to engage the districts to get them to understand and then the district has to get the principal to commit. But it seems like the further you move away from the classroom the level of personal responsibility wanes I just find that disturbing.
JB: Yeah that is interesting and I think there are so many different things going on there with you know teachers have you know obviously the students are sticking teachers have tenure but you start to get into the principal assistant superintendent level people tend to move around a little bit more. There is less protection. You know, people are more at will at those more senior levels and I think we do see a more kind of bear exercise of power sometimes to get a change across. I was reading a Harvard Business Review article and if you’re on my email list you saw my link to that yesterday that talked about the Wells Fargo scandal when bank employees and managers would open just millions and millions of kind of fake accounts in order to hit these targets that the CEO had set and the CEO would say things like 8 is great. We want every customer to have eight accounts or eight products with us so the employees interpreted that as if people don’t have eight accounts open some extra ones for them. And the authors of the article concluded that one of the problems with conveying that strategy that it occurred within Wells Fargo and happens in a lot of organizations is that when people are not involved in the strategy and they only receive the implications for them they don’t get the rationale they don’t get the heart of it because they’re not involved they tend to mess it up in something you know.
And sometimes we see that with cheating sometimes we see that with you know just going through the motions and complying for the sake of complying without really being on board with the heart. So I think that’s probably a good segue into talking about the first investment which is the cognitive investment and let’s get into that wit and we talked about the four investments in the podcast but let’s get into this a little bit and by the way our participants today any time you have a question please please feel free to chime in in the chat I’m happy to put you on webcam to share a little bit about a situation that you’ve seen an example or pose a question to dr. Muhammad so just find that webinar chat and put you on webcam if you would like, just let me know. But yeah dr. Mohammad talked to us about the first investment the cognitive investments.
AM: the first investment is probably most profound it’s not the most difficult but it has the greatest impact and that is we know that human beings are naturally wired to solve problems. It’s one of the things one of the elements that makes us human is to need to solve problems and any organization affects you go back to Max Weber’s research favors theory was the only reason organization exists is to solve a problem. Why do we have restaurants? Because people don’t always like to cook and that solves a problem why do you have a Board of Water and light or electric cookers people need like this a problem that you’re solving so solving problems is part of what makes us human and teachers want their students to be successful now they all may go about it in different ways but I’ve never met a teacher even the least effective teacher who didn’t want his or her students to do better so every teacher has a set of problems and a unique opportunity to leader has is to connect his or her vision their proposal to the person’s natural need to solve problems. That’s a natural attraction. So if I’m having issues with classroom management and what you propose is an intervention or an investment that’s going to help me do that—that’s a person who is going to be intrinsically engaged because your needs and their needs are meshed.
Often what happens is that the leader’s intentions or the leader’s purpose are not clearly conveyed to teachers in a way that fits with their natural need to solve problems and grow and evolve. And communication becomes the bridge for that intellectual connection. I think in the last podcast I gave you the definition the Latin root of the term word means the sound of an express thought. So if I have a thought about why PBIS, or PLC, or art and science of teaching is going to help us solve a problem— that’s the only reason you would propose change is that you want to improve. If I’m poor and communicating that then the teachers or whoever I’m trying to influence they’re not really intellectually in tune with the sense and the investment but what I like them to do because they don’t see it as a benefit because it doesn’t in their mind and solve a problem. So that’s why we broke down communication which is really filling the vacuum why. You need evidence and you need to be able to articulate or be persuasive about out of all the options we have to solve this problem. This is the most attractive offer this is what a salesman does. A person has a problem that person doesn’t have the power of coercion you only have the power of persuasion why is this vehicle out of all the vehicles you could choose because your vehicles old is breaking down—this Subaru is the best option for you and leaders often don’t take on the responsibility to be the best pitch people or the best representative of their idea. They tend often many would tend to lean on authority to address an issue that is cognitive. Authority is not a good tool to invest to address an intellectual or cognitive need.
JB: I like the way you break it down in the book into two parts the cognitive investment having a data component like confronting the brutal facts looking at where we have opportunities for improvement and how we know we have opportunities for improvement. And I especially like the example of a high-performing school that has massive achievement gaps you know overall you know ninety percent of the kids are doing great but if you break it down a little bit there are some troubling patterns so there’s the data to kind of pinpoint the problem but then there’s the persuasion angle that gets at the specific solution because I think for any problem that we might identify we’ve got dozens of possible solutions and you know one option is to do nothing of course. So help us distinguish between those a little bit because I feel like the investment is so often underestimated and I feel like with principals especially who have a core of teachers who like them and support them who will kind of do whatever they suggest I think it’s especially tempting for those principals to look at that group of teachers and say, okay I have cognitively persuaded— I’ve explained it—I’ve persuaded this group of people so I’ve done my job and everybody else who hasn’t gotten on board yet they are the problem. But in the book and I think in our previous interview you said the cognitive investment really is about 70% of the battle. So what’s going on with that first group and what’s going on with kind of everybody else in terms of that cognitive investment? Because I feel like we deceive ourselves a little bit and saying okay well the teachers who like me understand it and are on board maybe they don’t quite understand and everybody else definitely doesn’t get it.
AM: Yeah, when you really look at its essence it’s not that complicated. When we give it a parallel example if a teacher went eat when the leaders looking at a teacher’s performance data the teacher says well I got 10 kids in that class who are on board and the other 20 they just sits on matter of fact is their fault. As leaders we’ve learned that it’s not politically correct or that’s not a part of our culture as education that’s we’ve shifted—Larry Lizotte, Ron Edmunds, All Children Can Learn—we’ve shifted from that kind of socially Darwinistic model. A person might think that but they would never say it. It doesn’t fit the climate of education today so if a teacher can’t say that well I have kids to do their homework who do every assignment I give them what’s wrong with the other twenty? Then why would a leader be excused from the same responsibility? Look at teachers who have not engaged like students who need intervention. If we believe all children can learn all adults can learn. They might not have learned at how you taught it because that’s where we identify for different needs there may be some needs that the ten had that you fulfilled but the other twenty may need something. Your goal is to get all thirty on board so it’s kind of hypocritical the hold teachers accountable for egalitarianism but then an administrator would act in a socially Darwinistic fashion in kind of a “my way or the highway” approach. So I would ask that leader have you analyzed that perhaps there are some needs that those teachers who are not on board have not committed that you haven’t met? Have you been clear in your explanation if you gave persuasive evidence that it’s a better way to go? have you considered maybe you’re the fifth teacher in three years maybe it’s trust maybe it’s capacity maybe it’s none of those things and it’s just challenging your authority and at some points, you may have to use your authority but ultimately everybody has to hit that target. when that paradigm shift is made it’s not about whether it’s possible it’s what do I need to do to get there.
JB: I think that’s such a powerful parallel to see you know that we expect teachers to take responsibility for student learning and not to say well half of them got it the other ones are turkeys and it’s their fault and I think that’s tricky for us because Trust is always like the air we breathe in any of these conversations and that is the second investment so Trust what was the percentage behind trust you said 70% cognitive investment once the 20 percent behind establishing trust so after we communicate the rationale just going through the book here making that emotional investment and one of the things that occurred to me as you were making your opening remarks, Dr. Muhammed was the possibility that for some principals it’s not anything that they have done to damaged trust personally it could be about the turnover context. you know And I think like when I came in as a principal the previous principal had been there for seven or eight years very well-liked very well did and because of that you know stability I think enjoyed a pretty high degree of trust and coming in as the new principal I knew I would have to establish my own reputation and earn that same level of trust and I knew that that would take time. Help us think about what could vary from school to school with different trust scenarios so like if I look at the group of principals that I supervise and I say you know they all seem pretty trustworthy they’re all very reliable people they are people who stick to their word you know they do what they say they’re going to do they are trustworthy help us understand the context that we might not be paying attention to with
AM: Great question when it comes to trust often if you’re a new you’re really inheriting issues that you didn’t create you may be very collaborative the last leader might have been autocratic. The last leader may have been very decisive and directive and you’re more about building consensus. So any leader walking into a situation as to recognize that there’s a context that he or she is going in to. And that’s something that before I would take any new position I would have to understand the cultural context that I was inheriting because that’s going to be very important in the moves that I made to what decisions do I make.
So Dr. Cruz and I like to describe kind of when it comes to trust when it becomes a new leader there’s really three ways to describe three different situations a new leader is either an adoptive parent a foster parent or babysitter. If you’re a babysitter people view you as a temporary surrogate in a long line of temporary surrogates. So babysitters don’t get a lot of respect they have an established date they’re there for a short period of time or that’s the perception and so if I’m the seventh principal in five years they see me as the next babysitter. So before they can take me serious I’m to get through that period I have to understand that’s where they’re coming from that’s how they see me.
I could be a foster and I kind of moved from temporary home it’s not it’s not for an evening it may be for a couple months it may be for a year, but when a person if you looking into the research and foster parents it’s difficult for both the foster parent and the child to get attached because their connection is is volatile you don’t know if they’re gonna be moved, adopted, a relative might take them so there’s a reluctance to deeply engage you’ve got to recognize that. Or kind of like you’re so you’re the new adopted parent they lost the old parent did they had some stability but something happened and they’re looking for somebody to be the head of household. But you have to recognize there’s gonna be an attachment to the old parent throughout the past or it’s gone on and you’re taking over. So understanding that context becomes very important. If you’re seen as a babysitter and you know you mean you got to recognize that cut that bad situation so you got to know the context that you can hear it and the level of trust that needs to be built. When it comes to being an adoptive parent you got time not going anywhere. So but if you strike in and it’s just a very short period of time you got to establish trust relatively quickly at least enough to get the job done.
So we have high turnover I believe the last data was 3.1 years is the average tenure of a principal in one building. And in urban areas and in rural communities that turnover is much greater. People got to know when you’re walking in what are you gonna be? Are you a babysitter? Are you a foster parent? Or you the new parent? And that’s gonna guide how you behave when you inherited school.
JB: I love that metaphor I think that’s so powerful because the expectation of how long are we going to have together really really does make a big difference. And as a foster parent who recently said you know said goodbye to a child who went to live with family, I definitely feel that yeah the reality of that.
And so thinking about a district that has a school that maybe has had a lot of turnover, a lot of damage to the trust that teachers place in their administrators because they know their administrators probably are not going to stick around long. I feel like there’s a tendency to reward you know your most capable leaders with kind of the easiest assignments and you know the flip side of that I mean obviously we want everybody to be successful but the flip side of that is typically there are school—there’s kind of an 80/20 to it within every organization right there are schools that are stable for decades you know they’ll have the same principal for 14 years and there are schools that have a new principal every year every two years every three years and you’ve got teachers who’ve been there thirty and they’ve just seen the revolving door. What can assistant superintendents, directors, superintendents, who are responsible for placing principals and you know to whatever degree people move around the district responsible for overseeing those decisions do to kind of rebuild that trust? I think you give a specific example in the book of a school that has had that kind of revolving door and really say like that you know that issue has to be solved almost before anything else like if we have 40% turnover we can’t fix anything until we fix that. So what can district leaders do?
AM: Recognize their responsibility in placing the right leader in the right school it’s one of the most important decisions the essential administrator will make is picking that person of people for the to lead those particular buildings their cut relationship and their link is going to be essential so if I know that this is a school to see at high turnover why wouldn’t I adjust my hiring process why wouldn’t make that a consideration in looking at résumés that if I have a person I want to interview but they have a great transcript but they move jobs every two to three years and that’s not what this school needs and that’s that person’s pattern I’m really I mean the culpability of central office I just don’t believe it’s been addressed enough. A lot of the messes that are made at the campus level are made by poor central decisions where there’s no accountability and no responsibility. So if I’m responsible for placing stable leaders in all of my district’s schools a lot of that falls on me. I have to assess their needs.
If this is a building where teachers are relatively self-directed they’re strong instructional leaders they highly collaborative then the seriousness of having a person that’s competed for eight to ten years is not as important, because those teachers are going to be strong anyway but a building—I was just recently had a conference call with a district that wanted me to come and do some in-depth cultural work. And it’s what they said—we have one title one school in the district and the poverty level there is really really high we like free to come fix our call the culture there here’s the issue. They had a principal who went on stress leave because he couldn’t handle the building he had and he came back and they assigned him to the media schooling the district they have severe reading issues so they purchased a very expensive reading protocol with training and halfway through the year realized it wasn’t the right system so they pulled it after the teachers make all of those investments.
Somehow some of the students with the biggest and most of most severe disabilities end up being placed at that school they have the highest turnover. I said sounds like they don’t have a culture problem . It sounds like they have a bad central office decision problem every single problem you gave comes right back to your decision.
So when it comes to hiring people district office has to be much more methodical and take responsibility for putting the right person or people in the right situations. Turnover doesn’t have to be this issue that we accept. We can be more proactive than that, be more open and transparent. Listen we’re looking for somebody was finally making five to seven-year commitment. Is that a commitment you’re willing to make? because I can’t place somebody in the school because they really needed that when the next good offer comes along you’re gonna take it where you’re gonna run when things get rough that should be a part of the interview process. You should ask questions about resilience longevity if that’s an issue that’s just a byproduct of poor leadership.
JB: Yeah I’m thinking about some schools that I saw kind of have a little bit of a revolving door in Seattle. You know some schools that really struggled over a period of decades to retain staff and to have a positive upward trend. I think there definitely were some you know some good decisions made in that regard to really identify people who had been in one position for a long time had been successful and then ask them to not come in in one year and replicate the success of their other building in a very different context, but to bring that same level of maturity and level of commitment to the long haul and really having a conversation that that involves discussing multiple years.
And professor Kenneth Hayes is asking you know what about multi-year contracts? Why is this not a tool that we’re using? And kind of feel free to jump in here happy to have you come on camera and ask some follow-ups here. But this is something that I see international schools using.
So at The Principal Center, we have a fair representation among Americans or English-speaking international schools that you know if you are in Myanmar or Bulgaria and you have an English-speaking school you need Brits Americans Australia you know you need people who are native English speakers to run the school—it is difficult to attract people to various regions around the world so one of the things that they do is they say this is not a one-year contract this is a three-year contract or they’ll say this is a two-year contract but you get an extra 25 grand if you stay for a third you know things like that that actually incentivize people and set the expectation that this is something that you know like the trust the stability the long-term trajectory is something that we believe in strongly enough to actually invest in it to hire for it and to make it almost our number one priority.
AM: And we do that with superintendents all the time.
JB:Yeah.
AM: So it’s not as if it’s a foreign concept to us we just don’t use that same tool when it comes to principals which have a much higher leverage on increasing student achievement so absolutely I would totally be in favor of that. And perhaps we wouldn’t incentivize people to leave the position because really good principals get incentivized to leave the to go just because they make more money so why not it’s just a matter of distribution of resources why not place more resources in hiring really effective people who are gonna be stable in long term in a high leverage position it just makes sense.
JB: Yeah absolutely and I think sometimes we’ve got to have that conversation with our bargaining units with you know with the principal’s association if there is one. And I was part of a principal’s association not that was especially you know unionist in the traditional sense but one that you know did have a seat at the table and I think helped make professional decisions. But I think one of the things that were maybe hinting at here is that there can be you know even though money is probably not the main thing there can be you know some flexibility there. And certainly, I would say not all jobs are equal even if they have the same title you know there are jobs where you’re just on 47 committees and in another school, you might be on 12 and those jobs are just not the same and I think we’ve got to recognize that.
And you know and the money thing also comes in when we realize that in almost every geographic area there’s going to be another district that pays more alright I think everybody has that problem right that you know there’s another district that pays more you know those jerks two counties over that constantly stealing our people.
AM: but you want to hire people who are committed to your direction and our meeting a need that you have the need to just fill a position has to come second to putting the right person in that position. And I said it’s all situational. If you have a staff for the veterans but very student-centered highly engaged they have great practice the need for having a long term principal to build stability might not be as important but in a very high-risk area that’s had a lot of turnover and Trust is low turnover which is it’s really an issue that undermines trust. people are pessimistic. if I’m in a relationship and I’m in my fifth relationship in two years and the same pattern has emerged I get attached and the person leaves we’re human so the second skill is really about recognizing and honoring the humanity of a professional. it’s not just our knowledge base it’s not just a skill it’s not just policy people want there’s some human needs of people at and you got to know that you’re a good person you care about me just because I may struggle a certain aspect of teacher bit of teaching doesn’t mean I don’t have to right to my humanity. I may stink at differentiation but I’m still a person I need to know that Justin even if I disappoint you my humanity is not up for negotiation. and I got to know that you’re a person that I can relax and trust your vision trust your leadership and your stability and your reliability that you’re going to take us what you say you’re going to take us. that’s what we talked about with trust those are really the two basic components. If you don’t recognize the impact of certain decisions I have on these human part of the professional then you’re naive.
JB: What I think that that understanding that people are human. It sounds obvious when we say it right but what I’ve seen happen in hiring is that there there’s an expectation that the person who’s being brought in to fix the situation is some sort of superhero and I think that’s especially the case when we don’t that person and we’re bringing them in from the outside, they have this great résumé, they have these great you know letters of recommendation we place almost a superhuman burden on them so I think part of like recognizing the humanity of people is recognizing that nobody is truly superhuman and if we have those superhuman expectations—the support the resources the patience that that person is going to need to succeed are probably not going to be there and that is on us as district leaders. So with respect to that kind of superhuman expectation and kind of bringing that down and saying okay this is this is a person. Kenneth is saying in the comments here, how do we make sure that we are supporting people adequately who have been put into that difficult leadership role? So a lot of turnover low-performance building trust is going to be an uphill battle. We’ve secured this individuals commitment to stick with the school for five to seven years. How do we make sure that that we’re balancing the the urgency to bring about change? This person is not just gonna coast they’re not just gonna you know avoid stepping on toes we want to see those investments yield results. How do we support that person in developing the new skills?
Because I’m thinking about the different high schools especially in my district you know you have some high schools that are just you know everybody it knows every you know every everything is very stable everybody knows what to do nothing has really changed in a very long time so it’s easy to come in as a principal and look like you’re a super high performer. You move that person to another school where everything is in flux there’s a lot of staff turnover there is a lot of programmatic turnover where we’re trying new approaches every year, different consultants are coming in, and the skill set you know you’ve got the same person the same character but the skill set that’s required may be very very different in that school. What do we do as district leaders to be both patient and helpful to that person in developing those those different skills that are needed in that different context?
AM: What’s really ironic is that shift is right to skill number three which is professional support. People can’t do what they don’t know. So if I place you in a position where I’m asking you to perform I’m asking you to influence better performance than I have an obligation to feed you professionally to be able develop that skill set. So if we go back to trust if a schools issue is trust and you need stability, I’d rather hire somebody who is less skilled but more trustworthy and then build their skill. If you’re looking for a certain skill set that you want to develop then there’s an obligation as a leader that I have to give you that. Let’s scale it down to teachers they have administrators a lot of times talk about you got to build better relationships with kids as if by simply saying it they know how to do it. That to me triggers an investment I need to make if I’m a principal to teach teachers how to develop better relationships because if they knew how to do it the assumption is they would do it. Albert Einstein said you can’t solve a problem at the same level of intellect that caused the problem.
So whenever a person that might have been adequate in one setting without another, if I’m that person’s leader I’m asking what type of support professionally would it be a cohort or critical friends group among principals to study and grow professionally on certain issues? Would I address it with all of the administrators to emphasize district-wide problems or certain cohorts? Peter Senge hit it on the head—learning organizations are the organizations that are going to be learning is the new currency of the 21st-century organization. The organization has ability to learn and to grow and evolve is going to be the organization that stays viable. So in the PLC professional learning community concept the learning community piece it always been around they’ve been around for a long time. But Rick Dufour and Bob Baker really emphasized the professional part. And a professional’s personal goals to rite-of-passage to enter a field that is also expected to evolve in that knowledge base while they’re practicing.
So whoever you hire that’s not the end that’s the person who walked in the door. Once they walk into the door, if I was that person’s supervisor I would ask what do I need to develop? My former school was 98 percent African-American my staff was split by about 40 percent African-American 60% Caucasian and my staff really struggled with understanding responding to my students’ culture. It had nothing to do it to race to the teacher it was understanding the culture of our students when the best investments we ever made were deep training and culturally responsive teaching. Our teachers understood the route of Black English or Ebonics. They understood some of the psychological and social-emotional issues of culture, how to integrate and how to build bridges to mastery of the curriculum and content. They weren’t bad people they just didn’t know what to do. So simply telling them to be culturally responsive, without teaching him how to be culturally responsive, is a recipe for disaster. So whatever you want to see in a subordinate that’s where skill number three comes in. Have you made the adequate professional investment? Because they may be resisting because they just don’t know how to do what you’re asking them to do.
JB: Yeah and that’s a really interesting one because I think the percentages that you gave me on the podcast like 70 percent understanding what you want me to do. 20 percent the trust and the relationship and what was it for the capacity building, 80 percent? You know I think we might make the mistake of thinking that the clarity is about 10% and the how to do it the capacity is about 80 percent you know like that would be my intuition that it’s much more about the how and basically I just need to make a decision to explain its people and then send them training and we’re good to go. But you have it almost completely the other way around that it’s it’s much more about understanding the rationale and the nature of the change having the trust to you know to see that through but then the capacity building being a smaller piece a little bit.
AM: I want to clarify a little bit. That was for their willingness to engage. About 8% of those that we in our assessment were reluctant simply because they didn’t know how to do it. Some of those who committed with communication they didn’t know either but they committed because it’s it the logic of it engaged them. About 8 percent of those that we interview said you know what I’m kind of uneasy about taking this risk in practice because I’m not confident I can do was about 8 percent. That didn’t mean that everybody didn’t need training, but for about 8 percent the lack of understanding of how to perform that task prevented them from engaging. Once the task becomes clearer and they get a little bit more comfortable with their professional capacity, that becomes the bridge that gets them engaged.
JB: Okay so you have some people who will say “Yes let’s do it, we’ll figure it out” and you have other people who will wait and say, “I’m not gonna say yes until I figured it out—until I know how to do it and have that confidence in myself.” Okay I appreciate that clarification.
And you know and I see that with my own kids sometimes. They’ll say you know. “Oh no, I can’t do that.” I’ll say, “Yeah you can” And they’ll say, “No I can’t do it.” I say, “all right, well I’m gonna make you do it. And then you’re gonna see that you can do it.”
AM: And when they do it they get more confident. They might decide hey, this is not so bad. So recognize that they’re not bad people they just need some confidence in the capacity to be effective because that may make them kind of risk-averse because they kind of anticipate they’re not gonna do it well.
JB: Yeah and I appreciate you saying like that they’re not bad people because I think that’s a point that like it’s when we encounter resistance as leaders. It’s hard not to take that personally and it’s hard to separate the different reasons that people have resistance. And I think that’s why your framework is so powerful because it not only distinguishes between those reasons but it solves them, right? Like when we get the rationality cognitive investment first the relational investment second and then the how the functional investment third you know a lot of those issues kind of go away and I think the model—I’m gonna grab I’m gonna reach over here and grab a book—Diffusion of Innovations is a book that I cite quite a bit in our Organizational Learning Intensive when we talk about people’s different readiness for change.
Everett Rogers—this book is like 50 years old and you know he has the kind of bell curve of people’s adopter category. You know some people are innovators they’re always going after new ideas. They don’t need anybody’s permission. They’ll do it even if you tell them not to. You have other people who kind of follow in their footsteps and are eager to try new things as soon as they look promising, you know, like flipped classroom. You think about the first people who flipped their classroom a few years ago and get on board with that. And then the two biggest groups in the middle—you’ve got the early majority and the late majority which are each 34% of your population. So you know again kind of a bell curve distribution.
Typically I think we think we do most of our thinking and planning for professional development around that center group—the early majority and the late majority—but they’re different from one another their needs are different from one another and the pace or the order in which they adopt a change is different. And I think the lumping of everyone together is just kind of either on board or resistant it’s one of those things that keeps us from really understanding what’s going on in the change process and why people are resisting. But let’s let’s talk about that group that’s left. When we’ve done everything right when we have you know made the case, we’ve built the trust, we have built a capacity what’s left when we’ve done all of that and still we feel like we have some pushback— some people who are not on board?
AM: That’s the simple power struggle there’s no rational reason for not engaging. The brutal facts have been provided we’ve vetted the different methods of theories of what’s best. It’s not as if so yet got that through persuasion yeah here’s our problem intellectually this is the best proposal. We’ve addressed past emotional wounds we’ve built some consensus I’ve modeled for you we provided you with resources and training and practice. All that’s left is for some reason it may redefine how I view myself or my job to relinquish a level of autonomy or to cooperate, I might lose some personal definition. So it’s not a logical resistance it is you just can’t make me.
And there are some people who are like that. There’s a book called Inside Teaching by Mary Kennedy who studied some schools where people actually look forward to the recognition of almost sticking it to the man at all costs and just protesting no matter what it is because that’s how they become defined. So when that happens this is the test of the leaders resolve. And they often people use unions as an excuse. Well I’ve never read a contract that allows for insubordination and incompetence, but there’s a process you have to follow. Follow the process.
And personally and my skill set that fourth one is the easiest for me. Help me understand why and if you can’t give me a plausible explanation that I can assist you with but at this point I’m not asking you I’m demanding. And these are the parameters that I’m gonna use to it to assess your accountability. I want notes from this, I want to report on that, you need to be here at this time I will be checking on this. Put it in writing if it’s not done letter of reprimand follow that’s just insubordination. And often these tools aren’t used because of the fear that person may slander you. If they are they slanting you anyway that they may not be pleasant they’re probably pleasant now anyway this really in test the resolve of are you serious about improving the conditions for children or being protected and beloved and building consensus about invalidating you as a person. That’s why I believe being self-actualized is very important to go into school leadership because you can’t use your work environment as a way to plug in some insecurities you have. You have to be very securing yourself and sometimes you make you have to do something that for some people are not popular. And I love how Dr. Cruz described that last group he calls him CAVE people: Colleagues Against Virtually Everything. JB: CAVE people? Colleagues Against Virtually Everything I love it.
AM: Yeah so there’s some environments they don’t exist you might be able to be open in that case I like to use it’s that old Sesame Street skit, one of these kids is doing his own thing. When that one or two people become such deep outliers and another sign is the colleagues start to come to you and say that somebody needs to do something about Anthony, somebody needs to do something about Justin. When there is a public outcry or consensus but this person is an outlier that’s a clear sign that they’ve lost their political clout. Their colleagues find them disruptive and annoying in it they know that the only thing that works is in your possession which is your because they’ve tried to persuade, they’ve tried to encourage so they’re really looking you and if you don’t take advantage of that if you don’t what you’ve just said to everybody else who cooperated is that better practice as a suggestion. And as soon as I don’t want to respond to that suggestion I don’t have to. It’s a very dangerous precedent.
And I want to just kind of say this I have some colleagues of mine who I really really admire who written things as if you never get everybody or ignore the people who are not with you. Good luck with that because there’s a political aspect of school culture the separation from the formal and informal culture and if that person’s behavior is not dealt with and their clear outline there is I can guarantee you a very strong level of informal toxicity that’s eroding the foundation of what you’re trying to build. Sun Tzu is famous for saying in the Art of War when you have your enemy surrounded give them a clear exit route because the person that feels captive will reorganize and come back against you.
JB: Hmm give them exit, wow. So I think often we’re hesitant to use that skill set with that small number of people because we’ve seen it used with too broad a number of people. We’ve seen leaders who are ineffective because they don’t make those first three investments, they go straight for the withdrawal and they say “It’s my way or the highway. I’m the boss,” and they treat a large number of people as if they’re insubordinate. When really it’s you know it’s understanding, it’s trust, it’s something else. And you know it’s one that I think many leaders don’t really have much opportunity to develop because most of the time we’re not dealing with those people.
What’s your estimate of what percentage of people are we talking about here who really will respond to nothing but eventually that accountability? And how are they distributed because I accept you like some schools drive out those people some schools kind of collect those people.
AM: It’s not going to be the same in every school, but in our sample that was about 2 percent. Just totally illogical there are some people like that. Are they abundant from our sample? no. But they exist so I asked leaders to focus on the behavior if they’re resistant it has to be some reason and my goal is to try to build consensus. And once we know our necessary needs are met then you can conclude that those that did not respond to those because you would see some evidence of growth and consensus. Most people might start off somewhat reluctant you get 90 95 98 percent on board, you’re pretty confident in saying this small group or this person is a clear outlier. Something’s off because everybody else gets it like this in a way we address it is by gathering evidence on implementation. That’s how they get identified. So it’s not about walking around brooding as if we’ve committed to collaboration, but I consistently get evidence from your team logs you’re always late or you’re not contributing but the rest of your team is. That becomes the foundation of our dialogue because the accountability is an important leadership skill in general. It’s only an effective change tool for those who are not engaged. A person who’s already doing it, I don’t mind accountability, if you want as an instructional leader some exemplars from some of our formative assessments over the course of the week or the month why would I mind that? Because I’m all already doing it. You’ll gain the attention of those who aren’t and that becomes a talking point. If the expectation is that you’re going to engage and you’re not it couldn’t be because you don’t know why. Couldn’t be that you don’t know how. Couldn’t be that we don’t haven’t developed a trusting relationship that’s when you can conclude I’m not asking you here’s what’s demanded.
So you let the gathering of evidence on the implementation process guide you to those people well most people. it’s not a it’s not it’s not a change tool they’re already engaged they don’t mind accountability it’s effective for those who are the over my dead body people.
JB: the CAVE people I love that so that that really is what I love about this book just the sequencing there that we cover our bases and we cover them in order and and make sure that we’ve we’ve solved problem a move-on problem B. And only use accountability for the people that specifically need that tool to make the change do you need to run right now or do you have a minute for any additional questions.
AM: I can take one or two more and just okay as we went as I talked about my leadership journey early um trial and error making some mistakes that book is the book that I really wrote to myself that I wish I had when I started. Because I made almost every mistake in that book I made them. I was blessed to be able to recover that people were patient enough with me in 2005 I was a state of Michigan principal the year but there was a whole lot of non-principal-of-the-year years I had before then. So I think we have an obligation people like you and I will publish our thought leaders to really save people from making mistakes. The field has to evolve and that book is the book I wish I have, it’s the book I wrote to myself that I wish I had when I started so like to encourage anybody listening if you’re struggling with people who are trying to figure it out, dr. Cruz and I put that book together like a manual. And if they would read it and just apply what’s in it we guarantee you they’re gonna have a big gonna be more effective you’d have an easier time with the transition to building consensus and you can save a lot of headaches.
JB: Absolutely. All right so to all of our participants today Aisha, Louanne, Chad, Dana, Jamal, Rachel, Sarah—anybody who would like to hop on webcam and ask a question, feel free to do so. Just let me know in the chat and I’ll add you on here. And I’ll just say as we’re giving people a chance to do that and kind of wrapping up here—the way that we identify topics for our roundtable video conferences here—so this is our group of you know senior building leaders as well as the district leaders who supervise principals—the way we identify topics for these video conferences is often I will go back and listen to our principal center radio interviews if I find myself saying this one’s really good like this book you know I need to go back and reread this book and go through it and underline. and I’ve I have torn up the pages with underlining and you know I read with a pen and I’m shredding this one pretty quickly here.
So Dr. Muhammed I just have to really hand it to you for the practicality, the research. I mean this is a book that has a substantial dissertation length references and resources section and I really just appreciate the grounding in the research on change and psychology and understanding what people are going through and experience a change.
So before we take any other questions I just want to say thank you so much for writing this book. Thank you for coming on the podcast to share it with our broader audiences thank you for going deep today with our group of senior leaders who are overseeing this work I just very much appreciate the work that you do and the the the time that you’ve given us today. If people want to get in touch with you talk about some of the on-site works, I know part of the capacity-building for leaders is around these skill sets. People want to talk to you about working with you more directly on building some of those leadership skill sets. where is the best place for people to contact you personally? on my website is www.newfrontier21.com. It has articles, services there’s a link for contact us. That email link comes directly to me. So my website is kind of the 24-hour one-stop shopping any ticketed events I’m speaking at with solution trees my partner those links there. but to contact me directly new frontier 21 calm. fabulous alright. Everyone have a wonderful day have a great weekend and thanks so much for being here take care[/thrive_toggles][/thrive_toggles_group]
Resources
About Anthony Muhammad
Anthony Muhammad, PhD, is an internationally known educational consultant, a former middle and high school principal, and the author of numerous books, including Transforming School Culture: How to Overcome Staff Division.
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