Clarity

Clarity results when we...

• Think often and deeply about our principles/values.
• Come up against what are obviously life-impacting decisions.
• Fail at something important.
• Succeed at something important.
• Are pressed to reflection by a valued mentor.
• Have a scrape with death (our own or that of a loved one).

Clarity evades us when we...

• Are too busy to THINK.
• Forsake or forget our values.
• Spend too much time/effort on the mundane.
• Neglect our loved ones.
• Lose sight of the "main thing."

Life is better when we view and live it with clarity.  And that view is completely within our control.

BlizzardDeath

I remember reading a short story as an elementary student about a person who died in a blizzard, only a few yards from their home.  There are many similar accounts of people dying in blizzards, only a short distance from safety.

I can't help but draw an analogy between these literal blizzard-deaths and the figurative ones I've seen befall leaders in organizations.  The typical scenario is that circumstances/crises (i.e., blizzards) envelope these leaders, who end up being overwhelmed in the milieu.  They end up losing their credibility and/or position as a result.

It seems to me that two conditions portend these blizzard-deaths (both the literal kind and the figurative kind):

1. The person/leader either loses or lets go of their moorings, their bearings.  In the literal deaths, they simply cannot see how close to home/safety they are because of the storm.  In the figurative blizzard-death, the leader loses touch with his/her moral anchors, his/her principles, and becomes "blinded" by the overwhelming crisis.
2. In almost all these blizzard-death cases (both literal and figurative), the victim was trying to go it alone.  For whatever reason, they found themselves in the midst of an overwhelming storm, without others to help, support, and guide them.

We need not allow ourselves to succumb to those two conditions.  To avoid such tragedy we must 1) constantly renew and revisit our values, as they serve as beacons that guide us in overwhelming circumstances, and 2) cling to those who love, support, and sojourn with us, as they will be the ones to help us find our way through the inevitable storms.

The sun will come out, the warmth will return, but we'll only be there to enjoy both if we insulate ourselves against blizzard-death.

BleacherCleaning

In my first high school principalship  (Jayton High School in Jayton, Texas), I invested a lot of time and effort in "coaching" our student leaders on the campus.  I steadily hammered them with the concept that "to whom much is given, much is required."

As part of that leadership coaching process, I encouraged our cheerleaders to make sure that they removed and appropriately disposed of the spirit signs they would hang on the bleachers and fences at the stadiums of our opponents.  After a couple of games, I noticed that our band began cleaning up the portion the bleachers where they were seated during ballgames.

It wasn't long before I started receiving letters from principals, superintendents, even political officials from the communities we competed against, praising our students for their acts of service.

Of course, I shared those letters with our students and faculty.  Shortly thereafter, I noticed that our cheerleaders and band, of their own accord, began "sweeping" the whole visitors side of the stadium when we played elsewhere.  They combed the visitors bleachers from end to end, cleaning them of all trash and debris.  Surprisingly, even community members began joining our students in those acts of public service.

Watching that dynamic of infectious leadership centered on service to others, triggered by the student leaders in our school, is one of the highlights of my years of service as a school administrator.  The memory of watching those students sweeping the bleachers after a game (win or lose) still makes me emotional.  They were enacting one of the purest and simplest forms of servant leadership.

But then, aren't ALL acts of authentic leadership rooted in the soil of service?

InterviewedAgain

With some regularity I field interview questions.  Happened to me again today.  The exchange is below:

1) How do you advocate, nurture, and sustain a district culture and instructional program conducive to student learning through collaboration, trust, and a personalized learning environment with high expectations for students?

Communication is the vehicle by which leaders travel – either successfully or not.  The verbs in your question – advocate, nurture, and sustain – only become realities through effective communication.  Schools are organized, built, funded, and staffed for one reason and one reason only:  LEARNING.  When leaders have that understanding tattooed onto their soul, it becomes the centerpiece of their communications.  When communications along those lines become predominant and pervasive and when others perceive those communications as inherently heartfelt, then the collaboration and trust follow.  Learning is always a personal endeavor (if one believes in constructivist theory), but the richest learning environments honor the personalness of learning and strive to craft learning tasks that embody that reality.

2) How do you create and evaluate a comprehensive, rigorous, and coherent curricular and instructional district program?

Communications is the tool by which the curricular-instructional program is created.  Thousands of conversations (not mandates or directives) must occur to develop a common understanding of what the best approaches are to affect personal and customized learning for each child AND each adult.

3) How do you develop and supervise the instructional and leadership capacity across the district?

Dr. John Gardner says that the fundamental responsibility of leaders is to “manage the attention” of the organization.  Moving from that abstraction to something a bit more concrete, I believe the fundamental tasks of leaders should always be centered on developing those around them.  Specifically, helping others develop their God-given gifts to the fullest.  If those gifts lie in the domains of instruction and leadership, so be it.  If they lie in other areas, so be it.  This means that the leader must know those who work with him/her well - well enough to identify their gifts.  Then, opportunities and work assignments must be devised/revised to accentuate and accelerate those gifts.  

4) How do you promote the most effective and appropriate district technologies to support teaching and learning within the district?

Technology is nothing more than a tool.  Pencils represent technology, spiral notebooks are a technology, air conditioning is a technology, as are phones, buses, iPADs, projectors, and graphing calculators.  Those who work in schools – which exist only for the purpose of learning – must strive to use any and all technologies available to advance learning.  Some technologies are more robust than others, to be sure.  For instance, long division with pencil and paper can be used to find quotients; so can calculators.  A handsaw can be used to cut down a tree; so can a chain saw.  The trick, from the learning perspective, is to choose the technology/tool that is most aligned to the learning outcome one is trying to achieve. 

5) How do you maintain on-going and effective communication with the educational community?

I tend to talk the same talk whether I’m talking to teachers, elementary students, business leaders, secondary students, parents, graduate students, or school administrators.  The vocabulary and register may change, but the message is always the same: Our job is to take each student and adult that walks into our schools and optimize their learning – period.

6) How do you support your campus principal’s in implementing PLC’s on their campuses?

Schools have cultures.  Some have cultures centered on learning (the intent of PLCs) and some are centered on other things.  In my view, it is more important to help principals learn (there’s that development thing again) about how cultures morph and change and ebb and flow, and how the principal's words, actions, and intentions get reflected in that cultural evolution than it is to try to teach them how to build structures (e.g., PLCs) that become bogus and hollow without the underlying leadership understanding.  Another way of saying this (simpler, I hope) is that I believe it more important to help principals understand how to create the conditions that support PLC-like behavior than it is to create a PLC in structure.

7) How and what do you celebrate in your district?

Rituals are a fundamental contributor to culture.  If the culture we desire is a culture of learning, then our rituals should be built around learning successes.  Celebrating success can be as simple as a thank you note and as extravagant as a banquet.  Acknowledging and affirming learning must be the driver behind all those celebrations, whether it’s praise for a 1^st grader who reads to you in your office, or to an instructional aide who earns a bachelors degree, or a teacher who gains administrative credentials, or a class of graduating seniors.  Learning has to be the common denominator of the celebrations.

8) What questions drive the work of the teams in your district?

How can we be better at making learning happen today than we were yesterday?

9) What evidence shows that your district practices are aligned with your district’s priorities?

Soft data like collaborative learning at all age levels, improved communication skills across grade levels, manifestations of service and compassion and affiliation, expressions and demonstrations of adherence to commonly adopted values (see the Guthrie Graduate Profile at

http://www.guthriejags.com/profile.html for the details) provide evidence of alignment to our priorities. Hard data like attendance rates, graduation rates, academic performance data, college and workplace success, ACT/SAT offer a different view of success, though no more or less important than the soft data.

10) What procedures are in place when you experience failures in your district?

When we fail, we reflect.  We ask why, and look for root causes for those failures.  We don’t ask why with intent to blame.  Failure is a fundamental part of the learning process.  And, yes, LEARNING is the purpose of our existence.

ServeCentric

Service to others is the most powerful gift we can give.

Service is rendered in many forms:

• Teaching others what we have learned.
• Helping others accomplish worthy goals.
• Sharing our God-given talent(s) often and in many ways.
• Developing others to their fullness.
• Trusting others.
• Connecting others to enlarge their network.
• Affording others opportunities to grow.
• Ministering to others who have suffered or are in need.
• Listening, without judgment.
• Forgiving, as needed.
• Loving, unconditionally.

Once we are the beneficiaries of such service, we are then compelled to both reciprocate and radiate the same, within our circle of influence.

The size of that circle of influence is immaterial.  The enactment of that service is immensely consequential.

To serve in that manner is to approach life in its fullness.  To withhold service is the fountainhead of decay.

As always, we get to choose.

Starters&Finishers

Some folks are better at starting things and others are better at finishing them.

In building, some guys are really skillful at getting the foundation and framework of a building done.  They are often not very good at the finish work, like flooring, cabinetry, and painting.  Other guys do the finish work.  Both skill sets are absolutely essential to producing a quality building.  Both kinds of mindsets are required.  Neither is more important than the other.

In baseball, some pitchers are great at starting the game, picking off batters, throwing pitches that keep the ball "in the park" and base runners off the bases.  Other pitchers are great at finishing, throwing 100-mile-per-hour fastballs that one can barely see, much less hit.  However, they couldn't (with rare exceptions) do that for seven or eight or nine innings.  Both kinds of skills are necessary to win baseball games, and both kinds of mindsets are necessary for success.  Neither is more important than the other. 

Pick your profession, pick your endeavor.  The same sort of starters-finishers dichotomy exists.

To be sure, there are other "roles" and other "role players" that fit somewhere along the continuum between starters and finishers.  The point, however, is this:  we need each kind of "player" on a successful team.  They all bring something unique and important to the task.

And, of course, none is more important than any of the others.

FlatWorld

There was a time when...

• Three television networks owned the airwaves.
• Aspiring musicians had get "discovered" and promoted.
• Print media controlled the news.
• A few publishers decided what got read, and who would write it.
• Select universities cornered the "talent" market.
• Your product had to be vetted and blessed by some cadre of "experts."
• You couldn't access the world's marketplace or attention without someone else's permission.
• To be successful, you almost had to have connections. 

No more.

Now we can find whatever it is we're looking for.  We can learn from whomever we want.  We can learn whatever we want.  We can produce, write, play, build, and share whatever we decide to.  We can do all those things without asking anyone's permission.

It is now a VERY FLAT WORLD.  Gone are all those gatekeepers and barriers.  Gone also is the safety of excuse making.  No one can hold you back.........but you.

Whatcha wanna be?  Whatcha wanna do?  Whatcha waiting for?