[00:01] Announcer:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.
[00:13] SPEAKER_00:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Peter DeWitt and Michael Nelson. Peter is the founder and CEO of the Instructional Leadership Collective. He authors Ed Week's Finding Common Ground blog, and he's the author of nine books. Michael Nelson is a past president of the Washington Association of School Administrators and is an award-winning principal and superintendent who currently works as the thought partner at the Instructional Leadership Collective. And they are the authors of the new book, Leading with Intention, How School Leaders Can Unlock Deeper Collaboration and Drive Results.
[00:50] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:52] SPEAKER_00:
Peter and Michael, welcome to Principal Center Radio.
[00:54] SPEAKER_02:
Justin, good to be here. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much, Justin.
[00:58] SPEAKER_00:
Tell us a little bit about Leading With Intention, because this book is somewhat unusual in that it is largely a book about thinking. Talk to us a little bit about where the book came from in your work and introduce it to us.
[01:12] SPEAKER_01:
I'm going to try to do this in a short story, but I probably will make it longer. You know, Mike and I have done a lot of workshops together and and did a lot of work together. And we were finding that people didn't always know why they were in the room. And that struck us as odd. Like, how can you make leadership moves if you don't necessarily know why you're there? And we started to really focus on the whole idea of internal and external self-awareness.
[01:36]
Because what we found is that if you don't have internal self-awareness as a school leader, you're going to have a very difficult time self-regulating during difficult times or during those times when you're focusing on initiatives. And then the external self-awareness piece, if you're not really truly understanding how people perceive you as a leader or they understand your initiatives that you're focusing on because you haven't communicated them well, you haven't communicated the issues well. then that leads to a lot of initiative fatigue. And Harvard Business Review a few months ago put out a great article that said there are three drivers of trust. One is authenticity. If people don't feel like they're being with the authentic you, they're not going to trust you as much.
[02:22]
If they don't understand your logic, they're not going to trust you. And if they don't feel you care about them, empathy is the driver, then what we know is that they're not going to trust you either. And in the day and age of anxiety being high and diminishing self-efficacy and those kind of things, the idea of leaders understanding themselves as leaders and understanding their thinking and their moods is really actually much more important than maybe they even consider.
[02:50] SPEAKER_02:
Absolutely. We're really thrilled that this book came together and both Peter and I were principals and I moved into the superintendency and One of the things that was important to us as leaders is Peter talks about frequently how he flipped his staff meetings and really became it was very collective, very collaborative. It was all about learning. And I did the same on the two different coasts. He was on the East Coast. I'm on the West Coast and led that same way into leadership.
[03:20]
The superintendency. And what we believe is really unique about this book is the fact that it's full of research, it's full of great stories, but it's also full of places for the reader to pause and think as what Peter ended his conversation with. think, reflect, become better and more intentional in their practices, everyday practices, and building a different kind of culture in terms of one that is, we're all responsible as adults for our own learning and that we absorb into and want to lean into the latest in research to support student learning.
[03:56] SPEAKER_00:
Since the book starts with self-awareness, let's talk about that a little bit more. Why is self-awareness so important for leaders? And just as importantly, why is it hard? Why is it difficult for us to be self-aware?
[04:09] SPEAKER_01:
I'll take that one first, I guess. I think it's difficult to be self-aware because we sometimes assume we are when we're really not. You know, we talk to the same people and ask them questions about how we're, you know, our leadership is going and those kind of things. And what we've learned a lot over the years is just some really great research on things like feedback. You know, Adam Grant talks about Feedback seeking versus feedback sharing. So am I a leader that's saying, hey, how's my leadership going?
[04:39]
Or am I a leader that says, I've been focusing on instructional leadership and I've been trying to get into classrooms more and I've been trying to talk about learning and asking for feedback that way, which is actually much more direct feedback. and goal-oriented, right? We also know things from James Clear's work on atomic habits, the difference between motion versus action. So when we think about self-awareness, I think what makes it difficult is that we sometimes feel like we're getting things done because we're checking things off the list when really all we're doing is making a list and we're focusing on management. And we still have a hard time finding that balance between management and instructional leadership. So that self-awareness part is incredibly important because it's really understanding about what we know about things like instructional leadership.
[05:29]
Because if we don't really understand what learning looks like. You know, John Hattie talked to us a few weeks ago about having a philosophy of learning. If we don't have those things embedded in what we're doing as school leaders, then when we're going into classrooms to do things like walkthroughs and learning walks, if we haven't done those things like have conversations at faculty meetings or instructional leadership team meetings, then really what we're doing is we're not actually developing any sense of leadership credibility when we're going into classrooms to do the work. So self-awareness is really about understanding how we're making those moves every day. And the external part is really important because, you know, it's that reciprocal learning that we're doing with our staff. Are we having those conversations about deeper learning, transfer learning, and those kind of things?
[06:22]
So that's difficult because leaders are really busy. They have a lot going on. We know that. And so it's also not only about the difficulty of really getting into the discussion about self-awareness and learning, but it's also a time management issue. Where are the spaces that we're going to be able to have these conversations, which Mike had talked earlier about flipped faculty meetings. And as much as I...
[06:46]
kind of was hoping we would never have to call them flipped meetings anymore. They would just be something we do. The reality is people are still not doing those things. So those same old spaces that we've always had as leaders are the spaces that are set up for us to have these conversations, to develop that self-awareness, both internally and externally. And that's difficult because we don't necessarily take the time or we don't feel we have the time to be able to do that. And I think the other part of this, and it's something Michael talks about a lot and something he certainly developed really, really well as a superintendent, because I've been in his district, former district a lot.
[07:25]
I've done a lot of work in Washington state is the whole idea of human interconnectedness. How are you really lowering your status as the leader and raising the status of the people around you so they feel like they can share with you? They feel like they can give you their authentic voices and all of that stuff. So, you know, Mike focuses a lot on human interconnectedness when we're presenting, because that's something that he's been very gifted at doing. And more so even in when we're facilitating workshops, we find that it's not the two of us talking and it's really developing that human interconnectedness So in a weird way, we're actually developing self-awareness as facilitators too.
[08:02] SPEAKER_02:
I think you did a beautiful job of building the foundation of self-awareness, both internal and external. But Justin, what we've seen, both as people who have read the book, as well as presenting the concepts from the book and research is. We'll present it and people will nod and say, yeah, I think I would put myself up in the quadrant of I have pretty high internal and external self-awareness. We might take a break and then we might come back to it. And then we'll say something like, what about going into a parent meeting where you're very nervous about? What about right after that you're moving into an evaluation with a staff member that you may or may not put on probation?
[08:43]
With each and every decision and move that a leader makes, that internal and external self-awareness changes. So it's very situational. It's not surface level. It's very deep and complex. And once leaders really recognize that I need to be constantly thinking about internal and external self-awareness throughout my day, throughout the meetings within the day. And that's why we oftentimes start a workshop with Mark Brackett's work on how are you feeling?
[09:12]
You know, building those concepts of, You know, how are you feeling right now in this moment? And are you anxious? Are you feeling content? And that changes throughout the day. And that's where Peter talks about that self-regulation and getting yourself to a place of being the highest performing leader that you can. That's why it's so foundational, Justin.
[09:32]
And that's why it's chapter one in our book.
[09:34] SPEAKER_01:
And, you know, Joseph, I'm going to jump on top of what Michael just talked about too. We were in Canada a week last week, actually. And your name came up, just so you know. Some of the leaders we were talking to said you actually worked with them last year and you did a fantastic job with them on, you know, developing learning walks and walkthroughs and stuff. So we were working in New Brunswick on Friday and we have a long-term relationship with them. We're working with them for 15 months.
[09:58]
And somebody came up to us and ended up actually sending us a really nice email and quotation. about that she doesn't necessarily go to conferences anymore because she feels like when she goes, it's about entertainment and it's about this kind of one-sided, they're gonna talk at us and tell us what we need to do and then we need to leave. And I think what makes this difficult, and I don't mean this to sound arrogant because that's not what I'm trying to do. I think what makes this whole conversation difficult about self-awareness and about human interconnectedness is it's really about leadership. It's about how are you, what is the problem you're trying to solve? All of our work is hybrid.
[10:42]
We're working on collaborative inquiry. What's the problem you're trying to solve? What would success look like? What's your theory of action? If you do this, then what are you hoping is going to happen? Or if you do this, then what do your teachers need?
[10:52]
What evidence are you collecting to understand impact? I mean, Hattie has had an enormous impact on me over the past 10 years and Mike and John have gotten to know each other well over the past year. And what the woman had said is she said, you know, it's difficult because she'll go to conferences and it's almost more about entertainment. And what makes this a little bit harder is it's actually a deep conversation. It's actually a really deep conversation about Setting up a space where everybody in the room feels like their psychological safety to really talk to us about how they are feeling, how they're feeling anxious, how they feel like they have imposter syndrome. And then what can we do about it?
[11:36]
And what are the steps that we can take? So it's difficult because not only is it the self-awareness piece and the human interconnectedness piece, but But it's the collaborative inquiry piece to say, what problem are you actually trying to solve? And we found in some of the work that we've done over the years is that people aren't always clear on the problem that they're trying to solve. You know, they're good at looking social media. They're good at going to a conference and saying, oh, I think that's the problem I'm trying to solve. But it's not necessarily what it is.
[12:05]
So the deeper conversation is actually hard because it takes time and it takes effort and it takes consistent conversations and work. And it means that we have to be, as Follin talks about, coherence and all of that stuff. And I think that those are the parts that actually make it difficult because it's not just a show up and silver bullet and I'm going to figure out about myself and then I'm going to be able to do all this work. It's actually a lot of work to be able to kind of change your habits and understand yourself to a deeper level and understand what moves you're making that are tied to the problem you're trying to solve and the strategies. It means that we have to look at like research, like Vivian Robinson's work and really be able to talk about, you know, One of the things that she focuses on quite a bit is promoting, participating in teacher learning and development. It means that we have to actually have to break down those walls between leaders and teachers and learn together.
[12:59]
And leaders have to be okay with being vulnerable enough to say that they don't know it all. And they have to have a learner's mindset. That's a lot. And I think that's what makes it difficult as well. And then what we do with them is we give them a starting point. The book is really about a starting point.
[13:15]
It's really about here's the research on self-awareness. Michael is phenomenal at telling stories. And it's his first book. And one of the things that he was very conscious of when we were writing together was to take the book and actually create spaces for people not to answer questions that we asked. But one of the things that we've talked about a lot is what's your story? You know, your story as a leader or an educator is equally as important as any of the stories we have.
[13:44]
We just happen to write a book about it. So we want you to actually write your stories within this book. And within that book, Mike has been really fantastic at saying this. He talks about the fact that when you're done reading the book, you feel like the third author. because you have shared your story. You have made connections to what we are saying.
[14:07]
Mike has had amazing experience. He was the Washington State Superintendent of the Year. I mean, he has so much experience and expertise that is within this book that people can connect to and then share their own story in the whole thing. So we hope that it comes off as personable as we think that it comes off.
[14:26] SPEAKER_00:
There's a lot there that I want to touch on. And thinking about self-awareness and our interconnectedness and adult learning, one of the things that strikes me as just very challenging about being in this profession is just the roller coaster of situations and emotions, right? If you're a school principal, you may go from a curriculum meeting to a fight, to a parent meeting about the fight, to a district meeting and some phone calls, like just the roller coaster of not only cognitive tasks, but just interpersonal and emotional issues that we're dealing with throughout the day. It can really be a lot just to hang on as that roller coaster goes up and down. And you talk about internal and external self-awareness. Could you help us kind of distinguish between those and understand how they work together?
[15:10] SPEAKER_02:
Absolutely. So internal self-awareness is, am I aware of my own self and what I'm about? And an example might be, I'm going into a parent meeting And the parent is really upset over a discipline issue. Am I fully aware of the situation within myself? And then external would be, am I aware of how that parent might be feeling about me coming into this meeting? Am I fully aware of the situation which I'm getting myself into in terms of recognizing what she or he might be feeling about me in that situation?
[15:48]
as well as their own internal and external self-awareness. So the complexity of it all really plays out. And Justin, we often ask during our workshops, we often use chat GPT and we say to build capacity and understanding about particularly external self-awareness, write the prompt. I'm going into a critical parent meeting. where I'm going to have to talk with them about a discipline situation. I feel like they're going to disagree with me.
[16:21]
What things could I prepare for myself? Or through the example of I'm the parent going into this meeting with the principal, what What five things am I going to come to that meeting prepared to share with that principal? All of a sudden, I'm getting this 360 perception of going into this meeting. We have seen leaders come back and tell us that they've used that strategy and it all of a sudden relaxes them. They feel they're going in prepared. They have some sound bites.
[16:51]
They've built empathy. And understanding, you know, and of course, if you're the parent going into that, that's what you want immediately anyway, is to have somebody feel like they're truly listening in an empathetic way. And so that, you know, hopefully that described internal, external, you know, real life situation for that principal situation.
[17:11] SPEAKER_00:
So one thing we've talked about several times is adult learning, right? Learning as leaders, learning as a staff, and often on a day-to-day basis, we're only actively thinking about student learning. Help us think about adult learning and... this issue of kind of focus because certainly it seems like maybe an extra step or one more thing to think about to not only think about what we're doing for student learning but to attend to adult learning not only of our staff but of ourselves how do you think about adult learning
[17:42] SPEAKER_01:
One, I want to back up a little bit. I do hope that during the day we're actually thinking about student learning. You know, I do hope that's a conversation. Sometimes I remember Hattie was given a keynote one time and he said that we talk a lot about adult issues. He actually wrote a paper called The Politics of Distraction on it because he said we don't always talk about student learning. We talk about adult issues more than that.
[18:04]
Things that faculty meetings. So the talk about student learning would be fantastic. And Mike has been really great during times of facilitating workshops to be able to say, let's start with the impact. Let's think like a student kind of thing. From an adult learning standpoint, you know, I'm a huge fan of social learning theory. I feel like we learn best together.
[18:29]
That's probably why I've done a lot of research and Mike and I are continuing research on around collective leader efficacy which is most of our work and it's about developing a shared understanding it's about engaging in joint work and it's about collecting evidence of impact so from an adult learning standpoint and you tie in things like social learning theory it goes back to that what problem are we trying to solve and what conversations and actions are we talking about at those meetings you know as a former principal And I know we all were, Justin, you were as well. One of the things that I tried to do is have a non-judgmental attitude. So we, many years ago, focused on feedback. Some teachers, when I asked them to bring evidence of feedback to the faculty meeting, they brought worksheets with stickers on them.
[19:20]
And, you know, when I'm telling the audience that sometimes people start to laugh and I will just look and say, no, I'm okay with that because that's my entry point. That's what you think feedback is great. We can work with that. That's where I think the social learning theory piece comes in. where we're actually having discussions about what is our entry point? Where is your understanding about feedback?
[19:46]
You know, many times in our schools, we have a common language, but we don't have a common understanding. So that shared language is really important because we use words like student engagement. We use words like, you know, growth mindset, but we know that Carol Dweck had to clarify that work. When we talk about adult learning at our meetings, it's about really slowing things down. This is where the self-awareness comes in. It's about, are you taking a step back to say, I hear you talking about student engagement.
[20:15]
I hear you talking about growth mindset. Could you talk a little bit about what that looks like in your classroom? That's the adult learning piece. It's about having conversations to develop that shared understanding. And when you think about research like Vivian Robinson saying promoting participating teacher learning, Those are the spaces, our faculty meetings, professional learning, whatever. Those are going to be the spaces where we can have those conversations and talk about what the next steps will be.
[20:41]
And that's where collaborative inquiry comes into place, too. So to me, the adult learning is that it's a shared understanding. It's the joint work. But it's also that social learning theory where one person isn't controlling the learning. I'm not standing at the front of the faculty room talking. you know, or faculty meeting and talking for the whole entire time.
[21:02]
It's about how am I engaging them in reciprocal learning? And that's what Mike and I do when we're facilitating workshops. It's about maybe 40 or 50 percent of the time is going to be content. The other time is going to be allowing people to process because, you know, Mike can talk about it as well. But one of the things that we've heard a lot from people and we have a lot of exit tickets and a lot of data is, is that they value the time to be able to work with peers. They value the time to be able to work with their colleagues.
[21:31]
You can't hear that over and over again and not incorporate that into what we're doing within school. And unfortunately, that's not always the case.
[21:40] SPEAKER_02:
Justin, let me give you one quick example of something that we've shared often with principals in which we work. And it's been an aha in every workshop that we've done. And we share the story we kind of start with you know planning a staff meeting you have a staff meeting every other wednesday and how do you feel tuesday night before that staff meeting and you could just see the room they're like i don't know what i should put on the agenda i don't really know what i should be doing i want to make time worthwhile should i cancel it and that's the conversation that arises in table conversation and then you ask the question well what do you think your staff is feeling on tuesday night in the parking lot on the way home they're wondering what are we doing tomorrow? Do you think it's going to be worthwhile? And we really just talk about how might that planning of a staff meeting look differently? How might it be coherent where your staff meeting agenda at the end of that meeting, you develop the key concepts of your next meeting.
[22:38]
You develop action steps that you would want to occur between the meetings. So you as the leader and staff members truly know that through line of adult learning through your staff meetings. And they know the expectation. At the end of this staff meeting on Wednesday, I'm going to be a different professional before I come back to this staff meeting two Wednesdays from now, because I know the things that I'm going to be doing and committing to. And we talk about making learning visible. So we talk about build yourself, whether it's truly a timeline on a bulletin board of here's the learning in our staff meetings, the progression of learning, or we say you could do it electronically where you're building slides.
[23:21]
So you could show the last couple of staff meetings. Here's where we've gone gang. And here's where we're going for today. And we hear principals saying, I just need time. My day is thrown up. You know, it's just, there's so much going on and I don't have time to think about being an instructional leader.
[23:37]
Well, what about this? And they were like, oh my gosh, I hadn't thought about it in that way.
[23:43] SPEAKER_00:
So the word that kept coming to mind is, for me was sense-making, the idea of having a chance to talk about what we each mean by something, to talk through our varying definitions. And I think we've probably all been in workshops where we're asked to give a definition of whatever the topic is. And of course, everybody has a different definition. And I think one of the chief complaints of teachers and of school leaders is that their districts shop for and collect buzzwords. You know, we're doing all these different initiatives and you've talked about de-implementation and, you know, sometimes we need to undo that collecting, but often we don't even get on the same page about what we've been collecting, much less how we're actually supposed to go about that. So talk to us a little bit about that, that sensemaking process.
[24:28]
And you also use the term collective inquiry. How do we get on the same page? What are some processes that you talk about in the book for getting on the same page and having the time to kind of unpack what it is that we're actually committing to?
[24:41] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, so it's really the collaborative inquiry process, which I also think we make very complicated. It really comes down to four steps, which I've talked about a little bit before, which is what's the problem you're trying to solve? And we have a placement. We actually have an 11 by 17 placement. And I have to admit, Mike and I put it together probably over a year ago. And it gets downloaded a lot.
[25:02]
People can take it, they can use it, and we use it in the workshops that we're working in. And it really comes down to defining what is the problem we're trying to solve. And we've heard groups say, but is that the problem we're trying to solve? Like just in the conversation. Then we ask them within that moment, what does success look like? What would success look like if you solve this problem?
[25:26]
Just in that in itself, we always ask teachers to have success criteria for their classrooms for kids, but we don't have success criteria in our meetings. And that's something Mike and I start off every facilitation with. And we ask people, you know, not only do we have success criteria, but let's talk about how you can develop success criteria for your meetings, because that's going to help that shared understanding. But within that collaborative inquiry, within that collective inquiry, it's what would success look like if you solve this problem? And then it goes into the theory of action, if then. Those moments, that left-hand side of the placemat, that's what's in the book as well.
[26:07]
Going through that process with staff, whether it's your instructional leadership team, and that's mostly the groups that we're working with, that's going to help define that shared understanding. And then going into evidence, which is in the upper right-hand corner, and we use Bernhardt's work, and we have permission to use Bernhardt's work. And it's perceptions data, demographic data, student learning data, school processes data. And then it's reflecting, how might we do this differently? The thing about it is, as much as we use that 11 by 17 and we ask people to use this as instructional leadership teams, it's the very thing Mike and I do together as well. You know, we're always going through that.
[26:46]
What problem are we trying to solve when we're facilitating this workshop or we're working with this group? What's our if-then statement, our theory of action? What would success look like? What's our evidence? And we're collecting evidence around the impact that we're having. And then how would we do this differently?
[27:03]
So this four steps, collaborative inquiry has been around for a long time, but that's a chapter in the book. And that is something that I think can help clarify that language.
[27:13] SPEAKER_00:
So just in terms of some takeaways for leaders, you said you have a downloadable kind of placemat that people can use to organize some of their thinking. And is that on your website?
[27:23] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, that's on the website and they can always email us for those kinds of things too. And then there are copies of it within the book.
[27:28] SPEAKER_00:
I wonder if we could close by talking just a little bit as you do in the book about creating your own learning environment, because certainly we're responsible for the student learning environment. We're responsible for our self-awareness in all of the different kind of roller coaster of the context that we move through throughout the day and responsible for our team. How do we take responsibility for our personal learning environment? Talk to us about that a little bit.
[27:51] SPEAKER_01:
I think Michael is kind of the king of this because he, When I first met him, it was because he asked me to be the lead advisor for a thing that he was kicking off in Washington State called the Instructional Leadership Network. And over time, he introduced me to a TED Talk by Will Gadara on unreasonable hospitality. So Mike, I think you are actually better off talking about how to set up this environment because you do it very, very well.
[28:22] SPEAKER_02:
I appreciate that. We really think about it just like we were classroom teachers and that the adults, whether you're a building principal and you see the adults all the time or you're a school superintendent and you see the adults when you visit schools and in their leadership meetings, what are the things that you could put into place that would the likelihood of transfer of that learning to make a difference for students were to occur. And so you'll see in chapter five concepts such as a pre-learning letter where everybody knows going into a learning situation, here are the success criteria. Here are connections. If you want to learn more about the subject that we're going to be studying, we're not going to be going through this in the staff meeting or in this workshop, but here are a few examples of articles or book excerpts that you could preview.
[29:14]
So kind of what can we do ahead of time? And then what do we do in the learning? and what Peter talked about, where the learning is not the principal or the leader talking, but where people are engaged in the conversation as a collective in that piece. And then we really emphasize the space between events, learning events. So if it's a principal and it's a staff meeting, or if it's for us, a long-term relationship with New Brunswick, what's going to occur from the time that we were at New Brunswick last week to the next time that we see them. So immediately afterwards, we wrote a correspondence.
[29:53]
We talked about what we did. Here's possibilities of where we would like you to explore. We actually put them into communities of practice. And so they're in smaller teams. And so we are now addressing them in their need interest and you know we're working with them of that space in between so it's just what you would do with students we like to put in in chapter five here's thoughts and concepts of how we have done that with adults
[30:20] SPEAKER_00:
So the book is Leading with Intention, How School Leaders Can Unlock Deeper Collaboration and Drive Results. Peter DeWitt and Mike Nelson, if people want to learn more about the book or get in touch with you, where's the best place for them to go online?
[30:34] SPEAKER_01:
The best place for them to go is instructionalleadershipcollective.com. So that's our website with everything about the organization and the work that we do.
[30:43] SPEAKER_02:
They can also find us on social media on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter.
[30:48] SPEAKER_00:
Perfect. We'll put the links in the show notes. Peter and Mike, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.
[30:53] SPEAKER_01:
Justin, thank you.
[30:54] SPEAKER_00:
It's always good to see you. Thanks, Justin.
[30:57] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
