Mysterium Tremendum #2 - How Much Energy Should Leadership Put into Management?

Context
Leadership has shed some skin in recent years.  Management use to be the sole responsibility of admin. Now we are asked to both manage (paperwork, discipline, organizational work) and to innovate, especially via becoming experts on curriculum.

When discussing with a fellow administrator the amount of effort one should put into managerial tasks, we came to the conclusion that while managerial tasks are necessary, and they should be done well, highlighting one's abilities and insights, they should also occupy a minor portion of one's creative attention.  

Exploration

How does this work?  Well, it appears that the answer lies in relationships and systems. 

Relationships allow us access to two very important assets in management. Firstly, they allow us to create a true team for each managerial project.  A team, in this case, recieves instruction that leads to both the delegating of responsibilities and the distributing of key tasks. Without this support, we are mired in a mix of time consuming work and minutia.  The relationship work should open up the possibility of finding the strengths of others and allowing them to highlight and strengthen the project with their insight and capacity. 

Relationships also allow us access to advice from those who have experience in stretegic execution.  Especially with the new administrator, but also the case with veterans, strategic advice can save a lot of trouble in the long term. 

When working on managerial tasks, systems are the underlying operating factor. When one comes into a task, the current system must always be revised and corrected to make the system sustainable and repeated in the absent of the current work force carrying out the tasks. If a system depends on one person, a quick fix or informal agreements, then the risk is run of depending too mich on the individuals who allow for the system to run so informally. Systems also require attention to the synergetic networks depending on the current system, so that when change occurs to the one system, adjustments are also made to other linked systems. 

Conclusion

If relationships and systems are maintained and kept relevant, then the administrator is allowed the space and time, and especially the security and confidence, to focus on the more innovative projects that should be occupying the mind of the creative person. The administrator as manager should be considered with keeping things running, but only to the extent that he or she is concerned with those things running virtually self-sufficiently. 

Who Are We Teaching? Are They Naturally Engaged?

At one of my district management meetings, Dr. Joe Johnson, Executive Director of the National Center for Urban Schools Transformation, explained to administrators that our students are not "The Beaver" (from the T.V. show "Leave it to Beaver").  We are not teaching, he suggested, a simple, white, middle class child with in-tact family structures and fluid language access.

It got me thinking:  why is "The Beaver" so easily engaged?  Why is the underprivileged student so disconnected?

The answer, I think, is that "The Beaver" is naturally engaged, while the underprivileged student is naturally disconnected.

Natural engagement, I posit, is that sort of engagement that a student or staff member naturally has within his or her self because of an a priori perception of inherent opportunities in the tasks at hand.  The naturally engaged person believes that what he or she is doing will lead to success and better structures for living in the future.  The student, who lives in a world that is directly linked to the society and institutions that control life outcomes has a special privilege.  The teacher or administrator who is free to innovate and operate in a safe laboratory of learning has a special privilege.  This privilege is inherent from their home environment, carried from birth on, and it is reinforced in the institutional spaces that condition the climate for success.

Now for my purposes, "privilege" does not necessarily mean wealth or an ethnic upper-hand, though such factors are that type of privilege that probably hold the most weight in the public school system.  Privilege, for my purposes, though sometimes a cause of unjust advantage, is itself an innocuous condition, accessible to many, and enjoyed at all spectra of economy, society and culture.

For a privileged subject, school itself is an obvious guarantee of "success" because the perception of the subject is reinforced in his or her environment.  The parents of of the privileged child support success at home with a desk and a computer, with time and space for homework, with books and with an eye on the prize.  The teacher or administrator who grew up with any sort of privilege runs the risk of assuming that the benefits of privilege are at play or natural to most or all students, and thus is not keen to the lack of natural engagement in underprivileged students.  Said teacher or administrator was naturally engaged as a student, and without an understanding of the natural disconnection of the underprivileged student he or she fails to engage the underprivileged subject.

For the underprivileged subject, school and home environments more often than not reinforce ideas of failure, of missed or missing opportunities, and thus the student's natural engagement is minimal or non-existent. It is almost as if the lexicon of the underprivileged does not contain words that refer to any amount of success. The underprivileged life considers itself outside of that fantastic world of success, power and societal cohesion.

The task, then, of the conscious leader, teacher or administrator, is to identify the underprivileged subject, and with care and understanding attempt to create an environment in which the underprivileged is engaged to the point that a certain quantum step toward the access to privilege (power, language, financial stability) seems viable to the subject.  And this must be done with attention to the leader's own value bias.  We are not enlightening others to the value of a tight knit family or the value of wealth and financial independence.  We are creating an environment that allows others access to the intellectual curiosity that can only occur when one feels engaged with the intellect and the system in which the intellect thrives. With intellectual curiosity comes critical thinking, and with critical thinking and engagement comes an access to the choice of paths and future opportunities.  

Whichever school or school system we work in, those factors of privilege are at play. While a language-strong student may be engaged with ease into the dialogue of a strong class, he or she may be on the outside when it comes to emotional capacity.  But language and stability being the breeding ground for a consistent engagement in society and therefore school, we know that the economically disadvantaged and the English learners have serious engagement issues. I will stop their so as to not quantify privilege and thus patronize the reality of the engagement-disconnection discourse. 

These individuals are not disconnected because of a slow wearing down of their morale, rather they were born into and live and breathe and negotiate a world that is naturally disconnected from the expectations of the learning environment created away from them in schools. It may be beyond the scope of this blog post to create an impromptu list of how.  That is the job of our day-to-day. 

Nevertheless, it is urgent that we identify those who are naturally disconnected.  If a student or stakeholder is not privileged, no sort of strategies will overcome the general feeling of disconnectedness.  Engagement must begin with an environment that opens up the system of power and learning, otherwise even our best instruction falls to the wayside, and our work is not accomplished.  Learning only happens to those who are engaged in their core.  Engagement must privilege the underprivileged.  Learning being our truest task, offering access to privilege is our only real tool. 

When is it Time for the Courageous Conversation?

In the new atmosphere of leadership, we are privy to a confrontation of two styles of moving others to change. 

In the older style, we move quickly to discussions about what is right or wrong in the observed person's practice. We, in urgency, have a "courageous conversation" with the hope of convincing the subject (student, teacher or administrator) that his or her way is erroneous. From there we measure either a complete conversion or a defiance depending on the person's observed subsequent actions. 

This approach seems natural, not just because it is a traditional approach, but because it seems to set the expectations clearly in the moment and honestly. 

With the advent of newer research in leadership, psychology, and public school organizational relationship work, we now have a new set of mysterious options that are supposed to lead to a "healthier organization". Relationship-based leadership, strengths-based organizations, and other organizational psychology theories suggest that there is more to the "courageous conversation" than simply having a conversation. We are finding that callibrating expectations, building a safe context for conversation, and reinforcing talents and skills over deficits have a deeper, lasting and, dare I say, more wholesome effect than a nip-it-in-the-bud style that has dominated the past ten years of change leadership. 

If I could put these on a timeline, we would see that really "old" or traditional leadership was a bossy one, a what I say goes style.  With the understanding that we are all humans, leaders began taking a different bent on interaction and change; they had a courageous conversation justified by the urgency for change to happen in the school system that has taken too long to come around. The emphasis on the conversation gave it a tone of talking it over, of collegiality and reality-setting. 

I have to admit, almost all direct conversations are courageous because they risk putting someone on the defense.  But more importantly, and often overlooked, they risk putting relationships into jeopardy. 

I have seen, both as a student, a teacher, and now as an administrator, that real change only happens when a relationship of trust and safety has been built. And bigger than simply changing the other, I myself am changed because I transform alongside the other person. My initial view of any one situation may seem theoretically sound, but until it is tested in the confines of a true engagement with the other personality, I cannot judge what the true problem is, and I cannot assess a clear road of next steps. 

So when I think urgency, it is the style of some to urgently get to the conversation about the problem.  More urgent, and in the long run more expedient for all parties involved, is the building of a sound context for both the observer and the observed to interact in collegiality and respect. 

There are always some students or staff who will jump to attention for that courageous conversation, making it easy to write others off and incapabale of change. But true transformation and engagement occurs out of a real desire to interact more fully with one's context, one's environment. And this happens theough a sound relationship.  

At the elusive end of a good shot at a good relationship, we may end up having that courageous conversation, indeed.  But until our conscience tells us we have attempted to understand the other, and to even better ourselves alongside the other, then that conversation must wait until the we have exhausted our efforts and attempted all methods of raising up our fellow educators and educated.  

It is our art and science as leaders to confirm, without a shadow of a doubt, that we have attempted to reach the whole person, because in any observation and judgment, the whole person on both sides of the lens is at stake. 

Mysterium Tremendum #1: Should everyone be expected to innovate?

Just so you know, I do not have an answer to my own question.  This is my current  mysterium tremendum.

Context

I spoke with a teacher the other day who told me:

"I am a worker bee.  You give me the work, and I will be one of the best teachers you have seen."

My first inclination, as an administrator, was to say, "Well, our job as instructional leaders is to innovate."  But then I thought, while I believe in the growth mindset, while I believe in everyone's capacity to excel, I cannot force others to believe themselves capable of creativity.

I know they are capable or innovation.

I know that in spite of their insecurities, they can create.

But can I really expect, as an instructional leader, everyone to add "curriculum creator" to their plates?

Of Resource Teachers and Curriculum Leads

At my school, we have teachers on special assignment, called resource teachers, or TOSAs, or curriculum leads.  Their job is to act as a liaison between admin and teachers.  But more importantly, they have an extra period to digest and understand new research.  They can create, coach, and do whatever they want related to the curriculum,

Is this where I should expect the innovation?

I was thinking of asking these leaders to create the baseline curriculum for their respective departments.

Note: The following two sections are a logical meditation/exercise that may only give you insight into my thought process...feel free to skip them.

Encouraging Creativity
At the heart of the question behind whether or not we have an obligation to innovate, or a moral imperative to create as part of our educational vocation, is the question of the growth mindset, and even more specifically, what I call the pacing of the practices of growth and innovation.  In that realm we find that apart from encouraging the individual to remain mentally fresh, and encouraging the habits that preserve such a growth mindset, we also should look, with patience, toward the future of the individual innovator.   The pace of the individual can only work if the individual is moving, but it is also limited to his or her insights, which necessitates feedback and modeling.  

Growth and Innovation on the Time Continuum
The ancient stoics knew that we can only control our reactions, which is an exercise in living in the present.The growth mindset itself is living in the present.  Those in the throes of the habit of mind understand the present with the verb I can.  They do not say, I will be able to, nor do they say, I was once able to, but they look at what they can do now.  And what each of us, in the least, can do, right now, is train our mindset.
Our future, however, and our true innovation, comes from an creating new skills, not from nothing, but from the tradition and innovation at present and in the past.  We don't create from scratch; we innovate with combinations.  We participate in an alchemy, an amalgamation of ideas past and present that, having combined themselves in a fresh way, fulfill and designate our future.

So...should everyone be expected to innovate?

I really don't know.  I do expect teachers to at least innovate at the micro-level.  They should be able to observe and create modifications and innovations to suit student needs.  Should they all be expected to create a full curriculum?  I am not sure, but in the very least, a teacher should be able to respond to student needs; yes, in the very least.

The question turns into another...how can we teach observation?  And given that observation always raises a question begging innovative, unique answers, how do we teach a response to observations?  How do we teach innovation?

My One Word for 2016 is RESOUND

This year, resound will:

-Give me resonance with my students and staff

-Give my leadership voice a shape and a sound

-Give my creativity a contagious tone

-Give my home life new depth and range

Organic Initiatives Start with Relationships

Lately, school leadership has been tasked with organizing systemic approaches to local problems.  When literacy is low, we take on literacy initiatives.  When teacher resourcefulness is stretched, we implement coaching initiatives, ad nauseam. The initiatives, while well-meaning, are often instituted school-wide as a blanket solution. And they tend to show initial success.  While blanket approaches may begin to solve the problem, the pieces of fabric used in each department, even each classroom, resemble the other swatches to such a degree, the a deeper, systemic solution is never reached.  What we see working, that x-factor, is the relationship resonance between those tasked with carrying out the initiatives.

The cookie cutter research-in-practice approach to school initiatives will always fall flat.  This is because the culture that produces a model initiative necessarily differs from the culture that will apply it later. The general framework and truths of a good practice will hold in spirit at any school site, but the course of the initiative must grow anew at every new application of theory.  That growth only happens when the school and district provide the cultural space to have real conversations that devise real solutions.

Viviane Robinson ("Student-Centered Leadership") asserts that the task of school leadership is to assure a proper place for learning. The problem, she points out, is achieving student gains "to scale" among all schools.

The answer lies in situational, relationship based solutions. Just as I have discovered that the true laboratory of teaching is in the classroom, and the true observer is the teacher, I can extend this to say the true laboratory for school programs is in the school itself, and the instructional leaders are its true observers. An analogy for this falls in the physical sciences. The heart of oceanography happens in the ocean, while the conditions for these studies are set in the think tanks and research facilities where the conditions for the science to happen are formulated and assessed.   However, the quality of these initiatives depends on the resonance between those involved in the experiment.  The scientists in the research facility, and those in the depths of the sea need have a dialogue that resonates as it develops.  They don't have to agree, but they have to synergize.

I would say, on a practical level, that all schools that wish to cause change, should ask local school leadership to devise an initiative. The leaders should pull from research to inform the conditions of the initiative, but the heart of the initiative must come through a transformational process via conversation, data analysis, and culture building.

Systemic work must be done through relationships.  This is the consensus of my peers at leadership conferences and courses.  It's not that any old initiative will work. But an initiative, addressing the problem of practice, can be grown organically and effectively at each school site. It must be specific to the school and the culture of the school.  And it must happen through developing the resonance among those involved in the groundwork.  The classroom shows the prima materia for observation, and the leadership team's primary task is to grow those observations into information that guides the course of the initiative. 

How Do I Influence My Own Initiatives?

How much 

"Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets." - W. Edwards Deming 
"Every interaction is perfectly designed to produced the relationship it gets." - Me

In schools, and I suppose other organizational systems, our relationships with others play a distinct role in supporting the system that is organized around us.  And impressions being what they are, our interactions produce the quality of relationships we have with others. It appears to me that interaction begets relationships.  However, relationships do not beget interaction; they set foundations and contexts for more interaction.

How are we interacting with others via talk, email, and gestures?  Are people's reactions to our ideas a direct result of the quality of our interactions with them?  How much do we as innovators, thinkers, leaders control about our interactions?