#Wayne Turmel | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thelovingschool · 4 years ago

Text

The Fantastic Four to the Fourth Power, Part 1

I've recently finished Doris Kearns Goodwin's excellent book, Leadership in Turbulent Times, in which she details the ways in which four US presidents served as leaders through pivotal historical moments. I reaffirmed my admiration for Abraham Lincoln, as Goodwin discusses his push to make the Emancipation Proclamation a reality. I was invigorated by the way in which Teddy Roosevelt used the executive branch of government to benefit the citizens of the northeast USA during the Coal Miners' Strike of 1902. I gained new appreciation, wonder, and awe in the way that Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the country during his first 100 days in office in the middle of the Great Depression. I came to greatly respect the legislative leadership of Lyndon Johnson as he pushed the most dramatic and beneficial domestic agenda, his Great Society, including the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1965. Whatever else Johnson may have done or not done, particularly as it relates to foreign policy and the Vietnam War, his impact on the lives of the citizens in the USA cannot be discredited.

Reading about these four presidents as they grew up, faced challenges ranging from losing elections to losing family members to losing the ability to walk, and ultimately served in the highest office of the nation to great effect was a wonderful experience. I was struck by the common themes that ran through all four of the presidents' leadership challenges. Synthesizing the lessons learned from all presidents, it seems that a leader during turbulent times must:

Have a clear sense of purpose

Adapt along the way to achieving that purpose

Build a solidly functioning team

Pay attention to messaging and timing

Build in time for yourself

Having a clear sense of purpose -- In the summer of 2020, three amazing principals, Sanee Bell, Brian McCann, and Beth Houf gave a phenomenal webinar as part of the virtual National Principals Conference. Beth shared a story of her superintendent bringing the principals in her district together at the beginning of the pandemic and asking them all to spend some time thinking about their purpose, their "why" before sharing them as a group. (Beth's "why" was maintaining relationships with students.) Other leaders have focused on the importance of having a clear purpose, including and especially Baruti Kafele. As we've all learned, what was true before the pandemic only has become exaggerated during the pandemic, and so the need for a clearly defined sense of purpose is truly vital now. My "why" during the pandemic has been to ensure that the teachers with whom I'm lucky enough to work are supported with what they need to be as effective as possible given the challenges of the pandemic.

Be adaptive along the way -- As I've already written, I am a student of philosophy as well. One of my favorite professors, Father Joe Flanagan, was a huge Socrates' fan, and every college freshman can tell you that Socrates is famous for noting how little he knew. In order to achieve your purpose, it's important to accept that we don't have all of the answers, and we will need to continually learn and grow as we work toward our goals. I have personally learned a great deal from the work of Ron Heifetz as he discusses Adaptive Leadership. Without going into another book report (I want to save that for another post), in order to be an adaptive leader, one must understand that the leadership challenge you're facing is not simple to fix, and will require a great deal of learning. Back to that webinar at NPC20, Sanee discussed how even the simple question "how are you?" carries new meaning during the pandemic. If you're going to ask that question, you need to be prepared that you might not get a quick response back. It might even be the start of a very long conversation, and that is OK. We as leaders will need to spend time maintaining those relationships empathetically throughout the pandemic.

Similarly, I realized that while I work hard to build positive culture in my school, supporting teachers during this pandemic is something I simply didn't know how to do. I'm very fortunate to be taking a course through ASCD on supporting educator mental health. The lessons I'm learning have been immediately applicable with the team at our school. Adapting along the way means sometimes changing tactics based on new information, but if you aren't seeking out that new information you won't be able to get where you're going.

Build a solid team -- It goes without saying that none of us can do our jobs alone anymore. None of us ever really could before, either. In The Long Distance Leader, summarized here, authors Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel talk about the important of relying on your team and supporting your team throughout the times when you won't physically be together. The principal I currently work with centered his entry plan three years ago on creating and maintaining a strong divisional leadership team, and he has taught me so much over the course of our partnership. While pandemic economic circumstances have meant our partnership is to come to an end in a couple of months, I am headed to my own first principalship this August, and I feel extremely fortunate. When I asked the Head of School at my future school what he is proudest of (this is his first year there), he said that had he been able to create a leadership team from his 30 years of experience in international schools, he couldn't have created a better team than the one he inherited. That is exactly the kind of joyful, strengths-based, empowering, and collaborative leader I want to work with, and knowing that he shared that information in front of members of the leadership team shows that he is willing to give credit and appreciate his team.

I heard Ben Zander, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, share his insight about leading, that people come to the symphony to hear music, and yet he as conductor is the only member of the orchestra who doesn't make a sound. We as leaders are strengthened by the strengths of our team. We know from the extensive literature out there and our own experience how important it is to have trust on a team, and I'll simply relate something one of my own teammates once said at a previous school about our grade-level team of teachers: "We know each other, so we like each other, so we support each other as we work together."

Messaging Matters -- I can't say it any better than Will Parker does in his book, which my partner principal and I have been learning from all year. Similarly, I loved hearing Joe Sanfelippo at the NPC in Boston in 2019 talk about the importance of shaping the narrative about education, because unless we as school leaders shape the narrative, others are going to fill in the blanks with a negative story. For me, the best example of positive storytelling about school comes from Brian McCann. His article in the latest Principal Leadership magazine is one more example of the ways in which Brian models not just for his teachers, but for the larger professional learning community to which he belongs. In fact, utilizing Brian's idea of Positive Sign Thursday is one of the factors that enabled me to land my next job, so I'm extremely appreciative. The point in all of these examples is of course a lesson that Lincoln knew 160 years ago, that it is through story that we can best communicate our purpose. It's not always easy, finding the balance between too much communication and too little, between being optimistically realistic as opposed to toxically positive, but if we as leaders aren't attending to messaging, we'll lose our chance to build a positive culture.

As an example, we committed to maintaining contact with our families during this school year and having the chance to get feedback from them at least once a month. We did extensive work in August, had a check in virtual town hall during September, and had individual and small group conferences with teachers and students in October. Things were going well. But, as November came along and fatigue set in, we stopped being as intentional about meeting systematically with our parent body, and by the time January rolled around we started to receive emails that were letting us know that we weren't opening up a space for all voices in the community to be heard, and that was leading to speculation and unrest. We're still very fortunate to have a caring community that share ideas in respectful ways, and we have since re-instituted those intentional communication systems at a minimum monthly, and are therefore back to where we had been, but the lesson around the intentionality of messaging is well learned.

As the above example illustrates, timing matters as well. The presidents often had to be wise about when to act and when not to act, when to send messages and when to not send messages. I think of the West Wing episode when President Bartlet's team discusses sending out unpleasant news on Friday afternoons, or "the trash" because no one reads the news on Saturday mornings. Or I think of how fantastic it has been to be able to, just within the last couple of years, schedule emails to be sent at certain times. Of course there are times that I am working late into the evening, but I would feel terrible in the past when I would send out an email at 10 p.m. and get an immediate response from a teacher. There are studies out there that emails received at 6 a.m. are most likely to be read, and my guess is emails received at 10 p.m. are most likely to make you think your principal is a jerk!

Time and Space for Yourself -- Thinking about the presidents, Lincoln would go to the theater or read comedy aloud, Teddy Roosevelt would take strenuous walks, FDR collected stamps. Only Lyndon Johnson had no real outlet activity, and I wonder, if he had been better at taking care of himself throughout his presidency, might he have attended to foreign policy better. Few topics have gotten more press in the educational world lately than self-care for educators, and this is a focus area in the ASCD course I'm taking as well. I am also fortunate to be a part of a group of school leaders that gather for virtual instructional "rounds" periodically, organized by a former professor at Lehigh, Jon Drescher. Self-care came up at the most recent Rounds I attended, and to be honest I find this so difficult. "If we are always working from home, and we're always home, aren't we always working?" was the question I posed, and I have had real trouble answering this. Heifetz and Linsky talk about anchoring yourself by having a confidant to talk with and a sanctuary, be it a ritual, an activity, or a place to disconnect from the demands of the job.

This was especially challenging for me in 2020, as I know it was for many of us, as the hours spent on screens and away from my normal rituals of walking and playing the piano were disrupted by the sheer demands on the job. I've gained thirty pounds in the past year, and I physically don't feel like myself. More importantly, emotionally I have struggled at times. I have been exploring different ways to recover, and like Lincoln I find comedy is helpful. If I can get in a good laugh before bed I sleep better, whether that's watching old clips of Robin Williams doing standup or Netflixing Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. At this point I'll try anything and everything so that I can begin, now that the pandemic is hopefully turning a corner, to feel like myself again.

Part of feeling like myself again is the ability to create something, to produce, based on one of my favorite activities: reading! It's been a joyful experience reading the Goodwin book and the Heifetz/Linsky book, and trying to apply the lessons learned from both to my current role and point in my career. My next post will combine another of my great loves, Harry Potter. Stay tuned to find out which president fits in which house; Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw! Thanks for reading.

0 notes