Leadership: Making the Pieces Fit

1. Leadership:Making the Pieces Fit Pete Bennett, Supervisor of Special Education Josh Townsley, School Psychologist Lewis Cass Intermediate School District Pete

2. Asking Your Permission… • For an open exchange of ideas • To be provocative – provoke without intention to offend • Share your provocative thoughts or ideas in the context of our discussion "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

3. Why Discuss Leadership? • Leadership is the most important factor in creating change in a group or organization • Leadership has received little to no attention in the plethora of school reform initiatives • Leadership has received minimal attention from our group

4. Introductions: From what position do you lead? • Principal • Supervisor • Director • MDE • Teacher • Therapist • Other How often do you feel like the cat at work? How often like the dog?

5. Our Show • First Half • Challenge assumptions about school reform • Look at the big picture • Define leadership • Is bureaucracy the answer? • Second Half • Develop a shared vision • How to use vision • Learn the 5 levels of leadership • Apply leadership truths to PLC’s • Create Synergy • Third Half • Your thoughts

6. Response Record/Your Thoughts

7. Challenging Assumptions • Question: Why do we need school reform? • Question: Are some of the arguments for school reform based on faulty assumptions? • The United States is not at or near the top internationally.

8. Challenging Assumptions • Question: Is Accountability THE #1 key driver of school reform? • Most importantly: We have to measure individual student and teacher performance to improve education.

9. FullanArticle A ‘wrong driver’ is a deliberate policy force that has little chance of achieving the desired result, while a ‘right driver’ is one that achieves better measurable results for students

10. Fullan’sRight and Wrong Drivers I suggest four criteria to judge a driver’s effectiveness. Does it 1. foster motivation of teachers and students; 2. engage educators and students in continuous improvement; 3. inspire team work; and 4. affect all teachers and students?

11. Challenging Assumptions • Question: How does our use of High Stakes Testing (MEAP, Mi-Access, MME) stack up against the drivers in the Fullan article? • Question: How about Teacher Evaluation? • Use the Fullan article right driver characteristics to answer these questions.

12. FullanArticle: Wrong Drivers 1. accountability: using test results, and teacher appraisal, to reward or punish teachers and schools vs capacity building; 2. individual teacher and leadership quality: promoting individual vs group solutions; 3. technology: investing in and assuming that the digital world will carry the day vs instruction; and 4. fragmented strategies vs integrated or systemic strategies.

13. Fullan’sSolution The solution involves using the four big effective drivers: 1. The learning–instruction–assessment nexus. 2. Social capital to build the profession. 3. Pedagogy matches technology. 4. Systemic synergy.

14. California looks to Ontario - Fullan's interview with EdSource, April 2013May 6th, 2013Michael Fullan may be coming soon to a school district near you. The man credited with transforming the Canadian province of Ontario into one of the world’s most effective school systems is ready to help California do the same. Fullan, though, would lead the state in a sharply different direction from the forced march that federal officials in Washington, D.C., have led over the past decade. “I want California to become an alternative model to No Child Left Behind; that would be a great thing to aspire to,” Fullan said last month during an interview in Sacramento

15. Challenging Assumptions cont. • Question: Have the millions of dollars spent on NCLB resulted in improvement? • Our expensive and extensive yearly accountability measures have resulted in significant gains in student achievement. • http://www.opposingviews.com/i/new-data-shows-failure-of-no-child-left-behind • http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/a-decade-of-no-child-left-behind-lessons-from-a-policy-failure/2012/01/05/gIQAeb19gP_blog.html

16. NAEP 2009 Results Summary of results from the NAEP 2008 Long Term Trend report, released April 28, 2009 Reading Age 9 reading: reading scores did go up 4 points from 2004 to 2008, but they went up 7 points from 1999 to 2004 (more than 1.5 points/year). The black-white reading gap closed 3 points (statistically significant) while the Hispanic-white gap closed 4 points, also statistically significant. However, the Hispanic-white gap closed 7 points from 1999-2004, and the black-white gap closed 9 points from 1999-2004, about three times as fast.

17. Failure of NCLB/Obama Reform • The data accumulated over 10 years make three things clear: • NCLB has severely damaged educational quality and equity, with its narrowing and limiting effects falling most severely on the poor. • NCLB failed to significantly increase average academic performance and significantly narrow achievement gaps. • Attempts to deal with NCLB’s severe shortcomings, such as the Obama administration’s waivers and the Senate Education Committee’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization bill, fail to address many of NCLB’s fundamental flaws and in some cases will intensify them. These proposals will extend a “lost decade for U.S. schools.”

18. Challenging Assumptions cont. • Can a bureaucracy create change/reform in education? • State and Federal Departments of Education can legislate rules to create systematic reform and improve student achievement.

19. Challenging Assumptions cont. • Bureaucracy is designed to organize, monitor compliance and perpetuate an existing system, not to create and nurture change. • It relies heavily, almost exclusively, on Level I Leadership. (We’ll get to this.) • There’s little chance for/many barriers to synergy. • Politicians are bureaucrats and idealogs. • Neither they, nor their staffers, have education background/training in education. • Not one educator drafted NCLB. Ted Kennedy had no education expertise. • NCLB has been a dismal failure on a cost & effort to results basis.

20. Synergy Through Leadership • Why is synergy important? • Synergy defined: • The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. • If we don’t fully maximize our leadership potential, focusing on other reform areas in education will ultimately be ineffective • Right now, it’s not on the radar • As an endeavor, education is very complex which makes it critical that leadership is up to the task of organizing it • Leadership is the only way to maximize our human resources, which is our greatest capital!

21. The Big Picture • Question: Why is the big picture important? • You need a strong foundation for anything you do • Controlling multiple, and often competing, initiatives Larger

22. Do We Attend to the Big Picture? • Dressing Your Truth • Personality Types: • 1 Outgoing, animated, high energy • 2 Relaxed, subdued, connected, improve • 3 Dynamic, energetic, doer, by-the-numbers, active-reactive • 4 Serene, reflective, big-picture, passive-anayltic

23. The Second Half • What we will cover: • Develop a shared vision • How to use vision • Learn the 5 levels of leadership • Apply leadership truths to PLC’s • Create Synergy

24. Developing a Shared Vision:Start with Why • Video of Simon Sinek

25. Start with WHY (big ideas) • WHY is just a belief, HOW are the actions to realize it, and WHAT is the outcome- the tangible proof of WHY.

26. Start with Why big ideas cont. • We follow those who lead not for them, but for ourselves. • WHY builds loyalty. W/o it, change is through manipulation – stress inducing. • Trust is essential in communicating your WHY. Comes from setting out to serve those who serve you. W/o trust, people act for themselves – which creates office politics. • With every success and demonstration that the Vision can become a reality, the more practical-minded majority starts to take interest. (tipping point)

27. Start w/ WHY big ideas cont. • “You can’t have a good product w/o people who like coming to work.” “It is a company’s responsibility to take care of its employees first. – Gordon Bethune, CEO Continental Airlines • When employees belong, they will guarantee your success. They will be working hard for themselves, not for you. • “You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude.” Herb Kelleher, CEO Southwest Airlines • Hire those passionate for your WHY.

28. Start w/ WHY big ideas cont. • When people have a higher sense of purpose, WHY, they find it easier to weather hard times. • Knowing WHY makes decisions much easier to make. • All great leaders have charisma, which comes from passion for and clarity of WHY. • Behind every great WHY person is a HOW-type person. Bureaucrats are HOW-type people. The leader imagines the destination, HOW finds the route.

29. Start w/ WHY big ideas cont. • Copying WHAT and HOW from another organization will not work. Your actions must match your intentions. • When WHY goes fuzzy. • What you measure and incentivize is important. • When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. Try to better yourself, and you have lots of help.

30. Questions • What is your WHY? • What is your organization’s WHY?

31. Applying the Golden Circle Vision and Belief Statements Mission Statement

32. Our Vision Statement for LCISD Center-based Programs (WHY) “We challenge all preconceived notions of what a child can do, enabling each student to discover and achieve their goals.”

33. WHY does our staff get up every morning? • Making a difference in kid’s lives who were told they couldn’t read b/c they were too dumb and showing them how to read. • I want to leave the world better than I found it. Coming here gives me an opportunity to serve. • I am passionate about becoming the best leader possible, for students and colleagues, and continuing my own professional development through education. • Working with the young children and watching them grow and learn new skills. Celebrating all of the tiny steps they make.

34. Our Mission Statement (HOW) • Use a comprehensive data system to identify each student’s point of instruction and continually monitor student progress to inform instructional changes • Instruct our students in a variety of learning and life experiences with a relentless focus on skill building • Contribute to a professional learning community • Match resources to needs • Use a problem solving framework

35. Our Guiding Principles for HOW we will achieve our vision… • We will provide evidence-based, high-quality instruction and interventions matched to student need… • using data over time… • to make important educational decisions.

36. Outcomes we Seek (WHAT):The tangible proof of our WHY • Students learn skills to advocate for themselves. • Students learn to develop fulfilling recreational lives • Students learn to form and maintain healthy relationships in all areas of life. • Students and staff feel empowered and supported. • Students, parents, educators, community members, and administrators work collaboratively to meet student outcomes. • Students learn functional literacy, functional numeracy, functional communication, and critical thinking skills in order to promote life-long learning. • Students are prepared for continued education and/or employment. • Students gain the life skills necessary to be independent, resourceful and active contributors to their community in order to enjoy life to the fullest.

39. John C. Maxwell’s Chops • “John Maxwell’s books have been required reading for my leadership team for years…” – Dave Ramsey • “John has been a mentor and teacher for me for many years…he has pushed and helped me personally go through The 5 Levels of leadership!” – Kevin Turner, COO, Microsoft. • John has taught The 5 Levels of Leadership to our leaders at Delta with great results…” – Ed Bastian, president of Delta Air Lines.

40. Question: What is Leadership • Write out your answer.

41. 5 Levels of Leadership

42. In the Words of Our Staff: • Position: A poor substitute for influence – You’re not the boss of me! • Permission: You must foster positive relationships to be successful. • Production: Results – We are an organization of individuals who seek results. • People Development: Reproduction – Leaders develop leaders. • Pinnacle: People follow who you are – Not top down, empower others, bring out others’ best.

43. Position: (anyone can be appointed to a position) • Lowest level of leadership-the entry level. • People follow b/c they have to. • Based on the rights granted by the position and title. • May be boss, never leader. • No ability or effort required. • Difficulty working with volunteers, younger people and highly educated. • These people tend to be more independent and lack influence with them.

44. Position Characteristics • Given b/c have potential • Authority is recognized • Invitation to grow as a leader • Allows you to shape and define leadership

45. Position Downside • Often misleading • Does not make you a leader • Look for person in organization w/ influence • Devalue People • Assume they can’t, won’t, see problems-not potential, see as liabilities not assets. • Feed on Politics • Rights over Responsibilities • Lonely, stranded, get people’s least not best

46. Question • How have you reacted to Positional Leadership? • How have others reacted to you when you have acted from this level?

47. Level 2: Permission • Based entirely on relationships • People follow b/c they want to • When you like, value and trust people – you begin to gain influence. • Environment becomes positive • Not about preserving your position – it’s getting to know people. • You can like people w/o leading them, but cannot lead w/o liking people. - essence

48. Permission Characteristics • Makes work more enjoyable • Focus from me to we • Increases energy level • Opens channels of communication • Focus on value of each person • Nurtures trust

49. Downside of Permission - pressure on you to build positive relationships • Appears too soft for some people • Can be frustrating for achievers (Dress your truth Level 3’s, aka: us) • Can be taken advantage of (I’ve felt this) • Requires openness • Difficult if not naturally likeable (hmmm) • Forced to deal w/ the whole person

50. Questions • How have you felt when a leader took the time to know you? • Example of positive change in your relationship with an employee when you did the same?