The amazing things you can accomplish in just 15 minutes a day

 A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules. —Anthony Trollope

“Frenetic activity” is an apt description of the lives of many educators. With some, it is even a badge of honor that demonstrates their commitment and work ethic.

For others, it is a commonly-offered explanation for why they aren’t doing the things they know are most important, things like talking with teachers or colleagues about instruction, thoroughly preparing for upcoming conversations and meetings, exercising, and so on.

Here a some things that can be done in 15 minutes or less than can make a substantial difference in the quality of your work and life:

• Make a brief, focused visit to a classroom followed by a short note to the teacher.

• Write in a journal to gain clarity about a problem or determine a course of action.

• Prepare a thank-you note for someone whose efforts you wish to recognize or a note of encouragement for someone whose spirits you would like to lift.

• Write a weekly blog for colleagues or the school community.

• Write a book a year. (Fifteen minutes a day could easily produce a couple of hundred pages of text in a year. You wouldn’t even have to know what it was about at the beginning; it’s direction would reveal itself after a few weeks.)

• Determine your intentions for a meeting or conversation and sketch out a back-of-the-envelope plan. The clarity produced in even a few minutes of focused attention can change the direction and outcome of an event.

• Cease outward activity to be mindful of your breathing, feelings, and surroundings. Even a minute or two of such focused attention can make a substantial difference in your mood and stress level.

• Exercise. In 15 minutes you can walk a mile.

• Have a conversation with a colleague, family member, or friend. Spend a good share of that time listening deeply to the words and meaning of those with whom you are interacting.

• Develop an important and perhaps even life-changing new habit. Any of the above, for example, could become a valuable habit in just a few weeks.

I encourage you to identify one or two activities appropriate to you and your setting that in just a few minutes a day can make a difference for you and others.

And, in truth, we all have 15 minutes a day that could be spared to improve the quality of our work and lives.

What suggestions do you have for other worthwhile “15-minute activities”?

Why it’s essential to begin professional relationships with integrity

In Flawless Consulting, Peter Block wrote, “…when we bend over in the beginning [of a consulting relationship], we are seen by the client as someone who works in a bent-over position. When we avoid issues in the beginning, we are seen as someone who avoids issues.”

In a 1992 JSD interview I did with Block, he added: “We teach clients by our own actions how to work with us. It’s more difficult to renegotiate a relationship than to start it standing up in the first place.”

Block was cautioning consultants not to compromise their standards and/or integrity in the early phases of a relationship because of the likely long-term negative consequences of doing so to both the relationship and to the quality of their work.

That advice has lost none of its validity over the past 20 years and continues to have value for educators in various roles and settings.

Walking bent over has implications for:

• Teachers as they begin the school year or semester with a new group of students. (Teachers have long been told that it’s easier to ease rules and routines than it is to tighten up.)

• Novice principals as they begin their first leadership assignments.

• Experienced principals as they begin in new schools.

• Instructional coaches as they begin their work with teachers.

• Internal and external consultants as they begin their work with teams, schools, or school systems.

There are many reasons for becoming bent over in new relationships:

• A reluctance to make demands early in a relationship before an emotional bank account has been established.

• Anxiety about possible conflict;

• A lack of confidence in one’s point of view and/or skills;

• The desire to be perceived as a good team player;

• The importance of going along to get along; and

• The belief that initial problems can be easily remedied later.

What’s required to stand up straight…

It is essential that teachers, administrators, coaches, and consultants begin long-term relationships with crystal clarity about the desired outcomes of the work, the responsibilities of all parties to the “contract,” and the aspects of the work that are non-negotiable if it is to be successful.

In addition, courage may be required to suspend the work if agreements are not kept and integrity is compromised.

Standing up is difficult once we begin a relationship bent over. Walking away from work once begun that doesn’t ultimately serve the “clients” (which, in schools, almost always ultimately means students) is never easy.

That’s why it is critically important to begin new relationships with clarity, authenticity, and integrity.

As is true with almost everything in schools, students will be the ultimate beneficiary of our upright posture.

Choose hopefulness over resignation

Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right. – Henry Ford

Successful leadership can sometimes be reduced to a small number of fundamental choices. Once those choices are made, they guide decisions and behavior in dozens of situations each week.

One of those choices is between hopefulness and resignation.

Hopefulness means that we see possibility where others see only constraints.

Hopefulness is not a naive faith that things will always resolve themselves in favorable ways. Nor is it a strategy. Without stretching goals and robust plans hope is just a fervent wish.

Instead, hopefulness is based on a fundamental assumption that people working together can accomplish far more than they might have initially thought possible.

Resignation only requires that we surrender ourselves to the status quo when confronted by the inevitable challenges that arise when engaged in important work. (“There have always been kids who were weren’t successful in school, and there is nothing that can be done to change that.”)

Hopefulness has several benefits:

• Hopefulness expands what we believe is within our circle of influence.
• Hopefulness gives us energy, which in turn energizes those around us.

• Hopefulness is the glue which connects and strengthens the school community while it pursues demanding goals.

Hopeful principals and teacher leaders inspire the school community with the prospect of a better future. They then provide a means for the realization of that aspiration through the development of ambitious goals and powerful plans.

In offering hope and providing a pathway to its realization, school leaders serve their communities in fundamental and sustaining ways.

 

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Choose healthy skepticism over cynicism

Successful leadership can sometimes be reduced to a small number of fundamental choices. Once those choices are made, they guide decisions and behavior in dozens of situations each week.

One of those choices is between healthy skepticism and cynicism.

Choosing healthy skepticism means that educators will bring a finely-honed critical intellect to their study of professional literature and to problem-solving and decision-making within the school community.

Healthy skepticism requires an open mind. It also requires the ability to identify biases, to evaluate the quality of evidence and its implications for practice, and to synthesize various perspectives on the subject at hand, among other skills.

Cynicism, on the other hand, only asks that we reflexively dismiss new ideas and the views of others. It blocks innovation and creates a downward spiral of energy that prevents continuous improvements in teaching and learning.

Healthy skepticism has two primary benefits:

• Healthy skepticism dramatically increases the probability that new ideas and practices will be thoroughly vetted and perhaps even pilot tested before receiving widespread adoption.

• Healthy skepticism invigorates the intellectual atmosphere of the school community, which, in turn, creates energy for continuous improvement.

Valuing and cultivating healthy skepticism demonstrates trust in educators’ professional judgement and ensures that the school community’s human and financial resources are invested in ideas and practices that are likely to make significant contributions to important goals.

Without healthy skepticism, school communities will mindlessly fall victim to educational fads or just as mindlessly reject the possibility of improvement. In either case, students needlessly suffer the consequences.

One Mississippi, Two Mississippi

“During conversations, she is given to taking lengthy pauses,” a New Yorker profile of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg notes.

“This can be unnerving, especially at the Supreme Court, where silence only amplifies the sound of ticking clocks. Therefore, her clerks came up with what they call the two-Mississippi rule: after speaking, wait two beats before you say anything else. Ginsburg’s pauses have nothing to do with her age. It’s just the way she is.”

Every school would benefit immensely from the application of the two-Mississippi rule in classrooms, meetings for learning and decision making, and one-to-one conversations.

The two-Mississippi rule would slow down conversations in ways that would allow both speakers and listeners to more thoughtfully consider what was said and to explore more fully the chain of associations and ideas that are evoked.

In my experience, important professional learning often occurs in an unlikely place—the space between the conclusion of one person speaking and another person responding, a space in which speakers may choose to revise or extend what they said and listeners can ponder the implications of what was said for the topic at hand.

In the classroom this pause is known as “wait time.” Teachers who regularly practice it report that it produces greater engagement and higher-quality responses from a larger number of students.

When the two-Mississippi rule is in place listeners can give their full attention to what is being said rather than rehearsing their responses while the person is still speaking, which means they will comprehend at a deeper level. If the subject matter is particularly important or evokes strong emotion, it might be desirable to upgrade the two-Mississippi rule to the four-Mississippi or even six-Mississippi rule.

One consequence of applying the two-Mississippi rule would be more frequent and profound conversation-based professional learning.

Another consequence would be stronger, more respectful relationships as educators slowed down the fast-paced, often less-than-satisfying exchanges that fill their busy days.

Like wait-time in classrooms, the two-Mississippi rule a simple, yet powerful strategy whose only cost is the effort required to establish it as a habit.

Applying the two-Mississippi rule is a “small action” that can have a profound effect on learning, relationships, and the overall effectiveness of the school community.

I encourage you to give it a try at the very next opportunity.

8 ways you can become a Positive Deviant

In Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, physician Atul Gawande describes a talk he made to medical students addressing the topic, “How do I really matter?” He decided to offer “five suggestions for how one might make a worthy difference, for how one might become, in other words, a positive deviant.”

(In yesterday’s post I defined positive deviants as individuals who with the same resources available to their peers achieved more favorable outcomes. They do so through identifiable behaviors that distinguish their performance from that of others.)

In his talk Gawande suggested:

• Ask an unscripted question. “You don’t have to come up with a deeper important question, just one that lets you make a human connection,” he wrote.

• Don’t complain. “[N]othing in medicine is more dispiriting than hearing doctors complain.”

• Count something. “It doesn’t really matter what you count… The only requirement is that whatever you count should be interesting to you.”

• Write something.

• Change. “[M]ake yourself an early adopter,” Gawande recommended. “Look for the opportunity to change…. Be willing to recognize the inadequacies in what you do and to seek out solutions. As successful as medicine is, it remains replete with uncertainties and failure.”

Gawande’s suggestions lead me to think more deeply about the behaviors of school leaders whom I have viewed as Positive Deviants.

I concluded that they possessed one or more of the following habits:

1. Writing to gain clarity and to communicate;

2. “Counting” things to improve their performance (most things that count can be measured, even if only in rudimentary ways);

3. Reading widely in search of new ideas, perspectives, and inspiration;

4. Continuously seeking more effective and efficient ways to do things;

5. Engaging the support of others when challenged by stretching goals or demanding circumstances;

6. Persisting over many months and even years to achieve important goals because the values represented by those goals were so important;

7. Seeing things in unique ways that were in opposition to accepted wisdom or common practice; and

8. Assuming that important problems can be solved, and that working alone or in collaboration with others they would contribute to their solutions.

What behaviors would you add to this list?

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How to spread “demonstrably successful but uncommonly applied practices”

“We need to look at how individuals and organizations within our own systems achieved stellar results using the resources available to the system (and then duplicate then learn from that individual or organization),” reader Frances Miller said in a recent comment on  one of my blog posts. “Many times we spend our energy looking for outside experts when they are right there within our organization; we just have to learn how to develop a culture where others support their use.”

Miller’s comment brought to mind a 2004 JSD interview I did with Jerry Sternin. Sternin and his wife, Monique, had applied the concept of “positive deviance” to life-saving work they did for Save the Children in the villages of Vietnam and to solving other seemingly intractable problems, and I was curious about the implications of the practice in educational settings.

“Positive deviants are people whose behavior and practices produce solutions to problems than others in the group who have access to exactly the same resources have not been able to solve,” Sternin told me. “We want to identify these people because they provide demonstrable evidence that solutions to the problem already exist within the community.”

In the same way that villages in Vietnam had positive deviant parents who had found ways to support the health of their children with the same resources available to other parents, so, too, do schools have positive deviant teachers who are successfully and often quietly solving problems that others in the school community declare to be unsolvable.

Likewise, some schools within a school system have been more successful in solving problems that other schools had declared unsolvable.

Here are some important things to keep in mind about the positive deviance approach.

• Positive Deviance inquiry begins with an assumption that solutions to most problems of teaching and learning can be found in the school community rather than imported through consultants and other experts. If principals and teacher leaders do not share this assumption, the approach will predictably fail.

“Positive Deviance inquires into what’s working and how it can be built upon to solve very difficult problems,” Sternin told me. “It requires that experts relinquish their power and believe that solutions already reside within the system. Our role is to help people discover their answers.”

Later in the interview Sternin noted, “My experience in over 12 years of working with this particular approach and more than 30 years of experience in the development field is that improvement may occur when an external agent brings new resources and ideas to a community.  But as soon as that external agent leaves, the problem returns because the recipients were essentially passive. This is why best-practices approaches usually fail.”

• Positive Deviance inquiry is far more complex than principals identifying teachers who produce above average test scores and asking them to explain to their colleagues how they did it.

As Sternin explained it to me, the process has four steps: “define, determine, discover, and design.  The group begins its work by defining the problem and describing what success would look like—which is the inverse of the problem statement.

“Next, the group determines if there are individuals who have already achieved success.  If there such people, they are the positive deviants.

“Next, the group discovers the uncommon but demonstrably successful behaviors and practices used by the positive deviants to solve the problem.

“And finally, the group designs an intervention which enables its members to practice those demonstrably successful but uncommonly applied practices.

“The process is beautifully simple because it’s strength lies in the solutions that are discovered and owned by people in the community,” Sternin concluded.

• A school’s culture will determine it’s success in implementing Positive Deviance inquiry. I have said more about the qualities of such cultures in other posts.

• A Positive Deviance approach requires that principals and teacher leaders think about professional learning in new ways. It taps the strengths of the school community

In a deeply respectful and honoring way it taps the strengths of the school community and emphasizes behavior change above “learning about.”

“Knowledge doesn’t change behavior…. Practice changes behavior,” Monique Sternin said in a recent New York Times article. (Readers interested in a deeper understanding of this approach will benefit form reading this article.)

Tomorrow’s post will explore the practices of Positive Deviant school leaders.

Saying “yes” to our priorities usually requires learning to say “no”

 Having time to do what is important—that is, devoting energy to high-leverage activities—often means minimizing or eliminating other activities that do not serve the values and goals of the school community.

That’s why “getting to yes” regarding our priorities sometimes requires saying “no” to colleagues, friends, and even family members.

Indiscriminately saying yes to everything means some important things will not get done or will be done in a less than adequate or satisfying way.

Skillful leadership means engaging the school community in the determination of priorities and in maintaining an unwavering focus on the achievement of those goals.

It is essential that such a focus begin with principals and teacher leaders.

To that end:

• Post a prominent reminder of your top three priorities (more than three may mean that you have none because you can’t give adequate attention to any of them).

• Tell yourself that your disciplined focus will serve as a model for the school community. Others are far more likely to imitate what you do than what you say.

Saying “no” is difficult for those of us who think effective leaders always say “yes.” In addition, many of us have a strong desire to please others, which can make it difficult to decline requests.

But saying yes too often comes at a cost to ourselves, which, ultimately, comes at a cost to those we serve.

While reflexively saying yes may be a well-established habit, it can be changed, one “small action” at a time. For instance:

• Set a goal to say no to at least one request a day (or even a week), starting with those requests whose refusal seems less risky.

• Anticipate situations in which you are likely to be asked to do something that you know will be a distraction from an important priority and that will create stress for you and others. Rehearse what you will say. Anticipate the anxiety that may arise and consider practicing a brief relaxation technique like focusing on your breathing for a moment or two before the conversation.

Devoting time to the things that matter most requires eliminating activities that distract us from those priorities. Learning to say “no” may be the critical skill that enables us to work with a laser-like focus on those areas in which our attention matters the most.

Setting goals at which you cannot fail

Seek the small improvements one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens—and when it happens, it lasts. —John Wooden

Many of us believe taking action in support of new habits requires large and fundamental changes in our lives, alterations that may seem very difficult to initiate and sustain.

While large changes are sometimes necessary and can motivate deep change in ourselves, small, carefully-selected actions, as part of a larger plan or by themselves, can create motivation and over time produce substantial improvements.

In One Small Step Can Change Your Life, Robert Maurer suggests that even a single action can lead to dramatic changes. “Begin,” he writes, “by deciding where in your life you think you can most easily benefit from small, incremental steps toward excellence.” Maurer recommends that individuals identify the smallest step that will take them toward their goals, “a step so easy that you can guarantee you’ll take it every single day.”

Teachers and principals can take many small actions that over time can lead to substantial improvements in teaching, learning, and relationships. Here are a few examples:

• Listen for three minutes in a committed and nonjudgmental way to a colleague, friend, or family member. Don’t ask questions, comment, or in any other way interrupt the speaker. Just give your full attention to what the speaker is saying.

• Write down an important value and quickly brainstorm 3-5 actions that would be congruent with that value.

• Before a meeting, phone conversation, or other important task take a moment to clarify its purpose.

• Assume the good intentions of a person with whom you have a conflict and interact with him or her in that spirit.

• Determine the next action for each project as the previous action draws to an end.

• Place on your calendar something that will improve the quality of your life or work that can be done in 15 minutes or less. Keep that promise to yourself.

• Tell your truth in a situation in which it would be easier to withhold your view.

Steps such as these when repeated over time can lead to new habits that dramatically improve relationships and individual and group productivity.

What “small actions” have you taken that over time have made a difference for you and/or others?

Don’t fall into the knowing-doing gap!

Most of us know more than we do on a regular basis.

In our personal lives, we know more about a healthy diet than may be evident in what we choose to eat each day. We often know more about the value and techniques (and perhaps clothing) of exercise than we actually do exercise.

In our professional lives we are also likely to know more about leadership or about teaching than we regularly practice.

In addition, even when our intention is to learn and use new strategies, there is often a wide gap between our learning about that method and our implementation of it.

Some have called this phenomena the knowing-doing gap.

Here are several ways we can bridge that gap:

• Access prior knowledge. Before beginning a lesson good teachers usually determine what students already know about an area of study for both diagnostic and instructional purposes. Likewise, the knowing-doing gap can often be bridged by simply asking ourselves: “What do I know about this subject?” and then setting goals to do one or more of those things more consistently.

• Examine our assumptions. Sometimes we resist doing new things because they are based on assumptions that consciously or unconsciously contradict our current assumptions. For instance, we may resist new instructional practices that promise greater success for more students because of a previously unexamined belief that poverty and family background are more powerful forces than teaching methods.

• Embed learning in doing. Whenever possible, integrate the learning of new practices in situations that allow us to experience the practice firsthand, to identify implementation issues, and to consult with and receive feedback from leadership or instructional coaches.

Like most things that are important, closing the knowing-doing gap requires intention and persistence. It also requires that we recognize and celebrate the “genius” within us, a rich and readily-available resource that we can tap in a wide variety of circumstances.

The result of closing this gap will be the continuous improvement of leadership, teaching, learning, and relationships for the benefit of everyone in the school community.

 

A special note: I value my readers. And because I want to extend the reach of these ideas, I encourage you to become a subscriber to this blog if you are not already one. 

Subscribing ensures timely, automatic receipt of every post. It only takes a moment to subscribe using your email address, and it’s just as easy to unsubscribe. (WordPress does not use email addresses for other purposes.) 

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