Writing for Leadership Part 2

So, today was the final day of the Writing for Professional Growth series a colleague and I attended through Oakland Schools.  As the facilitator, Joan, handed back our manuscript all covered in red edits, I struggled to find any enthusiasm.  We had rewritten the entire thing twice already.  “Oh, this is so good,” Joan said while I leafed through the marked up pages.  “So much potential.  Lots of edits is a compliment, you know.”  She must have read my disappointment.  “If it wasn’t good I wouldn’t have had a reason to make any comments.”  Man had I heard that idea somewhere before.  Yet again, the parallels between leadership and writing were calling out to be noticed. And I knew she was illustrating still that writing is like leadership.

Good essays start with ‘good bones’

Leadership is about potential.  Joan pointed out that a good essay is about what it will be, not what it is.  If it has ‘good bones’, a good story to tell with meaning, it will become a good essay through work.  So many people talk about the value of capacity building in leadership.  I was just at a lunch where an assistant superintendent was talking about how a potential employee impressed her with his ability to humbly elevate the work of others.  His work was finding the potential in other people and helping them reach it.

Writers can’t see their own writing

Leadership is about re-visioning.  I worked with a writing teacher who spoke about the literal meaning of revision: to see with new eyes.  Because we know what we mean to write we often misinterpret what we have actually written.  It takes someone else reading our words, new eyes, to give us invaluable feedback on what others are seeing.  I can’t think of a stronger parallel to leadership.  What a leader says and what the audience receives are often different messages.  Without a great peer-editor a leader will often be misread.

Sometimes we just need to rewrite

Leaders are constantly redefining themselves.  I can’t remember what the article was, but the author was describing how GM’s true failure in the 2000’s was that it couldn’t reinvent itself from the 1950’s and was still basically the same company. As there are times where an essay, which still has those good bones (GM’s purpose of selling quality cars to the world is a solid one) but must be totally rewritten, sustaining organizations have leaders who can rewrite themselves.

We write for ourselves

Leading others helps us find ourselves.  One of the reasons I attended the workshop was to help my colleague get published; however, what was most interesting to me about this workshop was how it forced me to clarify and organize my thoughts about the work I have been doing for the last two years.  And the most wonderful result was I found there was meaning in my work, a structure and logic of sorts that once written looked pretty darn good, maybe even worth reading.

Failing to Succeed

Imagine my surprise when I recently stumbled across the Harvard Business Review article (April 2011 pg 68-74) entitled Understanding Failure: Why Leaders Don’t Learn from Success by Francesca Gino and Gary Pisano.  As it turns out, failure is the best teacher. If by any chance you’re having a time in your life when things just aren’t turning out as you planned, or in the event that you will (c’mon, you’re in leadership!), you should rejoice in your failure.  According to the article, those people who fail often, fail well and fail purposefully ultimately succeed the most.  Go figure.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the article:

Call it evolution, call it whatever you want—humans are not wired to learn from success.  In fact, success hinders learning.

1.   When we succeed we make false assumptions as to why.

2.   We also become overconfident, believing we don’t need to change.

3.   We only ask ‘why’ when we fail.  We don’t investigate good performance.

Test it out—think of a major success.  Compare that with a catastrophic failure.  Wasn’t it the failure that prompted soul-searing, heart-wrenching introspection?  Success feels great and you might have thrown a party; only failure hurts enough to cause you to change (pity parties can be worthwhile, however).

 ‘Learning is the process of updating our theories’(72). 

1. If we don’t have a reason to update, we won’t.  When we succeed, there is no reason to update theories. 
2. When we fail, we either have to revise our theories or be deemed morons (My wording not theirs--isn’t there some saying about doing the same things and expecting different results . . .).

Be assured, we don’t have to fail, it’s just so much easier to learn when we do.  Interested in learning while minimizing failure?

1. Examine success.
2. Institute a system of project reviews.
3. Consciously experiment.  What is experiment if not a process of testing, breaking and revising hypotheses?

So, I choose to rejoice in this month’s failures! 

1. I am learning more than I ever had.
2. I’ve updated more theories than I knew I even had.
3. I have asked ‘why’ countless times. 

Even better, I think I’ll make a point of failing my way through March.  Now, what can I find to experiment on?

Writing for Leadership

Writing for Leadership

A little while ago I read a post stating that all educational leaders should regularly tweet and they all need to write a regular blog.  I took it as an ‘advance your career’ idea and followed the directions reluctantly: advancing relentlessly is wearisome!  But recently I attended a workshop, Writing for Professional Growth, which opened with the interesting idea that leaders write and writers lead.  As the workshop progressed, I began to see clear parallels to leadership and the writing process.  I also grew to appreciate that by writing, I was adding an important dimension to my daily work in leadership. 

Here is what I learned:

Leaders write and writers learn. (Yep—said it again!)

1. Storytelling is a facet of leadership.  Sharing the story brings attention, support and transparency to my daily work. (Can you believe the Free Press used to have four fulltime writers dedicated to education?  There is almost no visibility for positive stories about education in the news anymore.)
2. Writing is a physical activity.  It’s generative, creative and productive.  Writing provides balance to the voracious reading most leaders must engage in.
3. Writing is collaborative.  Except for a personal journal, writing has an intended audience.  Writing collaboratively makes for a stronger product.

The writing process is the leadership process.

1. Have a vision of where you’re going.  Vision drives planning, and if you have a vision of what you’d like to create, you’ll be more likely to create it.
2. Be clear about what you’re NOT doing.  Sometimes knowing what you’re not talking about helps you know what you are talking about.
3. Know your audience
1. Cater to the needs of your unique audience
2. Match your interests with those of your audience
4. Know your guidelines.  If you’ve got the wrong subject matter, no matter how good it is, no one will pay attention.
5. Polish does matter.  You may only get one chance for a first impression, but it is a great idea to revise many times before publishing.  That way you’ve practiced that first impression many times before it happens!

Ebullience


I was in an in-service today, and the presenters finished with a clip of a toddler learning to walk.  Of all the things I learned today, this stuck with me the most.  It reminded me of the joy of learning, which seems to foreign to schools sometimes.

I see joy in education as an ebullience.  Think of a 11 month old learning to walk.  Wobbly, almost drunk, the child manages to leverage herself up and lumber forward.  When she makes it across the room and grabs the couch for support, she breaks into this all body, screaming celebration.  Then she falls, crawls back to the start and tries again.  

What is important is the child did it herself and experienced this overwhelming sense of accomplishment such that she must scream laughter in delight.  Although an 11 month old can’t talk, she’s saying, ‘I did it!’  It is also important that what she did is nearly impossible.  Seriously?  Walking?  It took humankind thousands of years to design a robot that can sort of walk.  Walking is really complicated, but this kid figured it out in 11 months?  Even so, she fell countless times before she pulled it off.  Furthermore, an integral component of joy is self.  Learning is an individual accomplishment.  While the best learning takes a group, we each must individually learn.  So, learning must matter to the person.  I cannot experience joy if what I am doing doesn’t affect my soul.  I don’t care how many times you asked me to read Romeo and Juliet, I desperately wanted to read Rotters (I highly recommend the book!).

Walking is freedom, is independence, is the image of our parents we love so deeply, but it is also ourselves in a more efficient form.  Have you tried crawling lately?  It is painful and slow.  When we learn to walk, we learn to be a better version of ourselves.  When we learn, we are a better version of ourselves.  When we learn something incredible, who can avoid doing that fist pump of accomplishment?

I think a joyful day would be any day that I learn to be a better version of myself.  This is the difficulty of education.  How do I have a classroom of 25 students and find a way to help each one be a better version of themselves?  As an educator, I find joy when I can pull that off.  When no one is looking, I do the dance of ebullience.

To Feel Joy Again

I had a really fascinating visit to a local business the other day: Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  Richard Sheridan, the CEO, is dynamic, innovative and loves sharing his company.  If you have a chance, consider scheduling a tour.  I think they are on pace to have nearly one a day.  Menlo Innovations is a cutting edge (check out all their awards on the site) software development company whose website (http://www.menloinnovations.com/)  and physical site pay specific homage to the concept of workplace joy.  Check out these four phrases directly from the site:

•Life is intended to be a joyful experience!

•Joy is central to the success of our software design and development!

•To achieve joy, everything must change!

•We can teach joy!

To paraphrase Richard, he believes in, ‘the business value of joy’.  His short monologue about the fairly harsh and unpleasant traditional working conditions--most people work 60+ hours, have little time for family, feel little reward in their work and in the end only torture the end user with frustration because the product doesn’t work well—really hit home with me.  I think in the field of education, too often teachers bring work home, have little time to develop new ideas, face the bombardment of angry parents only to find their students don’t like the work they’re doing.  The big question I was hit with was: to what degree are we torturing ourselves and our students every day?  And why?

The first answer I learned from Menlo was time.  We are torturing ourselves because we work all the time—grading, email, planning, phone, thinking.  Menlo Innovations streamlined meetings to 10 minutes and eschews any work time that detracts from actual work.   No, their heads aren’t bent to the computer all the time; they have lunch and relax.  But, like educators, they do work hard. The difference is they work at work and when work ends, they can’t work.  I know many teachers can’t accept that, but any administrator reading this will be scoffing.  That just isn’t possible!  I know.  Menlo would say we have a great reason to make changes, then.  Any industry which demands constant work from its employees isn’t getting the best from them.  Anyone out there ever felt themselves on the 'march of death' of endless, thankless work?

Another thing I learned was pairing.  The major reason people can’t work outside of work is that most of the work is done collaboratively.  It is part of the culture that each week every employee works with a partner.  There is always two people to a computer.  No one stands alone.  Now, I am not sure how this translates to education, but my first thought was to pair teachers during planning.  I have a PD day coming up and what would it look like to pair people as they develop the lesson plans?  I am not sure about how to bring collaboration to education, but I am sure that education is still a place of silos and compartmentalization.  One reason we don't feel joy is we are so alone. 

A final lesson learned was empowerment.  Richard pointed out how he’s writing a book which has forced him to be less available to his staff, which turns out to be a good thing.  He 'gets out of their way'.  A second piece to this empowerment is a very transparent work structure. To get more specifics, I again suggest you schedule a tour, but imagine visible thinking, Harvard's COT or even Nancy Atwell's workshop tools like status of the class.  The point is everyone knows not only what they are working on but also what their peers are working on. Richard connects this clarity to joy directly since ambiguity begets confusion and fear, both of which are enemies of joy and empowerment.  Finally, Richard empowers others by sharing. Hours after meeting with us he sent a thorough email of contacts and ideas. Since that email, we've connected with 5 more incredible people.  I feel energized, enriched and yes, that giddy sense of joy that I'm working on something vital, amazing and beautiful. 

Crucial Conversations

Some people write blogs that look beautiful.  They sat down and clearly typed for hours.  They thought; they formatted. I cannot do that. I don't have that time, so this blog is a testament to the timeless ones! This is written while driving from one meeting to the next in my car, dictated into my phone.

My job has a title that has nothing to do with what I really do, like so many people--plumber, technician, teacher. You’re an instructor. You're a police officer. Like me, you have a title.  Mine: 21st-century curriculum coordinator. But what I do has nothing to do with my title.  I have conversations all day every day. My job is about conversations.  I've also recently felt that I was doing poorly in my job, not because I'm a poor instructor or I don't know my technology. I'm very good with those things. It's the conversations that were letting me down.

Recently I came across a book titled Crucial Conversations. Hopefully you know about it.  It states that we live and die (seriously die), we succeed and fail based on our conversations.  Life is a series of conversations, all of those conversations crucial moments of success or failure. In fact, a fascinating statistic is you can evaluate whether or not a program will be effective with 90% accuracy based on the quality of the conversations.

Doubtful?  Here’s a question: are there moments where a conversation left you feeling worse, less effective, with a dark cloud of regret hanging over your head? For instance, when I got in a fight with my neighbor about how loud my children are. Or when I lashed out at a colleague about a comment he made. Or like when my wife was talking to me and I ignored her and she said, ‘why don't you ever pay attention’  The good and bad news is we all have those 'failed' conversations, the guilt, the frustration.  Those conversations failed, but those failed conversations are opportunities, opportunities to have a richer relationship with someone. And all of those conversations could've been successful with the right tools.

While I'm not going to go into all of the tools (please read the book), I’d like to share one: perspective. Today is a good example to feature.  I'm going to say today was okay because today as I was walking down the hallway to have a go at an insensitive colleague, I thought, ‘why was this colleague upset with me?’ How did that meeting look from her perspective, and how was I doing something that was making her life more uncomfortable? The conversation I did have, which was very different from the one I could have had was based in empathy.  Today I managed to listen to a good book and survive a crucial conversation.  Today.