Storytelling for leaders

27. August 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

I signed up for Scott’s book study this summer, and believe it or not I did read the book. I also logged into the forums a few times and read some of the discussion of Influencer. I just had a bit crazier of a summer than I’d intended and didn’t get to participate as actively as I’d hoped.

One of the biggest things I got from the book was the power of effective storytelling in influencing others. For those looking to tell great stories, I wanted to share something else I stumbled upon this summer.

The Moth is a not-for-profit storytelling organization that started more than 10 years ago as a small group of folks who would gather to spin tales on a friend’s porch. I’ve subscribed to the podcast and have a great 10-20 minute story delivered to my iTunes each week. Some of them are not appropriate for classroom use, but many are. If nothing else, they demonstrate the power of a well-told story — something that all of us school leaders could stand learn a lot from as we write the next chapter in the story of our own organizations.

Service with a smile

25. August 2008 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:
Every time you interact with a customer, you’re engaging in marketing. – Seth Godin

If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s receiving or giving lousy customer service. We don’t put up with it at the Olive Garden or the Starbucks, and we sure as heck shouldn’t expect our customers to put up with it from us.

Schools walk a precarious line with parents and the community. Generally, they like us OK. But then one little thing goes wrong and that’s it. They tell a friend or two how crummy our school is and that friend also tells a friend or two. Pretty soon everyone’s working on the assumption that your school is an unfriendly place because someone didn’t get the satisfaction they wanted.

I’m not talking about overtly bad customer service like being rude or snippy with someone, although that shouldn’t be acceptable, either. But sometimes the little things we do (or don’t do) and the hidden messages our offices and classrooms send speak louder than words. In one of my all-time favorite posts by Scott McLeod, he points out the subtle (and not-so-subtle) messages we send out to our teachers, parents, students, and community every day.

Consider the mother of a teenager in need of some last-minute advice from the student’s counselor. She walks into the counseling office and the secretary’s desk proudly displays that oh-so-witty sign that says, “Failure to plan on your part does not constitute and emergency on mine.”

Or consider the dad who comes in to review his student’s attendance. He is told by the first person he sees, “That’s not my responsibility. You need to see the Attendance Person.” So he dutifully goes to the attendance office only to find that the Attendance Person is at lunch. Approaching the nearest counselor he is told, “Your son is not in my part of the alphabet. You need to see Mr. Y and he’s booked all afternoon.” Down but not out, the father walks to the administrative offices and is told that his son is a senior and therefore he needs to see Mrs. Z who happens to be out of the building at that moment.

Now consider that pulling up Little Johnny’s attendance would have been about three mouse clicks for that first person. Why do we do this to people? Are we so afraid of stepping on someone else’s turf? Or is that we resent having to do “someone else’s job?”

Taking care of our parents and community is all of our jobs. As school leaders, we contribute significantly to the culture of the building. When people see us stop and pick up a piece of trash on the floor, it sends the message that we’re not too important to do our part to keep the building clean. When others see us stop to help a lost or confused parent in the building, they get the idea that we all need to take responsibility for taking care of the people visiting our school.

Empower the people in your building to do what is required (with consideration for what’s ethical and appropriate) to help a parent. Doing so will stop the game of parent “hot potato” that we play by bouncing these people from one person to the next. And even if they’re not happy with the result of the conversation (Johnny has missed how many math classes?!?), the parents will leave with at least a little bit of dignity as well as some satisfaction that someone took the time to listen and help.

Get your life back, Part 3

13. August 2008 · 3 comments · Categories: blogging, Productivity · Tags: , ,

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve captured what you need to do and set up a system to help you actually do it. But what about those odds and ends that you may need to revisit? Those little doodles, emails, handouts, or reference documents that you are just certain you’ll need agan?

As I indicated up front, I have untrained myself from the old habit of scribbling notes during meetings. Instead, I capture things that need to be done; actions that need to be taken. Yet I still find myself staring at piles of stuff that may need a home for some unforeseen time in the future when someone might ask me for it. Old meeting agendas, handouts, memos from the district, and the like.

For me, stuff like this breaks down into two basic categories:

Electronic Stuff

  • Emails with information that may not be immediately important but may be important later. Dates for trainings for teacher mentors, for instance. I don’t need it now, but may need it when an interested teacher approaches me about mentoring.
  • Other important documents you may need access to later. We have an emergency phone tree at my school, for example. Or maybe you got a PDF of a workshop registration attached to an email.
  • PDFs or other articles you keep meaning to read. I receive a lot of publications via email. Many of them are compilations of articles from around the web and there are always a few I’d like to read at some magical point in the future, “when I have the time.”

evernote1Evernote has become my digital dumping ground. Enough has been written about Evernote that I’m not going to spend a lot of time on what it does or how it works, rather I’m going to share with you how I make it work for me.

I keep a few notebooks for various purposes. I try to keep stuff that is work-related in its own notebook. In my “LHS Reference” notebook, you’ll find math content standards and frameworks, an emergency phone tree, and a list of important district phone numbers.  If I see an article I like, I ask Firefox to print it as a PDF and dump the PDF into my “Articles & Papers” notebook. Receipts for, well, anything get dumped into “Receipts” and anything without a clearly defined place goes into “Random Stuff.”

I recommend starting with one giant notebook and letting things happen organically. For instance, I think I’m going to have another notebook eventually called “Recipes” where I save recipes I come across online.

Non-Electronic Stuff

For stuff that doesn’t exist in electronic format (handouts, whiteboards from great brainstorming sessions, completed classroom observation instruments, etc), my first question is usually whether I can get it into electronic format (and whether I’d want to). One of these days I’ll get a Fujitsu ScanSnap, but until then I have a few other tricks up my sleeve.

Print“For handouts, I ask the hander-outer if they can email a copy to me or, “Put it on the wiki.” If it’s an Office document – or anything non-PDF – I’ll turn it into a PDF (this functionality is trivial on a Mac). For whiteboards I’ll shoot a picture or two with my iPhone. Both the PDFs and digital images can get dumped into Evernote where it will happily scan all the legible text and make even digital pictures of my whiteboard searchable.

But, alas, there are some things that just don’t make the jump to digital. For instance, I don’t have the time or the need to scan all the data-collection instruments I use for classroom observations. I have a folder for each teacher I evaluate and the instruments go in there. Once I complete a summative evaluation, I usually shred the instruments and move on.

As I mentioned in my very first post in this series, I don’t keep a lot of random stuff in hard copy format if I can avoid it. Having reference items in Evernote makes them easy to search and access if and when I need them.

Putting it together

We’ve come a long way from capture, to action, to filing away stuff you may need to get your hands on at some future time. Regardless of the system you put in place for yourself, make sure it’s something you can stick with and that it becomes a transparent part of your daily routine. The less you have to think about it the better.

By spending some time up front deciding how you plan to capture, act, and file you can free up your valuable time for other things. Plus you’ll feel less stressed because you’ll know you have at least some of your world under control.

Previously

Growing your own

11. August 2008 · 4 comments · Categories: Education, Leadership · Tags:
The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. – Ralph Nader

As a school leader, what have you done to cultivate teacher leadership in your building?

I don’t mean having your administrative intern handle all of your referrals this semester so that you have time for “more important things.”

How much have you invested in the teacher leaders in your school? Are you inviting them to share their practices — their successes and failures — with their colleagues? Are you encouraging others to listen to what they say? Are you listening?

Remember that not all leaders have titles.

Part 2b

08. August 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

In what can only be described as serendipitously good timing, Merlin Mann of 43Folders gets to the heart of writing doable, next actions using outcome-based thinking.

Think about the thing that’s most on your mind right now. It’s probably not the thing you think is most on your mind; the stuff that’s really getting our attention likes to run behind the refrigerator whenever we turn the lights on. But, anyway. Got it? Okay.

Merlin walks through a simple example that neatly illustrates the kind of broad items most of us end up capturing and how to recognize that what you’ve really got is an action and a project. While far more articulate about this stuff than I am, Merlin makes the point I was shooting for yesterday.

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