“People won’t change the way they talk about schools until we change the way we talk about schools.“
Dr. Joe Sanfelippo is the Superintendent of the Fall Creek School District in Fall Creek, WI. The Fall Creek School District was named an Innovative District in 2016 and 2017 by the International Center for Leadership in Education. Joe holds a BA in Elementary and Early Childhood Education from St. Norbert College, a masters in Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a masters in Educational Leadership, and a PhD in Leadership, Learning, and Service from Cardinal Stritch University.
TheSchoolHouse302 · One Thing Series: Telling Your Story with Joe Sanfelippo -- #onethingseries
Key Thoughts from the Interview:
“In the absence of knowledge, people make it up.” Joe provides incredible insight on the power of branding and why schools need to embrace telling their story. Learn how Joe creates connections and forces engagement. We’ll forgive him for his comments regarding the Philadelphia Eagles.
A powerhouse of inspiration, Joe mentions that Inky Johnson is a person he can listen to every day. If you don’t know Inky’s story, don’t let another minute go by! Within the world of education, Joe also mentions that he “leans into” Jimmy Casas and Tom Murray and we couldn’t agree more.
Interestingly, Joe discussed the one thing that we should be doing every day is listening more. He powerfully describes how he often gets caught up in the “next thing” and can overlook the moment. You have to hear what he also says about doing something a little scary.
Listen to what he says about reading. It’s awesome and totally about immersion and engagement.
With whom do you surround yourself? Are you around individuals who push you to another level? Joe describes how to grow, find out just how simple it is if you are actually willing.
Joe’s final response on what he used to believe is a great example of doing what makes a difference versus doing things you think make a difference.
Joe’s interview is a practical how-to interview. His suggestions on telling your story are simple yet profound. The story he tells of the young man bagging groceries is what it is all about.
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Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships. ~ Michael Jordan
A fun pastime among sports enthusiasts is to debate the best sports teams of all time, regardless of the sport itself. Undoubtedly, this is a challenging, arguably futile, exercise with fierce loyalties and subjective opinions, which inevitably cloud good judgment. Regardless, there are some heavy hitters that always make the list and that can’t be ignored. As Phillies fans, it is hard to admit, but the ‘98 Yankees definitely stand out. From the batter’s box to the pitching mound, they dominated the playing field. We’ve already mentioned the Chicago Bulls in last week’s post, so we’ll give a shout out to our friends from the north and recognize the incredible run that the Edmonton Oilers had in the 80s.
The question that looms when these arguments arise is about the essence of what it means to achieve unmistakable greatness. Granted, great teams win, but putting together a winning team is far more complex than just assembling talent. Players need to not only be the very best in their particular position, but also must complement the team as a whole.
Schools aren’t vying for NBA championships, and certainly won’t get the same accolades, but building a “Hall of Fame” team in your school is not much different from any other sport or big brand. Every teacher and staff member must excel in their roles and be able to contribute to the school as a whole to guarantee that it functions at its highest level. The first step in building a winning team is in your dedication to branding and actively telling the school’s story. This generates attraction and attention, which leads to the second critical step, recruiting. People want to be a part of something great, and if your school is doing incredible things for students, others will want to join you. Lastly, selecting the right candidate is paramount. Vacancies go far beyond the job opening and extend into the culture, the fit, and all of the other aspects of being a strong team player.
Excellent schools capitalize on all three areas–branding, recruiting, and selecting–to build their winning team. Take the first step in branding by telling your story. Use the ThreeMinuteChallenge below, and let us know how it goes.
Reflect: Think about how well you are engaging the greater school community and informing them about all of the things that are going on in your school.
Identify: There are multiple avenues for telling your story and continually building your brand. Identify one or two key social media platforms that you will use to communicate your school’s priorities and achievements. We like Twitter best for this.
Do: Commit to a 10 day challenge of telling your story. It only takes three minutes a day to Tweet, share a pic, or create a quick video. For 10 straight days, commit to communicating something special about your school. Whether it’s preparing for the upcoming school year or celebrating recent graduates, find ways each day to promote the great things that define your success.
Pro Tip: Audit your website to see how well your brand is communicated. In BrandED, Authors Sheninger and Rubin tell readers to assess their website by conducting a website “walkthrough” to determine if the message is clear and consistent as well as to determine if it effectively communicates the school’s story.
Stay tuned for more challenges, reflection questions, leadership models, podcasts, and more by following dereka206.sg-host.com. It’s our job to curate, synthesize, and communicate so that you can lead better and grow faster. In a world plagued by nothing but noise, we help you by getting to simple.
TheSchoolHouse302 is about getting to simple by maximizing effective research-based strategies that empower individuals to lead better and grow faster.
Great School Leaders Understand How to Market & Brand Their School
Don’t miss this vblog on books you need to read to lead better and grow faster. We recommend three titles that are must reads on the topic of building a winning team–branding, recruiting, and selecting top talent.
PS — If you have a topic you want us to cover or need recommendations on books to read in a particular area of leadership, just send us a tweet or email.
Creating and sustaining a winning team of talented people is maybe the single most important task of a leader. But a winning team is not just about putting together a group of high performers. In fact, the problem is twofold: 1. Assembling a team of driven players doesn’t automatically create the chemistry that it takes to “win.” And, 2. Building a team is more about the current culture of your school or business than it is about pulling new people onto your staff.
Consider the first problem. Having all the best players on one squad doesn’t mean that output will go through the roof. In fact, capacity is always more important than competence. You need people who can pivot–agility, adaptability, and the art of learning a new skill far exceed a narrow expertise. Dennis Rodman is considered one of the best rebounders that basketball has ever seen. But he was a leading scorer in college. On a team with shooters like Pippen and Jordan, Rodman found his niche.
Let’s also consider the second problem. If your brand, your culture, and your casting net are weak, your team is not set up to win. To drive the point clearly, we bring forward the Google-culture that attracts talent from around the world. It’s their branding and the fact that their internal working benefits are as well known to the public as they are to their employees.
That leads us to the three most important ways that you can build your winning team–the boosting and branding of your culture, the recruitment techniques that you use, and your selection process when you’re hiring. Let’s dive a bit deeper into each.
Branding Your Team
The branding equation is simple: Story + Priorities = Attraction. In The Power of Branding, Sinanis and Sanfelippo address the importance for schools, or any organization, to tell their story. Too often, even the local community, and sometimes parents, don’t know all the great things that happen within a school. Even worse, when something unfortunate happens, that does get advertised. Schools with the best reputation earn that stature by systematically telling the story of every great moment, program, initiative, and circumstance. It’s why “priorities” is the second component of the equation. Telling a story about how priorities came to fruition builds the belief that the team is winning. In fact, it provides proof of the “scoreboard.” That is precisely what attracts outsiders to a brand so that the team gets stronger from the inside-out as well as from the outside-in.
Recruiting Your Team
Too often, recruitment strategies are passive. A vacancy pops open, the job is posted, and we wait to see what the application pool presents. But with tools as easy to use as Twitter or LinkedIn, it’s almost irresponsible to be less than actively recruiting for top talent, even targeting individuals with a proven track record. Especially if your brand is clear through the stories you tell about the priorities you’ve set and goals you’ve met, it should be fun to glamorize an opening on your team to attract the leading players in your field.
Selecting Your Team
Finally, organizations can’t leave the selection process to an interview alone. Interviews aren’t good measures of anything more than interviewing skills. That said, the key to a quality selection process, even an interview, is through the creation of what we call the archetype of the position. When you have a vacancy, you don’t just need a qualified person to join the team. You need specific traits, skills, experiences, and mindsets to fill your gap. Creating the archetype of the position means intentionally listing (and posting) what it is you’re looking to gain. Yes, you may need a certified social studies teacher, but what other gaps in experience and culture might this person fill? Don’t just consider the primary functions of the role, examine the other aspects of the team that the person is joining to ensure diversity and fit.
Want to Know More? Check out Building a Winning Team. We dive deeper into branding, recruiting, selecting, and a ton of other content to help you create and sustain an awesome team of people. If you want the most successful team possible, you’ll enjoy the technical tips, strategies, and practitioner spotlights that are included in the book. Let us know what you think. We love to hear from you.
Stay tuned for challenges, nuggets of wisdom, reflection questions, technical tips, and the best resources for leading better and growing faster. Follow us at dereka206.sg-host.com to join thousands of leaders who get our alerts, blogs, podcasts, and more.
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TheSchoolHouse302 is about getting to simple by maximizing effective research-based strategies that empower individuals to lead better and grow faster.
Man the ship and bring her to life. ~ First traditional order as an active unit in the Navy
Jon Rennie is a Business Leader, Author, and Speaker. He is Co-Founder, President, and CEO of Peak Demand Inc., a global manufacturer of products for electric utilities.
He served as a Naval Officer on Nuclear Submarines during the Cold War and has been leading industrial businesses for more than 20 years.
He is passionate about leadership and employee engagement. His articles and blog posts have been read and shared all over the world. He believes that Leadership can make a significant difference in the performance of any organization.
Jon provides incredible insight into how the absentee boss leads from their comfort zone.
When asked who he follows to learn and grow, Jon didn’t hesitate to acknowledge the impactful work of Coach Bru.
You have to hear why he gets up at 4:00AM every day.
Jon describes how a ship is nothing more than cold metal in a harbor and that it’s the crew who brings a ship to life. Listen for what he wants to continue to do and how he wants to grow.
Don’t miss what she says about his Dashboard University.
Lastly, Jon covers some of his fascinating life story; he reveals, in the end, that leaders don’t have to know all the answers.
Jon’s interview is packed full of practical ways to become a more present leader. We hope you enjoy this interview as much as we did!
Please follow, like, and comment. Use #onethingseries and #SH302 so that we can find you. For more great leadership content, follow dereka206.sg-host.com.
“You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.” ~ Bob Marley
These are incredibly challenging times, filled with uncertainty. As COVID-19 continues to spread, the world continues to respond. We know that you’re responding too, in whatever unique circumstances are forming around you. Our prayers and thoughts are with everyone during this pandemic.
This month, we’re focused on self-improvement, and the coronavirus almost makes it impossible to ignore what it means for all of us to get better. As we learn and grow, we build trust. Trust makes our communities stronger. The definition of leadership is influence. The challenge of leadership is conflict. The result of leadership is change. We know that you’re leading through conflict toward a time that will be different than what we used to know as our reality.
As you lead forward, we thought it would be beneficial to point to some key resources for being our best selves during the outbreak. While many of us are following the advice of the CDC, and other agencies, who suggest social distancing as a mitigation strategy for the spreading of the virus, we know that leaders are taking action as best they can with whatever information they have. Leading better and growing faster is always our mantra, especially in times like this, and being informed is the number one way we lead and grow. This post is not just more information about COVID-19, but rather the critical direction that we all need for how to bring some normalcy and peace into our lives, how to continue to learn and develop as leaders, and how we can be better tomorrow than we are today.
Strategies For Remaining Calm
Martin Seligman, commonly known as the founder of positive psychology, provides key strategies that we can use when faced with uncertainty. His advice is simple and practical.
Check it out here in Penn Today. Great leaders will use these strategies and help others to do the same.
Exercising Without Going to the Gym
With social gatherings being limited, people are unable to go to some of their favorite locations. This includes the gym. Maintaining a solid health regimen is critical during this time for both mental and physical health benefits. Self-improvement always includes the body and the mind.
Check out this article for no equipment indoor exercises.
Staying fit is important for leading well. In fact, wellness, period, is synonymous with leadership.
Unplugging While You’re Plugged-In
We know that most of our audience is just like we are, which means you’ve been burning the candle at both ends. You’re probably inundated with texts, emails, and online meetings. Social distancing has put everything and everyone is a tech-based cloud (pun intended). That said, we need a healthy relationship with our technology, using it for the betterment of ourselves and others rather than its destructive capabilities.
Check out this piece on realistic guidance for getting unplugged.
Connecting with Your Loved Ones
It may seem obvious but when we’re all stuck inside we have an opportunity to connect with loved ones, especially our household family. But then we don’t. We squander the time away, keeping busy but not connecting. We have an opportunity to strengthen relationships, and great leaders always make that a priority (both with family and friends).
This article has a ton of great advice about staying social in times like this.
Working from Home
Companies everywhere, along with school systems around the globe, are moving to a work-from-home policy. While it’s the smart choice when possible, not everyone knows how to transition successfully to working at home. If you’ve done it for any period of time in the past, you know how hard it can be. But many industries, including education, are just starting to explore how to make the shift.
We like this article, which covers a number of best practices for working from home.
Finally, if you’re looking for what we think is the best resource regarding COVID-19, visit here.
We would love to hear from you regarding what you’re doing differently to self-improve while you keep your distance from others. Lead better, grow faster, stay safe.
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More Resources for You
Grab a Copy of One of Our Books:
7 Mindshifts for School Leaders: Finding New Ways to Think About Old Problems. Order it Here
Retention for a Change is an Amazon Best Seller and our Latest Book: Order it Here
7 Mindshifts for School Leaders: Finding New Ways to Think About Old Problems. 
