Great leaders understand that their own learning directly impacts their effectiveness. ~ TheSchoolHouse302

Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi, a Sōtō Zen monk, is known for his words of wisdom about directing our attention to ourselves as learners, not through what we’ve accomplished but through what we still don’t know. “Soto Zen Buddhism is distinguished by its focus on the down-to-earth practice of “everyday zen.” 

We appreciate this sect of Buddhism because it encourages awareness of the workings of one’s own mind as a means of living mindfully in all areas of daily life–at home, at work, and in the community. This is powerful as learners and as leaders. His famous quote goes like this: “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” This means that there are occasions when experience is the enemy of understanding. The longer we see an issue one way, the harder it is to change our minds about that issue. And, the longer a problem persists, the more likely it is accepted as unsolvable. 

Suzuki teaches us that “the mind of a beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities.” The mind of an expert is often the opposite, coming to a conclusion based on what we already know versus the promise and potential of making new discoveries. This is a persistent problem in all fields, and we see it alive and well within education. The field of education is riddled with this problem, holding on to traditions and activities that we refer to as “Protected Untouchables” in 7 Mindshifts for School Leaders.   

We can point to a number of things that we still do the same way that we’ve done for years, despite the research that tells us otherwise. Consider grading practices, such as the 100-point scale or the way we average students’ assignments within a marking period. First, there aren’t valid reasons for why we do this, and, second, there’s clear research that tells us that other approaches would serve our learners–both their academic and social well-being–better if we made significant changes to our current practices. 

Even at Yale University, where grading is said to have begun, professor of psychology Dr. Laurie Santos still must enter grades even though her very own research shows that it hinders the learning process. This speaks to the numerous challenges associated with large-scale change, which requires a completely new way of thinking. 

Grading is just one example of so many other long-standing traditions. But, it can be used to support the notion that education is an impenetrable industrial complex. We’re trapped within a system of schooling that spans from kindergarten through college that relies on methods and practices that are designed to measure learning, but then fall short in actually determining mastery. We keep a practice in place that thwarts our ability to meet our own predetermined goals. Pick another problem; the story is the same.

Part of the problem is that we think like experts. We are so used to doing things one way that we can’t see any other options, even when the literature is clear in our own field. The opposite approach is to use a Beginner’s Mindset, stepping back to see a problem from a whole new perspective. This is why certain school systems are unsuccessful with changes. They’re looking at the problem with the same lens that they used to create it. One reason that keeps us from sustaining new changes is that we constantly flip back-and-forth between one initiative and the next or we go back to what we’ve always done because it’s what we know, even when it doesn’t work. 

We learned from Richard Elmore that a beginner’s mind is the approach necessary to challenge old and persistent thinking. What we need more than anything are models for generating new designs for how to tackle old problems. Your journey to having a beginner’s mind can start today, but you must first hold yourself accountable to the following A, B, Cs of a Beginner’s Mind. If you’re reading this, it’s because you’re willing to challenge the status quo with new mindshifts for teaching and leading in your school. Let’s get started with three simple steps that any school leader can take. 

#1. Ask Questions–Generate probing questions, don’t accept a singular perspective to see the challenge with a new perspective 

Excerpt from 7 Mentals Shifts: Finding New Ways to Think About Old Problems

Lutchin’s findings are clear. Once we have success with solving a particular problem a certain way, we continue to apply that same approach time and time again. This limits us from solving persistent problems because we get stuck with old ways of thinking and the model we used to solve the problems that didn’t work on our first attempt. To battle this, great leaders learn to ask effective questions. As E.E. Cummings penned, “Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.” 

We subscribe to what Todd Henry has to say in Herding Tigers about gleaning information from the team: 

Because of vastly different life experiences, each person on your team has a unique perspective. Those experiences create filters that we can’t help but bring to the work we do. Two people can look at the same problem and see two entirely different things. This is why we need one another in order to see the full picture. However, it’s not as easy as it sounds to gain this perspective. A big part of this process is establishing regular feedback loops with team members so that you can (a) reinforce the ‘main thing’ and (b) hear their front-line perspective on the state of their work. 

Pro Level Tip: Memorize great and useful question-stems to help generate good conversation and discussions. Questioning is a skill that requires practice and repetition. If you are at a loss on where to start, always remember the immortal words of Rudyard Kipling: “I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How And Where and Who.” Beginners ask lots of questions, and so should you. 

#2. Be Vulnerable–Always think like a novice, and never overestimate your own expertise

Vulnerable leaders are “more interested in understanding reality than in being right and are not afraid to accept that they are wrong.” Being vulnerable does not mean being weak. In fact, admitting failure, blindspots, and challenges, helps the team to better understand the gaps in a transparent way. If we’re going to solve problems, we have to first be clear about what they are and why they exist.

One of the things that leaders who have a Beginner’s Mind are adept at doing is consistently working toward self-improvement. Not only are they on a quest to learn more and get better, but they also communicate their own weaknesses as well as the way they’re trying to address those deficiencies to their team. This puts us in a position with less authority over what it means to be an expert, but it also fosters the mindset that we ought to act as novices whenever we can. The novice mind, as Suzuki demonstrated, is the one that’s most open to learning and change. 

Pro Level Tip: We have to be willing to ask the team, “what am I not seeing?” or “what am I missing?” Letting your team know that you are aware of your own blindspots is empowering for them. It also builds trust. Remember, one of Covey’s high trust behaviors is to Get Better. When you do that with transparency and the help of your team, you’ll build even stronger bonds with them, and they’ll see that using a Beginner’s Mind is important for all of us. The way to shed your expert brain is to be vulnerable about what you don’t know and what you need to improve about yourself.  

#3. Create Space–Get past the constant noise, and don’t operate on autopilot

Very often, if we are so close to a situation that we cannot see it clearly. Our emotions, busyness, and distractions veil our site and hinder our ability to solve problems effectively. This is essentially the forest-for-the-trees argument, and despite the cliche, it’s true of many leaders. To practice a beginner’s mind, we need space. The constant noise of the day-in-and-day-out scenario can keep us on autopilot. Solving problems requires thinking differently; thinking differently requires time and space. 

There are times when we literally need to separate ourselves from a situation to be able to lead it effectively. It’s been documented that we make up to 35,000 decisions a day; if that’s true, then many of our important decisions deserve more thought and attention than we’re giving them on autopilot. 

Pro Level Tip: Literally separate yourself from a situation when possible. If it is a non-threatening emergency, go for a walk, stand up, grab a glass of water, or simply make time and space away from the decision at hand. Allow yourself to free your mind so that you are able to revisit the situation with a clearer perspective. The most mentally tough people don’t make decisions with haste. They’re positive, rational, and focused. That only happens when they create space for themselves. 

Final Thoughts

Like most things in life that are worthwhile, embracing a beginner’s mindset takes time and effort. It’s something we know that we should do and then as the day progresses, we find ourselves head down, working hard, and pushing for results, only to find ourselves falling back into the old habits that Suzuki-Roshi warns us of. That’s why we created the A, B, and Cs of a Beginner’s Mind: Ask Questions, Be Vulnerable, and Create Space. It’s simple enough to follow and powerful enough to produce results. Remember, to lead better and grow faster, we are working on progress, not perfection. Ask questions, Be Vulnerable, and Create Space. 

As always, we want to hear from you. Please hit us with a like, a follow, a comment, or a share. It helps us and it helps other readers, like you, to find our work so that more school leaders can lead better and grow faster. 

We can’t wait to hear from you. 

Joe & T.J.

Great School Leaders Know How (and Why) to Tell Their School’s Story

We think that everyone can agree that there simply is not enough good news being spread among the masses, all around the world. That’s why we loved John Krasinski and his show, Some Good News, during the pandemic. It was a great reminder to all of us that great things were happening despite the rest of what we heard and saw on TV. Spreading the good news about our schools is no different. 

The most important reason to tell your school’s story is that if you don’t control or contribute to the narrative, someone else will. And, the media is quite negative; as the old saying goes, “if it bleeds, it leads.” Why? The reality is that our brains are attracted to it and controversy sells. A Pew Research Center’s study revealed that most people believe the media negatively contributes to our view of the world, yet, we still tune in.

64% of Americans say social media has a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in the U.S. today.

~ Pew Research Center

That’s why we need to highlight as much of the positive news about our schools as possible. Great leaders embrace this responsibility, and they learn to brand well. This post is designed to help you to tell your school’s story better or, at the very least, to validate the ways in which you already spread your school’s good news. 

The second most important reason to tell your school’s story is that your school deserves to have a brand that attracts top talent. With staff shortages and shallow application pools, school leaders are missing opportunities to showcase their school if they don’t have channels for doing so. The fact is, when it comes to attracting, hiring, and retaining teachers, there are–and will continue to be–winners and losers. Some schools and districts will fill their positions to a greater degree than others, and it will come right down to one thing–the reputation that your school culture has within the community. 

If you have a crappy internal culture, that’s the place school leaders must start and change fast. The best way to do so is through a pressure and support model that’s designed to set clear values and high expectations that are attached to strong staff support.  

But, if your school is already a decent place to work–treating teachers and other staff with dignity and respect–you should be telling your story as loudly and as far and wide as you can. The first step is that all school leaders must learn to think like marketers. 

School Leaders Should Think Like a Marketing Agency

Thinking like a marketer is not something you likely learned in your principal preparation program. That’s because the people who build those programs are former school leaders, and they didn’t likely think like marketers either. TheSchoolHouse302 is to the rescue; we always try to demonstrate the nuances of leadership, including the counterintuitive nature of leading well and the aspects of school leadership that you can’t find from most other leadership development firms. With that said, we’re here to tell you that if you don’t have a marketing hat as one of your many school leadership thinking caps, you need to get one…fast. 

To get you started with your new marketing mindset, we developed five marketing considerations for school leaders that come from research and evidence in the field of marketing. Again, most school leaders don’t study this closely, but you do–or at least you do now–which gives you a competitive advantage when it comes to building your winning team.

5 Ways for School Leaders to Think Like a Marketer 

#1. Culture is King–Marketing is about who you are, not what you are 

The first principle of marketing is that it’s not just advertising; it’s all of the lived experiences that your customers and employees have on a daily basis. You can advertise anything you want, but that doesn’t mean it’s real. Marketing starts with the culture of the school. It’s everything you do. For a long time, schools could operate without a customer service mentality because going to school is compulsory–everyone needs education and everyone sends their children to school. School choice changes that reality. Parents have options and teachers have options, more options than ever before. If we don’t build a positive culture on the inside of our organizations, nothing we say to advertise our schools will matter

Pro Tip: Great school leaders don’t just know that culture is king, they measure it. Check out our Reputable, Effective, Perception Survey for Schools (REPSS) for an example of an instrument that can measure the success and needs of any school culture.  

#2. Great Brands Make a Difference–Marketing is about innovation and leadership 

School leaders who care about marketing can learn from great brands like Patagonia, which has “cause no unnecessary harm” as one of its four core values. For schools to follow the “we make a difference” principle of marketing, the school should clearly be innovative, making a substantial change to what it means to be an effective school. The new crop of teachers who are entering into education wants to work at schools that are not only having an impact but are doing things differently, breaking the traditions and testing new waters. School leaders who want to reap the benefits of an innovative environment need to build a brand that speaks to taking risks and pushing boundaries. 

Pro Tip: Revisit your vision statement and core values. Do the words speak to innovation, leadership, change, and risk-taking? If not, consider a revision. The information that you have posted online are your marketing materials. 

#3. First Follows Matter–Marketing is about knowing “the others”

One thing that great marketers do is to find their people. Seth Godin calls this tactic the “people like us do things like this” phenomena. People want to be part of something that makes them feel included with a sense of belonging that fills a very natural human desire. Knowing this helps leaders to make decisions about who to give certain tasks to and how to spread news quickly when the need arises. School leaders know who the big fans are of the school and those are the people who need to know first when something special is happening or when something new is on the horizon. They are the marketing team, whether they know it or not. 

Aside from Godin, you can check out this concept in more detail from Li Jin who wrote about 100 True Fans, Kevin Kelly who talks about 1000 True Fans, and Derek Sivers’ famous video called, Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy. The point is that when you want to market something, you need to spread the word through the voices of the people who are likely going to tell the story by finding “the others.” 

Pro Tip:  School leaders who want to build a reputation outside of the school walls should create a marketing team to discuss what to market and how to market the school’s story. The first step in this direction is to simply add a “marketing” agenda item to the leadership team meeting. 

#4. Stand Out Amongst the Crowd–Marketing is about being unique 

Unfortunately, schools in America are all very much the same in terms of the student and staff generic experience. It’s still very common to see English 9, English 10, English 11, and English 12 as the high school English curriculum versus naming these courses and teaching them thematically through the use of unique content and experiences that are relevant to our diverse student populations–whether that be their background or interests. The good news is that becoming unique and marketing something special about your school isn’t difficult. If you want to attract people who want to belong to a special experience then you need to market the uniqueness of your school or district. 

Pro Tip: Reflect with your team: what makes our school different for students and staff that would help us to stand out in the crowded space of teaching and learning? What can we do that would make us unique and special for our students and staff? 

#5. Show Up Regularly–Marketing is about being consistent

Anyone can send a tweet once in a while to demonstrate the things that are happening in their school. That’s not enough. Great marketers all have one thing in common–which is also common among great leaders–they’re persistent and resilient. They consistently show up with great messaging, new material, and interesting stories. Their news is on multiple channels with tons of likes, positive comments, and shares. The great story that you have to tell is only as good as your reach and the response that you get from your audience. The key is to be loud and proud. 

Pro Tip: We hate to say it, but get on Twitter. Three posts a day is the magic formula. If you’re on Twitter, get on more often. Twitter has become an educator’s workspace for sharing ideas, posting photos, and building a school, district, and personal brand. We’ll see you there: @tjvari & @Supt_Jones. 

Your School is a Brand 

As we wrap up this post, we encourage you to think about the things that great brands have that schools also tend to create: vision statements, core values, logos, merchandise, etc. As a school leader, your access to taking photos, posting news, and promoting a daily message is far greater than what many other professions offer in terms of an image. It’s just about taking advantage of what you’re already doing by telling your story to the world. 

And, we owe it to ourselves and the profession. When you see schools in the news, it’s rarely a depiction of the good things that we’re doing. Let’s change that narrative together. 

We want to hear from you. Please hit us with a like, a follow, a comment, or a share. It helps us and it helps other readers, like you, to find our work so that more school leaders can lead better and grow faster. 

We can’t wait to hear from you. 

Joe & T.J.