Improvement is Always Possible

We have been made to think certain things are absolute truths for most of our lives.  Take, for example, the saying that practice makes perfect.  While this sounds great in theory and can be a great motivation to pursue growth opportunities, an underlying fallacy is embedded in this message.  Take bowling, for example.  The ultimate goal of any bowler is to reach a perfect score of 300 by getting nothing but strikes.  By any standards, this is an impressive feat.  While perfection can be achieved with the right amount of practice, you would be hard pressed to find any professional bowler who scores a 300 consistently.  Hence the need to constantly practice improving performance.  

Even though there are other examples of perfection in sports, every athlete works to get better.  Hence, the message to all of us is that improving our practice is always possible, especially in the field of education.  I genuinely believe that each and every educator has an innate desire to grow, but there are often stumbling blocks along the way that delay or derail an initiative.  Time is probably the number one reason for improvement efforts becoming stifled.  While this is a legitimate challenge, we all know full well that it will materialize at some point.  Knowing this allows us to be proactive and make time to grow as opposed to finding time, which tends to be more reactive.  I shared the following back in 2014:

Let’s face the perceived fact that there will never be enough time to get everything done in any of our days.  Or is there?  Regardless of your respective role in education, time will always be your enemy.  This is where you need to focus less on finding time and more on making time to complete necessary tasks that are not only required but also ones that will allow you to grow, innovate, and develop more of a passion for your work.  Before getting to this point, you must look at how you currently utilize the time you have.  In my case, I was more of a manager as opposed to a leader.

I wrote extensively about chasing growth instead of perfection in Disruptive Thinking in Our Classrooms.  While the assent to growth leading to improvement will endure many twists and turns, there are some things educators can zero in on, which I have listed below.  

• Co-plan lessons, meetings, and professional learning
• De-emphasize non-essential tasks that don’t impact student learning
• Eliminate distractions such as social media and web browsing
• Prioritize passions and interests related to your position or responsibilities 
• Seek collegial support as these people know you and your culture best. 
• Develop a Personal Learning Network (PLN) to learn anytime, anywhere, with anyone you want
• Organize your learning environment such as email, physical space, and support materials to make the most of all available time
• Seek out challenging experiences that will push your practice to new levels 

Improvement is a process, not a singular event.  Growth and improvement start with honestly assessing our current reality.  There is no perfect lesson, project, classroom, school, district, teacher, or administrator.  There is, however, the opportunity to get better every day.  Hence, improvement is always a possibility no matter how much experience you have in education. 

Work Smarter, Not Harder

I have a secret to share. In my humble opinion, I am not very smart.  While others might disagree, such as my mom, I pride myself on being extremely resourceful. However, this was not always my strength.  During my years as a teacher and principal, I would spend countless hours planning, researching, and attending professional learning events to hone my craft in order to become a better educator.  In all honesty, though, I was just doing what I was taught, and thought were the best ways to grow. The amount of effort put forth resulted in me working much harder than I should have been.

Over the years, I began to delegate more and build capacity in others.  I established hiring practices that resulted in the hiring of a lot of smart educators. By investing in, and trusting the people around me, more time was freed up to focus on innovation and large-scale change initiatives to improve school culture. Now, this represented an excellent first step, but probably the most impactful shift to the way I not only thought but worked, came in the unsuspecting form of a little blue bird and a tool called Twitter in 2009. Here is where I finally learned the biggest secret to working smarter, not harder, through the formation of a Personal Learning Network (PLN). The image below illustrates another secret that I have to come clean about, but one that also represents the ultimate power of connected learning.

All of us are limited to the people we surround ourselves with in life.  Social media has completely disrupted that and, in the process, removed barriers such as time, geography, and money.  As I have mentioned for years, the true power of a PLN is not how many people follow you, but the quality and expertise of those with whom you choose to connect and engage with online. No matter the tools used, what results is anyone and everyone can take advantage of collective intelligence. Here is why this matters to everyone regardless of title, position, and power:

• Knowledge, skills, intelligence, and resources are an increasingly valuable currency in the digital world. Why would you not want access to all of these when they are readily available?
• We can now teach each other and learn something we previously had no knowledge of through diverse expertise anywhere, anytime, and from anyone.
• Life is all about choices. So why not embrace the strengths and skills of others around us, and, as a result, create more opportunity to influence others and to disrupt current thinking? 
• Connecting with those who are doing or leading the work provides needed context and motivation to do the same.
• It’s all free with a device connected to the Internet.

Every leader, including students, teachers, administrators, community members, and parents, can benefit from a PLN. HERE you can access a quick-start guide.

Connect yourself to the smart people then help your peers, co-workers, and those you serve do the same. To be more effective, we need to realize that there is a wealth of human resources at our fingertips that can help us all do what we already do better. They can push us to take a critical lens to our work, deliver essential feedback, answer questions, and provide support when needed.  Together we are better.

Always remember that there is someone out there smarter than you. Admitting this is a sign of strength, not weakness. If you genuinely want to get better, and not work harder in the process, connect with these people using digital tools.

The Ascent to Growth

I genuinely believe that most people want to get better in their professional role and they find comfort in growth. Who doesn’t want to make a difference while moving up the career ladder?  However, I say most because complacency, lack of motivation, or not being passionate about the work or the job can inhibit a drive to seek ways to improve.  Since the minority falls in this category, let’s focus on the majority.  For many of us, we are continually seeking out ways to grow and improve professional practice.  Even though the desire is there, and efforts are made, challenges arise.  These come in two primary forms: excuses and people. Let me elaborate on both.

People are our greatest asset, and when we invest in them, success likely follows.  There is no “I” in team, and to achieve goals as a system, the support of many is crucial.  Sometimes though people can play a role that works counter to what we set out to accomplish either at the individual or organizational level.  As much as they are essential in any culture, there are times when they can also impede growth. For reasons that vary, some people are not happy where they are or with the success of others.  What results are concerted efforts to undermine and derail the pursuit of improvement.  

It is essential to recognize both subtle and not so subtle behaviors exhibited by others as you strive to grow. These might be masked by platitudes that get you to rethink putting in the needed time and effort to improve your craft or to move a culture forward. Be confident in who you are and where you want to go. Don’t fall victim to the insecurities, fears, and unhappiness that other people might be grappling with as you work to get better. Even as you strive to learn and improve, a true leader also helps others do the same.  It is okay to focus on yourself when the situation calls, but in the end, helping the people we work with grow is just as important as what we do for ourselves. The process of achieving goals is much more fulfilling when it is a collaborative effort. 

In the words of Jim Rohn, “Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure.” Now this quote might seem a bit harsh at first read, but if you view it with an open mind, you will see that it is quite accurate. In many cases, we believe we can’t accomplish a task or implement an idea because of the perception that a challenge is too difficult to overcome, or the idea might have failed in the past.  In either case, our mind starts to develop a myriad of excuses as to why something won’t or can’t work.  Common impediments include not enough time, lack of money, or too many mandates and directives. Guess what…these are never going away. Growth will never occur if the will to tackle these, and many other impediments aren’t there. If it’s important to you, then you will find a way. If not, then you will make an excuse. The key here is to focus on solutions, even in the face of some difficult challenges.  

Change is hard at both the individual and organizational level. The ascent to growth will not always be easy.  Maybe it’s not people or excuses that get in your way. Perhaps it is your own mind, which can be the fiercest adversary you face on the path to getting better. Confidence and belief are two of the most powerful forces that help to keep us focused on achieving goals.  Just remember this.  You are only limited by the barriers you develop for yourself. 

Zoning in on Change

The comfort zone is the great enemy to creativity; moving beyond it necessitates intuition, which in turn configures new perspectives and conquers fears. - Dan Stevens

There are many impediments to the change process. One of the biggest culprits is fear.  Many times, this either clouds our judgment or inhibits our motivation to take needed risks to both challenge and upend the status quo.  In other cases, we might be afraid of failure.  I often reflect upon how, throughout the course of history, many of society’s most celebrated success stories went through the heartache and letdown of not succeeding at first.  To put it bluntly, these famous failures have influenced our current lives in countless ways.  In their eyes, the act of failing was a catalyst to learn from mistakes and eventually implement ideas or create solutions that have fundamentally changed the world. Henry Ford said it best, “Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” 

Another factor that has a negative impact on change is contentment.  An aspect of human nature is that when we are in a state of comfort, there is no real urgency to do something differently or better.  These mental habits lead to the creation of comfort zones that we rarely step outside of. Why should we if everything is great, right?  Or so our mind has us believe in a false dichotomy. The result is that we often then reside in a zone that is most comfortable, resulting in risk-averse behavior that impedes personal and professional progress.  What typically morphs are fallbacks on some of the most dangerous phrases in any profession such as that’s the way we have always done it, or it’s always worked this way. 

Comfort and fear are intimately connected. Whether separate or together they represent zones that many of us fall into and have trouble at times finding a way out of no matter how hard we try.  They work as powerful forces to keep us in respective lanes that are perceived to provide benefits, either individually or at the organizational level.  The reality though is that these zones hold us, and those who we serve, back.  For change to become business as usual and something that is pursued when needed, it is crucial that we identify where we are currently. The image below provides not only a great visual but also some critical context as to how we can put more energy into zones that lead to changes in practice. 

The main idea here is to find comfort in growth. As you look at the elements depicted in the image above, where do you see yourself dedicating the most time and energy? Be careful not to look at this as black or white.  There is a great deal of gray in each of the zones above.  I for one have added many additional elements through reflection to help move the majority of my efforts to learning and growth.  Consider developing questions aligned to each, using stems such as why, how, when, and what.  Improvement and ultimate success in the endeavors we are engaged in rely on acknowledging the zone where we spend the most time and making consistent efforts to invest more in learning and growth. 

Feedback Should Be a Dialogue, Not a Monologue

Feedback can bring people together in the pursuit of a shared goal. Criticism, on the other hand, can drive people apart. In many situations going with the former is the better course of action.  Below is a piece I pulled from an article titled Using Neuroscience to Make Feedback Work and Feel Better that explains why it matters so much:

Feedback isn’t just a ritual of the modern workplace. It’s the means by which organisms, across a variety of life-forms and time periods, have adapted to survive. To University of Sheffield cognitive scientist Tom Stafford, feedback is the essence of intelligence. “Thanks to feedback we can become more than simple programs with simple reflexes, and develop more complex responses to the environment,” he writes. “Feedback allows animals like us to follow a purpose.” It’s no coincidence the words organism and organization share a Latin root. Just as feedback enables the former to flourish, so it does for the latter.

The feedback process matters.

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Nobody likes to be just talked at regardless of the age group of the person being spoken to.  Even though there are most certainly cases that necessitate this, context matters.  Lately, I have been thinking about how we give feedback to our learners, colleagues, and those who we supervise.  Maybe give is the wrong word to use here. The prevailing notion is that one person speaks while the other(s) listens intently and reflects on the advice given.  Herein lies one of the greatest misconceptions with an effective feedback loop.  In many cases, feedback is seen as something that is given to another person.  It becomes even more complicated when it is viewed as something that must be delivered. 

When there is a focus on delivery, we run the risk of focusing more on what is said as opposed to a process that fosters reflection and ultimately questions from the receiver.  Often, we settle on what the feedback is in terms of what people have done well, or not, through our own lens.  So much time is then given to mapping out what the feedback is that we want to share with the other person that it becomes more about us than the person or people we are trying to help.  When done this way it can be construed as criticism as opposed to a catalyst for growth. 

If the purpose is to help others grow, then a mentality of delivering the message or advice has to be rethought.  Feedback should be a dialogue, not a monologue. A conversational approach can lead to high value and actual changes to practice. Below are some specific reasons why the conversation is such an integral part of the feedback loop:

• The receiver sees that it is more about him/her than the giver.
• Imparts a greater sense of trust on behalf of the receiver resulting in a more powerful relationship with the giver.
• Creates the space for open reflection based on what was shared.
• Opens the door for discussion on action steps to be taken.
• Provides the receiver with an opportunity to present his/her own perspective on the feedback given.  This can result in the sharing of evidence or more context that the giver might not have been aware of when initially providing the feedback.
• A conversational approach can motivate people to seek out feedback. Research suggests that asking for it can help organizations tilt culture toward continuous improvement.

Delivering feedback in the form of a monologue is an outdated process that can be improved whether you are working with kids or adults.  Instead of preparing how you are going to “deliver” the message think about creating the conditions where the receiver will value the recommendations.  A conversation that incorporates the art of listening will go a long way to creating a culture where feedback is not only acted upon but asked for regularly. 

Finding Comfort in Growth

"Comfort is the enemy of progress." - Hugh Jackman, The Greatest Showman

Have you ever been complacent when it comes to undertaking or performing a task? Of course, you have, as this is just a part of human nature.  In our personal lives, complacency can result if we are happy or content with where we are. Maybe we don’t change our work out routines because we have gotten used to doing the same thing day in and day out.  I know I love using the elliptical for cardio, but rarely use any setting beside manual. Or perhaps our diet doesn’t change as we have an affinity for the same types of foods, which might or might not be that good for us.  So, what’s my point with all of this? It is hard to grow and improve if one is complacent.  This is why we must always be open to finding comfort in growth.  If we don’t, then things might very well never change. 

The issue described above is not just prevalent in our personal lives. Complacency plagues many organizations as well.  When we are in a state of relative comfort with our professional practice, it is often difficult to move beyond that zone of stability and dare I say, “easy” sailing.  If it isn’t broke, then why fix it, right? Maybe we aren’t pushed to take on new projects or embrace innovative ideas.  Or perhaps there is no external accountability to improve really. Herein lies the inherent challenge of taking on the status quo in districts, schools, and organizations.  

There are many lenses through which we can take a more in-depth look to gain more context on the impact complacency has on growth and improvement. Take test scores for example.  If a district or school traditionally has high achievement and continues to do so the rule of thumb is that no significant change is needed. Just because a school or educator might be “good” at something doesn’t equate to the fact that change isn’t required in other areas.  It is also important to realize that someone else can view one’s perception of something being good in an entirely different light.  Growth in all aspects of school culture is something that has to be the standard.  It begins with getting out of actual and perceived comfort zones to truly start the process of improving school culture. 

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In a recent article Joani Junkala shares some great thoughts on the importance of stepping outside our comfort zones.

Stepping out of our comfort zone requires us to step outside of ourselves. If we are going to strive for progress, whether professionally or personally, we have to get comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable. This isn’t easy for everyone. For someone like me, who is a self-prescribed introvert, this can be difficult. Stepping out of our comfort zone requires extra effort, energy, and sometimes forced experiences. It requires us to set aside our fear and be vulnerable. We have to be willing to try something new, different, difficult, or even something that’s never been done before. We have to put ourselves out there — trusting in ourselves and trusting others with our most vulnerable self. It’s a frightening thought. What if we get it wrong? What if we look silly? Will it be worth it in the end? Will I stand alone? What if I fail? Oh but, what if I succeed and evolve?

Change begins with each and every one of us and spreads from there. Finding comfort in growth and ultimately improvement begins with being honest with ourselves.  Let me be blunt for a minute.  The truth is that there is no perfect lesson, project, classroom, school, district, teacher, or administrator.  There is, however, the opportunity every day to get better.  This is not to say that great things are not happening in education. They most definitely are. My point is that we can never let complacency detract us from continually pursuing a path to where our learners need us to be.  

Are you comfortable where you are at professionally? What about your school, district, or organization? Where are opportunities for growth? By consistently reflecting on these questions a continual path to improvement can be paved.  Questions lay the path forward. Actions are what get you to where you want to be.