Leadership coach for educators and business leaders, Julie Schniers, shares her insights around coaching others to create opportunities for growth, self- discovery, increased confidence, and a focus to accomplish their goals. She focusses on the importance of communication, connections, and confidence. Coaching curiosity is a key.

Visit Julie’s website and connect here.

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.100] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:00:29.910] – Steve
Building Your Coaching Impact: Confidence, Communication, Connections. Today’s guest is Julie Schniers, a teacher turned award-winning speaker. Julie now works with businesses and organizations of all types, helping them focus on what matters most – their people. After more than a decade in the world of education, Julie now works as a speaker, team culture consultant, and leadership coach, helping leaders and teams strengthen communication, connection, and confidence so culture and performance can grow together. Culture and performance growing together certainly is embedded in our coaching work as instructional coaches and school leaders. So I’m really excited to have Julie join us today. Welcome, Julie.

[00:01:26.610] – Julie
Hey, thanks for bringing me on. I’m so excited about our conversation.

[00:01:31.110] – Steve
I’m looking forward to it. So looking at your background, I’m wondering what were the most common traits you found as you entered into coaching and consulting business leaders at various organizations with the work that you had been doing as a speech and communications teacher and a teacher leader in your school?

[00:01:53.750] – Julie
I mean, the truth is, people are people. And I’ve said this and not everyone agrees, but there’s not a lot of difference between a Fortune 500 company president and a debate team top 5% in the nation, I fought real hard and please hear me roar team president. Like, the reality is that there’s not a lot of difference. And even though I was super worried about there being such a big difference that I wouldn’t be as effective. People in your space, the people that you coach, I mean, they were the kids on my team at one point, right? Kids grow up and they go and they work in the real world, but we all come from a certain place that builds who we are, whether it’s environment or our background, our experiences. And as an educator, which you know, as an educator, that is part of learning how to navigate what people need and how to reach them. And the same is just true about working with people in companies, big and small.

[00:02:52.270] – Steve
So in the introduction, when I read that piece, what matters most – they’re people. I guess that’s the common core, huh? Whether you were in the classroom, whether you were working with your, debate team.

[00:03:07.690] – Julie
Yeah.

[00:03:08.030] – Steve
Or in the work that you’re doing now.

[00:03:10.770] – Julie
Well, when I started coaching, Steve, so I ended up coaching at one of the biggest schools in Texas and when I started, I got 3 phone calls from people who knew the team, and they said, “Julie, do you know what you have done? These are the worst-behaved kids in the district.” And I was like, well, I thought that the job was a good opportunity, and I felt called to do the thing. And like, ah, crap, what have I done? And I start – okay, sidebar, like, little story. I start cleaning out the teacher before me’s desk, and I find this piece of paper that has a letter to the school district from a sub refusing to ever sub from the school district again. And attached is a letter that the kids had gotten together and written to the sub, and it was titled, “To the Gatekeeper of Hell.” And I thought, you know what?

[00:03:57.991] – Steve
[laughter]

[00:03:58.180] – Julie
I might not know what I have gotten myself into. And as I continued to clean stuff out, I did find lots of remnants of, oh yeah, those phone calls were, yeah, they were built out of truths from somewhere.

[00:04:10.950] – Julie
So having to even pivot a culture make kids want to buy in to the new idea that I wanted to create on the team. Just like taking over a company or just like building your own dream company. I mean, those pieces can be a little bit challenging and that is kind of what ended up weaving my experiences to the work world, even though I wasn’t quite sure it would weave, it did. It wove straight in because it’s still people fighting for culture. It’s still us helping each other show up as our best selves. And that is what makes the difference and it’s what made the difference in the classroom too.

[00:04:44.500] – Steve
So most of our listeners have either a formal or informal coaching role. How do you define a coaching approach?

[00:04:54.920] – Julie
Mm, man, that’s a really tough question. I don’t think that all coaches are made the same, and I don’t think all clientele are made the same. And I’m gonna just share this little snippet, and then we’ll bring it back to the question and cross-apply it. I had a leader once in a coaching session say to me, Julie, can you just tell me what I need to learn? Like, tell me what the things that I need to be good at to be a good leader are. And I said, I can’t do that because who you are and how you are best gonna be able to show up is gonna be different than the next person I’m working with. And who your team needs is gonna be different than what his team needs. So you showing that up as your best self, and helping your people be able to show up as their best self. That’s the answer to the question. What that looks like, only you can decide. And I think that’s true for coaching and in the coaching realm with you and your clients as well, because if I’m not a fit for you as a coach, then – it is the nature of the beast.

[00:06:00.840] – Julie
Now, I know that in some places, and maybe some of your people, you don’t get a choice, okay? Like, I’m coaching you through, and this is a school district assignment. You better, like, lean in.

[00:06:09.720] – Steve
Yeah.

[00:06:11.120] – Julie
So I do think in that space, we aren’t gonna always be for everyone. Not everyone is going to love our approach, which is why if you’re a good coach, especially when people don’t have a choice whether to choose you or not, it’s important that you are thinking through, how am I showing up as my best? Number one. But number two, how am I helping them show up as their best? Because your job as a coach is still to help your clientele, whoever they are, to be able to show up as their best self. And no matter if you’re an instructional coach or a life coach – those pieces cross-apply. If you have a coach title, a coach heart, a coach assignment, it is your job to not just coach them up by telling them what to do, because that isn’t going to be the answers that are going to have the best benefit and success rates. It’s going to be helping them navigate their journey to the best of your ability, even if the journey is getting on track with school district requirements, or if the journey is helping them navigate something that’s really challenging.

[00:07:18.420] – Julie
So my approach as a coach is how can I help you show up as your best self? Which takes leaning in and learning what it is that helps them shine the brightest. It is leaning in and communicating with them in a way that they understand, that they’re going to grasp the terminology, that they’re going to feel like, oh, she sees and hears me and knows me and gets me and wants me to be my best. Which does mean you’re gonna have to make those connections to build the relationship enough to know what that person actually needs to, I know, here I am leaning right into my 3 C’s – to be able to show up as their most confident self. Because our best work as educators, as businessmen, as coaches is gonna come when we are our most confident selves. So as a coach, you’ve gotta lean into communication, connection, confidence, which of course I was gonna say that because those 3 C’s are the power play that I throw into everything I talk about.

[00:08:18.930] – Steve
So before we jump into your 3 C’s, I’m hearing the coach, has to be engaged in learning what the coachee needs in order for the coach to play their role. There’s a connection I make when I’m working with teachers and professional learning communities. And I describe, we’re gonna look at student work, student performance. And the question we’re gonna ask is, what do the students need us to learn? I guess that hits curiosity on the coach’s part to figure out what they have to learn to work with that individual.

[00:08:58.100] – Julie
Well, you know what? I mean, everyone listening, you and I, we’re like, duh, right? Like, of course. You know, of course, that’s the keys to the kingdom. And you’re going to probably agree with this because you’ve got experience in lots of places. What I have found in education is that not all educators or people that work in that realm understand the importance of what you just said – that engagement piece, that what can I learn about my learners. There are so many, and I worked with them, I have worked with them because I still work with school districts, teachers who are like, my job – and I had a teacher literally say these words to me once – my job is to teach history, not to build relationships with kids. And I thought whoa. Because here’s the other reality, especially in today’s world, and I haven’t been in the classroom in, you know, 6 years. If your idea of helping your people, whether in this case is your, you know, your kids in the classroom to show up as their best self and learn history is to just jam history down their throats, you’re missing the mark because we can get online.

[00:10:08.340] – Julie
YouTube and AI are gonna teach us a heck of a lot more than probably another brain in the back of the room can. And they probably rather learn from YouTube videos than from somebody who has been teaching history for 20 years, if you think your only important piece of your job is to test them on what they learned in your classroom.

[00:10:25.210] – Steve
Right.

[00:10:25.210] – Julie
If you are not engaging with them and building those relationships and learning, okay, why are you struggling after you haven’t been struggling in my class for an entire semester? There’s something else going on here, right? Like, I think that the core of every educator has a heart for it. None of us really did it for the money. So, the reality becomes what holds us back from automatically showing up for people and engaging? And the answer to that question, there, I feel like there’s a lot of them and there’s a lot of heavy pieces that could link there. But as a coach, you have hopefully seen how beautiful and incredible it is to be curious, ask curious questions, dig deeper, not only to help your learners, but to help you help your learners show up as their best.

[00:11:12.460] – Steve
So let’s jump into the 3 Cs that you built into the title for our podcast.

[00:11:19.400] – Julie
Mm-hmm.

[00:11:19.920] – Steve
Confidence, communication, and connections. We’ll take them each one at a time. But where’s best to start?

[00:11:27.960] – Julie
I mean, communication would be my favorite place to start because I like to say that communication is what you need to build connection. And connection is where you will see how you can be more beneficial in the world of confidence. And when you have communication, connection, and confidence, you’re gonna build culture, culture in a space, culture in how people behave with each other, even in close relationship. But communication, connection, confidence have a two-prong approach in everything that I share and teach, and that is self and others. And self has to come before others. You have to have this self leadership piece carved out well, or whatever is happening in your self-leadership space is gonna ooze out on other people. So how am I communicating with my own head and heart? Because that’s gotta come before how I’m communicating with other people. If I’m telling myself, gosh, I suck at this and I’m not really good in this, how am I gonna navigate this? And how – there’s no way I can make this happen. You are not gonna walk into a room and communicate with your team and then be like, oh my gosh, she’s got herself together.

[00:12:31.240] – Julie
Life is good. That doesn’t happen. How you communicate with your own head and heart sets precedence. It sets the stage for how we’re gonna communicate with other people. So when you’re teaching yourself empathy, when you’re teaching yourself confidence, when you’re teaching yourself, I can do hard things, that’s gonna ooze out onto other people. You can do hard things. You should be confident. You should have empathy with yourself. Okay? Because you get what you give. And then of course, in the realm of connection, how do I really connect with what I need and where my feet are and not not how crazy life is around me, not that I’d rather be on my phone on social media. That’s a heavy piece that we’ve had to turn a lot of workshops in, right? Those connection pieces of me being present so that I can show up as my best self is step number 1, so that then I can connect with other people. So before I can even think about relationships with people around me in my circle of influence, and that’s something that I always talk about is it’s like a hula hoop that holds around you everywhere you go.

[00:13:27.530] – Julie
You have this circle of influence. You never ever know. And then my favorite thing to share out in keynotes are some of the stories and those connection pieces that remind us how powerful we are in connection. But if I am not able to connect with what I know I need and where I am and my best self, I’m not gonna be able to build those healthy relationships that are gonna be difference makers. And then of course, when I’m communicating with my head well and I’m connecting with where my feet are, I’m gonna be able to show up more confidently. Same for my people. When I’m communicating with them well, when I’m building relationships and connecting with them well, not only am I going to be able to build confidence in them differently, but I’m going to be able to build confidence from them believing and being confident in me as their leader. And that is a powerful piece that will never come without connection and communication. So they’re all aligned. Which one do you wanna play in first?

[00:14:24.310] – Steve
So 2 words kind of rattled around in my brain as I was listening to you. And the first one may be obvious, but it’s modeling.

[00:14:38.100] – Julie
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

[00:14:41.800] – Steve
So in my leadership role or my coaching role, I need to be modeling that exact same set of behaviors. So all the self-work is a critical element to that modeling part.

[00:15:01.100] – Julie
Well, and what I find, which I grew up in a home where I heard often, “do what I say, not what I do.” And I know that that’s an old mentality. And you’ve got a coaching audience that are all sitting around cringing. And the truth is, it just was a way that my dad said, “I don’t have time to explain everything and do it great myself, but this is what you should do.” And I find with the companies and the organizations that I work with, this is not uncommon. We might not say it like that anymore because that’s old school and that’s silly and we’ve been taught out of that. But the reality is, as a leader, and this is a really great reflection moment for everyone listening – as a leader, how good are you at self-care? As a leader, how good are you at unplugging when you are worried, frustrated, and really getting connected to where you are and what you need? Because we let ourselves get so busy. When you are the lead of a successful team, of a hurting team, it doesn’t matter. When you are busy, the very first thing we let go of is ourself.

[00:16:14.940] – Julie
It’s the very first thing that we go, okay, I’ve gotta take care of everybody else. So I’m gonna put out all the fires. So then, I’ll worry about those pieces of me later. But you are not gonna be able to show up as your best self to put out the fires if you aren’t taking care of you. And I know self-care was an easy one to lean into, but let’s cross-apply it everywhere. In conflict, if you are avoiding conflict because you don’t have time to have hard conversations, then you’re teaching your people to avoid conflict. Even if you’re like, I don’t have time for that right now. I would like for them to deal with this because I don’t want drama on the staff, or I don’t want drama with my people. I don’t want drama in between my clients or whatever the case may be. But if you are also backing up because you don’t have time to deal with it, you’re teaching that. So the hardest thing to do for a busy leader, which I find exists a ton in super successful places and super struggle spaces, if you are that busy and overwhelmed, the very first thing you let go of is you, which is why, it sounds easy, but I have made it like a huge crux of the conversation when I keynote or I workshop because that reminder.

[00:17:12.170] – Julie
And they are silly reminders, Steve. They’re like, okay, when you get on a plane, what is the very first thing that you see in the safety demonstration? Put your mask on first, because if you’re dead, you can’t help other people. Like, it is what it is. We’ve heard it before. It’s not uncommon. Duh, Julie, duh. But do we do it?

[00:17:30.450] – Steve
Yeah, I just read a piece that if there’s, there’s no way to have social emotional health for kids in a school – if the kids can’t look and see their teacher has social-emotional health.

[00:17:45.420] – Julie
Yeah.

[00:17:48.540] – Steve
So here’s the other word as I was listening to you with your 3 C’s. I’m thinking that the word vulnerability plays through those.

[00:17:59.380] – Julie
And maybe the hardest word to have conversations around. Because not many leaders in my space that I end up working with are real giddy about having vulnerable conversations. In part of my workshops, we all do some share time. We have conversations. I weave that in and I have fought leadership in some spaces about that. Like, I don’t know that we need to have those – but it’s usually everyone’s very favorite part – to get to have conversations and share because that sharing is what builds connections. And those connections again – those connections are gonna be what builds confidence within our teams and builds culture that we wanna be a part of. But I will say I’m never gonna ask you to do something that I’m not willing to do. So if I’m gonna ask you to be vulnerable, I’m gonna start first. Matter of fact, I’ve got this acronym that I use for one of my very favorite keynotes, and it’s LEANIN. Of course, in the world of education, this is the audience that’s gonna appreciate a good acronym. So thank you already for appreciating.

[00:19:01.770] – Julie
My teacher roots are strong.

[00:19:03.390] – Julie
And I remind people, no one’s going to lean on you if you are not willing to lean in. You’ve got to go first. You’re going to get what you give. And I have a friend who is super sweet and bubbly and everything is always just fine. And she’s the last person I’d share my crap with, right? Because if she’s never going to tell me the hard things that are going on, well, how dare I tell her the hard things going on in my life? So this is – and this gets to be a deep conversation. Start asking questions between personal versus professional, and where are those lines? And I’ve worked with HR groups where we had to go, okay, we’re talking about connections, not relationships on staff. Like the reality is, I know that that line can get blurred easily. So I’m not saying you should talk about your divorce, but I am saying, if you want authentic answers to questions, you’ve got to give authentic answers to questions. And it’s just important to build that vulnerability bone with honesty, but that honesty is going to build loyalty, trust, and psychological safety.

[00:20:01.330] – Julie
Safety with your people. I mean, studies show this. This isn’t even a Julie thing. The research tells us that. So I do think it’s a professional piece on what we share, but it’s really important that we are willing to not only ask hard questions, but answer hard questions authentically.

[00:20:21.630] – Steve
Yeah. Bingo. When I was looking on your website under the section of coaching, I pulled a quote that I want to share and then just have you expand on. But you have this on your website describing coaching. “You already have it in you. It’s just my job to bring out the amazing that already exists in ways that will create opportunities for growth, self-discovery, increased confidence, and find a focus that will help you accomplish your goals.” Expand on that a little?

[00:21:00.380] – Julie
Oh, man. When I started coaching, let’s just back up to why that even exists on my website. When I started coaching, I told myself, I am not equipped for this. I have 2 degrees, neither one of them were in education, and I ended up in education. So when I decided to leave education, which I’ve been coaching kids, and when I left, just a little backstory, that 7, we grew to, that team of 7, that was a struggle bus. We grew to 120 students, we were top 5% in the nation. We traveled every other weekend from September to June. So before you would even travel on my bus, because I’m not going to travel more than 55 kids at a time, you had to fight with each other for a spot before you could go fight with another team. I mean, like, truly, the culture that I was able to build with incredible kids, incredible support, man, it was not just your silver spoon kids. My very first national champion was homeless his entire senior year. So I had a very wide variety of kids coming from all kinds of backgrounds, money. I can’t tell you how many suits and meals I bought while I was teaching for kids.

[00:22:08.640] – Julie
So wide variety of culture, wide variety of backgrounds and types of families that they’re coming from and types of situations. So I was coaching. I wasn’t just coaching speech and debate. I wasn’t just coaching poetry and Lincoln-Douglas debate and persuasive speaking. I was coaching kids on life. Right? So in my mind, that was very separate than my coaching role that I was fixing to step into. So I decided to go back and get my master’s in executive coaching and consulting, which I’m still very glad I did. I learned a ton, and I love learning. But in that degree, I even remember sitting in one of my classes going, there’s no way I’m gonna be good at this. And my professor was like, you’re the top performer in our class. What are you talking about? I’m like, well, I don’t understand why this is all that it is. I thought that I was missing this huge boat in class. And he was like, no, you just actually have already gotten it. There’s nothing else to get. And as an educator, I didn’t realize that what they were training some of my classmates to do, I’d naturally have been doing for over a decade with students.

[00:23:19.220] – Julie
Not to say that I had it all perfectly together. But I was doubting, I mean partially, I was doubting myself because I thought that I was just a teacher. That’s part of it. And I was discounting the things that I had learned in the classroom. And then having to relearn, oh, my skills, it is within me. It is within me. And they’re just this, my professors are just growing this bone that already does exist in me. So I imagine if you’re sitting in this coaching space, you probably are gifted in this already. You are called to this. You are doing work that – you are helping others, you have a heart for it, or you wouldn’t be where you are. So I had to attach to that just a little bit more. And then I really looked back and reflected on, okay, then how did I grow that bone? And what made me good at that? And how do I want to really hold people up? And the place that I learned from was Concordia University, Dr. John Townsends was the main writer of their curriculum, and his theories are very similar in what I have on my website.

[00:24:30.600] – Julie
You already have what you need inside of you, and it’s not my job to make you somebody that you’re not. It’s my job to help you show up as your best self. But that is also my coaching mentality as a high school speech and debate coach, because I’m looking at kids who – I mean, one, I had a kid who was walking straight out of a gang and trying to navigate passing classes so that he could be on the debate team. Okay, so his reality was not the same as the kid who already had a full ride to TCU. They’re not the same reality. So how I need to handle that kid who has literally lived in gang life in his time, wore the same colors to school every day, who has decided now he wants to do something different and he wants to be a debater on my team. So now welcome to my dress code, right? Like, that shift in mentality and what he was going to need to help him show up as his best self, to help him see in the mirror how incredible he was, is going to be very different than the kid whose parents all went to college and has a full ride already before this kid is even starting their junior year.

[00:25:32.560] – Julie
So in order for me to help both kids show up as their best self, I had to believe you have something incredible. And so I would dig – and I even, to a flaw, as a teacher, would dig into how incredible kids could be and sometimes miss, oh, you’re dealing drugs on the side. Whoops, missed that because you’re such an incredible kid in XYZ spaces. And then my other kids would be like, schmears, how did you not know that that was happening? Like, I don’t know. She was so good at Congress and she was so kind to me. Like, I totally sometimes was blinded by the potential I could see in kids. But what a beautiful world if you can’t see your own potential to have a coach who can see your potential, dig deep enough to go, “Oh, here’s what it is that’s in you, I think. What do you think? Let me hold up my mirror for you until you can see yourself the way the world sees you with all of the potential that’s sitting inside of you.” But in order to do that as a coach, you have to actually believe that.

[00:26:31.500] – Julie
You have to believe that every single person you are coaching has something really incredible sitting inside of them, and it is your job to grow that, which does bring us right back to a word you said earlier that I love using, and that’s curiosity.

[00:26:47.840] – Steve
Yep.

[00:26:48.540] – Julie
You have to be curious, and you’ve got to engage to dig into that curiosity to know and find what it is that they could grow with, that they need growth with, but then also how you approach growth with them because, again, my kid who had a full ride versus my kid who is in a gang, like those types of growth opportunities and how we are going to walk that path is going to need to be different. And that’s what makes you a good coach, is that you pause and you ask questions and you think with a curious mind and not a mind of, this is what you should do because this is how we do things.

[00:27:29.970] – Steve
Yeah. I’m going to toss this off in a total different direction for a moment here. AI is catching a ton of attention.

[00:27:39.860] – Julie
Mm-hmm.

[00:27:40.480] – Steve
Thoughts that you’re playing with as to how AI and the whole realm of coaching go together?

[00:27:47.000] – Julie
Oh, man. I mean, you better not fight it because it’s coming in hot whether you want it to or not, right? You better just jump on that train or you really are going to be left in the Wild West. And I know that that’s true. And I tried – I like to say I’m young, but I’ve always been a little bit of a fighter in the world of technology, even in the classroom. I remember going, “Google Classroom? I’m not putting my crap on Google Classroom. I don’t even know how to play. Google Drive? You print that off and turn it in. Where’s your jump drive?” And kids would be like, “Jump drive? What the heck are you talking about? We shared it with you on Google.” Like, you aren’t sharing assignments and getting credit. IOkay, and for reference, I am 41. I don’t think I’m that old. But I fought those pieces and I remember when AI rolled around thinking, oh, you have gotta be kidding me. What happened to old-fashioned writing papers? How are these teachers – how are they gonna write? I mean, I fought it so hard.

[00:28:42.820] – Julie
However, in my business now, so let’s just turn our corner just a tad. In the world of business, if you aren’t playing AI games, you are sitting at a huge disadvantage. If you haven’t learned how to play AI games, then you are making more work for yourself than you would have to. Matter of fact, I run a female entrepreneur strategic planning retreat called Bravo Bravery, and in that retreat, we are building your strategic plan for your business. And I’ve got coaches that come, and I had a client ask me just the other day, “Are you gonna have somebody to teach us how to do AI at the retreat?” I’m like, oh my gosh, that would be fabulous because we all need that because it needs to be incorporated into our business. So I am looking for someone who is an expert at integrating AI into our business. But my personal pieces of that are also this: the difference maker in a world of AI is about to be the person who can still lean into human connection.

[00:29:40.670] – Steve
Yep.

[00:29:41.070] – Julie
If you can conquer AI as well as hold the power of that human connection, the importance of that is going to be what separates you from competition. It’s gonna be what separates you from, from everyone else in this world. Because you wanna know what else I’m doing a ton of, Steve? More workshops on how do we communicate with each other? Because we’re not good at talking because we’re such a tech-savvy world. I am teaching comms stuff that I taught to freshmen two decades ago. So, I mean, that’s kind of like, why is this something that we’re having to reteach? Why? Because we are unplugging from people and we are plugging into computers. So that scares me a little. I think that if we are not careful, we will lose the grasp that we have of what people need and we’ll be asking AI, what do people need? What are these people? And, and the reality is, even though AI can learn and do great things for our business or for our social media accounts, it is never going to completely replace a human relationship. And let’s talk about some of the keywords that we’ve said today.

[00:30:51.260] – Julie
Curiosity, engagement. Yeah, AI can be totally curious because I trained it to be.

[00:30:58.300] – Steve
Mm-hmm.

[00:30:59.280] – Julie
Sure, it can engage with me because I sit at a computer and ask it to. But in order for me to make AI show up as its best, I have to teach it curiosity and engagement. But the same is true for people. In order for my people to show up as their best, I’ve gotta be curious and engage. And if we would prefer to be curious and engaged with AI over people, we are going to lose these people pieces that will even make AI work. So I think we have to be super careful, especially as coaches at losing human connection. And of course, that’s a rant that’s not even like a maybe this podcast rant. That’s like a life rant. Like, lean into people. Don’t lose— don’t lose those moments that have meaning. Don’t forget how incredible it is. And I always say this, we are a to-do list checking, box marking, list making society.

[00:32:01.220] – Steve
Yeah.

[00:32:01.980] – Julie
But the box that we are continually forgetting to check are people. We want success, we wanna get the numbers, we wanna be successful in XYZ places, so we’re setting goals, but we aren’t taking care of the people that are creating those goals. And although AI now can do a ton of those goals, if there is a place in your business for people, you better make sure you’re leaning into your people because you are going to lose the opportunity for success in that space. And I don’t think that AI replaces all of us. I mean, that’s a movie somewhere, isn’t it?

[00:32:30.950] – Steve
My focus is on how you’re using it to be more of yourself.

[00:32:36.550] – Julie
Mm. Okay.

[00:32:39.190] – Steve
The sample that I use is, if I use AI to write now, I do more thinking about my writing –

[00:32:46.570] – Julie
Yeah.

[00:32:47.130] – Steve
than I did before AI.

[00:32:49.550] – Julie
Yeah. Well, if I’m gonna be vulnerable and transparent here, I mean, I’m a creative. One of my undergrads is theater. Of the 22 events that I coach, I mean, dramatic interp, humorous interp, duet acting, prose, poetry. So there’s this creative bone in my brain in all of what I did for coaching. And I find – here’s my vulnerability – that the more I have used AI for my writing, the faster I am to not push myself to be creative and just ask AI to help me. Because I use it too. I mean, I’m with you on the, okay, I’m gonna write this up, I’m gonna ask AI, and I will write it out and ask AI to make it better. And AI’s always better than me, always. It’s always prettier.

[00:33:30.030] – Steve
Go a different route. Don’t ask it to make it better. Ask it to ask you 4 questions you should consider.

[00:33:35.970] – Julie
Yes, yes, yes. No, when I have time, Steve, I definitely play that game. But let’s be very honest about time. I’m always like, crap, I forgot to do this. And my social media team’s like, Julie, get your crap together. [laughter]

[00:33:47.980] – Steve
So the time now is the issue, not AI. [laughter]

[00:33:51.060] – Julie
Yeah. No, you’re right. But also Julie should stop talking outta both sides of her mouth and pause and take time because, you know, I don’t wanna lose that creative bone. But again, that’s up to me. And that’s, that’s true for all of us, right? It’s up to you on what you are gonna do to help you show up as your best. And it’s on you. It’s on you to make those decisions in every place of your business, in every place of the relationships you’re building, in every part of, who you are and what you are assigned to do or tasked to give or the impact that you’re trying to make. It’s on you. The decisions that you make are on you.

[00:34:28.780] – Steve
Julie, I was excited about the energy that I knew you would bring to the podcast after I met you the first time, and I certainly am not disappointed with that.

[00:34:39.660] – Julie
Thank you.

[00:34:40.280] – Steve
Before we wrap up, any closing message or thought you wanna leave with folks as a walkaway here?

[00:34:50.090] – Julie
In order to help other people show up as their best self, you have to invest in you so that you can show up as your best self because you’re going to get what you give.

[00:35:00.430] – Steve
Powerful. Yeah.

[00:35:02.710] – Steve
Julie, what’s the best way for people to connect with you and find out about your ongoing work?

[00:35:08.670] – Julie
I’m so glad that you asked those questions because I get so wrapped up in our conversation, I forget. And then my team would be like, “Julie, why did you not?” Okay. I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Facebook, I’m on Instagram. And I’ll be real honest, I don’t like being in those spaces very much, but you have to in today’s world. So I would be very honored and thankful if you would follow me in those places, because I need, I need those pieces for business for me. But also my website is julieschniers.com. And I do that female entrepreneurs retreat. I travel everywhere and do strategic planning with school districts and businesses. And of course, my strategic planning approach is people first. So we do these people pieces woven into the big overarching plan, because I think that that’s what makes them most successful. But I love being a keynote speaker. I’ve got some really great classroom stories that, when I work with school districts, I get to share. I love being able to lead professional development workshops with Communication Connection Confidence. So if that sounds like, ooh, she doesn’t sound crazy and she might have something to offer school district or our company, I would love for you to contact me on julieschniers.com and let us have a conversation.

[00:36:22.610] – Julie
But thank you, Steve. This was so much fun.

[00:36:25.150] – Steve
I’ll put your website into the podcast lead-in, make it easy for folks to find. Thank you. I appreciate it.

[00:36:30.730] – Julie
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate you so much.

[00:36:35.380] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn @SteveBarkley or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.

What would be the benefits of ALL students being taught and coached to develop leadership skills? Maureen Chapman and James Simons, authors of, “Leaders of the Class,” share the needs, benefits, and processes for students to leverage motivation, perseverance, communication, and collaboration. Consider how to build stronger, healthier relationships with students as they discover their potential as purposeful, impactful leaders.

Educators grow their own leadership skills as they develop other’s leadership.

Visit Maureen and James’ website here.

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.000] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:00:29.720] – Steve
“Leader-full” Classrooms and Schools. Do you believe that leadership can be taught, modeled, coached, and developed? Do you believe that all students and teachers should be building their leadership skills and mindsets? Do you believe we all benefit from a leadership culture? Our podcast guests today hold those beliefs. Maureen Chapman and James Simon are the co-directors at CORE Creative Partners and the authors of Leaders of the Class. They both bring years of school-based experience to their work supporting educators in building their own and their students’ potential as purposeful, impactful leaders. Welcome Maureen and James. Thank you.

[00:01:16.460] – James
Thank you, Steve. Happy to be here today.

[00:01:16.460] – Maureen
Thank you so much. We’re so happy to be here, Steve.

[00:01:18.700] – Steve
Glad you’re here. I’m wondering, for a starter, in the experiences that you’ve both had as teachers and as school leaders, what do you think it is that pointed you in the direction of all – and I want to… that’s be my focus word throughout our conversation today, this idea of “all” students developing leadership potential.

[00:01:42.420] – James
That’s a great question, Steve. I would say In my personal experience, I had moments as a kid where I was tapped on the shoulder and recognized as a leader, an opportunity to have a role in a school play or be a captain on a sports team. And I also just felt a sense of belonging in school. I really enjoyed school. I tended to find success through academic work. And becoming an educator was an opportunity to widen my perspective and realize, oh, that is not everyone’s experience. I remember my first year as an English teacher sitting on the floor with essays just sprawled out all over the rug, and my wife was looking at some of the scores, and she said, “Oh, my gosh, you’re mean!” Like me, she had tended to see academic success in school and just assumed, yeah, these are the kinds of grades that come back on essays. I had to say to her, “No, when you’re working with 100 kids, there’s some kids at any given moment who are thriving, some kids who are doing all right, and some kids who are really struggling.” And so I think early on, that was helpful learning for me.

[00:03:06.100] – James
And then more and more in my work, I found I was gravitating towards those kids who are not finding a sense of belonging, who are not experiencing the success that they deserved. Early in my career, I switched to become a dean of students, and then I was later a principal. And in those roles, I was the ambulance driver. When there was a crisis, when there needed to be someone showing up rapidly to the scene, that was me. I had the privilege of sitting with individual students, sitting with families when they were really struggling in different ways. I quickly realized the more I got to know these individuals, just how profound their potential was. Time and time again, I would be experiencing this cognitive dissonance where I was in the staff room hearing teachers talk about some demon child who is making it impossible for anyone to learn. Then 10 minutes later, I would be sitting in my office with this child and seeing the spark in their eye and hearing how smart, how caring, how charismatic these individuals were. I would think, whoa, you could be leading the world if you just believed that you had that potential, and if those around you believed that you had the potential, and with that belief, I know you’re capable of building the skills that would back up that belief.

[00:04:45.410] – James
There’s no reason that you shouldn’t be the star of the play, the captain of the team, the student who is in the front row with their hand just miles high in the sky. And so I think that is a big part of what drew me to this work of how can I help every kid see in themselves what I am seeing in them.

[00:05:09.400] – Steve
You’ve given me a whole bunch of questions, but I want to catch Maureen’s response to that first.

[00:05:16.600] – Maureen
Yeah. James and I met by teaching on the same middle school team. Then we also both found ourselves later in formal leadership roles. I think this idea that everyone’s a leader is a little bit of distance when you think about the captain of the team or the star of the play, because that’s one person. But what does it mean for everyone to feel like a leader? I taught required middle school Latin, so I had 90 middle school students who are wondering why in the world this terrible thing had happened to them. [laughter] And some of them didn’t think it was a terrible thing. Some kids came first day of school, Percy Jackson under their arm, super excited. And then my job was to not let the other kids feel like, oh, this class is only for them, and to really have them believe me when I said, we are all going to be Latin stars in here. In this room, we’re going to bring out our inner nerd, and we’re going to do the thing. And so that looks different ways for different kids for them to know that I believed in them and that I wanted to hear their answer, and I wanted them to know so that we were only successful if we were all successful.

[00:06:28.960] – Maureen
And when I became as a school leader myself, I think what I came to appreciate about my own areas for growth was a lot of the own personal emotions that would get in the way when I was supposed to have a hard conversation, if I was supposed to share that something was upsetting me, if I was supposed to just, not even in an upset way, but just to give feedback after a classroom observation. I was so worried that somebody wouldn’t like me or that I would become too emotional in those conversations. It was helping me relate to what students are experiencing in the classroom all the time when they’re worried to raise their hand and take the academic risks they need to take in order to make the mistake and grow and learn. For me, those particular sorts of leadership skills to have the hard conversation, it just felt debilitating at times. I know I need to have this conversation, and I’m just a knot in my stomach dreading it. I didn’t have any training on that. And James and I really supported each other. And I think we had different areas of strength or comfort.

[00:07:36.860] – Maureen
But that was something he really helped me practice and just do. And so I would gain the experience and realize, no, I’m still safe or no, this person actually on the other side, I’m not trusting them enough to engage in this conversation with me. It was something that I needed to grow in. And so I think part of what’s really important to me in this book and in this work is building the emotional intelligence and those sorts of skills you need to have the conversations you need to have to feel better and to repair relationships or to serve kids or to serve the others in the world that you want to serve with your leadership. Why are we waiting until people are adults to get into it when those emotions in particular are so present and what make us so human. And also we see it again and again in coaching that people can really feel debilitated by just stuck in an emotion that is unpleasant and just feeling maybe ashamed of having them rather than knowing what to do. I think building some of those skills through the academic work so kids can be successful, I think also sets them up to have the impact in the way that their leadership is hopefully going to let them shine and the things that they care about shine as they get older.

[00:08:51.200] – Steve
I want to check my thinking with you. As I’m listening to the two of you, it’s striking me that our traditional school approach, our traditional classroom approach, has too few opportunities for too few students to practice, exhibit, and learn leadership.

[00:09:18.080] – James
I would agree with that. I’ve been in so many classes where the teacher will say, “Who wants to bring down the attendance sheet?” The number of hands that go up in the air is comical. It just illustrates how few opportunities there are for kids to take a meaningful role, to help out in some way. We are motivated to contribute to our social group, and particularly during adolescence. Through evolution, we survived because of our social impulses. We stuck together so we could find food and find protection. During adolescence, that impulse that has served all humans so well for thousands and thousands of years becomes even greater. You’re no longer this adorable baby that everyone’s going to protect just because of how Pixar cute you are. Suddenly, you need to demonstrate your worth to the group. When you’re sitting with a group of young people, they want to help out, they want to lead, but there are so few opportunities. So yes, when we are talking about student leadership, we are talking about student engagement. A culture of leadership is a culture where everyone is doing something. We’re not just listening. We’re not just filling in blanks in a worksheet.

[00:10:53.120] – James
We are communicating. We are collaborating. We are moving around the room making meaning. And so, yes, it is about leadership, but it is also about academics. It is about an academic setting where we are all engaged and active learners.

[00:11:13.500] – Steve
So it is leader-full.

[00:11:15.720] – James
That’s right, yeah.

[00:11:18.800] – Steve
Maureen, I’m hearing the SEL, executive functioning directions that schools are taking or wanting to take would connect with the leadership development?

[00:11:34.540] – Maureen
Absolutely. I think it’s a really astute observation. This work has been around since ancient times. We hear from forever, people considering moral development or character development or whole child development or college and career readiness and civic readiness and whatever you want to call it. But the stuff that makes us able to show up in the world the way we want to show up, to do hard things, including the academic hard things that every kid has the right to become a powerful learner so they can make the impact. But to be able to face those hard things requires you to draw upon your inner stuff. And that is so worthy. And academics are just one arena in which we can encounter hard stuff that gives us the opportunity to reflect upon who we are and how we’re bringing ourselves to hard things. So many schools, especially in the pandemic, sprung up with social emotional learning programs, and then they were trying really hard. I mean, just people working so hard to get 30 minutes once a week. So we could do this off the shelf curriculum so we can try to do something to help kids.

[00:12:53.270] – Maureen
This is how James and I came to found this consultancy. Our consultancy is named CORE, Creative Partners, and CORE is Latin for heart. We’re trying to make an impact and move the needle a bit on contributing to a culture in which people love school. I think that these SEL programs are also trying to get at that. I think the way that we want to contribute in service of that need is how to do it in your classroom where we spend most of the minutes anyway, and how to provide teachers who are… I always wanted to be a teacher. My dad’s teacher, my sister’s a teacher. This profession means everything to me. To see how much suffering there was for teachers who wanted to do that work when kids were really struggling and are really struggling, but feeling overwhelmed, that things were disconnected, they’re happening outside of the classroom. They didn’t write it. It’s not graded. Everyone knows it’s a joke, or it’s not enough. We wanted to offer something that made sense in the secondary classroom because the primary school classroom is just developmentally different with SEL, and it’s more about that morning circle and that discrete lesson on being a good friend, et cetera.

[00:14:07.060] – Maureen
In secondary, where you’re supposed to weave it in, how do you do that in a way that doesn’t take too long? You’ll have to have time to do all your academics, but it does give the space to sequentially build those skills through the year so that by the end of the year, it is really a student-led classroom where students are really feeling and seeing the growth that only happens when you do not too much at once. If you’re doing everything all at once, it almost feels like nothing’s important and you’re not moving in any way. So this book really offers a sequenced set of units. You could just do one of them. You could pick one. It’s really flexible. But if you did them in sequence, they naturally build so that students can really see their growth over time, and they’re tracking that growth in little quick ways. They can look back and say, wow, this is what I thought at the start of the year. And here’s how I’m seeing myself now as a leader in this room. I’m not the only leader, but I’m also believing in my peers as leader and intentionally building those beliefs so that students are safe with each other.

[00:15:09.820] – Steve
As I work through the book, you talk about four foundational leadership skills and four foundational conditions. I’m wondering if one of you would give us a run-through of the foundational practices and the foundational conditions. Which one should go first? In that sequence, which goes first?

[00:15:33.560] – James
Let me first share the practices, and then Maureen, you can fill in the conditions and anything else I’ve inevitably missed. The book presents a framework for building the skills that students need for motivation, perseverance, communication, and collaboration in the secondary classroom. And so there’s a unit related to each of those competencies. And in each unit, there is a specific practice, as you named, Steve, and also a specific condition that the class in particular is focusing on. Ideally, a teacher is pairing these units with their academic units and finding logical places to integrate the leadership routine teams that will help students gradually build their skills over time. So the four practices are, in motivation, students focus on the skills of reflecting and setting goals.

[00:16:47.140] – Steve
Two biggies. Those are both really big issues.

[00:16:50.000] – James
They are really big ones. And there’s a lot of research about how hard it is for us to just sit quietly with our thoughts, to really tune into what our bodies are telling us. There is so much noise around us. There is music and podcasts and videos and food. If we’re looking to be distracted from how we’re feeling and what we’re thinking, there are a million ways to do so. And so we really build in deliberate practice in reflecting. So you’ve engaged in some academic endeavor. Let’s take a minute and reflect, how did that go? What were your strengths during that time? What were your struggles. And we really believe in the same way that you would build up one’s reading skills. You wouldn’t say, you’re learning to read, go read for 45 minutes. Similarly, reflection should be in short, manageable bites. And over time, someone may finally have capacity to sit down and eat a full meal of reflection. But early on, it’s like, let’s just do some quick hits. And so early on, we’re reflecting on our motivation, and we’re setting a goal related to the academic work. And then through the subsequent units, individuals keep practicing those skills of reflection and goal setting tied to very specific academic endeavors.

[00:18:34.420] – James
And then in the second unit, perseverance, the leadership practice is experimenting with strategies. So now we’ve decided what is motivating us to pursue success in this class. But when something gets in the way of us and our goals, what are we going to try? And so classes co-construct strategy banks and individuals decide hat are the strategies they want to experiment with? And so kids are really empowered to be driving their own learning. It isn’t the teacher saying, whenever you’re distracted, do this. It is the whole community saying, what would work for you? What do you want to try? Let’s see how that goes. And then let’s track our data to see what is working, what isn’t, what do we want to keep, what do we want to throw out, what do we want to change? Those first two practices are really based in a level of collaboration and sharing, but also our individual pursuits. This is my goal. This is my strategy. In the back half of the framework, it is much more about, now that I’ve built these skills of self-awareness and of self-management, how can I contribute to this team? And so the third big unit is communication.

[00:19:55.280] – James
And here, individuals are practicing exchanging feedback with their peers, with their teacher. And then in the culminate and collaborate unit, students get together on an authentic, academic, collaborative task, and they practice the final routine, which is advocating for self and others.

[00:20:20.400] – Maureen
And then with the conditions, we can’t just expect to go through the motions. There are units you can follow step by step in the book. But if we’re not thinking deeply really about the conditions of our room, we aren’t going to be ready for that to actually go well. So the conditions that need to be in place, and it’s actually something really useful if you’re working with a coach or you’re working with a grade-level team, maybe your middle school eighth grade team is trying this together, and there are special directions on what to adjust if you’re doing this with the whole team. So kids aren’t like, “We already did this.” But it really is useful to process those conditions upfront as a whole, but then any each unit to really focus on one. So one is, as I reference, the safety to take risks. Students need us – and if you talk to kids, they’ll tell you what they need from you, which is to address it. If somebody does so little, it’s roll their eyes at them because they’re so invested in their peers’ perception of them. And so if anybody might do something that impacts their sense of status and you don’t address it, they’re going to shut down.

[00:21:26.950] – Maureen
So we need to feel safe enough in secondary years to to give the wrong answer, et cetera. We need belief in self and others. If we don’t believe that that teacher cares about me or thinks I can do it, and you can spot that quickly, oftentimes, if the belief isn’t there. And that’s often just a reflection of our own belief in ourselves as being able to reach the kid that seems so hard. If we feel threatened that it might make us look like a bad teacher, we might subconsciously put it to the student’s fault. It’s not productive. How do we just keep coming back to a belief believing stance and demonstrate that belief in each other. And then another one is motivating work. Is the work feeling worthy of doing? Are there ways I can tie the work to things I care about? And then the last one is opportunities to lead. If students are sitting and listening all the time, when are they supposed to develop leadership skills? They’ve got to get into groups, talk to each other, have new ideas, be heard, see things changing because of what they’re saying. So in the units, there are structures where before the unit, there is a prep the unit section where teachers, they do things like rotate the roles or change the objective on the board, but they’re also reflecting on their own experiences with those things.

[00:22:43.100] – Maureen
Do I believe…Why do I believe in myself as a leader? How do I believe in my students? And then they’re also looking at the unit ahead to see what are those key points in the unit I have planned where students will get to encounter this leadership competency. So if it’s communicate, what are the communications coming up? And if you’re doing that with a coach, maybe there is a chance to add more than you had planned. Or what are the opportunities for students to persevere? Where does this unit get hard enough that kids will get frustrated, which should happen when we’re becoming powerful learners? Where are those key difficult points where I’m going to then offer that reflection to go with it? How did you persevere through this, et cetera? Those talking points or those prep the unit sections offer some good questions that are helpful to process with the team if you’re lucky enough to have a coach or a team. And then there are team discussion questions at the end, too, which allow you to either just try those exercises students did as a team, and they’ll learn a lot about each other, or do a quick case study on a student who is really struggling with motivation or perseverance.

[00:23:49.080] – Maureen
And then it just guides you through some steps of how you can really use that as a useful way to think about it. Because we offer some scaffolds knowing that from our instructional coaching, some kids will need more. They’re not just going to magically now be the most motivated kid ever. And we have four or five things that we’ll usually try. But it’s so useful to talk it out in your school with other people who know you and know your kids and where you feel the safety to take the risk to say, “This didn’t go well, and what else can I try?”

[00:24:19.880] – Steve
As I’m listening, actually, I wrote the phrase down and it jumped in my head, but I’m almost hearing leading myself is the piece that the learners, that you have learners dealing with. Generally, you think about leading others, but I’m hearing leading myself in there. Does that make sense?

[00:24:43.420] – Maureen
Are you thinking about that for the teacher as well when you’re saying that?

[00:24:46.960] – Steve
Now you’re moving it to another level. I’m almost always sure that as a teacher, whatever it is I’m teaching, I’m learning more than the students are, so that’s there for sure. But as I was listening to the two of you walk through the elements, I’m seeing a learner becoming empowered him or herself, which is what I would call leading myself. Then because of that, I’m in a role for my leadership to be shared with others.

[00:25:16.080] – Maureen
Absolutely. Some of the things that you just come back to when you do different leadership research is you do have to love yourself to persevere through – to look in the face of your mistakes and your academic failures and to say, okay, what’s next? You can only do that with a healthy dose of self-love and self-compassion. And so we hope that this book contributes to a sense of identity development in these years that is a healthy balance of, I can keep doing better, and I’m already enough. And then you can have that confidence to lead yourself and know that you can do that safely with others because you are on your own trajectory, reaching your beautiful leadership potential.

[00:26:08.980] – James
Yeah. I would add, I’ve worked with many kids who struggled to find motivation in the academic setting. Sometimes it’s tempting to go, this kid is just not motivated, or even this kid’s lazy. So often that child is very motivated just in a different setting. They’re home taking care of their sibling or their home home playing a video game till 2:00 in the morning. I’ve worked with a lot of kids who love gaming. And part of that is because you’re the main character when you’re playing a video game. And so many kids come to school and they feel like what they call a non-player character, an NPC. You’re just in the background. You’re sitting there and the teacher is the main character. And so you’re absolutely right. This framework is an invitation for you to go, this is my game. I’m the one holding the controller and making the shots. The same, as Maureen mentions, goes for teachers. Some of the reasons that SEL curricula don’t always take off is because teachers don’t feel ownership. They take it off the shelf and they go, okay, I got 30 minutes. I’m going to read this script in a robotic voice, and go…

[00:27:27.210] – James
Sometimes you’ll hear teachers go, “They want me to tell you.” As soon as you hear it, you’re going to say, hey, you’re in the curriculum, you know you’re in trouble. With this curriculum, we offer a framework, we offer routines, and then we empower the teacher to lead that curriculum. You decide, where would this routine go? How often do you want to use it? What would it look, sound, and feel like for you? Like the student, you are the leader of your game. So yeah, I think that’s a really insightful observation that you’re making.

[00:28:03.220] – Maureen
And which of my stories about myself with perseverance through learning this subject do I want to insert? It really offers a chance for teachers to select from their own class and their own lives what will go in there. So it is really coming through in an authentic voice, and it takes a little more time for the teacher, but I think it’s really enjoyable for them to do that because we hold these stories and we don’t always see a spot for them to come through. But taking that story-based leadership stance is such a common theme in leadership. The right story can carry a lot of weight in building the momentum in the room so that you can step aside and the kids will pick it up from there. So, yeah, the adult as the lead learner in the room and the lead leader, as we often call them, we hope that this book is also rewarding for them, not only in their own individual thought process about themselves as leaders, but also in the relationship that will become stronger with their students and that the work will be more rewarding because it’s this space where these kinds of deeper and really important conversations come out appropriately.

[00:29:13.560] – Steve
The other thing that’s striking me as I’ve been listening to you and got a chance to walk through your book – a lot of schools I work with have a profile of a graduate that sounds really great, but I’m hard-pressed often to find what people are doing about it. I get the sense that if I were to sit down with the school’s profile of a graduate and your book, I’d find a lot of alignment, providing a way for teachers to focus on that particular element or many of the elements of a portrait.

[00:29:56.120] – Maureen
Yes, we definitely see that, and we really value value cohesion. I think that’s why we want to put these skills cohesively into a classroom. But when we partner with a school, we really do pay attention to their particular language and match it up. It’s usually not hard. Leader is usually somewhere or any of the words of these units. But how do we just make sure the language is landing cohesively? And so then we also do have little measures, whether it’s a student report or an observation report. There are little assessments, too, where you could track progress toward, here’s how we know whether we’re doing a good job of having kids believe in themselves as leaders. In one school, we did a three-year project and just ask kids that question as question one, are you a leader? Why or why not? You can just see who’s saying yes and who’s saying no, and is that changing? It just gives you something a little bit more specific where we often don’t have anything specific when we’re talking about the profile of a learner and then our graduate, and then it’s just floating around sounding good. People are all, I’m sure teachers are spotting it for what it is if it’s not really living.

[00:31:05.560] – Maureen
This helps us – if we want to do a good job, if we take this stance, everyone wants to do a good job. Kids want to do a good job if we show them what we’re looking for. Teachers want to do a good job in building that vision, too. This gives you some really specific things you can try and feel like, okay, we’re making progress. I’m doing the thing, and it’s feeling good, and it makes sense in my class.

[00:31:26.000] – James
I’ll just add, we have a lot of experience with College and future planning support. We each oversaw in the school where we worked, the College and Future Planning counselor. Maureen developed and oversaw an advisory strand that was a 5 through 12 curriculum preparing individuals for what awaits after 12th grade. She also launched a senior internship program. And in our consultancy, we partner with many schools to support their own College and Future readiness programs. And it’s very important to us that what is happening every day leading up to graduation connects to what is going to be happening every day after graduation. As Maureen was talking, I was just remembering a student that we both worked very closely with who was so shut down in school. The number of disciplinary hearings I attended with him, the number of dropout prevention programs that the two of us sat in on, the number of just in the hall conversations of what do you need are just too many to count. I remember a few years after he graduated, he came back in a police officer’s uniform with this big grin on his face, and he said, “I love this work.”

[00:32:56.600] – James
I was just like, I knew it. I knew there was a spot somewhere in there. I’ve reflected a lot about what more could have we done so that it did not take this individual so long to realize he has a place in this world. He is good and he can contribute to increasing the amount of goodness in the world. And there’s so many ways to contribute. And I really do believe a framework like this helps us ignite that spark for each individual just sooner. So you don’t have to wait years and years and years for someone to come back and say, I finally found my place. I found my people. I found my purpose. We want them to be finding it every day every grade level in every class.

[00:33:48.320] – Steve
You caught my attention when you first used that big word, “all” with the students and leadership. It’s been great having this conversation with you, having that reinforced. Before we close out, anything else about the book, Leaders of the Class, that you didn’t get a chance to lay out here to folks, or the work that you’re doing in your core creative partners that you’d like folks to know about?

[00:34:20.920] – James
Yeah, so I’ll jump in. We are Boston-based, but we travel all over, and we love being in different regions, different districts, different schools, and just learning from educators because everything we hear and see when we’re working with educators helps us support others in different settings more effectively. We do workshop series and PLCs and keynotes and consulting projects. Basically, we just look to see where is support needed. We really believe in this framework as a way to provide that support. You can adopt the whole framework. You can pick one routine. There are so many entry points. We would love for people to read the book, “Leaders of the Class” from SolutionTree. We would love for people to practice those routines and share with us how it’s going. You can reach us. Our website is corecreativepartners.com. Each of our emails are james@corcreativepartners.com or maureen@corcreativepartners.com. We’re always so thrilled to hear from fellow educators.

[00:35:27.900] – Maureen
I am obsessed with getting messages. I always have been. Find me on LinkedIn, email me. I promise I’ll write you back. We would love to hear if you’ve got the book, and if you have thoughts or you’re trying stuff out, we would be so grateful.

[00:35:39.760] – Steve
Terrific. Thanks so much, guys.

[00:35:41.140] – Maureen
Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Steve. We really enjoyed the conversation.

[00:35:47.420] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.

In coaching—whether you’re supporting a teacher, leading a professional learning team, or working with a school leader—listening is foundational. And yet, in the name of productivity, efficiency, or simply staying on schedule, we can too easily slip into haste. “We nod instead of reflect. We respond instead of inquire. We react instead of understand.”

A Harvard Business Review post titled, “Are You Really A Good Listener,” highlighted the conscious effort good listening requires. Jeffrey Yip and Colin M. Fisher reviewed 117 academic papers on workplace listening from individual conversations to team and large meetings and found that listening is far easier to describe than to display. They identified five of the most common and damaging causes of that failure: haste, defensiveness, invisibility, exhaustion, and inaction.

“Listening with haste can be worse than not listening at all. When you respond to people too quickly, they’re likely to feel frustrated, demeaned, or unimportant. And when you miss the message because you’re hurrying, you may also make decisions based on incomplete information, which can further demotivate your team.”   

(Yip and Fischer)

One insight especially stood out to me—the role of haste in undermining effective listening. That immediately brought to mind implications in coaching. As coaches, we can fall into the “haste” trap. We and our coachees have busy schedules, there is a list of outcomes we’re working toward, and as coaches we often have a strong sense of what a teacher “needs.” When we rush a conversation—finishing sentences, jumping to solutions, or interpreting questions as pushbacks— we miss crucial signals and undermine trust.

Haste might sound like:

“What if you just tried…”

“We don’t have time to worry about that now.”

“I think what’s really going on is…”

“Let’s talk about what to do, ”

Even when our suggestions are good or well-intentioned, offering them too soon short-circuits the deeper exploration that leads to teacher growth and ownership.

Christine Miles, the author of, “What’s it Costing You to Not Listen,” joined me on a podcast and identified the lack of training most of us have in how to listen.

“The biggest barrier is that most people aren’t taught how to listen. Only 2% of people worldwide have any type of listening training. I have a master’s in psychology from an Ivy League school in the States. I’m a certified family therapist from a renowned facility, and I have zero years of formal listening training. How can you do something well when you’ve never been taught how to do it? We’re relying on our instincts. We’re relying on our brains to cooperate with us.  Often, we fail, and we don’t even realize it. The first barrier is that we don’t even know what good listening looks like. Even though I think educators can be better at it naturally, that doesn’t mean they’re doing it to the proficiency that they could be. Not only to be better connected and build trust and all those wonderful things on a human level, but to actually solve the right problems. Until we really understand and get to root cause, we can fix a lot of the wrong problems.”

“Resist the urge to interrupt. Research shows that interruptions are almost always poorly received. Your first job is to understand the message and intent of the speaker. Respond only after that job is done.”

(Yip and Fischer)

In a recent podcast, Radical Listening in Coaching, I described that “radical listening isn’t easy, especially in fast‑paced environments where time feels tight and pressures are high. … When we lean into radical listening, we communicate trust, respect, and belief in a teacher’s capacity.” Those words capture the heart of coaching without haste. When we resist quick fixes and instead create space for deep listening, we show our teachers that we trust their insight—and believe in their strength to grow. That belief is the soil in which real learning takes root.

What skills do coaches practice to communicate being fully present in coaching conversations? How do those conversations support a growth-oriented environment where teachers feel valued, heard, and empowered to take ownership of their professional learning? Consider your use of questions and paraphrases in coaching.

Find “The Leader’s Guide to Coaching in Schools: Creating Conditions for Effective Learning,“ by John Campbell and Christian Van Nieuwerburgh here.

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.000] – Steve [Intro]

Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:00:29.860] – Steve

Coaches Listen to Guide Self Discovery. In “The Leaders Guide to Coaching in Schools, Creating Conditions for Effective Learning,” John Campbell and Christian Van Nieuwerburgh highlight three important elements that coaches need to practice: being present, listening actively, and clarifying. Let’s look at each. Being present. The authors highlight that present presence is one of the most valuable gifts a coach can offer. It requires full, undistracted attention, listening not just to words, but also to emotions, tone, and body language. Presence creates psychological safety, allowing the teacher to explore thoughts without fear of judgment. For coaches to engage in deep listening, they must be fully engaged rather than thinking ahead or multitasking. I find that taking notes while I’m seated next to the coachee so that they can read my notes assists me in listening and staying in the moment. My notes are often key words that I heard the coachee use. Listening actively. Active listening is affirming and helps teacher develops self-awareness. It creates space for the teacher to reflect on their own thoughts. It encourages teachers to articulate challenges and possibilities they may not have previously considered. Active listening supports the idea that the coachee, not the coach, should be doing most of the talking and thinking.

[00:02:30.180] – Steve

Clarifying. Clarifying is not about telling teachers what they mean, but rather reflecting back on what’s been heard and checking for accuracy. This helps the coachee process their own thoughts more clearly, sometimes leading to new insights. Clarifying also reassures the teacher that they are truly being heard and understood, and that It strengthens the trust between coach and coachee. Effective clarifying can involve paraphrasing, asking open-ended questions, or gently challenging inconsistency in thinking in order to support deeper reflection. In my own coaching practice, and when training coaching to others, I have a major focus on questioning and paraphrasing to assist in being present, listening actively, and clarifying. Let me share a little of my thinking about questions for finding out and questions for sparking reflection.

[00:03:49.330] – Steve

I’m big on using the term knowing the teacher’s agenda. It’s important to me that I know what thinking is going on behind the teacher actions that I’m observing. What did the teacher think in planning this lesson? What decisions did the teacher consider in planning and during the lesson? How did the teacher come to make the decisions that she made? In a pre-conference, an example might be, “What did you know about the students as you planned this lesson, and how has that knowing influenced what you planned?” Another in a pre-conference might be, “How important does this piece of the curriculum to your learners and why?” In a post-conference, it might be “when during the lesson did you see what you thought you you would see when you were planning? And what did you see that differed from what you thought while planning?” Another post-conference might be this – “You asked me to record this particular action. What do you think you’ll find when you look at the data that I’ve collected?” The specific example could be, “You ask me to record the questions that you use. What do you think you’ll find as you look at the list of questions?”

[00:05:33.910] – Steve

In many ways, the finding out questions, the knowing questions, are really for me. I want to know the teacher’s thinking before I share my thinking. My decisions about what I’m going to say or how I’m going to say it are influenced by my understanding of the teacher’s thinking. Reflection. With reflection questions, I’m looking at sparking the teacher’s thinking. Through that reflection, the teacher may consider something that he or she would not have consciously thought through had it not been for the questions coming from the coach. I’ve actually had experiences in a pre-conference where at the end of it, because of the reflection the teacher has done, the teacher may look at me and go, “You know what? I don’t even need you to come into my classroom right now because the piece that I wanted to work on, I’ve actually thought through.” That consciousness is an important outcome from reflection. Reflection questions in a pre-conference might be something like this – “You’re planning to have students work in groups of four. What have you experienced when you’ve that in the past?” In a pre-conference, a reflection question might be, “How much of this lesson are you able to plan prior to the lesson versus how much of this lesson will have to be decisions you’re making as the lesson unfolds?”

[00:07:21.550] – Steve

In a post-conference, reflection questions might sound like this – “How do you think my presence impacted what happened in the lesson? What questions came to your mind as the lesson unfolded? Are there questions that are remaining at the end of this lesson? What would you say you learned while teaching this lesson?” It’s critical to give enough time when you’re asking the reflection questions in conferencing. If you ask the question and the person doesn’t begin a response right away, be careful not to begin to offer possible answers, but to just extend that pause time and wait time.

[00:08:18.910] – Steve

While it’s important that coaches provide time for teachers to think following the coach’s question, it is equally important that the coach allow time for herself to think after the teacher’s response. Only then can the coach ask a question that aligns with being fully present during the teacher’s response rather than thinking about the next question. The coach, taking time for herself, communicates being fully present. Paraphrasing is another skill, and it offers deeper reflection on the teacher’s part, as well as increased understanding for the coach about the teacher’s thinking. Here are some of my thoughts on implementing paraphrasing.

[00:09:17.170] – Steve

Paraphrasing is a active listening communication skill. Engaged in a conversation with a person rather than asking them a question question to confirm your understanding. You take the message that you’re receiving from the person and you play it back to them in a statement, followed by a pause, which usually causes them to add additional information, or at minimum, give you a yes that lets you know your interpretation of what you’re hearing is is correct and accurate. I like to title this skill “confirmatory paraphrasing.” So it’s not confirmatory parroting, which is just repeating back exactly what the person said. You may have had that experience of meeting someone the day that they came back from some active listening training. And as you began to talk to them, you’re followed with, so you’re saying, so you’re saying so you’re saying. You want to hit them upside the head and say, if you’d shut up and listen to me, you wouldn’t have to keep repeating what I’m saying. A paraphrasing says that I’m pulling a message from listening to you. That message is influenced by your tone of voice. It’s influenced by your body language. It’s influenced by my past history with you.

[00:10:51.690] – Steve

I’m taking that message, that interpretation that I’m receiving, and I’m playing it back for you to confirm. As you’re listening to a person in coaching, you might confirm the facts, the feelings, the attitudes or opinions. You might confirm an intention they have or a commitment that they’re making. When using the confirmatory paraphrase, your statement that you make needs to end with a period with your voice tone. Example, “You will finish tomorrow.” is a confirmatory paraphrase. “You’ll finish tomorrow?” is a question, even though the words are the same. Here’s some examples. Imagine that you’re in a coaching session and the teacher says to you, “It’s frustrating to put so much time into planning a lesson and then not have it go well.” Here’s a series of different confirmatory paraphrases I might use from that one statement from the teacher. Confirming the facts, I might say, “You put a lot of time into planning this lesson.” Confirming the facts, I might say, “The students were unable to complete the independent activity that you designed.” If I were to confirm the feelings, I might respond to the teacher with, “You’re worried about what to do now.” Or, “You’re angry about the way the students responded.” Or even, “You’re embarrassed to have gotten that outcome while I was observing.”

[00:12:47.680] – Steve

Now, remember, as you’re listening to these, you’re forming a different one in your head because you’re seeing a different teacher, you’re hearing a different tone. It’s not like there’s one correct response here. To continue, the teacher said, “It’s frustrating to put so much time into planning a lesson and then not have it go well.” I might also confirm an attitude or an opinion. “You believe your planning time was wasted.” Or, Y”ou think this should be easier.” If I were to confirm confirm an intention, I’d be looking to confirm a future action the person might take. “You’re planning to reteach this.” Next time, you think you’d break it down into smaller instructional chunks. Lastly, one that I like to use is the confirmatory paraphrase of commitment. I’m looking to reinforce a belief I’m hearing from the teacher. My confirmatory paraphrase of commitment might sound like this – “You’re determined to do whatever it takes for your students to master this concept.” Now, why would I choose to use a confirmatory paraphrase over asking a question? My question, “Are you going to reteach this?” could be used to confirm similar to my confirmatory I’ll paraphrase, “You’re planning to reteach this.”

[00:14:33.370] – Steve

Confirmatory paraphrases invite a response. Questions require a response. Often, one of the concerns with questioning is that questions communicate control. If you think of an irate parent coming to school, the irate parent may come in the door asking questions. And as long as they’re asking questions, they’re in control. If you find yourself feeling on the defensive because of their action, you may fire a question back at them in order to pull control onto your side. So whenever you’re in a situation where you’re looking to downplay your authority, one way to communicate that is to have fewer questions and more confirmatory paraphrases. Coaching is often a spot where you’re looking to communicate exactly that message. And so making your questions more open-ended and having fewer questions because of the use of confirmatory paraphrasing allows you to communicate that more shared partnership level with the teacher you’re coaching.

[00:16:12.580] – Steve

Just like the need for a coach to take time after a coachee’s response to form a question that is driven from fully listening. Some pause time to form a confirmatory paraphrase may be needed. It’s not uncommon for me to stop in the middle of a question or a paraphrase and actually modify my response as I tended to do even some more reflective thinking as I began responding. I believe that those actions communicate commitment to deep listening and understanding. Campbell and Van Nieuwerburgh reinforce that great coaching questions are an extension of great listening. The coach’s role is not to ask leading questions, but to pose questions that emerge from deep attention and help the coachees refine their own thinking. Questioning and paraphrase paraphrasing, reinforce the idea that the role of the coach is not to fix or direct, but to create conditions where the coachee can explore and refine their own thinking. The listening-focused nature of open questions and paraphrases supports a growth-oriented coaching environment in which the teacher feels valued, heard, and empowered to take ownership of their own professional learning. You might consider taping a few of your coaching conversations and identify where you are currently practicing or could be implementing more questioning and paraphrasing that pushes deep listening.

[00:18:07.860] – Steve

All educators deserve coaching that is built on deep listening. Thank you for your listening.

[00:18:18.590] – Steve [Outro]

Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.

Teachers observing and supporting one another can be a powerful tool for professional growth.  The way feedback is framed during these activities can make a big difference.  Peer feedback is most effective when it fosters collaboration and shared learning rather than judgment or evaluation. In a previous blog, I explored the difference between peer coaching and peer observation. In peer coaching, the teacher being observed has directed what the observer is focusing on and has requested the information that the observer will share. In peer observations, the observing peer is deciding what the observation is focused on because the focus is on what the observer wants to gain. The feedback exchanged in these settings differs significantly. Care must be taken that the feedback in peer observation not be interpreted as “supervisory” even when it’s all positive. I have described that the feedback after peer observation might be described as a “thank-you compliment.” Peer coaching feedback guides reflective dialogue and joint problem-solving.

In her book The Co Constructed School, Ann Lautrette describes how much more difficult it is to make supporting feedback feel non-judgmental and non-evaluative when a teacher and school leader are working together. She supports building collaboration, trust, and risk-taking at the center of professional learning and creating teacher peer relationships focused on continually improving teaching and learning.

Teachers want to make a difference. The feedback they find most useful recognizes that commitment and, in collegial and supportive ways, helps them do just that. (Gusky and Link) 

Trying to overcome the difficulty of generating growth through supervisory feedback is often present when administrators provide feedback to teachers following short walkthrough observations. I explored this topic earlier in a podcast, Giving Two Glows and a Grow; Seldom Generates Real Growth. As I was exploring giving feedback with a group of teachers leaders, their comments reinforced my ongoing thinking that walkthroughs should be used for administrators to gain insights and questions that are then explored in focused observation and conversations. While principals describe walkthroughs as a form of coaching, generally, teachers say it isn’t. Instructional coaches often complain that when they take part in walkthroughs,  teachers see them stepping outside their coaching roles. I believe that thought on the teachers’ is reinforce when the receive a walkthrough feedback note.

One teacher described that walkthrough feedback notes at her school were a form the read:

I saw……………………….

A positive……………….

I wonder…………….?

Another teacher stated their form listed two “Glows” and one “Grow.”

Without the teacher engaging in a conversation with the observer, it is unlikely that valuable reflection would be generated from this feedback. I interpret this feedback as an attempt to be safe and compliant.  They are forms of the “feedback sandwich”.  Positive feedback is served as  bread and a needed improvement as the meat. While the provider of the sandwich might feel better with the delivery, the receiver seldom does. Growth and improvement don’t happen. While ‘I wonder?’ is a question, most teachers hear it as a suggestion or even a requirement for change.

As Ann Lautrette identified, it is easier for peer-to-peer feedback to be heard with a reflective mindset that can lead to change, but feedback that has a ring to a supervisory tone interferes with reflection and growth even though it is coming from a peer. Caution and consciousness should be present as peers give peers feedback.

A school I’m working with is designing an opportunity for peer observations, led by a team of teacher-leaders. Following my description of differentiating peer coaching and peer observation, one of the teachers sent me this note.

“I was able to share with our teacher-leader team from our conversation about peer observation vs. peer coaching and we’ve begun drafting some simple template ideas for peer observation. One thing that puzzled many folks (similar to the way it puzzled me during our chat) was why the observer shouldn’t compliment the teacher they observed in the conversation after?”

Here is my response:

You overstated my comment a little concerning feedback from peer observation…..  a complement or two are fine…. The difference is that the focus should be more on what the observing teacher is taking away from the observation….

For example, instead of saying:

“You had powerful open questions that encouraged student thinking.”

or

“Your transition times were short and smooth.”

A peer observer might frame their feedback in a more reflective way:

“The strategy you have in place for students switching between centers made things smooth and saved time. I want to explore if there’s a way that I can apply that with my students, even though they are younger.”

or

“I saw students being very supportive of each other in their groups. How did you build that practice with them?”

This approach keeps the focus on professional learning rather than evaluation. Instead of merely receiving a compliment, the observed teacher is engaged in a conversation that deepens both educators’ understanding of effective practices.

Dr. Kim Richardson describes that change is inevitable and manageable. As coaches and school leaders we need to be competent in guiding ourselves and others during change. Kim describes the need for emotional intelligence and resilient leadership. Knowing people are unpredictable requires coaches to observe and communicate. Change is a process not an event.

Visit Kim’s website here.

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.310] – Steve [Intro]

Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:00:30.110] – Steve

Guiding Through Change: Yourself, Teachers, and Teams. I’m excited to welcome Dr. Kim Richardson to the podcast. I recently participated in an instructional coaching conference and had the opportunity to attend Kim’s keynote and breakout session where she explored dealing with change. Dr. Richardson is a professional certified coach accredited by the Internal Coaching Federation, and she is the Induction and Development Director for Hampton City Schools in Virginia. Kim is also the creator of the Radical Learners course, Coaching for Connection, Certainty, and Autonomy in collaboration with the Jim Knight Instructional Coach Group. Welcome, Kim.

[00:01:17.710] – Kim

Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:20.290] – Steve

I’m delighted. As I was thinking about change, I remember my early explorations where I read about Heraclitus and the thoughts that change is constant. The quote was, “You can’t step into the same river twice.” And then there was Permanides, if I pronounced that right, Permanides. And he claimed that change is just an illusion and that reality is unchanging. So as I was thinking about that, I pondered, is there a Kim Richardson view of change?

[00:01:53.310] – Kim

Oh, yeah. I think, and thank you for sharing those two mindsets, but I think it’s inevitable. It’s inevitable. And I think we’re in a false sense of hope that something is going to stay constant, but it’s also manageable. And I think it’s inevitable because either I am always changing as I grow, learn, interact with different people, whatever it may be, or the context is changing. So I think my view on it is it’s inevitable. So if we know this, let’s manage it. And one of the biggest things That’s what I’m just a champion for, it’s not heavy research that I’ve done, but when I see a topic such as this begin to impact multiple layers of a hierarchical organization, I think that leaders really have to make sure we understand this. Whatever your title is, I believe, especially coaches or leaders, and we have to be able to be adept and thrive in this environment that we know is always going to be evolving. So that’s my view.

[00:02:57.520] – Steve

So is it fair to say that change is inevitable, and that’s good news and bad news.

[00:03:03.460] – Kim

I think so. I also think about the whole pendulum swing, right? When we see things swing to the left and then gradually come on back and to the other side. And I’ve been in education long enough to have seen that. And I always remembered as a younger educator, when the veterans would say, oh, we did that. Just a different name. We did that before. And I couldn’t understand it until now, but I do understand why the pendulum changes because it’s so extreme on either end that you have to make adjustments. For example, when I founded and started the coaching program in the school district that I work in, it was because there was not a good clarity on what and who was supposed to be supporting the teachers. And there were not enough supports as the needs became greater, as the standards that were being taught began to become more robust and rigorous. So we created and separated people that were outside of the classroom that strictly worked with students. But then we had another position that was the coach and that they were there to support teachers. And at that time, they reported to a division level.

[00:04:16.080] – Kim

They reported and then did their work in the school. But then along the year, some of the principals began to not feel like they had a lot of opportunity to personalize that experience in their school to meet their changes. So the pendulum swung and then they became school-based. And now I’m seeing, but now we’re confused about what the roles are. So the pendulum, I think, is also a part of that change because of the way that we respond to the things that are happening. And it does swing, however fast or slow and how long it stays on the up or the down, I think we have to consider that as well.

[00:04:54.990] – Steve

I know that you’ve been doing some research in leadership and change, and I know that you’ve looked at fields outside of education from the presentation that I was able to sit in on. What are some of the insights you gained that have brought application to being in a leadership role during change?

[00:05:14.980] – Kim

I know this is going to sound so simple that it might sound too simple, but really all the research speaks to our emotional intelligence that as leaders, we cannot operate as managers, that we have to be able to be self and socially aware and manage that. And then I was actually in a session with the World Business Executive Coach Summit last year, and they were talking about resilient leadership and how we have to be able to be resilient in the midst of that, because usually leaders, coaches, they are seen as managing the change, but sometimes it happens to them as well. And what time sometimes do they have to turn that around, to process it themselves, to figure out the why before I turn around and sell it, usually to the stakeholders that I am impacting. So the emotional intelligence, for sure, is coming up in the research. And then also the fact that you have to be able to adapt. So when we think about a 21st century leader, we are well into the 21st century, but if we have not shifted from being manager to leader, we have to for that very reason, because we cannot just follow a script any longer.

[00:06:27.850] – Kim

We have to be able to read the room to know what is going on inside of me to manage all of those things and then to adapt and be resilient in leading through those changes.

[00:06:39.760] – Steve

As I’m listening to you, I’m pondering a thought. So if I’m stepping out too far here, you can bring it in for me. But I’m almost hearing you can’t manage change. You work with it, you lead through it. But does the word manage suggest a control that you don’t have?

[00:07:00.610] – Kim

Well, I think with some of the changes, I think it’s appropriate. In the keynote that you heard, I was speaking about different types of organizational change, which was a little quick peek. It could be something that impacts the whole organization. It could be personnel change. It can be a change because of remediation in some way, shape, or form. So I think certain types of change, when we think about an implementation of something, that’s usually where educators live. An implementation, we can manage it as best as possible, but we have to remember the nuances of the complexity of it. So you can only manage as far as you think about all the different pieces, and sometimes they’re all known, and sometimes they’re not. So that’s where that emotional intelligence comes in and looking at models such as the managing through complex change to make sure I have addressed all the components. And then the other unknown is the people. People are not predictable. So your staff one year might have been able to react and respond in a whole different way than your staff this year. So you can manage to a point, but I don’t feel that that’s all that you would have to be able to do.

[00:08:11.590] – Steve

It sounds like planning a lesson.

[00:08:13.720] – Kim

It’s the human experience.

[00:08:15.150] – Steve

You can plan a lesson. That doesn’t mean you’re going to be delivering what you plan.

[00:08:22.250] – Kim

Absolutely.

[00:08:23.360] – Steve

So there’s preparation. Preparation is good leadership, but parts that you’ve got to be able to to modify, change, and adjust based on what you find.

[00:08:34.190] – Kim

I think the communication part, of course, we’re planners, we’re leaders, we are educated people. We can plan the communication, we can plan the rollout, but we have to remember, it’s a process. It’s not going to happen overnight. Do we ever plan for the full 2-3 year implementation that most things actually need it? And also because it’s a human experience part that we’re dealing with in leadership, we have to address it and walk carefully with empathy. There’s no way that you can demand something, expect it and evaluate it within a week. So where’s the give and take? Where’s the true plan for the rollout? And then we, leaders, if we have not been trying to in some neuroscience, we have to know that people are hardwired to do what they do. That is how the human brain works. So we also have to remember all of what needs to happen to change the wiring of that particular practice, if that’s what it And then remember that it takes time, attention, repetition, and positive feedback to even get new wiring going. So if leaders have not been trained in that, they’re not aware of that. People aren’t just trying to be resistant.

[00:09:44.480] – Kim

They actually are doing what they’ve been hardwired to do. So that takes a lot of undoing, and we may not always know how to do that.

[00:09:54.220] – Steve

So as a leader, what would you say I need to be aware of concerning myself as how I’m responding to change, maybe especially change that I wasn’t part of initiating?

[00:10:06.910] – Kim

Just your own emotional response. Is it a, “oh, my gosh, here it happens again?” And it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t feel it, but you do need to be mindful of your own emotional response to change, especially when you’re not the initiator, because what could tend to happen is you slip into victim mindset, you slip into, “oh, this doesn’t or this impact me,” but you don’t maybe fully own it the way you should because it didn’t come from you. So whether it came from you or not, you have to act like it did, and you have to really dive in and give yourself the time needed to either ask the questions of the source, whether it was your district leadership, state departments of Ed, other places. Get the why and get it under your skin enough for you to say, okay, I get this, or at least I get their why, so that you feel comfortable enough because I have seen more than often, and my phone will ring all the time, about leaders that will say, “well, they did it to us again,” and things like that. It’s a rally cry to try to get some camaraderie, that whole social identity piece, us versus them.

[00:11:19.810] – Kim

We know that’s going to happen, but that’s not good for the leader to do. So they have to get their own emotional response and their thinking wrapped around whatever this change is. And remember that even though this didn’t come from me, I am the leader. I am the leader of these people or this work. And so I have to be prepared to step into that place with high emotional intelligence, but also maturity so that we can do what we need to do because it’s not going to go away. And that has happened also. People just say, it will pass. No, it may not. And so you also don’t want to set yourself up for failure. Or your stakeholders.

[00:12:02.960] – Steve

So I know that you’ve got a responsibility for supporting and training coaches where you are, and you do that work with other leaders. What are some of the specific skills coaches should look to be developing to assist them with the consistent change?

[00:12:25.360] – Kim

Well, part of what I mentioned in the keynote at the conference was just the competency component. We have to think a little broader to not a checklist of skills, but competencies. Actually, one of the biggest things that leaders and coaches can do is develop their self-management competency and to be able to really think about what is the achievement orientation that I can take on to be able to manage this change for myself, but then also to turn around and help others. How do I go about setting goals? How do I look at the priorities, what’s needed? Because when we’re able to do it, we are able to know how to turn around and model and show that and teach that to other people. And that is recent research that has come out that is one of the most important competencies that a coach can have to impact change on behalf of the other person is that self-management of me. And it’s not the emotional part, but it is the actions that I take to do something that I need to do. What do I filter out? What do I zero in on? How do I determine what’s priority, what’s urgent, what’s not?

[00:13:39.640] – Kim

All of those things. And then also turning around and using our great coaching questioning. That is one of the most powerful things that we can do to help the other person, whoever it is, a leader, a principal, a teacher, to be as thoughtful and open with their thinking as possible. Because when a person that is being asked coaching questions and they have the opportunity to think or learn or create within that space that is created, they own their own solution, and they will be able to move forward versus, you told me to do this, so I guess I’ll do it. When they own their own solution, they’re going to be displaying more buy-in, they’re going to be more attached to the outcomes, and isn’t that what we want? Versus a teacher saying, Well, you told me to do it. It didn’t work. I told you it was going to not work. So that is one of the most important competencies that a coach can demonstrate is that self-management, and then turning around and asking those questions and helping another person begin to manage that change. And one of the other things that I am included in the course that I worked on with Instructional Coaching Group is helping people understand what is in their span of control and what’s not.

[00:14:54.350] – Kim

Sometimes just asking that question, “what is out of your control?” is in itself, an opportunity to surrender that and I can control the surrender. Our brain needs autonomy. And so while it seems like you don’t control any of it, I can control the opportunity that I can surrender that I don’t control those pieces. It’s powerful. And when people give that, their shoulders go down and they give that exhale, you know that you can then move forward with talking about the elephant in the room.

[00:15:27.480] – Steve

I think you’re touching on the piece that I was working on in my head. I frequently find coaches dealing with change, run into teacher’s resistance to that change. Then the coach has the difficulty of personalizing the teacher’s resistance to the coach versus the teacher’s resistance to the change that’s been imposed.

[00:15:59.580] – Kim

Well, so lots of coaches like to… yes, people do become resistant, but lots of coaches like to just say they’re resistant and combative, and then they get into combat mode.

[00:16:13.300] – Steve

I’m wondering if that combat mode comes because they’re personalizing the resistance.

[00:16:19.040] – Kim

Yes. I mean, we are what we do. And if a person has personalized that change and they own it, or it could have been, this is what I’ve decided we do, we all are what we do. That was my whole dissertation was professional identity development and so a teacher is who they are and what they do.

[00:16:38.960] – Kim

So now we are talking about each other, and this change is what I feel is best and the teacher is holding on, but this is how I’ve been operating. And so we do have to put those barriers down. I was trying to put my eyes on a quote that I had just come across, but I could not find it. But way back in the day with the National Staff Development Council, Now Learning Forward, they spent so much time in their coaching academies, helping coaches have strategies for the resistance to change and the components that they can think about, because somebody might be resisting or look like they’re resisting because they literally do not understand or have this…

[00:17:18.660] – Steve

They don’t know.

[00:17:19.200] – Kim

Yes. Versus I’m resisting change because the workload is too much and so I’ve decided to not do what it takes to make this change. I know I need to make it. I’m going to make it later because I have other things on my plate. So how do we help people do that? Or some people don’t see the change as credible. So what do you do in that case? Well, you have to explain some more of the why versus some of the ways that you respond. If we take a little bit of time to coach, to have conversations, and maybe figure out why versus why aren’t you doing this? Okay, you’re already going to now have an even bigger problem. And Steve, I know that you probably can see that you’ve experienced this, but unfortunately, most of us have had a negative experience with change in the past. So we tend to remember what happened the last time. And so you might be dealing with some of that. I shared before Or one of those organizational change types is personnel. And a lot of people in the last 10 years are experiencing having been left behind by people, their colleagues, their educators leaving.

[00:18:29.070] – Kim

It feels like you’ve left me. So a lot of people are hold up and shelled up, and it may not even be about that change. It may just be what I’m dealing with in my context. So how do we open ourselves up, ask the right questions to determine is this vision? Is this person lacking support? Is the school climate and culture able to properly sustain the learning necessary for this change or to give that grace for risk-taking, for trying it and failing it and practicing it? That is another huge component of change. Some spaces are not as safe as others. Sometimes that climate and culture in a particular place does not allow for the risk-taking and the failure that is needed when we’re trying something new to happen.

[00:19:20.510] – Steve

I remember a line that came to me in the midst of a teacher who was quite upset about a change that the system was was requiring. And after our coaching conversation went on for a while, I looked at the teacher and I said, “so if I’m hearing you, you’d like to change as little as possible and still meet the requirement? You got it.” And I said, “okay, I’m on board.” And then it was totally easy to work with her. She knew that I had this picture of where she wanted to go. And now we could build a relationship and she could make discoveries, and the whole coaching piece could go on from there. But you had to be able to separate yourself from that, that that’s okay to take this little piece of a step versus I’m here to sell the whole systems project?

[00:20:18.760] – Kim

Oh, my gosh. That makes me think about there’s an image in Cathy Perrette’s book, Compassionate Coaching, where there are different components. I don’t have enough blank to do this now. And, oh, I wish I could think about all of those pieces. But one of them was, I have a little bit more on my plate than I need to. I don’t have the right environment right now. Then how do you respond? I don’t have the right process This is in place to do this right now. I don’t have the power. I don’t have the community. We got to remember, this is education is a space where we’re supposed to be able to do this together. So what are the things that you don’t have? And do we, as coaches, have enough patience to step back? This is not about me. Let’s figure out how it’s feeling. Is someone isolated? Are they failing? Is there a lack of confidence so I can properly respond? Isn’t that what we’re there to do? Because if we’re beating people up, there is another issue there. There’s a whole other issue. I don’t think you want to talk about that in this section.

[00:21:25.490] – Steve

[laughter] That’s when the coach needs a coach.

[00:21:28.580] – Kim

Yes, that and.

[00:21:34.510] – Steve

Looking at the time of the school year here, many educators are going to be starting the year with new members of their PLC, their grade level, their department. And what can coaches and school leaders do to assist staff in growing through those changes that pretty much come every year?

[00:21:57.940] – Kim

One of the biggest things that I share with the folks that I work with is to just start with building that community amongst the team and the school as best they can from whatever their role is. I mentioned earlier, the school climate and culture has to be one of – and not to push a program or anything, but are we a community of learners here? And then you have all of those sub teams and components within a school or in another type of educational organization. So how can they help promote the community and the trust? We know the research from Chicago from those years ago about the trust that has to be on teams. So how can they help engender that. Engendering trust is one of the competencies in the National Document for Teacher Leadership Competencies. So how can we help do that? Because the other work will need to sit on that foundation. We won’t be to talk about data honestly and openly. We won’t be able to have conversations about, yes, I feel like I’m struggling. I need help if the trust isn’t there. So you can’t make it happen, but we can certainly help to build some of those bridges and authentically to do so.

[00:23:17.670] – Kim

Candy and jeans are not going to do it. It will help, but it has to be your authentic self, and it has to be also partnering up with the other champions in the building, the other teacher leaders, whether formal or informal. We have those informal teacher leaders out there that get it done, and they don’t have not one title. So figuring out how to connect. And nowadays, a lot of that new personnel are novice educators, sometimes so novice, they haven’t been through an education program. So just remembering that some of the school functioning, what the school looks like has not been exposed to some of our educators that are coming in now. They might not have been in a school setting since they were students themselves. So helping them, I almost call it draw back the curtain, draw back the curtain and take people behind or take them in the kitchen. If you’re in the restaurant, show people and help them really understand the processes. Our novice teachers always get so surprised that I just can’t stand up and talk all day to these children. No, there are other pieces. You have to plan, you have to anticipate.

[00:24:28.970] – Kim

Those are two of the biggest things. Pull back the curtain on what this work really looks like, what it means to really be an educator, and then also, how can we start to build that community and trust so that the real work that’s going to come up can happen.

[00:24:47.210] – Steve

When you describe the real work, one of the pieces that I’ve been working with in building teams faster is getting to common goals. So when an instructional coach or school leader can cause teachers in a grade level or teachers within a department to set a goal that’s common to all of them, that gives them a reason for working together. It gives them a reason to go look behind the curtain. It gives me a reason to show you behind the curtain in my classroom because the common goal has put you and me. Actually, it has almost required us to be vulnerable to speed that process.

[00:25:41.870] – Kim

It doesn’t feel like being vulnerable should be a part of our work, but it absolutely is necessary. And we can’t do that if I don’t feel like I can. So that environment is paramount, and coaches can help with that. Sometimes the coaches are seen as outsiders also. You’re not one of us. So they have a very delicate walk to walk and how to balance that because they’re not administrators. They may or may not be considered teaching staff. So as they ebb and flow in the midst of figuring out their dynamics in a building, that is one of the things that they will also have to do is be vulnerable.

[00:26:28.070] – Steve

I was just going to say they need to model the vulnerability.

[00:26:30.040] – Kim

Yes. And it’s hard, especially if you’re a new coach in a new space, you know no one, and you want to be able to show your competency. I’m here. I deserve to be here. I know what I should know. So that is very hard. But one of the biggest things that impacted a group of coaches I worked with in Illinois one year is that they all got up and they said, “we’re all new to this. We have no idea what it looks like, but we hope that you give us the grace to figure it out along with you.” And I was speechless, which is not often. And I said, Wow. And I looked around and the other people were like, Okay, so they don’t know what they’re doing either. Okay, so it doesn’t mean that we get in the same place where they are in the combat field, but you also can share what it might look like for you. It might not be the same stressor, but I also have a stressor, or it might not be the same change, but I’m experiencing it, too. It’s a little stressful. Well, we can do it together.

[00:27:28.870] – Kim

So that is part of that balance that you still show that I’m going through it with you, but I can’t stay there with you. We can’t wallow together. We got to come up out of that so that we can move forward. That is the strength of an effective coach.

[00:27:42.820] – Steve

Yeah, you’ve got me pondering that. That’s really a leadership skill, isn’t it?

[00:27:46.570] – Kim

And that’s why coaches are leaders. That’s really why… not that I don’t focus on instructional coaching because it is such a vital position. It is one of those positions as Nicole Turner, our partner says to help ensure equity for every kid so that they have access to amazing education. But they are leaders in their own right. And so we have to be trained that way. We have to understand some of that mindset and realize the power of our actions and decisions because they will ripple out.

[00:28:16.600] – Steve

Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I’m wondering if there’s any last thoughts that you’d want to leave with knowing the listeners to this podcast are often instructional coaches as well as school-level administrators. Any last thoughts of things that we perhaps didn’t hit as they’re looking at the issues around change?

[00:28:40.880] – Kim

I think between the two of us, we’ve said it all. We really have to have our communication skills, that active listening, not always having an answer already ready in my head and solving the problem before it even comes out of their lips, but really developing the active listening skills, recognizing that emotional intelligence is just as important as the knowledge and skills you bring to the table and making sure that I am able to be flexible and to adapt and then to step into that space to be able to support teams with conflict resolution, with collaborative problem solving, with whatever the components are to help ease those transitions and build more stronger teams and to help be a part of that. Sometimes they’re on the team, sometimes they’re coming in and out of the team. And then just start to embrace whatever the change is and recognize, I may not agree, I may not understand it, but it’s an opportunity for growth. We want to get past just surviving the change every year, or we’re going to just be holding on every year. What change is coming this year? I survived it. We want to get beyond that and see it as opportunities for growth as leaders.

[00:29:49.090] – Kim

And then just remember that because that is growth, am I able to continuously learn and be in that space? It’s all going to be about our positive outlook and mindset, which was one of those sub components of self-management, being able to thrive in that environment and be positive and manage my emotions, even if I don’t understand them all. So that can be an all-year thing and not just a beginning of the year thing.

[00:30:12.570] – Steve

Yeah, for sure. You flag another piece there for me. So even though I was closing this down, I can’t resist putting it out here to you. But as I was listening to you, I’m almost hearing that part of our role is assisting teachers in developing as many of those leadership skills that we’ve been identifying for coaches and instructional leaders. The more that teachers have those skills, that really builds the ability for teachers to collaborate, the ability for teachers to build collective efficacy?

[00:30:52.280] – Kim

Absolutely. I mean, teachers are the leaders of their room. They are making thousands of decisions. I know that data is out there every day. They are responding to every environmental thing happening. And when we think about teachers becoming leaders, we don’t think about a role that they take on, but being able to broaden their mindset to – yes, me and my kids, but also what’s happening- with my colleagues. And then we say, and I try to push, when I’m able to have a leadership mindset, I’m not just looking at me. I can understand, oh, yeah, no, that two need to have their resource time first because so and so, even though I want… It’s not just about being selfish, but I’m able to think more broadly about the system. And that’s one of the biggest things that a teacher can begin to do. But that’s not easy either because I have to be able to say that I am feeling competent enough in my classroom to then begin to think out there. Remember how you said with the person you were talking to, I can’t do that right now? Well, teachers cannot begin to think outside of the four walls of their classroom until they feel like I’ve got this now.

[00:32:08.850] – Kim

Not to take on something, but I can think about something else and add that level of consideration to my mental plate.

[00:32:15.860] – Steve

Well, I’m glad I tugged a little further because you gave me my big walk away. Leadership mindset for everybody. Because actually, we probably take that back. That’s what we’re hoping kids are going to walk out of our school choice.

[00:32:29.340] – Kim

Oh, yeah. Every kid, no matter what you teach, we have to try to keep in our mind that every kid is a future graduate. So what are the skills, no matter where I am, that will prepare them for life or for post whatever it is? If we don’t think about that as a pre-k teacher, as a sixth grade teacher, every kid is a future graduate. And so how can I not only teach my content, but how can I teach and model and provide opportunities for my kids to communicate and collaborate? I saw a kindergarten teacher within two weeks have small groups running in her room, and then our sixth grade teachers forget that that is what they learned how to do. We can’t be scared of giving them the opportunities to be in small groups, to have cognitive dissonance in the classroom, or we’re going to be sending out unprepared people that might be passing every test and maybe won’t be prepared for a neighborhood watch meeting where they don’t agree with something. So we just have to remember the bigger picture. We are creating future neighbors, citizens, and how can we best support that in this amazing field and industry that we have.

[00:33:39.780] – Kim

It’s an honor and a privilege every day to think about that.

[00:33:44.070] – Steve

So, Kim, what’s the best way for people to follow up, learn more about the work that you’re doing, maybe get in touch with any questions they might have?

[00:33:53.330] – Kim

Oh, the best way is just drkimleadership.com. I’ve got some free resources up there. You can contact me that way. My calendar is filling up, but I’m really excited about the opportunities that I have been given to be able to be in front of coaches. That’s such an important role and so close to my heart because I just had the opportunity to see my own life be transformed through becoming a coach. And so I know how powerful it is to be in that role. But I also know how empowering it can be when you are truly developed in all of the areas, including leadership. That’s really where my why is. And I just have on my desk, the sign of a good leader is not how many followers you have, but how many leaders you can create. And so any opportunities to be able to speak to anyone about where they are, what they want to do, help them reflect on what it is that they are dealing with. I am open to all that. Drkimleadership.com, and I’ll support anyone in any way I can.

[00:34:52.520] – Steve

You got it. We’ll put it in the lead-in to the podcast, make it easier for folks to find.

[00:34:56.870] – Kim

All right. Thank you.

[00:35:01.870] – Steve [Outro]

Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.