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Hello *|FNAME|*,
Every term break, I have the same message for teacher leaders: Don’t bring unwanted baggage on your break. The proverbial baggage is unresolved conflict with team members and leadership concerns about team performance. So, in this monthly missive, I am giving you and your team 3 gifts to ensure you are truly able to rest this break.
Why We Can't Ignore Unresolved Matters
If conflict and leadership concerns go unresolved, they start to form part of a self-narrative each person involved develops to justify not resolving the conflict or concerns. The cost for resolution starts to accrue and anyone involved will reinforce their narrative to ensure deferment of paying the cost for resolution. This is a form of Self Deception that the Arbinger Group wrote about in a fantastic story about organizational leadership and family.
When the cost of resolution starts to increase there is a myriad of consequences (in order of the cost, from lowest to highest):
- Delayed/missed deadlines
- Communication lapses
- Leadership distraction
- Complaints
- Rumours and innuendos
- Lack of focus on improved teaching and learning
- Loss of confidence in supervisor and/or upper management
- Loss of senior management support
- A toxic culture takes root
- Overall cynicism and distrust
Even worse than these costs, is the cost to our own well-being. Just because we go on holiday, it doesn’t mean we escape these costs. Debt collectors are ever-present. The collection notice comes in the way of emails sent during the break, task lists that grow during our absence, a dread of returning to work, and in the worst cases, an underlying anxiousness that disrupts sleep throughout the break.
Seeking immediate gratification only adds to the debt
In the run-up to this term break, I know that several leaders are trying to clear their desks as best they can. They do this by attending to the easy transactional matters, those that don’t require a lot of interdependencies. The self-deception is that leaders seek immediate gratification from checking boxes with the belief that if everyone on a team has gotten their work done, including themselves, then the work of the team is done.
In the wake of this approach to supervising peers in what I consider a working group, not a team, a teacher leader accrues a lot of baggage. Work gets done, but it comes at a significant cost. The big items that require genuine and authentic collaboration become harder to achieve and ultimately will shift more burden and responsibility on the leader to get them done when everyone returns to work.
Don’t become prey to this self-deception. Transactional work doesn’t improve teaching and learning. Transactional working environments discourage collaboration. Transactional cultures have higher levels of conflict and lead to higher turnover.
3 Gifts for You, Them and Us
Fortunately, I have a great repayment plan for you. It can start before this upcoming break and be paid for throughout the rest of the school year. Best of all, it comes with 3 gifts, one for you, one for the team (team), and one for you and the team (us). In order to receive the gift, you must be willing to ask these questions:
The gift for You
What are we doing well as a team and need to continue doing after the holiday?
This is an easy gift to ask your team to give you. Even if there is conflict between one or a few team members, there will also be pockets of positive collegiality that when exposed to everyone, you may be able to build on.
In the case where you feel no one has anything positive to say, which not surprisingly, many teacher leaders dread, you can individually speak with each team member and summarize what was reported to you. Individual meetings become an opportunity to surface positive relationships and practices that can be documented and shared in a meeting. When enough positive instances are captured, they start to reshape people’s narratives of the team, causing them to question their own negative perspectives.
The gift for Them
As a team, what would you like us to be doing more of?
This question might seem like a large leap of faith, but if the emphasis is placed on the team and what the team needs to be doing more of, then this is an opportunity for team members to have a voice in influencing meetings and collaborative work.
Again, if you fear that this will devolve into finger-pointing and a focus on why the team isn’t doing more of what is desired, then you should engage with each team member separately to shape how the conversation should be had as a team and why you want to avoid finger pointing and surfacing reasons for why the team isn’t able to do what people want.
The point of this question is for the team to write the proverbial wish list for Santa Claus. Over your winter break, instead of focusing on being haunted by the ghosts of Christmas past and present, you can start to envision a much more positive future and how you can shape it.
The gift for Us
When we return from the break, what should be our focus as a team for the next term?
The gift for everyone, in this case, is building consensus on the thing everyone wants most from the list drafted from the second question. Once everyone starts to focus on a shared purpose, everyone will be able to enter the break having turned the page on one chapter and looking forward to starting the next.
As all schools prepare to break, both Northern and Southern hemisphere schools, I wish you peace and joy. I hope you all start the new year envisioning what is possible, as that is the source of energy you will need for the next term.
Happy holidays and best wishes,
Michael
If you want to share this newsletter in whole or in part with friends and colleagues please identify the author, Michael Iannini, and here is a link to the blog post: https://middleleader.com/articles/3-gifts-for-you-them-and-us.
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EARCOS TEACHERS CONFERENCE
Join me in March at the EARCOS Teachers conference where I will be presenting on the importance of peer learning networks that transcend campuses, as well as my favorite topic, You Don't Need A Title To Lead.
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21ST CENTURY LEARNING WEBINAR RECORDING
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A LEADER'S MAIN RESPONSIBILITY IS TO DEVELOP LEADERS
The most important role that any leader has is to develop leaders. The most effective way to develop leaders is when senior leaders make their own development transparent and actively mentor aspiring senior leaders to participate in and lead whole-school change initiatives.
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LEADERSHIP ARTICLES RELATED TO COMMUNICATION
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Preparing to Have a Difficult Conversation - There are two sides to every story. WRONG. There is a third that should be considered. Trying to see a difficult conversation from a 3rd perspective can be a very powerful reframing strategy.
How Not to Hit Land Mines in Coaching Conversations - Being mindful of these four parts of a colleague's identity can be very helpful in testing potentially untrue assumptions you have made about them.
When Speaking Up, Timing Is Everything - Timing is everything when trying to address a concern that others may not be aware of or feel is very relevant to them. Although the article is about managing up, the tactic is just as relevant to difficult conversations.
How De-Implementation Can Curb Educator Burnout - Ask your team this: What can we stop doing to ensure we have more time to (agreed priority)?
Stop Ghosting and Start Saying No - Don't fall prey to the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. Bring closure to all the open requests before you break for the term.
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