I want you to spend this winter break reflecting on all the ways you can express appreciation to your colleagues and team members; even the really tough-to-stomach ones.

Delegation, when planned properly, develops team members capacity and capabilities to take on more responsibilities, assume accountability and instills a sense of ownership for the outcome.

If you have set a goal, then you need to take a step back and reassess the desired result against the reality of your working environment. You should also take into your own, as well as others, personal circumstances, as these might have changed since the goal was set.

Transformative Collaboration is actually the result of upsetting the status quo and challenging assumptions and sharing critical feedback. Not negative feedback, but critical feedback.

To encourage teachers to act responsibly requires leaders to communicate clearly and make all of the expected outputs very explicit. Caution, though, must be taken when defining the outputs that are expected, because if leaders are too prescriptive, it will limit a teacher’s agency to take ownership when problems arise.

Your first 90-days of leadership needs to focus more on people and less on process. Especially, if there is pressure to improve teaching and learning.

The post was written after the Beijing Winter Olympics, but prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The title of this post is in regards to my dismay about my daughter’s fascination with the Russian Figure Skating team. I firmly believe the message I am trying to convey in this post is just as, if not more relevant now as it was at the time I drafted it. I hope that you will read the post after reading the following appeal. The lesson I learned from almost unconsciously influencing my daughter's perception of Russians will be very important in understanding how to facilitate the type of dialog I am advocating for in this newsletter.