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Three Laws of Leadership to Create Your Profile of a Leader (ABSD) | E192

• Magnify Learning • Season 7 • Episode 192

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Are you ready to transform your leadership? This episode equips you with the three essential laws of leadership that can revolutionize your approach, whether you’re a principal, teacher, or coach. Join us as we magnify the bright spots in education, sharing inspiring stories like a district's successful leadership retreat that placed authentic learning and collaborative teamwork at its core.

Witness firsthand the transformative journey from traditional to progressive teaching methods. Our personal anecdotes guide you through the shift from textbook-reliant instruction to Project Based Learning (PBL). Discover how these changes not only revolutionized our teaching methods but also created impactful learning experiences for our students. We emphasize the importance of leadership growth through connection, learning, and building strong relationships within your educational community.

Inspired by John Maxwell's third law of leadership, the Law of Buy-In, we delve into the necessity of authentic leadership. Through compelling stories, including a successful leadership transition in Columbus, Indiana, we illustrate the importance of succession planning and connection. For those leaders who have already built strong relational ties, it’s time to launch your vision and bring your team on a journey toward greater accomplishments.

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Ryan:

Three laws of leadership to create your profile of a leader. We're continuing a series on asset-based school development. We're in the middle of change process, which research shows that we need to be magnifying our bright spots. What's working. Let's do more of that throughout your classroom, your school or your district. We've looked at profile of a graduate. What do we want our learners to know, say and do when they leave us? We've looked at profile of a teacher. When teachers are joining our team or as we're equipping our teachers, what do we want them to know? What are the virtues we want them to embody? We looked at them being humble, hungry and smart, and that smart is EQ. Smart Like how do we work together as a team? Now we're going to look at profile of a leader. When we look at profile of a leader, we are talking about building principals, aps coaches and teachers, because we're leading that classroom as well. So if you're listening and you're an educator, I think you're in the right place, because we're looking at profile of a leader and leadership matters. Welcome to the PBL Simplified Podcast, where we add value to PBL movement makers like you, so you can lead inspired, because everyone wins when leaders are inspired, whether you're leading a classroom, a school or a district. Your leadership matters At Magnify Learning. We're obsessed with helping you transform your school. I'm your host, ryan Stoyer, chief Inspiration Officer here at Magnify Learning.

Ryan:

Before we get into our main episode about that profile of a leader, I want to share a win, and this is an admin win. We had a district larger district that came back and they had their admin retreat. They brought in their leadership teams and it was awesome. They crushed it. It was not a bunch of work that could have been done in an email. It was not a bunch of rules and regulations that we have to follow. It was the real work, it was the mindset work, it was teamwork work, it was collaboration and it was authentic learning. And I want to highlight it as a big win because I think we missed this Right now. We're all doing the work because we want to change the lives of kids Right, and we've got to get the work down to that level. But the way you do that authentically is right at the top, in the central office seats. We need to have a mindset where we are listening well, central office seats. We need to have a mindset where we are listening well, we are providing PD that is relevant and timely and impactful. We're using data well and we're allowing people to have the mindset conversations that they need to have. When that starts at the central office level, it's super powerful. I can't wait to see the results of even just this admin retreat over this year and over the coming years, because it's so many administrators and they're like really thinking, not just checking email while you know somebody talked about some stuff or they went over data and then we never see it again. How do we do this? Methodically, using data, empowering people with appropriate autonomy, giving them goals and letting them track those goals right. Let the people do what they're called to do, and that's what this admin treat redid. It really did that right, so it's such a big win and it's such powerful work that it can be done. So today we're gonna be looking at leaders right, the profile of a leader. So I want to highlight a win in that leadership area.

Ryan:

And the next piece I want to talk about is design days, because this is where you can really equip your leadership team. So you bring your leadership team principals, aps, coaches, lead teachers that are thinking about doing something different. You bring them to a model school and it's during the school year, typically in the fall. We've done some in the spring too that have been really effective. But you don't probably don't want to be there in May because it's a little bit different. But so fall, early spring, come into a model school where things are happening right. There's a culture that's different. You get to talk to the learners, the teachers, the principals, and you ask them any question. You want right, the teachers, the principals, and you ask them any question. You want right, it's either a panel or it's informally in classrooms and your team gets to see the work that you envisioned. If you're a leader, you can see this work right.

Ryan:

And John Maxwell we're going to talk about a lot today. He says that leaders get to see farther and they also see before others. So as a leadership team, you might see farther than others. So we need to invite people in to see with their eyes right now like what it could be in the future. As leaders, we can kind of see the future. We need to get everybody on the same page with this vision.

Ryan:

So you come into a model school and say, yep, these are the things that I want in my school, and then we help facilitate two days of you planning out the next three years of how you're going to get there. So you go see a collaboration area. You go see some glass walls. You see kids collaborating in a really amazing way. You say, well, how can we do that? We don't have glass walls, but we do have a large group instruction room. I wonder how we can use that. But we do have a media center that has some flexible seating. How can we use that? And we help walk you through the structures, the processes that can help your team bring that model school magic back to your school. It's super empowering. It allows you, as the leader, to be a part of the group and not just driving the group. So those design days are super exciting. They've been really, really impactful to the groups that we brought through. So whether you're an elementary school or a middle school or high school, those design days can absolutely kickstart your your work here with PBL. So you can find some more information in the show notes. Check it out. Those design days are a great way to start.

Ryan:

Today we're talking about the profile of a leader and I would claim that every leader can hire or train their ideal leaders by living out and training others on these three leadership laws and I mentioned at the beginning, kind of my precursor is this idea that leaders are everywhere. They're at every level of the organization. So whether you're at central office or you're a building leader or you're a classroom leader, right, you're in the classroom teaching your leadership matters. And I'm stealing a little bit of my thunder from the very first law, but I want you to stay tuned in, no matter what position you have in a school system, because you have leadership and it matters. Leaders who can identify, hire and cultivate the next level of leaders who are humble, hungry and smart will have serious advantage over those who cannot. And this is a reference somewhat back to our last podcast where we talked about that profile of a teacher. But I want to apply it to leaders real quick, and then we're going to go right into the laws, because you could easily take the ideal team player work from Patrick Lencioni.

Ryan:

Hopefully you bought that book last week and you're into it. So, same situation Leaders still need to be humble, hungry and smart. And then we need to up our leadership game very specifically. So should you be reading leadership books in education? Absolutely. Should you be reading up on some literacy ideas, probably standards-based grading Yep, you should have a pretty good handle on that. But as leaders, we also need to be very specifically reading in the realm of leadership, and it might be leadership in business right, entrepreneurship, it might be other areas that we're not necessarily accustomed to, and are you going to have to adapt some of this to your arena? Absolutely, but are there still truths within that? Yeah, I think there are, and I think we need to go seek them out, and part of it is because this first leadership law so this comes from John Maxwell's book, the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. It's a classic. It's been over a long time, but he's also sold 3 million copies, so there's a few of us that really think these ideas still land, and he updates it every 10 years or so, I think. So I think you're going to like them.

Ryan:

I pulled out three that I think really work for our conversation in education right now, and the first one is the leadership law of the lid. The leadership law of the lid your leadership ability is the lid to the potential of your school. Can I say it again your leadership ability is the lid to the potential of your school or system. Where do we look first in change process? We look within. That's the very first thing we do. We look at our leadership, and as our leadership grows, it allows the leadership of others to grow. So we're the lid. I hate to tell you, but that's where the accountability starts. It's going to start right with you. So I look at this when I was in the classroom and I used to be an engineer right I was at a Fortune 50 company doing some industrial engineering, making things more efficient, which is still something I really enjoy.

Ryan:

But then I moved to eighth grade English and really taught traditionally to start, because that's all I knew. I thought that's what would work, traditional teaching along with relationships. And then I started to go to a conference and did some professional development and I realized that there were a lot more ideas out there that I just didn't know about. I was just ignorant of what was out there. I would have never thought anything about standards-based grading. It was all very traditional. I didn't know about it. I was just ignorant of what was out there. I would have never thought anything about standards-based grading, right, it was all very traditional. I didn't know there were new ideas or more best practices out there. So I'll give you a really concrete example.

Ryan:

Like when I first started teaching eighth grade English, I didn't know anything. I didn't know what a curriculum map was. So my mentor teacher had me literally copy, really copy and paste, her curriculum map over to mine and she taught eighth grade English too. So I was like, okay, this is what we do, right. Because we were just moving in the system from hers to mine and we checked a box and I was like I didn't know what any of that stuff said. Like zero idea. Like we got to complex sentences in second semester and I didn't even know what a complex sentence was. But if you looked at my curriculum app, it was there. I checked the box, somebody got to go see it. I doubt anybody at central office ever looked at it. But that's where I was at about my standards or how I could apply them. I was just going through a textbook and pumping out worksheets. I was there on the weekends making sure that I copied them all for the week. I was just chopping down trees.

Ryan:

But then, as I started to go to these different conferences, started to think about different ideas, get professional development, I would say raised my lid on leadership. Then it allowed my classroom to do different things. That classroom was not going to be able to do anything more than I allowed it to do, so my leadership had to raise. That lid had to raise. So I went to a PBL conference right that was it was interactive where we had discussions about different things. We had takeaways that we could, we built some things and we could take them back to our classrooms and go do them. I was like, wow, I didn't know this was an option, right. And oh gosh, I love learning. So this was a game changer for me, and not just a game changer for me, right, it's almost immediately a game changer for the learners in my classroom and I do think it's.

Ryan:

A good example of this leadership is the lid. So, wherever your position is, those under you, those that you're leading, that you're with, are not going to be able to go any higher than your lid. So what's a strategy for making your school better? Easy, you're going to make you better. We want all of our learning environments to get better, but we're going to make you better. So, in fact, it's the only part of the equation that you actually control. So if you draw a big circle, it's kind of an easy workshop that we do with people or that I do in individual coaching. You draw a big circle here's all the things that are in your realm of responsibility and then you draw a much smaller circle. What are the things that you can control? You can control you and the work that you do, the things that you say, and I think that's where we need to start. So as we get better, this very first law of leadership is the law of the lid. As we get better, those that we lead get better. This second leadership law is connection. It's connection. You might call it relationship as well. So leaderships touch a heart before they ask for a hand. That's what John Maxwell says. You touch the heart before you ask for a hand. So you're going to build relationships.

Ryan:

Great leader and friend, jeff Spencer, who was an assistant superintendent and we were in the trenches together leading a school within a school PBL environment. At the middle school I did a lot of silly things for kids, but as I've watched his career, he goes at the different schools. He's led as a principal. The school goes from a D to an A. They go from an F to a B. They go from an A to an awesome A. There has to be partners in it, right. So he's got a process that works for schools. It works for leadership and what happened on the podcast, I'll make sure it's on the podcast.

Ryan:

Maybe this is the call out, jeff, you've got to come on now, but if you were to sit Jeff down and buy him coffee which you should do he would tell you. The first thing he does is he talks to all of the teachers that are in the building. In fact, now he's at central office, the first thing he did he talked to the people that reported to him. He just sits down and listens to them, right. He starts to build relationships with them and then you can get into the work, right. It seems simple, but it takes intentionality and it takes a true heart of a leader to really believe it. If you say, okay, map out your first 90 days of the new position, well, there should be like 20 days before you even start the school year where you're just connecting with your staff, before you even get to day.

Ryan:

One of things actually opening up, and the thing that I watched Jeff do is he's so intentional about knowing the person and caring for, like, their vision for their classroom or their work and allowing them to do great things. It just shows. It shows there's everyone that he leads knows that he cares about them and because that connection is there, they're open to new ideas that he might bring. They're open to the data that he brings. He's super data-driven, which again helps some of these conversations when you get in a change process, like here's the data that shows that this idea works. Do you think we should do it? Yeah, I do Right, but so many times we don't go with the data. But this connection piece you know we talk about relationships in the classroom. I just want to tweak it just a little bit. It's about the connection that's going to happen so that you can help those people that you're leading and so that your leadership is more impactful. We're going to raise the lid, you're going to connect with those that you lead and your leadership is going to be more impactful.

Ryan:

The third leadership law is the law of buy-in. Buy-in. A vision is important, but people buy into leaders first. That's John Maxwell's idea that you can have a great vision. It can sound good, it might even rhyme right, it might be pithy, maybe nice and small, it fits on a t-shirt. But if people haven't bought into you as the leader, it's just not going to work.

Ryan:

I've got a horror story that I tell sometimes of a principal that did an evaluation for a teacher and he didn't know her name. He said well, mrs Smith, this is a really great lesson. I really appreciate the work that you're doing. I'll write this up and my evaluation, my thoughts, I'll give them to you. And she said well, my name's Mrs Roberts. Well, you know whatever? Now, that's what he said. That was the actual quote. And then he left.

Ryan:

It's like no one's going to buy into your vision. It might be neat, it might be good outcomes for kids, but they haven't bought into the leader that's going to take them down that path. The vision just doesn't matter. So do you need an important vision? Do you need a vision that's clear? Do you need a three-year plan? Yes, absolutely. That is your leader. Before that, you need to make sure that you have the leadership chops, the integrity, the authenticity that people will buy into you. Right, they're going to buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.

Ryan:

So if you go back a step to that law of connection when I mentioned Jeff, like when he brings out a vision, people listen. Because he's made connection with them, they buy into him as a leader. He's done a lot of really neat work in the past. He connects with people at a relational level. He's easy to buy into and when he brings ideas, you know they're well thought out and you know they're data-driven Right.

Ryan:

When he brings vision, people buy into that. But they're not just buying into the vision, they're buying into the person. And you might not see that from the outside right. If you watch somebody in another district and say, wow, how'd they implement that? That's amazing. And you go and visit, you got to realize that the people in there have bought into the person before they bought into the vision. And as part of why succession planning really needs to be super intentional as well, this might be a small rabbit trail, but I'm super intrigued by succession planning because we've seen so many PBL movements just die out because of principle leaves, because people had bought into the person and the vision and then the next person comes in and the vision might still be there. Sometimes it's not. It might still be there, but they haven't had a chance to buy into the person yet. So we need to be really intentional with succession planning to pick that person early, if we can, and give the teachers a chance to buy into the person so they can continue to buy into the vision.

Ryan:

It's really, really important and when we see succession planning going really well like our model school in Columbus, indiana, just had a succession the principal had been there for a decade, the founding principal retired, so now you've got somebody coming in that's going to have to fill some pretty big shoes, right, it's an amazing environment. Culture's huge. Your partners are great. So what's the new principal going to be like? Well, it turns out that the principal that came in was a former teacher at our model school. So he had gone to go be an assistant principal and be a principal somewhere else in the district. So he's coming back. Well, he's got an immediate buy-in right. Like he's been in the shoes of those teachers that were doing PBL at a really high level. He's done that before. Now he's going to be their leader Like that's awesome. So the vision stays and they're already bought into them, right? Does he still have to do the work? Of course, there's a lot of work for him to do, but the law of the buy-in is really right there because he's one of them, right, he's coming back home was the tweet that he sent out oh, I'm coming back home, right, the buy-in is immediately there. It's super important.

Ryan:

Some of you have the buy-in right. Some of you are great relational leaders, but you haven't yet taken the step to launch your vision. So, where Jeff's taken his first moves are to create buy-in and connection. You've done that, but you're still doing that 184 days later. You're still doing that 300 days. Right, you've been there for a while. You're like well, once I get everybody on the same page, then I'm going to launch my vision. Now you got to cash in some of that buy-in.

Ryan:

You have buy-in. Launch the vision. That's what people are looking to you for. That's your job. They want you to launch that vision. They want you to be a part of something bigger. They want to be a part of something bigger. It's part of the human experience. So, when you have this big vision, you've got the buy-in. I want you to launch it. And you've got the buy-in and I want you to launch it. And if you remember, at the very beginning of this episode, design days can do that. We will help you launch that vision. We'll help you think through things and we're going to coach you through the first year, right? So as things come up, we're coaching you through that process based on all the other schools that we've worked with and the other visions that we've helped people launch. So if you've got the law of connection, you've got the buy-in. I want you to launch the vision at that same time. So those are the three laws of leadership I want you to use to start to create that profile of a leader Like who is raising their lid intentionally in leadership Are they talking about leadership books?

Ryan:

Who has a track record of creating connection with their staff. Who has the buy-in? So when they launch a vision, they've got buy-in from their staff. Who has the buy-in? So when they launch a vision, they've got buy-in from their staff already. Those are the things you want to look at, and John Maxwell wrote the book 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, so obviously there are 18 more laws that I would highly recommend. It's such a good book. You get the audio book and John reads it, so you can just have John Maxwell in your ear or hanging out with you while you're running or while you're driving. 3 million copies have been sold, so if you haven't heard of it before then. I'm sorry about the well-kept secret, but the secret's out, so just jump in. Okay, you're going to love it. Calls to action.

Ryan:

I want you to take stock in your leadership. I said tell me about your leadership. You're like, well, I don't know, I just do my stuff. Well, let's get a little more specific about that. Where's an area in leadership that you want to grow? So, whether you're a teacher, a coach, principal, central office staff, wherever you are in leadership, take stock in your leadership. Where are you at? If your leadership became contagious, would that be a good thing in your school district? That there'd be more leaders like you, because that's part of our job is to create more leaders. That's what leaders do. So you want to be intentional about your leadership.

Ryan:

Go grab a couple books Again 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. You have 21 laws. You can pick a couple of them and make those the beginning of your foundation of leadership. Like these are the things I teach people and you'll be off to a really good start. You're likely a great leader because you're already trying to improve yourself by listening to this podcast. Like you're a movement maker. So start to codify some of those things. Get some sayings that you say every day and let that start to be the foundation of your leadership. Remember, as a leader, you are the lid, so raise your lid and go lead inspired.

Ryan:

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the PBL Simplified Podcast. I appreciate you and I'm honored that you tune in each week. Would you please take two minutes to leave a rating and a review? When you leave a review, it lets the next person know that this is a podcast worth listening to. When they go into their player and search project-based learning, and PBL Simplified popped up. When they see those reviews, they know that high quality, visionary leaders are listening, so they tune into and they can find their way into the PBL journey. Thank you so much for leaving a review. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you.

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