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Ringing in the New Year means to celebrate the accomplishments of the past year, create new goals to work toward, and, most importantly, reflect on what worked and didn’t work in your strategies for success. In the field of education, there are always new tactics that can be incorporated into a school’s plan. Here are a few that you can use to improve the communication and functionality in your institution:

Collaborate. Every teacher and staff member is different, which means each one has different pathways for engaging students and colleagues in conversation and learning. Allow unstructured open time during faculty meetings for colleagues to share ideas around topics of their choice. Promote, recognize and celebrate colleague to colleague learning.

Reevaluate Fixed Costs. It may seem as though every year, more and more resources are needed to not only maintain the school, but to also improve it. Before cutting programs and learning opportunities, evaluate money spent on costs unrelated to education. Sometimes equipment can be purchased to save the school money over time by reducing fixed spending.

Take Advantage of Free Online Tools. There are lots of resources available to teachers online, like Discovery Education, which offers lesson plan ideas and worksheets available for download. Smart Exchange allows teachers to download activities for a SmartBoards. Keep researching these kinds of tools!

Engage in Project-Based Learning. As you know, project-based learning allows students to solve real-world problems while learning about a new topic. Not only do experiential approaches to learning help students retention of facts, they foster critical thinking and solution finding skills that will serve students for a lifetime. The Buck Institute for Education has a free project search tool to find ideas for high engagement project-based lesson plans.

We look forward to researching and sharing the best practices and interesting resources regarding teaching and learning, team and leadership development and strategic visioning and planning with you in the new year. Please stay safe and thanks again for all you do to make a difference in the world!

Concentrics offers strategic planning, leadership coaching, team development and meeting and retreat facilitation to help prepare leaders and organizations to work in partnership and implement best practice in decision-making. For additional questions call us at 610-696-3950 or e-mail us at info@concentrics.com. You can also visit us on Facebook and Twitter!

Age Old Wisdom on Leadership Part 5: Pulling it all Together with Project Management

Over the last four weeks, I have explained the meaning of all four parts of the Medicine Wheel within us. Unfortunately, most of us have gotten a little lazy with developing our full leadership capacity. Rather than intentionally taking on challenges and tasks and developing skills that make us a more balanced and effective leader, we tend to rely on others to fill our gaps. We marry them, go into partnership with them and employee them to address issues that we should be facing on our own. This leads me to our final input in this series: How can we develop our areas of weakness? One way is to faithfully use the wheel as a project management and/or problem-solving tool.

After extensively studying various models on project management and creative problem solving, I’ve discovered that there are about nine stages that show up in a particular sequential pattern that align perfectly with the Medicine Wheel. Here’s a visual:

The first thing we need to do when managing a project is to go into the middle of the Medicine Wheel and identify the problem we are trying to solve. Let’s say our problem as that our Pre-K through 12 independent school has an enrollment problem in the Lower (elementary) School. The first thing we will do is come up with a root cause analysis based on data we have gathered about demographic patterns and retention figures in terms of who is leaving our school and when. Then, we will conduct exit interviews with departing families to see if there is anything more to gain from their experiences. For example, if we discover that the root cause of dipping enrollment is three pronged:

1. A lack of new families moving into the community
2. An increase of strong public/charter school options
3. A lack of a convincing case for our value proposition during the elementary school years

Assuming we have verified these key variables as critical to our solution, we can begin to travel around the wheel, starting with the East way.

Going East involves gathering relevant information near and far from schools who have faced similar challenges and filtering them against what is relevant to our environment. With this discovery as our platform, we can then begin brainstorming potential solutions for our school. The idea here is to think expansively and get out of the box. Then, with a list of potential ideas for addressing our problems listed in front of us, our next move is head “South”.

Going South involves reflection, synthesis, frustration, patience and intuition. It means allowing ourselves enough time to incubate on the ideas of others long enough until we see a new way forward that will work for us and our system. Once we have a potential path forward, our next step involves deep analysis and refinement. In other words, it’s time to head “West”.

Going West involves “kicking the tires” or asking the really hard questions. Questions such as:

“Why might this solution fail?”

“What could potentially sabotage this path forward?”

“ What will this solution cost in terms of time, human and financial resources?”

“What are the contingency plans if things blow up?”

“What will be our metrics for success?

“Where can we pilot our solution?”

“How will we monitor progress?”

After we answer these hard questions, we have to come up with a plan for piloting our solution and a process for evaluating its impact. To do that, we head “North”.

Going North means establishing who will do what, where, and when. It means to remain undaunted by all the obstacles that show up along the way and holding ourselves and others responsible for following things through. Going North means we are 100% committed to achieving positive results.

Finally, as a last step, after we have fully walked through the four places of power on the wheel, we need to revisit the middle of the wheel and ask the following questions:

What has worked?

What was missing?

What is needed?

If results are less than we expected, we need to go back to the middle of the wheel and revise our initial cause analysis of why the school has continued to have a shrinking lower school enrollment. Then, we begin recycling through this entire process again.

By making a commitment to touching all parts of the wheel personally while managing projects and solving problems, we are exercising parts of the wheel that need our attention. The impact of working the wheel in this way is to become a more balanced and effective leader.

To read further into the positions of the medicine wheel, click the following links:

•  East Way
• South Way
• West Way
• North Way

Concentrics offers strategic planning, leadership coaching, team development and meeting and retreat facilitation to help prepare leaders and organizations to work in partnership and implement best practice in decision-making. For additional questions call us at 610-696-3950 or e-mail us at info@concentrics.com. You can also visit us on Facebook and Twitter!

The Way of the Warrior: North Power on the Medicine Wheel

 In my last entry, we were three quarters of the way around the Medicine Wheel and revealed the strengths and weaknesses of the West way. A person with West medicine is a masterful critical thinker and a reliable problem solver with a capacity to engineer projects and produce long-term sustainable solutions. When out of balance with the other directions of the Medicine Wheel, the result is analysis paralysis, resulting from spending too much time perfecting every single detail of a project. The cost of analysis paralysis is failure to complete tasks on time and/or loss of opportunities which are only available if one is willing to act right now.

Here’s a visual cue of the West place on the Wheel:

Today, I’m going to focus on the North way, or what we call: The Way of the Warrior. To remember the characteristics of this style, it is helpful to focus on a time of day and an animal totem. The time of day for the North way is a clear, starry night. The animal totem is the Buffalo. The North way in the world is to be as crystal clear as a starry night, and to move forward as relentlessly as a charging Buffalo. Those with strong North Medicine size up priorities quickly and act decisively on what they see as the best way forward. They are also willing to break through any “fences” that would prevent them from achieving a goal. During my years of studying the Medicine Wheel, I’ve learned that those with North Power are consummate quick studies. They are capable of getting to the essence of complex tasks more quickly than others. They are also comfortable shouldering a lot of work, and are able to get it all done, because they take efficient paths to completion and start prioritizing activities right away. Their minds work quickly and they act quickly. In terms of list making, those with West power create lists to keep organized, while those with North Power create lists to watch items get crossed off.

Another wonderful gift of the North Way is to “speak the unspeakable”. While others are holding back their opinions in a group, team or task force, worried about getting it right or not hurting the feelings of others, those with strong North Power are quick to speak up and take a controversial stand. I can not tell you how many times I have heard those with North power say things such as, “Let’s face it, we don’t have the money or talent we need to do this project, so let’s cut our losses and move on.” After it was said, you could hear others muttering under their breaths, “I’m so glad she said that, I was thinking it but didn’t want to say it.”

Like all of the other directions on the wheel, the North’s greatest strengths (being a quick study, prioritizing tasks quickly, being willing to take risks and put a stake in the ground on tough issues) can easily become its greatest weakness. Under stress, they can become incredibly impatient and brusque. Because the North in us does not “suffer fools” easily, it can come off as harsh, aggressive, close-minded and self-serving. Only in retrospect when feedback from a trusted colleague, they will they say things like “Oh, that was a person I talked over in that meeting,” or, “You mean to tell me, I alienated five people with that single comment?” “Ugh, why is everyone so sensitive around here? Don’t they know that what I said was about the task and it wasn’t personal? You know, if it wasn’t for people, this could actually be a great place to work!”

In short, when the North is out of balance, it can come off as a buffalo in a china shop, or, as one colleague shared with me, “a buffalo that brings and breaks its own china shop wherever it goes”.

Finally, an out-of-balance North Buffalo will often take on too much leadership, control and credit for a project. It is not unlikely for the North in us to say, “By the time I explain it, I can just do it myself!” Or, “If I want to see this done right, I should probably just do it myself.” This failure to distribute meaningful leadership responsibilities to others means that when a leader with too much North power leaves an organization, leadership gaps are so significant that the organization’s future is threatened.

We have now made our way full-circle around the Wheel. Now that we have done so, I want to reiterate a comment I made in my first entry on this subject: “We all have all four parts within us.” Some spots are active and fully awakened, while others are asleep and need to be awakened. Also, it’s important to understand that although we may have highly developed strength in a particular direction on the Medicine Wheel, it doesn’t automatically mean we have the place of excess or weakness in that place of power. Remember, it is usually the lack of balance around the wheel or stress that moves us to old, familiar places. Next time, we will pull everything together and will talk about how to map the Medicine Wheel onto a project management model. Stay tuned! Meanwhile, here is the full wheel with all of its strengths (value) and excesses.

For previous posts to learn about the other four places of power on the wheel, feel free to click on the following links:

•  East Way
• South Way
• West Way
• North Way
• Pulling It All Together

Concentrics offers strategic planning, leadership coaching, team development and meeting and retreat facilitation to help prepare leaders and organizations to work in partnership and implement best practice in decision-making. For additional questions call us at 610-696-3950 or e-mail us at info@concentrics.com. You can also visit us on Facebook and Twitter!

Age Old Wisdom On Leadership: The West Way

 In my last entry, we made it half way around the Medicine Wheel and revealed the strengths and weaknesses of the South way. A person with South medicine is characterized by his or her deep respect for the individual and an ability to make others feel safe and valued. However, if lacking balance in the other 3 directions, they can too often avoid conflict, enable others who need to take care of themselves and accommodate, rather than lead with independence of thought and action.

Here’s a visual cue to remember the South Way:

Today, we are going to talk about the West Way. The Lakota Sioux call this “The Place That Looks Within”. The time of day is sunset, always a good time to reflect on what has taken place during the day, and the animal totem is the Black or Brown Bear.

The bear represents the West because they are both very goal focused. However, like those with great West Medicine, they are constantly discerning and analyzing with an eye towards perfection. Bears are focused on their goal, which is often food. When they go into the berry bush for their dinner, they will discern and discard the sour berries and pick only the ripe ones. The way of the West is always to “measure twice so you only have to cut once”.

While those with strong East power move quickly and even circularly towards goals, those with strong West power move methodically and in a linear, step-wise fashion towards achieving those same goals.

Furthermore, while those with great East Power may actually speak to what they think they know and fare well in a spontaneous setting, which values in the moment wisdom, a person with West power would be reluctant to speak up at that same meeting without having done some due diligence research.

For West’s, quality is their main priority. West are maximizers at heart, which means they like to improve things. They are uncomfortable with loose ends. They find every typo and seize every opportunity to better something. Which gets us to a well-worn phrase we have used over the last couple of weeks: one’s greatest strength can quickly become one’s greatest weakness.

While others are soaring with ideas and possibilities, the Wests can’t help themselves from thinking about how this might all fail. When others are ready to move forward with a breakthrough strategy, Wests are saying, “I think we need more time to analyze, pilot and evaluate. “

In fact, in an imperfect world, the Wests can be stuck with what we call analysis paralysis: waiting for more proof when time is ticking and opportunity will be missed. In short, the West in us sometimes has to learn how to lead in times of ambiguity and uncertainty without all the data to make the right decision.

There is one more potential pitfall worth mentioning. Those with strong West medicine have the power to remain objective longer than everyone else. This is a great gift, as they are unlikely, for example, to be captured by a trendy idea and more likely to go for sustainable long-term solutions. Yet while they are thinking things through, it is common for their faces and body language to go flat. As they think deeply, they appear cold and insensitive. They are less likely to smile, nod and affirm things right away, and more likely to spend the most time contemplating.

The stereotype of being unreadable combined with a tendency to want to pick out a plan’s flaws can make them tough partners for those who tend to be relationship-based. They may be listening deeper than anyone in the room, but they can be perceived as cold and judgmental.

As you will learn as we continue on the path of the Medicine Wheel, one of the challenges is to not take things personally and learn how to partner across our differences. For now, just take note.

In summary, a person with West power is a masterful critical thinker and a reliable problem solver with a capacity to engineer projects and produce long-term sustainable solutions. When out of balance with the other directions of the Medicine Wheel, the danger is analysis paralysis and being seen as judgmental, too focused on the details and missing the big picture.

Over the next three weeks, we will review one more place on the wheel: the North way. Then, we will pull it all together to help examine our road to better balance. Stay tuned!

To read about the other Medicine wheel positions, click the following links:

• East Way
• South Way
• North Way
• Pulling It All Together

Concentrics offers strategic planning, leadership coaching, team development and meeting and retreat facilitation to help prepare leaders and organizations to work in partnership and implement best practice in decision-making. For additional questions call us at 610-696-3950 or e-mail us at info@concentrics.com. You can also visit us on Facebook and Twitter!

Age Old Wisdom On Leadership: The Way of the South

 In our last Thought Thursday, I talked about the strengths and excesses of East Power. This particular leadership style is characterized by vision, optimism, and the ability to think out of the box. When one relies too much on a single style or strength, it is easy to get out of balance and lose our leadership effectiveness. A person with great East characteristics can also be poor with details and follow through. Here’s a visual reminder of the East place in terms of its value and its excess.

Today, I’m going to describe The Way of the South. The South place on the Medicine Wheel can be easily remembered with the color of red – for High Noon. Instead of what is happening next, which is a concern of those with East power, people who have with highly developed South traits are focused on what is happening right now, and especially what those around them are doing in the current moment. If I have strong South “medicine” and I’m in the presence of an individual who is suffering or feeling anxious and unsafe, those feelings transfer to me, causing me to experience their discomfort and wanting to do something about it. The animal totem of the field mouse represents the South because field mice build beautiful nests for their young, making sure they feel comforted and safe.

If I’m on a team in a work setting that is trying to solve a problem, I might say, “Let’s make sure we have the right stakeholders ‘in the nest’ and engaged in this project before we go too far in trying to solve a problem we can fully understand.” That’s real South medicine!

What I was taught is that those with South traits have a knack of making you feel like the most important person in the room. They listen better than others. They are quicker to affirm your strengths and find common ground. They are more patient than most with the emotional components of challenges. They have what Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, Mark Bracket and others call “Emotional Intelligence” or EQ. The Lakota Sioux called those with great South power the “Keepers of the Secrets” or “A Place of Calm Waters”. They put a premium on relationships, develop trust quickly and maintain the confidences of others. Although many people in leadership say they have an open door policy, those with South power actually have people coming into their offices, sitting for a spell and sharing.

What a great array of strengths the South way offers. What I learned in my study of the Medicine Wheel, however, is that whatever is our greatest strength can easily become our greatest weakness, especially if we lack the capacity to access our other four places of power. For those with South power, that means when they are busy taking care of everyone else, there is someone they may not be taking care of enough at all-themselves. What I have come to observe after years of studying the wheel is that when a person relies exclusively on their South strengths to lead, they are inclined towards what those in addiction counseling call “co-dependent or enabling behaviors”. They rescue people who should be taking care of themselves. They do the work of other people in order to avoid conflict and smooth things over rather than addressing problems, which might hurt another person’s feelings. Because of this, a person with South power can swallow their frustration for a long time; but watch out, like a long fuse, one day something is said or done and they EXPLODE with anger and frustration, confusing both themselves and others.

In summary, a person whose South is out of balance loses his or her ability to lead effectively. Over the next three weeks, we will review two more places of the wheel and then pull it all together to help examine our road to better balance. Stay tuned!

To read about the other parts of the medicine wheel discussed, click the following links:

• East Way
• West Way
• North Way
• Pulling It All Together

Concentrics offers strategic planning, leadership coaching, team development and meeting and retreat facilitation to help prepare leaders and organizations to work in partnership and implement best practice in decision-making. For additional questions call us at 610-696-3950 or e-mail us at info@concentrics.com. You can also visit us on Facebook and Twitter!

Thought Thursday: Age Old Wisdom on Leadership Development

 Over 30 years ago, I was working at Penn State University as a Director of the Center for Student Leadership Development. My work at the time involved bringing together faculty, staff, civic and business leaders in the community to share their wisdom and mentor future student leaders. It was an exciting time, and together we built a network of colleagues who simply loved the opportunity to light the spark of service and leadership in students.

During that time, I had the privilege of researching alternative models for understanding diverse leadership styles. The ones I enjoyed most were well-researched models with surveys that revealed a primary, and in some cases, a secondary style preference.

My absolute favorite at the time was The Myers Briggs Type Inventory, based on Dr. Carl Jung’s theories of psychological types, but there were others that were impressive as well. Another I enjoyed was LIFO, developed by Dr. Stuart Atkins, which included an additional component of examining leadership behaviors in times of stress. Two more that I would recommend were the DISC tool, based on Dr. William Marston’s theories of leadership, and the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) developed by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner.

The beauty of all these instruments was that they all had been thoroughly researched and included surveys, which were easily scored. Also, self-discovery was exciting and the opportunity to learn how to work across style was possible through helpful coaching.

Unfortunately, I found that too many times, people left sessions feeling boxed into a style or type and colleague stereotyping was part of the process, so I went on a journey to learn about alternative, more fluid approaches to developing leadership understanding and competency. From there, I was introduced to a model from one of my mentors, Rod Napier, an innovator in leadership education, who had taught at Temple University and authored several books on Group Dynamics and Leadership Development. Rod told me about an experience he had with a Native American Medicine Man and encouraged me to learn more.

It’s a long story, but through Rod and his colleagues I learned a model for understanding and valuing difference that I found to be life changing. The particular model I learned was from the Lakota Sioux nation and was called The Medicine Wheel. The model explains four places of power that we are all born with and can access as we travel on life’s path. Life’s path is what the Lakota Sioux call the “Sacred Red Road”. It’s a path that can lead us to not only understanding our self and others, but also to a more balanced approach to living our lives and stewarding the earth. The model is 5000 years old, and I believe it is the historical antecedent of all the models we presently work with as leadership development educators.

Over the next four weeks, I will be sharing with you all of the archetypal styles. Before I do that, I want to point out that we have access to all four parts through how we listen, learn and embrace our differences. You may even find, as I have, that those who may push our buttons may be our greatest teachers. As I was taught, we are subconsciously seeking balance and often find ourselves married to or in relationship with those who have part of the Wheel that we do not.

The Medicine Wheel has four places of power all identified with an animal totem and a color. They are the Yellow Eagle of the East, The Red Field Mouse of the South the Black or Brown Bear of the West and the White Buffalo of the North.

Once again, although we have all four parts within us, we tend to have one or two stronger areas of “power” places that we “sing” from, or have always been with us.

First, there is the East. The East is the place of sunrise; the dawning of a new day filled with possibilities and hope. The East is a place of optimism. The East in us lets go of things that happened yesterday and looks forward to creating something special for tomorrow.

The animal totem of the East is the eagle. The Eagle they say sees far out to the horizon and predicts what’s coming next well before others. Those with powerful East “medicine” begin every project with what Stephen Covey has called, “the end in mind”. They are visionaries. Here’s what’s interesting, even though those of us with East power are scoping the horizon for what’s up and coming, we can also swoop “down into the river” to pick up a salmon. This means we know when it’s time to get focused, but not until we have had ample time to circulate around things for a while.

So the East in us thinks circularly rather than in a linear fashion and gains clarity through divergent thinking. That is why East are often relied on to think out of “the box”, or sometimes even to burn the box altogether. When change comes, while some panic, a person with East power says, something like, “Wait, this could be interesting!” What I always say is, If you want to give a person with strong East “medicine” a death sentence, give them the same job to do with no variation for the rest of their lives. They’ll go crazy! To remember the East way in the world, it might be helpful to recall an old Disney tag line, “If you can dream it, you can do it!”

What a great array of strengths the East way offers. What I learned in my study of the Medicine Wheel, however, is that whatever is our greatest strength can easily become our greatest weakness, especially if we lack the capacity to access our other four places of power. For those with East power, the concern is: while I’m living in the world of ideas of what’s next, I lose my car in the parking lot. I can’t find my wallet or my keys. My office systems are horrible. I drive others and myself crazy by jumping from one area of interest to another. I bring stress to a project by tinkering with things in the eleventh hour, just when they thought we were at the finish line. Or I’m only reliable at the beginning/generative phases of a project and disengage when the details and hard repetitive work is needed to pull things through.

In summary, an East who is out of balance loses his or her ability to lead effectively. Over the next three weeks, we will review the other three places of the wheel and then pull it all together to help examine our road to better balance. Stay tuned!

To read about the other places on the medicine wheel discussed, click the following links:

• South Way
• West Way
• North Way
• Pulling It All Together

Concentrics offers strategic planning, leadership coaching, team development and meeting and retreat facilitation to help prepare leaders and organizations to work in partnership and implement best practice in decision-making. For additional questions call us at 610-696-3950 or e-mail us at info@concentrics.com. You can also visit us on Facebook and Twitter!

Thought Thursday – Seeing Systems Part 5: Understanding the Customer Space

 All of us have had the experience of being a customer. In short, you know you are in the role of customer when you’re relying on the goods and services of a provider in order for you to meet a personal or system need. Whether you are waiting on a medical diagnosis, waiting to be served at a restaurant, waiting for a contractor to give you a quote on a major home repair, waiting on a member of your IT department to fix your computer, waiting in line to renew your license at the DMV, or waiting on some critical information from a department within your organization for you to meet an immovable deadline, the customer experience usually requires patience and a whole lot of waiting. It also may benefit from taking specific proactive steps to ensure great service.

I remember, over fifteen years ago, sitting in a session with my mentor, Barry Oshry, and hearing him turn this simple, elegant phrase: “Enter into the customer- provider relationship early as a partner, as opposed to late as a judge.” First, let’s go back to the predictable conditions Oshry says await us as we enter into a space in a system. Referencing back to our analogy of the dog jumping into the lake, when we jump into the “customer lake”, we experience neglect. In response to that experience of neglect, we react with a reflexive shake, which is to stay aloof and hold the system responsible for our condition. After all, we are the customer, we paid good money for the service! Didn’t they get the memo: “the customer is always #1”?

So what does this strategy of staying aloof and waiting to get served do for us? Does it get us better service? Depending on how much neglect you experience and how patient you are as a person, you are likely to react with a pallet of emotional responses ranging from mild disappointment, to frustration, to “royally and righteously screwed”.

What are our alternatives? Sure, we can dash off a scathing review via some social media outlet, or we can share direct feedback with a powerless customer service representative. And yes, we can even do our best to make sure our friends never work with person X or frequent store Y ever again. But at what cost and with what gain? In order to pivot out of the position from complaining to satisfied customer, Barry suggests that we take a stand for partnership and Become a customer who gets in the middle of delivery processes and helps them work for us. In other words, rather than waiting to be served, take an active stand to help shape the service you would like to receive.

Barry Oshry suggests there are four strategies that can bring us into positive partnership with service providers so that they are more likely to meet our expectations:

• Know how “It” (their delivery system) works– Learn how service providers prioritize their work, make decisions, schedule service and get rewarded.
• Set clear demands/standards– Articulate expectations clearly from the beginning of your request for service and establish benchmarks and deadlines for what you want to get done.
• Stay close to the producer– Build a real relationship with individuals who are serving you and check in regularly to see how things are progressing.
• Get into the process early as a partner, not late as a judge– All of the above needs to happen from the outset of a customer provider relationship.

In many of the schools I consult with, too much time is spent criticizing other stakeholders, parents, students, fellow administrators, faculty and staff without adequate empathy and or awareness of the condition of the spaces they are operating out of every day. Barry Oshry’s exploration of the space of Tops, Middles, Bottoms and Customers unravels the mysteries of organizational life and opens up pathways to partnership that can create more powerful and robust systems. It’s not easy, but it is possible.

In case you missed it, click here and to read introduction about the Top, Middle, Bottom, and Customer spaces. To learn about previous spaces discussed, click the following links:

• Intro
• Top Space
• Middle Space
• Bottom Space

Concentrics offers strategic planning, leadership coaching, team development and meeting and retreat facilitation to help prepare leaders and organizations to work in partnership and implement best practice in decision-making. For additional questions call us at 610-696-3950 or e-mail us at info@concentrics.com. You can also visit us on Facebook and Twitter!

Thought Thursday – Seeing Systems Part 4: Managing the Bottom Space

Most all of us can recall a time when we felt at the “bottom” of the hierarchy within a system; where we found ourselves responsible for producing the goods and services for others with seemingly little control over policy, resources or evaluation criteria. In a school, one can experience his or her “bottomness” across the range of roles in the system.

Whether you are a student taking several tests on the same day, a teacher who must move his or her classroom, a Head of School being asked to pull together a last minute report for a finance committee, a parent filling out a financial aid form for a college application, a business manager being asked to find money to deal with unanticipated facility issues, or an athletic director being told his or her scholarship budget has been cut by 30% right before recruiting season, you know you are at the bottom when things feel out of your control and yet you still have to produce.

Barry Oshry describes the bottom space as a place where the work you do, who you work with, where you work, the resources you are given to execute your work, and how you are evaluated all are determined by others. Refer to the analogy of a dog jumping into a lake: the condition that awaits you when you jump into the bottom space is vulnerability, and the reflexive shake in response to that condition is to blame higher ups for all your frustrating circumstances. Unfortunately, this response, though it might feel good to vent, doesn’t reduce your condition of feeling powerless or oppressed; it just leaves you feeling self-righteous, frustrated and ignored.

Barry suggests that in order to move out of state of oppression to one of empowerment, we need to take the following stand: Be a “bottom” who takes responsibility for your condition and for the condition of the system.

Instead of sitting on the sidelines and bonding with others through misery about what’s not happening, we should turn our complaints into potential projects and propose solutions. In order to successfully implement our solutions, we need a game plan that includes:

1. A specific vision for making things better
2. A network to leverage our strengths through attracting colleagues to join with us in our plan
3. Concrete strategies for amassing resources so we can actually implement our proposed solution.

It’s not easy, but it can be done. One of the most dramatic examples I’ve experienced of everyone’s world going “bottoms up” in the world of education came in 2001 with the passage of The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

NCLB was America’s flagship program to close the gap for disadvantaged students. Its intent was noble, but its impact wreaked havoc on public school educators around the country. Suddenly there were expectations for each school, each teacher and each student to achieve to state standards or lose critical federal dollars.

“Priority Groups”, including minorities and those with special learning needs, who were supposed to be the beneficiaries of the program, felt stigmatized by the extra attention. Teachers were forced to shift what they taught and how they taught it in order ensure proficiency in reading, mathematics and science based on a test, rather than a set of more complex, sophisticated and rigorous standards of excellence. Schools had to have all their students score at the proficiency rate by a certain year or lose their federal funding.

Leadership at all levels was under incredible pressure and was reeling. Suddenly, refining teaching practices based on differentiated learning styles and new models of student engagement gave way to succeeding on a single state mandated test. The whole system was in protest mode and complained to each other and whoever else would listen, but with little impact.

Rather than waiting for NCLB to establish the standard, one of the school districts I was consulting with in 2001 decided to proactively conduct a learning needs assessment. The assessment focused particularly on listening to individuals who were members of, or worked most closely with what the NCLB called “priority groups”, or students who were most likely to fall into the achievement gap.

The study, comprised of interviews, focus groups and surveys, unearthed some areas in need of continuous improvement. Concentrics set forth a set of recommendations regarding culture, communication, and teaching practice for the district. Our recommendations were vetted with key stakeholders and further refined for implementation at the building level for each school.

The impact was profound. Not only did this district reduce their anxiety about meeting state standards on the dreaded tests, but it was also able to address the true mission of NCLB, which was to close the achievement gap that existed among the district’s diverse student body. Today, the study continues to provide the best methods of addressing learning issues within the district, while the test scores have been a non-issue.

When faced with “bottomness” in a system, we have a choice. We can be the victim or the co-creator of an improvement plan. It’s just another example that leadership is available to us at all levels of a system.

Tune in next week to learn how to navigate the customer space!

In case you missed it, click here and to read introduction about the Top, Middle, Bottom, and Customer spaces. To learn about the other spaces discussed, click the following links:

• Intro
• Top Space
• Middle Space
• Customer Space

Concentrics offers strategic planning, leadership coaching, team development and meeting and retreat facilitation to help prepare leaders and organizations to work in partnership and implement best practice in decision-making. For additional questions call us at 610-696-3950 or e-mail us at info@concentrics.com. You can also visit us on Facebook and Twitter!

Thought Thursday- Seeing Systems Part 3: Leading from the Middle Space

Most of us can think of a time when we’ve been in the middle of something, where we are pretty sure that if we please one party, we will displease another. One of my oldest memories goes back to being a resident assistant at the University of Pittsburgh. Back in the early 1970’s, I was lucky enough to receive room and board and half tuition for taking on this classic middle space role. My job was to provide peer counseling and mentorship while making sure the students on my floor abided by school policies. For those who have navigated this tricky space, you know the dilemma, which can easily be boiled down to a few choice words: build trust or make the bust. I remember sitting in my dorm room, as the parties raged on, and steeling myself for the interventions to come. Do I ignore this party? Do I shut that party down? Do I “write-up” the students for underage drinking or smoking pot and put them through the disciplinary process, at the cost to their academic futures?  What position will this put me in when students with real problems on the floor come to me for help? What do I really believe is the right thing to do? Why did I take this job anyway?! 

The other day, I was coaching a Department Chair who was in a similar position. She was being asked to implement a curricular change, which came from the central administration, and get the buy-in from her fellow faculty who had no interest in making the change. Worse yet, she too was uncertain about the impact of the recommended changes on student learning. She asked me, “What responsibility do I have to the administration, my fellow faculty and the students?”

This is the dilemma of the Middle Space. Whether you are a coach trying to advocate for a student athlete with the Admissions Office; a Development Director trying to steer a donor’s giving toward a specific school need; a Division Head responding to a parent’s complaint about a faculty member, or a parent trying to mediate a conflict between two children, life is filled with Middle Space dilemmas.

Barry Oshry explains that you know you are in the middle space when you have the experience of being torn. In reference to the analogy of the dog jumping into the lake, Oshry explains that the “reflexive shake” while being torn is an attempt to “slide into the middle” and try to please everyone. He says our most natural response is to run back and forth listening to all the parties and, in the process, we lose ourselves. We come off to others in our organization/system as wishy-washy, a pawn of one side or another and lacking leadership. To avoid losing ourselves, Barry says we need to take a stand.  The stand for the middle space is: “Be a middle who maintains your independence of thought and action in stays in service to the system.”  This stand leads us to alternative strategies for taking leadership:

1) Take top when you can. This means make a call and be willing to live with the consequences of your actions.  In other words, do what’s needed and ask for forgiveness later.

2) Be the bottom when you should. This means you must be a reality check. As ideas from higher ups hit the ground, they sometimes do not have the desired effect. As a middle, when you see that things are not going to work out well, be courageous and push back. Be prepared to share alternative approaches that might fare better.

3) Be the coach, which means coaching either end, or both, so that they can effectively implement their ideas and/or share their feedback in ways that will serve the mission/system well.

4) Be the facilitator- Invite the key parties to a meeting and then design the format and process so that all voices are heard and you leave with shared agreements.

Sometimes we start with one strategy only to find that another is needed. As long as we stay focus on serving the system, rather than specific individuals, the potential for being effective is there. It takes courage and support. Support can often come from fellow middles in the system. Oshry explains that the place of greatest leverage in a system is the Middle Space. After all, they are the folks who are likely to partner with all levels of a system on a regular basis. When middles integrate with their peers regularly (especially without their bosses present) good things tend to happen. Here are agenda items for “Meetings of the Middles”, recommended by Oshry, which are to be used as a guide for meetings:

• Share information
• Work information (coming up with a system diagnosis)
• Coordinate efforts
• Problem solve
• Engage in mutual/peer coaching
• Share best practices

There is great power and great challenge in the middle space. Remember, slide out first, maintain your independence of thought and action, and lead with intention. Don’t be afraid to develop/refine your skills as a facilitator and a coach.

Tune in next week to learn how to navigate the bottom space!

To learn about the other spaces discussed, click the following links:

• Intro
• Top Space
• Bottom Space
• Customer Space

Concentric’s offers strategic planning, leadership coaching, team development and meeting and retreat facilitation to help prepare leaders and organizations to work in partnership and implement best practice in decision-making. For additional questions call us at 610-696-3950 or e-mail us at info@concentrics.com. You can also visit us on Facebook and Twitter!

Thought Thursday- Seeing Systems Part 2: Navigating the Top Space

Here’s a quick story for you.  It took my wife and I many years to have children.  After a lot of challenges and lots of intervention, support and prayer, we were blessed with beautiful twins (a third one came effortlessly later). I remember distinctly the day we left the hospital with our precious little boy and girl in tow and as we buckled them into the child seats of our mini-van, I remember looking at my wife and saying, “OK, I guess they’re really ours now!” The feel of being totally responsible and accountable was almost overwhelming.

Barry Oshry describes ‘top space’ as the space in a system where you know you have overall responsibility for your part of the action. In an independent school, this could be the Head of School, a division director, a teacher in her classroom, or a student who is about to step on the stage and deliver a solo on opening night of the high school musical. Oshry goes on to explain that you really know you’re in the top space when you are the only one waking up at two or three in the morning to take care of your responsibilities. This reminds me of my wife and I. We were both ‘top space’, but she was at an even higher level, as she took the responsibility of nursing both children while I was able to get an occasional break.

Refer back to the analogy of the dog jumping into the lake from the previous blog post. What Oshry says is: no matter who you are when you occupy top space in a system, you get ‘wet’ with complexity and accountability. Your reflexive shake in response to that wetness is actually to suck up more responsibility. So, where does this leave you? It leaves you to feel burdened by it all. What is the alternative?

Oshry says the alternatives can only be considered by taking a firm stand. He describes a stand as a commitment that pivots you out of reflexive responses and allows you to consider other more productive alternatives. Let me digress with one more short story related to our twins to describe the power of the stand. Before we had our first two children, I was frequently traveling all over the country, and sometimes out of the country, to facilitate team development session and coach executives.  But, when the twins came, I decided to make a commitment to be a father who comes home for dinner every night. In my family and in my wife’s family, having family dinners together was central to building healthy family relationships. Now, 18 years later, we are still having family dinners together with our three children.

What’s important here is: the stand I took to make a commitment changed everything.  I had to reinvent my practice and discover a market here in the Delaware Valley to make a living. It brought me back to my passion, education and a more humble lifestyle that allowed all of us to feel connected in daily life. I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Barry Oshry, after years of research and careful study of organizations, has determined that the Top Stand is: Be a Top who creates responsibility throughout your system!  So, just when you are about to take on more responsibility, when you are about to say to yourself, “By the time I explain it, I can do it myself,” you must pause and instead say, “Who else could be doing this work and benefit from the opportunity?” Successful tops develop leadership capacity around them. They do it through:

• Sharing high quality information
• Involving others in big issues
• Asking for help
• Investing in training and development
• Creating enrolling visions
• Making other ‘tops’ on issues and becoming more of a coach
• Creating and using teams

Remember: your job is to create leadership around you.

Stay tuned next week for the tips on navigating the Middle Space!

To learn about the other spaces discussed, click the following links:

• Intro
• Middle Space
• Bottom Space
• Customer Space

Concentric’s offers strategic planning, leadership coaching, team development and meeting and retreat facilitation to help prepare leaders and organizations to work in partnership and implement best practice in decision-making. For additional questions call us at 610-696-3950 or e-mail us at info@concentrics.com.