4 Ways to Spring Forward in your Leadership

The time change is here, and since it’s spring, that means we move our clocks ahead one hour. Sadly that also means we will need go get up one hour earlier. While I don’t like getting up one hour earlier, I love the benefits of having extra daylight in the evening. Springing forward gives me a brand new perspective on my day and its new opportunities. More time is always a good thing.

With this ‘extra’ hour, we can get out more. We can attend more events. Ultimately, we experience more of what’s outside our office or buildings because the new season and the new time change entices us to seek the beauty of spring. With all of the personal benefits of the time change, it is important to explore how springing forward can impact our leadership?

4 Ways to Spring Forward in your Leadership

With the time change, there are 4 ways to leverage spring to get even more out of our leadership. 

1. Visibility - Getting out more offers leaders more opportunities to connect with more stakeholders. Use the spring to get out of the office and gather information of where the organization thrives and where it needs improvement. 

2. Spring Cleaning - Now is the perfect time to identify ineffective actions, initiatives, and resources that need to be removed from the organization. Remove the clutter or waste from your daily routine, and springing forward will be a breeze. 

3. Planning - Summer is right around the corner, and that means preparing the school to excel to even higher levels next year. Summer work can’t truly excel without spring planning. Spend time each day mapping out the next steps for organizational and personal growth. 

4. Feedback - Since spring serves as a springboard for next school year, leaders can make time to elicit feedback from students, parents and staff on the effectiveness of their leadership, communication, and support of the school. Feedback is the fertilizer for new growth. 

How will You Spring Forward?

Where does your leadership need to grow?  Where does it need to be pruned both in personal work and organizational inefficiency?  The answers to those questions lie in the leader’s ability to honestly reflect, but the results of the time change are ultimately determined by the leader’s courage to both embrace the new time and to take advantage of opportunities given this spring. 

Happy Time Change. 

The 5 Plays of a Championship School

Everyone wants to be a champion, but only champions do what it takes to become a champion. At the end of the day, what makes a champion is work, but not just the ordinary work that everyone else does. It takes the right work to become a champion.

If you think of transforming a school into the premier school in the same way you think of making a football team a state or national champion, you quickly come to realize that excellent schools do a few things really well. To be more specific, becoming a champion boils down to running a few plays extremely well, and those plays are executed with precision in order to reach the mountaintop. 

5 Plays of a Championship School 

1.  Consistency- Championship schools understand that consistency is the key to their success. From the front door of the school to the classroom and everywhere in between, the adults in the building strive to be consistent with one another because they know that consistency sets the foundation for every student to become a champion. 

2. Set the Bar - Championship schools identify the bar that every student must reach to become a champion. Within each subject educators identify the skills that every student must master in order to master the subject, and they challenge every student to believe in their ability to reach them. 

3.  Measure the Bar - Once the bar has been set, educators define how they will assess all students in order to determine which kids are making progress or even becoming proficient in reaching the bar.  More importantly they inspire kids to own their data and believe in the hard work it takes to reach the bar. 

4.  Plan to Reach the Bar - Building assessments is great but championship schools and the educators within them make specific plans to help every student master the assessments. Those plans result in fun instruction, powerful lessons, targeted interventions, and specific strategies that all students will specifically designed to prepare all kids to master the assessment. 

5.  Professional Learning - Champions never stop learning, and they never stop reflecting. They know that championships only come when they invest in their own growth and development in their craft. The best educators are no different. They know that their success and their students’ success is greatly impacted by the depth of their own learning. 

What Plays Would You Add?

So what other plays would you add?  What else does it take to become a championship school? What other actions do schools take to reach the pinnacle of excellence?  Always remember. Your school’s championship is within your reach. The question is will you have the courage to inspire your school to run the plays to reach it?

The Continental Decide

The other morning I saw an advertisement where a pastor told the story of 2 raindrops that landed at the top of the Continental Divide.  One landed just half an inch to the west of the peak and the other landed just half an inch to the east of the same peak.  That inch of separation made all the difference in the final destination of those 2 drops.

The drop that landed to the west followed its path winding through creeks, mountains, rivers, and valleys and eventually wound up in the Pacific Ocean, while the drop to the east journeyed to the Mississippi River and found its way to the Gulf of Mexico and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.  One inch changed the trajectories of the 2 drops forever.

The Continental Decide

This powerful story is no different for us, and this is how it applies to us.  We have a decision to make and this decision is so powerful that it could quickly take us to the land of pacification or it could take us to unbelievable places.  The decision is whether or not we want to commit our lives to discovering our unique excellence and why we were placed on this earth or if we want to simply accept mediocrity as our lot in life. 

The choice of mediocrity will not require a lot of work, and it may make us content and possibly happy, but the downside is that the path of mediocrity will never lead us to discovering our true gifts and abilities that were given specifically to us.  The choice of excellence will make us open to new ideas, challenging ourselves to constantly become better, but it will also be relentlessly hard work that will exceed the normal hours others will want to work.  Both paths will have upsides, but they will also have their downside. 

It took the 2 drops roughly the same amount of time to reach their destination.  We also have the same amount of time allotted to us to live our lives.  We can choose to discover our inner best or not.  The interesting thing about the Continental Decide is that neither decision is bad, but the choice we make will take us to 2 totally different places while we are on this earth.  I'll choose excellence.  How about you?

WHY Your Day should Start with Your WHY

This past week, our district had the opportunity to have Ken Williams speak to our district staff. (By the way, if you haven’t heard him, you’re missing out. Click here for an example of what I’m talking about.). His message reminded me of the real reason we do what we do, to create men and women who are not only successful employees, but ultimately influential leaders, mothers, and fathers of future generations.

Think about that for just a second. How much more powerful would our work and daily efforts be if we constantly reminded ourselves that our work was designed to build future leaders?  How much more committed would we be to our work if we knew our work was building mothers and fathers? Chances are that we would be more connected to our work with that compelling why as opposed to a work-based why like improving test scores. 

Your Why Influences your What

If your why is compelling, your what will follow suit. If the reason you exist is to simply get the job done, your work will be driven by numbers and tasks, but if your purpose on earth is to build men and women of the future, not only will you instill values into your students and those you work with, but your numbers (test scores or whatever bottom line you need) will grow even more. 

Ways to Stay Focused on your Why

Your day is not impacted by your Why unless you wake up to your Why. Some great strategies to start with your why include:  

• Posting your Why in a prominent place that you can see when you wake up, 
• Post your why in your car on your way to work, or on your desk or board in your room when your arrive at work,
• Tell others what your why is. When you profess it, it’s power grows. 
• Set an alarm on your phone that reminds you to focus on your why. 
• Have a morning routine where reviewing your why is one of the things you do. 

Our work (WHAT we do) often fails to reach its potential because we are influenced by emotions of the day or even hour, unexpected issues and even setbacks. When these things come up, our why can lose focus and ultimately it’s effectiveness in making a difference, but when we start our day with the WHY, those unexpected obstacles stand much less of a chance of negatively impacting our work because our why drives our perspective. 

Simon Sinek said real change starts with the WHY. If we take that simple yet powerful concept to the next level, we could conclude that real change occurs only if we commit to change for the better everyday; therefore, we would start everyday with our  why and keep our focus on that why throughout everyday. And when we start each day’s work with the why, what we do will yield results and relationships beyond our wildest needs.