Timeout for Leadership-your one-minute leadership idea

Tip Sheet #40

Are you asking the right question?

 As we approach the All-Star break we also approach for many of you reading this article today the halfway point in the summer.  In what will be seemingly a very short time, you will be preparing to start the new school year.  Just think about it, you have chosen a profession that allows you to start over every year.  Just like the baseball team in early April, you believe that this will be your championship year.  You get a do over. Take advantage of it.

In keeping with our Moneyball summer theme, today I will take a look at this quote, “Baseball thinking is medieval.  They are asking the wrong questions.” We do the same thing as principals and leaders of our school.  We are asking the wrong questions.  We waste a great deal of time thinking about the wrong things. Is school leadership thinking medieval?  I think it is.  So, let’s narrow our focus and talk a bit about the following:

• Are the students learning? How do you know this?  Perhaps these two questions are all that are needed.  We lose track very quickly of the entire concept of student learning and how we actually know that learning is happening.  To better understand this, we must be goal centered and goal directed with very simple measurable student outcomes.  These outcomes must transcend simple tests.  Next, do we have the evidence that this learning is truly happening?  Our conversations must focus on evidence, evidence and more evidence.
• Why? Boy, a simple one-word question but yet it is extremely powerful.  Why are you doing the things that you do?  Does everyone know why you are doing it?  As a principal, I missed the boat on this one.  There were times that I did things without ever really understanding the “why” behind it.  And if I did not understand the “why”, how were my teachers going to understand it, let alone the students. I implore each one of you to take a moment to reflect on everything that you do at work and ask yourself why I am doing this?  I think this would serve as a great activity for your close team of colleagues.  I would encourage teams of teachers to explore the same question.  Put all of your fourth-grade teachers in a room and start to ask why.  I am convinced that you will hear a whole host of divergent answers.
• So what? Is what you are doing important?  Later in my career, this question became a very important question for me.  I wish I had asked that question more often and much earlier in my life as a principal.  Be careful asking this question because you may come across as flippant and arrogant.  That is not my purpose.  My purpose in posing this question is to see if you know the implications involved in the things that you do. My bet is that you don’t.  But you need to.

Let’s summarize.

1. Are the kids learning?
2. How do you know?
3. Why?
4. So what?

Be an active learner today.  For everything that you do, ask yourself why you are doing it and what are the implications of my actions. It is not as easy as it seems.  Good luck!