Provision #680: Education
Matters
by Bob Tschannen-Moran
Laser Provision
When it comes to leadership it's important to take seriously our
responsibility for life-long learning. All work and no learning makes for
unhappy ruts. We end up doing what we know how to do, and not much else. Great
leaders don't let that happen. We are constantly elevating our game by gaining
new competencies and learning new approaches. We step back and reflect on our
work at regular intervals. We take vacations not only to charge our batteries
but also to enlighten our minds. That's what I'm doing this week; read on if you
want to learn how.
LifeTrek Provision
In last
week's Coach's Kitchen essay,
Packing Your Bags,
Kate encouraged us "to consider the magic of 'getting out of Dodge' if only for
a long weekend. We all deserve a change of pace and surroundings, perhaps a
chance to spread our wings, breathe deeply, and let go. Later youll have the
added blessings of good memories, cherished pictures, or dear souvenirs. I
believe its one of the very deepest gifts we can give to ourselves."
That's what I'm doing this week. It's time for our annual trek to the
Chautauqua Institution in western New York
State. This week serves multiple purposes in my life: it's a vacation, a family
reunion, a planning stop, and a continuing education opportunity. One would be
hard pressed to ask for anything more out of time away from one's regular
routine.
The importance of these breaks to not only quality of life but also to
leadership effectiveness was driven home to me this past week during a coaching
conversation with one of my clients. He had been in conversations with the owner
of a mid-sized company about coming in as a top-level executive, perhaps in the
role of COO or even CEO, when the conversation broke down over two issues:
salary and vacation.
The salary proved to be less of an issue than the vacation, since the salary
could be supplemented with bonuses, stock options, and profit sharing. The
vacation, however, was company policy and the owner, correctly, saw problems
with making an exception for anyone, including such key persons as the COO and
CEO: one week of vacation in the first year of employment.
That proved to be the deal breaker. As much as my client may have been
interested in this position, he was not willing to have only one week of
vacation a year. On the surface, he saw this as a quality of life issue. He and
his family had been used to much more vacation than that, and he was not willing
to go back. Good for him! It's important to hold to our standards and boundaries
in any negotiation.
As we talked through this decision, however, it became clear to my client that
quality of life was not the only issue. He recognized that leadership
effectiveness also came into play. Without more time away from the company, time
to step back from the daily urgencies, he would not only lack the energy to run
the company he would also lack the necessary knowledge, perspective, and wisdom.
What a smart man. Vacations serve many purposes. They obviously meet our needs
for recreation, leisure, play, connection, and enjoyment. Everyone needs that;
those needs are universal. But vacations also meet our needs for reflection,
learning, planning, competence, and education. Those needs, too, are universal
and vacations can serve them as well.
That's true even for people who seek to get away and not think about work at
all. The processing may go on without conscious direction or awareness, but it
goes on just the same. That's because we are whole beings. It's impossible and
not even desirable to compartmentalize life such that our work is bracketed from
everything else. When we step away to go on vacation our work comes with us.
But it comes with us in very different ways from when we are at work. Instead of
active engagement, vacations give us the opportunity for reflective engagement.
We have the opportunity to organize our thoughts, establish our priorities, and
refresh our perspectives. It's not uncommon at all for people to come back from
vacation with the resolve to do something differently at work, even when they
didn't consciously set out to think about that ahead of time.
My client recognized the importance of that to not only his own leadership
effectiveness, but also to the effectiveness of the entire company. What kind of
an organization was he coming into that gave people only one week of vacation a
year? He recognized that the owner of the company was probably right to not make
an exception in his case. But why was the policy so restrictive and controlling
in the first place? That was the larger, underlying issue that really led my
client to walk away.
Ironically, high-performance schools, companies, and organizations do not make
high-performance their goal. High-performance is the byproduct of making
vitality our goal. When the orientation and culture of schools, companies, and
organizations focus on vitality, when they engage everyone fully in a happy
quest for excellence, then high-performance is sure to follow.
Tim Gallwey wrote about this years ago in his excellent book, The Inner Game
of Work, when he described the work triangle as a balance between
performance, learning, and enjoyment. When we focus on performance above all
else, as we often do in more traditional understandings of work, performance suffers. We start pushing and driving so hard that we exhaust
ourselves and our colleagues in the process. Working harder is not always the
answer.
Working wholeheartedly is the key. No matter how hard we work, if we work
reluctantly we will be less than fully effective. When we work wholeheartedly,
on the other hand, then all sorts of good things become possible.
To work wholeheartedly, Gallwey argued that we need to balance performance
concerns with concerns for learning and enjoyment. He encourages leaders to work
with their people to set not only performance goals but also learning and
enjoyment goals on an annual basis. That should be the measure of evaluation:
not just what did you accomplish, but also what did you learn and what did you
enjoy?
That's the kind of company my client wants to work for and lead. A company that
recognizes and respects the importance of education and enjoyment as well as the
importance of performance. It's in the balance that vitality breaks forth.
So that is why I include the Chautauqua
Institution in my annual vacation plans. Not only is it a fun place to go,
with lots of leisure, artistic, and entertainment opportunities, it is also
incredibly educational. For nine weeks each summer, the Institution features
speakers and workshops on topics of interest. And this week is of special
interest, given the publication of our book,
Evocative
Coaching, and the work of our
Center for School Transformation, since the topic for the week is
"Excellence in Public Education."
Here is their description of the week:Our nations founders believed that high-quality public
education is a requirement for a robust and functioning democracy. This week
will examine current efforts that are dramatically improving the performance
of public education in the United States. Specifically, we will look at the
impact of talented and motivated superintendents, leadership training for
principals, trends in teaching teachers, and innovations in
curricula.
We will discuss the responsibilities, interactions, and support from
national, state, and local government leaders, parents and grandparents, and
local community groups. Well leave with a better understanding of what is
required and what is working, and what each of us can do to fulfill the goal
of greater academic excellence for students in our schools.
Wow! What a gold mine for anyone concerned school
transformation. We wrote
Evocative
Coaching to illustrate and describe a process for transforming schools, one
conversation at a time. Vitality is a key word in our book, both as a desired
future outcome and as a current possibility when it comes to observations and
conversations about performance improvement.
We take a person-centered, no-fault, strengths-based approach precisely of how
that approach enhances vitality and, thereby, the performance of schools. I am
looking forward to learning how our approach connects with what the speakers
have to share this week. These speakers include:
- Linda Darling-Hammond, co-director, School Redesign Network
at Stanford University
- Barbara Bowman, founding faculty, Erikson Institute
- Jonathan Schnur, co-founder and chief executive, New Leaders
for New Schools
- Randi Weingarten, president, American Federation of Teachers
- Mark Roosevelt, superintendent, Pittsburgh Public Schools
Throw in a bunch family fun and leisure activities and it would
be hard for this vacation to get much better. I'll let you know in next week's
Provision what I learn and how it goes.
Coaching Inquiries: What do you enjoy doing on vacation? How do you most enjoy
learning new things? How would you describe the balance in your life between
performance, learning, and enjoyment? How could you bring those three factors
into greater balance? What is one thing you could do this week that would move
you closer in that direction?
To reply to this Provision, use our
Feedback Form. To
talk with us about coaching or consulting services for yourself or your organization,
Email Us
or use our
Contact Form
to arrange a complimentary conversation. To learn more about LifeTrek Coaching programs,
Click Here.
Top
LifeTrek Readers' Forum (selected feedback
from the past week)
Editor's Note: The LifeTrek Readers' Forum contains selections from the comments
and materials sent in each week by the readers of LifeTrek Provisions. They do
not necessarily reflect the perspective of LifeTrek Coaching International. To
submit your comment, use our Feedback Form or
Email Bob.
I am so thrilled
to be reading about the success of your book and your new work through the
Center for School Transformation.
I have been a big fan of both you and Megan for many years, so I am rooting for
more people to discover and benefit from your work. I'll be sure to spread the
word. Congratulations!
We tried Kate's grilled corn on the cob recipe and it was DE-licious. Thanks, Kate!
Top
May you be filled with goodness, peace, and joy.
Bob Tschannen-Moran
President, LifeTrek Coaching International,
www.LifeTrekCoaching.com
CEO & Co-Founder, Center for School Transformation,
www.SchoolTransformation.com
Immediate Past President, International Association of Coaching,
www.CertifiedCoach.org
Author, Evocative Coaching: Transforming Schools One Conversation at a Time,
Online Retailers
Address: 121 Will Scarlet Lane, Williamsburg, VA 23185-5043
Phone: (757) 345-3452
Fax: (772) 382-3258
Skype: LifeTrek
Twitter: @LifeTrekBob
Mobile: www.LifeTrekMobile.com
Subscribe/Unsubscribe: Subscriber Services
» Top |
