This blog post is part of a series on your improvement engine—make sure you have a great improvement engine (purpose, perspective, process, plan, and practices) before you start working on your improvement goal! (See also School Improvement Reflection Protocol).
Help staff and leaders at your international Christian school to use a thrive mindset (not a survive mindset) for school improvement! Why?
(1) Because helping others use a thrive mindset gets them flourishing.
(2) Because using a thrive mindset increases the likelihood that staff and leaders will be proactive, engaged, and see school improvement as a way to help students, staff, and leaders to flourish in Jesus.
(3) Because using a survive mindset increases the likelihood that staff and leaders will be reactive, frustrated, and just want to get school improvement tasks over.
(4) Because helping others use a thrive mindset is a best practice.
Image by pch.vector on Freepik
How can you help staff and leaders at your international Christian school to use a thrive mindset (not a fixed mindset) for school improvement? Here are 4 options:
- Assess your school’s mindset.
- Compare and contrast practices of schools with a thrive mindset culture and practices of schools with a survive mindset culture.
- Assess your school’s focus on the urgent and on the important.
- Discuss misconceptions about mindset.
Let me explain each option:
(1) Assess your school’s mindset, using the table below. Next, discuss the results and determine next steps.
| Thrive mindset focuses on… | Survive mindset focuses on… |
| Being proactive on what’s important. | Being reactive to what’s urgent. |
| Prevention. | Addressing symptoms. |
| Developing systems. | Completing tasks. |
| Using documentation. | Using personal recollection. |
| Carrying out ongoing processes and multi-year plans. | Completing projects. |
| Helping both current and future students, staff, and leaders to flourish. | Getting through today, this week, this month. |
In my experience, international Christian school staff and leaders have full sets of responsibilities: helping each student learn and flourish, preparing lessons, and participating in meetings—not to mention email, report cards, and concerned parents. I understand how staff and leaders can see school improvement as just one more urgent thing. And I recognize that this type of thinking, while it can lead to completing a recommendation, may not actually lead to deep, lasting change and to high expectations.
What’s your experience? How do staff and leaders at your school respond to school improvement? Is the focus actually on surviving, thriving, or a mix?
Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash
(2) Compare and contrast practices of schools with a thrive mindset culture and practices of schools with a survive mindset culture: Use the following ChatGPT prompt, discuss ChatGPT’s response, compare your school’s mindset culture with the 2 mindset cultures described by ChatGPT, and determine next steps.
| ChatGPT prompt: I’m going to describe 2 mindset cultures and then ask you to use them to help me. Here are the descriptions of the 2 mindset cultures: (1) A thrive mindset culture focuses on (A) being proactive on what’s important, (B) prevention, (C) developing systems, (D) using documentation, (E) carrying out ongoing processes and multi-year plans, and (F) helping both current and future students, staff, and leaders to flourish. (2) A survive mindset focuses on (A) being reactive to what’s urgent, (B) addressing symptoms, (C) completing tasks, (D) using personal recollection, (E) completing projects, and (F) getting through today, this week, this month. Now, I want you to apply mindset culture to school improvement. Here goes: In terms of working on school improvement (like major recommendations stemming from the accreditation process), compare and contrast (A) staff (not students) working at a school with a thrive mindset culture and (B) staff (not students) working at a school with a survive mindset culture. Use the same recommendation for each school. (Do not use different recommendations for each school). Then give 10 examples of how each school responds to and works on that recommendation. |
(3) Assess your school’s focus on the urgent and on the important, using the chart of Stephen Covey’s 4 Quadrants and the questions below. Next, discuss the results and determine next steps.
Questions: When it comes to school improvement…
- Which quadrant’s activities best describe your school? Which quadrant’s results?
- What happens when a school focuses on the urgent (Quadrant 1 and Quadrant 3)?
- What happens when a school focuses on the important (Quadrant 1 and Quadrant 2)?
- Which word best describes the focus of your school: urgent or important?
(4) Discuss misconceptions about mindset: Have staff and leaders discuss mindset misconceptions and then determine next steps. Here are 3 possible misconceptions about thrive/survive mindsets:
Misconception #1: We may have a survive mindset culture, but we complete our accreditation recommendations. So, we don’t need to shift to a thrive mindset, right? Well, I can see you’re getting the results you want (completed recommendations), and what comes to mind for me are students who want the results of just passing classes (not actually learning). Not good.
Misconception #2: We urgently want to get our jobs (including school improvement) done—a thrive mindset doesn’t seem to address urgent tasks. I’m glad you experience urgency about helping kids and getting school improvement done. That’s great! And I want to share that a thrive mindset focuses on what’s important (Quadrant 1: Important and Urgent) and Quadrant 2: Important and Non-Urgent. A thrive mindset seeks to invest as much time as possible in Quadrant 2, while being responsible with Quadrant 1.
Misconception #3: We want students to learn, we get them for a limited time, and we’re just taking school improvement a day at a time and week at a time. We are busy! I understand what you shared, and I agree with some of it. I also agree that when it comes to school improvement, focusing day-to-day and week-to-week can result in ineffectiveness (no systems developed), inefficiency (no documentation to use), and decision-making that is unsatisfactory in the long-term. When it comes to school improvement, be like students who actually want to learn and let the grades take care of themselves—use a thrive mindset!
Here are some related resources:
- To what extent does your perspective help you improve?
- What mindset do you and your colleagues use when doing school improvement? Growth mindset? Fixed mindset? A mix?
- How important is mindset?
- School Improvement Reflection Protocol
- School Improvement Framework
Bottom line: Help staff and leaders at your international Christian school to use a thrive mindset when doing school improvement!
Get flourishing!
Michael
Get Flourishing 