How can you share your thinking in a way that helps others?

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Get your thinking out of your head and put it where you and others can see it! Why?

(1) Because getting it out of your head and putting it where you and others can see it helps others flourish.

(2) Because it increases transparency, clarity, and understanding. I’m so glad that God’s Word is documented, that Shakespeare and Shusaku Endo documented their thoughts, and that international Christian school boards document the statement of faith, mission, philosophy, and other policies.

(3) Because not getting it out of your head and putting it where you can others can see it increases the likelihood of bad things—muddled thinking, ambiguity, misunderstanding, and friction. Not good. Remember, your thinking is not self-evident.

(4) Because it’s a best practice. The author of Your Next Five Moves emphasizes, “You simply cannot scale your [school] without creating the systems for it to operate without you. You have to make lists. You must create manuals (video libraries may be more effective than printed ones). You must codify your knowledge. If it exists only in your head, you have a job to do. If you want to have a sustainable [school], codify what you know and make sure it gets transferred to everyone else in your organization” (loc 2756).

How do you get it out of your head and put it where you and others can see it? Two things that come to mind for me are creating blog posts and creating tools.

(1) Creating blog posts helps me process what I’m thinking and learning. It helps me pull things together and present them with greater clarity. And the process of creating helps me thrive, helps me flourish.

(2) Creating tools that I and others involved in international Christian schooling can use helps me increase clarity and makes it easier to share what I’m thinking with others. (As a bonus, creating tools involves things that help me flourish—thinking, formatting, and getting feedback.) Tools I’ve created on Google Docs include: Conversation Protocol, Quick Win, Stop Self-Neglect/Start Self-Care, and Toolbox.

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

What do you want to get out of your head? What I’ve been recently working to get out of my head includes how to benefit from ACSI’s Flourish Model and ACSI’s Inspire. I’ve done this by creating a series blog posts:

1. What are you aiming for from your ACSI Inspire self-study?
2. Transitioning from REACH to Flourish & Inspire is no big deal, right?
3. Board members, how can you help your head of school actually flourish during the ACSI Inspire self-study?
4. How can you use the process of doing your ACSI Inspire self-study to help people actually flourish?
5. Do you want to effectively or ineffectively complete your ACSI Inspire domain report?
6. How will you conclude your ACSI Inspire self-study visit?

What I’ve also been recently working to get out of my head includes my thinking about things I and other international Christian school leaders and staff have struggled with. And I’ve done this by creating blog posts and tools

Blog Post	Tool
(1) To what extent do you intentionally use your school’s accreditation recommendations to help others flourish?	Action Plan
(2) How clear are you on your school’s approach for helping students grow strong in the Lord?	Approach for Helping Students Grow Strong in the Lord
(3) What’s your plan for curriculum?	Curriculum Plan
(4) How clear are you on why and how you use expected student outcomes?	Expected Student Outcomes Assessment Plan
(5) How clearly and consistently are you articulating your organizational culture?	Organizational Culture Map

What got me thinking about all of this? The following graphic:

Source

To flourish, people need helpful resources, including policy and procedure. Three discouraging things about How We Actually Get Things Done When We’re Really Busy and Short Staffed are it’s

• Not comprehensive.
• Not written well.
• And possibly not written down at all.

Bottom line: Get your thinking out of your head and put it where you and others can see it!

What about you? How do you feel about getting it out of your head and putting it where you and others can see it? How do you get it out of your head and put it where you and others can see it (like Google Docs)? What do you want to get out of your head?

Get flourishing!

Michael

International Christian school leaders, why should you stop using a professional development plan?

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Stop using a professional development plan, and start using a personalized flourishing plan that is designed to help you consistently experience each of the 5 elements of flourishing: passionate purpose, resilient well-being, healthy relationships, transformative learning, and helpful resources. 

Why?

(1) Because international Christian education is all about flourishing (meaning, it’s about more than professional development). And as the CRM (chief role model, aka living curriculum), it’s vital that you are flourishing.

(2) Because using a personalized flourishing plan increases the likelihood…

• That you’ll experience each of the 5 elements of flourishing. Good!
• That you’ll more effectively serve at your school (because you are flourishing). Yes!
• That you’ll model that flourishing (not just learning) is the goal. Powerful!

(3) Because using only a professional development plan unfortunately increases the likelihood… 

• That you won’t experience 1 or more of the 5 elements of flourishing. Not good.
• That you won’t serve effectively at your school (because you’re not flourishing). Not good.
• That you’ll model that learning is the only important thing—which is exactly what we don’t want to model for staff and students. Again, not good.

(4) Because making a plan to help you model what you and Christian educators really want (flourishing) is a best practice.

To see a sample plan, responses to concerns about using a personalized flourishing plan, and ways to create a plan, keep reading!

Photo by Laurin Steffens on Unsplash

What does a personalized flourishing plan look like? For me, a rough version could look something like this:

To consistently experience the 5 elements of flourishing so I get flourishing and help others get flourishing, over the next 3 years I will…

(1) Passionate Purpose: 

• Recite the mission statement routinely in casual conversation.
• Routinely and explicitly use the mission as a decision-making guideline.
• Formally invite the board to rigorously monitor the implementation of our Christ-centered purpose statements.

(2) Resilient Well-Being:

• Get 7-9 hours of sleep each night.
• Practice gratitude by writing down 3 things I’m thankful for each day.
• Seek agency (not control) by focusing on my Circle of Influence.

(3) Healthy Relationships:

• Eat lunch 2+ times each week with colleagues that energize me.
• Increase my conflict resolution skills by implementing what I learn from reading Radical Candor and from completing an online course (The Feedback Loop).
• Listen in order to understand, not to respond.

(4) Transformative Learning:

• Increase my operational knowledge of what makes a good Christian school good by going on 1 accreditation visit per year.
• Stay current with best practice by attending the annual ACSI Administrators’ Conference and EARCOS Conference.
• Participate in weekly coaching sessions regarding my personalized flourishing plan.

(5) Helpful Resources:

• Subscribe to and read 1 newsletter.
• Field test 1+ tools that help me focus on flourishing, for example: Curriculum Plan, Expected Student Outcomes Assessment Plan, Help Students Grow Strong in the Lord, Organizational Culture Map.
• Formally ask board members to help me flourish.

Imagine. What might happen if you actively implemented your personalized flourishing plan? Just imagine! What might happen if staff do the same? Imagine flourishing staff! And what might the impact be on students? Imagine flourishing students!

You’ve been introduced to the idea of using a personalized flourishing plan, and you’ve seen an example of a personalized flourishing plan. At this point, you may have concerns. Let me address some: 

(1) How long will it take to create a plan? Not long. Using Quick Win, you could get started in as little as 10-15 minutes. Here a template you can use to develop your plan. And please keep in mind, planning helps you flourish.

(2) What if I have trouble getting started? Getting started can be a challenge. Sometimes you just need a list of sample action steps. Quick Win has 35 sample action steps (p. 2) and a ChatGPT prompt designed to give you 250 more (p. 3).

(3) What if I don’t have the finances to fund this plan beyond what has already been allocated for my professional development? No problem. There are a variety of action steps you can take that don’t cost money. For example, it doesn’t cost money to memorize the mission, eat lunch with a friend, or subscribe to a free newsletter.

(4) In Standard 10 of the Inspire protocol, ACSI emphasizes professional development. If I use a personalized flourishing plan, how will professional development be addressed? Professional development is an important part of an personalized flourishing plan, as you can see in the action steps in the sample plan: 

• Increase my conflict resolution skills by implementing what I learn from reading Radical Candor and completing an online course (The Feedback Loop).
• Increase my operational knowledge of what makes a good Christian school good by going on 1 accreditation visit per year.
• Stay current with best practice by attending the annual ACSI Administrators’ Conference and EARCOS Conference.

(5) Is this going to actually help me? I think so. In addition to professional development, this will help you focus on flourishing and on working toward holistic flourishing. As you get flourishing, you’ll feel better and be able to serve more effectively, in part because you’ll be able to better serve as chief role model/living curriculum. For me, focusing on flourishing has really helped —I’m getting more exercise, reading and writing more, and creating and using new tools.

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

What helps you create and implement a personalized plan for flourishing that helps you consistently experience each of the 5 elements of flourishing? What comes to mind for me includes:

(1) Reflecting on how planning actually helps me flourish (meaning, I’m less likely to flourish if I just wing it).

(2) Brainstorming options for taking action. (Need a boost? Try Quick Win—it has 35 sample action steps on page 2 and a ChatGPT prompt on page 3 that is designed to give you 250 more!)

(3) Making sure I have 3+ action steps for each of the 5 elements (passionate purpose, resilient well-being, healthy relationships, transformative learning, and helpful resources).

(4) Using a 3-year timeframe to get flourishing by accomplishing my action steps.

(5) Starting with one thing, instead of trying to do everything at once.

(6) Seeing each action step as an experiment designed to get me flourishing.

(7) Reviewing how I’m doing each week and then as appropriate, determining next steps.

(8) Using a template.

Photo by Ussama Azam on Unsplash

Bottom line: Stop using a personalized professional development plan, and start using a personalized flourishing plan that is designed to help you consistently experience each of the 5 elements of flourishing: passionate purpose, resilient well-being, healthy relationships, transformative learning, and helpful resources. 

What about you? 

1. How do you feel about replacing your professional development plan with a personalized flourishing plan? 
2. What excites/concerns you about the sample personalized flourishing plan? 
3. What might happen if you actively implemented a personalized flourishing plan? 
4. What concerns do you have about using a personalized flourishing plan? 
5. What helps you create and implement a personalized flourishing plan?

Get flourishing!

Michael
P.S. Remember to try this template and/or Quick Win!

International Christian school leaders, what’s your plan for curriculum?

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Leaders, use a user-friendly curriculum plan! Why?

• Because using a user-friendly curriculum plan helps teachers and students flourish.
• Because using a user-friendly curriculum plan helps teachers help students experience transformative learning and helps teachers experience helpful resources.
• Because not using a user-friendly curriculum plan increases the likelihood of teachers being unclear and cranky about curriculum, which distracts them from focusing on helping students learn.
• Because using user-friendly plans is a best practice.

What does a user-friendly curriculum plan look like? For me, it’s short (1-2 pages), accessible (Google Docs), uses a question/answer format, and provides a helpful overview of curriculum—what it is, how it’s developed, and so forth.

How can you develop a user-friendly curriculum plan? What comes to mind for me includes:

(A) Using a collaborative process. 

(B) Using a set of reflective questions, for example:

1. What is curriculum? 
2. Why use a curriculum?
3. What makes a good curriculum good?
4. In terms of curriculum, what’s the relationship between mission, outcomes, standards, assessment, instructional strategies and resources, and children?
5. How do we develop our documented curriculum?
6. How do we assess and improve our curriculum?
7. How do we adopt new textbooks?

(C) Using a template like this one. (It comes complete with ChatGPT prompts and sample answers to the above questions.)

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

How can you consistently use your user-friendly curriculum plan? Here are some suggestions:

• At the start of the year, ask subject area teams and the Curriculum Team to read through the curriculum plan and to respond to 3 questions: What’s 1 thing that interests you? What excites/concerns you about our plan? What helps us consistently implement our plan?
• Invite subject area teams and the Curriculum Team to start each subsequent meeting by reading aloud the mission and the answers to “What is a curriculum?” and/or “Why use a curriculum?”
• Establish the practice of annual after-action reviews for subject area teams. As part of the review, ask the to assess the extent to which their efforts are aligned with the curriculum plan.

Here are some related resources:

• ACSI Inspire Standards 7-9 on teaching and learning
• Additional plan templates: (1) Expected Student Outcome Assessment Plan, (2) Approach for Helping Students Grow Strong in Jesus, (3) Organizational Culture Map, and (4) Action Plan
• Transformative Learning: What comes to mind when you think about flourishing? (This includes a description of a vision for student learning.)
• How can you use the process of doing your ACSI Inspire self-study to help people actually flourish?

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

What about you? How do you feel about using a user-friendly curriculum plan? What does a user-friendly curriculum plan look like? How can you develop a user-friendly curriculum plan? How can you consistently use your user-friendly curriculum plan? 

Get flourishing!

Michael
P.S. Be sure to check out this template for developing a curriculum plan!

Do you want to effectively or ineffectively complete your ACSI Inspire domain report?

Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash

Effectively complete your ACSI Inspire domain report! (Please don’t ineffectively complete it.) Why?

• Because effectively completing your domain report helps you, your colleagues, and your school to get inspired to flourish.
• Because effectively completing your report helps readers more deeply understand what’s happening and how to move forward in your domain.
• Because not effectively completing your report results in frustration for you (the writer) and for your readers (think domain committee and members of the visiting team). Not good.
• And because as the living curriculum for your students and colleagues, effectively completing your domain report demonstrates your desire for excellence.

(Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash)

Good news—you don’t have to feel like the kid in the above photo when doing your ACSI Inspire domain report! Just identify the limited number of steps you need to take to write an effective report and take them! What comes to mind for me are the following 7 steps:

(1) Clarify the big picture. Make sure you deeply understand the focus of your domain and the key ideas in the domain’s standards.

(2) Assess your school’s effectiveness with regard to the domain indicators, strengths, and growth areas.

(3) Reflect on how your domain helps people thrive, how effective your school is in terms of your domain, and what your distinctives and challenges are relative to the domain.

(4) Collaboratively develop the criteria of an effective report. 

(5) Write a draft of your domain report.

(6) Use the criteria (see step 4)  to assess your draft and then apply what you learned from your assessment to improve your report so that it meets all criteria.

(7) Celebrate the completion of a domain report that meets the criteria.

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

Hint: Use the expanded version of the 7 steps by clicking here! 

Take 7 Steps provides additional details, useful ChatGPT prompts, and a sample report outline, all designed to help you write an effective ACSI Inspire domain report.

Here are some other tools you might find helpful:

• Expected Student Outcome Assessment Plan (see also blog post)
• Approach for Helping Students Grow Strong in Jesus (see also blog post)
• Organizational Culture Map (see also blog post)
• Action Plan Template (see also blog post)

What about you? How do you feel about writing an effective domain report for your ACSI Inspire self-study? What are the benefits of writing an effective domain report? What steps do you need to take to write an effective report?

Get flourishing!

Michael
P.S. Don’t forget to check out Take 7 Steps, the full version of how to write an effective domain report that comes complete with ChatGPT prompts and a sample outline!

What are 7 helpful tools you wish you had?

Photo by Dan Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash

Use helpful tools to work on your priorities! Why?

• Because experiencing helpful tools and using them to make progress on your priorities helps you flourish.
• Because helpful tools help you get traction on your priorities.

• Because unhelpful tools slow you down, hinder you, and at times seemingly thwart you from making progress on your priorities. And they make working on your priorities distasteful. Ouch!
• Because using helpful tools is a best practice.

What makes helpful tools helpful? For me, helpful tools are tools that…

• Are user-friendly. They are easy to access, are easy to use, and using them is a pleasure.
• Help get results effectively and efficiently. 

What are some helpful tools you wish you had? Tools I wish I’d had include tools that would help with…

1. Developing and implementing shared understand of how we assess our expected student outcomes.
2. Working together to help students grow strong in the Lord.
3. Describing our organizational culture so that we can all work together.
4. Connecting flourishing with our school improvement plan.
5. Stoping self-neglect and burnout culture, and starting self-care and well-being culture.
6. Getting a quick win in terms of flourishing.
7. Getting responses to specific questions (not Internet search results).

Photo by Luís Feliciano on Unsplash

I wasn’t able to find most of the tools (see 1-6 above), so I got inspired and created them (see 1-6 below)—and I started using a new tool (see #7 below):

(1) Expected Student Outcome Assessment Plan (see also blog post): Use 7 questions to define what expected student outcomes (ESO’s) are, what role they play, and how you will assess them. The tool includes sample responses to the 7 questions.

(2) Approach for Helping Students Grow Strong in Jesus (see also blog post): Use 7 questions to  identify your beliefs and practices regarding helping students grow strong in the Lord. It comes complete with sample responses to the 7 questions.

(3) Organizational Culture Map (see also blog post): Use these 8 questions to describe your organizational organizational culture in terms of beliefs, mission, values, and practices. The tool includes sample responses and sample ChatGPT prompts.

(4) Action Plan Template (see also blog post): Use 1 of 2 templates (basic and advanced) to connect school improvement to flourishing and to clarify action plans/action steps. It comes complete with visioning and an after-action review.

(5) Stop Self-Neglect! Start Self-Care (see also blog post): Assess your current experience with resilient well-being, describe your vision of resilient well-being, and take action on making that vision a reality. Comes complete with numerous examples of things to stop doing and things to start doing!

(6) Quick Win (see also blog post): Invest 5-10 minutes in designing an action plan, based on a self-assessment of your current experience with the 5 elements of flourishing: passionate purpose, resilient well-being, healthy relationships, transformative learning, and helpful resources.

(7) ChatGPT (see also blog post): Use ChatGPT as your new assistant! Why? Because ChatGPT is available right now (sign up here), is free to use, and can help you with a variety of things, including getting answers to your questions—not to mention brainstorming, comparing, translating, suggesting, list creation, pros and cons, and writing.

Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash

What about you? What kinds of tools do you like to use when working on your priorities? What makes helpful tools helpful? What are some helpful tools you wish you had? What’s 1 sample tool (from the above 7) that interests you? How are you going to get the helpful tools you need?

Get flourishing!
Michael
P.S. For additional tools, check out my toolbox!

Summer Reading #4: The Culture Map

Source

What if we in international Christian schools intentionally taught and modeled content and skills to equip students to work effectively with people from a variety of cultures?

Wait–isn’t that what we do? Well, there are a number of related things most international Christian schools do: 

• Provide an environment in which students rub shoulders with people from a variety of cultures.
• Expect students and staff to function, with a little guidance, in a Western/US educational culture, regardless of their home culture.
• Offer language classes in the host country’s language.
• Provide cultural enrichment (food, games, traditions, music, celebrations) from the host culture, and sometimes from other cultures represented in the community.
• State goals about equipping students to communicate and collaborate cross-culturally.
• Try to have respectful, kind, trustworthy interactions among staff and students.

These things are good. But in a number of ways, they fall short of equipping students to work effectively with people from a variety of cultures. For example:

• Respect, kindness, and trust are shown in different ways in different cultures.
• The majority culture—frequently US—can receive less analysis and become the default “right” way while other cultures’ differences from the default are viewed as less desirable.
• Students can become bilingual and bi-cultural—comfortable in the host culture and the school’s default culture—and remain uncomfortable in any other situation.
• Staff can write off problems in relationships as personality conflicts when they may be experiencing a cultural conflict and missing the opportunity to be the living curriculum for cross-cultural communication and collaboration.       

What if international Christian schools intentionally provided training in how cultures differ and in how to skillfully navigate those differences in order to effectively communicate and work with people from other cultures? What if our students graduated with not just an interest in other cultures, but with confidence in the knowledge, skills, and experience they have to flourish and help others flourish in cross-cultural settings (including those they have not yet experienced)? 

What would that knowledge and skills look? The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of International Business by Erin Meyer is a great place to start. The author is an American married to a Frenchman and with experience in training international business people in working effectively with people from different cultures. 

Meyer posits 8 scales that help explain how a culture works (see below), and she regales the reader with real stories of conflicts resulting from cultures being at different places on each scale. (Check out Anglo-Dutch Translation Guide below for examples of how miscommunication can happen when 2 cultures approach delivering negative feedback differently!)

Here is a brief explanation of Meyer’s 8 scales:

(1) Communicating: In a low-context culture like the US, good communication is precise, simple, and clear, and repetition is okay. In a high-context culture like Japan, good communication is nuanced, messages are often implied, and repetition can be insulting.

(2) Evaluating: When a culture gives direct negative feedback (like the Netherlands), it is blunt, honest, and may be given in a group setting. When a culture gives indirect negative feedback (like Indonesia) it is soft, subtle, and done in private. 

(3) Persuading: A principles-first (or deductive) culture like France values a thorough explanation of the theory before proceeding to application, while an applications-first (inductive) culture like the US prefers the practical and concrete. Interestingly, Asia is not even on this scale, but represents an entirely different approach which Meyer calls “holistic.” These cultures need to know the context first.   

(4) Leading: In egalitarian cultures like Sweden, there is little distance between subordinates and the boss who is a “facilitator among equals” (loc 1811). In hierarchical cultures like Korea, there is a big distance between the boss and subordinates, and status is important.

(5) Deciding: Consensual cultures like Japan make decisions by agreement in groups. In top-down cultures like China, the boss makes decisions.

(6) Trusting: In task-based cultures like the US, trust is based on reliability on the job, and it changes easily. In relationship-based cultures like Brazil, trust is built outside of work, over time.

(7) Disagreeing: Confrontational cultures like Russia see disagreement and debate as productive and appropriate—attacking an idea is not attacking the person who expressed it. Cultures that avoid confrontation like Thailand value group harmony above all.

(8) Scheduling: A linear-time culture like Germany values promptness, organization, and doing steps in order without interruption. A flexible-time culture like India values fluidity and adaptability in order to take advantage of opportunities.

Source

Meyer’s stories memorably illustrate how conflicts along each of these scales develop: 

• A French woman receives American feedback which sandwiches the real criticism between positive comments, and she’s ecstatic that her manager likes 2 things about what she does. Meanwhile, her manager is considering letting her go because she’s not changing the one thing he asked her to do. 
• A Dutch manager makes his Chinese group feel devalued by riding his bicycle to work and wearing a polo shirt. 
• An American sends a follow-up email to a meeting and loses the contract from a Saudi who feels distrusted and demeaned.

The list goes on. Each of the 8 scales is also illustrated with a graph plotting 20+ countries along the scale from one extreme to the other:

(To see all of the scales, check out this article.)

What might teaching, modeling, and practicing this content and skills look like? First, understanding, articulating, and using it at the leadership and staff level. Then with students. It could be as simple as using this tool to plot the cultures represented on a team or in a class ($3.95 for 24 hours of access). Next, label and refine, from the perspective of effective cross-cultural communication, what your school already does. 

We can articulate the concept of high/low-context cultures, identify countries along the scale represented in the staff or class, and work to provide clear, simple documentation of agendas, policies/procedures, assignments, and more. 

For example, a key place to start is with high/low-context communication. Low-context communication is important in cross-cultural settings because we don’t all share the same understandings, so being precise, simple, and clear makes sure we are all on the same page. 

Meanwhile, we should express the reason: Because when working with people from diverse cultures, it is important to use low-context communication in order to raise the probability that we all have the same understanding.

Who would this help? I’m thinking of…

• A student I’ve had whose parents came from 2 different cultures (Colombia and Japan), grew up in a 3rd (USA) before enrolling in an international Christian school in Japan (which is sort of a 4th culture).
• The 6th grader in my first year of teaching who said her goal was to work for the UN; years later we connected on social media, and she’s doing exactly that.
• Students who go on to work in multinational companies, who marry cross-culturally, who volunteer to help resettle refugees, who worship in multicultural settings, and so many more.

Cross-cultural communication and collaboration are significant skills in our interconnected world. Wouldn’t it be great if we could give our international Christian school students a leg up on the experiences they already have by intentionally teaching and modeling specific content and skills to help them do it even better? I found The Culture Map a fascinating read for thinking about cultural values and how to navigate the conflicts that inevitably surface when they collide.

Here are some related resources:

• Blog posts related to The Culture Map
• How clearly and consistently are you articulating your organizational culture?
• Tool: Organizational Culture Map
• Erin Meyer’s culture mapping tool
• Becoming a Globally Competent Teacher

What about you? To what extent does your school intentionally equip students to communicate and collaborate cross-culturally? What might happen if your school more intentionally equipped students in cross-cultural communication and collaboration? How might teaching, modeling, and practicing content from Erin Meyer’s The Culture Map help? Now what?

Get flourishing!

Kim

International Christian school leaders, how important is it for you to increase your self-awareness?

Increase your self-awareness! Why? 

• Because increased self-awareness helps you flourish. 
• Because increased self-awareness helps you experience increased passionate purpose, resilient well-being, healthy relationships, and transformative learning.
• Because a lack of self-awareness can lead to passionless purpose, not feeling good about yourself, others not feeling good about you (aka annoyed with you), and stagnation. Please note: self-delusion, the opposite of self-awareness, is a no good, very bad thing.
• Because increasing self-awareness is a best practice. 

I just finished reading Tasha Eurich’s Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think. It’s a fascinating book full of intriguing stories, keen insights, and useful tools—like the Candor Challenge, Dinner of Truth, and 3R Model. The author makes increasing self-awareness actually doable!

Throughout the book, Eurich emphasizes the significance of self-awareness, for example: “There is strong scientific evidence that people who know themselves and how others see them are happier. They make smarter decisions. They have better personal and professional relationships. They raise more mature children…They’re more creative, more confident, and better communicators…They’re better performers at work who get more promotions. They’re more effective leaders with more enthusiastic employees” (loc 153). I want this!

And throughout the book, the author also emphasizes the harmful effects of insufficient self-awareness, for example, “un-self-aware professionals don’t just feel less fulfilled in their careers—when they get stuck, they tend to have trouble figuring out what their next phase should even be” (loc 163). I don’t want this!

She organizes Insight into the following 4 sections:

(1) Roadblocks and Building Blocks: While blindspots and the cult of self hinder self-awareness, the 7 Pillars of Insight help—meaning, being aware of your personal values, passions, aspirations, fit, patterns, reactions, and impact (see loc 723).

(2) Internal Self-Awareness: Myths and Truths: “Internal self-awareness has to do with seeing yourself clearly. It’s an inward understanding of your values, passions, aspirations, ideal environment, patterns, reactions, and impact on others. People who are high in internal self-awareness tend to make choices that are consistent with who they really are, allowing them to lead happier and more satisfying lives” (loc 211).

(3) External Self-Awareness: Myths and Truths: “External self-awareness is about understanding yourself from the outside in—that is, knowing how other people see you. Because externally self-aware people can accurately see themselves from others’ perspectives, they are able to build stronger and more trusting relationships” (loc 216).

Note: According to Eurich, internal self-awareness and external self-awareness aren’t always related (loc 210). Meaning, just because you know yourself doesn’t mean you know how others see you—a helpful reminder!

(4) The Bigger Picture: This was my favorite section. Eurich explains how to build self-aware teams using 2 things:

• The 5 Cornerstones of Collective Insight: objectives, progress, processes, assumptions, and  individual contributions (see loc 3319).
• The 3 Building Blocks of Self-Aware Teams: a leader who serves as the role model, a safe environment in which team members are expected to speak truthfully, and a mechanism to keep the team focused on self-awareness (see  loc 3790).

Note: The 5 Cornerstones in combination with the 3 Building Blocks provide just the framework I need!

Insight was a helpful read—and as a bonus, the author includes the 7-Day Insight Challenge and 14 practical appendices addressing everything from values, to ideal environment, to feedback. The author also provides a free online assessment on self-awareness.

Here are some related resources:

• Insight summary sheet from the author
• How self-aware are you?
• What are your tendencies?
• International Christian school leaders, how can you increase your self-awareness?
• What kind of leader does your organization need you to be?
• What kind of international Christian school leader do you want to be?

What about you? How do you feel about increasing your self-awareness? What helps you develop self-awareness? What hinders you? How self-aware are you? (Hint: Try the free assessment !) To what extent are you the living curriculum of self-awareness for your school? To what extent do you want to be?

Get flourishing!

Michael

International Christian school leaders, how can you increase your self-awareness?

Leaders, increase your self-awareness!  Why?

(1) Because increasing your self-awareness helps you flourish.

(2) Because increasing your self-awareness helps you maintain and enhance your well-being, regulate your emotions, build relationships, and identify and address your growth areas. 

(3) Because not increasing your self-awareness means remaining where you are (aka stagnating), complete with all your blindspots. Not good.

(4) Because increasing self-awareness is a best practice. Do a Google search on “leaders increase self-awareness” and you get over 119,000,000 results, including The Importance of Self-awareness in Leadership, 7 Strategies To Improve Self-Awareness in Leadership, and 10 Tips for Leaders to Improve Their Self-Awareness,

Source

How can you increase your self-awareness? In The Self-Aware Leader, John Maxwell offers 12 ways—which also serve as his 12 chapter titles. I’ve listed the chapter titles below, along with a quotation for each chapter:

Chapter 1: Become Good at Leading Yourself: “If you want a better team in a better organization that produces better results, you need to become better at leading yourself” (loc 250).

Chapter 2: Know and Work Within Your Strengths: “Where am I strongest? What are my top three strengths? Where am I weakest? Who on my team can I help using my strengths? Who can I ask to help me where I’m weakest?” (loc 468)

Chapter 3: Put Your Team Ahead of Your Own Career Advancement: “[L]eadership is relational more than positional, and helping the team win is much more important than winning personally” (loc 479).

Chapter 4: Look at Yourself When People Quit: “When leaders are incompetent, they become a distraction to the team. They waste people’s energy. They prevent people from keeping the main thing the main thing. They take the focus from the vision and values of the organization and place it on their own behavior. If the people working for an incompetent leader have a high degree of skill, they will continually worry about the leader messing things up, causing them to expend time and energy fixing messes. If people lack skill or experience, they won’t know what to do to fix things. No matter what, productivity declines, morale suffers, and positive momentum becomes impossible” (loc 660).

Chapter 5: Listen More than Talk: “Do I spend more time talking or listening to my team members? Why? What would happen if I spent more time asking questions and listening? How can I start doing that beginning today?” (loc 814)

Chapter 6: Handle Criticism with Grace: “Where am I defending myself and pretending I have it all together when I should instead be gracefully accepting criticism and striving to improve?” (loc 938)

Chapter 7: Admit Your Mistakes and Learn from Them: “People can either run from mistakes and hurt themselves, or learn from them and help themselves. People who try to avoid failure at all costs never learn and end up repeating the same mistakes over and over again. But those who are willing to learn from their failures never have to repeat them again” (loc 1002).

Chapter 8: Stop Micromanaging People and Start Managing Your Priorities: “Under pressure, do I try to control others on my team? Or do I work to prioritize my own responsibilities so I can be at my best? Where could I empower others more?” (loc 1188)

Chapter 9: Become the Best Learner in the Room: “If you want to lead, you have to learn. If you want to continue to lead, you must continue to learn” (loc 1236).

Chapter 10: Judge Your Leadership by the Success of Your Team: “How successful is my team? In what ways should I take responsibility for their shortcomings, and how can I help them improve? How should I become a better leader?” (loc 1460)

Chapter 11: Take the Longer Road that Leads to Higher Leadership: “Where am I currently taking the shorter or easier road instead of making the more difficult choice that is likely to help my team or make me a better leader in the long run?” (loc 1580)

Chapter 12: Credit Others for Your Success: “If you want to be a successful leader, you will need the support of many people. And if you are wise, you will appreciate and acknowledge them, crediting them for your success” (loc 1618).

While I find each of Maxwell’s 12 ways to increase self-awareness to be helpful, the ones that especially resonated with me include: 

• Chapter 1: Become Good at Leading Yourself—as Rumi says, “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
• Chapter 9: Become the Best Learner in the Room—I enjoy learning, and continued learning will help me increase my self-awareness!
• Chapter 12: Credit Others for Your Success—without God’s help and and the help from those God has brought into my life, I would not be where I am today.

Photo by MART PRODUCTION 

What 1 or more action steps can you take to increase your self-awareness? Steps I’m taking include (1) self-assessing how I’m doing on each of Maxwell’s 12 key points, (2) asking a trusted advisor to do the same, (3) comparing our results, and (4) then implementing 1 or more action steps.

Here are some related blog posts:

• How self-aware are you?
• What are your tendencies?
• What does a flourishing leader look like?
• What kind of leader does your organization need you to be?
• What kind of international Christian school leader do you want to be?

What about you? How self-aware are you? Which of Maxwell’s 12 ways to increase self-awareness resonate with you? What 1 or more action steps can you take to increase your self-awareness?

Get flourishing!

Michael

Summer Reading #3: The Will to Learn

Did you become a teacher because you love learning, love kids, and love to see kids learning and flourishing? Do you have moments, seasons, periods, or classes where you would be delighted to see that happening even more than it is? Dave Stuart Junior’s new book The Will to Learn: Cultivating Student Motivation Without Losing Your Own is a resource that can help. 

He says, “Love—the active, earnest, and intelligent pursuit of our neighbors’ good. Is this not what we spend our labors on each day in our classrooms with our students? Schools exist for a single purpose: to promote the long-term flourishing of young people. Specifically, we do this by teaching them to master disciplines that they likely wouldn’t otherwise” (loc 244).  

Stuart delivers an inspiring big picture, a wealth of specific examples of what has worked for real teachers, and a research base that supports his own credibility. For example, he explains 5 key beliefs in students’ hearts that will motivate them as learners (credibility, value, effort, efficacy, belonging–see graphic below) and 10 strategies that a teacher can use to strengthen those beliefs. Each of the strategies includes examples from multiple grade levels and fields.

Source

Stuart’s 5 beliefs that motivate students are:

• Credibility: The student believes that you, as her teacher, are good at your job.
• Value: The student believes that the work he does in your class is worth his time. 
• Effort & Efficacy: The student believes that with intelligent effort, she can succeed at the work in your class. (These 2 beliefs are grouped together because they are so closely related.)
• Belonging: The student believes that people like him do the work of your class.

Stuart’s 10 strategies that strengthen the 5 beliefs in students’ hearts are as follows: 

1.  “Track Attempted MGCs” (loc 1491): An MGC–or moment of genuine connection–is an intentional, brief (15-30 seconds) interaction with a student about a personal or academic topic where you “attempt to communicate, earnestly and simply, that you value, know, or respect that student” (loc 1491). 

The significance is in the tracking. Most teachers I know would agree that attempting such moments is a good thing—but no one I know (including me) actually tracks it. Which means our efforts are unevenly spread, and we may spend ourselves on a few students while missing opportunities with others. 

2.  “Improve at One Thing” (loc 1979): Rather than being overwhelmed by all the things we think we need to improve in, the author suggests selecting 1 to focus intently on for 2 or 3 months. This should be one of 8 areas that builds that most foundational quality: credibility. Stuart (A) lists the 8 crucial areas, (B) models how to break the first 2 down into some specific, constituent parts, and (C) provides resources for those parts. 

One resource he provides is a chart on what to do with your body, voice, and word choice in order to convey a “warmly authoritative teacher presence.” The chart articulates at a granular level what I realize I naturally do as a teacher with over 30 years of experience, but it would have been gold to me early in my career (loc 2151).   

3. “Gentle Urgency” (loc 2328): This section includes a practical list of ways to enact non-stressful respect for limited learning time at the beginning, middle, and end of class. Stuart reminds us that “as teachers, our sense of sacred urgency must be balanced by a palpable kindness, calm, peace, and gentleness” (loc 2328). 

4.  “Micro-sermons from an Apologist, Winsome and Sure” (loc 3269): Be the kind of teacher who regularly, naturally, joyfully, and confidently explains the reasons for studying your subject area. This section includes 9 different types of reasons and many specific examples from a variety of classes. Check out this example from a math class!     

5. “A Feast of Knowledge” (loc 3707): Know interesting things about your field, delight in the knowledge, and let students in on the secrets. “We want our students to have knowledge constellations all throughout their minds” (loc 3703).

6. “Valued Within” (loc 4028): Get students to articulate how the skills, concepts, and strategies they’ve learned in your class intersect with their own interests, goals, and values—no easy task. For me, it’s easier to reel off reasons my discipline is important, or even to get students to repeat them.

7. “Woodenize All of It” (loc 4509): Like iconic basketball coach John Wooden, teach—specifically, respectfully, and clearly—every skill needed to succeed in your class. Wooden taught his college players how to put on their socks and shoes in order to not get blisters—”Woodenizing All of It” means teaching kids everything from how to come prepared to class to how to take notes to how to study.

8. “Define Success Wisely, Early, and Often” (loc 4953): One way to do this is by developing a clear, shared, important, attainable vision that is regularly discussed. As Stuart says, “We need to give students regular, robust opportunities to contemplate success in our classes, in school, and in life” (loc 4960).

9. “Unpack Outcomes, Good or Bad” (loc 5198): Get students assessing their outcomes, figuring out what strategies got the results they got, and what they want to keep or change (aka, after action review). This is especially important in the case of what Dave Stuart Jr. calls “effortful failure”—when students believe they’ve tried hard and still not succeeded.

10. “Normalize Struggle” (loc 5844): We as teachers need to shine a light on struggle—our own, famous people’s, classmates’, and everyone’s. Everyone was once a beginner. Beginners struggle. Struggle is part of growth. Growth is what we’re after.  

Here are 2 of my favorite quotations:

• “In other words, schools are institutions of love—of this earnest seeking and serving of the fullness and wholeness of one another” (loc 256).
• “We’re after volition in the heart, in the very spirit. We’re after the genuine, thriving, bright will to learn and how to create the kinds of schools and classrooms that align with the realities of the human heart” (loc 389).

How about you? Why did you become a teacher? How motivated are your students? What do you find motivates them? What’s 1 of Stuart’s 5 beliefs that interests you? Which of the 10 strategies to increase student motivation resonate with you? What can you do to increase student motivation?

Get flourishing! 

Kim

International Christian school leaders, what’s your focus: developing others or managing others?

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Leaders, focus on developing others, not on managing them! Why?

• Because people want to be developed, not managed. I mean, “Would you rather be managed or developed?” (Management Is Dead, loc 121)
• Because developing people helps them flourish, helps them develop and use their God-given gifts.
• Because if you focus on managing people instead of developing them, you might not get around to developing them. Ouch! 
• Because “[p]eople development is the new way forward. It’s not a fad; it’s a foundation. Ignore it, and you’ll be left behind. Embrace it, and you’ll be a part of the revolution. Implement it, and you’ll reap incredible benefits” (Management Is Dead, loc 208).

What can you do to develop others? Management Is Dead advocates 5 things:

1. Recognizing unique strengths.
2. Implementing personalized growth plans.
3. Setting clear goals.
4. Doing 1-on-1 meetings.
5. Giving consistent feedback.

How can you move forward with focusing on developing others? What comes to mind for me includes:

• Starting with myself. Ensuring that I’m taking steps to develop myself and that I’m serving as an effective role model of a developing person.
• Deepening my understanding of people development. (Explore the links above!)
• Recognizing the strengths of others.

Here’s what else I’m learning from Management Is Dead:

• “The type of management that’s all about taking charge of something, handling, directing, controlling, and ordering, has given way to developing, which focuses on bringing out the possibilities in people and helping them grow and expand” (loc 119).
• “When we talk about developing people, that can only happen in the context of trust and relationships” (loc 511).
• “People development doesn’t require perfection; it requires humility. It requires you to constantly evaluate yourself, constantly grow, and constantly strive for the best version of yourself. That’s not easy. But it is necessary” (loc 2487).

Here are some additional resources:

• As a leader, how can you help others thrive?
• How can you more effectively help staff grow?
• What steps are you taking to help others flourish?
• Looking for a simple, effective way to flourish and help others flourish?
• Leaders, how do you feel about transformative learning?

What about you? What do you currently focus on more: developing people or managing people? (What does your calendar indicate?) What’s important about developing others? How can you move forward with focusing on developing others?

Get flourishing!

Michael