It is go, go, go all of the time.
“I’ll eat lunch later.”
“I’ll get to that!”
“I need to do more.”
“If I am sitting and thinking, then I am not doing and not making progress.”
These are the thoughts that chased each other around in my mind every single day. The truth is, I use to prioritize these thoughts and let them manifest in my mind until they became what I believed was effective. They simply were not. Don’t let me fool you.
Finally I realized that I was so busy but going nowhere real fast. I decided to make a change. Instead of doing more, I decided to focus on less. I paused and I set an intentional focus on reflecting on what was getting traction and what was not. So often, we think that if our to do list is full or our meetings are packed with endless housekeeping that means we are busy and productive. That just is not the case. Instead, I decided to take time to pause and with that came a flood of reflection and reveals. That was when I finally started to build momentum and make progress towards my goals.
Taking time to reflect in leadership is an art that must be curated into your leadership plan intentionally….or it just won’t happen. Reflection is like stretching after a really hard workout, it usually doesn’t happen because you are onto the next thing and it feels like it is not as productive – until you get caught with an injury. We so often underestimate the power of reflection and how it can reveal the very things we are running around looking for. Reflection makes the learning visible to us. It reveals the progress we made and it helps steer us to our next right step, rather than trying to take all of the steps at once. It makes us think about whether or not we are pouring our effort into the right things or just spinning our wheels. However, if you don’t pause to reflect then you may never realize what you may be missing or should be prioritizing because you are trying to do it all. When you are in the middle of the work, it is sometimes hard to see what is really happening. It isn’t until you pause to reflect that the work and progress you have made reveal more answers.
The answers that reflecting reveal are clarity and direction about how to go from where you are now to where you want to be. It provides that measuring stick of progress, which then unveils the measure of value that you are producing, offering, or of the work you are doing. In fact, it becomes blindingly obvious. But these answers don’t happen unless you are intentionally looking and reflecting with evidence on the progress you and your community have made. Reflection also reveals a start and an end point so that you can move from priority to priority. It helps make you and your teachers aware of the gap and provides intentional focus to closing the gap with specific actions because you are focusing on less rather than it all.
Another superpower in reflection is that it reveals milestones and indicators that you are making progress which then feeds momentum. These milestones allow you to be aware of the progress you are making and keep you and your community wanting to keep at it to reach that destination. The goal of leadership is to lead your community forward and to make progress, however, if you don’t take time to reflect, you often miss the progress that has been made or perhaps stall the progress altogether because you are trying to do it all. Therefore it is soooo important that you as a leader create the metrics by which your community will measure and realize their progress.
Celebrations and wins are also revealed when you pause to reflect back and highlight the progress that has been made. This also helps to build and grow a positive, solution seeking culture. If people are validated for the work they have done then they want to continue to be a part of the work that is happening. The only way to validate the work is to look back on it and reflect which reveals the wins.
You see where I am going here, right? Reflection is a necessary part of growth, productivity, and a culture where everyone wants to do their best work. No one likes to work their butts off and never get noticed or recognized for it. No one wants to work endless hours only to feel like they are not getting anywhere. No one likes to work in a place where there is no direction or clear pathway. People want to know what to do next and what they are working towards. They want a step by step plan and autonomy to make progress towards those milemarkers. The only way to come up with that map and destination is through reflection of what people need, want and what matters to them. Reflection reveals all of those things. It also reveals the actions to get there. Curate your reflection to ask the right questions. What do you need to get your teachers there? What do you need them to do to make progress? What do you want them doing? What do they want? Questions like these focus your actions and your destination. Reflect on where they are at and that reveals the action items for each stage of the pathway towards your destination.
Lastly, reflection gets you and your community of learning mode and into doing mode. Once you look back on the work you have done, it reveals the next step clearly so that it is becomes necessary to take. This engages implementation of the ideas that you learned because you know the work you do will be reflected on. Your long term success depends on your ability to reveal the success to them through reflecting and becoming clear on steps, destination, and how they will feel at each stage. It sets expectations that each person is asked to contribute to the work that is being done and reveals the responsibilities that each person needs to do in order to achieve the destination. Reflection helps to spread out the responsibility so that it does not always fall on certain individuals but on the entire community.
To recap, reflection is necessary because it reveals:
- A pathway to your destination with clarity and direction
- Your destination and what you really want to accomplish (it helps you to focus on less and get more done)
- Steps and stages/milestones to get to your destination
- Characteristics of how you or your community will feel at each stage
- Whether or not you are actually making progress
- Awareness to the progress being made which builds momentum
- A need for evidence to show that progress is being made
- Action items to provide the next step
- Celebrations of wins
- Gaps in where you may need to go next
- Responsibility of each individual to move towards that next milemarker
Now that you know the secret powers of reflecting and how it will inject momentum and productivity into your community, let’s talk about what types of things to focus and reflect on. Here are some things that are important to reflect on within leadership in a school:
- Now and Future – You want to create a contrast between where they are now and where they will be as a result of the work that you are doing in your school
- Content – The content and professional learning focuses that you are providing for them needs to help them go from where they are now to where they want to be. It has to make them move. Anything that is fluff and not related, get rid of. Focus your content and strategies on the stages your teachers are mostly in.
- Momentum – As you are planning your focuses for the year and the work your teachers are doing, think about how you will maintain momentum and retain their focus and dedication to the work. The most powerful tool to do this is to reveal where they were to where they are now. Yep that’s right – Reflection! Reflect back to them the progress they have made.
- Tracking – In order to reveal the progress to your teachers, you need to figure out a way to track the progress. This may be through surveys, looking at work samples with baselines and at each mile marker, assessment data, videos, pictures, etc. It needs to reveal growth and that is what will retain and focus them to the destination you are all working towards.
Reflecting needs to be intentionally curated into your leadership plan. It is also necessary to provide time and space for your teachers to reflect as well as be taught how to reflect with intention. There is such a power in reflecting and it will reveal the answers that you have been searching for for years! There you have it – the secret to making progress is reflecting!
Now, I am an action plan kind of leader so after deep reflection, I have your action steps! Your next action steps are to curate a reflection plan into your messaging and then set specific time aside to implement reflection in with your leadership team and your teachers. I think you will be surprised at how pausing and reflecting instead of piling on more jobs just might be the key to productivity and a momentum building culture!
Speaking of momentum building communities who move from the learning to actually doing…..I have something in the works that could really take our leadership to the next level of actually implementing all of what you learn in this blog at a deeper level and into your leadership plan. So many times, I have learned so many amazing ideas and strategies but I learn them and then I do not know exactly how to implement them. That is what my idea to form a school administrator’s leadership membership is all about, how to implement and get results. Imagine a community that supports you every step of the way through a private group, templates to help you clarify your thinking and success paths, mastermind sessions with each other to figure out specific hot seat problems that are happening in your school and coming up with a plan together, masterclasses that are curated to your pain points or questions, and a plan with intentional reflection and measuring sticks of progress to keep you moving forward. We would do this each month in a very targeted group membership curated to your needs.
This membership idea that I’ve been thinking about creating would serve all administrators of schools to actually implement a very specific system called the Leadership Edit System step by step and in small amounts so that it is manageable and can eventually be automated. The idea came from years of figuring the answer out to this very question, seeing others struggle with this very thing, and from hundreds of conversations with other administrators around the world. The problem we are solving in our membership and course would be the struggle of tired and overwhelmed leaders who are frustrated that they cannot seem to motivate or inspire their teachers to take action to get results. That is what is in the works!
Here’s the backstory… For several months, I’ve been getting private messages from people who have reached out with questions like “is there a way to learn more about engaging and motivating my school community?” or “is there a way to go deeper with this content and actually make it happen?” “How do I get my teachers to take action without me feeling like I am always hitting a wall to even get them engaged?” “I am tired and frustrated, is there anyway that I can do this leadership thing without spending hours at the office?” “How do I actually start to conquer my priorities without feeling like I am running around getting nowhere?”
Prior to this, I had never considered having a membership and space for our community to learn and grow together and implement in small bite sized pieces so that it makes sense, gets results quickly, and doesn’t add to your overwhelm. You guys, I get it. We want convenience and speed, clear direction, less info and more progress. That is what I want too and that is what my main goal of this membership that I am thinking of doing is and also with the course that I have already built.
The more questions I got like this, the more my wheels began turning. I started to see a place where we could…get our teachers to take action and get results specific to their needs, solve problems more independently through teaching them frameworks on how to solve problems or finally finding clarity, visibility and trust in our leadership messaging or even… ways to make my meetings and professional development times more actionable, efficient, engaging, and productive. Like I said, it’s still raw. But you see the potential right? I can’t stop thinking about how a school administrator’s membership and community dedicated to taking action in small actionable ways, finding clarity in order to get results, could lead us in 1 year, 3 years, or 5 years from now. THAT’S what gets me excited! It’s the progress we would all make by working together with such a tight focus. But here’s what I’m VERY clear on… I can’t do this alone and I don’t have all the answers.
Currently, this idea is very rough around the edges. It’s definitely not perfect (yet) and there are many things we still need to work out. But the vision is there. And that’s why I’d love to extend an early invitation to you. I want you to be part of this… especially if you’re willing to help me shape this idea. Meaning, if you join me as a founding member and you’re willing to help contribute ideas on how we can make this THE best membership program to support school administrators in engaging their community to take sustainable action, I’m willing to extend a very favourable “founding member” price to the digital course AND the membership AND lifetime access to updates. By being a part of the founding members group, you will have a hugely discounted price and lifetime access to the School Administrator’s Academy Digital course that teaches you a very specific problem solving system that you can use for yourself, to teach your teacher leaders to use within their teams, and teach individual teachers to use in their own personal teaching journey. It is a system designed to automate problem solving, reflecting on the results and progress, and empowers teachers to become leaders through coaching each other. Best of all, it is a system that will automate problem solving! You will also have a hugely discounted price (that will never go up) to a monthly backend membership to this course that will help you to implement the Leadership Edit system that you learned in the School Administrator’s Academy course in small, bite sized chunks with support every step of the way. Not to mention you will be a huge part of how this membership will look because you are the foundation to it all.
As I said, all the details for this are not figured out yet. Nothing has officially been created. And I expect some of the best ideas will come from you and others who join me as a founding member. That is the best part, you get to be a part of the design so that it fits your needs exactly, is long lasting and actually gets implemented with support every step of the way.
The goal is to officially launch this on Aug 17, 2021. So between now and then, things will be happening fast and furious based on the ideas flowing back and forth between founding members. With all that said, what I am clear about is how this School Administrator’s Academy Course and Inspire Membership community will serve all of us as we make progress towards engaging our teachers to trust your leadership messaging and take action to get results.
That’s what excites me and has me waking up early with my mind racing a million miles a minute. Years from now we’ll look back on this and say “do you remember when…”. And guess what, that all can begin here today. Join me. Become a founding member. All you need to do is…. simply send me an email and say “yes I want to become a founding member!”. This idea is still really raw but I would love your ideas and input as I build the foundations of this course, back end membership and dream. You are a big part of how it will support leaders around the world. If you want more info or are interested at all, email me at jacealynh@gmail.com and I will send you all the details. No matter what you decide, I will always continue to serve you through this blog. This membership and course are a chance to finally meet you, learn from each other, and build a community of like-minded leaders who make a plan to implement with support every step of the way for years to come. As Luvvie Ajayi Jones states so eloquently, “When you serve people, you will be seen by the people you need to serve and be surrounded by people who will lift you up and share the torch.” I hope to hear from you!
Want more? Download my free guide to workshopping your meetings that shows you how to curate coaching and reflecting between teachers into your meetings.
Also, we are waiting for you at our private facebook group for school leaders called Principals and Leadership.
Check out my website for all the latest happenings and some more freebies!
Plus, I have a podcast called Even If You Miss that is a wellness podcast by kids for kids. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Even If You Miss..... 