**Jethro D. Jones:** Hello, welcome to Transformative Principal. I am Jethro Jones, and today I'm gonna do a little bit, something a little bit different on this show. I'm gonna share with you a recording from, uh, a podcast called My First Million, uh, which is a, a pretty good podcast to listen to. Not an education podcast, but if you've listened to me for any amount of time, you know that I like to get a lot of inspiration and information from other sources besides just education, because a lot of the problems we're facing are basically the same, uh, as they're facing, just a little bit different because of our context.
So I'm gonna share this. And they have a, uh, a guy on the program named Joe Hudson, who is, uh, an executive coach for, like, really high-level folks. And it's... There's a lot of really good stuff in this whole podcast. I suggest you listen to it. I'm gonna put the link to it in the show notes so you can go and listen to it.
But I wanna share this one particular part because he talks about two different things, and these two things are really the same problem that all principals face all over the world. And the first one is about dealing with people who are not living up to expectations and doing what they should. And a lot of times what we do in education is we put people on improvement plans, and then the workload of the principal becomes huge.
And then the second thing, um, is related to that, which is trying to figure out what's going on and why the problem is happening, which involves a lot of deep listening. So let's listen to this first, and then I have some commentary that I'll share, uh, about this after it's done
**Speaker 2:** Yeah. So let, yeah, let's get into that. But I think that the... I, I do wanna say one more thing intellectually too, because it's, um, the... if I was, if I go in and monitor a company's health, I literally just use two metrics: how quickly do they have the hard conversation, and how quickly do they resolve it? So let's say you have a CEO who's a yeller.
I guarantee you that the, a lot of hard conversations aren't gonna be had, and they're not resolving quickly. And let's say you have a CEO who's conflict avoidant. A lot of hard conversations aren't gonna be had, and a lot of things are gonna be avoided. So it doesn't really matter what the actions are of people, just to think about those two metrics as the health of an organization is just a great way to go in and very quickly see how healthy that organization is.
Okay, so now how do you do it? So typically, before we get into how you do it, let's talk about the resistance to it. So the resistance is usually, I'm gonna be abandoned, not loved This is a waste of my time. I'm not gonna get anywhere anyway, and it's gonna take so much energy, I could use the energy somewhere else.
That's the second reason that people choose not to do it. And the third is, I'm gonna destroy something that I care about. Like, I have the hard conversation, that person leaves, and then the company's gonna collapse, or then the sales department's gonna collapse or whatever.
**Speaker:** I- is there a fourth one, which is like, I don't even know if this is a problem worth addressing, maybe I should just give it time?
**Speaker 2:** I feel like that's like a, a reason for one of the other excuses . But y- I'm sure that there's moments where that, that's the case. And sometimes that's-- there's actually some, there's some validity to that. Like, I've given them feedback, I'm gonna wait a couple weeks and see what happens instead of like be on their ass every day about the thing.
I can see that there would be some validity to it. And so some of that speaks to the fact that the person doesn't know how to make the conflict productive reliably. Like, I have conflict, and it just ends up in a worse fight that just like doesn't go the place that I wanna go. So typically, if I'm talking about it, let's just take one example 'cause it-- this gets a little complex.
If I'm taking just I wanna have a hard conversation with somebody, what do I do? The first thing that I'm gonna do is I am going to not solve the problem for them. To most people in a hard conversation say, "Hey, sales is off, and what I need you to do is make more phone calls, and we're gonna monitor those through this set of data," right?
That's incredibly disempowering, and that conversation usually doesn't go very well. But if you say instead, "Hey, sales are off. I need a plan. Please present it to me tomorrow about how we're gonna get sales back on track," that's a far more powerful way to do it because you're not, you're not disempowering the person, and you're not coming in and telling them what to do.
So letting them solve the problem for you rather than you solve the problem for them... You solving the problem for them is self-reliance again, and it's what most CEOs do instead of let them solve the problem for you, which is far more empowering to them, and it makes them feel like, like they can't blame you for it.
So that's one of the like skills that I would teach. The other one is I would really try to understand their situation before having the hard conversation. So I'd ask a lot of open-ended questions. I would make sure that they feel very heard, and so I understand what's going on. So as a CEO, I sit down, and I'm like, "I have an idea of what's going on over here in billing," but I don't.
I do not have the full picture. If I have the full picture, I should fire the person because they're not doing a job good enough where I don't have to pay attention. So the first thing I wanna do is really ask their context and understand what's actually going on with them and see, like, if they're even happy with the job that they're doing or what's going on actually.
Another thing I would do is I would actually be very vulnerable about where I am with it. So I would say something like, "Wow, I feel like, um, we've lost trust. Like I, I'm, I notice that, like, I'm not trusting that this is gonna get done, and so I'm not having confidence around this, and that sucks for me, and that's gotta suck for you.
And so I wanna know how we're gonna fix it." So I'm gonna be very vulnerable with how I am rather than making about them. So this is again back to the self-reliance piece. Uh, entrepreneurs who are self-reliant have a hard time expressing when they're hurt, have a hard time expressing some sort of, "This isn't working for me really well."
And therefore, the problem is always about the other person instead about them helping fix you- fix your issue, which is the way an organization is designed
**Jethro D. Jones:** Okay, so let's talk about the first one. That was good, huh? Okay. So the first one is typically when a principal does an improvement plan for a teacher or a paraprofessional or whatever the other role is, or even a superintendent does a improvement plan for a principal, the onus is on the leader to do all of the work to make sure that this is working.
They put the plan in place. They say, "This is how we're gonna fix it." And I learned this when I had to put a teacher on a plan of improvement, and then I realized that she was just jerking me around, and she was not doing anything to show that she was going to improve. And the biggest problem was, was that she didn't think she was doing anything wrong, which was definitely an issue, obviously.
But that was, that was part of the problem, is she thought, "There's nothing wrong here, so I don't even know why you're putting me on this, on this plan." So that relates to the second piece, which is really understanding, one, whether or not the person thinks they're doing something wrong, and two, uh, being able to understand is this something worth even tackling?
So Putting her on an improvement plan resulted in a massive amount of work for me, where I had to follow up and check in on things, and about halfway through I was like, "You know, the only one experiencing any pain or frustration or pressure here is me. I have to prepare for my weekly meetings with her.
I have to do all this stuff." And so halfway through, I just said, "We're gonna adjust your improvement plan, and the onus is gonna be on you for everything." So instead of, instead of me checking her lesson plans and making sure and, like, doing observations and stuff, I said, "Your responsibility is to show how these lesson plans are doing the things that we talked about.
Your responsibility is to invite me into your classroom when you can demonstrate these things, and I'll still do my, my own, uh, drop-ins, you know, to make sure that you're doing the stuff you should be at other times." But that whole perspective really took a lot of pressure off of me, of having to police her and make sure that I was doing everything to make this whole thing work out, and it just...
It, it made her feel the pressure of what was going on in her classroom, which was... She was not feeling that before. It was basically, you know, Jethro's just gonna show up, and I'm gonna have to do whatever he says or whatever, and it was just, like, not a big deal at all. And then what was great was that, uh, I was doing a lot of stuff where I had to, like, check off things, and instead I was like, "Okay, you need to start checking off and showing how these lesson plans are aligning to standards, and I'm not going to be the one to do that anymore."
Now, in the end, I still put a tremendous amount of time into it, but my shift in focus made it so that the energy I was putting in was a lot more valuable and productive to both of us than it was before, and the energy she was putting in was a lot more valuable to her work instead of, um, just being busy work.
So I would challenge you, if you are dealing with this situation as a principal, what does this look like? How do you go through and make sure that you have things organized in such a way that you can You can put the, put the ball in their court so that they are the ones who decide how to improve things.
Now, that doesn't always work out, um, because sometimes they don't agree or they don't know what they can do better, and that's okay too. You can, you can work through that. But a lot of times in education, our default is to say, "I will solve the problem for you," and I just don't think that that is always the right choice.
In fact, I think that's rarely the right choice. Alfred Adler, uh, who was a contemporary of Freud and Y- and Jung, he said that, um, you should not take on other people's tasks, and that's one of those things where I'm gonna make sure that you're going to be a great teacher and I'm gonna force that into you.
Well, you can't really force that into people. They have to make their own choice on that And then I wanna talk about the second part that Joe talked about in here, which he already said it, so I'm just gonna translate it into education speak. You know, his example was, "Sales are off. Uh, I need a plan." Um, and what, what you need to do is, is say...
Well, that was actually the first one still. "Sales are off. You need a plan. Uh, kids aren't learning. You need a plan for how to do this. I'm here to help. I'm here to support." And then the second piece that he talks about is really getting an idea of what is going on for them and why they're struggling so you can understand the problem.
And, uh, and this quote I really liked. He said, "As a CEO, I sit down and I'm like, 'I have an idea of what's going on over here in billing,' but I don't. I do not have the full picture. If I have the full picture, I should fire the person because they're not doing a job good enough where I don't have to pay attention."
Now, this is something that I find so ironic about education. We delegate the most important and the biggest job in school is teaching, and we delegate that, delegate that to teachers every single day to however many teachers we have in our building. And if there's a problem, we really need to go and ask their context, see what's going on, and really understand why they're having the struggles that we perceive that they're having.
And you and I both know that your great teachers, you honestly really don't know what's going on in their classroom, but you know great things are happening. Your really struggling teachers, you may not know what's going on in their classroom, but you got a f- sick feeling in your stomach that it's not good.
And, and that's really what needs to happen. And I love the clarity of this. If I have the full picture, I should fire the person because they are making my job more difficult. And that's easy to say in business, and it's a little harder in education. I get that, so don't think that I'm saying we should just be firing people 'cause that's not what I'm saying.
But what I am saying is that it's still worthwhile to go and make sure that you understand the situation and what the teacher's going through, uh, before you make these decisions. And truly, if you as the principal have to be involved in all kinds of decisions at the classroom level, you're definitely doing your job wrong because you don't have the capacity to do that.
You have to be able to trust your teachers that they can go and do their job without you holding their hand. That's essential, and we all know that intuitively, but it's very easy for us to forget about it in the moment or to think, "Ah, maybe I need to do just a little bit more here." Um, and really, it's their responsibility.
They're the ones who are the teachers. And as you know, managing a bunch of teachers as a principal is a much different job than teaching in a classroom, and you have to take different approaches. And, you know, this same idea would extend to kids as well. Why aren't the kids performing well for you as the teacher?
You can't fire the kids, obviously, but you do need to understand what's going on, where are they struggling, and that requires time and energy, just like it requires time and energy for the principal to be able to do that with the teachers. So there are a few thoughts. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
You can, uh, mention me on all the socials, @JethroJones, uh, or you can just, uh, shoot me an email and, or reply to one of the emails that I send out. If you're not on the email list yet, uh, for sure go and do that at transformativeprincipal.org. There's a little box down on the bottom for you to enter your email address, and then we can have emails going back and forth.
All right. Thanks so much for listening to Transformative Principal. A little deviation from the norm on this one, but hope you enjoy it, and go check out that podcast, My First Million, that is in the show notes.
So I'm gonna share this. And they have a, uh, a guy on the program named Joe Hudson, who is, uh, an executive coach for, like, really high-level folks. And it's... There's a lot of really good stuff in this whole podcast. I suggest you listen to it. I'm gonna put the link to it in the show notes so you can go and listen to it.
But I wanna share this one particular part because he talks about two different things, and these two things are really the same problem that all principals face all over the world. And the first one is about dealing with people who are not living up to expectations and doing what they should. And a lot of times what we do in education is we put people on improvement plans, and then the workload of the principal becomes huge.
And then the second thing, um, is related to that, which is trying to figure out what's going on and why the problem is happening, which involves a lot of deep listening. So let's listen to this first, and then I have some commentary that I'll share, uh, about this after it's done
**Speaker 2:** Yeah. So let, yeah, let's get into that. But I think that the... I, I do wanna say one more thing intellectually too, because it's, um, the... if I was, if I go in and monitor a company's health, I literally just use two metrics: how quickly do they have the hard conversation, and how quickly do they resolve it? So let's say you have a CEO who's a yeller.
I guarantee you that the, a lot of hard conversations aren't gonna be had, and they're not resolving quickly. And let's say you have a CEO who's conflict avoidant. A lot of hard conversations aren't gonna be had, and a lot of things are gonna be avoided. So it doesn't really matter what the actions are of people, just to think about those two metrics as the health of an organization is just a great way to go in and very quickly see how healthy that organization is.
Okay, so now how do you do it? So typically, before we get into how you do it, let's talk about the resistance to it. So the resistance is usually, I'm gonna be abandoned, not loved This is a waste of my time. I'm not gonna get anywhere anyway, and it's gonna take so much energy, I could use the energy somewhere else.
That's the second reason that people choose not to do it. And the third is, I'm gonna destroy something that I care about. Like, I have the hard conversation, that person leaves, and then the company's gonna collapse, or then the sales department's gonna collapse or whatever.
**Speaker:** I- is there a fourth one, which is like, I don't even know if this is a problem worth addressing, maybe I should just give it time?
**Speaker 2:** I feel like that's like a, a reason for one of the other excuses . But y- I'm sure that there's moments where that, that's the case. And sometimes that's-- there's actually some, there's some validity to that. Like, I've given them feedback, I'm gonna wait a couple weeks and see what happens instead of like be on their ass every day about the thing.
I can see that there would be some validity to it. And so some of that speaks to the fact that the person doesn't know how to make the conflict productive reliably. Like, I have conflict, and it just ends up in a worse fight that just like doesn't go the place that I wanna go. So typically, if I'm talking about it, let's just take one example 'cause it-- this gets a little complex.
If I'm taking just I wanna have a hard conversation with somebody, what do I do? The first thing that I'm gonna do is I am going to not solve the problem for them. To most people in a hard conversation say, "Hey, sales is off, and what I need you to do is make more phone calls, and we're gonna monitor those through this set of data," right?
That's incredibly disempowering, and that conversation usually doesn't go very well. But if you say instead, "Hey, sales are off. I need a plan. Please present it to me tomorrow about how we're gonna get sales back on track," that's a far more powerful way to do it because you're not, you're not disempowering the person, and you're not coming in and telling them what to do.
So letting them solve the problem for you rather than you solve the problem for them... You solving the problem for them is self-reliance again, and it's what most CEOs do instead of let them solve the problem for you, which is far more empowering to them, and it makes them feel like, like they can't blame you for it.
So that's one of the like skills that I would teach. The other one is I would really try to understand their situation before having the hard conversation. So I'd ask a lot of open-ended questions. I would make sure that they feel very heard, and so I understand what's going on. So as a CEO, I sit down, and I'm like, "I have an idea of what's going on over here in billing," but I don't.
I do not have the full picture. If I have the full picture, I should fire the person because they're not doing a job good enough where I don't have to pay attention. So the first thing I wanna do is really ask their context and understand what's actually going on with them and see, like, if they're even happy with the job that they're doing or what's going on actually.
Another thing I would do is I would actually be very vulnerable about where I am with it. So I would say something like, "Wow, I feel like, um, we've lost trust. Like I, I'm, I notice that, like, I'm not trusting that this is gonna get done, and so I'm not having confidence around this, and that sucks for me, and that's gotta suck for you.
And so I wanna know how we're gonna fix it." So I'm gonna be very vulnerable with how I am rather than making about them. So this is again back to the self-reliance piece. Uh, entrepreneurs who are self-reliant have a hard time expressing when they're hurt, have a hard time expressing some sort of, "This isn't working for me really well."
And therefore, the problem is always about the other person instead about them helping fix you- fix your issue, which is the way an organization is designed
**Jethro D. Jones:** Okay, so let's talk about the first one. That was good, huh? Okay. So the first one is typically when a principal does an improvement plan for a teacher or a paraprofessional or whatever the other role is, or even a superintendent does a improvement plan for a principal, the onus is on the leader to do all of the work to make sure that this is working.
They put the plan in place. They say, "This is how we're gonna fix it." And I learned this when I had to put a teacher on a plan of improvement, and then I realized that she was just jerking me around, and she was not doing anything to show that she was going to improve. And the biggest problem was, was that she didn't think she was doing anything wrong, which was definitely an issue, obviously.
But that was, that was part of the problem, is she thought, "There's nothing wrong here, so I don't even know why you're putting me on this, on this plan." So that relates to the second piece, which is really understanding, one, whether or not the person thinks they're doing something wrong, and two, uh, being able to understand is this something worth even tackling?
So Putting her on an improvement plan resulted in a massive amount of work for me, where I had to follow up and check in on things, and about halfway through I was like, "You know, the only one experiencing any pain or frustration or pressure here is me. I have to prepare for my weekly meetings with her.
I have to do all this stuff." And so halfway through, I just said, "We're gonna adjust your improvement plan, and the onus is gonna be on you for everything." So instead of, instead of me checking her lesson plans and making sure and, like, doing observations and stuff, I said, "Your responsibility is to show how these lesson plans are doing the things that we talked about.
Your responsibility is to invite me into your classroom when you can demonstrate these things, and I'll still do my, my own, uh, drop-ins, you know, to make sure that you're doing the stuff you should be at other times." But that whole perspective really took a lot of pressure off of me, of having to police her and make sure that I was doing everything to make this whole thing work out, and it just...
It, it made her feel the pressure of what was going on in her classroom, which was... She was not feeling that before. It was basically, you know, Jethro's just gonna show up, and I'm gonna have to do whatever he says or whatever, and it was just, like, not a big deal at all. And then what was great was that, uh, I was doing a lot of stuff where I had to, like, check off things, and instead I was like, "Okay, you need to start checking off and showing how these lesson plans are aligning to standards, and I'm not going to be the one to do that anymore."
Now, in the end, I still put a tremendous amount of time into it, but my shift in focus made it so that the energy I was putting in was a lot more valuable and productive to both of us than it was before, and the energy she was putting in was a lot more valuable to her work instead of, um, just being busy work.
So I would challenge you, if you are dealing with this situation as a principal, what does this look like? How do you go through and make sure that you have things organized in such a way that you can You can put the, put the ball in their court so that they are the ones who decide how to improve things.
Now, that doesn't always work out, um, because sometimes they don't agree or they don't know what they can do better, and that's okay too. You can, you can work through that. But a lot of times in education, our default is to say, "I will solve the problem for you," and I just don't think that that is always the right choice.
In fact, I think that's rarely the right choice. Alfred Adler, uh, who was a contemporary of Freud and Y- and Jung, he said that, um, you should not take on other people's tasks, and that's one of those things where I'm gonna make sure that you're going to be a great teacher and I'm gonna force that into you.
Well, you can't really force that into people. They have to make their own choice on that And then I wanna talk about the second part that Joe talked about in here, which he already said it, so I'm just gonna translate it into education speak. You know, his example was, "Sales are off. Uh, I need a plan." Um, and what, what you need to do is, is say...
Well, that was actually the first one still. "Sales are off. You need a plan. Uh, kids aren't learning. You need a plan for how to do this. I'm here to help. I'm here to support." And then the second piece that he talks about is really getting an idea of what is going on for them and why they're struggling so you can understand the problem.
And, uh, and this quote I really liked. He said, "As a CEO, I sit down and I'm like, 'I have an idea of what's going on over here in billing,' but I don't. I do not have the full picture. If I have the full picture, I should fire the person because they're not doing a job good enough where I don't have to pay attention."
Now, this is something that I find so ironic about education. We delegate the most important and the biggest job in school is teaching, and we delegate that, delegate that to teachers every single day to however many teachers we have in our building. And if there's a problem, we really need to go and ask their context, see what's going on, and really understand why they're having the struggles that we perceive that they're having.
And you and I both know that your great teachers, you honestly really don't know what's going on in their classroom, but you know great things are happening. Your really struggling teachers, you may not know what's going on in their classroom, but you got a f- sick feeling in your stomach that it's not good.
And, and that's really what needs to happen. And I love the clarity of this. If I have the full picture, I should fire the person because they are making my job more difficult. And that's easy to say in business, and it's a little harder in education. I get that, so don't think that I'm saying we should just be firing people 'cause that's not what I'm saying.
But what I am saying is that it's still worthwhile to go and make sure that you understand the situation and what the teacher's going through, uh, before you make these decisions. And truly, if you as the principal have to be involved in all kinds of decisions at the classroom level, you're definitely doing your job wrong because you don't have the capacity to do that.
You have to be able to trust your teachers that they can go and do their job without you holding their hand. That's essential, and we all know that intuitively, but it's very easy for us to forget about it in the moment or to think, "Ah, maybe I need to do just a little bit more here." Um, and really, it's their responsibility.
They're the ones who are the teachers. And as you know, managing a bunch of teachers as a principal is a much different job than teaching in a classroom, and you have to take different approaches. And, you know, this same idea would extend to kids as well. Why aren't the kids performing well for you as the teacher?
You can't fire the kids, obviously, but you do need to understand what's going on, where are they struggling, and that requires time and energy, just like it requires time and energy for the principal to be able to do that with the teachers. So there are a few thoughts. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
You can, uh, mention me on all the socials, @JethroJones, uh, or you can just, uh, shoot me an email and, or reply to one of the emails that I send out. If you're not on the email list yet, uh, for sure go and do that at transformativeprincipal.org. There's a little box down on the bottom for you to enter your email address, and then we can have emails going back and forth.
All right. Thanks so much for listening to Transformative Principal. A little deviation from the norm on this one, but hope you enjoy it, and go check out that podcast, My First Million, that is in the show notes.
