What We Can Learn From Watching Ships Sink: Water on the Inside is Far More Dangerous Than All the Water on the Outside

Three years ago I accompanied my wife to the EdTEch conference in Chicago, one of the largest instructional technology conferences in the United States.  We both went to different sessions that we thought could provide professional learning and growth.  One of the afternoons while my wife was in a late afternoon training, my daughter and I went to see the ports where Chicago touched Lake Michigan, which is one of the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world. One of the signs at Lake Michigan presented facts about the number of ships that have sunk and some that are still sitting at the bottom of Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes.  I later saw a YouTube video of a ship actually being sunk on the lake to dispose of it and render it completely out of service.  I thought to myself that we can learn a lot from watching ships sink that's very applicable to leadership and life. 

 

Over 97 percent of the Earth's water can be found in the oceans.  According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there are over 332,519,000 cubic miles of water on the planet. Of this vast volume of water, NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center estimates that's enough water to fill about 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallon-sized milk containers!  While that’s more water than we can possibly fathom, no amount of water in any of the oceans on the outside of the ship sinks a ship.  Ships don’t sink because of the water around them. They sink because of the water that gets in them. It’s the same with organizations and leadership.  The greatest advertisement for any organization comes from those within the organization, the best endorsement and evaluation for any leader comes from those closest to them, and those within the organization are the most influential in creating the perception of success or failure of an organization. 

 

Under Genghis Khan, the Mongols would catapult the dead bodies of soldiers infected by the bubonic plague over city walls during sieges. This is one of the earliest accounts biological warfare.  A fortified city or structure was safe as long as the disease was on the outside and didn’t get to the inside.  However, disease inside of the fort was deadly and spread to infect so many that the fort couldn’t survive.  In 1346, during the siege of Caffa, the attacking Tartar Forces (subjugated by the Mongol empire under Genghis Khan), used the bodies of Mongol warriors of the Golden Horde who had died of plague, as weapons.  Disease outside of the Caffa didn’t have any impact, but once it got within it was the beginning of the end.  Many historians, suggested the soldiers of Caffa should’ve catapulted the diseased bodies out immediately and limited exposure to disease as well as sending it within the attacking force.  Leaders have known since the beginning of time how deadly and dangerous disease within an organization can be.  It’s probably a good thing for many people that the violent nature of punishment for treason has changed since medieval times when traitors were beaten, hung, beheaded, and quartered (body cut into four parts and sent to different parts of the empire to display so everyone would fear punishment for that offense). 

 

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu said “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”  Many times, the challenges/obstacles and also the positive recognitions are created by people within an organization and closest to leadership.  These are often communicated from those within to those outside of the organization.  People outside of the organization accept this information as truth or fact because they believe those within a building know what goes on better than anyone else.  There are times when we face challenges from the outside that we can’t control coming at us, but these should not be created by people within an organization.  People within the organization that create challenges and undermine either leadership or the mission of the organization are toxic and impede an organization from improvement.  

 

 

Ultimately, the most important job anyone within an organization has is to make their boss or supervisor look good.  We do this by serving our customers effectively, fulfilling the mission of the team, being loyal to your teammates and leader, communicating positively to promote the good of the team, and knowing which information is confidential and should be not communicated outside of given circles.  Ultimately, the challenges within an organization can break an organization or destroy a leader’s credibility and vision for success more than anything else.  I’ve worked for a great superintendent that I’ve learned immensely from and one of the most relevant things I’ve learned is the importance of loyalty and everyone on the team pulling in the same direction together.  This reminded me of what I learned from coaching and sports about teams that play together and support each other.  As a coach, we made it to the 4th round of the playoffs and one game away from a state championship with a regular season record where we only got in as a final seed by the luck of the draw.  How did a team that barely got in the playoffs make it that far and be so successful in almost winning a state championship....because we quit fighting against each other and undercutting each other, instead we finally played together and for each other like a family.  It’s hard to row a boat to the finish line when someone isn’t rowing in the same direction as the rest of the team and especially when they row against the leader and team.  A leader and team can’t expect to be but so successful when they have to take on their own team members as well as the other team and outside challenges.  There’s a great leadership lesson to be learned from watching a ship sink and realizing the water/toxicity inside an organization is far more dangerous than any amount of water or challenges outside of the organization. 

Stress is Necessary for Success: The Way We React and Adapt to it Makes a Huge Difference in the Outcome

During the 2020-21 Covid19 pandemic, society has experienced a lot of changes.  The educational field is no exception with adapting to moving learning to virtual and hybrid models, distancing and disinfecting requirements, quarantine protocols, etc.  This is all new to the educational field, there is no playbook for this type of situation.  Despite all the challenges, our schools have experienced a tremendous amount of success and this will change education for the good in the long run.  We have this belief because we know stress is a precursor for change and improvement.  Stress is useful to prompt a specific action, to a specific threat, or to promote alertness during a brief period of danger.  Second, it can keep you alert in during a period of danger. 

 

When we talk about stress and pressure a couple of stories come to mind.  Story #1: On the deserts of the Serengeti, there’s a gazelle that knows they must run faster than the greatest lion or any other animal every single day if they want to survive.  On that same desert, every day a lion has to run faster and out maneuver the fastest gazelles if they are going to eat and not starve.  Survival of the fittest is the essence and nature of our food chain, but this stress forces each animal to be at their top performance for survival.  This stress causes daily growth and constant improvements for mere survival.  Story #2:  In theory it doesn’t make sense that someone would dig a hole and pour dirt on something in order to make it grow hundreds of feet tall.  As I drive to work every day there are miles and miles of peach orchards that produce fruit shipped all over the world for human consumption.  Each one of these trees started by someone digging a hole, throwing the seed down into the hole, and pouring a mound of dirt on top of them.  This dirt, pressure and stress, is necessary for the tree to grow.  The nutrients in the dirt provides nutrients for growth and develops a strong root system so the trees can stand strong as pressures and stress increase and tests their character.  People are the same as both these stories.  Like the lion and the gazelle, stress forces us to get up running every morning and causes pressure to increase our performance to survive.  Like the trees that grow strong from being put in a hole and having dirt poured on them, the stresses we face in life help strengthen us and cause our root system to grow strong if we are going to thrive.  Pressure is necessary for increasing performance and the people that can stand strong and continually grow from stress without breaking or having a meltdown excel and rise above others.  In the world of sports, the pressure players are the ones every coach wants to have the ball with the game on the line.  The key to stress is how we react and adapt to it.  Does it make us stronger and better or does it crush us and break us down? 

Is Stress Useful?  One of the strongest arguments is that for something to change something has to change and something has to be the stimulus for that change.  Stress is useful to prompt a specific action, to a specific threat, or to promote alertness during a brief period of danger. That’s it. Any stress which doesn’t facilitate these purposes is wasted and therefore any beliefs that stress is necessary must be limited to these contexts.  Why do people that want to be successful athletes train?....because they know the stress they are putting on their bodies will strengthen them and help them improve.  There are two kinds of people in this world: those who believe they can make things happen and those who believe things happen to them.  Tim Judge, University of Florida psychologist, researched how perception and attitude impacted how we handle stress and reported that people who feel that they control the events in their lives more than the events in their life controlled them and are confident in their abilities to adapt and adjust end up doing better on nearly every important measure of work performance.  His research concluded that people with this perception of and attitude toward stress:

 

1. Sell more than other employees do
2. Give better customer service
3. Adjust better to new assignments
4. Take home an average of 50 to 150% more in annual income

Stress is a necessity in life for change and improvement; anxiety is an absolutely necessary emotion.  We all experience it daily; however, everyone reacts and adapts to it differently.  We are biologically hard-wired to increase our capacities and performance under stress for survival.  The elderly gentleman that is able to lift or move a car to free someone trapped under it and save their life is an example.  Our bodies are prepared for out brain to be able to send the signal for our bodies to produce and release great amounts of adrenaline, a super hormone, to help us be able to survive.  Our central nervous system has the capacity to fire more muscle fibers simultaneously than we’ve ever been able to fire from our conscientious mind through our stress induced survival mechanisms.  The trick to using stress to increase performance is for the individual to be able to manage anxiety and keep it within the optimal levels in order to achieve top performance.  There are a couple of things that help with managing anxiety and using stress to increase performance: 

 

# 1: Expect and Prepare for Change.  Change is a given, we will all experience.  People don’t fear change, they fear change without support or requisite preparation for success.  Mentally prepare for change and be ready to make it happen instead of it just happening to you. 

# 2: Focus on Your Freedoms, Not Your Limitations.  We’ve all heard the saying “life isn’t fair”, but wouldn’t it be better to say “life is what you make of it.”  We have the freedom to choose our actions and reactions. 

# 3: Re-write Your Script.  Be reflective and learn/grow from every situation.  Every moment is a teachable moment.  It’s only failure if you don’t learn from it and improve going forward. 

# 4: Stop Negative Self-Talk.  The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them.  Most of our negative thoughts are just that—thoughts, not facts.  The brain has a natural threat tendency to inflate the perceived frequency or severity of an event. Positive thoughts have a tendency to produce more positive outcomes. 

# 5: Appreciate What You Have.  Gratitude is a powerful emotion.  It also lessens stress and anxiety because it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%.

 

Stress has the potential to increase performance if utilized and harnessed the right way.  Sometimes it takes a stressor to create the stimulus for change.  The key is how we react and adapt to stress in any situation.  Do you let it make you or break you?  The great thing is that decision is up to you. 

Failures and Dropouts: Who Really Failed, the Student and/or the School?

Statistics demonstrate that one in every four high school students drops out of school, and one student drops out of school every 26 seconds across the United States. The highest percentage of dropouts occur in urban, high-poverty areas. Dropping out means leaving high school, college, university, or another group for practical reasons, necessities, or disillusionment with the system from which the individual in question leaves. 1.2 million students drop out of high school every year, many falling into a cycle of poverty, unemployment, and violence. Sobering statistics on dropouts include: 

  

We know that far too many students drop out of school, and students from high-poverty situations drop out at the highest rate......the question is, what are we doing to fix it and help them get to graduation?  One of the obstacles many schools and districts are facing in the pandemic is student failures.  The bigger question is "Who really failed?  The school or the student?"  The goal should be to see each student be successful.  Does that mean that we just give the student a grade they didn't earn or work for?  Absolutely not, but this shift into virtual and blended learning has a learning curve for all involved, including the adults in the school.  As a former coach, many times we had to have a philosophy of "bend but don't break," "keep snapping the ball and see what happens," and "finish strong in the 4th quarter."  These would all be very applicable in this type of pandemic situation and school year.  

Patience and compassion are critical now more than ever for everyone in education.  When you look at data on why students drop out of high school, the alarming thing is that most reasons are preventable or workable.  Three out of the top four reasons students drop out of high school can be handled or prevented at the school level, actually all the way down to the classroom level.  As a classroom teacher, I never want to fail a student because I felt like I had failed as well.  I used to tell students that I didn't give a "0", they had an "Incomplete" until they finished it and that was up to them; or prove to me that they know the content in some way of their choosing and I'd give them credit because learning is what was really important to me.  I shifted to the latter approach as I grew and began to realize that learning was far more important than compliance of doing work.  Some of the major reasons students give for dropping out are disheartening such as "No one cared if I attended."  That's the power of human connection and relationships.  Relationships will actually help most all of the top reasons students drop out.  

We also have to help our stakeholders see the big picture in bending but not breaking, keep snapping the ball and playing another snap, and finishing strong.  The operational hurdles, just to be able to keep school open, are just as big as the instructional hurdles this school year.  When someone questions funding education, the better response would be "how can you not fund education?"  The investment in education has the potential to produce exponential gains in the return on the investment and help to alleviate or reduce many of the societal pitfalls and areas for improvement.  This is a time in our country's history where education is more important than ever.  

People Don’t Buy What You Sell, They Buy Why You Do It: What Are We Selling in 2021?

 As we enter the New Year, most people set resolutions or goals to accomplish.  This has been an annual ritual since the inception of time, yet most years the greatest percentage of people fail at most of their resolutions.   The best times to set the tone as a principal or leader is at the very beginning or after an extended break, such as Christmas.  As I reflect on potential resolutions, I go back to our purpose, mission, and vision as an organization. 

 

What is our purpose?  To provide the best possible education in a physically, mentally, and emotionally safe environment.  Our mission of “Commitment to Excellence” and our vision of “Every Student Every Day” require that students always come first in our decision-making and everything we do in school.  What is our product or what are we selling and who are our consumers?  Consumers are our students, parents, and community, but what do they buy?  Many people would say that they buy or consume the best possible education for their child.  While this statement is true to a point, I’d argue that our parents buy much more than that and something far simpler than that.  The average parent isn’t super well-versed in the latest education jargon, instructional concept, or technological advance in education.  What they buy from us is trust and confidence in the people that are working with their children and confidence from the students that the adults in the building will do every possible thing they can to help them learn and be successful. 

In talking with a good friend and colleague who sends their child to our school, they told me they planned to leave their child at the school even if their job location changed.  They didn’t speak of the push to go 1:1 or the renovations to the building or the extensive programs we offer.  Instead, he only talked about “who” was working with his child.  He had trust and confidence in the teachers and staff at the school, the coaches, the administration, and the adults in the building to prepare and care for his child.  In thinking about the decision of where we would send our own kids to school, I remember the number one reason we sent our kids to the high school they went to was because I had a profound confidence in the teachers, principal, guidance counselor, and staff at the school.  I trusted them to treat our kids like they were their own.  I had worked with many of the teachers and staff at other schools and knew how good they were instructionally and how much they went above and beyond for kids.  The principal was my former assistant principal at my first principalship and I had so much confidence in her to look after my kids that we moved our kids across a state border to send them to school in the district where I worked with people that we trusted. 

 

If I could have a couple of wishes for 2021 they’d be that students were better off because of my being there, that teachers and staff were more effective and enjoyed their work to a greater degree because of my being there, that our parents and students are confident in us to do everything we can to help students be successful, that my supervisors are confident in our abilities and performance to give us autonomy to be able to do whatever it takes to help ALL students be successful, that our students and parents are confident in us to do what's best for students and put students first, that our school is better off because I'm there, and that we always remember that every decision in our building is based on what’s best for our students and not what’s easiest for the adults in the building.  Simply put……without students, they wouldn’t need any of the adults in the building. 

 

In going back and forth with a colleague in South Carolina, we were talking about grading and how many schools have failed so many students this past fall semester.  Grading could be a whole book in itself, but what matters most is learning.  As we go into 2021, we must revisit our purpose of what we do and be able to see the bigger picture of our work.  Is our work about compliance or commitment, doing or learning?  Great schools are learning institutions, where everyone in the building is constantly building capacity and building tomorrow through learning today.   As we go into a new calendar year, we must remember who are our consumers, what are they buying, and why do they buy it?  What they are buying is trust and confidence in us to do what’s best for children because they trust the people in the building.  We don’t have the right to break this trust.  We have a responsibility to live up to the expectations of our consumers.  We have a responsibility to always do what’s best for students!

While some districts are moving to remote learning full-time or part-time to begin the new semester, we have to ask if this decision was made in doing what’s best for students or what’s most comfortable for the adults?  Almost 83% of our students chose to return on a face-to-face basis this semester.  We all know that most of our students need to be back in school, both for safety and for learning.  While a percentage of students can be served effectively through online learning, the impact of a great classroom teacher can’t be denied.  The relationships and rapport teachers have with students is critical for student success.  The responsibility of the school and district to act in parenti loco is critical for students to be safe physically, mentally, and emotionally.  I’m one that fully supports the decision of our district in returning to learning in two days with both face-to-face and online options.  I whole heartedly believe that the decisions made in how we return to school for the Spring semester and how we will navigate the Spring semester will all be made with the best interests of students at the forefront.  That’s what our parents and students are buying…..trust and confidence in us to always make this the basis of all of our decisions!