EPISODE #296

How to Handle Uncertainty

You're listening to the school leadership reimagined podcast episode 296. 

Hey, builders. Before I begin today's episode, I just wanna let you know that it's back. What am I talking about? I'm talking about the Staff Alignment Challenge. We do this challenge once a year, and the focus of this challenge is how do you get everybody on your staff doing the right work, the right way, for the right reasons? Now, this year's challenge, we are updating it to talk about what's working right now. What are builders doing differently than leaders? That's making a difference, that's helping them to get their ent entire staff aligned.

We're going to take the work that you're already doing, feedback, support, accountability and culture, and we're going to show you how to tweak it so that it's way more powerful, way more effective, way more efficient, so that you're not spending all your time chasing, checking and correcting. And instead, you can get your entire staff on the same page so that you can accomplish your goals this year. So go to buildershipuniversity.com challenge, that's build buildershipuniversity.com challenge, and sign up for the free Staff Alignment Challenge. Even if you've done the challenges in the past, you're going to want to sign up for this one because we're going to be talking about the latest what we know really, really, really, really works. And you're going to get a huge amount of benefit from it. So again, buildershipuniversity.com challenge, we get started February 2nd, so make sure that you grab your spot today. Now, on with the show. You're listening to the School Leadership Reimagined podcast, episode 296.

How do builders like us make a dramatic difference in the lives of our students in spite of all the obstacles we face? How do you keep your vision for your school from being held hostage by resistant teachers, uncooperative parents, ridiculous district policies, or a lack of time, money or resources? If you're facing facing those challenges right now, here is where you'll find the answers, strategies, and actionable tips you need to overcome any obstacle you face. You don't have to wait to make a difference in the lives of the people you serve. You can turn your school into a success story right now with the people and resources you already have. Let's get started.

Hey, builders. Welcome to another episode of the School Leadership Reimagined Podcast. 

I'm your host, Robyn Jackson, and today we're going to talk about how to handle uncertainty. You know, one of the things that really makes being a principal or an Assistant principal or any kind of district administrator. One of the things that makes it really, really hard is, is uncertainty. It's not the skills. It's not, you know, the strategies. Those are. Those are easily learned, right? I mean, you can learn how to conduct an observation. You can learn how to facil an IEP meeting. 

Those are skills that everybody can learn. And if things were predictable, those skills would really work. The problem is that things aren't predictable. Things are really uncertain. So you might be able to conduct that IEP meeting, but you're not ready for the parent who breaks into tears in the middle of the meeting and accuses the school of failing her child. You're not ready for the teacher who loses her cool in the middle of the meeting and says something that puts you in danger of having a lawsuit. You may learn how to give an observation, and you might know how to script and how to write everything out, but you're not prepared for when you're giving the teacher feedback and the teacher starts crying or the teacher goes off on you, or the teacher shuts down.

You're just not. There's so much uncertainty. And that's just the simple stuff. There's all kinds of other pieces of uncertainty. Like in the middle of the year, a teacher quits and leaves, and now you to find a sub to take care of those children. Or you have a student who threatens suicide, and now you're getting social services and the family involved and trying to really help this student or get the student the help that they need. You have a group of teachers that you thought were perfectly okay, and they schedule a meeting with you. And during the meeting, they list 21 different ways that you're making their lives and their jobs miserable and you're doing things wrong.

There's so much uncertainty in the job, and that's what makes the job hard. You see every day when you walk into the building, you really don't know what you're going to be facing. You may have a plan for what you're going to do that day, but who knows what's going to happen? There is a bomb threat or there's somebody you know that you've got to do an active shooter drill that you didn't know was scheduled or, you know, there's so much stuff going on, and that's just in school. Let's not talk about all the stuff that's going on in the world right now. And that's what makes the job really, really hard. And so today I want to talk about how you Handle uncertainty.

And this episode is really inspired by a conversation that we were having inside of Buildership University during office hours.

So for those of you who are outside of Buildership University office hours, where we get together once a week and people can bring their challenges and they can get some one on one coaching and, and the group comes together and we learn from each other. And so we had a really interesting conversation and one of our builders, Scott, said something that just, I mean, like, it made me like, spit out my teeth. It was hilarious. He was coming and he said, you know, I've been struggling with this for, you know, a couple of weeks now and haven't been coming to office hours. And I have this thing that's going on in my school. And then finally I was looking at it and I was like, why am I stressing out? I just need to be you the essence. I mean that. Oh, did I say that? That's not what he said. He said, I need to be you the heck out of this problem. And I laughed so hard. I laughed because it was funny, but I also laughed because it was true. That's the way you handle uncertainty. You be you the heck out of it. And so today I want to talk to you about what that means.

And what's really interesting is during this office hours, there were two people who came to office hours and they both had challenges that seemed on the surface to be very similar. One was dealing with a challenge attendance, and another one was dealing with a challenge around inclusion. And in both cases, their staff was not, they weren't doing the process. They had a process in place for attendance over inclusion. And the staff was pushing back against the process and they weren't doing it. And on the surface, those look like the same problem, right? You have a process that you're trying to put into place in your school and for some reason your staff is not doing that process. And we've all faced that.

I mean, that's probably one of the most frustrating things about our job is that we have something that we're trying to do as a school. We have a process we believe will help us to accomplish it, but nobody's doing it. And that's the uncertainty that I'm talking about. Again, if it was just a matter of teaching people how to do the process, easy. But the uncertainty comes because we're working with human beings. And the human beings may not do the process the way we want them to do it. They may not buy into the process the way we want them to buy into the process. One of the reasons why we are doing.

We've heard by now we're doing a staff alignment challenge again in February. It's not the same one that we did last time. We've updated it. We're really. The focus of this challenge is really about what's working now. But one of the reasons why we can't get away from staff alignment, when we ask people, what do you want us to do? They always go back to staff alignment is because that misalignment in your staff is the greatest source of your uncertainty. You see, if you don't have an aligned staff, you will face uncertainty because you don't know who's on board, who's not on board. You don't know. 

You have some people who are working really hard. 

You have other people who are fighting or pushing back or being passive aggressive. And so when you don't have everybody in alignment, when you don't have everybody committed to the same work, committed to doing the right work, the right way for the right reasons, you will face uncertainty because you just don't know from one day to the next who's going to refuse, who's going to not do it, going to push back. And so you are creating more uncertainty when you have misalignment. So both, both builders have been working on creating an aligned staff, but they identify this area of misalignment, and on the surface, it looked the same. And if you use your leadership toolbox, you would handle both of these situations the same. Right?

So the leadership toolbox works like this. You have a process that you want to put in your staff. You've rolled it out to your staff. They, they know the process. They understand that. They've had the training, and yet three weeks later, a month later, they're not doing the thing you asked them to do. So what does your leadership training teach you to do? Well, one, you can, you know, have a meeting with your staff, say, hey, we need to get back to the process, maybe reiterate some training.

You know, really put a push and a focus. Guys, this is important. We really have to do it the year, you know, we're starting all over again. Let's get back on track, give them that pep talk. And then you spend all of your time running around chasing, checking, and correcting. You put pressure on yourself to get into classrooms more. When you get into classrooms, you have a checklist of behaviors you're looking for. Look for us, ask about.

And you, you. You go in, you. You check the things off that are working. You, you, you talk to people or follow up with people. When they don't hit everything on your checklist, it feels like a gotcha. So then teachers become more resistant or they become more compliant. Just to get them off of your back. You, you know, go gung ho for a couple of days, getting into classrooms, and then, of course, the rest of life happens.

And so you've got to take care of other stuff. So then you stop going into classrooms as much. And so you have these ebbs and flows, ebbs and flows. And at the end of the year, you still don't have 100% of your people on board and aligned to that process. That's what your leadership toolkit will get you. But here's how builders do things differently. So we're in office hours and the first person talks about how in their school they're having a challenge with this attendance program, and we start asking questions, right?

So the thing is, whenever you are facing a challenge, you got to get to the root of it.

We know that. But the tools that we've been given to get to the root cause are lacking. You know, what are you going to do? I'm having a struggle. Are you going to stop right then and make a fishbone diagram? Or maybe you have a meeting and you do the five whys and listen, I used to be a big fan of the five whys, and I still think they can work. But I have also seen too many meetings where people have done the five whys, and they just keep going around and around and around in circles. Why, why, why, why?

And they never solve anything. So we all know we have to get to the root cause, but we don't have really good tools to help us get to the root cause. And so as we were talking, we were getting to the root cause of why this wasn't working. And we realized that for her, it was a process issue, that there was a hole in an accountability leak in her process. And so her solution is, we gotta close the accountability leaks in our process, and that'll help us to do it. Then the next person came in and he had another issue. It's a process he's doing in his school, and it's not working. They rolled it out this year and it's not producing the results that they want.

It's kind of a headache. And what we realized in his case is it wasn't an accountability leak. He had a culture problem because the new process that he was introducing was impacting and shifting the culture. And the reason that it wasn't working is that he didn't realize the cultural impact that the process was having on his school. And so he didn't do the work to rearrange the culture to be able to accommodate this new process. So in one case, we have a process we're trying to get done. People aren't doing it. And the answer to her problem is she needs to close accountability leaks.

It's an accountability issue. In another case, we have a process. People aren't doing the process. It's not working. It wasn't an accountability issue. It was a culture issue. And figuring that out made all the difference. It kept them from wasting time trying tactics that were just going to create more drama and more problems.

It gave them a quick solution that's easy. 

It took the uncertainty out of the process. Once you understood, okay, this is the issue, this is an accountability problem, or this is a culture problem, there's no more uncertainty. You know how to solve it, you know how to fix it at that point. And third, it helped them to really address the root cause rather than putting band aids on the issue. Because if you put band aids on the issue, those band aids fall off, and you'll deal with the same issue over and over again. But by addressing the root cause, they were able to fix it. So how did we do that?

Now, for this next piece, I'm going to have to pull out the buildership model. And if you are listening to this, I'm going to do my best to help you kind of understand how the model works and how we use the model to get to the root cause. But if you can jump over to YouTube and you can see me do it. So I'm going to be drawing some things on the screen, and you can actually see me do it. Okay, so let me go grab my buildership model, and I'm going to show you exactly how you can use it to get to the root cause, to solve any problem, and to take away the uncertainty that makes our job so tough. Hold on a second. Okay, I'm back with the buildership model, and if you're just listening, then I'm going to try to describe the buildership model to you. So at the center of the builders model is, of course, 100%. And we're focused on two 100%. We're focused on 100% student success and 100% staff alignment. So if it's not threatening our 100%, we're not thinking about it. So the challenges that we're dealing with are really about challenges that get in the way of our ability to achieve 100% student success and 100% staff alignment around 100% student success. Okay, so that's at the center of the model. Now, the model has think of a Venn diagram with three interlocking circles. And the first circle is a circle that is focused on your compelling purpose.

That really involves your vision, mission and your core values. The next circle is a circle that is focused on committed people. And that involves four things. It's only four things you can do to get people committed. Feedback, support, accountability, and culture. And then the third one, the third circle is a coherent process. And there are three things that you need. You need a clear pathway for achieving your goals.

You need a strong and committed team that works well together to achieve your goals. And you need the ability to execute on your plans so that you can achieve your goals. Those are the three things that are your coherent process. So you have purpose, people and process. Okay, so now here's where this really works. When you have a challenge that you're facing, the first thing I want you to think about, is this a challenge around purpose? Is it a challenge around people and is it a challenge or is it a challenge around our process? So the way you do that is, let's say you have a problem.

You have an attendance problem in your school and you have an attendance policy that's designed to address that problem. But people are not executing on your attendance policy. So you want to ask, is this a problem because we don't understand our vision, mission and core values? Is this a problem because our people aren't fully committed to the process and we've let the process lag, or is it a problem with the process itself? The process isn't coherent. Okay, so when you ask that question, that helps you get to the root cause. Let's say that you have instituted a new program.

Let's say that you're moving from a pull out model to a push in model for special ed, and you're struggling as a school.

You have to ask yourself, is this a problem because it's not aligned with our purpose? We're doing something that isn't aligned with our vision, mission and core values. Is this a problem because our people fully haven't committed to this thing yet, or is it a problem because the process itself, we're either struggling in understanding the right pathway, having the right team on board, or not executing it properly. And when you ask that question, and you really examine that question first, it helps narrow down. It helps take this big thing like I Don't know why it's not working. And I'm feeling so overwhelmed because it's not working. And it helps narrow it down to something that can help you start to solve the problem. You see, the big problem with uncertainty is that a lot of times when you are struggling with uncertainty, the reason that things feel so uncertain is the problem feels big, it feels overwhelming, and you really don't know how to solve it.

You don't even know where to start. And when you have a framework, and in our case, because we're builders, we're using the buildership model, when you have that buildership framework, it takes this big amorphous challenge where you're just feeling all the problems, and it feels so overwhelming, and it helps you to narrow it down and get to the root cause. So let's go back to our model and let me show you how the model works. Okay, so once you've narrowed it down, and in the case of the two examples that I just talked to you about with the attendance policy and with the special education program, both of them were really people problems, right? It wasn't that what they were doing was misaligned to their purpose. It wasn't that what they were doing. The process itself was flawed. They had spent a lot of time and worked on a process and had a really good process.

They have the team in place. They believed that this was the pathway to achieve their goals. That wasn't the issue. The issue was that when it came time to roll it out, in one case, the people were kind of half doing the process. In another case, people were pushing back against the process. Okay? So this was both. These.

In both instances, they were people problems. So when you do that, you narrow it down and you can get rid of all those other things. And if it's a people problem, there are only four solutions. So rather than being overwhelmed by all the different things you could or you feel like you should be doing, once you understand that it's a people problem, there are only four things you can do. You can fix it by giving people better feedback, support, accountability, or culture.

So let's dig a little deeper. 

Once you know it's a people problem, the first thing you have to ask is, are people doing the process incorrectly? But they don't know that they're doing it incorrectly.

They think they're doing it right, but it's really not right. Okay? If that's the case, that problem is a feedback problem. Okay? Now maybe they are struggling to implement the process. They're not doing it right. They know they're not doing it right, but they're doing the best they can, and they need more support. Okay, maybe they know the right way to do it.

They've gotten the support that they need, but they're just not doing it. They've let it slip. Other things have gotten in the way. They've put other things in front of it. Or the process itself creates these leaks, what we call accountability leaks that let people off the hook. And if that's the case, it's an accountability. You solve it with accountability. Or maybe the problem is the culture thing.

In other words, you have a process in place, and people are starting to tell stories about the process. It doesn't work. It's a waste of time. It's too hard. And those stories are getting in the way of our ability to do the process. So people are beginning to disengage from the process. They're not giving it a chance to work because they have started to build a narrative around that process that. That is getting in the way of the process.

If that's the case, you have a culture issue. Hey, Robin here. And I just want to break in real quick to ask you a huge favor. You see, I want to get the word out to everybody about Buildership, and I could use your help. If you're really enjoying this episode, would you mind just going to your podcast platform and leaving a quick review? You see the reviews, get the word out. They tell other people this is a great show. Other people who have never heard of school leadership reimagined before can hear about it, and you'd be sharing the word about Buildership.

So would you mind just leaving a quick review? It would mean the world to me. Okay, now back to the show. So when you really sit down and you take this big pile of uncertainty and you start sifting it through the Buildership framework, it helps you to take that big problem and start chipping away at it until you have certainty about how to solve it. So in the examples that we had in the first case, the issue around the attendance policy was that there are accountability leaks.

How do you solve it? 

You identify where the accountability leaks are, and you close it. That creates certainty. In the second case, the problem around the inclusion program was that it. There was a narrative being developed. The program had just started, but already people had started to complain about it, and some of their complaints had turned into a narrative about, this isn't working. This isn't going to work. Maybe we shouldn't have done it. This is too hard. This is Overwhelming. I don't have.

And so until you started shifting that narrative, you weren't going to shift people's ability to engage in the process long enough to make it work. And so the principal, instead of going back and giving people more support and more training and doing all the things we were trained to do as leaders, simply has to get control of the narrative again. Now, once you know that, when you go to work the next day, instead of saying, oh, this thing, it's like this boogeyman in the closet, you have a solution. Now, once you have a solution, it becomes simple. I didn't say easy. Right, because there's still work involved. But simple. You know what to do.

And if you do what you know to do, you will get the results that you want. So that's pretty plain, that's pretty straightforward, and that's pretty certain. And that's how you overcome uncertainty. Now, some of you may be wondering, okay, all right, that was a people problem. Can you give me an example of what it looks like if, for instance, it's a purpose issue? So let's say that you are rolling out a new discipline policy and people are pushing back against the discipline policy. The policy isn't working. You're doing it to kind of crack down on kids skipping class, but it's not working.

And you're trying to figure out what's happening. And when you do a little dig a little deeper, you start to realize that the discipline policy that you created is in direct opposition to your mission as a school. Your mission as a school is that we exist to help kids make good decisions. But your discipline policy takes all decision making power away from kids and punishes kids and builds consequences. Without a process for helping kids learn from their mistakes and make better decisions in the future. Well, in that case, I don't care how much you tweak that discipline policy. I don't care how much feedback, support, accountability, and culture you give people. That discipline policy is not going to work because it is.

It is antithetical to the mission that you have for your school. 

So you need to scrap the policy. You need to revise the policy or create a new one that is more in alignment with your mission. Once that policy gets in alignment, it's a lot easier to get people on board, and it's a lot easier to build a process that works with you instead of against you. So that's an example of what it would look like if purpose was at the root. Now, what would it look like if instead of purpose being at the root, this is really about a coherent process. Okay? So instead it's the process.

So let me give you an example. Let's take that same example about the discipline policy. You go back through, you revise the discipline policy so that it is in alignment with your mission. It makes more sense. You've rolled it out to your staff, you've given them feedback, support, accountability and culture around that discipline policy. It's now something that is a part of your culture. And so everybody's doing it, but you're still having some issues. It's not bigger, big, you know, big, big, big issues around the discipline policy, but there's some small things that are.

That are happening where some things that you thought were going to work don't work. Now you go back, you look, you see. No, there are no accountability leaks. Everybody's kind of being accountable. It's the policy itself. It's in alignment. But there are parts of the policy that, as we rolled it out, we've learned some things and we realize it's not working, it's not optimal. It's creating a lot of work on our staff.

They're doing it, but it's feeling really overwhelming. How do we make this process something that's going to be sustainable? Now, if that's the issue, then it's really about coherent process. So the first thing you have to figure out is, okay, is this policy. If we follow the policy through, does it give us a direct line to helping us achieve our vision, mission and core values, or is it veering off the pathway a little bit? Is the problem the team? Nope. Team's committed.

Everybody's doing the work. Or is the problem execution? And that's when you're looking at it. You're saying, we're not monitoring the data. So we know that there are parts that are not working, but we don't have. We're not going through and sitting down and revisiting the policy. We just rolled it out and then expected everybody to kind of implement it. And we're not sitting down and revisiting the policy and looking at how to refine it and making sure that it works and monitoring, monitoring the data to identify what's not working and fixing it quickly enough.

So we have a problem with execution. 

And so you put some things in place so that you can monitor it, so that you have a way to solve problems when they come up quickly before they morph and become these big things. You have a way to kind of get feedback around it and use data and other things and to tweak it so that you can refine the policy and then embed it. So you didn't just kind of start the policy and get some initial wins and then hope that it works, but you're doing things to maintain it and continue to make it better. So that's an execution. That's an example where it's execution. Here's my point. When you're dealing with uncertainty, when things feel overwhelming, the answer is that you need a framework that you can anchor in, and the buildership model is that framework.

Every problem that you're facing right now, at the root of the problem is one of three things. It's either a problem because it's not in alignment with your vision, mission and core values. It's a problem because your people don't have the feedback, support, accountability or culture they need to execute, or it's a problem because your processes are incoherent. That's it. And once you understand that, there's nothing too overwhelming, there's nothing too insurmountable. And when you walk into the building every single day and you face uncertainty and you're not sure what to do about it, and it starts to feel overwhelming, and you start to feel like, I don't know what to do, you always come back to the buildership framework, and the buildership framework can take that big uncertain thing and help you find certainty. And so those of you who are in Buildership University, that's what we're going to keep coming back to. That's why we're building the pieces right now in your architectures, so that the architectures are there for you when you face uncertainty.

And if your architectures are already built, that's why we keep having the conversations and we keep coming back to the buildership model, because that model, that framework, helps you to take everything that's uncertain in your world, sift it through the framework and find certainty within there. Uncertainty is going to happen. We can't. That means the nature of the gig, right? It's going to happen. But there's a difference between the way leaders handle uncertainty, which is usually freak out, create a whole bunch of extra work to give them a false sense of certainty that doesn't actually solve the problem, and the way that builders handle uncertainty, which is to take a step back, look at their problems through the lens of buildership, and be you the heck out of it. So that's my challenge to you this week.

If you're facing uncertainty right now, take the buildership model and start sifting your challenges through that uncertainty.

If you want a little bit more about how we do that inside of Buildership University, we're going to be opening doors to Buildership University shortly, and you are welcome to join the next Buildership University cohort, and we'll walk you step by step through the process. And if you are interested in doing that, just go to buildershipuniversity.com buildershipuniversity.com and go ahead and sign up for the next cohort so that you can learn how to apply the Buildership model to your world. We have a new AP program, so if you, you know, before, you couldn't get into Buildership University unless you were principal, but we just opened up a. A new AP pilot for assistant principals. So if you're a principal or an assistant principal and you want to join Buildership University, we, the cohort is open right now. Doors close for that cohort shortly, so we're just leaving it open for a little bit of time. Then we're gonna bring some people in and we're gonna start applying this Buildership model to your world. So.

So check out buildershipuniversity.com if it's not open yet, if I, like, spoke out of turn and it's not quite open yet, then you want to go ahead and join the wait list, because it's opening up at the very beginning of February. So by the time this episode airs, it may not be quite open yet. But go ahead and sign up for the waitlist so you can be the first to find out when doors open up and you can be a part of that next cohort. Here's my point. You don't have to deal with uncertainty. We always are going to face uncertainty. But you don't have to. It doesn't have to feel overwhelming.

You have a tool and a very simple tool to help you deal with whatever it is that you're facing. And so you have a choice. You can continue to kind of wallow in uncertainty like a leader, or you can bu the heck out of uncertainty like a builder. I'll talk to you next time. Hey, if you're ready to get started being a builder right away, then I want to invite you to join us at Buildership University. It's our exclusive online community for builders just like you, where you'll be able to get the exact training that you need to turn your school into a success story. Right now, with the people and resources you already have inside, you'll find our best online courses, live trainings with me, tons of resources, templates, and exemplars and monthly live office hours with me where you can ask me anything and get my help on whatever challenge you're facing right now. If you're tired of hitting obstacle after obstacle and you're sick of tiny little incremental gains each year, if you're ready to make a dramatic difference in your school right now, then you need to join Buildership University.

Just go to buildershipuniversity.com and get started writing your school success story today. Hey, it's Robin here and I want to thank you for listening to today's episode. Now, if you have a question about today's episode or you just want to keep the conversation going, did you know that we had a School Leadership Reimagined Facebook group? All you need to do is go to Facebook Join the School Leadership Reimagined Facebook Group. Now, there are going to be a couple of questions that we ask at the beginning because we want to protect and make sure that we don't have any trolls come in and that it really is for people who are principals, assistant principals, district administrators. So make sure you answer those questions or you won't get in. But then we can keep the conversation going. Plus, we do a lot of great bonus content.

I'm in there every single weekday. So if you have a question or comment about the episode, let's continue the conversation. Join us at the School Leadership Reimagined Facebook group and I'll talk to you next time.

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