EPISODE #274

You're listening to School Leadership Reimagined, episode number 274.

Hey, builders, before we begin, I have a quick question for you. Are We Connected on social media? The reason I'm asking is because, as much as I love giving you the podcast episode every single week, I'd love to take our relationship deeper. So if we're not connected on on social media, let's connect. I'm on LinkedIn at Robyn. Underscore mind steps, I'm on Twitter at Robyn. Underscore mind steps, I'm on Facebook at Robyn. Jackson, please, let's connect so we can keep the conversation going. Now on with the show you're listening to the school leadership reimagine podcast episode 274.

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 lack of time, money or resources if you're facing those challenges right now, here's 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 are going to talk about meetings. Now I know that's not the sexiest thing we could be talking about, but I can tell you from experience that having the right meetings every week is a game changer. It is so important, and so I want to talk to you about the five meetings that you should be having on your calendar every single week. Now, if you're saying five meetings out of time for five minutes, then I want you to hear me out, because this is the work you've heard me talk earlier about the difference between the chores of the job and the real work of the job. These five meetings help you do the work of the job. So you're one going to want to pay attention, and then you're going to want to get these five meetings on your calendar as soon as possible, because they are a game changer, and I'll explain to you why in just a second. But the first thing I want to do is I want to talk about the purpose of meetings. You see, the reason that we hate meeting so much is because we have a meeting to talk about the meeting that we're going to have a meeting about later on. And meetings are just kind of purpose less. They are a waste of time. And I can tell you, from experience, I'm a terrible meeting goer, if that, I can tell within a few minutes whether or not the meeting is going to be worth it. And then once I realize that the meeting is going to be a waste of time, I check out. And probably shouldn't, but I do. So I feel you. I know I get it. I get it. And a lot of times, meetings are a waste of time because there's no clear agenda. We're just having a meeting because we think we need to have a meeting, or there is we're not clear about the purpose of the meeting. So we we have a meeting, and we get lost in the weeds, and we go around and around and around, and then we never solve anything in the meeting. So the meeting is just about people kind of venting or throwing ideas around or a lot of debate, but after an hour or two, we still haven't come to a solution. And then the third reading. Reason that meetings are so frustrating is because we often don't have the right people at the meeting to make the decisions.

We have the wrong people at the meeting. 

We're not, you know, we so that. So we still have to go talk to somebody else. We can't solve anything in the meeting because we have to go talk to somebody else. And so the reason I think that we hate meetings is because we don't know why we're having them. There isn't a real purpose or a solution or resolution, and we don't have the right people at the meetings. But these five meetings that I'm going to talk to you about today are the opposite of that, because these five meetings, if you do them right, will help you to solve problems. Every time you have a meeting, you move things forward. The meetings that I'm going to talk to you about today make sure you have the right people at the table so that things can get resolved, and they actually make your work go a lot more smooth. I used to like I told Jay, say, hate meetings. And so even here at mindsteps, I didn't do meetings. I just said, you know, we can do a weekly meeting, and then that's it, and then I'm just gonna let people do their jobs. But what happened was, a lot of times we we because we weren't meeting every single day. I didn't really know what was going on all the time. Sometimes people would go in a direction that was not the direction that we needed to be going in as a company, and I wouldn't find out until that weekly meeting when it was too late. Sometimes people were struggling. I wouldn't find out until it was too late. And so I started putting more meetings in to our process, and as a result, we were way more productive. I'm talking about hitting our goals every quarter that kind of productivity. 

So I want to share this with you today. It's something I've shared with hundreds of administrators inside of BU, and I want to share it with you as well. So the first thing that we need to realize is that the purpose of a meeting that meetings only have two purposes. So either a meeting is designed to make a decision or drive an outcome. If the meeting is not helping you to make a decision or it's not moving an outcome forward, it's not producing a result, you don't need the meeting. Let me say that again. It's either got to make a decision, if the meeting doesn't help you make a decision. So you walk out of that meeting with a decision made, and people have action steps to go act on that decision, or if that meeting is not driving an outcome forward, you don't need a meeting. So let's talk about the five meetings that I think should be on every principal's calendar every single week, and I'll tell you why, and I'll tell you how it's going to either help you make a decision or drive an outcome forward. Okay, so the first meeting is the weekly meeting. Now I talked about this way back in episode 19, and since then, principals have come to me. They still come to me and tell me that meeting agenda, where I break down that whole weekly meeting agenda. That thing has really driven us for it. The purpose of the weekly meeting is to help you make decisions, to help you make decisions as a leadership team. So the weekly meeting has a very specific agenda. And the agenda is, we're going to do some quick updates. We're going to take a look at where we are and what things we are trying to achieve this quarter, and then we're going to figure out what is our biggest barrier. And the purpose of the weekly meeting is to remove that barrier. That's it. 

So you're not just doing updates, because updates could just be an email. You know that you need some updates that kind of speak to where you're trying to go as a school, and so you quickly go through those but you're using those updates to help identify what are the challenges we're facing, what are the things that are getting in the way of our ability to achieve a goal. And then the rest of the meeting is focused on figuring out what's the biggest barrier that we have this week, and then how do we remove it, and that's why I love the weekly meeting, because if you do it right, every single week, you're moving the work forward. Every single week, you are making decisions in real time and looking at data in real time that actually helps you to achieve your goals. So when we instituted the weekly meeting in our work and mind stops. It was a game changer. The next quarter, we hit all of our goals, and we hadn't been hitting our goals before. That weekly meeting helps you to kind of bring everything together, and everybody is focused on solving problems and removing barriers. And what feels really good about that meeting is that every week, you leave that meeting with a problem solved, with a decision made, and you feel like, okay, now we can go do the work. Now we have direction that we need. And everybody walks out the meeting feeling that way. So again, go to school. Leadership reimagined.com/episode19, if you want to get the agenda for the weekly media meeting, and if you did no other meeting, but the weekly meeting, you would see a huge difference. But if you really want to throw gasoline on what happens at that weekly meeting, you need the DSU. That's the second meeting.

The DSU stands for the daily stand up. 

And I can tell you that the daily stand up is another game changer, because in the weekly meeting you will solve a problem, and as a result of solving that problem, you'll say, Okay, we need to do this. This, this. We you've made some decisions. There's some action steps that need to be taken. The daily stand up is an opportunity for you to check in and stay accountable to what you committed to doing at the weekly meeting. So the daily stand up is meeting that you know originally was a stand up meeting, but now they're they're all different ways you can do it. But the reason they called it a stand up is because right about the time when you're ready to take a seat, that lets you know the meeting should stop, it should only be 10 to 15 minutes long, and it's a quick check in with your team on on the work that they're doing that's an outcome of that weekly meeting. So it's a great accountability check, and it's a great check for you as a principal to figure out what my team is up to and making sure that the work that they're doing is the right work. It's the focused work. Some people like to do the daily stand up at the beginning of the day. I prefer it at the end of the day. Some people do it at lunch. Some people do it asynchronously. So I'll kind of talk you through what it looks like. So the daily stand up is a very quick meeting for questions. What did you say you were going to do today? What did you actually do today? What were your blockers that get? What if anything, kept you.

Doing what you needed to do today, what you said you're going to do today, and what are you going to do tomorrow? And what this does is, by standing up in front of everybody else and answering those four questions, it gives you a very quick look at, okay, what work are people doing and and is that the right work? Now, I don't. The thing is, you're focusing not on what did you say you're going to do today? Well, I was going to get some coffee, and then I'm going to go check and make sure their paper towels in the bathroom. It's not that kind of list. It's, what are you going to do today? That's going to move us closer to the goals we set for the week at our weekly meeting. So you're not telling your whole schedule. It's what, what today am I going to do? That is going to move us closer to our goals. What today am I going to do that that I committed to do with the weekly meeting, and so you're really focused. It's it's a very focused check in to make sure that everybody's doing what they need to do. So when you get to the next weekly meeting, stuff is done. And I love combining the weekly meeting with the daily stand up, because it helps people to be accountable, so that when you get to the weekly meeting, people are saying, Oh, I didn't get to it this week, or Oh, I didn't finish it. Instead, you've got people moving every single day, and it's a quick check that everybody is accountable for. So it's not you holding people accountable if you're not there the day of the daily stand up, people can still do it. But what it does is it helps everybody to get up in front of everybody else and be accountable.

So a couple of questions about the daily standup. Do you do this with your whole ILT? Probably not. This is something you're going to do with your admin team or with a small group of people who are driving the work forward. Second question, Can you do it asynchronously? There are some times when you don't have a centrally located team or people are dispersed. So in that case, what you can do is you can do a virtual daily stand up. And I'm not talking about just a Zoom meeting, although that's that's possible as well. You can just create a sheet with the four a column with the four questions, one column for each question, and then on the rows I want the date, so Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And then under each question, everybody puts their answers to those four questions, and they have to have it posted by noon, or they have to have it posted by 4pm and then everybody else sees that, and you can go in and see that everybody's kind of checked in for the day on the daily stand up. So you can do it virtually as well. But the combination of the of the the weekly meeting and the daily stand up, the two of them together, creates this, this rhythm of productivity happening in your school that keeps your school moving forward. All right, are you still with me? Because I've got three more meetings you need. And again, I told you, this wasn't sexy, but it's so important because this is the work. This is the process side of the work. We get excited about, you know, all the other cool, you know, stuff that you know makes you feel really good, but this is what maintains the work. This is what creates the momentum. Okay, so we've got the weekly meeting, we've got the daily stand up. 

The third meeting that you need so important is what I call the teacher dashboard meeting. 

It's a meeting that you have once a week where you look at where your teachers are and figure out, what do I need to do next week to move them forward. What I love about this is that instead of just randomly wandering into people's classrooms, you're being very intentional about which classrooms you're getting into. You're being very intentional about what support you're giving to teachers. So those of you in BU, you know we have the Teacher Dashboard, and for those of you who are not in BU, the dashboard is just a simple document that we use to look at where teachers are and what's the one thing the teachers are working on right now, and what kind of support we're going to give them every week. You need to sit down and go through that. If you have an admin team, you want to go through it together. If you are by yourself, then this is a meeting with yourself where you go through that dashboard every single week, and what you're doing is you're checking to see, okay, what teachers have i What classrooms were at? Where have I been in since the last time I looked, what feedback did I give that those teachers? What follow up Do I need to provide those teachers, and then what classrooms do I need to be in the following week? If you did that, then there aren't teachers who are falling through the cracks. If you did that, then getting into classrooms wouldn't feel like a chore, like, oh goodness, I gotta get into my three classrooms a day. Instead, it would feel very intentional, because when you show up, you know why you're there, you know what support you want to provide for that teacher, the teacher benefits from it, so you are driving an outcome forward by showing up, rather than just kind of fulfilling the obligations that were placed on you by your district, and you're actually making a difference. 

Now, I probably should do a podcast about this at some point, because there is a lot of bad advice out there about just the idea that you just have to be visible every single day. I get why people say that? Because it's really important. You don't want to be you don't want to be holed up in your office all the time. And people don't see you. They need to see you, but what do they need to see you doing? That's the question. People think, if I just show up and walk around, and then then I'm visible, and then all of a sudden, instruction is going to change. But there are people who are visible every single day, and instruction is in the toilet because they are showing up, but they're not supporting they're not moving things forward. So the the teacher dashboard meeting is a way for you to be very intentional about where you show up and what you do when you show up, so that you can actually support teachers, so that you can actually move instruction forward, so that you actually make a difference. And so I love this teacher dashboard meeting, and very few administrators do it. Unfortunately, they don't spend time being intentional about what kind of feedback does this teacher need? What kind of support does this teacher need? Do I need to show up in this teacher's classroom? I was just there last week. Do I need to show up again? You think that somehow, if you show up more often, you're going to turn a bad teacher into a good teacher. That's not how it works. If you show up, are you adding value to instruction? Are you adding value to that lesson? If you're not adding value, you don't need to be there, and so you want to focus on making sure that when you show up in a teacher's classroom, you have a focus for being there, that your visit, your presence, actually makes a difference in that teacher's practice, and the teacher dashboard meeting helps you do that. 

Hey, it's Robyn here real quick. I just wanted to interrupt this episode for just a second, because if you are enjoying what you're hearing, then would you mind sharing this episode with somebody else? So all you need to do is just go to your phone, if you're listening to on your phone, or your podcast player, and then click the three dots next to this episode, and it'll give you the option to share the episode. Now if you do that, three things are gonna happen. First, the person that you shared with is gonna think you're a hero, especially if they're struggling with what we're talking about right now, they're gonna love you. Secondly, you're gonna feel good because you're gonna get the word out about buildership and start building this buildership nation. And third, you will get my eternal gratitude, because I really want to get this out to the world, and you'd be helping me out. You'd be doing me a huge favor. So please share this episode with someone right now, who's who's dealing with this same issue, someone you think would really benefit. And now back to the show. All right, so you've got a weekly meeting, you've got the DSU, you've got the teacher dashboard meeting. 

The fourth meeting that you need is you need one on ones now, again, this is one that we were not taught to do, having regular one on ones with our teacher leaders. 

Having regular one on ones with with the folks who are our department heads or team leaders or APS or our instructional coach, setting up a time where you have a regular one on one rhythm will remove you from being the bottleneck of the building, but at the same time, empower the people who occupy these positions to be able to do a good job, and for you to be able to trust them to do a good job, because you have a structure. Now, a lot of people think they're having one on ones, and they're not. I remember meeting a principal recently, and she says, Oh, I have one on ones with all of my teacher. And I said, Oh, you do that. That's great. And she said, Yeah. And I sit down and I show them their data, and then I say, you got 30 days to fix it.

Oh, that's not a one on one. That is. That's a shakedown. That's not a one on one. A true one on one really is a collaboration. A true one on one is really an opportunity for you and the that that person, that that teacher, leader, that that that person, the the person who occupies those, those leadership positions in your school, it's an opportunity for you all to collaborate around the goals of the school. And so at some point, I probably need to do a podcast where I break down exactly what happens in a one on one. But let me give you the Cliff Notes version here, in a real one on one, you and the teacher come prepared. In fact, the teacher or the teacher leader, they drive the agenda. You don't drive the agenda. They drive the agenda. So when they have a one on one, they're sitting down, they have some success criteria that they are working towards. They have data that they're working towards. They give you the data. They walk you through their data. You don't show their data to them and then say, what are you going to do about it? They show their data to you and tell you what they're going to do about it. And then your job is to ask questions. Your job is to give them some feedback on the work that they are doing. They are also giving you feedback.

Back on how supported they feel and what else they need from you in order to be able to meet those success criteria. But it's focused on the vision mission and core values and the role that they play and achieving the vision mission and core values, you don't drive the agenda they do. You don't push the data towards them. They have to bring their data to you, and so it becomes, it puts you more in equal footing, so that you can truly focus on making decisions around the work that they're doing and driving the outcomes that they're responsible for in those meetings. So if your one on ones are doing anything other than that, that's not a one on one, it's a shakedown. Okay? So four meetings. You have the weekly meeting, the daily standup or DSU. You've got the the teacher dashboard meeting. You've got a regular cadence of one on ones. And again, you don't have to have a one on one with every single teacher every single week, but every week you should set aside time to be having one on ones and the one on one rhythm that you have with each individual might be like, I might have a one on one with you once a month, or I might have a one on one with you every other week, but every week on your meeting, your your schedule, there needs to be a space for one on one so that you can check in with people and really drive the work forward. 

All right, the last meeting is probably the most important meeting, and it's probably also the most neglected meeting that anyone has on their calendar, and that meeting is a meeting with yourself. 

Now, you've heard me talk in earlier episodes about how to find that four hours a week to be able to do this, but it's really important. You need time to just sit down and catch your breath. You need time to sit down and figure out, what am I doing? I find that when I don't have that meeting with myself, that I don't spend time where I just close off my calendar and I just close the door and it's just me trying to figure some things out. Then I feel stressed. I feel stretched. I feel cranky, I feel overwhelmed, and if you're feeling any of those things, then you need to have a meeting with yourself where you just take a step back and look at the work and get refocused on the vision. Get refocused on the mission. Get refocused on the core values. Get refocused on what's really important.

A lot of times we put ourselves last. A lot of times we say we don't have time that. That feels luxurious, but that's the work, that's the gig, that's the job. If you don't do that, you cannot be effective in your role, because all you're doing is reacting. You're not proactive. All you're doing is absorbing everybody else's stuff to the point where you can't even metabolize it anymore, and you're not ever moving things forward. You were just maintaining the reason that you are in the role that you're in is because you have a vision for where you want to take the school. But if you never spend time connecting with that vision, looking forward, getting out of the day to day stuff, to really go out and keep building. Then how can you invite other people to build with you and they're stuck the same place you are, you've got to get out of the weeds and move and be and be thinking ahead. You've got to take some time to step back, and instead of having this myopic view of every single problem, looking at the whole picture so that you can set priorities and move things forward, if you don't take time every single week to have that meeting with yourself, the best you can do is react. The best you can do is just, you know, put out fires, but you're not preventing fires because you don't have time. And so if you do none of these meetings, and you just start with one meeting, start with a meeting with yourself, spend time every single week, taking a step back, not knocking out paperwork, catching up on emails, you know, doing all the stuff that are the chores of this job, but spend time doing the work, spend time thinking about arranging, managing, focusing the work that's happening in your building so that you can get to your vision. If you are not regularly reconnecting with your vision, you will soon lose sight of your vision. So that's this week. I told you, it wasn't sexy, but this is the, this is the important stuff. This is the, this is what makes a difference between a vision that's just a pipe dream and a vision that actually turns into reality. You know, people love the vision. 

That's the sexy part of it. 

You know, I want to get my 100% vision, and I want to get you know all of my teachers aligned to my vision. That's the sexy part. But then after you create the vision, and after you get everybody committed to that vision, what then? Well, then you have to do the work. You have to actually achieve your vision. And if you don't start putting systems in place to achieve your vision, then your vision stays stuck. So if you have a vision today and you feel stuck, think about putting these five meetings on your calendar for the next month, and then see how your school starts to move if, if you are feeling overwhelmed by the work, put these five meetings on your calendar and see how you can start to dissipate the overwhelm and actually move your thing, your school forward and feel productive. And if you have meetings on your calendar that are not either helping you make a decision or move the work forward, take them off your calendar. They're not so they're not serving you. They're not serving your school. You don't need them. And then replace them with these five meetings, because if you do, if you put these five meetings in place, you will see progress. If you put these five meetings in place, you will feel like you are actually being productive instead of being overwhelmed. If you put these five meetings in place, you will begin to move your vision, mission and core values forward 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 buildership university.com, and get started writing your school success story today. 

Hey, it’s Robyn 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 they're going to be a couple of questions that we ask at the beginning, because we want to protect this group 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.