EPISODE #299

Your staff may not be as aligned as you think

You're listening to the school leadership reimagined podcast episode 299. 

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 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, Robin Jackson, and today we are going to talk about your hidden alignment problem. I am so excited about to tackle this discussion because this is something that came up during the staff alignment challenge. And I think that it's a it's a problem that a lot of school administrators are struggling with and you don't even know you're struggling with it. And so today you're going to get some insight about about why you're experiencing some of the things that you may be experiencing in your school right now. And more importantly, you're going to get three things you can do to fix it. But before we dive into that, I need to tell you about a couple of things. First of all, the master class on Monday was so cool. I love it when we get to come together and talk about the bigger picture.

It was it was this great gathering of builders and there were a lot of insights. It was just amazing and incredible. And if you missed it, I'm sorry there wasn't a replay. There won't be a replay, but it was good. Let me tell you now. The second thing that I want to remind you of is that the doors to Buildership University are now open. We are only doing 2 cohorts this year. This is the first one and we won't do another one until the second-half of the year.

So if you want to join Buildership University, now is the time. And let me tell you why this is a good time to do it because when you join Buildership University now in the 1st 8 weeks, you're going to have your vision. You're you're going to have everybody committed to that vision. You're going to have a mission and core values. You'll be working on that as a staff and you're going to have A1 plan together. So what that does is remember everything for next school year is being built right now. Your master schedule, you're hiring. If you have people who are on the fence, they could get really excited about this new vision and then they may not leave.

They may end up staying because they want to be a part of it. There's so many things that are happening right now that you've bet that if you have that, that the buildership tools that you can apply to it, you can set yourself up for an incredible next year. So I know you're busy. I know that it feels overwhelming right now, but why not get the tools, the training, the mentorship, the support so that you can stop feeling so overwhelmed and so that you can take the things that you're doing now and set yourself up for an incredible year next year. So if you're ready to join, go to buildershipuniversity.com. Come and join. Doors are open, but they close on Friday. And we only have 30 spots available for this cohort because, you know, we've been bringing people into Buildership University and you know, people are staying because they really like it.

So there are only 30 spots available right now. 

Now if you're an assistant principal, we people have been asking us when are you going to do something for assistant principals? We have something for assistant principals. And so if you're an assistant principal, go to buildershipuniversity.com and Scroll down the page and look for the link think to join the assistant principal program. We are piloting a brand new program. So you get to be a part of that and shape that also. You know, for me, my personal strategy is anytime somebody's piloting a program, that's the group that I want to be a part of because you get more personalized attention, you get more support because they're still building the program. And so if you want that as an assistant principal, it's a six month program.

So it's not a year long program. So if you want to join that, you are going to walk away having some systems in place to help you to the parts of your job that are really, really tough. And I'll also set you up for the principalship. So again, buildership university.com. All right, so let's talk now about hidden alignment problems, right? Because you might think that your staff is pretty aligned. Everybody gets along, you know, you don't have a whole bunch of challenges. But what if I told you that even in really great schools, there are is often hidden misalignment, especially if you are using the leadership strategies that we were trained to use, right?

And that hidden misalignment is actually causing more work and more stress and less progress every single year. But because we were trained to quote UN quote lead this way, we just think it's a part of the job. And so we don't even question it because things usually are going pretty well, right? And so you don't even realize that there are these cracks in your alignment until something goes wrong. And then but and then when something goes wrong, all of a sudden you're like, oh, we're not as aligned as we thought we were. But at that point, you now you're putting out a fire. Now you are, are scrambling to try to repair things and it's already too late. And so today we're going to talk about what to do, how to figure out if you have a hidden alignment problem.

Look for signs of, you know, hidden signs of misalignment and then address said before it spirals out of control, right? Because just because your teachers are working hard and they're showing up and they're following the procedures and they're very compliant, doesn't mean that they are actually aligned, right? And so there's a big difference between true staff alignment and and, and compliance. And that difference determines whether or not your school is going to run smoothly or whether you are going to be constantly putting out fires and dealing with the same problems over and over and over again. All right, so let's dive in. There are three, they're kind of three signs that that you have maybe have a hidden misalignment problem. So the first sign is that things are harder than they have to be.

Do you ever feel like that?

Like every time you try to do something, you think it's simple, but it takes twice as long to do it as as you expected or, or you give somebody something to do and it takes them twice as long to do it. You know, whenever your staff isn't truly aligned, things are going to be harder than they have to be. You, you're, you're not going to build momentum. It takes a long time to get things off the ground. You might launch something new and then you have a group of people are like, OK, all right, let's do it. And then you have these foot draggers and the teeth suckers and the eye rollers, the people who are just not moving forward. And you think, well, if 90% of my staff is moving forward, you're always going to have, not everybody is going to do it. That's leadership thinking, right?

Leadership thinking would have you satisfied if 75% of your staff move forward and then you'll just leave the 25% till later. But builders know that unless you have 100% alignment, that initiative is not going to have have 100% effectiveness with your students. And so if you feel like, like things are moving harder or slow, things are things are harder to get done or things are moving more slowly than they have to be, that's a sign that you might have some hidden misalignment, Right? OK. The second thing is that you don't, you're not making the progress that you want to make, right? So you feel like progress is really inconsistent. You move, take two steps forward, you move one step back, right? Some people are moving, some people aren't moving.

You sometimes feel like you're, you're, you're playing catch up a lot like the the stuff that you thought you were going to accomplish by this point in the year you haven't accomplished yet. And that is a sign because when there are even small, tiny little cracks in staff alignment, you end up having a lot of wasted time and energy. And then here's the the most, the most horrible part about that is you have a lot of missed opportunities. You're so busy playing catch up or you're so busy trying to drag things along that there are other opportunities and you may even see them, but you don't have time to pursue them or you don't have the energy or the bandwidth to pursue them. So you'll know that you have some hidden signs of staff misalignment. When you say things like, I can't put one more thing on their plates right now, people are already overwhelmed. Or you'll say things like, well, that would be great to do right now, but I'm already so overwhelmed I can't add one more thing to my plate, even though I believe that other thing would be a game changer. So I'm not talking here about chasing every squirrel that shows up, right?

So you know, my word for the year is boring and I'm doing OK at it. 

I got all these ideas that are showing up and I'm trying to be disciplined about putting them in the hopper. But when there is a real opportunity, when you see something and learn something because you know you're constantly learning and evolving. But when you see there's a better way of doing things. So when you see there's a simpler, more direct way of doing things and you believe that it could be a game changer for your school and you believe that this is what your school should be doing right now, but you hesitate because you're not sure if how your staff is going to react or you're not. You know, you're feeling like you're already spending so much time chasing, checking, correcting people that you don't have time to ask them for something else. If the reason that you don't do something that is that is really, really good for kids. If your reason is my staff, I can't do that right now.

It's a sign that you don't have to alignment because if you are all focused on 100% student success and there's something that comes up that will get you closer there faster and you're scared to take it to your staff. Or if you've not shared your vision yet with your staff and you're scared to share your 100% vision with your staff, even though everybody's nice and likes you and everybody gets along, that's a hidden sign of a staff alignment issue. So anytime you're scared, anytime you're you're worried, anytime your progress in your school gets slowed down because you can't take things to your staff, you got an alignment problem. All right, third sign. The third sign is that your hardest working teachers are exhausted, right? And that's because they are picking up the slack for those who are not fully aligned. And this one is really insidious because you have some teachers who believe in your vision and you have some teachers who are working hard to achieve it. But because not everybody is aligned, there's some people who are coasting, and then there's some people who pick up the slack for those coasters to keep things moving forward.

And what's happening is your best teachers are getting burned out. So you're moving forward and you're seeing progress. But the reason that you're seeing progress is because you have not everybody, but you've got just the committed few who are pulling hard enough that they're bringing everybody else along. That's not staff alignment and it's not sustainable because over time, what's going to happen is your best teachers are going to start resenting the other teachers and resenting the fact that they're doing all this work and everybody else isn't. Your best teachers are going to start getting getting burned out and saying I can't keep this up. And what will either happen is they'll either lose their enthusiasm for your vision and your vision will feel impossible because you know, they're working hard and you know, yes, they're seeing results, but they can't sustain that kind of hard work because they're pulling other people along. Or they're going to leave and do something else and you'll have higher staff turnover. Not the people that you may want to leave, but the people who you don't want to leave be.

They're leaving because they just can't continue to work at that pace. 

They can't. They just, they're running out. They don't have the bandwidth, right. So what happens is over time, it damages your school culture. And instead of continuing to encourage your best teachers, what you're doing is burning them out very, very quickly. That's what happens when you don't have full staff alignment. So what do you do about it?

Because even if you think your school is fine right now, hit and miss alignment is making everything take longer. It's making everything feel harder. It's costing more energy than it should. And it's it's burning out your best teachers. But the good news is that there is something we can do about it. And because I'm boring, you probably already know what I'm going to say, right? The first thing that you need to do if you want true staff alignment and you want to get rid of that hidden misalignment, it's that you need to make sure that everybody is clear about your vision, mission, and core values. If you're not clear, then sometimes people will think that they're working towards your vision, mission, and core values, and they're working hard and enthusiastically on something that isn't going to move the needle.

And so you think everybody's moving in the same direction, but you've got some people kind of slightly veering off because you haven't been clear about your vision mission and core values. And over time, they get frustrated because the further they veer off the track, the the more misaligned your staff becomes. And yet they think they're doing the same thing. So you've got this miscommunication, you've got people getting frustrated, you're frustrated. So you got to keep repeating the vision mission and core values. You got to keep coming back to it. You know, our leadership training taught us, write a vision statement, go through that horrible visioning activity that they make you do. And then at the end, yay, we've got a vision statement.

You write it and then you, you never deal with it again. You, you drag it out for special occasions. You put it on your agendas for all of your meetings. You paint it on a wall somewhere. You put it and highlighted on your website. But it's not driving your work. And so over time, even though it's prominently displayed, if you were to ask people what's our vision, they wouldn't know. If you were to ask people, how is the work you are doing directly impacting our vision, they have no idea, right?

So we got to make sure that we are visiting and revisiting our vision, mission and core values. 

Because if we don't, it starts to get muddy and we got to keep things clear. So every single day, week, conversation should be coming back on some level to your vision, mission, core values. And you might be saying, Robin, that's excessive. No, it's not right. If you want true alignment, you got to keep the direction and the focus in front of you. Remember, your vision says, what are we building? Your mission says why it's important.

Your core values say, what's my role, How we're going to go about doing it? Those are the three fundamental questions that everybody has. And if you don't answer those questions and constantly give people the answer to those questions, they can't do their job in a way that's in alignment, right? The other thing is that every decision, every initiative, every action, it should be obvious how it aligns with your vision, mission, and core values. Because if you're out of alignment, how why do you expect your staff to be in alignment? And there are a lot of areas of misalignment in your school that are neglected. Like one of the things we do in Buildership University, after you build all of the systems, you know, when you finish, the next thing we do, we're doing this in the mastermind now is we're looking to make sure that everything we do is in alignment. Is our discipline policy in alignment, is our, is our attendance policy in alignment.

It's the way that we give feedback to teachers in alignment with our vision, mission, core values. Every initiative is the way that we teach reading is it is the way that we it's our uniform policy in alignment is the way that we do field trips in alignment, everything in his alignment. And that if you make sure that your systems are in alignment, then it helps keep people in alignment, right? Everybody has to know why what you're doing matters. Everybody needs to know how the role that they play directly impacts your vision, mission and core values. If you don't do that, it's hard for to keep people in alignment and it creates areas of hidden in misalignment. In fact, I bet that if we looked at your school right now, we would find all these hidden areas of misalignment by just looking at whether or not your policies, your vision, mission, and core values are clear and whether or not your policies are clearly in alignment with your vision, mission and core values. That's a good place to look for hidden misalignment.

OK, The second thing is that it's it's one thing to get your vision, mission and core values out there and to keep reminding people of it, but you also have to feed their commitment to it. And you have to feed their commitment to it, both in their will and their skill, right? There a lot of people who want to be committed, but they don't have the skills that they need to do it there. A lot of people have the skills to be committed, but they don't want to be committed. And then there are people all in between. So you have to make sure that the work you're doing is building the skill and will of your staff, right?

We spend way too much time trying to get buy in right. 

So we're constantly selling our vision or selling people on the latest initiative. When in reality, if your staff, if you're building true alignment, people want to be aligned. You don't have to sell them on it. They want to be aligned because they believe in that vision, mission and core values. And then the second thing we need to do is the vision, mission, and core values calls all of us into a higher, better, greater version of ourselves. And if we are not intentional about scaffolding the skills it takes to stay in alignment, if we're not intentional about building the skill set of our teachers so that they can stay in alignment, why are we expecting to be in alignment? Even people who want to be over time, if they don't have the skills to be, they'll, it, it, they'll feels loud. And so we need to make sure that we're doing it. And we are not intentional about our PD.

Can I just say that right? We're not developing the capacity of our people. We are just doing this scattershot, OK, this skill over here. Oh, reading scores are down. We need to do some of the reading rather than tying it all to our vision mission and core values. When you are intentional about building people's skill set in a way that aligns with your vision, mission, and core values, you build their commitment. You sustain alignment. 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. OK, now back to the show.

When teachers feel supported and inspired, but they also feel competent in their ability to do the work, they naturally take ownership. 

They naturally get into alignment because their will and skill are directed in the direction of your vision, mission, and core values so that you don't have to run around chasing, checking, and correcting people. People are are holding themselves accountable to that vision, mission and core values and they have the skills to be able to do it as well. And then the third thing is you need coherent processes, right? Instead of, you know, always reminding people and following up and constantly managing and constantly providing oversight, put processes in place to ensure that teachers are doing the right work the right way for the right reasons, even when you're not looking. And so alignment isn't something that you need to be fighting for. Your system should make alignment automatic. Let me give you an example.

Let's say that you have a you want teachers to always talk about attendance. Let me talk about something else. Let's talk about referrals, right? So you want teachers to, before they refer students to the office, they have to go through a series of interventions within the classroom before they send the kids out to the office. But lately you've been noticing that a lot of teachers are just sending kids out because they're sick of them. They haven't done the interventions. When you send the kids back to the classroom, the teacher gets mad at you and see, it's creating this all of this misalignment. Well, if teachers are not doing what the system says needs to be done, you need to look at the system.

We just did this in our our mastermind. So for those of you don't know Buildership University, the first year of Buildership University, you are establishing and putting systems in place and you know, really putting installing that buildership model to your school. And then after that you graduate into the mastermind and then the mastermind you are, we're coming, we're sitting around and we're kind of addressing some of the challenges, we're executing those systems and addressing the challenges and getting better at that. And one of the things that we did last month in the mastermind was we are, we took a system that isn't working in our school and we, we did what's called a system map of that system and an audit of the system to figure out where were the alignment and accountability leaks. And what was mind blowing for a lot of us is that that our systems have leaks in the system. And we can't blame people because the system isn't working. The system isn't designed right.

We're not implementing the system, right.

So instead of getting mad at people because they're not doing the thing, you should go back and look at the system and make sure that you have a clear process. The process is coherent. Once you have that process, then are you on boarding people to that process and building their capacity to implement that process consistently? In most cases, the answer is no. So we have all kinds of hidden alignment that we just live with, accountability leaks that we just tolerate, cracks in the system that we don't have time to address. And we do that until the thing explodes and then all of a sudden we have to put out a fire. But you know what? That fire is our fault because we didn't do we didn't do our processes right.

And so if you want to alignment, get that, get that vision mission core values, make sure that it's in front of people next to make sure you're building the will and skill of your staff and then put systems in place. Once they have the will and skill, put systems in place that set them up for a success and make that alignment automatic, right? If you do that, then not only do you close accountability leaks, not only do you get everybody re engaged in the work, but you eliminate a lot of the small minor irritations that we've been tolerating. You see, leadership says, hey, it's not perfect. You do your best, you get as far as you can, but there's always going to be something. And we were trained to tolerate those little somethings and we're taught that this is the best and this is all that there is. I want to tell you that it's not all there is. You don't have to tolerate all those little irritations that come from hidden misalignment.

If you are intentional about addressing those hidden areas of misalignment, you eliminate those irritations, your school starts working more smoothly together. One of one of the the we during the challenge, we had some people come in and share some of their stories and over and over and over they were saying that things that they used to tolerate and thought were normal, They realized once they became builders, that's not normal. What's normal is success. And I think we need to do more about that. We need to normalize success. And the problem is we don't. We have normalized failure.

We've normalized accepting less than what we know we are capable of doing.

We've normalized accepting. Not everybody's going to be aligned. But as long as people aren't fighting, as long as they're mostly compliant, then that's good. But that is not going to get you to your 100% vision. Only 100% alignment is going to get you there. So if you've been feeling that your school, the work is harder than it needs to be, that you're afraid to bring things to your teachers because you're worried about how they're going to react. Or, you know, you you start and he stop and you have these inconsistent results and you feel like still everything is kind of relying on you, then you need to get serious about addressing areas of misalignment. I know I talk about staff alignment a lot, but it's only because when I talk to principals it is their number one challenge and just about everything comes down to staff alignment at some level.

Because if your staff isn't pushing in the right direction that it all falls on you. If your staff isn't pulling in the right direction, you put out more fires. If your staff isn't putting in the right direction, you get inconsistent results. And the solution is simple. When you get serious about addressing misalignment and getting your staff aligned, you will see exponential results. So the problem isn't that you just need another tool or strategy or resource. The problem is that you need to get your staff aligned. Once you get everybody moving in the same direction without you having to push them, then things get so much easier.

Results come so much faster. Success starts to feel automatic. You begin to normalize healthy cultures. You get to normalize success. All right, so that's what we're doing in Buildership University. By the way, you know, I got to put a plug in, right? I, I can't end this without inviting you to Buildership University and I'm not selling it. I mean, it's not right for everybody because if you're good tolerating misalignment, Buildership University is not going to be good for you.

If you are not ready to be intentional, it's not a good fit. 

So I'm I'm not selling it. But for those of you who know that they're should be something more of your, you know that you're tired of putting out fires. You, you know that you're tired of, you know, being the only one pushing and, and, and feeling like you got to go sell everybody into doing everything. If you're tired of burning out your best teachers and you believe that they deserve something else and and you believe that alignment is possible, then this is your invitation. We've got about, I don't know, I haven't checked the numbers today, but I think the slots are almost full. There's still a few left. And all you need to do is go to buildershipuniversity.com.

Doors close on Friday, so you don't have a lot of time, but go to buildershipuniversity.com. That way you can start the process of of implementing the buildership system in your school so that you're not micromanaging and enforcing alignment. Your staff owns their work. They're holding themselves accountable. You're no longer wasting time on initiatives that don't move the needle. You're working less, but you're getting bigger results. And by the way, if you're an assistant principal and you've been wanting to learn these strategies and, but learn them in a way that that helps you get better at the role, your current role, but also sets you up to be a really incredible principal. Know that we have an AP pilot program.

There are only 20 slots available for that program and most of those I know are gone because people are really excited about it. So just go to the the the to buildershipuniversity.com. If the page is still up for APS, if that link is still alive, it that means that there's slots. If that's closed, it means that we don't longer have any slots. We'll put you in the wait list for the next program. All right, I think that's it for today.

Here's the deal. 

If you are struggling with misalignment, even if you think everybody's pretty good, pretty good, it's not good enough for you, right?

You're a builder. You, you, you need to stop tolerating all of these mine, what we consider to be minor irritations. You don't have to do that. Things could get better. Your school can be a well oiled machine, but you got to get serious about getting your staff aligned and you got to stop tolerating and just living with all of these hidden areas of misalignment. So my challenge to you this week is this, stop tolerating the hidden misalignment areas and the results and the the consequences that come from them. Start getting your staff truly aligned 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 games 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 they're going to be a couple of questions that we asked 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.

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