EPISODE #305

You're listening to School Leadership Reimagined, episode number 305

You're listening to the School Leadership Reimagined podcast, episode 305. 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 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. And today I had another podcast planned. I had all mapped out, knew what I was gonna do, but then I got some news, and it's kind of thrown me off. So I'm gonna ask your indulgence with me today, because I don't wanna talk about what I had planned. You see, I got some news that one of my mentors, Merv Sims, is dying. And it has. I don't know, it's thrown me off for today.

And so today I'd love to talk about mentorship and what it's meant to me. And so this is gonna be a less structured episode. I apologizing ahead of time if that's not something you're interested in. I promise next week we'll be back with more structure. But, you know, I was thinking about Merv this morning I met Merv. It's been probably 10 years ago now, and it started when I heard him on a podcast. You know, I like to. I'm a podcaster, but I also like to listen to podcasts.

I listen to podcasts all day long. And I was listening to a podcast and Merv was interviewed on the podcast. And it was one of those things where everything he said I needed to stop and just pause the podcast and think about what he said. So smart. Merv is the person who introduced me to the idea of value, added work, enabling work and waste. And looking at my work through that lens, what am I doing every single day that adds value to what I'm trying to do? What is enabling that value? And then what work am I doing that's not adding value, it's not enabling value.

And that work is just waste. And that framework really helped me to focus at A time when I was trying to find my way. Anyway, I listened to the podcast and it was just so full of gems that I must have listened to it three, four, five times. And after I listened to it, there were some things that I immediately went and applied, and I could see the difference right away. And I was so grateful for what he said that at the end of the podcast, he mentioned that he was on LinkedIn, and so I looked him up on LinkedIn and then I sent him a message. And LinkedIn is a funny thing, right? Because I hate sometimes getting messages on LinkedIn or seeing that I have a message on LinkedIn, because usually it's somebody who wants something or somebody who's selling something. So, you know the messages you get on LinkedIn, hey, you know, I just wrote a new book, and would you read it and review it? Or, hey, I am starting a new program. Would you buy a ticket? People with whom I don't have any relationship, they just. They want something.

So I almost didn't do it, but...

I just was so amazed at what he was teaching and the difference that it already made that I sent him a message that basically said, hey, I heard you on this podcast. Thank you for the work that you're doing. These are the three big takeaways I took from the episode.

And here's how I've already applied it, and here's the difference that it's already made. Now, that sounds like a long message. It was not that long. You know, it's a short message, but that's basically the gist of the message. And I sent it to him, and I didn't have any expectations of him writing back or maybe a great, glad you liked it. Thank you. I was just so grateful. Well, he wrote back and he said, this is the nicest message I've ever gotten on LinkedIn, and if you're open to it, why don't we hop on a quick call?

It was, look, if Beyonce had sent me a message, I would not have been more excited. I couldn't believe it. And so I wrote back right away. Great. When do you want to do it? He gave me a time. I dropped everything I was doing and I got on a call. Now he was in Nova Scotia, Canada, and did not matter, right?

I wasn't thinking about how much his call was going to. I just wanted to talk to him. So I called him at the time. He said, and he was so nice. He asked me about what I was trying, Trying to do. And we chatted. And again, I just told him, you know, how grateful I was for his work and how intrigued I was. There were a couple of things I didn't understand.

And so I asked some genuine questions about what he was teaching and got some clarity. And I was so excited. And after about 10, 12 minutes, I, you know, I didn't want to take up too much of his time, so I just said, listen, I don't want to take up any more of your time. I'm just so grateful that you took the time to hop on a call with me. Thank you. And he said, listen, I'm getting together some clients in two weeks in Nova Scotia to do a two day intensive. He said, if you can make it here, normally this is something that costs like $10,000, but if you can make it up here in two weeks, you can come as my guest, y'all. I.

I dropped everything. 

I cleared my calendar. I didn't necessarily have the money to buy a plane ticket to Nova Scotia and book a hotel room to Nova Scotia, but I knew this was an incredible opportunity, and he was so generous to offer me this opportunity. So two days later, I sent him a note and said, I'll be there. Thank you. And then he said, oh, wow, okay, well, if you're gonna come, why don't you come a little early and we can have lunch before the event, since you're coming anyway. And I said, done. And I booked a flight.

And, you know, it was hard getting a flight, but I got one. It was expensive. I didn't care. I just, you know, listen, we will. I looked under the couch. I found all the spare change. I said, I'll eat beans for the next month. I will be there.

But I got there, and he was so nice. And so when I got there, I let him know I was there, and he had lunch, and he asked me more about what we were trying to do with Mindstepps. And he was just so encouraging about the work and so. And what we were trying to do. And I was telling him the challenges that we were facing, and he just, you know, was giving me some great advice. So happy. And then I went to the workshop for the next two days, and I sat in the front row. I mean, I was such a nerd, right?

I sat in the front row. I took a whole notebook full of notes. I met other people who were in different businesses and talked with them. I drank it all in. I just thought, I am so. I felt so lucky to be there and so excited, and I was learning so much, and I was calling the team, you know, on breaks and saying, oh, my goodness, I've learned this. Oh, my goodness, and we're going to do this when we get back and that sort of thing. And then at the end, Merv said to me, he said, you know what?

You need to meet my son. 

My son is my business partner, and you really need to meet my son. And I said, okay. He says, well, when are you leaving? And because I couldn't get a flight out from Nova Scotia that evening, I was spending the evening there and leaving in the morning. And he says, my son, I'm going to call him up. He's supposed to be driving this evening. I'm going to see if he can leave a little earlier.

You need to meet my son. So I waited, and his son left earlier and drove to where we were. And when he got in, it was really late. And so I. But I didn't care. He said, well, I'm here. If it's too late, I understand. But, you know, it's like.

Like, I mean, not midnight late, but, you know, 8:00, something like that. And I said, nope, I'm coming down. And I came down to lobby and I sat and talked with his son for two hours. And his son was just as brilliant as he was. And his son said, we want to help you. And at that point, Merv and Matt Sims became my mentor. My mentors. And for the next three years, they poured into me and they poured into my team, and they taught us some things that are foundational to what eventually became the concept of buildership.

And so, you know, the things like the meeting rhythm, like before that we were meeting, but we didn't have. Our meetings weren't intentional. It was after working with Merv and Matt that we established a meeting rhythm for ourselves. We saw how much of a benefit that meeting rhythm was for Us, especially the DSUs and the weekly meetings that we then began to teach our clients that. So people in bu, we all have meeting rhythms. We can thank Merv and Matt Sims for that. The builder's blueprint is something that I learned from them.

They were doing something different because it was focused on our organization.

And I asked their permission to take that and use that to inspire one that would work for schools. And then after I did it, I gave it to them and they took a look at it and, you know, kind of critiqued it and gave me some suggestions and asked really interesting questions, helped me shape what is now the builder's blueprint. I mean, they poured into us and they were so generous at a time when I needed them, that, you know, I just. It helped us out. And it also inspired me to be that kind of mentor to other people. And so one of the reasons that we turned Buildership University into a mentorship rather than a coaching program is because of what I experienced being mentored by people like Merv and Matt Sims and by people like Max Thompson and Shannon Thompson, and even by people like Doug Schiffman, who was probably my first mentor when I was first trying to figure this out, and people like Melissa Bradley and Alessandra Bradley Burns. And, you know, these are the people who poured into me and make me look good. And I believe so firmly that it is so critical for us to have good mentors, because I know how much I've benefited from it.

I could not and would not be where I am today if I didn't have good mentors. And so when I tell you you need a mentor, I'm not just telling you that because I want to sell you a slot into Buildership University. I'm telling you that because none of us can do this work alone. None of us can figure this out. The work that we are trying to do as builders is so big, so v that it's a lie to think that you can do it by yourself. And the challenge for us as administrators is that a lot of times we're the only one in our building. And so it's us, and then it's everybody else. All the other teachers have other teachers to hang out with.

We're the only principal or we're one of three administrators in the building or one of two administrators in the building. And that positioning of us being the only ones often makes us think that we have to do it by ourselves. You know, what makes it worse is that when we go to our principal meetings or assistant principal meetings or, you know, the big district admin meetings, everybody else there is posturing and competing. I know we're not supposed to say that like, you know, but it's. It's true. We go to those meetings, and everybody is bragging about what they're doing. And if you're an assistant principal, everybody's looking at you as their competition for the one open spot in your district for a principalship. And you're all kind of interviewing for the same thing.

If you're a principal, it's almost like the district pits you against each other. 

Right? You know, they rank your schools, and so you're looking and saying, oh, I'm number five and that person, but that person's number nine. In the district, but that person's number one in the, you know, we, it seems like we can't find, we can't be truly vulnerable with our colleagues. You know, we can be collegial and nice and we might even have like a principal bestie in the district. You know, somebody we kind of call after the meeting and go girl or dude, did you see? You know, maybe we have that person, but for the most part we're by ourselves and we are trying to figure it out all on our own. But you can't do this work by yourself.

You can't do this work on your own. You need other people. And the challenge is your people may not be proximate to you. They may not be in your district. One of the things that surprised me the most when I first started this movement around buildership and this movement around being at 100% principle is how I didn't, I underestimated how lonely it would make people. Because once you believe this, once you see a hundred percent, you can't unsee it. But it kind of makes you a weirdo amongst your colleagues. It kind of.

Because everybody else has bought into the leadership paradigm and everybody else is doing the leadership stuff and everybody else is, is settling for incremental goals and everybody else is feeling their job is to stay busy and to chase, check and correct people. And we accept it as normal that we're going to be working late and nights and weekends and stressed out. That's the gig. And when you start becoming a builder and you stop being stressed out and you stop chasing and checking and correcting people and you achieve that 100% staff alignment and work gets easier and you're leaving the building at 4 o'clock every day and you are having these double digit gains. You become the anomaly. You know, we're trying, we're out here trying to normalize student success in a world that is already accepted, that there's just some kids who aren't going to make it. And we're out here trying to change the narrative and say, no, that's unacceptable.

Every child deserves to be successful.

People look at us like we're naive or delusional or are crazy and it's lonely. And if you're around that all the time, the, the message that you hear is that there's something wrong with you rather than maybe there's something wrong with a system that accepts failure. And so you need people you, you need to be around people who believe like you believe. Who. People who don't think you're Crazy people who speak the language that you're now speaking. If you don't, it's going to demoralize you. If you. If you're not being very intentional about being around people who believe in you, you are going to start to lose grasp of that vision.

That vision. You're going to start to question yourself. And so you need to be around people who believe like you. And then. Then there's this other thing, right? You know, people always say, I can't believe you have a mentor. Right, Because I'm mentoring so many other people. We all need mentorship.

We all need people who not just believe in us, but guide us. I believe with all my heart that everybody needs mentorship. Everybody needs somebody who is going to show in the way. 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. I've been very blessed. You know, the.

Every time that I've needed a mentor and I've been praying like I don't know what to do, God has put somebody in my life who has been there for me, shown me the way, been a good mentor to me, been very blessed that way. But I'm not. I don't have to. I'm not the only one.

You could have mentors, too. 

You just have to look for them. And I was talking to somebody who was thinking about joining Buildership University recently, and she was saying, well, I already have a coach. And I said, that's great, but a coach is not a mentor.

A coach is really. And listen, there are times when you need coaches. I have coaches, too, but coaches are for a specific. They're there to help you develop a specific skill. Right. So I think of coaches as like a performance partner. So if I want to get better at, I don't know, chatgpt, I get. I might get a coach to show me how to do that.

If I want to get better at having difficult conversations with teachers, I might get a coach to show me how to do that. If I want to get better at master scheduling, I might have a coach show me how. Like I want to find out who is the best at master scheduling and I want them to teach that to me. Who is the best at AI. I want them to teach that to me. A coach is somebody I go to when I am trying to develop a specific skill. And I've had my share of coaches. I believe in investing in coaching because coaching helps me to learn something, a skill or a way of doing things faster than if I would do it on my own.

So when you're looking for a coach, you have to be very intentional. You might figure out what is the skill that I'm trying to learn and who is the best at it. And then you give them money and they show you how to do it. That's what a coach does. A mentor is different because a mentor is a relationship. Right. It's not about a specific skill. The mentor is about you.

It's about having somebody pour into you. 

It's about having somebody understand where it is that you're trying to get and to help you chart a pathway to help you get there. Right? That a mentor doesn't just show you how to do stuff. I mean, they may, I mean, if you get a good mentor, they know stuff, right? So you're going to learn from them. But a mentor shows you how to take the stuff that they know and use it and leverage it in a way that works for you. So the mentor gets to know you.

There's a relationship there. A mentor often will challenge your thinking. A mentor doesn't just show you a skill. They help you decide whether or not that's the right skill for you. So, you know, coach comes with a program. Here do this stuff and here's how you do it and here's how. And you go to a coach when you're trying to learn a skill or achieve a certain result. You go to a mentor when you are looking for long term growth, when you're looking to get wisdom, when you're looking to really experience a transformation.

That's what a mentor is for. And the mentors in my life have been that for me. Right. It's not just that, that with Merv, I went to him and, and he taught me the things that I told you he taught me, he taught me those things as a, as a, as a part of helping me to build this idea. Do you know that the buildership model, I first sketched that out when I was in Nova Scotia working with Merv and Matt. I was sitting in intensive that they were doing, and my team and I were there. We used to go up there every quarter and spend time with them. And we were sitting there, and I should have been paying attention.

I wasn't. But there was. It was only because it was. It wasn't that I wasn't paying attention. They. Merv. No, Matt. It was Matt. Matt said something in that meeting, and it made me think, and I don't even remember what it was he said, but my brain took off, and I grabbed my notebook and my pen and I grabbed a glass, and I started drawing circles on the paper. And my team is like, what are you doing? You need to be paying attention. And I was like, leave me alone. And there was this flash of insight. And when I finished, when we got to the break, they were like, what were you doing? And I'm like, I have it.

This is the buildership model.

We were just designed. I was just thinking through the buildership concept, and it was something about being in that room. And again, I don't remember what he said. He didn't tell me, go build a buildership model. But it was something about being in the room with people who were thinking in a particular way that made me. That sparked something in me. It was something about being mentored by people who challenged me to think bigger than what I was thinking, who helped me see my blind spots, that cleared away space for me to build this model. And when I showed them the model, they were like, that's it.

That happened because I was willing to be mentored. That happened because I put myself in the right room, and that model started driving everything that we do here right now. That's the power of having a mentor. And so, yeah, I'm not sure, like, what the goal or challenge is of today's episode, except that I'm sad and grateful because I got to be mentored by a great man who decided. Who saw what I was trying to do for education and poured into me. And so that's one thing. But in addition to being sad and grateful, I want to challenge you. I think a lot of us are cheating ourselves of the opportunity to do something really amazing because we're trying to do it by ourselves.

Nobody can do it by themselves. I don't care what they tell you. Everybody who's done something great has done it because they have. They've been mentored by somebody. And so I want to challenge you this week. And if I have a challenge, it's this. Get a mentor. You know, if you.

If you want to come inside a Buildership University and be mentored by me, that it would be my honor. But that's. That's not my point. Right. My point is not. I'm not. This isn't a sales pitch for you to get into Buildership University. This is just me sharing my experience with you.

I can attest to the value of having a good mentor. 

And you have to be careful, right? Because not everybody who wants to be your mentor is right for you. Right. You gotta be careful. You know, choose your mentor wisely. Choose somebody who is going to pour into you. Choose somebody who's going to believe in you.

You know, not everybody. Sometimes people want to mentor you because they want to be called a mentor, but not because they want to pour into you. You know, a good mentor listens to you and tries to understand what it is you're doing and what you want to do, and then they help you do it. A good mentor is focused on you and pouring into you. You got to find that person. Not somebody who just wants to, you know, kind of, you know, have followers. That's not a mentor. A mentor is unselfish.

A mentor is not trying to get you to do what they want. They're trying to help you achieve what you want. That's the difference, right? So finding somebody to do that, really, really important. And then you gotta be a good mentee. You know, the reason that I was even able. That Merv was even willing to start pouring into me was because I was hungry to learn, because I was asking questions. You know, people.

People come to me and said, will you mentor me before? And, you know, at the beginning, I would kind of just foolishly agree to anybody because I was. I was so grateful for the mentorship that I got that I was just. I wanted to be generous and do it for other people. But not everybody who says they want to be mentored actually wants to be mentored, right? Because when I would say, okay, here, show up here, you know, I would give people, like, free tickets to Builders Lab. Okay, we're mentoring. Let's start here.

And they wouldn't show up, or they'd show up late, or they would show up and do other work. You know, when Murph gave me the free ticket to his $10,000 per person event, I sat in the front row, I took notes, I raised my hand and asked questions. I interact with other people. And then every single evening, I would take what I learned and what I could apply immediately. I did. I was sending out emails. We're going to do Things differently. I was redesigning stuff in the session.

If you're going to get a good mentor and if somebody's going to pour into you as a mentor, you've got to actually, you know, do the work. I don't. People always, you know, like people. There are a lot of people who say they want a mentor and they really don't. If you want a mentor, you got to be willing to do the work. So be a good mentee. So, yeah, you need a mentor.

You need to be a good mentee.

And when you can find that right relationship, your results are exponential because you can't do it by yourself. So my first thing is, if you don't have a mentor, you need one. All of us need a mentor. I. I keep a mentor and, you know, depending on where I am in my life, I. I really, really think it's one of. It's a secret weapon for me to, to have. To have and find the right mentors.

And I'm always, always working under a mentor. Always. Always. At least that's what I try to do. So I'm encouraging you to do that, too. And, you know, if you can't find one, you know, that's why we have Buildership University. You always can come in and I'll be happy to be your mentor. But again, this is not me trying to get you to be you.

I'm just telling you, you need a mentor, and if you can't find one, we're here for you. The second thing is you need to put yourself in the right rooms. And I did a whole podcast about, you know, who's in your ear and you gotta be careful who you're listening to. But, you know, when think. I was thinking about Merv this week and about how many breakthroughs I had because I was just in the right room. I was around the right people. Like I said, the Buildership model came not because they were teaching about it. They weren't even teaching about it.

I just was in the right room where I could be around people who sparked my thinking, who inspired me, who. Because of the conversations, it freed me up to be able to think bigger. I've been in other rooms with people where, you know, there's something about the conversation around people who think bigger, who, who, who are thinking the way that I aspire to think, who are, who are doing the things that I aspire to do, who are challenging my own thinking that have helped me shed old, outdated ideas that I just accepted because everybody around me accepted them and helped me to see Things bigger way.

So not only do you need to be, you need to have a good mentor, you need to be in the right room. And one of the reasons why we opened up the buildership, we're opening up the buildership community next week, is to create that room for people to help people who are ready to be 100% principals, find a place that helps them develop 100% mindset and to start taking a hundred percent approach to their work. And part of that community is really going to be about just taking things that you would normally do and you've accepted as normal, like your master schedule, like vertical alignment, you know, these boring topics that we've accepted and done for years, but they haven't really worked. Just showing you that there's another way of doing it, that if you approach it like a builder, those tools become something different. We did a masterclass and have a playbook in there around walkthroughs because people are doing them wrong.

And so we have a process that creates these amazing walkthrough experiences that's kind of what that community is. This isn't a commercial for the community. What does this thing.

Oh, yeah, you need to be in the right room. 

And one of the things that I am focused on this year is really, you know, not hoarding all of that. Right. So I know what has been beneficial to me having a great mentor being in the right rooms. And a lot of the work that I'm doing this year is about creating that for other people, giving people roadmaps.

It's been helpful for me to get some roadmaps. I want to do that for other people. This is the year, you know, it's not just the year of boring, but it's also the year where I'm just. I'm thinking a lot about some of the blessings that I've had and what. And being very thoughtful and mindful about what has served me and trying to build that and give that back to you. Because I'm not getting any younger and so I'm thinking more about that. Anyway, I'm rambling. Thanks for listening while I think through this and.

And mourn the loss of my mentor. Next week we'll be back with a regularly scheduled programming. I do want to tell you that there are going to be some changes in the podcast happening. Our podcast, Diversary, is coming up and it's been seven years and so we're going to be making some shifts. I think you're going to love them. I'm really excited about it. So stay tuned. For that and see what else is coming up.

Oh, the community opens up Monday, March 24th. If you want to be in the right rooms, then join us in the community. It's pretty incredible what we're building there. And if you get in early, you're part of that. You're part of what we're going to be building together. So go to buildershipuniversity.com community to join, and I don't know what else other than that. I just want to challenge you this week. If you feel, if you're doing it by yourself, if you're trying to do this, all this work, this really important work, and you're trying to do it by yourself, you are setting yourself up.

You need people. All of us do. I have a mentor. I've had a series of mentors. I've engaged coaches. I have been building intentionally a community of people to help me get better. And so I want to challenge you to do that this week. Stop trying to do it alone and start building your tribe and your community 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, real quick, before you go, if you enjoyed today's episode and you know someone who would really benefit from what you heard here today, maybe they're struggling with the thing that we talked about in today's episode. Would you take a moment and share this episode with them?

You see, not only will it help us get the word about Buildership out to more people, but you're gonna look like a rock star going to give people something they can really use to help them get unstuck and be better at building their schools. Plus, it would mean the world to me. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time.