Transformative Principal

Eric Makelky: all right, well good morning.

Welcome to the Transformative Principal.

This is your host, Eric Mekelky.

And on today's show, we have two guests, Dr. Robert Feirson.

Welcome to the show.

Robert Feirsen: thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Eric Makelky: Yes, and also joining us, Dr. Seth Weitzman.

Welcome.

Seth Weitzman: Nice to be here from New York.

Eric Makelky: Yes.

Yeah.

So today's topic, I was personally really interested in when I saw the title of the book, that you guys had, co-authored Conflict to Collaboration as School Leaders Guide to Unleashing Conflicts, problem Solving Power.

We were talking before we started recording this morning.

This sometimes is what.

Principal's up at night.

Seth Weitzman: It sure is.

You know, it's funny, you, run into people as a principal, you run into people, at a party and they say, oh, it must be so nice being a school principal.

You go home at three o'clock , it's, it's a warm and fuzzy place to be, and of course they don't realize the truth.

And for me, that came about because, I, I was very active in, suburban New York City at the, County level and also the state level or associations of principals would meet periodically.

And I noticed that, during the lunch break or after work, when we went out, I'd sit back and listen to what people were complaining about.

I mean, everybody can complain about their jobs, right?

And I noticed that it was.

Teachers versus teachers, and the principal had to sort it out.

It was teachers, against, administrators, often involving unions here in New York.

It was, Parents, sending principals overnight emails with, subject lines like important issue to deal with.

Eric smiling because he, just got one of those last night actually.

but I realized that all of this stuff had a common theme and that was.

Principals didn't like dealing with a conflict on the job and also didn't know how to as well.

And, I was in a bookstore one day, uh, in the business shelves actually looking for books on school leadership.

Often you have to look in the business section.

and I found one called Leading through Conflict.

And I had an epiphany standing there in the Harvard coop, was the name of the bookstore.

And realized that, you know, maybe there's something I could do about it.

Maybe it wasn't just a distasteful part of the job that I had to live with.

And there actually is a body of research out there, comes from business and organizational psychology.

But, it more than anything, the last 10 years that I was a principal and I was a principal in total 27 years.

But it changed my practice more than anything in the last 10 years.

Eric Makelky: and you, you were, were you middle school level principal, Seth?

Seth Weitzman: You can send me condolences, . But I loved it.

Actually, I was a middle school principal in two different school districts for a total of 27 years.

Rob, was a middle school principal as well, and then went on to become a superintendent.

Robert Feirsen: Yeah.

Actually we met, we met his middle school principal colleagues.

And actually Seth was the middle school principal for my kids.

I just remembered that.

So I really do have a vendetta here to

Seth Weitzman: They were great kids and one of them just had a baby

Robert Feirsen: Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Eric Makelky: All right.

That's a nice, that's a nice connection.

So Rob, where'd your motivation come from with the book based on your experiences?

Robert Feirsen: Uh, I think it's twofold.

Similarly from experience, I was a principal.

I was an assistant superintendent, I was a superintendent, and certainly, a good part of your day as a school leader at any level are filled with the challenges that you don't have on your calendar.

You walk in the morning and you think, well, I have to do this.

I'll get this done.

I'll get that done, and.

Very quickly, it kind of dissembles because, one issue or another comes up and it's often the kind of tension between opposing viewpoints, opposing issues, opposing approaches to something.

So certainly that that is one.

And, so when Seth and I talked, it was certainly struck a nerve.

And the second piece is that I've been working, in higher ed either part-time or full-time, for a good number of years, and working particularly in school leadership programs with aspiring school leaders, principals, aspiring directors, chair people, superintendents, et cetera.

And they always, mentioned almost spontaneously at one point or another that the thing that they are most fearful of is, conflict.

They worry about how to deal with issues that arise between stakeholders in some level, they worry about dissension and how they'll manage that.

They worry about controversial issues and how to approach those things.

And even in higher, even principal preparation courses, there, there is no focus on this topic.

So we send people out into the field to learn by experience and that's not a great way to do it because what happens is they're unprepared to look at this strategically To be able to harness conflict, for ways to improve their schools.

Eric Makelky: How often do you see that with your aspiring principles?

Their fear of conflict leads to avoiding conflict.

Robert Feirsen: I, I think it's very common.

I mean, it's right on the tip of their tongue, and then it's what they'll tell you that they're most afraid of.

And what we, the.

Kind of perspective that we have very often about conflict is that it's a bad thing.

So if you are experiencing conflict in some way as a school leader, you've done something wrong.

You've made something worse.

But the fact of the matter is, is Seth and I learned as we delved into this subject more deeply and thought about our own experiences and reflected upon them in ways that we came out of this in productive ways.

What you can do is harness conflict.

What you can do is dress.

Constructively.

And when you do that, you do many things that are beneficial for your school.

You create better relationships.

You foster better communication.

You build your school's capacity to solve future problems because you learn how to do these things.

In, in our book we call this conflict agility.

You, you, which is basically, Seth up and says it's like a muscle and if you don't pay attention to it, it becomes, unused and deteriorates.

But when you exercise these conflict agility strategies, you wind up strengthening that muscle, not just for yourself, but for the school community as a whole.

Seth Weitzman: I just want to go back, Eric, before we move on and talk about how, school leaders can, manage conflict, I wanted to go back to the question of, the impact of neglecting conflict.

And of course, you know, any conflict, whether it's in a marriage, family with your children, what have conflict, unaddressed, just festers, but.

I also believe that some of the, substantive issues that we face in school, and I know that, mentioning it might be controversial in some, places, but, issues like.

Racism in school issues like inequity.

I think part of the reason why these issues have persisted is because school leaders have overlooked them for fear of the conflict that they will inevitably bring.

There's a great book.

There's one book that I, like to shout out in these presentations.

Paul with the best intentions written by two authors named Lewis and Diamond that describes exactly this in a high school outside Chicago.

Everybody's kind of aware for parents, school administrators, teachers.

Everyone's aware of the inequities that exist in the school, but there is an unwillingness to actually deal with them because people fear the conflict that will result and where that will end up.

Eric Makelky: Yeah, just, it just kind of festers and sometimes we put our heads in the sand and just hope you know.

Nobody brings it up.

Seth Weitzman: Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Eric Makelky: Yeah.

Has the, has the library, book situation been as lively on the East Coast as it has been in the West with banning books?

Seth Weitzman: I don't think so.

There are, in the county that I live, just north of New York City, Westchester County, there's one school district in particular, but no, opening up a newspaper, The book banning issue, c r t, also has not been the kind of hot button issue that it's been elsewhere in the country.

Robert Feirsen: But I think what we've experienced in, at least in, in this area, in New York, and probably surrounding the metropolitan New York City, area is Discussions that
sometimes get heated over, first of all, during Covid, certainly there were many controversies about when schools should open, shouldn't open, wonder what conditions, et cetera.

But what's come out of that too is, controversy about social emotional learning.

it's placed in the curriculum, what it means, how it should get done.

Even the term itself is a, is kind of a hot button issue, which is one of the things that, we talk about in terms of strategies is how to deescalate those kinds of conversations and turn them into productive, discussions.

Seth Weitzman: Yeah.

It's interesting to us that we wrote the book, two years ago, I think.

Pressed submit and sent the manuscript onto the editor.

And the manuscript was about the run of the mill school conflict that we've been describing, bet among stakeholders in the school.

But, within six months after we submitted the manuscript, the kinds of, political.

Strife, C R t book banding, et cetera, had, you know, reached national headlines.

It's interesting, Rob and I sometimes we ask ourselves a question.

When is the, is this the worst period of school conflict?

In the United States in terms of conflict, into the national headlines, and you have to go back quite a few years, we think.

I mean, 1954 Brown versus Board of Education and Desegregation in the 1970s.

This has been a difficult period to be a school leader.

Eric Makelky: Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

Things that I don't know.

One was prepared to have conversations about and think would become such big topics.

And really the, some of those conflicts way beyond, the in-house conflicts with students and staff and parents and it's more of community-wide or, or statewide or national conflict.

So I mentioned a little bit guys that sometimes, leaders will avoid conflict, but how else do you see principles, approaching conflict?

What other approaches are there besides, just avoid it and hope.

Hope for the best.

Seth Weitzman: Well, we say there are three basic approaches.

There are the three, a's we call them.

One is avoidance.

It takes many forms.

We've all probably known school leaders who set up committees.

Ask you to join, and you go, I don't know if I wanna join this.

Because, the committee's not going anywhere.

they're going to deliberate the issue.

And when it comes to recommendations, at some point it gets buried.

That's a form of, Of avoidance, right?

So avoidance takes lots of different forms.

Another the second a we call aggression.

I'm surprised as a, also teaching, in an ED leadership program at Mercy College here in New York.

How many of my students who are all teachers at this point, aspiring school leaders?

Talk about the aggressive approach to conflict from their principals.

And it's everything from yes, screaming . I can't believe it as if they think that there's something to be gained, just outright yelling at school school staff.

But it's beyond that.

We also say it's, using.

The, incentives and disincentives, institutional incentives and disincentives in order to coerce an outcome.

So, for example, who gets the best parking space assigned?

Who gets the preferential teaching schedule?

, what was your end of year rating?

I mean, these are the kinds of, incentives and disincentives that principals sometimes use in order to coerce an outcome.

We say that's a form of aggression as well.

And then the third a as Rob, began describing before is addressing the school conflict.

That's being upfront and honest.

At the same time, respectful of each other, we kind of put the approach into two different categories.

One are the leadership strategies.

that can be employed and we have quite a number of them in our book.

And the second is a protocol that we adapted from design thinking, which actually comes from the field of engineering, but can be used in a productive way to, to take on, some of the controversial issues we face.

Eric Makelky: Is it safe to say we should shoot for addressing over avoidance and aggression?

Is that always the better?

The better choice?

Seth Weitzman: very safe to say.

There are Todd, actually, the serious answer, this is kind of a, in the weeds, but, sometimes it does make sense to avoid, you have, the phrase, that's not the hill I want to die on.

You know that phrase.

Yeah.

Sometimes it does make sense.

You can't take on every issue.

And we also say in our book that it also is sensible at times to pick the low hanging fruit.

Use another metaphor, we say start by, taking on the less consequential.

Conflicts in a school until the faculty gets more accustomed to that and confident in their ability to listen to each other and to reach a resolution.

I did that as a school principal of, actually, it's where I started.

I began faculty meetings with, I called.

For the good of the order, or they kind of mocked that.

For some reason I changed it to, for the school, for the good of the school and, I invited teachers to bring up issues as long as they were school-wide issues.

Not my own particular problem, you know, in my, classroom or department, what have you.

And as long as they, were going to make themselves.

Part of the solution, you couldn't just, point fingers or offload the problem onto the school administrators.

So I would actually solicit issues and we'd spend the first 10 minutes of a faculty meeting, in a community problem solving excercise.

So a teacher might, stand up.

This is middle school, right?

What they look like in the spring.

so a teacher might say, behavior in the hallways, this is what's going on.

We had the phrase, spring has sprung, right?

I'm sure it's everywhere in the world among, I love them.

11, 12, 13, 14 year olds and together.

We would brainstorm solutions to it.

I'm the principal.

I better get out there in the hall.

We all should get out there, during the change of classes, we, whatever solutions came up.

But we practiced group problem solving.

And, what's an example?

Robert Feirsen: So what Seth, illustrates in that discussion is the one of our key principles, which is principle ple, which is, taking a kind of step back and being able
to put a structure around these, issues, these conflicts, the dissension that you experience rather than deal with it, you know, fighting it off as it comes to you.

People, what people do with principles is they walk into the office and they dump their problem on you and they walk out.

And that's certainly not a way to address something constructively.

So everything that we talk about in the book really addresses how to bring people together, how to, foster communication, how to encourage dialogue in a productive way.

So that you engage people in addressing conflict rather than try to battle it single-handedly and fight it off,

Eric Makelky: And the, I think about that a lot.

it's kind of taxing.

When these situations come up.

But the goal always is empower people to solve problems themselves or amongst themselves.

Instead of, Hey, if you come to me, I'll solve this problem for you because you're just building in that well it, next time there's a problem, it needs to
go to somebody else and they'll, solve it for me, which isn't, that's not what we want with students and that's not what we want with staff and parents.

So how, how about this guys, what about if you have someone you work with that they're really, really good at avoiding conflict?

When there is any possibility of any conflict, a hundred percent avoidance, how would you help them start, leaning into and maybe trying to flex those conflict muscles a little bit and get out of their conflict cave.

Seth Weitzman: I like that phrase.

So the, first step and then I'll turn it over to, uh, Rob.

I'm stealing this from Rob because it's, this is what he usually begins with.

So conflict feels bad.

When you're faced with a conflict situation, you start sweating blotches on your skin, anxiety level rises.

So, this is, pop psychology maybe.

But the first thing to do is to take a breath, right?

Try to relax, calm yourself.

Realize that maybe this isn't directed at you.

Don't personalize the conflict.

That's a good, oh, we also have a phrase.

Um, I learned it from, maybe the school administrator I worked with who I admired most, over the years.

He had a phrase, the issue isn't the issue, meaning the issue that's presented to you isn't necessarily the real issue that the person has.

So the first step, is, Calm down and to try to get some perspective.

And then I'll turn this to Rob.

Robert Feirsen: To follow up with what Seth said, Certainly the issue is not always the issue.

And I think it's part of, ,part of, in bringing people into the discussion is to kind of, understand where they're coming from.

We spend a lot of time in the book talking about empathy, and developing a sense of empathy, which again, something that we often think about, but we don't necessarily know how to develop to try to find out what people are thinking, feeling, saying, and.

doing So when you have that kind of reluctant partner, it's really important to really take good look at, all the things that he or she presents part of.

Sometimes one of the things that we can engage people with is, a sense of dissonance.

You know, the gap between what they think and what's actually happening, the gap between their beliefs and what's, occurring on the ground.

And so engaging in a conversation or discussion about whatever that issue is and the gap between what they think they should be and what currently is, can be motivating and be encouraging to, bring into dialogue.

There's also a tendency for us to simplify things all the time.

We tend to think, see things in black and white and we don't see the shades of color in between.

And so perhaps sometimes the first step in working with someone who is taking that kind of, very position, I'm not involved in this, I don't wanna get involved, I'm not
interested, is to make things more complex or actually to show them that there are many things involved in a particular situation and that their perspective is a valid one.

You know, you could say something like, I understand where you're coming from, and it's a valid opinion, although not necessarily one I agree with, inviting them to engage in, in deeper discussion.

So we make it more complex.

We make it a little bit more complicated than just yes or no, and that often sparks a discussion.

Seth Weitzman: Yeah.

You know, it's interesting to me that, I've been toying with this, idea of, let's.

Step back and take a look at how our schools function.

And you could try this, Eric, today in your school and maybe listeners can try it again cuz it's, it's fascinating to me.

And I would do this as well.

I'm now retired as a, school principal, but, so you're sitting in a meeting.

Somebody brings up a controversial issue.

It could be anything.

You know, how do we teach reading, do we need to monitor the bathrooms more frequently?

What have you, and they, propose a solution.

It's interesting.

Just step back next time you're at a meeting and you find yourself in this situation and listen to how people.

Just pretend you're an, anthropologist.

Maybe, ho uh, looking at a different culture, or I used to like the metaphor, pretend you're an extraterrestrial covering, a mile above, of Earth, looking at how these earth.

Behave.

And it's so fascinating to me because people would, be, I would notice that, uh, so somebody puts out an idea, you know, so ask yourself, how do others respond?

Do they ask questions?

The question mark is a lonely punctuation mark in the English language.

People just don't like to use it, you know?

So, in our book we try to encourage people to, leaders to get people to respond with genuine probing questions.

I say genuine because, sometimes they, people start questions with, well, what about this, well wha that's not really a question, you know, that's a judgment disguised as a question.

Um, so, they start pointing fingers as well.

The school leader presents the, data, oh, the fourth grade, math results declined this year.

And immediately people, point fingers.

Well, in third grade, , they weren't so great neither, or, they find some way to, absolve themselves or blame other people.

It's just fascinating to watch how groups naturally respond.

There are psychological reasons to that.

So, part of our book is, trying to figure out how to break.

Cycles interrupt the dynamics.

A phrase that we use in our book is Conflict without Divisiveness, that it seems like I, the way I put it is Eric, it's not enough for you and I to disagree.

If you're gonna disagree with me, I also have to put you down.

You're a worse person.

You're less intelligent than I am.

Obviously, I'm more handsome than you.

Also, the list goes on.

And on.

Of course, it doesn't have to be that way.

And we have some suggestions in our book, for leaders to establish a new professional norm in the school that we can disagree with each other.

But people say, well, disagree, respectfully, and of course that's true, but we have specific strategies that people can use in order to, make that come to life.

Eric Makelky: Seth.

I was gonna tell you, I sometimes feel like what you were describing, you know, just observing a conflict in a group, because as a new principal, I kind of feel like, an observer because there's certain dynamics.

And I'm thinking especially among the staff where you're just watching and observing and noticing, body language and tone and who crossed their arms and who's clenching their fist.

And so I, can relate to that.

We're working through, we, we've started a building leadership team.

We call it the Guiding Coalition.

And in our topic last week, we've tried to start with building some trust, just getting to know each other and be comfortable with each other in a small group.

But what we started last week was, overcoming that fear of conflict.

And it was really interesting to hear their, the teacher's perspective on, Why we avoid conflict and how that has worked in the past and what it's gonna take to overcome that.

Because it's hard to change if that's been the culture really in the school.

Seth Weitzman: That's interesting that they were conscious of that, that they could articulate that.

Robert Feirsen: one of the ironies of conflict is that, to address it as you've started to do in your school, Eric, you really need to build relationships.

And yet conflict, ironically tends to separate people.

So the key part of the key to the solution is developing those relationships even though there are forces pulling you.

There's a tendency to, you know, um, overgeneralize about the opposition side, and make it a black and white issue.

There's emotionality that clouds our judgment.

There's a, there's a interest in getting your agenda done and, rather than listening and working with the other side.

So the conflict is driving people apart.

The job of leadership here is to take a more 30,000 foot view of that and find the factors that can bring folks back together and find the ways to either create better communication, build relationships, and really solve the problems that the, that they're, addressing.

Seth Weitzman: I do think, as Rob said before, we u we have this phrase, Conflict agility.

And I do, we do think it's a muscle, that can atrophy if it's not used, but also can be, toned.

If it is.

And I have this story and I'm putting it out there, to show that, we can make progress in this area and this group.

You're starting absolutely where you should start, which is trust.

The mountain grows from, a foundation of trust.

But this is again, from experience that, towards the end of my years as a principal, I was interested in inquiry-based learning.

And it's a fundamental shift in the role that teachers would play.

more as guides on the side, the phrase is, rather than sage on the stage.

And, we really did something tremendous, in a short period of.

Time and transformed the, way the children end the school year, all 1200 of them in three grades.

And I'm positive that the reason why we were able to accomplish this was, was that we had learned how to deal with conflict and at one point, Conflict would've been an obstacle that we never would've surmounted.

But because we had practiced in small parts and kind of built on, our conflict agility skills in the end, we had made great progress in curriculum and instruction because first we had learned to deal with the inevitable conflict that has to be worked through.

Eric Makelky: Yeah and if you have that foundation, then you can take on anything.

There's always gonna be another conflict.

Seth Weitzman: Sure.

Absolutely.

Eric Makelky: Can you guys tell me, you mentioned, at the start of the conversation about the design thinking that came from the engineering field.

Can you just tell me some more specifics about that?

I, I don't know much about design thinking and I know nothing about engineering, so I'm just curious how that

Robert Feirsen: Well, neither did we, so don't, don't feel badly.

So, um, so design thinking, did evolve from engineering and it really is designed, the purpose of design thinking is to tackle what's called wicked problems.

Wicked problems are the things that defy traditional ways of solution.

They're not the easy things to do.

They're not the mechanical things you can adjust.

It's not just tinker here and there.

it's these big issues that often wind up becoming, very conflicted issues in the school.

And, it's a structured approach to this, which is designed to involve people's best thinking and develop solutions that are, meaningful and practical.

There are five steps involved in it, and I'll just briefly go through them.

The first step is empathy, and I talked about that before.

The reason empathy is so critical, is that empathy really helps you understand the full scope of a problem.

Because we all have tunnel vision.

Everyone sees things from their own perspective, and it's unavoidable.

We all carry biases with us.

Whether it's, looking for facts that confirm what we already know or the tendency to believe people we already have relationships with, we all have that.

So the first step is really gathering the sense of what's out there, what are people thinking, feeling, saying, and.

Once you have that, because as Seth mentioned before, the presenting issue is not always the issue.

and often there's an underlying values issue, perspective issue, cultural issue, organizational history issue.

That's motivating it.

So once you have that empathy information, you begin to define the problem more clearly.

So that's the second step is define.

, once you have the definition.

The third step is to what we call ideate.

So ideate is a process where you really, we call it thinking, there's thinking inside the box.

Then people who oppose that say you have to think outside the box.

We say ideate is thinking without a box at all.

It's pure thought.

It's really what are the possibilities here?

With every idea accepted and every idea valued for its own sake, before you begin to win with down.

And that's one of the errors people make in solving these kinds of issues, is that they tend to throw out things before they get a chance to fully consider them.

So idea is step three.

Step four in the traditional model is called the engineering model.

It's called p. and prototype is really quick and dirty, quick and fast.

Saying, how would we operation operationalize this?

How would we make it come into existence?

And thinking about that.

Sometimes in schools we do pilots like that, but prototypes are really quick because if you spend a year piloting something, the issue may morph into something.

So then you look at the prototypes and last step is what we call tests, which is really saying, okay, we think this is the model that will work.

Now we're gonna begin this.

Now we'll begin, this in earnest and see if it works, and gather data about that, and the process can repeat itself.

You may find that when things engineers do is that they say if they get the prototype and the prototype doesn't work or work as well as they expected, they go back in the process and they go back to ideate or they go back to defining the problem.

Maybe they.

And it has a real history of success.

This approach has a tremendous history of success, not only in engineering, but in business and in, a field that I find has many parallels to education, which is healthcare.

Because in healthcare too, we're dealing with many, many people.

There are many different professions involved.

There are levels of professional expertise, and is an urgency because you're dealing with human life.

so It has a, real record of success in those areas, not so much in education.

And part of our work is to help people understand how this process can be adapted for use in schools.

The beauty of the process is that not only does it create lots of possibilities for solutions, but in that process of dialogue and really engaging creatively with others, it brings people together.

So we talked about relationships before and the importance of relationships.

It builds those relationships.

So you don't wind up with a this side and a that side.

You wind up with a problem solving, group,

Eric Makelky: Yeah.

Instead of having those opposing teams, I'm on this team,

Robert Feirsen: right.

Eric Makelky: You're on that team.

Yeah.

I, now that you describe that, I wonder if that's where I had a superintendent years ago use, he called it like a 90 day design cycle.

You would test for 30 days and then kind of review initial results so

Robert Feirsen: Yeah.

There are lots of spinoffs from

Seth Weitzman: Very similar.

Eric Makelky: yeah.

Seth Weitzman: Yeah.

Because it's not the way we work in education.

Typically what we do, I'm sure you've been on these committees out in Wyoming as much as we've been then on them in New York, you form a, committee.

It might be a curriculum committee for example, so you all meet and write the, curriculum and you know, then you're done and you say goodbye to each other, I'll see you, next committee that forms
or, and uh, you're done . As if, you've reached the all time, perfect solution as opposed to this, I mean, you described it as a 90 day, we're gonna go back and, reassess and, maybe redesign right away,

Eric Makelky: yeah.

Robert Feirsen: I think it's important for us to agree on what success looks like, and then that's really a key piece of the process is what does it look like
when it's done, what does it look like when it's successful, so that we were able to say confidently, we've either done it or let's go back and try some more.

Eric Makelky: Well, thanks guys.

I wanted to throw out, the final question to you today.

What can principals do this week to be a more Transformative leader like you?

Robert Feirsen: That's a very interesting and important question, so thanks for posing it.

I think we've kind of addressed that in some way.

There, there are two things, and I think they're, both related.

One is build trust.

because at its bottom, everything we've talked about, relies on developing that sense of trust, that sense of that, that you are what you purport to be.

That I can, see you being consistent person, that I can feel that you're honest with me and that you're approachable.

Those things translate, for school leaders into many aspects of their.

With every stakeholder, possible, kids, parents, staff, faculty, you name it.

And when you build trust, you build relationships.

And one of the authors that I like best is Michael Fallen, who studied school change, very deeply, and he always comes down to the same phrase, which is, it's about relationships.

And good relationships are founded on trust.

Seth Weitzman: Am I allowed to slightly modify your question?

Eric Makelky: Yeah, absolutely.

Seth Weitzman: So I would actually think about this.

So there are days that you're sitting behind your desk as a school principal.

It's probably, let's say two o'clock in the afternoon at this point, and you feel like you spent your entire day.

Answering emails, there's a mountain of reports.

You've been putting out fires, all day and you really haven't moved the organization forward.

So this is my, answer to the question and that is do something every day that really makes a difference in your school.

Spend an hour every day.

Don't go home.

Or let a day go by unless you've spent an hour on, something that is crucial to your school and makes a long term difference

Eric Makelky: I love that.

I don't always know what that is,

Seth Weitzman: And it's different of course, in every school, for every person.

Um, yeah.

Eric Makelky: I heard a great.

Principal of the year speech at a state conference, and he talked about, principles need to mow the lawn more.

And his analogy was that feeling when you get done mowing the lawn and it's clean, the stripes are in it, you're sitting down enjoying a cold beverage and you, see that you accomplish something because as a principal you go.

Emotionally, physically exhausted, but you oftentimes leave the building wondering, what did I accomplish today?

Seth Weitzman: Yes, true.

How old are your children?

Your children are younger

Eric Makelky: right?

Uh, Uh four and two

Seth Weitzman: Yeah.

Like what does a principal do?

Like they know what a policeman does and they know what a firefighter does.

, what do you tell 'em You do,

Eric Makelky: Well, I, last night I had 'em at the, basketball games and the bleachers.

and, one of my daughters didn't put her shoes back on and I said, Hey, you need to be a good listener.

And she said, if I don't, are you gonna put me in the principal's office?

So

Seth Weitzman: She knows.

Eric Makelky: she, someone, someone has told her, I don't know if that came from her mother or, or who that was, but, yeah.

Seth Weitzman: It It speaks to the part of the job that, people just don't understand unless they're actually in it.

And I, I love the mow the lawn, metaphor that, it's a, the progress is incremental and constantly building on itself, and it's hard to see sometimes at the end of the school day, how exactly you moved the goalpost,

Eric Makelky: Yeah, it just, it's nice to have that tangible,

Seth Weitzman: Yeah.

Eric Makelky: In Wyoming.

Where I've been, it's been a wild winter with snow, so there's no, no lawn to mow for months.

But I come in early and I, I plow the snow instead of mow the lawn.

And it really does feel good.

When you get done and you look at, sidewalks or a section of a parking lot and you see pavement, you're like, okay, no matter how this day goes, I got that reinforcement of I accomplished something which you know.

Seth Weitzman: this is a personal story.

I don't know whether you wanna cut this out in the end, so I mentioned before that I take long bike rides, multi-week bike rides and, I normally mow the lawn, but my wife started mowing the lawn, in my absence.

And when I came back and asked her how she liked it, she said she loves it actually.

She wants to take over the job.

Why?

She said, I never understood.

She said, this is exactly what you were saying before.

She said, I never understood.

I always thought it was weird that after you mowed the lawn, you would, for days you'd stare at the lawn.

Same thing when you shoveled the snow.

You'd stare at it for, she'd catched me at night, like looking out the window at the shoveled, you know, walkway

she said, now I get it.

You wanna see the, the lawn that you just mowed and feel like, wow, I did that Good advice for a principal.

Eric Makelky: Well thank you guys.

Really appreciate you coming on the show today and sharing some, resources and ideas to deal with conflict because it is, it's something we, know we're gonna
deal with and, we can always use, some of those strategies to really harness the power of the conflict instead of avoiding it or, or just getting angry about it.

So thank you

Robert Feirsen: well, thank you for having us, and certainly we invite your listeners and, those who tune into the podcast to contact us to reach out to us if they have questions and wanna continue the conversation.

Eric Makelky: We'll have a link in the show notes, but did you guys wanna share, the best way to contact you for listeners who have questions?

Robert Feirsen: Sure.

They can email us at info I N F O teacher edge.net.

Teacher edge, one

Seth Weitzman: C H E R E D G e, teacher edge, um, net.

Eric Makelky: Great, and then we'll have a link in the show notes to both of your email addresses as well.

Thank you guys.

Really

Robert Feirsen: Thank you very much.

Seth Weitzman: Thank you.