Transformative Principal

# 423 Robert Quinn

Welcome to transformative principle where I help you stop putting out fires and start leading. I'm your host Jethro Jones. You can follow me on Twitter at Jethro Jones.

I hope you had a chance to check out the white paper that I mentioned last episode@pagesdotjethrojones.com. Today, I'm announcing a webinar that I'd like to invite you to, that will help you figure out how to deal with the collective trauma. We've all experienced and get support for adapting to what you see next year. As you start a new school year.

Please join me at Jethro jones.com/webinar. That's Jethro jones.com/webinar.

[00:01:00] **Jethro Jones:** Welcome to transformative principal. I am excited to have on the podcast today, Robert Quinn, uh, he spent the last 40 years doing research publishing, teaching consulting and speaking, and he is the Margaret Elliot Tracy professor emeritus at the university of Michigan Ross school of business. And he focuses his writing on purpose, leadership culture and change.

And, um, he's published 18 books. One of them is deep change, which is, one of the, great books out there. And Ryan got FinCEN who was on the podcast. A couple of times now said that, uh, deep changes one of the best books that he has ever read. So that's, uh, that's quite an endorsement from someone who wrote one of the best books I've read.

So I'm excited to have Bob on the program today.

Bob, welcome to transformative principle.

[00:02:02] **Robert Quinn:** thank you so much. I'm just delighted to be here.

[00:02:05] **Jethro Jones:** Yeah, I am. I'm excited to talk to you. And there are so many things that we could. Talk about, and I don't know exactly where, where this conversation's going to go or how much we are going to be able to talk about, but there's, there's a lot that we could talk about. So I'm going to start with talking about change first.

And you, you say in the book deep change that, uh, there's deep change or there slow death. Can you talk to us about those two sides of the coin and what that, what our choices are there.

[00:02:36] **Robert Quinn:** Every living system from one cell organisms to you and I as complex human beings to social systems like a school, our living systems and as individuals, our conscience is always calling us to change. It may be. An intellectual change. You need to learn more. It may be a physical change. You know, I felt the impression a number of times in recent months, you need to lose weight.

My response is don't bother me. Um, so it could be physical. It could be spiritual. It could be social. That is. In order to flourish, you and I need to change all the time. And as human beings, we have a mechanism that's is calling us to that organizations are living systems within. Dynamic living systems and they're being called to change during the pandemic.

School's been called change in many, many, many ways. We recognize that, well, the process never stops when we deny change. And that's a very natural thing to do. You know, the people on this podcast are going to be very interested in learning. And one of my favorite. Terms that I've coined is knowledge is the ungrateful child of learning.

That is the minute learning turns into knowledge. My incentive is to stop learning and I have a confirmation bias. I don't want my beliefs changing, cause I don't want to do the work of learning.

And, uh, so there's a natural tendancy on my part on your part and on the part of a whole organization, like a school to deny the need for change, and we'd go to great lengths to do it.

We're very, very good at it. But as we deny that need for change, we begin to experience slow death. The school is slowly dying. You and I are slowly dying if we're not renewed by making a change, uh, we just continue on that route, slow death, and with each additional step. It gets more painful.

Uh, and so all day, every day, we're all facing the deep change or slow death dilemma. And we spend a lot of time on the road to slow death.

[00:05:07] **Jethro Jones:** Yeah. And, you know, if we take that analogy further, then eventually everything is going to die or at least our part in that is going to die. And one thing that I think is really fascinating, especially in the education system, is that as employees in a system. You are a cog in a machine and the machine is just going to keep going.

And so sometimes the change needed is so great that you don't want to take that step to make change, because it seems so insurmountable because everything is just moving on. I mean, a teacher or a principal or a superintendent leaves and. A pandemic happens and those kids still need and get educated, whether it's good or bad or not.

It doesn't matter to the machine. The machine just keeps happening. How do we approach change when we're confronted with something that is so, uh, seemingly insurmountable,

[00:06:09] **Robert Quinn:** That's probably that's one version of probably the most frequently asked question. Uh, we created a field called positive organization scholarship. It's about flourishing in life, individually, collectively as groups or as organizations, the. Research and the findings over the last 20 years are exhilarating.

When we teach those, we have high paid, highly educated executives sitting there, drinking it in, and then I say, okay, what are you going to go home and do differently on Monday? And they get a panicked look on their face. They can't imagine applying what they've just learned because, and what they just learned is full of exciting.

Change possibilities to change tactics and things they could do, which they're actually quite interested in. But the notion of grasping those is terrifying. Uh, I have people, regularly walk up to me after a session and say, I work in a blank organization, an education organization, a finance organization, medical organization.

Therefore I can't do anything. And it's an absolute universal assumption that I am powerless. And I know I'm powerless because I proved it in the past. I tried things. I asked the principal, if we could do this and the principal jumped down my throat, I am powerless. I know that to be the case. And so that's universally held in, in all hierarchies.

What we have is evidence all around us. That what we believe is not true and. If we actually wanted to know that the easiest way we can do that is to begin to learn from excellence. One of the most exciting studies I ever did was a study of public schools. Um, I had access to the top 1% of the public school teachers in the state of Ohio.

There were actively measured. These were people who were simply a walk on water. People you'd send your kids to this person's class. They would teach fourth grade and June. Your kid comes home to in seventh grade work. It's impossible. But the fact is the school systems in the United States we'd look at every thousand teachers.

There's one teacher who's doing that. If one teacher's doing it, that means it's possible. That is if it's out there and it exists, it's real. That person somehow was violating everything we know to be true. It's impossible to teach like.

that. It's impossible to flourish in a, in a big medical for financial or other kinds of hierarchy.

I'm just a low level person. And so the question is what's real. Yes. Most of what we see is in the middle of the curve. It's conventional. It's not exciting. It's not exhilarating, it's actually dying. But if we look at the far right side of the curve, we see very different things happening in the same hierarchy.

And I'll give you a real example. One of these teachers. Was at the end of her career. She said, I retired this year for the fast, last five years because of these measures that have been out there. I've had a lot of attention. She's obliged been teaching like this for 30 years. Not once in the last 30 years has an administrator from this district ever walked in my office to see what I was doing.

Never once now. Let's pause. Where was that administrator for the last 30 years that administrator was in his or her office solving problems. That's what managers do. So that ministers dealing with all the problem, people in the district all day long, every day, year after year, that administrator never watches.

This woman teach that administrator has no theory of social excellence. No theory of what, what great teaching looks like. The administrators never seen it. So when that administrator makes decisions day to day,

what's his, or

her reference point, it's the middle of the curve and the left side of the curve.

It's problems.

It's full of constraint. It does

not aspire to

excellence. And so. What we're talking about is not some

given administrator. We're talking about

everyone. We all tend to

learn from the middle of the curve and we block out the right side of the

curve. And the way you change things is you

begin to learn from

excellence.

You begin to learn and aspire to that, which is well outside the norm. I went on way too long, but that's uh, that's my shortest answer.

[00:11:28] **Jethro Jones:** That's okay. Yeah, I appreciate that. Well, I, I love what you're saying about the way you change

things as begin to

learn from excellence. and

I think that's so important. That's why I

started this podcast. That's why I

do the masterminds. The coaching program that I do with, with other principals is that if you.

If you're surrounded by, um, mediocrity or you're in an environment where your district is not pushing you to change and grow and do and be better. Um, it's easy to be complacent. Like you said, our reference point is the middle of the curve

and. As certainly as a school leader, that's what

we're dealing with so much is we are, we're taking care of the problems that are happening and not taking the time to celebrate and be around those who are really great, which is why anyone who's listening to this podcast is doing exactly what you're talking about.

And I think that that's really an important thing for everybody to, to be aware of is that you have to be seeking out that excellence, um, in order for.

you to, to be able to have that growth and change that you're looking for.

[00:12:38] **Robert Quinn:** yeah, I love the way you

said that because we are in fact, all looking for growth and change and meaningful life. We want that, but something blocks us from going after that. And that's fear. Fear of failure if embarrassment, fear of whatever. and we build all kinds of mechanisms in our heads and in our institutions to, manage to the avoidance of failure.

And principals learn or begin to believe that their biggest role in life is to prevent the conflict when there were value added scores. And that was of course, highly argued over. But, uh, when they in fact had a lot of, uh, potential application, and we saw that, but we also saw these tremendous political turmoil.

We, uh, At Berlin together, a group of these high performing teachers. And, they said, why did you bring us together? and we said, what do you mean? Why? Because your scores, they said, what scores? We said, what do you mean? What scores? We don't know what you're talking about. The principals did not give the high-performing teachers their feedback.

So we called the principles. What did the principal say? They said, oh yeah, she's the best teacher in school. But yeah, I, don't want to put that out there. It's going to cause

conflict

Right? Well, that's how all of us organize our lives. You do it. I do it to avoid

conflict. Leadership is about creating

conflict. You surface the elephant, you resolve the conflict and you turn it into transformative

cooperation.

that

sentence terrifies people. I said, I don't know how to do

that

So we're talking about changing deeply held assumptions that drive the educational process in the public schools and the universities and in everyday life.

[00:14:41] **Jethro Jones:** I wanna just think about that for a moment because it's so powerful to think that leadership is about creating conflict and then turning it into transformative cooperation as, as I've been a leader and seen different ways that I could, you know, help people change and grow and do better.

Every time it has led it has started with that conflict. And I didn't think of it in that perspective before,

but now that I look back and think

about

the people that I'm closest to, that

I feel like we grew the most, where there really was

some transformation

in them.

There was conflict in the beginning

of that. and uh, one person that I'll mention Tana Martin, who's a, um, Uh, librarian up in Alaska and it was just amazing. Uh, when she came to my school, I remember over the first couple of weeks, there were times where I made her cry multiple times and I hated that. But at the same time, I saw so much potential in her that I knew it was worth it too.

To bring up that situation and, and, and let her be frustrated for a moment. But I got to tell you, Bob, she just, the way that she changed and the way that she improved her life was so inspiring that I. She's someone that I want to work with the rest of my life, because she's not, she's not afraid to push back on me either and say, well, this is what you're doing wrong.

And that's what I think is just so valuable, but it's so easy to avoid that and just try to

prevent any kind of conflict. And so I really appreciate you saying that

[00:16:19] **Robert Quinn:** I love your account. Let's just think about your account.

you say I could see so much potential in her. So what was the driving variable? It was the realization or the actualization of potential in that woman that wasn't selfish on your part. It was selfless. That was love. Now let's think about the nursing great teachers and good teachers, not bad, not normal, but good and great.

We know scientifically that there are four variables that define transformational people, whether a school teachers were CEO's number one. They use idealized influence. That means they're selfless. They're models of selflessness. They don't have an agenda. They've transcendent their ego. Number two individualized concern.

There's an authentic, genuine concern. You looked at that woman and you had concern for her. Number three, inspirational motivation. You link people to their best future. That's what you did. Number four is intellectual stimulation. It's a lousy title, but what it means is you constantly, instead of telling them what to do, you're constantly using inquiry.

You're asking them to think for themselves to empower themselves, to behave in new ways, according to their own volition on their own choice. Now that's what stimulates transformation in every system. That's what you did to her. Let's go back to the study, the PA of the public school teachers, those school teachers didn't have jobs.

They had callings, right? Their calling was not to teach math or history or English. It was to realize the potential in the students, in their classroom. The purpose was to create was not to learn the English or the math or the history. The purpose was to develop the love of learning. If I get my kid to love learning that kid's empowered all their lives, that kid could be from a terrible situation, a minority neighborhood, And it doesn't matter, the kid's gonna make it cause the kid loves learning.

Now these school teachers marched to a different drummer. They had to fight the school to do what they did because the school didn't want them doing it.

Kids flock to them, the classroom, they would say, uh, you know, the average teacher says, my kids don't want to learn they're from that neighborhood. These teachers said, my kids are from that neighborhood. My job is to create the

interest in learning. That's not the kids' job. It's mine.

these are people

who are not marching to the drum of

convention. They're not externally

directed. They're not responding to the school the principals created, and the same thing holds for principals. The principle that's transformational is not creating a culture

that

the school is creating. It's, he's creating, or she's creating their own culture. That's aligned with the needs that exist in the real world at this minute.

[00:19:44] **Jethro Jones:** Yeah. And when you talk about it, in that sense, what I'm, what I'm seeing is the, the potential for people really comes out and take center stage their ability to grow and, develop. Reaches a higher

level when that is the case. And I really

appreciate that because I think there's so many

opportunities for it, for us to,

given to the

status quo to a religion, the potential that we

see mostly because we're

avoiding. Conflict, but also

because it just seems like there's not enough time in the day. And sometimes there is, um,

if you have all these things that you, you need to get done than

just surviving to the next day is sometimes all that you can think about. And that doesn't sound like a recipe for success.

It sounds like barely surviving, which you know, is really that slow death.

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[00:21:39] **Robert Quinn:** that's a perfect description. Now you're describing every human being on the planet. That is, we are all subject constantly to the slow death pattern. So we're not condemning anybody. This is all of us. Now there's a way out. And it's a simple, simple question. Robert Fritz wrote a whole book about this question.

And the question was, what result do I want to create a people say, oh, I asked that question all the time. No, you don't. The question most of us ask most of the time is how do I get what I want? And what I want is to be comfortable. I want conflict to go away. I do not want disruption. I don't want to think, and I don't want to learn.

When you asked the question, what results do I want to create? You've instantaneously linked your identity to an emerging future. The only way to resolve the tension is to step into uncertainty, engage in learning by faith and create the future that doesn't yet exist. The moment you start to do that.

Your entire being changes, your learning accelerates you live in total commitment. Every one of the school teachers in the study, we did had the, had a higher purpose and they were driven by it. And so every day, and then they had 20 years experience, 30 years experience, but every day was a new day. And when a kid came in that couldn't learn.

And who was disruptive, the solution. Wasn't throw them out of the class. The solution was, oh, I have a new challenge. How am I going to turn this kid into a learner when the kid's been traumatized the whole life? That's a very different orientation, but it makes a huge difference in your own life If you're living for a higher purpose and, every day you're trying to enact it, which means you're going to have many failures every day, because you're trying harder than the teacher in the next classroom

or the next principal in the next building.

That means you going to have failures, but the failures don't bother you because of each failure is a

teacher

on the way to realizing this

purpose. Why am I on the earth? What's my

mission here. What's my highest purpose. the research

shows that people who can answer that

question. Cornish a long list

of

benefits.

They don't die as her. They live

longer,

they don't get this disease. They don't get that disease. They don't get that disease. They have richer

social relations

networks. They, uh, They make more money. Every possible payoff you can

think

of is scientifically correlated

with living a purpose

driven life. Because the moment you

embrace a higher

purpose, you've transcended your

ego.

Instead of trying

to satisfy your ego. You're now serving

the

community and you're part of a greater

whole,

and

you're learning and

growing the same thing holds for a person in the middle of a

corporation. Doesn't matter what

organization we're

talking about.

[00:25:17] **Jethro Jones:** when you talk about a teacher or an educator having a calling, then that's them buying into that purpose driven life and, and saying, you know, I'm not just here to teach a class, I'm here to teach students. And I served a mission for my church in Russia. So I speak Russian. And one of the things that fascinated me when I was just a young man, was that the way.

teaching is described

in that language is that it's not, I

teach kids, no teacher says I, I teach a specific subject. They say, I, I teach kids to a specific subject. And so kids are

always the

subject of that verb. They're always the one that we are, we

are teaching them. And then we take them to the subject in the

same way that you would say,

I go to the store, you

use the same. Uh, declension in the, in the noun, which implies that

I go with the

kids too, that not I'm a math

teacher. You would, you wouldn't be

able to say that in Russian, it doesn't make any sense. You can only say I teach kids to math and the, the way that you, that you approached that really, uh, highlights that you have a purpose that it's not about teaching a subject.

It's about teaching kids. And that's a small thing, Bob, but I think it's so important. To lean into that purpose and to make that more important than we typically feel that it is, that that really is, that matters a lot. And it allows you to do things that you typically wouldn't do. And what I've seen is.

great teachers and great leaders are often breaking the rules and not doing the things that they're supposed to. And, in education we're often a lot of, rule followers, but those who are making changes really have to break the rules to make that happen. Can you talk a little bit about the need for breaking rules?

[00:27:17] **Robert Quinn:** yes, I can. The moment that you commit to a purpose, you just moralized your life.

You're now operating from your conscience, right? and there are many secular theories of moral development and all of them include The, shift from a occlude, the transcendence of ego. You grow up. As a dependent person, you internalize lots of expectations from a given group. You leave your parents cause you want to be independent and then you joined some gang and you dress exactly like the gang.

You're highly dependent on them. But then there's a moment where you find out who you are and you become free of the culture. And you begin to pursue your real identity. It's always a call of conscience. Thoreau described It beautifully. He said, when you take that leap, Then you begin to separate things.

When you act from principle, you separate church and state, you separate a names, a number of things. He says, you even separate yourself. You separate the diabolical from the divine, your best self begins to emerge. and so you're moralizing yourself. You're tying yourself to service to the higher. Good.

And when you do that, now, your logical mind, your imaginary to

mind and your conscience operating together, you feel like your whole, you feel like you're one.

Your interests now is in the good of the community. And you go out to serve the

community, pursuing your higher purpose, and you have cycles of experience.

You go up and down and they'll cycles. You fail, fail, fail, and

then

succeed as you do that over and over

again, you begin to put those experiences together and you develop an overarching

theory of transformation. You develop transformer to power.

And it's exhilarating. One of those, there was one woman I interviewed, she was a fourth grade

teacher.

She said, I went to my first day And my first class, I looked at these 34th graders looking at me. I thought I'm a long way from the

ed school. And she said that, but there was one

belief

I had from the ed school that

stayed with me. It was, if you want to be a really

good

teacher, you need to know the needs and

interests of each student.

She said, so I went to

great lengths to

learn, to do that while suppressed. I was

writing that down.

She said, then I went to the next level. I, my head snapped up. I said, next level. She said, yeah, I went to the next level. I said, what does that mean? She says, well, then I discovered they're all the same. I said, you just told me they're all different. She said, they are all different. And they're all the same. You see, no matter

what they say or

do

now, let me repeat that. No matter what the students say or do

coma

every student. Wants to learn. Every student wants to succeed. Every student wants to be loved when you break that code, everything changes. you

can teach anybody old or young,

special ed gifted. Doesn't

matter. Now just ponder

that incredible

claim. Here's a young woman teaching

fourth grade. And she believes that she has a universal theory of influence

that will work anywhere. And what's it

based on

it's based on not just individual empathy for each kid, but collective empathy for the

whole.

and that allows

her

to serve that

community in ways the teacher in the next room

can't

serve

them. And she. Is this enormously empowered woman? Well, I find that to be an, a just incredibly instructive account and pretty much holds for every teacher we interviewed.

[00:31:41] **Jethro Jones:** Well, and in my experience as an educator, that is exactly what I have seen as well. And kids will fight against what we're doing in school, but that doesn't mean they don't want to learn and they will resist. The, the lessons and the opportunities, but that doesn't mean they don't want to learn or be successful.

It just means that maybe

they don't want to do it in exactly the way that we want them to and separating those two

things has been essential

for me in finding any kind of success as an educator, because when you put those. When you assume that a kid not wanting to read a book, you're assigning a class means that they don't want to learn.

Then you're shooting yourself in the foot. And you're, you're never going to be

able to reach that kid because you've already made the judgment about what they want. But when you take it the other way, like the teacher did and say, no matter what kids say or do every student wants to learn that that is totally the truth.

And then it's a matter of you trying to find the way to inspire. To connect with them so that they will learn from you.

[00:32:51] **Robert Quinn:** It couldn't have been said any better. I mean, that's exactly right. If that, if the one kid doesn't want to read your book, there is a hundred possible reasons why that might be the case. My natural inclination is to see it as a rebellion against my authority. and I can't think of anything. That would attack my

ego more than that

And so I have an enormous need to exert control, but the real question is

why, why does this kid feel this way? Now the kids afraid to tell you why?

So unless the kid trusts you, unless a

kid absolutely senses that your purpose is his good,

that kid's not going to tell

you. And you're going to go on giving assignments that

the kid's going to resist all year

long. And you're just going To keep, as you said, shooting yourself in the foot,

uh,

[00:33:53] **Jethro Jones:** I have to be that way either. And that's the thing that I hope that people hear from our conversation is that okay. As the teacher you're still in control, you can still decide how you're going to react and what you're going to do. And just because somebody is resistant to the plans or methods or strategies that you're using, doesn't mean that all hope is lost and taking us to the next level with principals as well. That just because your teachers don't want to do the change that you want to do doesn't mean that they don't want themselves. To be successful in their craft.

And one of the things that I learned right at the end of, of being a principal before I left to be a consultant, was that, the biggest thing that. That my teachers wanted was to be authors in that change. And if I could give them the opportunity to be authors in the change, then they were much more willing to engage in it themselves. So for example, when I stopped saying, this is how we have to change and started asking what are you ready to change? Then it, it, made it possible for everybody to be involved in that. And those who were afraid of change and didn't want to do it, then they weren't changing very much, but they were deciding that rather than me saying,

you must do this or must do that And it really made, the things I want to

do much more

accessible because of taking that shift in approach.

[00:35:24] **Robert Quinn:** So, what you were doing is you were

asking each teacher what result you want to create? And

some had very

exciting visions And some had one

inch visions. Right. But you were

committed

to helping each one

of them pursue what it

was that they

wanted. Now that's the first step in

unifying community.

Now there's many more steps, but then you

animate a

community. As they, as you

put

together, the things

they want As you

nurture them from day to day, a

transformation occurs. Think about the movie

stand and

deliver, right. Is a ghetto school.

Jaime

Escalante walks in there. It's nothing but resistance in the early

times, but then

step-by-step something starts to change. Uh, and then

all of a sudden there's a new

culture in the classroom. Now take any education movie

from Hollywood,

they're all transformation of

movies. Each story seems to be unique and different. They're all the

same. It's always about the transformation of the culture

and that transformation holds for corporations and holds for military.

It holds for everybody. It's the transformation of

negative peer pressure into positive peer pressure

When everybody is pursuing the common good. When everybody's realizing potential, all of a sudden a

new culture emerges. And in that new culture, everybody expects everybody else to give their best. The moment that

happens, if I'm a principal, my job radically changes.

I have no

need to police anybody any longer because the police function just went into the group.

There is no negative deviance.

Now that is shocking to the conventional mind of a manager. They because they can't imagine that,

but that's what we see when organizations are at their best.

[00:37:33] **Jethro Jones:** Yeah. And I'm glad you brought up, uh, stand and deliver, uh, because I was able to interview Henry Gretta. Yes. The principal of that school who made it, so that Jaime, Escalante. Could do the things that he did really well. And he, he did exactly what you're talking about. And So if you're, if you haven't heard that interview, it's in the links, uh, at Jeffer jones.com/podcast.

So make sure you check that out because it's so fascinating because one of the

things that he. Uh, that he talked about and talk about a calling at 83 years old, he was still teaching Spanish, uh, to

local high school kids. Um, and was just, uh, uh, Henry Gropius was just a powerful example of someone who's really doing, doing the things that we're talking about here.

And so he said, one of the things is, Making sure that, recognizing that other people said this can't be done.

And

he said, well, we're just gonna do it anyway.

And Jaime wanted to do it. So we're gonna make it

happen. And everybody. thought,

um, that they were, you know, doing crazy stuff, but really they didn't change. Any of the district policies. They just

interpreted them in their own way to make

all the things that they did at that

high

school. Work, which you know, is going

back to that idea of, uh, transcending, the rules and understanding that what we do

matters and we're policing it ourselves instead of, you know, trying to like

rally The school board to change

different things.

When you don't really

need to

do that, you just need to interpret it in a way that makes your

cause work because your cause is obviously just.

[00:39:11] **Robert Quinn:** Um, that's right. But in the process, there will be resistance everywhere. The people you're trying to reach, if you're a principal and you're trying to get the teachers to do it, there'll be teachers in your face, actually, you know, just blatantly upset with you. Uh, if you start to succeed and all the teachers buy in, now you can have problems to the district because the school is doing things and other schools don't do when it's a problem, it doesn't fit the hierarchy.

parents are going to complain about something, cause there are new patterns. That

is for you to create social

excellence. You are creating a new order

and that disrupts existing orders. And that is the conflict we talked about earlier. you can't be afraid of that and you will be afraid of it, unless you've internalized the purpose you're pursuing.

And so those guys at Garfield high school had a really clear vision and they were getting up in the morning full of energy, ready to fight the fights they had to fight. And that holds in any organization.

[00:40:19] **Jethro Jones:** It's been a great conversation, Bob. I feel like I could, we could go on for hours. So, um, I do want to respect your time though. And my final question is what is one thing That a principal can do this week to be a transformative principal?

[00:40:37] **Robert Quinn:** That is a spectacular question. My response is you sit down before you ever go in and you say, what result do I want to create now? Most people can't answer that question. It, sounds like an innocent question, but it's not. And, so. There's a larger question underneath it. and that is why am I on the earth? \What's my purpose in life. What's my mission in life. When I die, how will the planet be different? Because I'm here. So as a principal, am I here? Because this is my job. I get to feed my family because they pay me X dollars. and that's the reason I get up every morning. Or do I have a purpose on the earth? Do I love learning?

Do I love fill in the blank? Do I have a vision of the impossible? Do I have a vision of every kid? Passing the AP exam in Garfield high school or whatever it might be. And if I answer that question, here's the result I want to create as a principal.

Now I have an image to organize my life too, that will give life to my life. It will give life to others. It'll give me a reason to face the problems in the day and I will face them and I will learn my way to a new social reality. That one simple question changes everything. Now, if you want three additional questions, it's what result do I want to create? Am I internally directed? That is, do I have integrity or hypocrisy? We all have Apocrypha. What's it mean for me to have integrity? How does my purpose link to my deepest values? The moment I answer that. I begin to generate courage. The third question is, am I other focused? Am I living in empathy for those teachers who don't want to cooperate?

Do I know why the student won't read the book until I know that I can't succeed? And the fourth one is, am I externally open? And what that means is, am I humble enough? To co-create the future with other people to co-create the future with others is to be in a conversation in which we're listening to each other.

They listened to me because I listened to them and they know it. Then as we communicate, we are, co-creating a new culture. What results do I want to create? Am I internally directed? And my other focused, am I externally

open? You answer those four questions

in every situation and you will be a new principal, not next week, but today.

And the four questions apply all day long. In every situation, they turn you into a dynamic whole that's aligned with the larger dynamic holes of which you are apart.

Everybody can do that.

Even people who know they

can't.

[00:44:17] **Jethro Jones:** Yeah, I especially appreciate that last bit that, Everybody can do that. And when you do it, you're right. It, it totally changes your life. And, and I appreciate that. Um, if you'd like to hear more from, Bob Quinn, Robert E quinn.com is his website, and you can check that out. And, uh, Bob, just want to say thank you so much for your time and for being part of a transformative principle podcast.

[00:44:44] **Robert Quinn:** Well, Jethro, I'd just say what you're doing is of enormous importance and I appreciate being part of it tonight.

[00:44:53] **Jethro Jones:** Thank you.