Colleagues,
MVP: It’s simple and powerful to treat people like they matter and we should do it each day. In yesterday’s episode of The Assistant Principal Podcast, Angela Maiers talks about the science behind mattering. Angela’s proposition is simple – treat people as if they matter, and it will have a huge positive impact on both you and them. Just two weeks ago I share the way Natalia Meija greets her students – with a big smile and a “I am so glad you are here!” This is so powerful because it communicates that the person matters. Angela has a basic formula for interacting with people, which I have tweaked slightly:
Today’s intention: Let someone know they matter. Cheers! Frederick
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Colleagues,
MVP: A set of questions you can use to begin building a relationship with your new people. Yesterday I suggested that new leaders should seek out new employees and seek to lay the foundations of a strong relationship. How do we do that? By asking the right questions and listening to the responses. Possible questions:
If you know the typical struggles of people new to the job, you can ask specifically about them. The critical thing is to listen. You don’t need to mirror back, paraphrase, or share your own experiences. Just listen. Later, you can come back and ask follow-up questions, which demonstrates that you were listening intently. Do you have questions you think would be great to share? Feel free to share them with me. Today’s intention: Reflect on these questions. For which people in your organization do you know the answers? Also, remember that you can still use our checklist to help identify the people to fill the four roles of your support network. The link is here. Cheers! Frederick Colleagues,
MVP: It is a natural fit for new leader to focus on supporting and growing new people I’m using the p-12 school context to illustrate today’s idea, but it should transfer to other contexts. One of the most challenging things for a new principal or assistant principal to do is to come into a new school and try and grow veteran teachers. I’ll dig into why that is so difficult in a future post, but today we’ll focus on new teachers. New school leaders pairing with new teachers is a natural fit because:
If you are new, whether you are in education of another field, seek out the other people who are new, and begin laying the foundation for a strong and lasting relationship. Today’s intention: Whether you are new or not, think about who is new to your organization and ask them how they are doing. Cheers! Frederick Colleagues,
MVP: Doing things for people is not the same as removing barriers. I’m going to use assistant principals as an example, but you can easily insert yourself and your role here and it should work. Yesterday I talked about being a servant leader and suggested that the key to organizational improvement was to focus on supporting and growing people. One of the places we miss the boat is on understanding what constitutes support. Support means two things:
New APs can enact this by:
We sometimes miss the boat by:
We wind up working hard on things that matter less. When we say “work harder, not smarter” it requires us to understand what the real barriers and needs are. How do we do that? Relationships. Today’s intention: Think about how you are supporting people. Are you doing things for them, or are you clearing things away so they can focus on priorities? How do you know the difference? Cheers! Frederick Colleagues,
MVP: Just focus on supporting and growing others. Servant leaders focus on the priorities of supporting and growing the people around them. Honestly, I don’t know how we can run an organization any other way. Supporting and growing our people yields these results:
It is so simple! Not easy – supporting and growing people is hard work – but it is simple. Today’s intention: Think about everything we ask our people to do. It should fit within three criteria:
Cheers! Frederick |
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