"The Right Questions"

I have come to understand and appreciate the power of asking questions rather than providing answers. Too often leaders subscribe to a belief that telling is leading. Don’t get me wrong – having answers is important; asking the right questions is more important.

“Leadership is not about knowing all the answers. It’s about knowing what great questions to ask, and carefully listening to those answers (Michael Marquardt, 2005).

More often or not, leaders underestimate the need for others to wrestle with difficult, challenging questions. The rhetorical exercise of asking and answering ones’ own question does not allow for the necessary intellectual tension, conflict associated with learning. Not to mention that perspectives, contrarian viewpoints, alternative solutions and the like are necessary to raise thinking and problem solving commensurate with the level of challenges faced in complex, fluid, and dynamic organizations.

Yet, what if we have been asking the wrong questions?

What if our questions are based on a narrow viewing point or perspective or are limited by faulty assumptions, erroneous facts or etc.?

The wrong questions lead to wrong or incomplete answers that cannot and will not produce different thinking – different behaviors – different results.

How do we know if the questions we are asking are the right questions?

Insight into asking questions comes from Michael Marquardt’s (2005) book titled Leading by Questions. He says that “Great questions – questions that inspire, motivate, and empower the organization” are the right questions. Right questions require “developing and sustaining a culture where asking questions is safe and desired”.

He goes on to add, “Astute leaders use questions to encourage full participation in teamwork, to spur innovation and outside the box thinking, to empower others, to build relationships with others, to solve problems, and more. The most successful leaders lead with questions, and they use questions more frequently. Successful and effective leaders create the conditions and environment to ask and be asked questions. Questions wake people up. They prompt new ideas. They show people new places, new ways of doing things. They help us admit that we don’t know all the answers.”

At the Ebenezer Community Forum two weeks ago I was asked why there is such a wide disparity between our African-American students and Caucasian students in academic performance?

Rather than providing my thoughts, I asked, “why do you (the audience) think there is wide disparity?”

First and foremost – yes, there is a wide disparity in performance! That being said, the question can actually “inspire, motivate, and empower” not only the school system but also the community.

Without retreating and offering the oft cited and proven false explanation or excuse of poverty, value proposition, family structure, unemployment, and etc., we focused on expectations – the expectations of community.

Does our community expect each learner to learn to high standards? If yes, how does community communicate and reinforce high expectations for each learner let alone each teacher, each classroom and each school?

Does our community expect each learner to demonstrate, apply, and perform what they have learned at a mastery level? If yes, how does community communicate and reinforce high expectations for each learner let alone each teacher, each classroom and each school?

Does our community expect each learner to conduct himself or herself in a manner that does not interfere with learning, safety or well-being of others? If yes, how does community communicate and reinforce high expectations for each learner let alone each teacher, each classroom and each school?

These questions are at the center of the disparity in academic performance.

We have not expected each learner to learn to high standards!

We have not expected each learner to demonstrate learning to a high standard!

We have not expected each learner to behave in such a way not to interfere with the safety, learning, or well-being of others.

Our questions, these questions require participation, full participation of our community. These questions require the building and sustaining of relationships within and throughout our community.

Lastly, these questions must prompt and provoke new thinking as well as new ways of doing things. The answers and solutions are not far from our reach. In fact, they are readily available and within our control. The answer is and will remain – expectations.

It starts and ends with us - our community!

"Reproducing Dysfunctional"

“Sometimes we don’t know what we want until someone shows us the possibilities”. Seeing possibilities requires in many respects a willingness to “look” through different lenses, new eyes if you will. In much of what we have initiated over the past four and half years has required different. We have in so many ways implemented programming and practices that produce results – different results. Yet, we have endured reluctance and resistance to “different”.

Underpinning different has been coupling the “all means all” mission with whatever it takes. The “whatever it takes” mindset is what differentiates successful implementation, fidelity if you will, from the inconsistent, underperforming, and disappointing results to date.

The other night I fielded questions from community members about Make Your Day. Woven into the questions were misconceptions about the program, misuses or misapplications of the program components, or blatant, willful refusal to implement the program protocols. As I stated clearly, the program works. Where it isn’t producing the desired and expected results, one only needs to look at the adults not the students. We continually suffer the consequences of decisions, choices by adults.

Why do they make these choices?

Let me quickly say that it is not my intention to throw our teachers or our administrators under the proverbial “bus”. Rather, my intention is to emphatically state that the choices, the decisions for whatever the reason not to implement the program as designed, as trained, as expected is just that, a choice with serious and significant consequences.

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that in a “big” way, those staff albeit teachers and administrators that embraced Make Your Day with the whatever it takes mindset and the possibilities of different eyesight are responsible for reducing suspensions from over 7,000 (2007) to less than 1000 (2011). They are also responsible for the highest number of students proficient (2011) in our history. Imagine if you can what our system would look like if every staff …

A factor in the success of MYD as well as other programs has been leadership by both principals and teachers to not let the existing culture manipulate new programs and practices. That is, the power of the existing culture – the culture in place to exert its’ influence, its’ restrictions, its’ beliefs, its’ limitations on different explains why in many classrooms there has been a decision not to change.

A dysfunctional culture has amazing power to reproduce itself in spite of best intentions. It is why the adage the “more things change the more they stay the same” is more true than not.

We must have permission to change the culture. The whatever it takes and possibilities of different cannot and will not bring about the enduring change without permission.

The dysfunctions of culture are not insurmountable but they are formable. Often we attack the symptoms not the root cause of cultural dysfunction. In schools this explains why it is so easy and acceptable to point to students – their lack of discipline, lack of motivation, lack of interest, lack of engagement, lack of … and the list goes on as to why students are not learning to the expectations we desire. It is also why parents are singled out as not caring, not supportive, not involved, not interested in the success of their child. It is why the community is blamed for not supporting schools. It is why teachers, principals, and administrators are at fault.

Dysfunction was not birthed yesterday, five years ago, 20 years ago and so on. Rather, dysfunction began as soon as the first finger was pointed shifting ownership, casting upon someone else the responsibility as the explanation as to why this or that occurred. It is the culture of dysfunction that permits such finger pointing, lack of responsibility, accountability, and authority to address root cause.

Dysfunction is why many communities have more memories of the past than dreams of the future.

Alas, I know our work is only as good as our accepting and embracing accountability as defined by:

“An attitude of continually asking “what else can I do to rise above my circumstances and achieve the results I desire?” It is the process of “seeing it, owning it, solving it, and doing it.” It requires a level of ownership that includes making, keeping, and proactively answering for personal commitments. It is a perspective that embraces both current and future efforts rather than reactive and historical explanations”

(Connors, Smith & Hickman, 1994; page 65).

This is far from a new thought, new theme, or new revelation about accountability. However, at such time that each individual and our community embraces whatever it takes and the possibilities of different we may in earnest live this definition of accountability.

“It’s How we define caring”

This past week a staff member challenged me with a statement, “I am tired of being told that I don’t care about students!” In the moment I responded, “prove me wrong”. Stepping back, I realized that we were coming from completely different definitions of caring. Caring or showing concern, taking an interest, kindness, compassion, sympathy, and etc. are each important and something we should all demonstrate to and with others. Our students need caring adults.

I think however that caring is much more. I believe caring is also about high expectations as it relates to both behavior and academics. Caring is not settling, accepting, or acquiescing to lesser.

Rather, we need to demonstrate caring by not lowering expectations or standards. However, not lowering expectations or standards cannot be in word alone.

High expectations require consistent and constant presence and practice by the adults those behaviors expected and required of learners.

High expectations must start with a commitment of, by and for the adults to communicate, model, reinforce, recognize, and affirm the very behaviors they insist in, of and by learners.

We need to care enough about our students not to accept less than albeit in 1) learning to use their minds well, 2) learning to make responsible decisions including the consequences as well as benefits, and 3) learning the rights, roles, and responsibilities of citizenship, and community.

Caring is ensuring that access and opportunity to learn the habits or discipline of learning is consistently and constantly reinforced.

Caring is proactive not reactive!

Caring is a choice not a condition!

Caring is doing!

Our present behavioral and academic performance reveals mixed levels of effect and impact related to high expectations – we must do more! We must care more!

By the by, we have control over our expectations – low or high.

On a related matter, we know we are expending vast amounts of energy, time and effort on training as well as planning. It is extremely important to note that our present reality is defined by being behind.

Without excuse or explanation, we are behind in our capacities (curriculum competence and coherence, effective instructional practice, use of formative and summative assessments to inform both teaching and learning, and the culminating effect – student performance).

In addressing the legacy of both failed learning and the failure to learn we now more than ever are confronted by our reflections, images of ourselves and behavior that until recent were out of focus and not easily recognized. It is possible that the reluctance or outright refusal to accept responsibility for past performance was intentional. I, however have surmised that it has been more of “didn’t know” rather than “didn’t do” situation. Hence the knowing and doing gap was exacerbated literally by not knowing. This in part provides insight into the intensive training and planning agenda we have initiated.

This has come at a price, however.

We are exhausted.

Yet, the sense of urgency has never been greater. We cannot stop and rest. The students who most need our best, effective work are here now not tomorrow. We cannot wait for staff to “get it”. They must “get it” and “do it”. This brings me back to caring.

The factor we have control over is also the fuel to drive, to push, to pull us forward. These are our expectations.

We must care enough to accept that different results don’t come from different students, different parents, or different administrators. Different results come from caring enough to set, implement, monitor, and assess our expectations for teaching and learning.

Where they are too low –

We must increase them!

Where they are inconsistent –

We must make them consistent!

Where they are not constant –

We must make them constant!

Where they are not present –

We must make them present!

Where they are not practiced –

We must practice them!

Each and every one of us is responsible for caring just as each and every one of us is responsible for building and expanding our capacities.

How we define caring has everything to do with whether or not we will succeed. Moreover, it will determine if our students succeed.

How do you define caring?