Starting day one and on every day of school thereafter, you have two primary goals.  First, to make it crystal clear to students that you love having each one of them in your classroom and care about their individual learning and development.  Second, make it similarly clear that the academic content in your class is the most interesting, fascinating, and important stuff students could possibly be learning.  

I’m a firm believer in City et. al.’s conceptual theory of the Instructional Core.  The Instructional Core basically asserts that the student, teacher, and academic content comprise the basic variables that set the limits and possibilities to the quality and quantity of learning that can happen in a classroom.  Raise the level of teacher skill, student engagement, or curriculum quality, and you raise the possibilites for cognitive demand and critical thinking.  As classroom teachers soon learn, however, the three independent actors of students, teachers, and content really only exist in relationship to one another.  In other words, the possibilities for learning are completely mediated by the relationships in the classroom setting between students, teachers, and the content they are engaging together.  Relationships are not just a nice idea.  They are at the core of our practice as professional educators.  

So, with that little theoretical detour, it should be clear that taking time to build strong relationships with your students is at the heart of your work, as is initating students into a fascination and love for the stuff you are trying to teach about.  You should never, ever, ever, take those relationships for granted.  If you lean hard on the fact that students don’t have a choice but be in your classroom (either due to compusive education laws or graduation requirements), then you are undermining your ability to leverage two of the three essential relationships of the instructional core: student/teacher relationships and student/content relationships.  You might be okay in the third realm of the core, and sustain a healthy appreciation for the content you teach, but in my view that is the least important variable of the core.  We assume teachers know something about the subjects they teach.  

We simply know too much about how young people learn to continue with the belief that relationship building is extraneous or a waste of time.  Similarly, professional educators have to embrace the pedagogical work of integrating relationship-building instructional practices into their classrooms.  This is true even and especially for those classroom teachers who expect that students enter the classroom pre-wired with the social emotional skills necessary to decode the expectations of the teacher and willingly embrace the educational complex as a mechanism for furthering their personal interests.   Students come to school with a wide range of attitudes and expectations based on developmental differences and past experiences.  All of them have a right to learn in our classroom.  Part of being a reflective educator – a term the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards plasters all over it’s certification process – is being reflective enough to acknowledge our duty to proactively foster quality relationships with every student. 

That’s why all of those activities you do at the beginning of the year to get to know students and build relationships are not just a great way to start the school year, but can and should be extended throughout the year.  Of course at the beginning of the year, it is easy to be enthusiastic about instructional practices that strengthen relationships.  The novelty of the new school year can be a powerful ally to take advantage of the natural opportunity to connect with your students, and connect them to the content.  But then, throughout the year, find ways to loop back to those beginning of the year relationship-building practices.  

Yesterday morning, I had the absolute pleasure of welcoming our new teachers to school.  You simply can’t duplicate the excitement, nervousness, and genuine curiosity that accompanies starting a new job in a new organization.  For many of our new staff members, they are also new to Costa Rica, which adds another layer of excitement and adventure to the mix.  As a person who truly loves new places and new challenges, it is a lot of fun to interact with our new staff who are similarly embarking on a new adventure in their life.  I love hearing about their past experiences, and what has motivated them to make a big change in their lives.  

Aside from the opportunity to interact with new and interesting people, new teacher orientation is one of my favorite moments for the school is an organization.  When we see ourselves through the lens of a new staff member, it allows us to be a little more objective about who we are and how we are approaching the work.  It’s kind of like that first date, when you are trying to get a sense for who the person is sitting across from you.  Of course it’s a little harder to run away screaming if you don’t like what you see when it comes to your first day at a new job, but the stakes are no less high just because you don’t have an easy out.  

On a big picture level, one of the primary goals of new teacher orientation in a school has to be to convey the values of the organization.  By the end of day one (ok, in my opinion, by the end of their first interview prior to taking the job), your new staff should have absolute clarity about what you values are and have some examples of what those values look like in action.  Of course they will soon discover whether your espoused values match the day to day cultural reality of the school.  Yet even if the lived experience doesn’t yet match what you envision in terms of organizational values, you are already behind if you aren’t at least putting your vision out there.  

In addition to sharing the organization’s core values, I think there is nothing better on day one than to immerse new teaching staff in the instructional vision and core practices of the school.  After all, teaching and student learning are the reason those new teachers are there in the first place.  So I like the idea of going right in the front door and talking about instructional practice on day one.  There will be time (hopefully) for the more mundane, yet necessary, aspects of orientation.  Yes, how we take attendance, or call in a sick day are important details, but not nearly as important as how we lead a killer Socratic Seminar or Think Pair Share.  

One of the hardest parts of the pandemic year was missing out on some of these orientation opportunities.  We hosted virtual sessions and tried to create spaces for online interaction, but there is absolutely no substitute for meeting our new staff together as a group on day one in person.  Our sessions together, including the opportunity to eat lunch together and have some of the small talk that eluded us last year, were an absolute joy for me this year.  Our time together with our new staff left me more excited than ever about launching the new school year.  

One of my hallmark routines as a classroom teacher was leaving work each day, with my classroom ready for the following day’s lessons and learning.  The goal was to be able to, if necessary, walk into the room, flip on the light switch, and be ready to teach.  Part of that motivation was born out of a potentially silly worry that something would come up in the morning that would keep me from being prepared for class.  Maybe that is a common stress and worry that teachers live with (especially since many teachers, like me, were likely conscientious students who similarly wanted to be ready for class as students).  Even with years of experience and a demonstrated ability to wing it if necessary, I never got accustomed to the feeling of starting a class without adequate preparation.  

The second reason I developed this daily habit was perhaps even more important.  It allowed me to use my morning time before class much more strategically.  I could use the time in the morning to work on future lesson and unit planning, connect with students (especially students who might be struggling in class), collaborate and connect with my teacher colleagues, and attend to the countless logistical and administrative tasks that teachers have to work through on a daily basis.  

I also have never been a person who liked to take work home.  For whatever reason, I like to do work at work and try to protect my time at home (of course, that preference has been totally disrupted this past year during virtual and hybrid learning, and admittedly I really enjoyed my opportunity to experience working from home).  The ending of the regular school day set into motion my secondary work day.  Immediately following classes I would typically offer either office hours for students seeking (or requiring) additional support, or sponsor student clubs.  Occassionally I would also have professional meetings as a department chair, or part of the school IB or AVID leadership teams.  Rare were the days that I didn’t have some formal responsibility immediately after the school day.  

Once my formal after-school responsibilities were concluded, I would settle into my grading and assessment work.  Of all of my professional duties, grading student work was my least favorite.  Mostly, this was due to my belief that student assessment feedback is best delivered as part of the instructional practice of the school day, as opposed to teachers assessing work offline to be returned to students at a later time.  I’m a big advocate of Assessment for Learning, as opposed to the more traditional approach to assessment of learning.  Despite my deliberate efforts to minimize the grading work that had to occur with students not present, there were assessment tasks that could not be avoided.  I tried very hard to complete any grading the same day that it was turned in.  

Grading completed, my last task of the day would be reviewing and prepping for the following day of instruction.  This meant reviewing my lesson and unit plans, updating my boards (daily agenda, Do Now, daily objectives, etc.), preparing any materials, and leaving everything ready to go for the following day.  Only then did I feel like I was ready to call it a day.

On the final day of the calendar year for teachers and staff, I received a phone call just before 7 a.m. from our Chief Financial Officer.  A member of the team had come across the body of our long-time head security guard, Mauricio, or “Don Mau” as many of us referred to him, lying in the grass not far from the entrance to the school.  He had died of a heart attack on his morning walk to work.  

While the passing of any staff member might constitute a moment of crisis, Mauricio was not just any staff member.  He was undoubtedly the most respected and beloved member of the Lincoln team.  Just the previous weekend I had sat in the Senior Recognition Breakfast, where the senior class brought Mauricio to the stage to express their appreciation for his service to the school and to present him with a series of special gifts.  This scene replayed itself the following weekend when we hosted our annual Sports Banquet, and again Mauricio was called forward in acknowledgment of his contributions to the school.  How is it that a security gaurd comes to embed himself so completely and essentially in the fabric of a school community?  While I only had the opportunity to work with Don Mau during this past year – and an interrupted year at that – I quickly came to recognize just why he was such an important person to the school.  

Hay que ponerse la camiseta

Mauricio worked hard, showing up before anyone else arrived, and leaving late into the evening when the parking lots were empty.  I remember one particular Saturday morning when I had come in for a few hours for a school activity, Mauricio caught me as I was leaving.  His message was brief – “gracias por ponerse la camiseta.”  In English, that translates roughly to “thank you for putting on the jersey,” and is a soccer reference to  our willingness to go to work and sacrifice on behalf of the team.  It mattered to Mauricio that I, as the General Director, had chosen to be there that day.  He didn’t care about degrees or resumes, he was just interested that you were bringing your whole and best self to the work of the school.  Mauricio was always willing to roll up his sleeves and do whatever needed to be done, and that was his same measuring stick for determining the committment level of those around him.  

Relationships always come first

In Costa Rica, the wake, funeral services, and burial all happen within about 24 hours of death.  With COVID restrictions in place, the small Catholic church across the street from the school simply wasn’t going to be able accommodate the number of people who wanted to come pay their respects to Don Mau.  So we held an impromptu service across the street, outside in front of the school.  I’ve had a lot of unexpected experiences as a teacher and school leader on campus, but hosting a viewing was not one I had ever anticipated.  As students, staff, family, and friends thronged the parking lot, I couldn’t help smiling to myself as person after person turned to a neighbor to tell about their special relationship with Mauricio.  That was Mau’s secret power – he made everyone feel like they were important.  He had conversations with EVERYONE.  He had an insatiable curiosity for finding out about people’s lives – what was important to them, what challenges they were facing, how he could help.  He never hesitated for a moment to walk up to someone and start a conversation.  Being inclusive was in Mauricio’s DNA.  

Quiet, Direct Advice

Over time, Mauricio become somewhat of our Lincoln armchair therapist.  Of course he never postured himself that way.  Rather, he was such a good listener, that you couldn’t help but confide in him.  The combination of his good nature and universal positive regard for others made it easy to keep talking.  Plus, he kept confidences.  You never had to worry that he was going to go around making problems because you shared some delicate piece of news or because you vented about a coworker during a moment of weakness.  He politely listened, asked a few simple questions to make sure he understood, and then usually, would finish wtih some simple advice.  His counsels were never terribly complicated.  Mauricio primarily dispensed common sense, and perhaps hearing what you needed to hear in simple, clear terms is what made his advice so valuable.  It was as if he stood outside of any common organizational drama or interpersonal politics and just gave it to you straight.  

Living Your Values

As we prepared to move in procession from the front of the school across the street to our small neighborhood church, I was handed a microphone and invited to share a few words.  What came to mind then is still what strikes me now.  Mauricio was a man who seemed to have total alignment between his values and how he went about his day to day work.  He was always busily engaged in the work of the school, but never too busy for any individual person who needed his attention.  He was always concerned for the well being of the organization and the people who were a part of it.  

Just this past week, I read an article in a business journal that encouraged readers to stop referring to the workplace as home or coworkers as family as it has the tendency to blur the needed boundary between personal and professional life.  Perhaps for many of us that is good advice.  But for Mauricio, Lincoln really was family.  As students and staff walked past his coffin to pay their last respects, eyes filled with tears, saying Lincoln was family was no exaggeration.  When 6 recently graduated seniors, dressed in white, carried the coffin from the school doors to the church next door, Mauricio was certainly amongst his adopted family.  

By any measure, this school year was challenging.  Yet even in the midst of the COVID madness, none of us could have imagined we’d lose Mauricio on the very last day of the work year.  Honestly, I momentarily lost my breath when first hearing that he had died.  Not long after, I found myself standing next to Mauricio’s wife in the street, trying to find words of consolation while behind me Mauricio’s body lay in the grass as it was prepared to be taken to the funeral home.  That is a moment and memory that I will forever associate with this pandemic year.  And if this year has taught me anything, it is about how precious and fleeting life can be, to enjoy the people we love while we have them, and to strive to live our values every day.   

One of the things I love about working in schools is the annual school calendar.  It has a clear beginning and a clear finish.  You move from grade level to grade level, with predictable start and end dates.  Thanks to the education system, you might think that life always has a nice rythym and sense of progression. Young people the world over probably get the wrong idea from school about how things work, assuming real life will always provide clear progress milestones.  

This past weekend, I participated in my first graduation ceremony with Lincoln School.  We actually had to divide the graduating class into 3 smaller groups to meet all of the COVID related restrictions and protocols that have been mandated across Costa Rica.  Given the madness of the past 2 months with the spike in COVID cases in the country, I was just grateful to be able to celebrate our students with an in-person ceremony.  It was absolutely beautiful.

As I told parents in the audience, graduation is one of those few times as a parent when you can actually see and measure the impact of years of sacrifice, hard work, and encouragement.  For the student, graduation similarly marks a discreet moment in time with a clear and potentially dramatic difference in day-to-day life before and after.  It’s a true milestone.  You even get a diploma, which serves as tangible evidence and formal documentation of your growth and achievement.  For many families, high school graduation is the rite of passage that officially moves a person from childhood to adulthood.  

For the school and the faculty, graduation is no less exciting.  In some ways, the entire institution is aligned to this final moment of student promotion.  In addition to the quantifiable element of graduation – how many and what percentage of our students met the requirements and are moving on – we ask lots of questions about the qualitative outcomes.  Do our graduates possess the skills and abilities that we say they do as a result of their time with us?  Do our graduates’ college choices and next steps in life reflect their true potential as developing and maturing young adults.  Perhaps most importantly, are our graduates the type of people we hoped they would become? 

I was struck during the senior video to see the pictures of our graduating seniors back when they were in preschool.  Many of them spent 15 years at Lincoln.  That’s a long time and a lot of interaction with our school and faculty.  It’s humbling to think of how much of an impact we can have in shaping each students’ childhood and trajectory into adulthood.  

Eventually, we all find ourselves sitting together in an auditorium to watch students as they walk across a stage, and then, ultimately, out the exit.  When the auditorium empties out, we still find ourselves there as educators.  Yes, we feel a sense of accomplishment and a certain degree of closure.  But we know that our work is as much at a beginning as it is at an end.  We have a fresh group of students, excited to take on the mantle of the senior year.  We welcome a new class of preschool students coming to school for the very first time.  For our students, the finish line is clear.  For us as educators, our work is again just beginning.  

For many years, I was a Google Suite for Education acolyte.  As a high school principal, we went “all-in” with Google – Gmail accounts for all students and staff, Google calendar for all official school activities and meetings, and we were heavy Google docs and sheets users.  We built an entire discipline referral and data system in Google sheets that logged tardies, referrals, interventions, and just about every other activity a student participated in.  If we needed to log and track data or share planning documents, Google was the tool of choice.  

When I moved from a school to the district office, I found that office life was much more entrenched with Microsoft.  Anyone who worked with numbers was on a PC using Excel, and you couldn’t schedule a meeting without Outlook.  I wasn’t very good at hiding my frustration with what felt like clunky sharing and access permissions on OneDrive when the business office shared documents.  

Perhaps the most perplexing was that the district was paying for both Google suite and Microsoft suite at the same time.  I had to regularly check both a Gmail and an Outlook account.  It seemed like an unnecessary use of limited resources to pay for both, and I not-so-secretly wished for a way to finally do away with our district office reliance on Microsoft.  Most of the tech saavy educational staff were heavily invested with Google products.  We systemtatically encouraged teachers and administrators to pursue Google Certification, and we encouraged staff to integrate Google classroom into their classroom repetoire.  

And then the pandemic hit.  All of a sudden our tech software package was our primary platform for student learning.  Overnight, our in-person classrooms and meetings were moved into teleconference mode.  Some of us who were more seasoned Google users shifted into Google’s teleconference service, Google Meet.  Many of our teachers found the administrative controls bulky and confusing, and intuitively opted for free Zoom licenses.  Of course in those early days of the pandemic there was a lot of concern about the weak safety and security features in Zoom, but it was easily the more manageable option for our staff members.  I too, admittedly, was frustrated with the quality and usability of Google Meet, and wondered why it was that Google seemed to be struggling to roll out features for group learning that other services were adopting more quickly.  We developed elaborate work arounds to communicate the right meeting codes, including setting up Googlesites where we housed pages with group meeting codes.  We struggled to embed links into Outlook invites with the appropriate sharing features.  

Then, in July, I moved to a new job, where Google was entirely absent.  The school was 100% committed to Microsoft.  I was already familiar with most of the Microsoft tools.  I’d learned to use Outlook and appreciate it’s utility – even if I still felt like it was not very fun and was hard to look at.  For the first time, I experienced Microsoft’s teleconferencing software, Teams, and that is where my mind was being changed.  Within just a few weeks, I had fallen in love with Teams and the integration of tools across the suite of Microsoft tools.  I watched teachers who seemlessly integrated student notebooks in OneNote with their Teams classes.  Our students had embedded chat features, that allowed them to stay connected with each other in a monitored school environment.  Contacts, email, chat, videoconferencing – everything seems to be talking to each other, and I felt my Microsoft resistence softening quickly.

Now, a year later, I’m a highly satisfied Microsoft suite customer.  While I still don’t think OneDrive and SharePoint are quite as easy to use as Google Drive, Microsoft has greatly improved their cloud based services.  In the case of teleconferencing software, I think Teams has been consistently ahead of Google’s products.  Outlook is, well, Outlook, and I will likely be a Gmail user until I die, but Outlook does get the job done, and their iOS app has made it easy to access and use across platforms.  In other words, it’s no longer so clear to me that schools should opt for Google over Microsoft.  At the very least, Microsoft has closed the gap, and perhaps in the pandemic, has in some ways been able to inch ahead.  

This past week was a challenging one that reminded me of the importance of embracing hard feedback.  Costa Rica is in the midst of the most severe wave of COVID-19 cases since the onset of the pandemic.  The national government, in an attempt to control the outbreak, has outlined renewed restrictions that seek to limit contagion without shutting down key elements of the economy.   Last Monday, the public school system got involved, with the Ministry of Education announcing that they would be shifting the academic calendar to allow schools to shut down for 3 weeks during the peak of the COVID wave.  This declaration made it mandatory for public schools to close their doors starting today.  

The decision to shift the calendar and mandate public school closures left private schools in the country in limbo.  In a private meeting that same Monday afternoon, we were informed that private schools would be required to shift entirely to virtual learning during the 3 week public school closure.  We were invited to move forward accordingly, with the understanding that physical school closure was not optional.  

We made the formal announcement the next day that the final three weeks of school would be entirely virtual.  Unlike previous decisions and communications with our school community over the course of our navigation of the COVID pandemic, this communication raised immediate concerns from many members of our school community.  Without a formal announcement from the Ministry of Health and Education that virtual learning was a mandate, why would we announce a move to virtual education?  Furthermore, if the government could shift in-person options in a moment, our families wanted to know what we were doing to ensure that the upcoming school year would be as free of disruptions and limits to in-person learning as possible.  

When feedback comes in a flood like it did this past week, it can be difficult to process and appreciate it.  If you allow yourself to get in a defensive mode, then you can become blind to the fact that the feedback can actually make you better and stronger moving forward.  Of course we had a strong rationale for our decision to close, both fulfilling the need to provide several days’ notice to cancel contracts for in-person services, and to provide our staff and families with enough advance notice to plan accordingly.  Additionally, by the end of the week, we did get an official announcement from the Ministry of Health and Education.  Moving to virtual was the legal expectation, and we had been proactive in our communication about that.  Yet the feedback that had come was still incredibly helpful.  Some of our families felt that as an administration, we weren’t being responsive enough to their needs as parents.  In other cases, there was concern that our communication had been too one-sided and that we weren’t curious enough about how our parents were feeling about any decision to close in-person services.

The result of the feedback was some genuine reflection and planning to act on what we heard.  This included us planning an information and feedback session to talk with our community about our planning for reopening in August.  I also had the chance to personally reach out to some of our families to better understand what they were thinking and feeling about how plans were unfolding.  In the end, I came away with a better sense of the decisions we needed to make as a school that would best meet the needs of our students and families.  It was another reminder that the moment when it is hardest to hear the feedback is often the time when you need it the most.  

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This morning I arrived at school with staff buzzing about an announcement this morning by the Costa Rican Ministry of Education, closing public schools for three weeks and shifting the school year into January (Costa Rica’s educational calendar runs from late February to mid-December).  Of course we’re a private school, and we run on an American system calendar – August through June – so we are awaiting some further clarification from discussions between the Association of Private Schools in the country and the Ministry of Ed.  Hopefully we’ll have some clarity by the end of the day, if not tomorrow morning.  Regardless of the decision and subsequent details, it’s just another reminder of what a true roller coaster hybrid learning has been this year in schools around the world.  

The longer we have been in crisis mode around the world, the deeper is my sadness for our kids.  I’m by nature a very optimistic person, and I also believe that children are incredibly resilient.  Yet still, the thought of kids around the world, not to mention at my school or my own children, who don’t have access to the spaces to play, to interact, to learn and grow brings more than a little heartbreak.  I was commenting just last night to my wife, that our youngest daughter, now two, will likely never participate in what we refer to at our church as “nursery.”  Nursery is a class for 18 month olds to 3 years old where our kids have typically had their first experience with formal learning spaces and interaction.  They have a lesson, play games, color, have snack time, enjoy singing time, and generally begin the important process of socialization.  Our little girl was just 6 weeks shy of entering nursery when we went into lockdown in California.  Now in Costa Rica, it seems there is little chance that nursery will be up and running by early November when she turns 3.  She’ll miss entirely what was for our other children an important rite of passage.

The same can be said on a much larger scale for kids around the world.  While the United States and other wealthy nations are just now seeing shifts towards normalcy, much of the world is facing another 6-12 months (or more) of COVID restrictions and waves of cases.  We’re planning a return to school in August under hybrid learning conditions.  While our return to school hybrid plan will likely include a full day of school on campus, we’ll still have restrictions to how many students can be on campus based on social distancing.  Plus, the past month and it’s COVID wave in Costa Rica has reminded us of the need for constant, daily flexibility in what we can offer.  

The irony, is that after nearly 10 months of virtual learning, our staff and community were more than ready to come back to campus in late January when we opened for hybrid learning.  While most of the schools in the Central America region stayed closed, we felt deeply grateful and lucky to be in Costa Rica, where things were being managed relatively well and schools were being allowed to reopen with certain strict protocols in place.  For nearly 3 months, case rates in the country were low, and we didn’t have a single positive case amongst our students.  Then, after our Spring Break week and Easter, it seems that the wheels came off the bus, and we faced contagion at the nationwide level, and increased cases amongst our school community.  Our COVID leadership team was meeting on a day to day basis, scheduling interviews of potential cases, assigning quarantine measures as necessary, and in two cases, moving entire school departments into temporary virtual mode.  Now we face the opposite set of feelings.  5 months of hybrid learning and simultaneous instruction has everyone ready for a vacation.  

For our parents and community, there have been different needs.  Many parents, especially of our smallest learners, have been desperate to get their kids to class and keep the school open.  We have likewise gone to great lengths to keep our doors open.  Yet there has been a different impact with staff, who unlike our parents and students, don’t have the option to stay home when case rates in the neighborhood or community spike.  Teachers themselves are visibly torn, wanting to be at school for their students, while also concerned at the heightened risk that comes with being outside their homes.  We’ve tried to walk that line and find the appropriate balance, but it has been very difficult at times.

And now, the announcement that public schools are closing for 3 weeks, which happens to coincide exactly with our last 3 weeks of school.  Yes, it’s disrupting.  Yes, it’s challenging to staff and students alike.  Yet the positive side of all of this is that as a school we have learned a tremendous amount of flexibility.  I was commenting to a member of our team how remarkable it is that we have the capacity to accommodate students in-person or virtually on an individual basis, on a week to week or even day to day basis.  Schools have not been traditionally designed to accommodate such personalization.  Of course that flexibility and adaptability has come at a cost.  The learning curve for many teachers has been steep.  Planning and delivering simultaneous instruction to in-person and at-home students can be exhausting.  

Last week as I sat on a call with school heads around the Latin America region, several participants on the call announced how excited their schools were to finally move from virtual to hybrid mode.  Unlike in Costa Rica where we’ve been in hybrid for the entire semester, most private international schools in the region have remained closed to in-person learning.  We’re having the opposite experience, with many families and virtually all staff wishing we could move to virtual mode for a few weeks to wait out the wave of COVID cases in the country.  It seems that wherever you are, when it comes to schools, we’re all still riding the roller coaster.  

Related Links:

COVID Management in Hybrid Settings

Hybrid Learning Starts this Week

Simulcasting Instruction

UNESCO – COVID-19 Response Hybrid Learning

I describe Leadership on the Line as my leadership bible.  Heifetz & Linsky’s (2017) book is one that I love and come back to over and over again.  I first read it as part of my School Leadership program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and I’m currently reading it with my leadership team at Lincoln.  First of all, it’s a fun read.  I love the integration of examples across industries and countries.  Whether we’re talking about political systems in South America, peace negotiations in the Middle East, or private industry in the United States, there are plenty of fascinating leadership scenarios to explore.  I also love how Heifetz and Linsky distill the most important concepts into simple metaphors.  The concepts are “sticky,” and I often find myself referring to them with my own leadership team.  Here are just four of the “stickiest” concepts that seem to be forever imprinted on my brain.  

Adaptive vs. Technical Work: With Technical work, people have problems for which they already have the procedural knowledge and skills necessary to fix things.  It’s just a matter of identifying and implementation the right solution.  Adaptive work is much trickier.  Those are the problems that cannot be solved without adopting new ways of doing the work – new attitudes, new behaviors, new discoveries.  Of course human beings don’t like change, so Adaptive work unleashes all kinds of problems and potential dysfunction.  With Adaptive work, people get uncomfortable, especially when the leader they look to proposes change instead of stability and predictability as the formula for moving forward.  

The Balcony & the Dance Floor: When you are engaged personally and deeply in the work, you sometimes lose your perspective.  Heifetz & Linksy use the metaphor of the balcony and the dance floor to illustrate the importance of not only doing the work (the dance floor), but pulling yourself away from the action often enough to get a bigger perspective of what is happening (the balcony).  On the dance floor, we’re so busy with what is happening in front of us that we just focus on doing the dance.  It isn’t until we get up on the balcony that we can see different patterns, differences amongst the dancers, or notice some people who aren’t dancing at all.  It’s the leadership work of constantly going from participant to observer to back again in order to ensure that our actions take into consideration the full context.  

Accept Responsibility for Your Piece of the Mess: This is another concept – really just a simply question – that I go back to over and over again.  I am constantly asking myself, “what are you doing that is part of the problem?”  It’s a question that can help keep us humble in our leadership roles.  It’s also a question that can prevent us from blaming others, where we attribute fault outside of ourselves and often, misdiagnose problems.

Control the Temperature: Really, the entire chapter about orchestrating productive conflict is one of the most potent chapters of the book.  It’s the idea of strategically controlling the temperature, however, that most sticks with me.  Basically, your organization is like a pot on a stove.  Too much heat and everything boils over and makes a mess you can’t contain.  Too little heat and nothing happens.  No transformation of what’s inside the pot.  In terms of human capacity, too much change and uncertainty and your pass people’s tolerance limits.  Too little change and you don’t reach a threshold for human learning and adaptation.  The idea is to master the tools to both raise the heat and lower the temperature as necessary so that your organization constantly stays within a productive range of stress.