Shifting for Impact

Mar 19 2020
Shifting for Impact Podcast artwork

Educators have long wrestled with how to manage productive change in their schools. Besieged by well-intentioned voices suggesting they take “this” or “that” course of action to improve student performance, school leaders and their teams have often found themselves heading down one road only to exit onto another. As a result, the intended changes don’t stick, and their desired outcomes remain out of reach. In these episodes, we’ll hear from educators who successfully navigated change and from those who support educators in that quest.

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Link 9.1 – What Future Do We Envision for Our Children?

Mar 19 2020 5 mins  
Listen to more of the interview we conducted with Mary Howard where she distinguishes between change initiatives and a culture of change. Listen especially for what she means by a collectively embraced “passion-fueled mindset,” and the difference between initiatives that are merely an act of “doing” instead of “becoming.”

Link 8.3 – Listen for Brilliance

Mar 04 2020 6 mins  
Listen to part of an interview we conducted with Steve Paul where he outlines the goals, steps and benefits of a “Performance Acceleration Meeting.” Listen for why he puts a heavy emphasis on behaviors that affect the “Healthy”-side of his business.

Link 8.1 – Stay Curious a Little Bit Longer

Mar 04 2020 9 mins  
Listen to our interview with Michael Bungay Stanier, author of The Coaching Habit (2016) and founder of Box of Crayons, an organization that promotes coaching as the essential leadership behavior. Listen as Michael recounts the five layers of resistance to coaching – and how he counters them.

Link 7.2 – Innovating Inside the Box

Mar 04 2020 33 mins  
Listen to our two-part interview with Amnon Levav, Chief Innovation Officer of SIT - Systematic Inventive Thinking, where he reviews the firm’s “Function Follows Form” innovation process. Listen for why innovating with constraints and manipulating what you already have yields better results than trying to innovate out of thin air.

Link 7.1 – Cultivating Change at the Grassroots Level

Mar 04 2020 5 mins  
Listen to part of our interview with Evan Robb where he described how he set the stage for another change initiative - revising the school’s grading procedures. Listen for the strategies he used to increase engagement and get people ready to embrace and implement the change.

Link 6.5 – Keeping the Wheel of Change Turning

Mar 04 2020 23 mins  
One who didn’t stop applying at least one of the principles from Good to Great and the Social Sectors (2005) is Deb Gustafson, former Principal of Ware Elementary School in Fort Riley, Kansas. Listen as she describes how she applied the Flywheel principle and achieved dramatic results. Pay particular attention to what she determined had to be the all important first step of the s

Link 6.2 – Critical Behaviors of the Mindful Leader

Mar 04 2020 13 mins  
Listen to part of an interview we conducted with mindfulness author and expert Michael Bunting where he describes the “7 Disciplines of the Mindful Leader.” As he talks, think about how these disciplines would be especially relevant to the change leader.

Link 5.3 – It Takes a Lot of Conversations With a Lot of Folks in Different Arenas

Mar 04 2020 7 mins  
Listen to part of an interview with Greg Ewing where he describes a change initiative when he served as superintendent of Cobb County School District in Georgia. Note how leaders revised their plan as they gathered and assessed new data.

Link 5.1 – Provide the Right Kind of Support

Mar 04 2020 7 mins  
Listen to more of the interview we conducted with former Superintendent Dr. Karen Rue where she describes the need to listen carefully to her faculty during the district’s technology change initiative. Listen for why it was necessary to assemble the right team to determine the real problem they were trying to solve.

Link 4.4 – How You Tell the Story Creates Who You Are

Mar 04 2020 13 mins  
Here we speak with Sarah Elkins, author of Your Stories Don't Define You, How You Tell Them Will and a communications coach who specializes in working with clients on the stories they tell themselves – and on what happens to them as a result.