Part 2 with Rob Stones:The Art of Building Connections in School Leadership

Unlock the transformative strategies that lie at the heart of educational leadership with Rob Stones, our esteemed guide through the complex landscape of shaping minds and cultivating leaders. Prepare to be inspired by Rob's insights on the pivotal role of relationships and choice theory in decision-making, and why personal growth is non-negotiable for those at the helm of educational change. Infused with Gandhi's timeless wisdom, this dialogue is a treasure trove for anyone determined to emerge as a beacon of inspiration within the academic sphere.

Embark on a revealing exploration of why the bonds between teachers and students are the bedrock of educational success, and how acknowledging each student's need to feel significant can transform classroom dynamics. Rob Stones shares compelling stories of kindness and individual recognition that hold the key to maintaining student interest and minimizing disruptions. Aspiring leaders, take note: this episode is a masterclass in the subtle art of fostering a culture where excellence and growth are not just encouraged, but expected. Whether you're leading a classroom or an institution, this conversation with Rob promises actionable wisdom that will redefine your approach to educational leadership.

To view our Professional Learning Offerings visit:
https://www.nswppa.org.au/professional-learning

Transcript

Drew: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Season 2 of the Principal Learnings Podcast. If you're a principal or educational leader looking to enhance your skills, this is the place for you, so let's get into it. Let's embark on this learning journey together. Welcome back to Part 2 of our podcast recording with Rob Stones, the original facilitator and designer of the Arda Leadership course. With Judy Hatswell, rob is still a facilitator of the Arda Leadership Masterclass, which are both exclusive to the New South Wales Primary Principles Association.

Drew: 0:36

In this discussion, rob shares the importance of relationships between the leader and the teacher, as well as the importance of impact of choices based on choice theory principles. Rob also shares the importance of changing yourself as a leader, all based on research as well as the advice of well what not to do. So this is a really fascinating discussion, part two discussion, which is another fascinating insight into so and there are so many key takeaways that rob has for us. We pick up part two with how you can change, including the famous gandhi quote you must be the change you want to see in your life. Enjoy part two with Rob Stones.

Rob: 1:37

It's so easy in life to think I have a picture out here, a dream out here, of what I want to create. Okay, and I'm going to do my best to get other people to help me create it, to do my best to get other people to help me create it, and what's central is that you only achieve that dream if you change. Okay, um uh, it used to be called transformational leadership. Um uh, these days that's not a popular word, but it's a good way of understanding it. If you want, if you want something to be different, you have have to be different. You have to persuade your teachers to be different, and then, when you're different, you know, as Gandhi said, we must become the change we want to see in the world.

Drew: 2:13

Yeah, yeah, you are the change. Yes, you are the change.

Rob: 2:20

There's a little bit of a thread that goes through the teaching profession, which is you know, once you've done your third or fourth year, you know how to do the job, so all you need to do is keep doing the same thing, but you always have different children in your class. Society's influence has changed. It's all around you. You can't control that environment, but you can respond to it in ways that make you a more influential teacher and a more influential leader yeah, so I wanted to go into that.

Drew: 2:53

What are there's any? As as a mentor and a coach yourself, are there any key qualities that you look for in in aspiring leaders? That?

Rob: 3:05

you can see.

Drew: 3:05

That would say, or advice that you say, yes, this person is going to. You can see a pathway. This person is going to be a potential principal or a person that has educational leadership qualities that could be shared amongst the system or within their context.

Rob: 3:28

The learner piece is a big one, and for that you've got to have an open mind. You've got to go into the job of leadership accepting that you have a lot to learn. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing it. I did it for 21 years and I was still learning at the end, and there's some research backing for this. You see, I've lost a name.

Rob: 3:48

A New Zealand researcher who used to work with John Hattie in New Zealand was very sceptical about what I've called transformational leadership until she did some research in a huge group of multi-schools, a huge group of Maldi schools, and she discovered that the single thing that improved the effect size of a principal's influence was attending professional learning with their staff. Okay, because then they all know we're learning together. You know, one of the most distressing things that I've ever done is, you know, we're asked to work with our whole staff, you know, perhaps on a student-free day, and I get introduced by the principal, who then disappears into his or her air-conditioned office for the day and at the end of the day strategically arrives to thank me for the work I've done. You know. So whatever I did, it really has zero credibility with the staff because we're not important enough for the principal to come. Why are we wasting our time with this? I could be preparing for my lessons tomorrow.

Drew: 4:56

It's a subliminal message, isn't it? It really is saying look, this is important and it's not no, no, that's right.

Rob: 5:01

So there's that you saying look, this is important and it's not no.

Drew: 5:04

No, that's right Okay.

Rob: 5:07

So there's that, you know, being willing to learn, keeping an open mind, I think, looking for, you know, the jewels among your staff members. I mean always, on every staff, every school I've ever been in as a teacher or as a leader, there are teachers who absolutely get it, who have great relationships with kids, who are insightful about how to work with kids to get the best out of them. And they're not the people necessarily who are going to be outspoken in staff meetings. They're not the people necessarily who will serve on many committees. They're often not the people who get promoted because they're just doing their job in their class, but what they're doing is outstanding and taking the time to find those people and nurture them and nurture their influence in school is, I think, a really important leadership characteristics. It's easy to work with the people who you know I don't want to be disparaging and not exactly a yes man but easy to work with the people who think that if I get in the principal's ear and I do what he wants, okay, he'll recognize me. But I think it's more about the principal or the other leaders of the school going, looking for where are these little circles where quality is already happening and how can we nurture that and build that and how can we share the things we see coming out of that classroom with other teachers around the school and, particularly as new teachers come in, nurture that, because if you don't do that, this is what it seems to me happens in so many schools.

Rob: 6:54

Those people don't exactly hide, but they're not very visible. What is visible and audible are the teachers who are already getting a little bit because they're not very flexible or really getting a bit distressed with their job as a teacher. They're very loud in the staff room. You know about how horrible the kids are and how this is all the kids fault and we should get more support from administration and stuff like that. And the dual teachers the ones I'm talking about, the ones that you go looking for because they know how to do things okay. They never participate in that discussion, they just know I can smile and go back to their classroom and get on with what they're doing.

Rob: 7:39

Happens is there's so many of their new teachers are influenced by the loud voices and those teachers who are already feeling disaffected that if you hear something over and over again, it becomes something that must be true because everybody's saying it. You know this is a terribly hard job. We should be paid more, we should have more support from the admin, whatever it is, instead of thinking what can I do, okay, and where are the people I can look to to improve how I do things? So it seems to me that leaders who are looking out for where are the bright spots in my school? Okay, and how do I connect them with the flow of new teachers coming in and how do we distill what it is they're doing in some way. So I mean, I'm working with schools at the moment, for example, both in New South Wales and Queensland, where there's a principal and an executive team who are doing this really strongly. They understand it's important to have a theoretical basis.

Rob: 8:46

As a principal and executive team who are doing this really strongly, they understand it's important to have a theoretical basis for what they're doing because that helps teachers connect one idea to another.

Rob: 8:55

We're doing this, okay, because we can't make kids do this, but we can very much influence them, okay, by our enthusiasm, for example. Okay, so this is how we do things, and then that culture shifts. You know, culture is, you know, how things are done around here, really not what necessarily the boss says we're doing here, but what the teachers say we're doing here and in these schools that I'm thinking of, you go and talk to anybody teaching staff and they'll tell you very clearly. This is what we're about here. We're about nurturing good relationships with kids. We're about using the best research ideas we can find, being flexible to try other ideas when we find a student it's not working with, so that to be a, it seems to me to develop from you know, a teacher into a really good leader. You have to be astute enough to see that that's the underlying background of success and go looking for it.

Drew: 10:04

Yeah, rather than the approach of being seen and heard. Being seen and heard I'll say that again is in front of and doesn't necessarily make you the best leader. It just is more of this looks like you actually look like a follower than actually having a moral purpose or moral and uh integrity. And that, and you've circled back to, is what are we doing this for? And you keep coming back to that question why are we doing this for? To benefit our students, to benefit the kids in, in, in the work that we're trying to do? It keeps circling back to that moral purpose. Why are we doing this for?

Rob: 10:48

Yeah, and like it's very important to be responsive to your staff, but not necessarily reactive. I mean, one of the schools I became the principal of had a discipline program in place, which is quite common, and basically students who misbehaved were sent to a responsible thinking classroom and filled in bits of paper and all those kinds of things and the complaint was it wasn't working because those kids were still going back in the class and misbehaving. And I'd been there at the school hearing all this, you know, talking about it a lot and trying to work it out with people, and one of the quietest teachers in the school, very, very impressive person. Kids adored him, okay, but he didn't say much. Okay, he just came and laid a piece of paper on my desk one morning. It was just a piece of research he'd done as to who, how many teachers were sending students to this responsible thing in classroom compared to those who just managed the students themselves. So 64% of the teachers never said the students were responsible for the thing in classroom. Another 10, 10 or 12 percent really did.

Rob: 12:06

So that all this chatter about. You know, we've got to toughen up the responsible thinking classroom and we've got to be tougher on kids and we need to suspend more students and stuff, like we're coming from a minority of teachers who are struggling, and you know, the teacher and the group of teachers that he represented were saying they're struggling because of the way they're doing things. Okay, so we can't bring in an outside solution. The solution is inside them. Begin to do something differently. Because if the kids are treating you badly, well, you've got two choices as a teacher you blame the kids or you think, hmm, what am I doing? And the sensible approach is to stop and go. What am I doing?

Drew: 12:56

That can be threatening, though, for people in terms of what am I doing? It's sometimes a safer place to go and do the blame cycle of all external. Everything else is the reason why this is occurring. In terms of your mentoring, coaching, would there be any advice for principals or leaders who are currently in that situation, which I hate to say, maybe they could be currently in right now Any advice in terms of if they are seeing that in the staff room or those things? What advice or tips would you give? Or would you just say long-term solution is go to an art of leadership course. Develop those skills.

Rob: 13:48

And some. You know, one of the interesting things we found in the art of leadership is that's the solution that some principals come up with. So they send everybody on their staff, even people who are just aspiring leaders, to the art of leadership, but they don't go themselves right because they want everybody else to change but they don't go themselves right because they want everybody else to change but they don't think they need to change. And that's again a pretty key idea for leadership. You know, we go back to the Gandhi thing If you want the people around you to change something, change something yourself, because if you stay the same, it locks the whole thing up. I was just about to say something before we went there. There was an extension of what we were already saying.

Drew: 14:32

You were discussing around the loud teacher or the teacher that's causing, and you talked about the study of having the. I'm not sure if it's a reflect. It was a reflective room and also how the statistics showed really what the conclusion was. Relationships are the most important thing that matters, so if you wanted to go further into that, absolutely.

Rob: 15:04

Well, and I guess this is one of the themes of my books and the art of leadership that if and all the research says this if the critical thing between a teacher and a student is a relationship, it is the critical thing. Almost everybody agrees with that idea, without ever putting that idea into practice. But if it is the crucial thing, and then, as a teacher, you rely on your power over kids. You know being able to punish them or send them to the responsible thinking room or remove privileges for them. Or you know, you know hate, hate level systems but, um, you know change the level that they're in. You know the level of privilege that they've got in school. If you do all those things, you hurt kids. Okay, they punish the effective punishments as only effective because it's painful, right? Yeah, so, although as teachers, most of us would not say I deliberately hurt kids to try and get them to do what I want them to do, that's in fact what we're doing, right, and the more you do that, the worse your relationship, because none of us enjoy good relationships with people who intentionally cause us pain. We try to avoid those people, right, and so then, if you dig deeply you know this was this comes back to memory amygdala, and we knew that if we, if we managed to get these, enticed these kids to school and then treated them badly, they'd go again.

Rob: 16:42

Um they, they had absolute freedom and acres of stuff. The only thing that we ever found to keep them inside school fences in Bamberga that was highly effective is we got lots of their grandmas in the school. So I built a weaving place in the school like a roof and a sandpit, and invited all the grandmas to come and use it as a place to do weaving. So they were just trying to find a random tree somewhere and they loved it because they could all get together. So there would often be 20 grandmas sitting in the weaving pit. They see a young man or young woman heading for the fence, bunch up their skirts and run after them back to school. Back to school, because it's a very matriarchal society up there. But apart from that, the only tool we had was to be interesting and to be nice people. So we did those things as best we could, because if they come to school and fail, failure always feels bad. They come to school and fail and do badly, or they come and be treated badly. They're not going to come to school. Exactly the same thing occurs in a mainstream school, except, you know, mum and dad probably insist that when many of them come to school as we know there are a proportion who don't but if they come to school and they're not doing well and they've got suffering the pain of that and they're socially not fitting in very well and the teacher's not treating them very nicely and they're often getting into trouble, they might be there physically but their heads are going to be somewhere else.

Rob: 18:26

And because you know a choice theory we know is everybody has a need to be powerful, to feel significant, okay, to be, you know, successful in something that's significant. So if you can't be powerful by doing really well in school and enjoying the, the interactions and the activities, you can be successful in the classroom. You'll be powerful some other way. And you know, taunting the teacher or being the class clown or any of those things are really easy ways to be powerful, but they're disruptive for the learning. So, um, so as a as a teacher, I've got these two choices, you know like, well, I'll blame the kid because he or she is the person doing the disrupting right. So somebody needs to do something to that kid to stop them, or I can can go okay.

Rob: 19:25

So John and Mary Ellen is not engaged. What is it I can do to engage them? They're not being successful, so what can we do to try to help them to be more successful? And difficult sometimes, especially in high schools, schools which have a very competitive ethos often. But even in the upper levels of primary school, where you know the focus on individual achievement tends to be drifting towards what teachers think high schools want, which is a more competitive environment. Even then then we're not careful, we build that in, and so then we have well, the powerful kids, the successful kids, and the not powerful kids, and it's easy to see where the trouble comes from.

Drew: 20:15

We don't get lots of behavioral issues from our kids who feel, really feel powerful because they're successful and they're achieving true, absolute and the the harder uh way is to actually get to know the child and in that circumstance you said is to uh. The easy route is to blame the child and then just dismissive. That's an easy short term but in terms of the long-term implications, that child will no longer feel a failure and they will inevitably not achieve their success, not achieve their potential, all of those things. If you're a principal or educational leader looking to enhance your skills, this is the place for you. This season, we'll be showcasing a wide range of professional learning experiences designed with your success in mind. We'll continue to focus on the values of wellbeing, leadership, growth, as well as optimising school operations. Curious to learn more about our offerings, you'll find our full catalogue on our website at wwwnswppaorgau forward slash catalogue. Or you can easily book your next professional learning experience at wwwnswppaorgau forward slash professional-learning-calendar-bookings. If you or your network is interested in further professional learning through the New South Wales Primary Principals Association, reach out to me directly, djanetzki@ nswppa. org. au

Drew: 1:11:12

Ending sign off: This is the place for you. This season, we'll be showcasing a wide range of professional learning experiences designed with your success in mind. We'll continue to focus on the values of wellbeing, leadership, growth, as well as optimising school operations. Curious to learn more about our offerings? You'll find our full catalogue on our website at wwwnswppaorgau forward slash catalogue, or you can easily book your next professional learning experience at wwwnswppaorgau forward slash professional-learning-calendar-bookings. If you or your network is interested in further professional learning through the New South Wales Primary Principals Association, reach out to me directly, djinecki at newsouthwalesppaorgau. I look forward to hearing from you soon.