Readers Write... (The Legacy of a Great Coach)

In response to the 7/20/2011 post, “The Legacy of a Great Coach,” readers write:

1. Thanks for sharing. I am at T-CASE, today. He will be missed, but what a legacy of influence.

2. That is awesome! Made me cry.

SC Response

I agree and me too.

Harlan understood principal coaching. He had a rule for our relationship. At least twice a week he would remind me, “Son, this is your school, not mine. I’m going to give you my best advice for a given situation. Use it to inform your decision. I’ll adapt my advice based on what you decide.”

That is the same mindset I now use when I’m working with school leaders.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

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The Legacy of a Great Coach

September 1996. I was in my first month of being a principal. I had just finished doing my morning class observations and was heading back to my office when I saw an older gentleman sitting at the secretary’s desk. Seeing me, she said, “Mr. Cain, this is Mr. Yetter and he would like a minute or two.”

Being trapped and without an obvious escape route, I asked him into my office and said, “What can I do for you, Mr. Yetter.”

He said, “Sean, it’s what I’m going to do for you. I live right around the corner and I was read that this school just got a new principal. You see, I’m a retired principal and I figure I can work for you or I can work for my wife. You pay better.”

I asked, “What exactly are you going to do for me?”

To which he replied, “Your secretary told me you have a substitute filling your 9^th grade reading slot. I’m your new reading teacher.”

“Are you any good?”

“Not really, but I’m better than the sub. But that’s not why you are going to hire me.”

“Then why am I going to hire you?”

“I was a Principal for 24 years in two different states. I’ve seen a lot. What I’m going to do is sit in the back of every one of your staff meetings. I’m going to make sure that the back row pays attention. But most importantly, after you say anything, if you are on the right track I’ll nod my head ‘Yes.’ I’ll nod my head ‘No’ if you screw up.”

I hired him on the spot. And he was true to his word. He would nod yes or no after everything I said. Which made me a better and more collaborative leader. Get a “No” from your coach and it is amazing how fast you want and need team input on an issue. And also true to his word, he taught his reading classes better than the sub, but not by much. Which is why I made him a testing coordinator the next year. When I moved to central office (the power of good coaching), I gave Mr. Yetter a flexible schedule and had him float to all of my campuses, mentoring Principal and Assistant Principals.

Mr. Yetter was an inspiration to our little band of urban educators. He was a high school drop out who made good. He earned his G.E.D. in the military. When he was discharged, he went to college to become a teacher and later a principal. Then he was an inclusion principal, long before anyone considered the concept. He would admit that he didn’t educate his special kids well, but would tell me, “It would have been just plain wrong to let those kids say at home.”

That simple understanding that wrong by omission is still wrong, though inconvenient, has served me well.

Earlier this week, at age 78, Russell Harlan Yetter (Harlan to his friends) passed away. His funeral is today. I will not be able to attend. Instead, I’ll be coaching a group of Principals, Assistant Principals and Teachers in a different city. That is how I will honor his legacy. But I will always miss my friend.

A Reader Writes... (Advice for the First Year Principal - Part 4)

In response to the post, “Advice for the First Year Principal,” a reader writes:

“SC, if it wasn’t for you I would not have made it though my first year. I don’t say that lightly, there were other first year principals in my district that didn’t make it. Why doesn’t our district hire you to coach all of our first year principals? Don’t they care?

To all the new principals out there, get LYS to your campus, even if you have to pay for it out of your own budget like I did. The stakes are too high to just guess all the time.”

SC Response
Thanks, for the high praise. It’s not the districts don’t care. I’ve yet to come across a district that wants principals to fail. Principals are like fighter pilots, very expensive and hard to replace assets. But I do recognize that many districts do a poor job of new employee induction in general and new principal induction in particular. It has been my observation that there are three common reasons why this happens.

1. Money and time. It takes both to organize and operate a meaningful induction program. Unfortunately, I haven’t found many school districts that are flush with cash and have nothing to do during the day.

2. A faulty memory. Part of the human condition is that we minimize or forget hardship and remember the good times and experiences. If this wasn’t the case, we could never get past tragedy. But a by-product of this is by the time you are in a position to support a first year principal, you have forgotten the toll it actually took on you. The highs you remember (of which there are a lot) the lows you forget (which at the time felt devastating). When you don’t remember things being that tough, in a world of limited resources, induction programs go from being an “A” priority to a “B” priority.

3. An outdated experience base. Many of us in mentoring and development roles today, earned our experience during times of less rigorous accountability. We forget that during our first year the stakes were lower. We actually had the luxury of time (relatively speaking) to learn our craft. Therefore, what I might view as a luxury, based on my experience base, is now a necessity.

If your district has an induction program, embrace it. If it doesn’t, find somebody you can trust and talk to them a lot. Just the process of stating a problem out loud often makes it less ambiguous and easier to solve. During my first year as a principal I was very fortunate I had the advice and council of an internal coach (Dr. Richard Griffin) and external coach (Wayne Schaper) and a coach that I hired from my own budget (Harlan Yetter). Would I have survived without them? Probably. Would my career trajectory been as steep? Absolutely not. My coaches made me and my school successful. Since then, I have been conscious of the need to pay that forward. It is unfortunate that many in our field view the need for coaching as a sign of weakness (ironic, since we are supposed to be focused on continuous learning and improvement). Because the more potential you have, the more valuable timely coaching becomes.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

A Reader Writes... (Brezina Coaches)

In response to the post, “Brezina Coaches,” a reader writes:

“It is hard to grow in any capacity without coaching. We all grow as leaders by reading this blog, but our organizations need more than this blog, they need personal coaches. This is where Lead Your School comes in. Lead Your School can provide the honest coaching your organization needs to grow. And no, I am not an employee. I am a real leader in a real school.

SC hits on another point. Coaching and teaching often points out inadequacies. This is not always a comfortable process. I have received some real honest feedback from E. Don Brown that was not comfortable to receive at the time, but I am a better leader now than I was even just 6 months ago.

SC is a better leader now, I have seen him grow. But I bet you some of the coaching he has received from Brown and Brezina has not always felt good. The point is we all need coaches, even our organizations, just to make sure we face our inadequacies. Even though it is not fun.”

SC Response
I believe that exceptional performers search for answers both internally and externally. If you are not reflective, your ability to improve will be greatly limited. And if you don’t have an objective person, that you trust, standing in your blind spot, your ability to improve will be greatly limited.

As the writer points out, every coaching interaction is not a “feel good" situation. This is becuase an effective coaching relationship requires a great deal honesty and significant give and take. As such I believe that there are two critical elements in selecting a coach.

1 - The coach should not be your supervisor. A truly honest coaching dialogue requires the sharing of questions and weaknesses. Your supervisor may mentor and support you, but providing him or her with a running list of your inadequacies is rarely a good career move. I am a product of external coaching. If not for Wayne Schaper and Harlan Yetter, I may not have survived my first year as a principal. Instead, my first year was so successful that it fast tracked me for promotions (not my goal, but a nice fringe benefit). In fact, I believe you should have the ability to fire your coach. If your coach isn’t making you more effective, get another one that does. Just try firing your boss.

2 - Select a coach that you trust and has experiences that will be beneficial to you. If you don’t trust your coach, then why are you wasting your time? And beware of the coach that has little practical experience. I once had “coach” from a service center come to advise me on a personnel issue. The advice seemed good and then I asked an innocent, yet crucial question. I said, “How did this work for you on your campus?” The response was, “Oh, I was never a principal.” After she left, I called Harlan Yetter. His advice was similar, but his actual prior leadership experience gave me the confidence to act.

If you are a supervisor, either provide an external coach for your key people, or give them the budget to get their own. When Brezina promoted me, I realized that much of my success was the result of the coaching I received. As such, one of the first things I did was hire Wayne Schaper to coach my principals as he coached me. There were just three rules. 1 – He would meet with each of my principals at least once a month. 2 – The content of those meetings would be confidential between him and the principal. 3 – A principal could replace Wayne with a coach of their choosing. Wayne never shared one conversation with me and not one principal replaced him.

I often sum up the power of a coach this way, “You can fool your mama, you can buffalo your boss, but you can’t B.S. your coach.” Dr. Mike Laird sums it up this way, “Your boss provides directives; your coach provides suggestions.”

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

A Reader Writes... (Brown Wisdom)

In response to the comments relating to, “Brown’s Wisdom,” a reader writes:

“Let's not fool ourselves; most principals are NOT the main advocates for students even though they should be. In most cases they are caught up in political mumbo jumbo, employee issues, and district office garbage that consumes most of their advocacy time. I am sure glad Sean can say it like it is and refocus the leaders who really want to be advocates.”

SC Response
I do agree that most principals are not the main advocate for students, which is why the system is generally designed for adult comfort. If the person who occupies the advocate’s role does not engage, that is the logical result. However, I think the reasons for not embracing the role are varied. Here are just a couple (feel free to share others):

1. There are bad principals that shouldn’t have received their job. Just like there are bad teachers, bad superintendents and so on. Some people just aren’t cut out for the job, even though they interviewed well. These principals are the "Unwilling and Unable."

2. There are some principals have been beaten down to the point that all they know to do is hunker down and go with the flow. These principals are the "Injured."

3. There are some principals that just don’t know that they should put students in front of adults. These principals are the "Uninformed."

4. There are some principals that haven’t had the right mix of mentors to help them develop their ideas and professional character. These principals are the "Unlucky."

I may be the luckiest school leader ever, my personal list of mentors includes: Dr. Richard Hooker (the early godfather of Texas school finance); Bob Brezina (who LYS readers know); Wayne Schaper Sr. (the godfather of Spring Branch ISD, TASSP and UIL); Fred Richardson (TASSP president); Harlan Yetter (Principal); E. Don Brown (who LYS Readers know) and Dr. Shirley Neeley (Commissioner, Texas Education Agency). If I don’t do right, there is a long line of people who are still more than willing to remind me why we really do this job.

5. There are some principals who are working on a figurative island, who have no one to bounce ideas off of and shore themselves up with. These principals are the "Isolated."

Again, I can not be any luckier. The following are just a few of the active Principals that I get to have serious conversations with, more than once each month: John Montelongo (HS Principal); Justin Marchel (MS Principal); Leslie Thomas (ES Principal); Barbara Fine (ES Principal); Jerry Gibson (HS Principal); Mike Seabolt (HS Principal); and Lesa Cain (ES Principal). That’s a network of a lot of powerful brains that are linked for one purpose, their students outperforming your students.

I was taught early in my career (and didn’t understand until much later) that the two most important people in the system are the Superintendent and the building Principal. The organization focuses on the Superintendent (and central office) because he or she is the source of power. The organization overlooks the Principal (and the campus), even though he or she is the source of service.

My goal (or agenda) is to shift the focus of the organization from the Superintendent and central office to the Principal and the campus. This means that the Unwilling and Unable Principal will no longer have a place to hide. And that every other Principal and campus leader will have at least one external source of support as they fight the good fight. One person is a lonely voice, two people are the genesis of a team.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...