Super Bounce

I used to wait on starting a new book until I finished the previous one. But the older I get, the more I seem to benefit from consuming 2-3 books at a time. I enjoy reading them slowly and deeply, so I can make connections between texts, my thinking, and my work.

Sometimes, you find just the right book combination to stimulate your thinking. Currently, I’m enjoying the following three texts and intersections between the content and our work as educators:

How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks

Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team by Patrick Lencioni

I Love It Here (Workbook): How Great Leaders Create Organizations Their People Never Want to Leave by Clint Pulver

My reflections across these books (which I continue to savor) have brought me to this conclusion: We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are. - Anais Ninn

Which is why our work as educators requires so much self-awareness, reflection, and self-work.

I was struck a concept from the I Love It Here Workbook where Pulver unpacks what he called the “mentor manager.” Someone who is not just in charge but who positively inspires and influences others. He explains that mentor managers can be defined by two words: standards and connection.

Standards: High expectations for behavior and performance

Connection: Empathy, recognition, quality time, and advocacy

He goes on to explain that if a leader has high expectations but low levels of connection, this leads to rebellion and resentment. When a leader has high levels of connection but low standards, this leads to entitlement. So, the most impactful leaders nurture connection and high standards simultaneously.

Normally, I would take a text like this and find it interesting and then continue on with my reading. But because I’m also reading the two other texts mentioned above, I found myself thinking about what it looks like to foster meaningful connections with others and to maintain high standards.

A strategy that I’m currently pondering is conversational looping. Brooks explains in How to Know a Person that we often mishear or misunderstand what others are saying. He also asserts that we as the speaker often think we are being more clear than we are actually being. Thus, two people can leave the same conversation with very different experiences. Looping is simply a strategy where you repeat back to the person what they have just said. Often, when it’s repeated back, this allows the person sharing to hear how it sounded and clarify what they actually meant. “So, what I hear you saying is…” But Brooks goes on to say that this can feel a bit clunky and disingenuous over the course of a 20 minute conversation. Therefore, he finds it helpful to paraphrase or explain how he heard it instead which feels more natural and still allows the individual to clarify feelings and meaning.

Example: She is something else.

Response: It sounds like she is irritating you.

Clarification: She is not irritating me. I’m slightly humored by her behavior, but I’m also concerned about what will happen if these kinds of reactions from her continue.

Brooks goes on to explain that when connecting with others in conversations, great conversationalists don’t just want to know what happened, they want to know the story of what happened and how the speaker experienced what happened. They want to know where they were seated, who was there, how the person felt, and what this has them thinking now.

This is one strategy for truly seeing others more deeply and growing high levels of connection. Beyond conversations and little moments like this, I find myself thinking about Lencioni’s book, Working Genius, where he explains that there are 6 working geniuses: wonder, invention, discernment, galvanizing, enablement, and tenacity. In short, we all have two geniuses, the work that we really enjoy and feel alive doing, two areas of competence, and then two frustrations from that list of six.

If we spend too much time outside of our working genius or too much time in our working frustrations, this can lead to dissatisfaction in the work. So, knowing our teammates well and understanding their strengths or working geniuses can allow us to leverage those strengths for the greater good. Too often, when we think of having high standards for performance, we think of what we expect of individuals rather than thinking in teams. Thinking in teams honors the humanity and unique gifts, talents, and brilliance that each team member brings to the work. Leveraging those strengths is not only good for the work itself, it’s also an energy amplifier when more members of our team are seen and celebrated for contributing in meaningful ways that align with their working geniuses.

The work of educators continues to feel more heavy and complex. Perhaps we need to stop thinking as individuals with our doors shut, heads down, just getting after the work every day. Instead, we may find the work more manageable, meaningful, and fun as I say in Legacy of Learning, if we create what Shawn Achor calls the super bounce. When we jump on the trampoline alone, we can go pretty high and do some cool tricks, but when we time our trampoline bounce just right alongside others, we can catapult ourselves to new heights without exerting more energy.

As we bring 2023 to a close, many of us will be focused on our own resolutions and that’s wonderful. But I have to wonder if the way to truly create a new reality inside and outside of our schools is to start thinking about how we are going to grow and learn together.

Less bounce. More super bounce.