Mission Command Meets Education: Adaptive Leadership Techniques

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That leads to a lot of inefficiency and it can end up costing you your entire team. If you want to build better organizations, you've got to be intentional in how you invest in developing your leaders. That's especially true in the K through 12 space, where you have entire organizations that are running lean and are often Overworked and underpaid when it comes to leadership development in that space.

, but this conversation will [: 00:01:00

Previously, he served as the district administrator for the Gale Ettrick Trempealeau School District, where he also filled the roles of business manager and director of special education. He was a middle school and high school principal and high school science teacher. Dr. Engel earned a PhD in educational leadership and policy analysis at UW Madison, where he wrote his dissertation on inclusion in special education.

He also serves his community as an active member of the Wisconsin Army National Guard. He's currently a lieutenant colonel in the medical services corps and is the deputy commander of For the 40, 426 regional training Institute in Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. Woo. That's a mouthful. Aaron, welcome to the show.

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[00:01:58] Dr. Jim: I'm pumped to have this [00:02:00] discussion and I think we're going to cover a lot of ground and we're taking a little bit of a different approach in this conversation where we're focusing on the people skill development of leadership. And building leadership and strength, but before we dive into that conversation, I think it's going to be helpful for you to share with the listeners a little bit more about your career trajectory and also the landscape of the district that you're in right now, because that's going to help set the tone for the discussion that we're going to have.

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[00:02:53] Dr. Jim: Really interesting overview of your career. One of the things that I'm curious about is building out a [00:03:00] leadership profile. You mentioned that you've had a lot of leadership training and development throughout your career.

And I'd imagine part of through your military career that you've had in leadership training and development there. But one of the things that I'm curious about is that what works in a military setting, which can tend to be more command and control, doesn't necessarily work in the private sector and doesn't necessarily work in the K 12 space either.

So tell us a little bit more about how you've leveraged all of your different leadership experiences To build a cohesive leadership strategy.

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One of the experiences that I've had as a medical service corps officer is I'm not the subject matter expert of the [00:04:00] soldiers I leave. I lead soldiers who are doctors, dentists, nurses, medics, and I have none of that training. I'm not even certified to put a bandaid on, frankly, in the military.

And yet it's my job to lead them and ensure that. They are experts in their field and able to meet the demands of the mission. And what that means is, I have to learn about their expertise. I have to bring out the best in them and give them the tools they need to succeed. And it's translated to the educational field really well.

I lead. elementary level. I never served in that capacity. I have to lead special education teachers and English teachers, and I've never done those jobs. And so that same experience I had in the military helps me in the civilian world, in public education, in leading folks who are subject matter experts in their field in places that I'm not.

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So how did you build the discipline to not jump in too quickly into areas where you didn't have any firsthand experience?

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And just because I knew better, just because I had a PhD, just because I was an officer didn't mean that I had the right answers. And those answers needed to come from the folks I was working with, the people doing the work on the ground every day. And something I've gone back to in my career that I learned in the [00:06:00] military, but I've tried to apply in public education is a concept called mission command.

And it's where you tell people what to do, but not how to do it. We can agree on the common outcomes and goals for our organization and for the mission at hand, but because I'm not the subject matter expert in the trenches doing it, I can't dictate to people how to do their job. And so my job is to create common understanding around what we're going to accomplish and lead the experts to doing that in the way they best know how.

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[00:07:04] Aaron Engel: And in a smaller school district, I was much more connected to the work, the daily boots on the ground work the, in the trenches work just by nature of the size of the organization. There were fewer layers of support, or you could call it bureaucracy in a smaller organization. And so as I transitioned from a smaller district to a larger one, it was a shift for me in thinking about how to lead.

Instead of being a leader on a daily basis, working closely with teachers and principals, I had to be a leader of leaders. And so trying to mentor, trying to coach others to be the best they could be so that they could lead our teachers and our students every day. In the classrooms.

And so that was a real shift for me and thinking about how to. create a system of support for our principals, for our teachers, as opposed to being that support for them.

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One is to emphasize in the area of instructional excellence. And the other is to build leadership capability from a people skills perspective across your district. Now. You can do both. When you look at your first entry into this district, how did you decide? What you were going to focus on and why did you decide to decide that you were going to focus in one particular area versus another?

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And for me and understanding that the principalship is the key leverage point in our school districts. really helped me focus my work here in a larger school district. And so while we have lots of layers of support all of it is ultimately focused on building our principal's capacity and providing the support that they need to be successful every day.

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[00:09:44] Aaron Engel: Yeah. In our school district here in La Crosse, when I came one of the things I discovered is we had more of a district of schools as opposed to a school district. And this came out of a site based philosophy that led to a lot of [00:10:00] autonomy for our principals. And as a result it also became competitive.

Principals weren't sharing good ideas. They weren't interested in our collective success. They were interested in moving their buildings forward and it came out of a good place, principles were given that freedom, freedom within fences. However, there weren't a lot of requirements either.

And these independent leaders were doing great things oftentimes in areas, but it wasn't consistent and we couldn't be certain that every time a principal got to a building, we'd get great outcomes in every place. And that inconsistency was something that we wanted to And so by focusing on our principals, by creating that mission alignment by coaching and mentoring our principals it would allow them to come together as a cohesive team for the benefit of all of our students.

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I'm trying to understand the root reasons why. Each of these different buildings operated independently versus more of a cohesive unit.

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And then there was other schools that had turnover consistently over a few years. And what there was missing was a layer of support for our principals to come together around common ideas, around the mission that the school district had, around the same systems of support that we knew were effective in our schools.

endent site based management [: 00:12:00

[00:12:12] Dr. Jim: Thanks for mapping out what you observed.

I'd imagine the folks that had struggling buildings would be more apt to respond to change and be in favor of it. How did you get around the resistance that you might have encountered in those more established buildings that didn't have any quote unquote problems per se and yet entrenched leadership who were used to doing things one way?

How did you get around that resistance? Thanks.

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And so these principles, I think, were in a tough spot in a way, they'd gone from site based management where they were able to make their staff happy on a regular basis and still get good student outcomes. But now there's this district mandate to do something different and it really involved first, setting some new expectations at the district level.

And demonstrating that they were rooted in best practice and really high reliable strategies. And then also developing buy in for our principals by showing them that if we put in place these systems, we can really support you to the best of our ability. And so creating new expectations.

But also developing buy in from those principals. Cause once again, they work independently from oversight on a daily basis. And so if they don't believe it, it's not going to happen.

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Because that would be important too, because you're only have so many hours in a day. So what was your process for. Mapping out what are the most important things that we're going to focus on in this effort to shift how the district operates.

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And it wasn't an overnight process. We're talking two, three years as we come out of the pandemic to really define what this high reliability strategy looks like, what these best practices are. And concurrently, we were also building buy in with our principals. And with a little bit of turnover of some of our veterans and some folks who are maybe a little [00:15:00] more open, we were able to create more consistency and meeting more frequently with our principals to come together.

And it started by collaborating and sharing and this was tough at first because there wasn't a culture of vulnerability amongst our principals because they had historically been competitive. So to move to a collaborative model was certainly a challenge. But through some great leadership and some coaching of our teams we were able to get to a point where our principals were able to reflect, ask questions, share what they had done.

And by doing that, it started to break down some walls and make folks a little more open to new ideas and these systems of support, these high reliability strategies that we would be able to put in place.

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[00:16:03] Aaron Engel: it was incredibly important because we cannot leave student outcomes to chance. We have to be confident that what we're doing is going to make a difference for students. And that's important for every school district, of course, but in a school district like ours, where 50 percent of our students are experiencing poverty, where 30 percent are of color and historically been marginalized, where we know that we have disproportionality in both academic and behavioral outcomes, it is crucial that we are putting in place.

The best possible strategies for our students every single day. And so that is why we needed systems alignment so that we could be certain and confident that we could tell every parent we're doing the best possible job for your kid. And not because it's good at this building or that building, but because we know this works for every student everywhere.

ing work. Okay. If we're not [: 00:17:00

You mentioned it up top. We're running lean in public education. And we really have to do better with less. And having that capacity and resilience to overcome these challenges, it's crucial that we have systems of support that we're all aligned to.

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So how did you at the educator layer? So how did you, what was your process for preparing your principals to be better supporters of your educators who are doing the frontline work? What did that look like?

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And we needed our principals to be able to lead staff through collaboration and professional development. But we also needed principals to be change managers. And the model that we've adopted is adaptive leadership. These are changes that change how people believe or change what people believe.

and change how people do their work, which is really challenging. Some key components of that were distributed leadership, ensuring that our buildings had good building leadership teams where our staff were involved in decision making and building our staff's capacity. And of course, nothing happens without good relationships.

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[00:19:01] Dr. Jim: So I want to dig in a little bit more on your point about, making sure that you have really effective relationships at the building level. Because you can. My thought is that you can focus on all the technical details of what needs to be done, but if the relationships aren't there, you're going to plateau.

So on the relationship side of leadership development, what were the things that you put into place and the habits that you helped create at the principal level that helped advance those relationships and strengthen those so that you had capacity at the educator level?

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And it can be difficult when you're trying to ask a teacher to do more when they don't feel like they have the capacity. So we always start with why. Why are we doing this? How is this good for kids? How will this help our school? Starting there, it means it involves having a high emotional quotient, high EQ, using that understanding and empathy using active listening [00:20:00] skills.

There's some basic strategies we continually reinforce with our principles that we all know we need to know, but forget about in the moment. And going back to those basics is really crucial to understanding what the challenges that our educators see in the field and ensuring that they get the resources they need to be successful, to move towards better outcomes.

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[00:20:42] Aaron Engel: Yeah, I think there were two key strategies that we put in place to support our principals for those key moments. One was coaching for continuous improvement. And we've hired some external coaches from time to time, which has helped. But we also have folks in our buildings or in our district [00:21:00] that are coaches for our principals as well.

And they have somebody that can rely on to call when they need assistance. And it might be our director of elementary education. It might be a fellow principal, but it's somebody that they can call when they're having that difficult moment. They're thinking through their strategies and maybe they didn't remember the, quite the right one.

And then the second really crucial strategy is that collaboration that I talked about before. Our principals meet weekly to talk through what's going on in their buildings. It allows them to calibrate around those things. System expectations that we have. It allows them to share their best practices.

It allows them to problem solve on something that they're working on right now. And so coaching and collaboration have been really crucial for building our principles, capacity for those in the moment, tough conversations to move folks forward.

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[00:22:20] Aaron Engel: Yeah, hiring is tough everywhere, even amongst our top leadership in our school districts. We used to see a hundred applicants for things. We're seeing 10, 15 applicants for principal jobs now. And so first we try and grow our own and we mentor good leaders. If you're working in our organization, Every day is an interview, and we get an opportunity to see you, develop you, mentor you, and so that's where it starts with us.

We're trying to build good leaders within our organization so that we've got a good pipeline and pool when openings become available. And then we're looking for the same things everyone else is looking for, integrity, trust, resilience, those are sorts of things, that we're looking for evidence of.

also looking for things like [: 00:23:00

It might be they're a coach already in their building doing instructional coaching or behavioral coaching. It could be they're a mentor teacher to others. They might take on student teachers on a regular basis. So demonstrating those leadership skills and ability to bring others along on difficult change management journeys at a lower level is indicators of their success at a higher level.

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[00:24:07] Aaron Engel: Yeah. So once we've hired a great candidate, we want to support them to the greatest extent possible. And so we start with a robust onboarding. I think it's three days of. Of time over the summer to really understand the systems of support. We have here in the school district, our common expectations and the resources that they have available to them.

And then we provide a mentor that's not in their kind of evaluation change. Some of they can talk to honestly and vulnerably about the challenges that they're having. And somebody to go to for those tough conversations to remember the thing they forgot. And then the ongoing coaching from a leader in our organization to ensure that they've got mentoring on a monthly basis, coaching on a weekly basis.

district. But that said, the [: 00:25:00

They're going to go on to become directors of curriculum and instruction. They're going to become superintendents. And so we know that this isn't a one and done process. And we're going to have folks that are here for 30 years. It could be. And if that's the right fit for them, that's great. But if we're doing our job they're going to take new roles in our organization.

They're going to go off to other places and continue to make a bigger impact in public education.

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Yeah. And educator empowerment through the principles. What are the things that you've put in place as a district to make it easier to do both of those things ?

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We want to make sure that we're calibrating our principles about what those expectations are. That means defining what the expectations are and then giving tights and looses, we need everyone to be perfectly aligned on this and you've got freedom to maneuver over here to implement it, how you like, and really trying to focus on that mission command, what not how.

And so that's really important. And then another key strategy that really leads to a lot of principal buy in my opinion, is coordinating our resources for their benefit. We need to show up, we need to listen to what principals need, we need to listen to what our teachers need, and really learn about what that is that, that they need to do their job the best that they can.

resources over there so that [: 00:27:00

[00:27:14] Dr. Jim: So it's interesting that you mention that point about reallocating resources towards districts that might be in greater need due to the economic circumstances that they face. Have you run into situations within your district where a district that isn't resourced? Poor gets salty about having not having the things that they need.

And then they actually see another district that is resource poor getting that support. How have you navigated those situations when they've come up?

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Because we have a culture of vulnerability because we ask questions and can learn folks understand, principal might say I understand why you need that resource right now. And if the situation was reversed, they have empathy and understand I know that I would be asking for that resource and would probably expect to receive it.

And so it's difficult, and we certainly. have some introspection and some reflection but because we have that good shared collaborative culture we're able to navigate those difficulties and ensure that, we can support each other, even if it doesn't go our way. This time we know that when we need it, we'll be able to get that resource too.

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[00:29:17] Aaron Engel: Yeah. For me, it's really about focusing on principles and they're the key leverage point that really moves the needle. For schools and for our students. And I like to think about doing that by building instructional leadership, all the components that are involved there and ensuring that they're adept at change management, because it can be really tough moving the needle when you're moving people's cheese and we support our principals through coaching and that collaboration.

litating that collaboration, [: 00:30:00

[00:30:07] Dr. Jim: Really good stuff, Aaron. I appreciate you hanging out. If people want to continue the conversation with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

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[00:30:20] Dr. Jim: I appreciate you hanging out with us. I think this conversation is going to be really useful for a lot of folks that are going to be that are going to be listening in. I think when I think about the conversation that we had, there's a couple of things that I want to call out as best practices.

practices when you're looking at impacting this sort of cultural change that you're describing. And the first element is understanding where your starting point is. There's a saying in Six Sigma that says that a structured repeatable process is necessary so you can reduce variability and identify defect.

your story, you described a [: 00:31:00

And I think that was an important. First step. If other districts are looking at doing any sort of transformation, they first need to look at a level of standardization that allows you that allows them to identify the key areas that they want to focus on. The other piece of that puzzle that you described is the emphasis on the leadership piece.

l, helped you identify where [: 00:32:00

So you need to pick. Pick the high impact elements that you can move forward on. The third thing that stood out about this conversation was that oftentimes when you hear about building structure or building systems, it can create an environment that is overly rigid. And it sounds like one of the key things that you took in their account.

Was still leaving room for autonomy and flexibility at the district, at the school level. So that was a, an important factor in keeping the buildings as agile as possible so that they can pivot as they need it. So these were all important things that stood out to me in the conversation. And I hope the listeners walk away with those insights as well.

For those of you who have been listening to this conversation, we appreciate you hanging out with us. If you like the discussion, make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. If you haven't already done so make sure you join our community. You can find that at www. engagerocket. co slash HR impact.

And then join [: 00:33:00