Empowering Through Trust: Creating a High-Performing School District

[: 00:00:00

And when we say double down on investing in leaders, it doesn't mean getting those leaders more effective at task management. It means investing resources into making them more effective as people connectors, like the private sector. There's a steady stream of evidence that seems to indicate that at least a portion of the educator population is leaving the field because they don't feel supported or connected to leadership.

s worked in public education [: 00:01:00

Dr. Katie has also served as an adjunct professor for the doctoral program at Cardinal Stritch University. Mike, welcome to the show.

[: 00:01:27

[00:01:29] Dr. Jim: Yeah. I'm looking forward to this conversation. I'm generally pretty excited to chat with folks and really dig into the leadership space in these conversations. So I'm pumped to have you on. I think one of the things that is a first order of business is for us for you to share with the audience, some of the things that you feel are important that wasn't included in your bio. So floor is yours and fill in some of the gaps for us.

[: 00:01:52

At one point I was a teacher And even an associate principal at Pewaukee High School. Pewaukee High School is nestled here lakeside along Pewaukee Lake in Waukesha County. We are positioned in between a number of real high performing Suburban school systems just outside of Milwaukee for those who aren't familiar with where we're located.

We serve: 3000

So people who visit our district would come up the hill that beautifully [00:03:00] overlooks Pewaukee Lake, and you have a 4K through 2 building right next door to our Three through five building and then a seven a six through eight building connected directly with their high school. So that provides us some really unique opportunities to build community whether it be with our students and our parents or with our staff as well.

So we are a system that has enjoyed a real strong performance very strong community support. And so I'm looking forward to talking more about our organization today

[: 00:03:29

[00:03:55] Mike Cady: Yeah, it's a great question because it leads to the concept of having examples, [00:04:00] mentors, role models that you learn from. One of the best decisions I ever made was accepting a teaching position at Pewaukee High School back in 1997. The principal at the time, a man by the name of Marty Van Hooley, Was the high school principal and I recall at the time a rare experience in education is that I actually had two job offers to teach both at Pewaukee and at another neighboring district that was also high quality, but the leader was the reason I chose the system.

So I was really engaged and impressed by that principal Learned a lot from him as a teacher on his staff. And after leaving for a year for my first administrative position, had the opportunity to come back and be his associate principal. And so getting to learn side by side with who I still consider to be the best high school principal I've ever seen.

had a desire to come back to [: 00:05:00

I always knew I wanted my kids to go here because I knew I knew what a special place it was. And I knew the kinds of staff and leaders that were working in this district. So having the experience in this kind of an organization that is very student focused, student centered but that has the kind of leadership in place that I think is necessary to sustain success for an organization was really important.

[: 00:05:24

[00:05:37] Mike Cady: Yeah, I think of a couple of things. One, I was also head coach of a couple of athletic teams and I really believe. That experience is, has a lot of similarities to organizational leadership. And when you're an athletics coach, I coached girls swimming and wrestling and you're trying to build a program.

ve culture. among a group of [: 00:06:00

So it always made sense to me. I wanted to have options in the future. And the coursework related to organizational. Change in leadership was something that I found really interesting and then getting to see the building leadership that I was exposed to every day was really important.

As a district just that already commitment to continuous improvement and getting better that was in place through approaches like strategic planning that brought in the voice of many stakeholders was something that resonated with me as well.

[: 00:06:43

[00:07:04] Mike Cady: so I, I bring an interesting perspective because of my history in the system the superintendent that served before me. She was here for 16 years. Really dynamic, strong leader who had a lot of great systems in place. I was able to work with her both when I was in my role at the high school, but then I was gone for 8 years of serving at another high school before I came back.

And then then I was hired and was one of her senior leaders as chief academic officer. So I had five years really working side by side. And so the direction of the district was something I was already very invested in. We were really committed to innovation, continuous improvement and always spoke about this being a people first organization.

y invested in. And we're the [: 00:08:00

So something we're very invested in, but we always talk about people first in that culture, the old adage culture eat strategy for breakfast. But if you put those 2 things together, that's really how you sustain improvement. So I had that whole kind of mindset coming in. So part of my.

As I've literally just moved across the hall and changed offices my charge was to continue the forward momentum of this district. We wanted to continue be on that upward trajectory of improvement innovation to continue to utilize. Baldrige Excellence Framework to continue to utilize strategic planning as tools for advancing our mission and our vision.

day and age with increase in [: 00:09:00

that's been put in place for school systems, that we had to be really good about telling our story publicly to garner as much support as we can. Really moving to a marketing communications coordinator position in the district to really be thoughtful about what our brand is and how we communicate the stories that tell who we are to our community was an example of something that was a little bit of a shift in focus as I assumed this role.

[: 00:09:26

So if you encountered resistance from the board in those conversations, what was your process to get them bought in on the necessity of a rebrand as part of an a broader strategy that you're trying to push forward?

[: 00:09:57

So that was a key strategy in that plan. And what we just, we really just talked about how important it is that we tell our story, because someone's going to tell it. And we think we're the best, but we should be the ones that are advancing that conversation. We know that in, in one of the things that like in your opener that you referenced was the workforce.

Yeah. People want to be associated with systems of quality. And we need to present what we know is true that we're a high quality organization and we need to present that story publicly so that people are aware. We know that effort has been a real positive on our behalf in recruiting and retaining a really high quality staff.

and Ed, B R A N D, capital E [: 00:11:00

And we're very conscious about making sure that we're sharing our stories, whether it's through social media, whether it's through our print. Publications to really share the exciting good work that's happening with kids on our campus. So we found that to be really positive as well as why this is a great place to work.

14 of the last 15 years we've been identified as a top workplace. And that's something that's really important because our employees are the ones that give us that designation. Those things we want to share the good news about that. And that helps us with that recruitment and retention piece.

[: 00:11:41

[00:12:00] When you look at that. Trajectory that you had. You had somebody that was a strong mentor of yours. You got to build your leadership capability under that person. How did those lessons that you learned at that time show up in your role today as a leader of the district? What were the things that you brought over?

That You feel have been really impactful and building the kind of district that people want to stick around and

[: 00:12:28

Yeah. It goes to your hiring practices, right? Who are you bringing in? Do they fit what you're looking for your system? So do you have a good approach to recruitment? And then the hiring process itself is your first opportunity to begin building culture with the people that you're [00:13:00] eventually going to bring into your organization.

So through that process, what kind of messages are you sending? How are you representing yourself? Whether it's the way you treat people that come in for interviews, the kinds of things that you emphasize and the people that you ultimately select and recommend in your organization. And then as soon as you select those people, how are you onboarding them in a way that's productive?

So you're setting them up to, to be successful. And so it goes to leadership training. It goes to the kinds of common practices and whether it be from a skill set or. Dispositions that we have and want to see emphasized by by our leaders. And then in my case, some things to your question that I think are really lasted with me is the impact you can have on someone when you express confidence in them, you talked about being tapped and when someone you respect suggest to you that you might be good at this.

myself as the opposite of a [: 00:14:00

And I certainly need to be aware of what's happening. They're put in a position to, to be successful and to have impact. And I have consistently found that when you empower people and you support them, they're that they generally meet or exceed expectations. And I had that experience.

I remember being the associate principal at the high school and our principal empowered me to recruit a team of teachers to take them to a national conference and develop an improvement plan for our school that. That was something that I think had lasting impact on my growth as a leader to know that I had that level of trust, because that could have very easily been him.

He could have told me to mind the store while he took this group but instead he wanted to grow me. So he put me in a position to grow and we went to that conference and brought back a plan that was implemented and it had an impact on our school. So that kind of experience is something that I try to replicate with people that I work with.

[: 00:14:57

Tell us a little bit more about how that actually shows up in your hiring process and your onboarding process when you're trying to cultivate. leaders coming into your organization or leadership capability coming into the organization and extending that in the onboarding process. What does that look like in practical terms so that other folks that are listening that want to build a leader full organization have some signposts that they can apply to their own organizations.

[: 00:15:38

So if you're hiring some new, someone [00:16:00] new and you're bringing them in you're sharing those kinds of things. Like these are values that we have. This is how we want to operate as a group of leaders. And then one of the ways, for example, that you build trust is you extend trust. We just hired a principal at one of our elementary schools.

There's a number of positions to hire. And I had informed my outgoing principal right away that, we're going to hold off on any hiring until the new principal's in place because the new principal needs to be empowered to bring on the people that they feel best fits their vision. So I hired this person.

I extend trust and support. And so that's, what's been happening and it's no disrespect to the person that's leaving, but if you're going to be the, You're going to be the one running the show the next year. I think I'm trying to think of the football coach might've been Bill Parcells. He said when he, I think he was both GM and coach, he said, if you're expected to cook dinner, you ought to be able to shop for the groceries.

impressed by this person. We [: 00:17:00

Especially when we're bringing on leaders, we expose them to multiple groups, multiple situations to make sure we're making a good decision. Because we hope to bring in a principal that stays for a long time, and we don't do those real frequently. So it's super important that we make the right choice.

And then how can I start right away by sending a message to that person that you're going to be empowered. You're going to be trusted. But at the same time, we're, right alongside and to support that person to be successful. So that's an example hopefully that helps illustrate what I'm talking about.

[: 00:17:39

I wanna. I want to dig a little bit deeper on something that you mentioned. You mentioned in order to build trust within an organization, you need to extend trust. And I agree with you on that on that point. And that makes sense from a leader to leader level. One of the things that I'm curious about, and especially in the context of this conversation where we're talking [00:18:00] about what can we do to better retain our people and especially our educators within the staff.

Give me a sense for some of the things that your principles and your building leaders are doing from a day to day perspective that demonstrates that extension of trust that actually impacts the frontline employees or frontline educators that you feel the most. Are habits that should be embedded at every district so that you're getting more of that trustful organization what's your line of sight into some of those best practices that you've seen work well on that front?

[: 00:18:36

building whether it be absolutely with our staff, can be with parents, can be with students. Certainly as well, all those layers, that's so important and, there's no shortcut to that. Yeah, we talk about culture is the product of a thousand conversations, right?

e in those engagements. For, [: 00:19:00

Obviously the buck stops with them as the principal. There's times where they just have to be the executive in charge and make the decision. But if you want to bring a group of people along, you have to engage with your people. And it's certainly, it's an expectation that, that every school functions with a collaborative model of leadership that feedback and input is always sought.

That's who we are. We survey regularly. Our staff does, employee engagement surveys every year. We do them with parents and students as well. But we spend a lot of time looking at the comments, looking at the feedback from those surveys, and then we always bring that back to our staff. These are the things that we're hearing from you.

ings. We're very, our single [: 00:20:00

At the same time, I don't want my principals to ever feel threatened by that, right? I did, I'm doing listening sessions in all four of my buildings with no agenda whatsoever. It's hey, I'll be in this room at the end of the day. Let's come have a discussion if there's anything that's on your mind.

And my principals are comfortable with that because they know it's not about, I'm not having a listening session on their leadership. I'm just connecting with the staff so that I'm accessible so that I stay in touch and they do similar kinds of things.

[: 00:20:33

And that's not what we're really talking about here. So I'd like you to share a little bit more about the things that you're doing within the district [00:21:00] that get your building leaders, your principals your leadership team, more effective at relationship building, at having the right conversations at building the right leadership capability.

Because I don't think that's a topic that's taught spoken about enough. In terms of district effectiveness. So share with us a little bit more about how you're embedding and embedding the coaching mindset, leveling up your leaders.

[: 00:21:26

But from, talk about things like everything you do sends a message, right? It's a phrase that we use regularly. And what kind of message do you want to send? And when we engage in people in a way where they feel valued, they feel respected, they feel known. Those things are all going to be.

position standpoint, I think [: 00:22:00

The most important interaction that happens almost every day is going to be between that teacher and that student or that counselor and that child that needs support or that family. And it is the job of leadership to empower those folks to have the greatest impact that they can. So we are in service to them.

So if we bring that disposition and we have to demonstrate it, our words are meaningless if our actions don't match that at the same time, we have to maintain high expectations, right? It's we support staff, they're valued, they're known. But, we're we're fortunate that we're a system where people want to come and work for.

bligation to make sure we're [: 00:23:00

How do you coach and raise the level of performance of your people? And we know you have to use different approaches. If we have a low performer versus a mid performer versus a high performer, we know that in a lot of organizations that the people that get often missed and don't get the feedback they need are your high performers.

And those are, that's a group that we should make sure we're always tending to with that high performer. Performer group and how do we continue to challenge them make them it known to them that they are valued, but also getting as much out of them in terms of impact as we can. So those are things that, that we train everybody on.

We have specific training that the whole administrative team has around coaching conversations. Because yes, evaluation needs to happen, but we think evaluation is the least important aspect of feedback. Feedback is about improvement. And how do we have that being the most important emphasis?

That's what these [: 00:24:00

[00:24:06] Dr. Jim: That's really good perspective. One other point that I'd like you to expand on. You just mentioned that one of the things that you've built across the district is making sure that everybody across the district has a level of touch point where you're not missing high potential folks. And I think your phrase was it's often the quiet ones that are your top performers. So walk us through what you're doing from a district perspective or from a leadership perspective to make sure that high potential folks aren't falling through the cracks. Especially when they tend to be, you know, kind of keep their head down and not raise their hand.

[: 00:24:45

But Mr. Johnson needs feedback and usually your high performers, they're the ones that are hungry for the feedback. They want to know how they're doing and they're probably a high performer because they want to keep getting better. And so we have to make sure that those people are getting the attention that they need.

Part of it is building systems that make sure that happens. So if you want something to happen consistently, you got to build a system around it. And we talk about all that all the time that we have a process for that. So our evaluation model is built that way. Everybody goes through a similar process every year.

There's goal setting. There's multiple touch points throughout the year. There is a rating system actually tied to our compensation model that rewards performance for for having a strong performance in the classroom and as a staff member. There is a promotion system with salary bans and different things that are related to that consistent, sustained high performance and a major factor to get promoted in the system is leadership within our staff.

Are [: 00:26:00

So that really leans even more into how important the relationship building is and the trust is when. We do that difficult work of applying a system like that. But at the same time, you have a system that, that emphasizes and tries to reward those kinds of things.

[: 00:26:35

You're a high performing district, and there's a risk of complacency when you're in a district that's performing [00:27:00] well. So what are the things that you're doing from a leadership development and upskilling perspective to make sure that. People don't start running on autopilot and taking all this stuff for granted.

[: 00:27:11

Looking at that kind of data. Is something that always pushes us that alongside having this continuous improvement orientation that I think is really baked into the culture here of constantly improving allows us to really avoid that trap of complacency and thinking that. We've arrived or that it's good enough.

as well. The, it's a target [: 00:28:00

They tend to focus their time and energy on professional development and training of many of their work groups, but they miss the leaders in that process. Sometimes we hire leaders and think they're supposed to know what to do and to be really good at their work. And we just expect that, but we don't tend the way that we should maybe to their professional development in our system.

We really emphasize the importance of coaching for the leaders as well. I maintain an executive coach myself. I talk about how valuable that is to me. I engage in coaching leaders and other systems for our state association because I think that's, that helps make me better. And all of my leaders have access to their own coaches to improve their their performance.

uilding, engagement in state [: 00:29:00

[00:29:06] Dr. Jim: Great stuff. So I appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing your thoughts. One of the things that I think would be helpful for those who are listening to this conversation would be.

A paint by numbers approach from your perspective on what they can be doing to build a leader full organization within their district.

[: 00:29:24

What are you doing to. To support your recruitment efforts. I talked about branding earlier. It's just one thing that I think helps that. And then what's the experience that people are having when they're coming in and become part of the organization because that gets to your retention side of things.

lways having an eye to that. [: 00:30:00

I want to give them additional responsibility so that they can they can grow. One of my favorite books is good to great by Jim Collins and, the whole getting people. The right people on the bus and in the right seats on the bus is a concept that I really ascribe to.

So those are a few of the thoughts I'd have on that.

[: 00:30:30

[00:30:41] Mike Cady: Yeah, they could go to our school district website, PewaukeeSchools. org and they can easily find my contact information. I'm always happy to talk to anybody about leadership or about the great things that I feel like we're doing in our organization.

[: 00:30:54

I think it's going to [00:31:00] be a really important conversation for people to dig into when I think about the conversation that we had. There are a couple of things that stand out that I think are worth calling out. One of the things that you mentioned early on in the conversation, I feel is really powerful in terms of how you should be orienting your district.

You mentioned that leaders are the stewards of your culture and. If you're looking at building a leadership, full organization or a leader, full organization, that should be one of the North stars that you apply within any district, and it needs to show up at all stages of the employee life cycle that should define how you're selecting talent that should define how you're onboarding talent, and that should define how you're developing talent.

I think if you're looking at [: 00:32:00

Those are some of the things that you should be focused on because the lesson is really simple. People will join organizations and they'll leave their managers. And if you're not building strong leaders at your manager tier, you're going to be dealing with a revolving door. And I think that's one of the big lessons that come out of this conversation that we had.

And I appreciate you sharing that with us, Mike, for those of you who have been listening to this conversation, we appreciate you hanging out. Make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. If you haven't already joined our community, make sure you join you can find that at www.

engagerocket. co slash HR impact. And then join us next time where we'll have another great leader sharing with us the game changing insights that help them build a high performing team.