From Instructional to Relational: Transforming School Leadership

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It's often said leaders set the tone for the culture of an organization, and if you're thinking about how to attract and retain talent, you can't build an organization where everyone looks to you for the answers. The key to building a culture that inspires its people is to let go of your Legos. Leaders need to empower their teams by helping each individual grow their leadership.

That's how you build an organization that retains 80 to 85 percent of their people. Today's conversation walks through how the Burlington Area School District approached the issue of teacher turnover by deliberately decentralizing power and control and creating a culture of autonomy and ownership.

story with us today is Jill [: 00:01:00

So just like your host, she's a big nerd. Jill started her professional career as a high school science teacher, followed by assistant principal, principal assistant superintendent, and now superintendent within the K through 12 public school system. Jill also serves on the association of Wisconsin school administrators, district leaders commission, AWSA coach for other administrators within the state of Wisconsin, is a member of the Rotary within Burlington, and as a board member for the Chamber of Bur Burlington. While serving six years as a middle school principal, Jill assisted with moving the school report card from a 72.7 to an 84.4, along with being above 95% of all middle schools in the state of Wisconsin when it comes to student growth performance. Jill is also a wife [00:02:00] and mother of two amazing identical twin girls who are 11 years old and loves to travel the world, to experience other cultures, and she never sleeps.

Jill, welcome to the show.

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[00:02:10] Dr. Jim: We're going to cover a lot of ground and especially be focused in on how a decentralized leadership structure can be actually better allows for organizations to retain their staff and particularly their teachers.

So I'm looking forward to that conversation being a retention and turnover nerd. But before we dive in, I think I'm going to ask you a question that we didn't plan for, and I'm totally going to judge you if you give the wrong answer. You're a world traveler and you like to see a lot of different places.

What's your favorite place that you've been to so far and why?

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And everyone meets up at the square at night and hangs out together. Grandparents, kids, everybody, and just as more social than we are here in the United States in a lot of ways. So I think really anywhere in Europe, but probably if I had to pick maybe the Czech Republic area, cause the architecture there is just different or Italy.

So yeah.

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[00:03:40] Jill Oelslager: yeah,

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All right, so let's let's get into the conversation. And I think that the first thing other than your travel exploits that we should probably get into is for the listeners to get a view into what you experienced and saw before you took on the leadership role in your district.

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And really had more of that instructional mindset as the building principles. And over [00:05:00] time here in the last. As assistant superintendent to superintendent, so in the last three years, we've really started to try to shift more of our focus on ensuring all of our leaders are more relational leaders and really the thought process there is to help ensure that we're creating people that, we, there's always that saying that you.

You leave because of your manager or boss, right? You don't leave because of your pay or something like that. So how do we ensure that the leaders that we have throughout our system are super relational and help make sure that all of our employees and uh, like to come to work, right? And want to be here.

But then also I noticed Quite a few principals and teachers would always say you got to call the district office. The district office is the one that handles that, right? Like it always was the district office. So how do you start to decentralize all of that too, so that you can really start to empower everyone within the system to feel everyone's a leader and not just some people are leaders.

So I do feel like that's [: 00:06:00

[00:06:04] Dr. Jim: I want to drill in a little bit in a couple of things that you mentioned. You mentioned that 35 percent of the students within the district are free or reduced lunch. Recipients and then 16 percent are in special ed. What are some of the unique considerations that you had to take into account As a district leader, when you're looking at that sort of student demographic criteria that you need to manage and navigate,

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We also have an alternative high school for our nine through 12 students. We have a project to win, which stands for what I need. And that's for students [00:07:00] that normally it would cost the district a hundred to 150, 000 to outsource certain students, but we try really hard to keep them in house so that they have an easier time transitioning back to the typical setting with the rest of their peers in the least restrictive environment.

So I think it's so often when you start thinking about the population of kiddos that you have, I think it's so important to make sure that you're starting to create programming options that really reach a broader skill set of students. We also have quite a few families that want to homeschool, right?

So we started a charter school this year and we partner now with the more of our homeschool families so that we can really try to have more outreach in that regard. So I think you have to be nimble in the, and flexible when it comes to figuring out what student programming you need for all the different types of kiddos that are in your system.

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[00:08:09] Jill Oelslager: Yeah. I think. It's interesting because when I first stepped in the role, I didn't necessarily foresee myself as a leader, but I think my principal at the time, Dr. Kopech Hill, she tapped me on the shoulder once and said, you really have leadership skills to move into administration. You really need to take on that kind of a role.

When she would be absent, she would let me fill in. She's the one that inspired me to get my master's, right? So as I start, as I started moving through the system, I feel like I met different leaders that would always tap me on the shoulder and help me empower me to become something more than I already was.

everyone else also feel more [: 00:09:00

So leadership is within all of us. And I think you have to learn how to be more flexible. In your thinking and that you have to really be able to be a leader that is okay with being vulnerable and not always feeling like you have all the answers. And I really feel like I learned that from her and then also from former assistant superintendent, Connie Zenon, two women that just to me were really powerful women that did a great job of showing that vulnerability and also really trying to make sure they were empowering other people along the way.

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If somebody hadn't tapped you on the shoulder, or if you didn't have a series of taps on the shoulder, who knows where your career trajectory might have gone. [00:10:00] And I'm curious about how you've eliminated that chance or luck within the district. What are the things that you've put into place to eliminate that luck and be more intentional from a people development perspective,

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And one of our paraprofessionals walked up who oversaw a recess from what I could tell and she said, are we allowed to go outside for recess today? And I said, I don't know, do you think we should go outside for recess today? What do you think we should do? And then it was interesting. Cause she's I've never been asked that before.

e one to decide if we should [: 00:11:00

They're not just a paraprofessional. There are people that are part of our system that make everything work. And how do we ensure that everyone feels like they have some ability to be in charge or have some empowerment and make decisions and we don't all have to make those decisions.

just taking up two people's [: 00:12:00

It's not as efficient and we're not empowering anybody. To me, it's those simple things that we have to start to really flush out in order for us to just change the system authentically from the ground up. And I just feel like another thing that is a strategy that, put in place is a simple Tuesday mornings.

We have a leadership meeting and at the start of the meeting, we always start with a kudos, right? Like kudos to someone within the system to make sure we're recognizing everyone else. And it takes a bit to get your team to not just recognize those within the room, but to make sure we're really recognizing everyone.

Everyone across our system and maybe even sometimes outside of our system, right? Maybe it's a community member that really helped us, but how are we recognizing and celebrating when we're seeing other people step up and take on some leadership and leadership is, can be the smallest things sometimes, right?

may be is at the very top of [: 00:13:00

I think it's just that ability to be vulnerable and be willing to flip that and ensure that everyone else is in starting to be empowered. And I think it really triggered back to learning that from Dr. Kopach Hill, my principal at the time, and just distributing that leadership as best you can.

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[00:14:02] Jill Oelslager: Yeah. So this this year specifically, I started lining up meetings with all of our directors and principals every three weeks and at those meetings they more so run those meetings, but then while I'm there I catch things that they say where I can say Okay, let's practice through that.

How can you push that out? That's something that you can, should be taking off your plate. Who could take that and put that on their plate instead? How can you empower someone else and really helping our team start to eliminate some of those processes? Another thing I noticed that was happening was I would always get the phone calls of, I don't know what I should do about this student or, Something happened at school today.

And I was noticing like, wow, a lot of the principals are calling me all the time for support and more I think it was a confidence piece. Are they making the right call? And I tended to not answer them and I would say, Did you call one of the other principals first? What, what has, what have they said?

Oh, I didn't call them [: 00:15:00

So that they start to become more consistent with each other, and then they ensure that everything that we're doing across the system is the same, and we don't start treating students differently. But then what it also does is it helps them start to see each other as colleagues, and that they can benefit each other.

And it's been really cool because as the year has shifted, there's been less and less phone calls to me from the leadership team about what do you think I should do about, right? Which to me just means we're distributing things out because I need to be able to spend more time within the community and trying to build partnerships with businesses and trust with the mayor, all those kind of things.

t necessarily have the time. [: 00:16:00

And all of our principals were in their meeting about a newsletter they want to send out this weekend. Historically that was not happening. Everyone was in silos. They were not meeting and ensuring their newsletters were the same, but it's those baby steps to get them in, to get them in. into the same world for that principles were not meeting weekly with each other outside of those Tuesday meetings.

One of them would say to me, Oh, I'm really struggling with consistency, like our buildings, our staff are getting upset because they're, what they're hearing from this principle is not the same as what I'm saying. Then, so my response is more like, so I wonder how you could remedy that with, And then the principal will say maybe we should have meetings more often.

Yep, maybe that's a [: 00:17:00

Then it became that they meet every Friday. Then they started shifting. We should meet sometimes in person. And now they're doing these pop up meetings based on certain topics that they need to talk about. And I just try to sometimes give them kudos. So today I can hear them in the boardroom.

So then I'll swing in there really quick and say, Oh, what are you guys working on? And then give them kudos. This is really awesome that you guys came together to do this. Thank you for doing that because it only makes consistency in the system, right? So you're just helping give them that empowerment, but also helping them know that they're doing the right thing.

nd when you don't trust your [: 00:18:00

But I like to use the term freedom within fences. So as long as you help set the fence line. Then they have the freedom in the pasture, right? So as long as you have those, to me, those consistent every three week meetings, one on one, we have our Tuesday meetings where we're all together, that's where the fence line is being made.

And then they have that freedom in between to really, Start to push things out and empower themselves within their team. And then the bigger challenge now is to help push that down into the classroom and the teacher level with the paras, with all of our staff, our custodians, and just helping them see those moments where they could push that down.

And I'm not going to lie. There's moments where I still see. Why are you making that decision? Is there someone else on your team that could, and going to those simplistic little tech technical pieces that really empower other people because the other people tend in our system to not get those decisions.

ical things off leadership's [: 00:19:00

[00:19:04] Dr. Jim: So I really like the concept of freedom within fences, and I often describe it in a similar way. Tell me which sandbox to play in, but don't tell me what to build. I can build whatever I want in the sandbox as long as I stay in the sandbox. That's a really good concept. And I want to wind this back.

So far in this conversation, we've talked a lot about building freedom within the organization, building empowerment across the organization. Pushing leadership down into the organization. What was it that you saw when you started out in the district that indicated that these were the things that you needed to build? Why was this the thing that you focused on versus something else?

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So I think I've observed that some people are carrying, 1, 000 buckets of water where other people are carrying one. And how do we ensure that we all help carry? More equal number of buckets across the system because we don't have a really robust system with so many people in so many roles, right?

Like sometimes I get really jealous. I look at some systems and I'm like of course they have the coolest looking newsletter because they have a communication director. That person has two assistants, right? What I noticed in Burlington is we are so thin. And we don't have a communication director.

h public education, but I do [: 00:21:00

If you notice that there is not enough people across the system to, how do you become more efficient with the people that you have? And I think the best way to do it is to is simply by distributing leadership, right? We need to count on every single person in our community, in our organization, as members that can carry buckets.

And too often we're like, no, they can't carry the bucket, right? It's why can't they carry the bucket? Don't we want everyone to feel like they can help carry the water? Because that's what we all need to do. That's what I probably noticed. Is some people, too, there were too few people carrying lots of buckets of water.

And then everyone else was I can help. But then we're never being tapped on to help, right? So how do we do that and flip that over?

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insight. And I think you're a midsize to, larger midsize district in terms of employees and students. And I think what you talked about would be really strongly [00:22:00] applicable to even smaller districts where you have to be scrappy. So theoretically a district of your size should be not running as thin as it as you are So in the face of that you made some decisions that actually distributed the workload.

So that's really good insight one of the things that i'm wondering so you've had some challenges from a funding perspective In terms of going to referendum, but you yet you're still a district that has a pretty solid retention record. How did you pull that off? What's the story there?

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So I think that is the biggest shift that we've [00:23:00] done is we get really great feedback from our staff. They love their bosses, right? Their principals love their principals. We get it. Much less complaints from parents or students because our principals are doing a very good job being able to have Stronger conversations with our parents where instead of just calling them to say their student is suspended.

We're first more apathetic with the family. We've tried to build relationships with them first. So then when we do call them, they're more understanding, right? And we're in more of a partnership. I would say that plays into our retention, everything. It's amazing. We just had to reduce our budget by 5 million moving into the next school year.

e are losing minimal people, [: 00:24:00

And I think it really is because of our shift in mindset of what you're looking for in your leadership team to ensure that you focus first on, on people, right? That you bring in someone that's what their focus is, that they believe that they have to take care of their employee, employees, their students, their staff, their.

Their their families above all else. And I don't think that in historically in education, that's how we always functioned. I think we functioned first on, we need someone that understands standards based grading. We need people that understand. How to lead professional learning communities, right?

ght. That's a skill that you [: 00:25:00

[00:25:00] Dr. Jim: You mentioned earlier people join organizations and leave managers and this pivot that you made. Is certainly a strong explanation for why you've been able to retain your educators at the degree that you have, especially given some of the constraints that you're dealing with now that pivot to hiring more relational leaders, can't be done overnight.

So tell us, tell me a little bit about how you. Embedded process in the hiring stage for your district and also even in your development stage where you're upscaling your existing leaders to be more relational in nature. What was your process for that?

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And then take that feedback and coach those leaders, right? And if you have to work to off ramp someone out of that position, and they're in the wrong seat on the bus, then we as leaders have to have, The courage to do something about it. I also think too often we leave people in a situation that they shouldn't be sitting in.

And then that's where I think we see turnover, right? Where, people can tell you like, hey, this leader, nobody wants to be in that building because of this leader. And then that's my job to do something about it, right? So I think that's number one is trying to coach that person and or make sure we're getting the right people on the bus.

hat you know is best for the [: 00:27:00

And it's a tricky process and it is frustrating at times because it took us, I don't know, three years to start to really make the shifts and we're still making some. We have some shifts that we're making this year in regard to, Just write people in the right seats, right? And I think you have to listen to your organization and listen to your stakeholders.

And if there's concerns in any way you got to make it, you got to address those, right? But where I never hear concerns, which is so intriguing to me, and this is, it could be a case study on its own, is I never hear concerns where we now have relational leaders in the role. I don't. The people that are more relational, I'm, I never hear complaints about them.

To me, that's validating that we're moving, we're, the adjustments we've made and the people we're looking for and are, we're making the right movements in the right direction.

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And that's one way [00:28:00] to bring that into your organization. How are you developing that capability with the people that already exist there? So you're shifting them from being technical experts and technical leaders to being stronger people, leaders.

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And they want to [00:29:00] help ensure the right people are in the right seats on the bus. And then I think people start looking around on the bus. And they start saying, man, I don't fit in here anymore. So then I think that's more what starts to happen is you start to just have a system where everyone is saying, this is how we act and either start acting this way.

Which most people rise to the occasion. And then those couple that don't choose to, go a different route and that's okay. Like they're going to work out for someone else's system, but for the organization we have I think it's really, use the group to move the group.

So if you can get your whole organization To start to know that this is how we act. This is what we expect. Then it just rises everybody up. People will rise up or they'll self select to get off the bus.

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So really cool stuff. Really enjoyed this conversation. And one of the things that I'd like you to do at this point is when you think about what you've done so far in your role and how you've been able to pull this off what are the key principles that listeners need to think about when they're looking to execute the same thing that you're, you've been able to execute?

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So that's [00:31:00] one thing. The second thing I would say is that it is really important to listen to be curious and not listen to respond. So I think once I made that shift, I really was able to help more of my team so that everyone else has the ability and skillset to feel like they can make decisions, right?

If we always just listen to respond we're not really empowering anyone else to be able to come up with their own thoughts of how they would go about things. But if we listen to be curious, then we tend to ask questions of I don't know. What do you think we should do there? Like it comes off more in that sense, which then just helps them build upon their own leadership abilities.

stions relating specifically [: 00:32:00

So ensuring that you shift your interview questions and the thought process of who you bring to your team to be on that more relational side, I think is really important. And then the last thing I would say is be more like water. Water takes on lots of different forms, right? I think you have to be able to be flexible.

I think as a leader I don't know how many times you bring, I bring something forward to a team and I think they're going to like it or I think that it's going to go well and then someone says, I don't like that or I think we should go this way. It's important to listen to them and be flexible, right?

et go of more of the control [: 00:33:00

It just ripples out. My last thing that I would say that I love thinking about is I always try really hard to make sure I'm like a rock that's thrown in the water. And. Because the rock creates the ripples. You don't see the rock anymore, right?

The rock goes to the bottom, but then all the ripples that come off of you as the leader is amazing to see, right? And you just don't even know how far those ripples are going to go. So be okay with being the rock and the rock doesn't need the accolades, doesn't need the acknowledgement that they're the ones that did something right.

Like I will always take the blame, but never take the credit. It's the team that really did the work. Yeah, I think those are the pieces of advice that I would give in my short time that I've been doing this. And I have a lot more to learn, but ask me five years from now, I'm sure it'd be different responses.

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[00:33:58] Jill Oelslager: Best way to get a hold of me [00:34:00] would be to email me within the school district and or I'm also open to my phone number and sharing that with you as well.

My personal phone number I used to be afraid to do that, but people only reach out when they have good questions. I'm happy to do that too.

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When they're deciding to build the type of organization that they want to build, is your job something where you're just checking boxes and moving through the different tasks that you have in the day? Or is your job as a leader to build more leaders within your organization? And it's obvious based off of our conversation that your Solution for building a really strong organization and a strong district that is, [00:35:00] even though it's lean, it's still doing a pretty good job of retaining its people is to focus on what the actual job of leadership is, which is to serve the people that report into you.

And there are a few things that. Stood out in that process that I think is worth calling out. One of the things that you emphasized was peer to peer development. You can't be at all places at all times. So you have to rely on the peer group at each of those levels to develop each other and be their own coaches.

The other part that was important in terms of what you mentioned was that you had this nice rhythm of gathering feedback and then taking action. You have to have both of those things in place in order to make the kind of impact that you're talking about. And by doing those things together, what you're doing is you're creating a self reinforcing system where people are holding each other accountable to the vision that's been set forth at the highest levels and holding everybody accountable for achieving that and self selecting people in and out.

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If you haven't already done so make sure you join the engage rocket community. You can find that at WWW. That engage rocket. co slash HR impact. And then tune in next time where we'll have another leader sharing with us, the game changing insights that help them build a high performing team.