Unlocking Potential: The Power of Work Teams in School Districts

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When you're not attracting and retaining enough of your frontline talent, that has a negative impact on your leadership depth across your entire organization. So what do you do if you're faced with that lack of leadership depth and you're also running somewhat thin? One way to tackle the problem would be to distribute leadership through the organization through the use of work teams.

That solves a number of problems and it creates growth opportunities within the organization. So how do you leverage that capability? That's one of the questions that we're going to tackle in today's conversation. And the person who's going to be guiding us through that discussion is joining us today, Dr.

e Finger Lakes region of New [: 00:01:00

Matt has nearly 30 years of public education experience as a teacher, coach, principal, and district level leader in nearly every aspect of school administration. He is a past president of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators. In 2016, Dr. Hillman was recognized as a MASA Outstanding Central Office Leader Award.

In: 2022

Paul Minnesota State University in Mankato and the University of Minnesota. Matt met his wife, Mary, when they were first year [00:02:00] teachers in Medalia, Minnesota. Matt and Mary center themselves around the simple educational philosophy, do good Things for kids. They have three kids and live in Northfield.

Matt is apparently a twins fan, a golden gophers fan and a St. John's red storm fan. So depending on your perspective, he's very similar to Chicago fans where they have a tradition of losing that we support. So Matt, welcome to the show.

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[00:02:26] Dr. Jim: Yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation, and I think we're going to cover a lot of interesting ground in terms of building leadership depth, but before we dive into that piece of the conversation, I think it's going to be valuable for you to share with the listeners a little bit more about your background and particularly the things that shaped your leadership philosophy as you navigated your career.

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I was always had the opportunity to be tapped or people saw something in me that felt I could make a difference for others. And so as far back as I can remember, I always remember having other people's confidence. In my ability to marshal people towards something bigger than themselves. And when I graduated high school, I was at the end of high school.

I worked for a newspaper in Elmira, New York. They had a really cool project where they had local high school students write a weekly sports page in the actual printed newspaper about local youth athletic association. So we would write stories about the soccer association games for 11 and 12 year olds.

nior in high school covering [: 00:04:00

And so I thought I wanted to be a journalist. And so I went to St. John's in New York city, fully expecting what a great place to learn journalism. I quickly realized that my pathway led along a different route. I worked for the Bronx YMCA in an afterschool program. And quickly realized that, education was going to be what I wanted to, is about building people up, rather than necessarily looking for flaws that were in certain systems.

And so as soon as I got into education, I realized that I had a chance to make other people's lives better and how could I impact the people who I was around? That led me to be a coach coaches, a leadership piece, that led me to get into teaching. And when I became a teacher. At the time I had a social studies license, Jim, but I could also turn a computer on.

This is: 1995

Transcribed I ended up being a technology director in another school district. There was a resignation. I ended up becoming a dean of students and then a principal and then moved to the district office here in Northfield 15 years ago. This is my 15th year in Northfield. I was the director of human resources, another leadership opportunity, getting out of that necessarily leading learning organizations at the school level to thinking about it more of a holistic approach.

and been superintendent since: 2016

Some way, shape or form in the jobs that they do every day. And I think that provides some credibility and it also provides me the chance to help people solve problems. And at the end of the day, I think that is what leadership is. How can you unleash people's potential to solve the problems that are in front of them, to make the organization better.

And again, to make all the people around us better and inspire people. To do more than they ever thought that they could. If

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So one of the things that I'm wondering is when you have that diverse perspective, Diversified set of skills, some of it at the tactical level, and then you get in the big chair. You said that it's a strength of yours that you understand what the blocking and tackling looks like In those different functions when you're engaging with people on your team What [00:07:00] were the guardrails that you put up against yourself?

So you're not getting all in the weeds of somebody else's kitchen Because you have that specific knowledge What were the steps that you took to make sure that you're not going too far into somebody else's space? You

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To give me that feedback. If I was straying too far into their territory where they needed to have the agency to make the decision to tell me, and because of the relationships I had developed, they were absolutely willing to do that. So there were times where people would say, we're still working on this.

ally allow people to come to [: 00:08:00

Knowing that I'm not going to overstep my authority unless it's something I feel really strongly about.

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[00:08:25] Matt Hillmann: So Northfield, Minnesota is a town of about 20, 000 people. Our district has just under 40, 000 total residents across 178 square miles. We're 40 miles South of the Twin Cities and we're home to two prestigious regional liberal arts colleges, Carleton College and St. Olaf College. Our student population is around 3, 800 students.

percent of our students [: 00:09:00

And I think one of the things that we face is we have a very educated community. So there's a lot of high expectations, which is a really good thing. And it's something that drives us to be, to excellence. And it is also a piece that we are constantly battling to make sure we're able to meet those high expectations.

Within the financial within the financial parameters that we have.

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Really interesting landscape and also background that you've given us when I opened the show. I talked about how when you're facing a talent crunch, How And you're trying to figure out, okay, how do you share and distribute leadership across an organization?

he district forward and meet [: 00:10:00

[00:10:02] Matt Hillmann: So I think that the first piece is I was, this district has long had an excellent reputation. And it's a destination district where people want their kids to come here. There's a lot of people who want to work here. And so the first piece is how do we make sure that we maintain that excellent reputation at the level it's at?

And continuously move it forward so that we are not only viewed in the region, but also statewide and in the upper Midwest. As one of the premier school districts to bring your child for their learning experience and to choose to work as an educator. So the first piece is how do we maintain the wonderful culture that we had, and then how do we continuously improve it?

pening and the timing of the [: 00:11:00

It's much shallower pool of applicants that we get. So what are those conditions that make people want to work here? And how do we recruit the best so that we can continue improving that reputation that we have as not just an excellent school district, but also demonstrating it in our results?

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[00:11:33] Matt Hillmann: I think we all do things better as an organization when we do it together. When there's true collaboration not just collaboration in word, but collaboration in deed. I think that's a place that is very good to be. When we're thinking about the outcomes that we want, how are we collaborating with our community and with our staff, to have something that is worthy of our worthy of us to pursue from a continuous improvement perspective to improve our outcomes, but [00:12:00] also that is something that is realistic, that we can measure well.

That we can know we can do in a reasonable amount of time. So bring people to the table is what we've always endeavored to do. And really it was three years ago that we doubled down on it in terms of the work team philosophy that you and I have chatted about.

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[00:12:29] Matt Hillmann: So I think there's several different components to that. One is something that all organizations should have a quality strategic plan. The strategic plan that we had was developed with literally hundreds of people involved. We had in person sessions. It was during COVID. And so some people were uncomfortable being inside.

g all of our staff, students [: 00:13:00

Our largest demographic group immigrant demographic group is Spanish speaking. So we wanted to make sure that we had. Their feedback as part of this process. So that was what helped us develop the strategic plan, identifying the vision, our commitments, and then benchmarks. And the benchmarks are important because they are metrics that we use to judge the health of the school district.

And one of those is about employee satisfaction. So we use a survey on an annual basis. And we also use another strategy called a leader rounding, where we endeavor each year to meet personally, have a leader meet personally with every staff member who would like to. And those staff members share with us what's going well, areas that they see for improvement, things that are preventing them from doing their best work.

interim assessments, if you [: 00:14:00

[00:14:12] Dr. Jim: Okay. So that, that sets the stage for the inbound data and the things that you point things that you need to focus on. So what was your process for prioritizing? What was going to make the biggest impact? And then how did that lead you to the work team idea as what you were going to move forward with?

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On decisions that affect my job. And that was one that we were seeing as one of the lowest rated items in our survey. And so it really challenged this perception that we had, where are we really bringing all of the voices to the table that let us take a look at how are we doing that? And we were doing a lot of volunteer kinds of committees to solve problems.

ed to the work team format in: 2022

We need to define how much time does each work team need to spend on their topic. What's the deliverable that they need to produce for us? And the payment is something that, we have a lot of young parents who need, if they're going to come to school in the [00:16:00] summer, which is when many of our work teams are conducted, they need to be able to pay a babysitter, right?

They need to be able to get here to school. They need to be able to make sure that they can cover those expenses of just making sure that they can be here. So the payment part. really accelerated the number of people who are able to participate. Many people had wanted to participate in the committee structure before, they just couldn't because of those kinds of barriers that I talked about.

So after we have executed these work teams for several years, we look at through our survey data, through our rounding data, through the big rocks that we know are coming up. So by way of example, this year we're doing an elementary mathematics curriculum So we needed a specialized work team. To help think through that implementation ranging from how do we unbox the curriculum?

they're on the right track, [: 00:17:00

That is the kind of thing that rose to the top because we knew that's something that we had to do this year. Another area that we prioritize has been 10 years. Since we had really done a deep dive into our evaluation systems, and we were hearing from staff that through our rounding conversations through some of our survey tools that we really needed to modernize the evaluation tool that we had not only for teachers, but for the rest of the district as well.

that we have each summer and [: 00:18:00

[00:18:01] Dr. Jim: There's a lot there that I I That I think we should dig into I think one of the first things that I'm curious about is when you, I like the concept of. Structuring these work teams and making sure that they're paid so that you're getting broader interest from the community versus the small group of hand raisers that would automatically opt in for just about anything that you would run.

But there's a problem with that. So if I'm looking at paid work teams as part of a project organization to work on an initiative, if you're a smaller district, that might not be feasible. So how would you thread that needle in a smaller district that doesn't have the resources and still make this work work team idea workable?

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So I think there's some ways that you can [00:19:00] augment that if you don't have the financial resources to pay them. There are some districts where I could see that they could potentially give them some kind of credit. Toward a lane change in their contract. I suppose in some districts, they may be able to provide some compensation through time off in some other way, shape or fashion.

There might be some other creative ways to compensate. I think at the end of the day, we had looked at a number of things and I would rather for us to have fewer work teams, focused on the highest priorities while giving that payment, because you're right. We do lose out on the brilliance of a lot of people if they don't have the capacity to be able to cover some of those basic expenses that are associated when I have to have childcare and things like that in the summer.

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Either through direct monetary compensation or through a total compensation lens, it still doesn't eliminate the workload objection that you might get from teachers in your district because everybody in a district is running thin and you have a never ending task wheel and then you as the Guy in the big chair is throwing another thing on the plates of people.

So how did you navigate that challenge and make it make sense so that you're still getting a broad range of people who are interested in helping solve these things?

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People become invested and they feel that [00:21:00] they actually have agency because we've done the work team several times They see the work that the previous teams have done They see the good work has been implemented and made a difference for their workload in many cases during the school year So people feel that they collectively have agency to make this difference in their organization Which people are willing that people are more willing to invest their time into something where they see a return on that investment of time.

If it's just another team just to create some new thing for us to do, people aren't interested in that. But when you're genuinely solving problems that you face and you have some agency and how we're going to attack those, that is a very clear and compelling why. Which brings a lot of people to the table.

We're also very strategic in how we think about this. So most of our work teams happen during the summer break. And while all teachers are working during the summer in some way, shape or fashion, they may not be teaching classes, but they're preparing for the upcoming year. They're recharging.

ots of different things. The [: 00:22:00

And we're very, we've been fortunate that we've had enough substitutes where this is. And it is also something where people can complete this work during the school day, and we are also able to be very drilled down on. We have to make sure we have the right amount of time. We have to manage the meetings very effectively.

And so all of those things come to play. And if you do what you say you're going to do, and people see that you did what you say you're going to do, they're more willing to participate.

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[00:23:01] Matt Hillmann: So far the tasks that our work teams have been doing, there is professional development, certainly baked into any work team, you're learning about the T the topic that you're that you're going to make some recommendations on by way of example, we just held our teacher development and evaluation work team.

Second meeting. Last week and the first meeting a month ago was really focused on grounding that team in what the statute says So from that perspective they were participating in professional development, but most of our work teams are Fueling other people's professional development. So whether it's our k5 literacy team who's planning Here's what the strategy for professional growth is during the year the mathematics team that I mentioned who's really thinking What Strategically about how to roll out and implement that new curriculum whether it is our student citizenship handbook work team that is looking at our discipline policies and making sure that we're helping educate everyone in the community about them.

There is a there is an [: 00:24:00

[00:24:16] Dr. Jim: So when you look at the deployment of these work teams what's an example of a district wide challenge that was solved effectively using this work team work team format?

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What are, what do we look at as high performance? What do we look at as low performance? And so we brought a work team together that actually [00:25:00] identified seven different characteristics of things that we expect from every employee, whether you're a night custodian, Whether you're the superintendent of schools, the head basketball coach, the grounds coordinator or a paraprofessional in one of our elementary schools, that there are some common things we can expect from everyone.

And that team went through and not only did they identify the seven core areas, they also provided descriptors and examples for what high performance looks like. And what lower performance looks like. And when we brought this forward, when it's not just coming from the superintendent or from a leadership team, and it's coming from a great cross section of our employees, people really took notice and we are beginning to see how people use the language in that core performance expectations document with each other about what does high performance look like.

it and get back toward high [: 00:26:00

[00:26:06] Dr. Jim: So I like if I'm putting that entire project on a bumper sticker, it's figuring out how to define what good looks like.

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[00:26:15] Dr. Jim: yeah, so I like how that worked out now bridging off of that. If you're going to the effort of defining what good or great looks like, how has that been applied to your overall talent landscape in terms of who gets developed, how and what career pathways open up based on the definition of where they are from a talent perspective?

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This year we are looking at how we integrate those core performance [00:27:00] expectations as part of the evaluation system. And. We have used this in a couple of different ways. Number one, we have some departments that are using the core performance expectations as part of their Employee selection process.

So after they've completed some interviews, this is not widespread yet. This is more pilot kind of work. They will look at the candidates and they'll look at them through the lens of that core performance expectations document and say, how do we think they would help us further our organization through this, through these lenses?

Very helpful. In some tougher employment conversations where we have someone who might not be meeting the mark. We've had leaders who brought the document in and said, Hey, let's talk about this particular. And let's talk about where you see yourself at right here and where I see you are at right here with your performance and how can we make a plan to move forward?

oncept that we're looking at [: 00:28:00

And so giving that group of people a greater understanding, almost like a small certification program, a local certification program, ideating that to develop that this year. Maybe even run a prototype group in the spring.

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[00:28:35] Matt Hillmann: So I think that as people continue to become involved in work teams, they are feeling like they have greater agency and greater input into what is happening and how we are solving problems in the district. And when you feel like you have agency and you have the ability to shape the culture that you're part of.

of a team in a way that you [: 00:29:00

Our annual employee experience survey saw 19 of 20 indicators improve year over year, and the one indicator that it didn't improve was the highest rated indicator, and it only went down by 0. 01, and we had some fairly substantial improvement in a number of years. Here's one. Question that I'll share with you, the improvement.

that is a fairly substantial [: 00:30:00

14 Points on a five point Likert scale. So these are the kinds of things that employees are telling us Through this objective survey that we are getting better at making sure that they feel like what they are doing is driving the organization that makes people want to stay and we have people who have applied in our district who have said, I understand that you value your people and their expertise.

And I want to be part of this team. And our retention has been overall very good. We do think that the best way to recruit people is to have your own people spread the word.

That's a great place to work.

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When we look at the conversation that we had and we tie it all together and you're advising somebody else that's considering launching this work team as a way to develop [00:31:00] leadership depth across the organization, what are the key principles that they need to keep in mind when they're trying to develop a program like this in their own districts?

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These are the things that you can decide on. And your recommendation is going to go forward to the leadership team for approval. We've never not approved the recommendations of work team because they stayed within the parameters. So clarity around. What is the problem that you're trying to solve?

nd that there's some kind of [: 00:32:00

It could be a training plan. It could be a number of different things. But you have to avoid going into this. I'd recommend people avoid trying to let people admire the problem. You got to have enough time for problem admiration, but you quickly need to move to what are the kinds of things that we can do to make this better next year.

And clarity is always King in that Jim. I'm, I know that everything, whatever I've struggled in leadership, it's almost always because there wasn't enough clarity.

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[00:32:38] Matt Hillmann: They can reach out to me via email and you can certainly put that in the show notes.

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That is the best way to go possible solution that's pushed forward. Otherwise you're dealing with the same group of hand raisers that you're typically dealing with. So if the goal is to build leadership depth and capability depth across your district, you need to put some resources behind it. The other thing that I think is important to mention is focus and focus is a little bit different from clarity.

g that's in front of you all [: 00:34:00

to make sure that you're driving towards a solution that makes the most possible sense, and it also keeps you from being spread too thin across your work team so that you're not burning out your groups. The last piece that I think is important, and we mentioned it throughout various stages of the conversation, is that this is not just a point in time solution.

This is an evergreen solution. So if you're going to build a work team, Towards the goal of changing some factor within your organization. It's not a set and forget exercise. You need to build that work team, start executing towards the goal, evaluate how you did on the project, and then take another stab based on what you've learned.

time so that you're actually [: 00:35:00

That's what I took away from this conversation. For those of you who've been listening to this discussion, we hope you liked the conversation. If you did, make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. If you haven't already done so, make sure you join the community. And then tune in next time where we'll have another great leader sharing with us The game changing insights that help them build a high performing team