Interview

[Intro music plays in the background.]

Holly Ellis: Welcome to the Accelerate Your Performance podcast. I’m Dr. Holly Ellis, Director of Research and Instructional Content at Studer Education, and I have the pleasure of working with Dr. Janet Pilcher, the host of this podcast.

Today’s episode will be a bit different, as I have the opportunity to interview Janet, which gives us all the chance to learn from her reflections. Janet, I am so glad to be here with you today to talk about some of the thoughts that you’ve had following your most recent interviews. And I’m excited for you to share some of your learnings and takeaways, because when you reflect out loud, we learn. So I’m excited about this episode.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, thanks Holly. It’s great to be on this side. You know, I thought about it as I’m on this side, I can learn from what the listeners feel from how I will connect, but also the people that I interview. So it’s a good opportunity for me to reflect on the process as well. But I’m glad to be here and just share some insights and gives me a chance to be reflective as well. So thank you for the opportunity.

Holly Ellis: Yeah, I think it’s going to be a good opportunity for all of us. So Janet, you recently interviewed Dr. Christi Barrett and Dr. Ryan Carpenter, and those interviews focused on their leadership and wow, did they deliver.

They talked about specific tactics that they use for coaching their teams and moving the needle. And listeners, if you haven’t yet listened to episodes 372 and 373, you won’t want to miss them because those are the conversations that Janet had with Christi and Ryan.

So Janet, let’s jump in. In the episodes with Christi and Ryan, the idea that leaders have not led well until their teams have performed well was central. How has this idea shaped your thinking about leadership responsibilities and how you measure success as a leader?

Janet Pilcher: So Holly, you know, and listeners, you know, I always tend to connect leadership to coaching and being a good team member. And, you know, that’s because coaching is and sports really are deep within who I am and what I represent and how I’ve learned a lot over the years.

But I go back to a book written by Ron Gallimore and Swen Nader, but really with Ron doing most of the lead work. And it’s a book called “You Haven’t Taught Until Students Have Learned.” And it’s about John Wooden as the great UCLA basketball coach. And it’s the life of talking about John Wooden and his approaches, but also the connection to Bill Walton and Swen Nater. And I’ll talk a little bit more about who those players are for those of you that don’t know.

But just like ways we, we coached through life, leadership success to me comes from our upbringing in leadership, you know, just like we have an upbringing with our families and the way we position ourselves in life. We are brought up in the world of leadership and we’re a student through that upbringing. And so it’s how you carry yourself as you’re that student that really helps you mold your professional life.

So leaders like Christi and Ryan are continuous leadership learners. And that’s what I really love about Christy and Ryan and other leaders that I’m fortunate to work with in higher education and K-12 districts that are just continuous leadership learners. And in order to be a good leader and continue to build excellence in your leadership, I’ve just tried to hardwire that into my philosophy that I need to continue to learn.

And so when we look back at the story of John Wooden and being a coach and a teacher, I don’t want to underestimate the relevance of what we’re talking about here. When we think about Swen Nater and John Wooden, and we think about his story, Swen Nater was a six foot nine center and kind of oddly enough, he was cut from his high school basketball team. But he had a junior college coach that pulled him into a junior college and then positioned him to get a scholarship, the last scholarship at UCLA, being coached by John Wooden, who was one of the best coaches, basketball college coaches of all time. And when he was offered that scholarship, there was also a man or young man by the name of Bill Walton, who was on that team scholarship who was a center. So both of them played that center position. Bill Walton happened to be seven feet. And so John Wooden said, “Okay, if I bring you on Swen Nater, then your goal is not to play, but to push Bill Walton to be better. Like that’s your role on the team. If you’re willing to do that, I’ll scholarship you.”

So Swen Nater never really played a game, but learned from the best coach alongside one of the best players of all time. It’s a phenomenal story. Says a lot about Swen Nater. And by the way, he was drafted by the NBA in an early round and became a great professional basketball player without ever starting a college game. So Coach Wooden, if you think about this story, and there’s a lot to that story, but Coach Wooden was a great coach and teacher. And he taught us that when we are in a direct leadership or coaching role, we have different things to offer. We guide, we teach, we set goals, we practice, we give feedback, you know, on and on and on. And our team members don’t want a relationship with their coach and their other teammates to be competitive. What they want is feedback. They want kudos. They want to be recognized. They want to be given new challenges, and then they want to be shown how to improve.

And so when you think about John Wooden and Swen Nater also taught us to be a good teammate. And so being a good leader is also being a good teammate. That’s someone that, where teammates can exercise their craft, where you can challenge each other and continuously improve when you know when you need to be humble with the skills that you have and learn and when you can also challenge and teach. And so it’s really going in and out of that teacher and learner as a leader in order to continue to be at your best. So I mean, I think you measure your success in both ways.

And at the end of the day, coaching and being a good team member, you’ve contributed if your team is winning. And that’s, you know, what that story tells us. It’s been a story that I just keep so dear to me as I think about how we lead and what we learn from lead. And again, Christi and Ryan show that as an example.

Holly Ellis: Yeah, absolutely, Janet. And listening to you talk about that story reminds me of something that Christi said in her interview, and she was talking about good leaders and good teams. And she said, “It’s not just about one thing. It’s about people working well together, coupled with producing outcomes.” And so that’s sort of what you’ve been talking about too, is we have to be good team members, but we also have to be focused on the right thing.

Janet Pilcher: That’s right. Absolutely.

Holly Ellis: That’s great. So Janet, if I were to ask you, who’s been a good leader to you, probably multiple names would pop up in your head. So I’m going to position that question a little bit differently and ask you, who is your John Wooden? And why would you pick that person to be your John Wooden?

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, you know, I’ve been, I was fortunate. So that was, you know, just my connection to leadership life. And then, you know, I think my John Wooden is Quint Studer. And Quint, I had an opportunity to meet Quint years ago. But when I was still at the University of West Florida before we started Studer Education, I learned. Quint gave me an opportunity to come to his leadership team meetings, to come to their leadership development institutes.

He gave me an opportunity to watch and learn from the sidelines. So he had his own plane at the time, and I always say Quint didn’t really like to travel alone. And so he would sometimes call me at the last minute and say, “Hey, I’m going to a, to visit a partner. Would you like to come with me?” And I said, “Well, when do you want me to be there?” He said, “in a couple hours.” And so I just had an opportunity to take advantage of that time with him and watch him, be with him, you know, learn with him.

He was a teammate. We were teammates to each other at times. And then he was really a good coach to me. And so I, you know, I was fortunate to really learn by him. And then when I got an opportunity to start a little bit of the work before we even formalized Studer Education, I could work in the field and try things out. And he would coach me and he would ask me what I thought. And we just had a really good opportunity for him to really guide and coach me along the way. And still to this day, you’ll, our team will hear me say sometimes they may be tired of it, but they’ll hear me say, “I learned this, the way we position our language and key messaging and how we, you know, how we position our language. I learned this from Quint Studer, you know, he’s masterful at doing that.” And it was just watching and observing and watching and observing.

You know, and sometimes I think back, there’s another experience there that, you know, when I think back on always what comes to your mind, you know, Holly, sometimes there are things that just continuously come to your mind. And I remember Studer Group had a consultant by the name of Keith McFarland. Quint called him his insultant. [laughs] And it was really kind of cute and Keith McFarland did kind of a study like Jim Collins did but with small companies and wrote a book called “Breakthrough Company.” Excellent book. Older book but great book.

And I just loved watching Keith facilitate those strategy sessions with us, but I was on the sidelines because I was education and he was really there to help with the healthcare growth. And I’ll always, I just remember, if I could just have Keith help me, right, Keith help me, but I realized that wasn’t the purpose. He wasn’t hired to help me, that my job was to be on the sidelines and watch. And kind of ironically, when I think about the bullseye which everyone knows I love, in terms of positioning the bullseye I got that idea based on, you know, listening to Keith and, and that coming out of that, so it works very well for me and I think for some others.

But it’s sitting on the sidelines and being coached and really taking ownership of that. That was one, I wish, I’d love to say now that I knew exactly what I was doing, and I was so mature in that process, and I don’t think that was it. I just somehow got lucky to do the right things and learning process and I just really had a great opportunity and was fortunate that I had the intellect at that time to take advantage of it.

Holly Ellis: Yeah. And, you know, Janet, my brain keeps going back to the interviews with Christi and Ryan, and I’ve heard you talk about your learnings from working with Quint and all of those takeaways that you’ve had. And in thinking about something Ryan said about a good leader, I think that’s a good takeaway that I’ve heard you experienced with Quint. And that is good leaders empower and engage. And even when you were sitting on the sidelines, he was empowering you through being on the court, even if it was on the sidelines and and engaging in different ways and in different conversations so, so good. 

Janet Pilcher: Yes. Yeah, so, so important what you just said, Holly. It wasn’t that I was just a passive person on this over there. I mean, there were still expectations of what it meant to sit on the sideline. He always has high expectations and you know so that’s an important part. Sitting on the sidelines as an active engaged learner, right? The goal is really, I think, how do we become the john Woodens of others, right, with our partners? How do we become the John Woodens of our teams? And how do we know how to position people in a way that helps them be as successful as they can, can be? But what you said is really, really important.

Holly Ellis: Yeah, I love that Janet. And my next question dovetails right from what you’re talking about, but it’s a two part question. And the first part is, how do you see the concept of coaching as integral to effective leadership? How do those two come together, and you’ve been talking about, you know, you learned from a good leader, and his coaching, even if it was sitting on the sidelines. So the first part is, how do you see the concept of coaching integral to effective leadership? And the second part is, what specific coaching techniques have you found that are most impactful in developing your leaders and teams?

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, you know, so I find myself saying this a lot, Holly, that the work that we do, and when we read “Hardwiring Excellence in Education,” there are strategies and tools and tactics in there, but the worst thing we could do is have a compliance focused mindset, we’re applying, right?

And so it’s kind of like, well, what not to do. I’m think I’m answering, like, what not to do. Well let’s not have a compliance focused mindset. Let’s really have a performance focused mindset with any of the strategies and tactics that we apply in order to achieve excellence with our teams. So it’s, it’s how you coa–we coach others to continuously improve and get better and better and better. And how do we look at it from a performance and really have that deep desire to build excellence and improvement? That’s philosophically the mindset that needs to occur before we actually apply it. And where I’ve seen us not be successful is when we don’t help coach and shift people out of that compliance mindset. So, you know, I think philosophically, it’s important to start there.

And then it’s, then what do we do, you know, how do we, how do we think about how we start and how do we frame that? And, you know, I just, I go back to, I know I’m going back to a couple of stories today, but I always connect back to those most meaningful things that changed me as a person, that influenced me as a leader, and I connect to the work that we’re doing today.

And many of you know when I taught high school I coached tennis. And I was never, you’ve heard me say, too, I was never coached myself. I learned how to play by reading books and practicing, you know, by myself for the most part. And when I thought about coaching a team, I didn’t know how to coach because there’s; it’s different than playing and coaching.

And I went to my principal, and I know there was no way that they would provide professional development for coaching. And, but, but I did ask if I could have a couple of days off to go to Atlanta to attend a session on how to be, how to coach tennis. So I did that, and I learned so much. In fact, if you are ever watching me in my office, at home office on zoom, there’s a box that sits behind me. And it’s a box that has “Prince” and “World class kind of coaching” on it. And it’s a green box. And it’s the box that I got when I was at that session, and it has all the ways that you can build different practice plays and it and it’s my, it’s my coaching box for tennis. And it’s followed me everywhere I go, and it sits behind me everywhere I go just for a reminder of the foundational components there.

So it goes to then, what, right? So regardless, we look at “Hardwiring Excellence in Education,” it really does connect back to that little box, because there’s a game plan. There are outcomes,  small one at a time, for accomplishment. We identify where gaps are, where we need the most coaching. We define the priorities and goals. We act on something, one to two things. We can’t go out and create a practice play for working on five things. It’s technique on one things that’s foundational. We practice, and as we’re practicing, we learn how to see ourselves and provide feedback, we, as a coach, we provide feedback to each other. We get our teammates to provide feedback, we adjust, and we continuously improve.

And if you think about the work that we do with the organizational excellence framework and the Nine Principles, that’s really what we do. We have tools and tactics that connect to that, but at the end of the day, we’re putting a good game plan in place, building that consistency of practice, and having that relentless focus for excellence, and to win that game at the end of the day.

So, those are the, it’s high level, but if you go into “Hardwiring Excellence in Education,” you can begin to see the specific tools that are aligned to each aspect of that improvement process.

Holly Ellis: Yeah, and the beauty of what you’re describing, Janet, is a change in one thing affects a change in another thing. So a tactic working for one solution can often lead to larger solutions that are even potentially more systems level types of solutions because we begin to make those steps. And once we begin that mindset of change, we want more of it and and we continue to push so. Really good.

Janet Pilcher: Yes, yes, you know so when I think about the game plan and the plays right that we’re practicing, you know we’re not practicing the plays we’re good at.

Holly Ellis: Right.

Janet Pilcher: Right? We’re practicing the plays that are, don’t feel so good, that are awkward. That we have to get better, that become that natural habit of practice. You know, so it’s really, like you’re talking about in that change process. It’s really facing that discomfort and helping coach people through that discomfort in order to get to a better place and build improvements where those improvements are necessary. And that can’t be compliance. It’s all about performance, right, all about how we perform. All about how we continuously grow and improve.

Holly Ellis: Absolutely.

[Outro music plays in the background.]

Holly Ellis: As we close today, I’d like to thank you for tuning into this episode of Accelerate Your Performance. Janet, I often hear you thank others for their leadership, but as my leader and a leader to so many we thank you for your leadership and all the to teach us.

Tune in again next week to learn more from Janet and hear the rest of my conversation with her. And please make sure you follow the show so you can get an automatic download of each new episode. Have a great week, everyone.