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Introduction

Janet Pilcher: Hello everyone, welcome to the Accelerate Your Performance podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Janet Pilcher, founder and president of Studer Education.

I take a moment to thank our presenters and participants who joined us at our K-12 Virtual Destination High Performance Conference last week. I was blown away by the work and results shared by our partner organizations. I left each of the three days with gratitude and confidence that their work is truly making a difference for students and families. I am so grateful for what you do each and every day in our schools.

Today we’re sharing a special episode featuring Dr. Robin Largue who worked alongside me early on to begin Studer Education years ago. Robin retired from the educational system after a long career as a K-12 educational leader in the Escambia County School District, a faculty member at the University of West Florida who led an educational leadership program, and a Leader Coach at Studer Education.

Robin was featured on a podcast produced by the Escambia County school system. She joined the podcast Voices United in Education hosted by Meredith Hackwith Edwards on Episode 132 titled Leadership and Data, An Unlikely Power Couple. We highlight some key points aligned to Robin talking about the relevance of goals and actions that drive improvement, operationalizing the values to provide specific feedback, and using feedback from input and surveys that creates great customer service.

Robin is now volunteering at a local elementary school in the ReadingPals program. She works with a four-year-old every week staying connected to her passion and education and making a difference in the lives of students and families.

Interview

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: Thanks for being here.

Robin Largue: Thank you.

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: So can you start by painting a picture of how a coach at Studer Education helps upgrade the schools in a way that parents would appreciate?

Robin Largue: Yeah, and I think that’s really important. Coaching is about creating a collaborative team. And teachers are coaches as well, and they create a team with their parents, their children, other professionals within the school building to really what can they bring to the table to support every child to be as successful as they can be at that particular time.

And I think in coaching leaders, it’s all about where are you right now and where do you intend to take your district in the leadership position you’re in? So as a school principal it would be different than an assistant superintendent for finance or the superintendent of a school district, but all of them have the same motive, and that’s improvement.

Improvement is not a spot on the map, but it’s something that we constantly and consistently strive to achieve, and we do that through knowing where we start and where we intend to end or develop.

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: So from a parent point of view, knowing that there’s people like you out there collecting these resources and coaching the people who lead their kids, why would that matter to a parent? Do you think a parent would feel if suddenly tomorrow that went away?

Robin Largue: Yeah, I think education, teaching, learning is such a people business. It’s all about how we connect with one another, how we support one another, how we provide feedback that helps us grow, and I think that’s the important part for parents to understand is feedback is really important from them as well as from their teachers and principals and others in the school setting that they work with. And that feedback will help us move to that next level and continue to strive for that excellence that we really all want. I’ve not met a parent ever that doesn’t want their child to be successful and successful at every level.

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: So it sounds like it’s like a circle. You know, Studer Education is helping to coach the educational leaders who are coaching the leaders below them, who are coaching the actual educators, the teachers who coach the children. And then Studer uses the feedback from the parents that they get from the children to circle back and coach the leaders. Did I get that right?

Robin Largue: You got it. Absolutely. Everybody receives feedback and ultimately to achieve that positive goal. I think we do surveys, different surveys, parent survey, an employee survey, and then a support services survey that says are schools and departments supported in the way they should by different people within the district, and we always share that data.

Each leader will share their data with their team. So in a school, a principal would stand in front of their staff, and this is everyone, cafeteria workers, custodial staff, administrative staff, everyone, and teachers, and talk about “what does the data tell us about the job we do?” and “how can we get better and really getting information from them?” So parents should expect that and know that that feedback is so important to ensuring that their school continues to provide the best opportunity for their child.

And in one district where I worked, the principal was a gentleman, and we had been working with them for just a short period of time. And we’re talking about sharing this data and his was a bit uncomfortable and he knew it. And he knew that the only way to get better was to say “yes, this is what the data says. So now what do we do differently?”

And so he shared with me, “I want to tell you what this feels like. It feels like standing in front of an audience without your shirt on.” And a female principal said, “or trying on a bathing suit out in front of everyone.”

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: [laughs]

Robin Largue: So it is kind of like that, and I think we have to understand that receiving feedback and giving feedback has to be done with positive intent which is to improve, not to belittle or anything like tha,t but to improve, and that’s really what we’re about.

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: It’s so interesting that you paint that picture because, for one, it’s very funny, and good on that principal to continue to disclose the results of the survey regardless of that. But I don’t think that most people equate leadership and vulnerability together, but I could see where it would be important because if you don’t, you continue to make the same mistakes that you’ve always made, and worse yet, those mistakes become incredibly institutionalized into the systems that build more systems upon them and more systems upon that and then you’re in this like deep, messy—

Robin Largue: —chaotic mess. Yes. And I think, too, it’s that positive atmosphere is going to spread. We know from research that employees leave their bosses. They don’t leave their job. They don’t leave the building. They leave their boss. Same thing is true in a classroom. That teacher is the boss, so parents and students leave the boss, not the setting, not the programs, not the effort. So I think that’s important for all of us to realize as well, and we’re all bosses, and even when we talk about feedback and how to share feedback and how to use that feedback to improve, some of our partners have said they use it with their children. And they use the ideas of how to give that feedback and with that intent for improvement.

So like, if you have a child who’s not doing homework, right? How do you do that. Do you say, “you have to do your homework?” No. Okay, “we need to do our homework because what is it you want to achieve? If you want this, you’ve got to make an A on that next test or a B on that next test” or what. But it’s really approaching that improvement in a different way and what we hope all people will do.

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: That’s interesting, and I think our listeners will be excited to know, having just listened to you already, that there will be a spring survey for the parents.

Robin Largue: Correct. Correct.

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: So that they can participate in that.

Robin Largue: And that survey is so important. It’s not difficult, and it’s not lengthy. It’s pretty quick. It’s 25 questions, I believe, 25 items, and it really asks for your perceptions about the school where your child attends. So you should fill one out if you have a child in elementary and middle. You should fill one out on each one so that those faculties and leaders have an opportunity to use your data in the most positive way.

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: Earlier you mentioned teachers are coaches, and I kind of put a mental bookmark there because I thought, “I come from a family of teachers. I don’t know that they saw themselves as coaches.” Do you find that there is a barrier there when you’re coaching these types of educational leaders in themselves, seeing themselves as leaders?

Robin Largue: The leader themselves?

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: Right. The idea of identity, of being a barrier between where you are now and where you want to be and where you want to grow. Because if it would require a person who sees themselves as a, let’s say, a humble teacher, like I picture, my grandmother was a one-room schoolhouse teacher in the prairie of Nebraska, and that is not made up. As soon as I said that, I’m like, “that sounds like a movie plot. But no, that was our real life.” And she would have never described herself as a coach or as a leader. She would just simply say, “I’m doing the job.” You know, and so how do you as a leadership coach overcome that identity piece with folks like that?

Robin Largue: And I don’t think the title is an issue, but it’s what do you do in your classroom? What are the actions you take? How do you interact with your students, with your colleagues, with your administrator, with your parents? And it’s that interaction that is the coach-like conversation. Most teachers, if you listen, and probably your grandmother as well, was a coach. Even if she did not see herself in that way, she was consistently providing that feedback that would help them get better, but also encouraging them, “Okay, now take the next step. Do this again. Here’s what you need to do.”

And so it’s providing that direction that helps all of us perform at higher and higher levels. We all rise to the level of expectation. So the important thing is have that high expectation, but not unrealistic. And so that is a fine line, and that is a learning for a lot of us as we work with individuals.

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: What did you find in your time as a coach? Were some of the biggest barriers for progressing the leaders in their next steps?

Robin Largue: So I think of this one district that I worked with in Illinois, and it was a small district. Everybody knew everybody. Everybody grew up together. I mean, in my estimation, I thought they should have had such good, close working relationships. They did not. And so one of the elementary principals actually was an administrator in the prison system and returned to education as an elementary principal. Great school, high performing, but very, I would say, toxic and chaotic for the people who were in that building.

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: I mean, that is a big pendulum swing.

Robin Largue: Yes, for him. Absolutely. When he told me that, I’m going, “Okay, now what are you going to say?” [laughs]

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: Right, right.

Robin Largue: Now what’s your advice? So we did some things with thank you notes, thanking people for doing a good job in very particular ways. Well, he was the bah-humbug. He was, “this is ridiculous,” but superintendent, this is what we’re going to do. All of us. And we had a little accountability system for it. So he did that, and then I kind of tear up on the story, sorry.

But when one of his teachers retired, who had been at that school for her entire career, he went to her home for a retirement party, and on the wall in a frame was a thank you note. And she told him that’s the only one she had ever received. So I think the power of positive reinforcement is something.

Now, you don’t do it if you’re not sincere. That’s the other part. It has to be sincere. It has to be specific. So why am I being recognized? “Well, you’re a good girl. Thank you.” No.

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: [laughs]

Robin Largue: You know, or like in some schools after an open house, the principal will say thanks to everybody for a great open house. And then there are people sitting in the audience saying, “I know five people who weren’t even here.” Right? So it is that, it’s the authenticity and the sincerity that’s so important when we provide positive feedback. In the form of thank you notes or just a thank you in the hall or in the cafeteria or as you’re signing in in the morning.

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: Yes, it’s, it’s fascinating the contrast of thank you notes to use that very specific incredible story. When that, how that contrast to like the goals of a district, because when you think of leadership, it’s a concept without hard edges. And then the goals, they have very hard edges.

And there is a checkmark, and it is either in the box or not in the box. So, you know, for people like the former prison warden, how do you weave in and out of those broad concepts while still providing the proof that, hey, this is going to make the progress that we all want and need?

Robin Largue: We do believe that you have to have goals each year. You don’t have to have a hundred. We do not recommend that. But a few goals that are very specific to the team or the school or whatever the situation might be, might be a family. And then that you really together say, “what are we going to do to achieve these goals? What are our strategic actions?”

Now, you might not call them that. It is the “what are we going to do each day, each unit, each opportunity? What are we going to do?” And it’s really paying attention to those actions on about a 45-day, 60-day period of time. Are we doing what we said we were going to do? And how do we know? And how do we know is what’s our data that we’re using to validate that we are working in the right way for the right goal?

And it might be that as you’re moving toward that goal, the first 45 days, you say, “oops, this, this action is not getting us where we need to be. What do we need to do differently? And how do we know that that’s what we need to try next?”

I think families do that in a much more fluid way than organizations. It’s much more difficult for us to shift gears. I think families have an easier time of recognizing when something is not working and try something different. But that is that is a critical piece of improvement. There’s no destination on the map that says excellence, but it’s that constant moving to that point. And I think that’s the importance of it.

And I think leaders have to understand that communicating with the people they work with and for is the critical part. And sometimes it’s the way we say things—That’s a whole other podcast—are the words we use and how we use them that help us get to where we want to be.

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: Yeah. How do you decide what those little daily actions are that will positively impact the culture? Because you’re talking about families and how the families can make those successful shifts. And part of that is because it’s ingrained in us from some biological level to be accepted by our tribe. And we don’t always see our workplace as our tribe.

We’re like, “I can leave you people, you know, like I got to go home to my family.” And the other part is size. Families are usually smaller than organizations. So those shifts can more easily happen. And you also share DNA. So with all those ingredients missing from a corporation, how do you decide, “Okay, you know what’s going to shift our culture? Thank you notes.” Like, how do you how do you come to that conclusion? Where do you pull that idea from?

Robin Largue: Well, that’s the coaching part on Studer Education’s side. Because we do start with helping organizations determine what are their values, their core values. Those values then translate into what do I do, every what does every person in this district do every day that shows that they live that value? So that then becomes actionable and actionable in conversation.

So that leader then who was uncomfortable saying, “you’re not a very nice person,” saying, “I saw you talking with Mrs. Elliot the other day, and you were very open to her ideas. And I thought that was a great positive first step” or whatever it might be. But it’s recognizing people for trying new things and being successful or maybe not being successful, but at least trying. And what can we do to help you take that next step and be successful?

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: Finding the difference, the gap between. This is what we say we are. This is what’s painted on the wall in the hallway.

Robin Largue: Right. Right.

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: Compared to like our actual actions and how we speak to one another.

Robin Largue: I think it’s interesting, though, as a district level administrator, I used to visit schools, but I always thought it was interesting. It would be interesting to ask parents, and that’s what our parent survey does. So “when you enter a school, are you welcome?” Well, if that is a low score, then the conversation with the faculty, staff, and leaders of that school is why are we not seen as welcoming? What do we not do that we could do? Is it the sign at the front door that says, “do not enter without—” I mean, we’ve all seen it.

Meredith Hackwith Edwards: [laughs] I have.

Robin Largue: Yeah, we’ve all seen them. So it’s really, it’s not that people intend they’re trying to protect the kids. We know that. But what could we do differently that would be a bit more welcoming.

Conclusion

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Janet Pilcher: Robin’s right. What could we do differently to focus on providing the best level of service to others? How do we choose our words carefully? Because as Robin says, we don’t intend to send negative messages. We know that leaders want to do what is best for students and their families.

Thank you, Robin and Meredith, for sharing your interview with our team on Accelerate Your Performance. And thank you, Robin, for the decades of service to our profession. You indeed made a difference in our profession and you are continuing to do so by working with pre-K students as a reading pal.

And to our listeners, thank you for tuning into this episode of Accelerate Your Performance. I look forward to seeing you next week as we continue to focus on organizational excellence. Have a great week, everyone.