Read the full transcript of Episode 87 of the NAIS New View EDU podcast, which features author, strategist, and consultant/coach Julie Williamson. She joins host Debra P. Wilson to talk about the challenges and opportunities of leadership and what it means to make “how” matter in our work. Julie and Debra discuss the challenges of turning a strategic plan into an actionable framework that sets an organization up for success.
Debra Wilson: Welcome back to New View EDU.
Schools commonly agree on mission, vision, and values, and yet, still struggle with cross‑functional execution. Whether it’s division silos, initiative overload, board‑head tension, culture‑change fatigue…any of these things can slow us down. This can be particularly frustrating after a strategic planning effort that results in a beautiful picture of the future of the school and its work, but moving it forward is a totally different kettle of fish.
Today’s guest is an expert in solving those frustrations. Julie Williamson is the CEO of Karrikins Group, an experienced keynote speaker, an in-demand consultant/coach, and an Ironman triathlete. She’s also the author of Make How Matter. Her work gives us language and tools to define the how of leading together. And I’m really looking forward to the insights she can bring to our school community.
Julie, it is so lovely to have you with us on New View EDU today.
Julie Williamson: Thanks so much, I'm glad to be here.
Debra Wilson: I'm not sure if I shared this or not. I'm sort of cheating a little bit because we here at NAIS just finished a strategic plan. And I've been in this role now for almost three years. And so we are looking at implementation of sort of a bold…Some of it is new direction. Some of it is work that we've always done. And so your work with senior leadership teams on alignment and making how matter could not be more relevant, I know to our schools, but also to us here at NAIS. So thank you specifically for joining us today because I'm excited about this conversation.
Julie Williamson: Yeah, it's a perfect time to have the conversation when you're looking at a new strategy or a big direction that you're trying to set. It's a great question to be asking, how are we going to lead this together?
Debra Wilson: Yeah, so, so tell me a little bit about, know, you have a great book. You have a fabulous website, which I highly recommend people go and check out. As we mentioned in the intro, Julie is CEO of the Karrikins group and the website has all kinds of great materials. So, you know, you spend a lot of time on alignment. Let's just like jump in there with both feet. What do you notice leaders most often miss when they think they're aligned, but maybe they're not?
Julie Williamson: Yeah, I mean, it's such a great question, Debra. It is, you know, my driving purpose is to solve that problem of we think we're aligned, but we're actually not. And that is really what we do at Karrikins group, is try and help leadership teams move past agreeing that something is a good idea, and doing the work to actually get aligned to lead it together. And the question that they usually leave unanswered is not what is it that we're going to do and why. Usually, you probably know exactly what you need to do strategically and why you need to do it. But it's answering the question of how are we going to lead this together as a leadership team? And that's very specific about how people lead. And they leave it unanswered because it's a really uncomfortable question.
Debra Wilson: So yeah, OK, so let's talk about that uncomfortableness. So I love the fact that you're on the website. There's a great interview. I think it's an interview with you. And you talk about how people love to say, I agree. But that doesn't mean they're in alignment. And particularly in the nonprofit space, particularly in schools, we're very nice people. And people want to be agreeable. It's almost like when my 15-year-old tells me, “I'm fine.” So you know, like, I agree. So talk a little bit about that tension around agreement and alignment.
Julie Williamson: Love that your 15-year-old is leaning into “I'm fine,” because that's like the most passive aggressive answer we can give, and it happens in business all the time. And it happens a lot with nonprofits as well. And also with member based organizations where it's like, yeah, that would be great if we did that. Or, you know, I'm fine with wherever we're going, whatever direction you guys want to go. I'm fine usually means I'm fine if you want to go do that and I'm going to keep doing exactly what I'm doing.
Debra Wilson: Yeah, that's actually pretty much my takeaway with my 15-year-old when she says that to me. So let's break down. So you talk about the diamond triangle, right? What, why, and how. And so we under invest in how. Talk a little bit about that and what that looks like.
Julie Williamson: Yeah, I think that leaders typically know how to invest in the what. They understand conceptually strategy and planning and technology platforms and new processes and that type of stuff. So they know how to buy that. They know how to do it. They know how to lead it. And often the why has now, thanks to people like Simon Sinek and others, become fairly well understood. We need a mission, a vision, a purpose, whatever that looks like, and we sort of know how to do that. I might get some outside help to amplify it, but people understand it. And so they feel very manageable and accessible to leaders to focus on the what and the why. And what we've seen consistently, I've been in business for over 30 years, is that leaders can be fine with what they say they're going to do and why they want to do it, and they can be in absolute agreement that it's a great idea, but if they don't change how they lead together as a leadership team, they are not going to achieve their what and their why, or they're going to come up short of what they really know they are capable of doing. They're going to come up to fine, and then they're going to be done. And that's a shame.
Debra Wilson: I mean, it is a shame, and I don't want to do that. So there's this statistic that's out there that haunts me at night. And you have it on one of the pieces on your website, too, that transformations fail in over 70% of attempts. Right?
Julie Williamson: That is the driving statistic that I want Karrikins Group to play a role in changing in the whole world, right? I want us to play a role in helping leaders demolish that statistic. I want it to go away forever.
Debra Wilson: Absolutely. So let's dive into that. And so I think you're talking about the failure gap. And we'll put in a plug here. Julie has a podcast called The Failure Gap that delves into this sort of uncomfortable place of where things go wrong. So let's talk about that. What does it look like with day-to-day leadership behavior? And how do we build some discipline around stuff?
Julie Williamson: Yeah. I will just say, Debra, I have a lot of empathy for leaders because they're humans. And sometimes we forget that, right? This is a human who's trying to do something different. So you've been leading this organization for three years. You have habits and routines that serve you really well in how you lead. And people have gotten used to you leading in a certain way. And it's served the organization, it's served your team, and it's served you.
And we all know, I mean, gosh, what do they call the second Friday of January, it’s Quitter’s Day, right? We all know how hard it is to change habits and routines, right? Because they serve us. They help us navigate a fast moving and complex world. And changing how you lead means changing some deeply embedded habits about how you're showing up together as a leadership team. How you, as the head of the organization, how you're behaving and what you're doing in the organization to drive the strategy forward.
If you're not transforming how you lead, you will not transform your organization, no matter how good the strategy is. So when you think about this new strategy that you're putting into play, that you've just finished crafting, and I'm sure people are really excited about it, a question for you to ask is what leadership behaviors need to change for me and for the team if we really want to achieve this?
Because if there's nothing for you to do differently in how you lead, your strategy might not be as ambitious as you want it to be.
Debra Wilson: That sounds like a lot of pressure, Julie. Thanks for that.
Julie Williamson: Just a little bit. But it actually, you know what, it can be fun, right? And it can be fun for your 15 year old too, by the way, to think about like, how do I get out of fine, right? How do I move past this? Like when we think about creating new outcomes, and we have a behavior model in the book that people can take a look at if they want to, it's also on the website. But we think about creating new outcomes. It means exhibiting different decisions and behaviors for leaders. So you have to ask yourself, what decisions are going to have to change for this strategy to come to life? And what behaviors have to shift for all of us?
Getting to new decisions and behaviors means navigating your day-to-day trade-offs differently. So if your New Year's resolution is to go to the gym, then the trade-off is, I hit the snooze button or do I get up? Right? If the trade-off is from a strategy perspective, you're going to be shifting where you put your investments, then the trade-off might be this investment has to go away and this other one has to get resourced. Right? So we need to move resources around. That can be deeply habituated for leaders, where they put resources.
We know that trade-offs are hugely influenced by mindsets, group dynamics, and organizational factors. Now, let me just ask you, Debra, of mindsets, group dynamics, and organizational factors, where do you think leaders like to spend their time?
Debra Wilson: I would say probably mindsets or at least talking about mindsets.
Julie Williamson: Yeah, never in my experience of working with leaders have they wanted to talk about their mindsets. They want to talk about organizational factors.
Debra Wilson: Really? Well, know, the joy of the education space, and I know you'll go with this. Well, we think a lot about the growth mindset, right? We talk a lot about students and we talk about mindsets. One of the, and I want you to provide this list for our listeners too. You have a piece, I don't remember if it's the seven signs of misalignments, because I immediately, like, took those and turned those into like, how do you activate those, right?
You talk a lot about meetings and the meeting after the meeting. And how do you keep from having the same conversations again and again and again? And to me, some of those are mindset traits, too, to just say, no, we're not going to have that conversation again, or we're not having a meeting outside of the meeting, or we're not revisiting the decision-making process. Those are all things that drive me a little bit bonkers as a leader.
So we've done some of that work at NAIS to approach some of those topics and say, how can we bring that in? But tell me how people go into the organizational, because now I'm worried about traps I'm going to fall into. So I'm looking at Fresh, Shiny, Magical, Strategic Plan, of which there's a six-page version and a 47-page version with comments.
Julie Williamson: Yeah, yeah.
Debra Wilson: So tell me about those three buckets and where do leaders fall down?
Julie Williamson: Yeah, I think what often happens, and I really appreciate the idea that in education, you're more attuned to the growth mindset and really fueling it. That's a great strength to build from. What we often see leaders do is focus on those organizational factors of, we need a technology or a process or a system to help us to make different trade-offs. And you might need those things, but those are usually not what's holding a leadership team back.
It's usually somewhere in the mindset of, gosh, this strategic direction is great, and it means I'm going to have to give up control over something, or I'm going to have to report differently around the work that I do, or whatever that might look like in the strategy as the transformation takes place, it has an impact on the leader and how they function day to day. And they have to be honest about that and find words for that, put that into words, have the conversation about it in order to shift it so that the mindset doesn't go into the deeply habituated responses and then you never end up making different trade-offs.
Because people are amazing at working around processes. You can put in a new process and people will find a way to continue to work the way they've always worked if they haven't changed their mindsets or the group dynamics that are supporting the old way.
Debra Wilson: Yeah, they create those shadow systems, right? And they rely on the shadow system until they believe in the new system. So you have to build up that trust over time.
Julie Williamson: Yeah, 100%. Yeah.
So that's something for you to watch out for, is, am I seeing some shadow systems popping up that might be a sign that people haven't really grappled with the mindset or the group dynamic that's holding them back.
Debra Wilson: So how do you take that from being an individual leader of an organization and working with your leadership team? So we have schools of all kinds of shapes and sizes. We have schools with 55 kids, and then we have schools with 3,600 kids. I mean, when you're thinking about that as a leader, and you're working with your leadership team, because presumably they have to engage in these practices, too.
So say, you know, I have division heads and that can become very siloed, right? Particularly if you have multiple campuses. How should a leader be thinking about shifting like that? Like what are some practical tools that you've seen that are really useful for like, sort of getting that mindset shift and getting people really engaged in that how process in a more complex organization like that, when you're trying to get the leadership team…I mean, to me, change has to be pretty deep if you want real change. So yes, it comes from the top and it also has to really get in there. So how should leadership teams be thinking about working together to make some of these changes happen?
Julie Williamson: One of the things we really see on leadership teams are deeply embedded habits around how they talk to each other and what they talk about. And so people come with that mindset of, let's use the example of different campuses for a particular school, right? So my campus, my problem, might be the mindset. Right?
So I'm not going to bring that to the leadership team. My job is to solve that on my campus and whatever anybody else is doing, they got to do what they're going to do. Right? But in the leadership meeting, a great conversation might be taking time to share success practices across campuses. Like what's working, what's not working in different spaces, so that you can learn and grow together around that.
Where we see barriers get put up is somebody will come in and be like, this is the best practice for doing X, Y, and Z. And the other campus heads are like, what makes that the best? Here's all the reasons why it doesn't work for me. But if you come in and say, hey, I have a success practice that's worked for me, I'd like to share it. Suddenly, now people are leaning in, and they're interested, and they want to know. So sometimes it's language shifts.
Like how do you shift your language into something that's more inclusive and something that invites conversation, rather than something that immediately puts people into their own little silo and into a defensive posture around it. So those sorts of small things that happen around teams, that's a group dynamic also, right? That pops up, is how do you protect your space? And being able to break those down and really get the leadership team talking about the right things,
and sharing things that will help drive the strategy forward in a productive way. Those types of shifts can be really important. And as a leader, you're in a perfect position to help nurture that.
Debra Wilson: You also talk a bit about how to structure meetings. Talk a little bit about that, because I was excited to read some of what you have to say about that, particularly kind of at that leadership team level, though I imagine it works on a variety of levels throughout an organization.
Julie Williamson: I think structure falls in that “organizational factors” bucket, but it is really important. And again, you need all three mindsets, group dynamics, and organizational factors to be working in service to your strategy. And so sometimes we'll see in a strategic plan, the leader will be like, this is the most important initiative that we have. And then you look at the leadership team agenda, and it's always the last thing on the agenda. By the time you get to the last thing, people are done.
Debra Wilson: You've lost three people, you know, somebody's cat's walking across the screen, different things are happening.
Julie Williamson: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You've been there. I can tell.
So sometimes it's really thinking about how are we, just as simple as what's the order of the agenda? What are we putting at the top? What are we putting at the bottom and why? And being really intentional about that can be very helpful. I think there's also something to be said within meeting structure, to think about how you are bringing people into the conversation. Many of us work virtually. And so things like breakout rooms, right? Having, if you have an important topic, giving pairs of people two minutes or five minutes to go and talk together and then come back and share what they've uncovered. That's a really powerful way to fuel dialogue that often doesn't happen around the table.
You can do the same in person by simply telling people, turn to the person next to you and take five minutes to explore this question, and then come back to us with what you've uncovered in your conversation. So giving people the opportunity to do something a little different in that meeting structure, that can yield really powerful results in terms of driving alignment to whatever the shared goal might be.
Debra Wilson: How have you seen that work with boards? All of our schools, our member schools are all nonprofits. They all have their own independent boards. And boards do do a little bit more work online than they do in person. You know, and boards are complex too, right? You want to keep them at a certain altitude because they're looking at the long-term strategic direction of the organization.
So as a leader, you've got your shiny new strategic plan and you're starting to work with the board. How do you see smart leaders shifting some of those dynamics or working with the board in different kinds of ways?
Julie Williamson: Board relationships are so interesting when it comes to alignment. So let's just start there, right?
Debra Wilson: I love that as an opening concept, yes. Interesting is a word I rely on sometimes, yes.
Julie Williamson: Yeah, I know, it's a great consulting term. That's interesting. It means I'm thinking hard about it.
But no, I think that from a board perspective, whether it's in a company or a school or whatever it might be. Having a board that knows how to work together as a board is often a gap, right? The board hasn't done the work to get aligned on how they are going to lead as a board. So you, let's just say you have 10 people around the table. Two of them really don't even know what it means to be a board member. They're just there because their kid goes to the school or whatever, right? Or went to the school. And two of them are like, hard driving business people who come from a really specific context around what it means to have fiduciary responsibilities for something. And they think that that's what they're supposed to be doing on this board, right? And like, so you have all these different contexts around the board.
So one thing I think as a leader that is really important is to get the board to spend the time to figure out how are we going to be a team? How are we going to lead this school and work with the head and the rest of the leaders of the school to achieve the vision that's out there? The boards often skip that step. If we assume that you've got a great board who's done that work, then I think one challenge, we often see this with CEOs, is it becomes a contentious relationship sometimes because the CEO or the head of a school, they might feel like they have to defend the strategy rather than have a generative approach to the strategy with the board.
So it becomes, they always kind of go in on their heels, saying we've done all this work on the strategy and now we have to defend it to the board. And I think it's really important for the board chair and the head to have a good relationship or in a business context, the board chair and the CEO to have a good working relationship where it is in service to the leadership that the board can provide oversight and insight and perspective to help make things better, not to put that leader in that position of always being on the defensive. We often see that dynamic. I don't know if that is as true in your world, but it's certainly a challenging dynamic between the board and the leadership team if it's allowed to be.
Debra Wilson: Yeah, I think one of the things that we see, because a lot of our boards have term limits, you can end up with a fair amount of board turnover, particularly when we have international schools, they see even more board turnover. It's re-explaining the basis for the strategic plan, getting everybody with the same understanding going forward.
And then so, like, how we use those meetings, what really struck me, you know, when I was reading your piece on meetings and how we think about meetings, you know, you want to get the best of people's brains while they're fresh, right? Was I think the way you put it in one piece. And I talk about that a lot around creating agendas with your board, you know, to have the strategic conversations early. You know, like sometimes we leave the medias part for last and either you've lost some people or they're just not fresh or like it's gotten pushed.
Julie Williamson: And they're tired.
Debra Wilson: They're tired. You've run out of time. You only have 12 minutes to talk about the big hairy audacious goal that you've got for yourself. So just thinking about how do you shift that kind of behavior? Because it's comfortable to report, right?
Julie Williamson: That's right. Yeah, I think one of the things we see often in board reporting relationships, whether it's a school or a business, there's this idea of like, let's just knock out the easy stuff or like, let's knock out the the operational reports, like, what's the budget and what's like we want to, or there are people who like, I want to get to the numbers, right? Well, that may or may not be the most important thing. But the strategy should probably be at the top of the agenda every time. Right?
How are we talking about that? How are we getting people engaged in that? And then get to the operational stuff later when people don't need to be as fresh.
Debra Wilson: Yeah, I've seen some boards – and I'm curious whether you've seen that with some of the groups you've worked with too – They're doing more of that either through video reports or different kinds of reports, so they're just frankly using less time in meetings overall for reporting, because there's so many other ways to do it.
Julie Williamson: Absolutely, I think that's a fantastic application of technology, to be able to provide board members with what they need while also making the best use of the precious time that you have together. Because that time is really precious.
Debra Wilson: Right. What do you see, when you're talking with organizations about creating this alignment, like what are some of the signs you – we talked a little bit about what it looks like when you're not aligned, right? So what does it look like when you are aligned? How do you know? Like what are your bellwethers?
Julie Williamson: I love that question. Yeah, I think one thing is when you're aligned, there's some practical things. You're making progress against your strategic goals. You don't feel like you're stuck in that, It's fine. We'll get to it. Like it's down the road. We still have time. Like that mentality of we still have time. If people are saying things like that, you're probably misaligned, right? But if you're starting to see progress against those goals, then you're probably in good alignment across the leadership team and probably with your board as well.
I think another great sign of alignment is that people have confidence in the decision making processes. So it doesn't mean that a decision never gets revisited. Conditions change, the world changes, you know, whatever. But that only happens when there's a big event or a big change that requires a decision to be revisited.
It doesn't happen just as the normal course of business. So they have trust in decisions that are made, and that those decisions will be upheld, unless there is a really significant change in the environmental conditions around you. So I think that's a, that's a big marker as well.
And then the last thing I would just say is, I think you just have more fun together. I think people look forward to their meetings together when there's alignment, because they know you're going to make progress. They don't dread the meeting because they're just like, I've been in this meeting seven times in the last year and I don't need to sit through it again. Right. Like they have that kind of energy towards it. They actually look forward to spending time with their colleagues.
Debra Wilson: Yeah, the revisiting decisions really resonates with me. I tell people I don't buy the same real estate twice. So when you're revisiting, and I'm all for it if conditions on the ground change, OK? But it gets tiresome when you have a groundhog day of, I feel like we already had this conversation. You can actually go back sometimes through the minutes or through the agendas.
How do you think about alignment in terms of the overall health of the organization? So a common concern that boards have is, what happens if we lose our head of school? And most nonprofits, corporations all have this concern, right? So what would happen? They're hired away. They retire. Whatever the thing is, how does alignment strategically help the organization for those kind of unexpected turns in, particularly in a smaller school?
Julie Williamson: Yeah, it's a great question. I think for one thing, I saw in one of your reports that the turnover for heads of schools is accelerating. That's happening in the business world as well. The turnover of CEOs is happening very quickly. If there is alignment at a leadership level in the school, then the school is better able to absorb the loss of a head. But I would also suggest that if the board is aligned, and if there's good alignment between the board and the head of the school, I would suggest that's a great retention tool in terms of keeping somebody there longer, because the job doesn't feel as lonely and it doesn't feel as hard if the work that you're doing is in service to the school and you're not spending a lot of cycles as a head trying to manage the board relationship or trying to relitigate decisions with your team, right?
Like some of the things that are just really hard and they feel like they feel burdensome. Like the hard things that you want to work on, whether you're a CEO or a head of school, the hard things you want to work on is how do we be in better service to our students, to our families, to our customers, whatever that looks like for you. You don't want the hard things that you're working on to be, got to go wrangle the board again, or I've got to go convince my team that this is the right direction to go. Right? That's not what you want to spend your time on. And that will cause turnovers.
Debra Wilson: And burnout, right? It's hard if you feel like your, your energy is getting sort of diverted elsewhere and you're like, okay, we're not making progress because I can't work on the thing that I see out there, but I'm spending a lot of time burning through these other pieces.
Julie Williamson: And I think sometimes people forget that those leadership roles, whether it's a head of school again, or a CEO, they're very lonely roles. so alignment in my mind, the work of getting aligned as a team and also with the board, that relationship that can help, that can help solve for some of that isolation that people in those very senior roles feel. And it gets more people involved in the overall support structure for the leader's success. And so I do think there's something to be said for doing the work to make sure there is alignment, especially around a big strategy so that the leader doesn't feel alone in that pursuit.
Debra Wilson: So talk about that a little more because I was really interested to read a piece that you had on lonely leader syndrome, which I think is a very real thing. We talk about it with heads of school a lot and I think there's a lot out there. And you talk a lot about kind of connection and social cohesion, right?
Dive a little deeper into that sort of lonely leader syndrome and how leaders might think about that, particularly when it comes to alignment.
Julie Williamson: Yeah, I think, you know, people bear the burden of leadership, right? And that is true. If you're the head of a school, you ultimately are responsible for a lot of things, and creating alignment across your team and bringing them into the decision making processes and the support of your vision and your strategy doesn't mean that you give up decision rights or authority, but it does mean that you build more social cohesion towards that goal. And I think boards should really be paying attention to the degree to which they impact the sense of connection that a head of school or a CEO has to the organization, because that interaction with the board plays a really significant part in that sense of isolation that that person feels, or the sense of connection that that person feels.
Because if they feel like they have to protect their team, for example, from the board, rather than seeing the board as an active and engaged partner, then it just amplifies that sense of isolation that they have and the sense of responsibility that they have. Rather than having them feel really comfortable and confident, having one of their colleagues in front of the board, or working with the board, right?
So I think all of these things come into play and how that person as a head of school or any other leadership position experiences either a sense of community or a sense of isolation.
Debra Wilson: That's so well said. And I think people feel that on a very visceral level in some ways, right? As leaders, particularly if a leader finds themselves between the board and the staff, it's a rock and a hard place, right? You need to be in alignment with your staff to do the work and to make great progress. And you need to be in alignment with the board to be stewarding the school for the future. And those things, they have to be kind of clicking together. Or that sense of progress is definitely going to be gone. You're definitely going to be spending a lot more time on that. But I hadn't thought about it until you phrased it that way in terms of how that feeds isolation, because you don't feel…you're completely out of step with those groups.
Julie Williamson: And I actually think boards should hold themselves to a higher standard in how they support and actively engage with the head of a school or a CEO, whatever that looks like. Because if you are able to help that person to be in that role longer and to, then they, they will be more successful. Right? So if a leader is feeling a real sense of anxiety or trepidation about meeting with the board in any way, in my mind, the board is failing. Because you should be creating an environment where whether it's good news or bad news, that person feels confident that they have a group of people who are there to support their success and that they are going to partner with them and hold them accountable, yes. You know, challenge them, yes, push them, yes, but make them feel small or make them feel anxious or make them feel unworthy of the role? No. And I think that does happen.
Debra Wilson: So how do you, how do you ensure that kind of alignment across the system of trustees? Boards are fascinating to me because a lot of the times you're bringing leaders together and you expect them to work as a team and leaders are not always good team members. Like those, we don't, those, those, those two skillsets don't always have a big crossover on the Venn diagram. So, you know, when you're thinking about creating alignment on a board around what I think you're talking about, you know, are sort of best practices. How, how do you, how, how would you talk to boards about building that particular alignment? And building that kind of culture of alignment?
Julie Williamson: You know, I think boards are tricky and interesting as well and fascinating in all sorts of ways. And I do think that with a board starts with the board chair. And if the board chair isn't on board, I just put a very circular reference in there. But if they're not willing to maintain a standard for the board that says we're here in service of the success of this organization, then it's very hard to get to where I would like to see boards be in their relationship with the head or a CEO, whatever that looks like.
So I do think the board chair is a really critical role in all of this. And I think it's about being clear on the standards that board members are accountable to in how they work with the head of the school, the leadership team, whatever that container is. Because without those standards, people think that they're doing fine. Should I go back to fine, right? I'm a fine board member. Or I have the right as a board member to yell at somebody or to question them in a way that makes them feel defensive or whatever that assumption might be, it goes back to the mindset. So what's the mindset that the board member is bringing into their role as a board member? What do they think is their prerogative? What do they think they are entitled to? What do they think is required of them? What do they think is necessary, right?
And we've got to make all of that visible in conversation with them and let them know what the board chair standards are for what a good board member looks like, so that they have a clear sense of what's appropriate.
Debra Wilson: I love that. And we probably don't make that as concrete as we could or should. There's a lot of, you know, we all know this, we've all been in a lot of meetings. There's like a lot of unspoken norms in meetings or yeah, those social dynamics in front of you. They're bigger than you think sometimes.
Julie Williamson: Group dynamics. Yeah. A great example on boards: You'll have one person who thinks it's their job to be the contrarian, right? And you'll hear them say things like, well, I'm the only one who's willing to tell the truth. Or I'm the only one who's thinking about the future, right? There's that mindset of I'm the only one who's has the, you know, who's willing to do this. And the group dynamic is when that person starts talking, everybody kind of glazes over and they lean back in their chair.
And they're like, well, we're just going to wait this out. And so the person who sees themselves in that role is now grilling the head of school or the CEO. And the rest of the group is just like letting it happen. And this too shall pass mentality. So you've got a mindset at work and you've got a group dynamic at work and no amount of organizational factors is going to change that. And the ultimate outcome is that you don't get to a good healthy place with the leader who is in that environment.
Debra Wilson: I've worked with a CFO who's a former head of school and he called that being plucked to death by ducks. You know, ducks don't have pointy beaks. So like, you know, every time as a head that you're sitting through that dynamic and you're not necessarily in the role to call it out, it's sort of another, you know, straw on the camel's back to mix my metaphors a bit, right?
And it gets back, in our earlier conversation, about how you're thinking about meetings and how are you disrupting some of these patterns of conversation?
Julie Williamson: And none of it is about saying that you don't need that person to be asking good questions and to be thinking about the future and to be challenging the position that the head of school is taking. It's a question of how you do that, and how you attend to the human as well as to the topic.
Debra Wilson: I love that actually as a touch point. Because we are all, you going back to the lonely leader, we are all humans leading these organizations. And so there is a very human part to it, and there's the work. And so, you know, how do we keep both of those things in mind when we're engaging?
Julie Williamson: And asking yourself, is this approach in service to helping this person think differently, or is it in service to me feeling like my ideas are being heard? And I think board members have to be really authentic with themselves and honest with themselves about that.
Debra Wilson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we use that mnemonic, THINK, right, with kids? I'm trying to remember all of the words now that I put it out there, but it's like, is it thoughtful? Is it helpful? I can’t remember what the I is, but is it new? Like, you know, basically, are you covering old ground? And again, you know, we think about growth mindset in schools, but we have mnemonics like that to help kids really think through like...OK, before I say this, let's check myself so I know why I'm adding this.
All right, Julie, last question. If you could get leaders or teams to shift one practice to show that the how matters in their school, in their place, what would it be?
Julie Williamson: I think if people could just slow down a little tiny bit, just slow down the thinking and the speaking, and just put a little bit of thought between the what they hear and how they respond, then it would fundamentally shift how teams work together. And I think it would really change the dynamic between a board and a head of school, for example. Just slowing down. It doesn't mean coming to a stop. It doesn't mean stalling out. It doesn't mean not making efficient use of your time. But we could all afford to just slow down a little bit.
Debra Wilson: I'm so glad you said that because you, in another piece, you talk about how career paths are not straightforward. I think you said it's, your career path has been like a ramble. Mine were, when my son was very little, we were putting together like one of those Thomas the Train tracks. And we were doing it kind of late at night on this new train table. And we had a couple of bridges to nowhere. And I told my husband, I said, look, it's my career path. And there's no wrong step, right? There's the next step.
So you still want to take the step, but to slow down and consider it and consider what you're building or potentially tearing down in that process.
Julie Williamson: Yeah. And I'm always telling, especially young leaders, exactly that. Wherever you go next, it's your next step, not your last step. And your next step is going to open up all sorts of learnings for you. One learning might be that you don't want to be there, and that's okay. But don't be afraid to take the next step because you have a mindset that it's going to be your last step. There are no last steps.
Debra Wilson: Excellent. I love that. Julie, thank you so much for being with us. We really appreciate it. I know our listeners will enjoy this podcast and take a lot away from it. So thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.
Julie Williamson: Yeah, thanks Debra, I really enjoyed it.