Byron's Babbles

Christ’s Entry Into Brussels
James Ensor

I was prompted today to write about servant leadership; or really leading from where you are. Really I guess I am combining three important concepts to leadership here, but I believe they are not mutually exclusive. First, I believe leaders must be servants, not title holders. Second, I believe everyone must have the ability to lead from where they are, and finally, I believe we must use Christ’s model and lead from the middle.

Let’s explore my three thoughts. As leaders we lose the right to be selfish. Leadership is about serving others, not wielding power because of a title. Great leaders please others, not themselves. The great leaders I admire add value to others’ lives. We should also, as effective leaders, emulate Christ’s model. Finally, as a servant leader we must remain life-long learners and teachable. As the saying goes, “Leaders are Learners.”

Every day when I walk into school, I remind myself that it is not about me. It is about everyone else that I serve. My goal is to make myself the most dispensable person in the building. Imagine how effective our team will be if every person is empowered and has been given the personal, professional growth to lead, educate, and operationalize everything in our high school.

Additionally, I believe we must lead from where we are. I am a card-carrying believer that every person in our high school is a leader – from the person who empties the trash to the students, the teachers, and right to me. I learn from someone in those groups each and every day. Wheatley (2007) promoted a more unstructured style of leadership, which promotes self-organization. She contended that most leaders use control and imposition rather than a self-organizing process (Wheatley, 2007). I believe the more control is imposed on people and situations the more they are made uncontrollable. Wheatley (2007) considered self-organizing systems to have the capacity to create for themselves the aspects of organizations that we thought authoritarian leaders had to provide. Therefore, it is important for leaders to create a culture where individuals are free and the need to create is met (Wheatley, 1992, 2007).

We really need to move from leader-centered organizations to leadership-centered organizations. There must, in my opinion, be a sharing of leadership responsibilities. Schultz (2011) asserted that by flattening the hierarchy and moving toward a shared leadership model, positive outcomes result from a reciprocal influence between leaders and followers. This is the concept I mentioned as my third concept of Christ’s model of leading from the middle. Schultz (2011) recommended sharing leadership with others. This is really important on two fronts – 1. I want everyone in our organization to be empowered to provide leadership anytime they see a need; and, 2. I want to be leading from within right along side everyone, not out in front where I can’t see what is going on. From the middle I can help pull people along and can also help push. Effective leaders are hands-on and operational giving them the situational awareness necessary to be curious, learn, and take action.

I included the image of my favorite painting in this post – Christ’s Entry Into Brussels, by James Ensor. I was first introduced to this painting when I read Leading Change: Overcoming the Ideology of Comfort and the Tyranny of Custom by James O’Toole (1995). This book is displayed in my office as one of the top five literary influences on my life. In this book O’Toole introduces the idea of values-based leadership that he calls, Rushmorean Leadership. Based off of the leaders chiseled into Mount Rushmore. As O’Toole said: “I prefer to think of the four as the best representatives of a school of values-based leadership dedicated to democratic change” (O’Toole, 1995, p.21). It is important to think about how all four Presidents led: they listened to others, encouraged dissenting opinion, empowered authority to their subordinates, and led by example instead of power, title, manipulation, or coercion.

Now, back to the painting by Ensor. If you enlarge it you will find Christ in the middle where we always find Christ, among us. Look close at the painting and you will find him in the middle of chaos, just like most of us lead in every day. Remember, he led by becoming one of us and teaching us among us. He would not have had to do this, but it was the only way. He led by example, he listens, and he empowers us each and every day to be the best we can be to serve. Take a moment and reflect on your role as a servant leader. Would O’Toole call you Rushmorean? Are you leading from the middle like Christ?

References

O’Toole, J. (1995). Leading change: Overcoming the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom. San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Schultz, D. (2011). Sharing leadership. Leadership Excellence, 28(2), 16-17.

Wheatley, M.J. (1992). Leadership and the new science: Learning about organization from an orderly universe. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Wheatley, M.J. (2007). Finding our way: Leadership for an uncertain time. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

For the second week in a row I am going to reference a Bible verse. I received an email from one of our teachers this week thanking me for the leadership I have been providing. I really appreciated the email, but also appreciated the reminder of what it says in Proverbs 29:18: “where there is no vision, the people perish but blessed is he who keeps the law.” It was great to see this reference in his email.

I love references to Proverbs because I read a chapter a day, as there are 31 chapters. Perfect for a daily reading. I learned this from reading Steven Scott’s The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: King Solomon’s Secrets To Success, Wealth, and Happiness.

This reference was so appreciated because I believe having a vision is so important. More important than the vision is the action. You can plan and visualize all you want, but until you “do” nothing happens. We have a vision for a great school for our students and are working very hard to provide that.

I used to talk about the “Nintendo Effect.” The reason why kids of all ages love and get hooked on video games is because of the great educational best practices these games employ. These best practices are: student-centric instead of monolithic, immediate feedback, actionable feedback, the opportunity to immediately go back and re-try, and the ability to collaborate and watch others play and learn from them. You would have to agree, all of these are important to learning whether you are a p-16 learner, business executive, or pro-football player. Right?

I have now changed my phrase, however, from “Nintendo Effect” to “Angry Birds Effect.” This change is not just to keep me more in tune with the times, but the fact that Angry Birds does a better job of combining all the best practices than Nintendo ever could. For those reading that have never played Angry Birds let me give you a little tutorial. Basically, you are presented with Angry Birds and a sling shot and your job is to destroy green pigs who are sheltered by very creative structures in a variety of settings. This game, designed by the Finnish game developer Rovio Mobile, was first designed for the Apple IOS system in 2009.

Each level starts with the number, types, and order of birds predetermined. If all the pigs are defeated by the time the last bird is used, and you improve your score three times the next level is unlocked. Basically, standards mastery! Upon completing each level, players receive one, two, or three stars, depending on the score received. I want to make sure you understand here, I can play as many times as needed to get all three stars – a little different than the way most students are graded today. Players may reattempt unlocked levels as many times as they wish in order to complete them successfully or to earn additional points or starts.

Angry Birds has many of the components that should be incorporated into great student centric curriculum and lesson planning or development of corporate training programs. The way most schools do feedback right now is by grades and “when the grades are handed out, the privilege of feeling successful is reserved only for the best students. By design, the rest experience failure” (Christensen, Horn, & Johnson, 2011). Let’s take a look at the best practices we can learn from Angry Birds:

1. Early in the game, the single Red Bird is the only one available-basic knowledge.

2. Players advance at their own pace.

3. Mastery is required to advance – You must have cleared a level three times with   score improvement each time before moving on.

4. As the player advances, new levels are introduced.

5. The player can move ahead and clear levels beyond the one they are presently in, but not too far.

6. Different contexts are portrayed (deserts, gem mine, city at night, et cetera) to make it interesting and relevant to the player.

7. The player is given new tools (different types of birds) to use as he/she advances and unlocks higher levels.

8. Immediate feedback is given. The player knows the score immediately.

9. Ability to go back and retry and review any level any time.

10. The next level is always “just above” (Christensen et al., 2011) the players ability. Not too far above, but “just above.”

Let’s dig into this concept of “just above” a little deeper. Christensen et al. (2011) asserted, “There is mounting evidence that students’ learning is maximized when content is delivered “just above” their current capabilities – not too much of a stretch, and not too easy. Customization to the “just above” level for each student is much easier to achieve in software than in the current monolithic delivery of most schools.” This adds a whole new dimension to differentiated instruction and modifying learning according to the way students learn. Remember, this is true for adult learners as well.

So let’s recap what we can learn from Angry Birds. We must provide a learning environment that is student centric, not monolithic (Christensen et al., 2011); we must provide immediate and actionable feedback; we must provide the students with the ability to go back and keep trying and editing till mastery is achieved; and we must introduce material “just above” where each individual student’s capabilities are.

Next time you are planning a lesson, developing a training program, planning a practice, or whatever your profession has you teaching others; think about the best practices of Angry Birds.

Reference

Christensen, C.M., Horn, M.B., Johnson, C.W. (2011). Disrupting class:How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns, expanded edition. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies.