ESSA Opportunity #1: Assessments
I am beginning a series of ten posts detailing opportunities I see us having with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This post deals with new opportunities afforded by ESSA for Assessments. ESSA continues the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) schedule of federally required statewide assessments. ESSA still requires annual statewide assessments in reading and math in 3rd–8thgrade and once in high school; science assessments once each in elementary, middle, and high school. Those assessments must be aligned with state standards and provide information on whether a student is performing at grade level. ESSA allows computer-adaptive tests as well. These computer-adaptive models could be used to measure a student’s academic proficiency above or below grade level to determine a student’s actual performance level.
It is also important to keep in mind that no more than 1 percent of all students in the state can take an alternate assessments for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. There is still the requirement of 95% participation in state testing. States or localities may create their own laws on assessment participation, and districts are required to notify parents about those, but the 95% participation requirement must be met.
There are some options already being used in some states for the high school level. An option for states or districts to use a nationally-recognized assessment (e.g. SAT or ACT) at the high school level in place of the state test. These assessments may measure individual student growth. Any assessment that is used must be aligned to the state standards, provide results that can be used for accountability, and meet all the technical requirements that apply to statewide tests. They also have to be peer reviewed. Under ESSA, any district-selected assessments must be approved by the state.
In addition, summative assessments can be administered through multiple statewide interim assessments that , when combined, produce an annual summative score are allowed under ESSA. Also allowable under ESSA are assessments that are partially delivered through portfolios, projects, or extended performance tasks.
Finally, ESSA encourages and gives states the opportunity to audit their assessments to look at over-testing. As you can see, ESSA gives new flexibility in assessment design. The new law allows for use of nationally recognized high school assessments and innovative assessment flexibility. Now it is up to the states to collaborate and come up with solutions that are best for the students.
ESSA: What Stays The Same?
I will continue my series of blog posts concerning the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) here with a post about what stays the same under ESSA. I previously blogged about our fascination with ESSA in Why Is ESSA So Fascinating? Because of the many years of state’s frustrations over what were considered by many to be a heavy and prescriptive federal role in education policy, I believe we are all looking for innovative and effective ways that could have lasting impact on schools’ priorities and ultimately a positive impact on our children’s lives. All of the talk of new flexibiity promised under the ESSA, I believe we are all excited to get started on getting everyone in our states together to collaborate and innovate. The United States Department of Education, however, is still in the initial phases of rule-making and figuring out what the USDE’s role will be to regulate under ESSA, a process which is looking like will take several months. The law doesn’t go into full effect until the 2017-18 school year, but certainly it is time to get started.
Therefore, I would like to take the opportunity a few of the things, as I see ESSA, that stay the same. These things are worth studying because we now have the opportunity to tweak and continue to innovate. Indiana is in a great position under ESSA because many of the things called for under the new act we are already doing. We now can take the opportunity for continuous improvement. We have the opportunity to further hone our vision for education in Indiana and engage our communities in the conversation. Before we get into what remains the same under ESSA let’s take a look at what the wishes of the law are (adapted from an International Association for k-12 Online Learning [iNACOL] webinar):
- High expectations and tranparency
- Required action for underperformance
- State autonomy
- Local control
- Program consolidation
- Room for innovation
Here is what remains the same. We, the states, are still responsible to:
- adopt challenging state academic standards. Remember, these do not need to be common core and the Secretary of Education has no authority to tell the states what those standards will be.
- test students annually in math and reading in grades 3-8 and once in high school; and science in grade span. There many who keep talking about how the requirement to test is gone and this is simply not true. By forming our ESSA/ISTEP+ Task Force, however, the Indiana Legislature provided great leadership in having us take this opportunity to study and improve our state testing.
- publicly report scores based on race, income, ethnicity, disability, and English learners.
- identify schools for improvement including the bottom performing 5%.
- distribute Title I, Title II, and Title III formula grants.
In future posts I will be outlining the new opportunities we under ESSA. Every one of those opportunities is fascinating on its own, but we will all need to find ways to collaborate so that all components of ESSA can be knitted together for doing what’s best for the students we serve.
Why is ESSA so Fascinating?
I am so proud to be our Indiana State Board of Education’s representative to the task force, formed under HEA 1395, and charged with studying the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and our ISTEP+ summative high stakes Indiana test. Ever since the bill was signed into law on December 10, 2015 by President Barack Obama, I have been fascinated with the possibilities that lie ahead for our children. I have the opportunity to speak about my views and thoughts on ESSA and most recently spoke at the District 9 Meeting of the Indiana Association of School Principals and led off discussing my own and the nation’s fascination with ESSA. But why? Why am I and so many others so fascinated with ESSA?
Speaking to District 9 Principals of the Indiana Association of School Principals
I believe there are a three big reasons for this fascination:
- The historic nature of this law that started back with President Lyndon B. Johnson, was revisited in the President George W. Bush era, and now with ESSA being signed into law by our current President Barack Obama. President Obama told us that when ESSA goes into full effect with the 2017-18 school year, we will be maintaining Lyndon B. Johnson’s civil rights legacy of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which turned 50 last year. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) was originally passed as part of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration’s War on Poverty campaign. The original goal of the law, which remains today, was to improve educational equity for students from lower-income families by providing federal funds to school districts serving poor students. Since its initial passage, ESEA has been reauthorized seven times, most recently in January 2002 as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Each reauthorization brought changes to the program, but its central goal remains: improving the educational opportunities and outcomes for children from lower-income families.
- It was also historic and fascinating that ESSA passed by a huge bipartisan margin after eight years of debate. ESSA passed by a vote of 359 to 64 in the U.S. House of Representatives and a vote of 85 to 12 in the U.S. Senate. President Obama acknowledged No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law and the work of President George W. Bush, but also said the NCLB “often forced schools and school districts into cookie-cutter reforms that didn’t always produce the kinds of results that we wanted to see.” He went on to say that ESSA “creates real partnerships between the states, which will have new flexibility to tailor their improvement plans, and the federal government, which will have the oversight to make sure that the plans are sound.” I believe this opportunity for collaboration between states, including state legislatures, state boards of education, communities, families, schools, and all other external and internal stakeholders, and the federal governments fascinates us and has us dreaming of the possibilities.
- Finally, I believe we are fascinated with the opportunity to invent unexpected solutions. Innovation is a major pillar of fascination. Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican – Tennessee, and a key architect of ESSA said it best when he stated “What I believe is that when we take the handcuffs off, we’ll unleash a whole flood of innovation and ingenuity classroom by classroom, state by state, that will benefit children.” Ingenuity and innovation – now that is fascinating and we in Indiana and every other state need to take full advantage of the opportunities that ESSA provides for our students.
With this fascination comes responsibility. As I stated earlier, we have the opportunity to invent unexpected solutions – in other words, INNOVATE. Many talk about the POWER going back to the states under ESSA and even as a card carrying fan of my hero, Patrick Henry (who was an advocate of individual and state’s rights), I would rather say “RESPONSIBILITY back to the states.” Power guides action, so we have the responsibility in Indiana to guide the action and bring all internal and external stakeholders together for a true collaboration to develop innovate for great solutions for the children of Indiana and our Nation.
Leading Learning
Charlotte Danielson Speaking to NASBE Members on April 4, 2016
This past week I had the opportunity to take another deep dive into the new Every Student Succeeds Act during the Legislative Conference of the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE). It was also great to not only listen to Charlotte Danielson of the Danielson Group, but I was also able to have a lengthy personal conversation with her about innovation in education, teacher evaluation, and teacher leadership. The thing that impresses me most about Charlotte is that she is always thinking continual improvement and innovation. She made a few comments that are appropriate as we consider leading learning. Let’s face it, students learning is the ultimate goal we need to be achieving in education. The phrases that Charlotte said that resonated with me were, “Learning is done by the learner,” and “Teaching is cognitive work.” As we lead learning I believe it is very important that we keep these two thoughts in mind.
The goal must be to shift the thinking on the student and how the instructional environment supports student thinking. Teaching is a constant work of improvement – a career that involves learning and rethinking our approaches daily. It’s a very interesting concept if we reconsider that we’re always developing our practice. If we are to be successful we must start with the student as the focus and lead the learning from there. The student must always be at the center – this is always critical to success in leading learning.
In my studies at Harvard University around leading learning, I have had some key takeaways that came from the idea that, “Learning might be best described as the process by which information becomes knowledge” (City, Elmore, & Lynch, 2012, Chapter 6, p. 153). This when put together with the thought that, “Knowledge…is information plus meaning, where meaning is acquired through experience or education” (Chapter 6, p. 153) frames a fertile environment for innovation in education. It allows us to take education outside the walls of the traditional schoolhouse. It allows school to be any modality where some combination of information, knowledge, and learning flows from some portal to the learner (City et al, Chapter 6, 2012). As a leader of learning I want to continue to use the lens of education as learning instead of school as a physical place of learning. (City et al, Chapter 6, 2012). These key takeaways came from studies of the book The Futures of School Reform (2012) edited by Mehta, Schwartz, and Hess.
As a state board of education member and someone that works in education leadership and policy development, I want to continue to make sure and educate fellow policymakers on the learning core and make sure we are leading learning and not just leading school as usual. I want to continue to improve leading learning from a policy side to help others understand how to make policy meet reality.
Leading Innovation in Education
Being involved as a school leader of a network of schools offering fully virtual enrollment, as well as blended learning centers, I have experienced both the joys and challenges of being involved in innovation. Keep in mind online learning is very much still in the pioneer stage of development. Through this experience I have learned first hand the push back from individuals, organizations, and policymakers who will not even accept trying innovating in the space of online education and school choice. The same holds true for many other innovations in education as well. This makes it extremely hard at times to reach consensus for having education policy, accountability systems, and funding meet reality.
Some of the push back I refer to is well founded. When you think that we have been educating our children in much the same way for two centuries, it is natural for there to be some resistance to change. Interesting to me, however, is that an analysis of data from all the traditional means by which we deliver education to our children suggest we should be pushing back on some of those means as well. By their very nature, innovations are new and untested. Therefore, it is unreasonable to expect that all innovations become immediate success stories and be evidence-based. At the same time, the education field has a long history of promoting the latest fads and “flavors of the month” that turned out to be, at the least, ineffectual, and at the worst, have children falling further behind. I am certainly not suggesting we contribute to this unintended consequence either. Sometimes, though, I worry that we have not given some very effective and innovative ideas enough time to see if learning gains will be experienced.
In the world of education, innovation comes in many other forms than just the online world. There are innovations in the way education systems are organized and managed, exemplified by charter schools or turnaround academies being managed by education management organizations (EMO). There are innovations in instructional techniques or other delivery systems. We need ongoing innovation in the area of customizing learning for every student. This is very important in serving every student. There are innovations in the way teachers are recruited, prepared, and compensated. I have had the opportunity to work with Teach for America teachers and would put them up against any teacher preparation program. The training and disposition of these teachers to work with struggling urban students who are behind on both skill and grade level is outstanding.
We must continue to encourage creativity and innovation in addressing our most important challenges in education. I believe we need more opportunities for innovations to pass through a peer review process focused on the project’s design. This would provide an opportunity for vetting of the ability of the innovation to be brought to scale and be duplicated. Schools and other innovators of learning must place rigorous, experimental evaluation designs in place so that, over time, we can learn if practices are effective.
Additionally, we need to continue to think about how to accelerate innovation time and evaluation of the effectiveness of those innovations. I believe collaboration is the key here. Innovations are best designed when they are a direct result of a need in a specific school context. We need to make sure our teachers and staff have the necessary time and resources to reflect and be creative in developing customized solutions for the students he or she serve. Finally, we need to continue to develop robust networks for sharing innovations and best practices.
Big Opportunity Leadership
On my flight home from Washington DC last night I had many things on my mind. One of which was the newly signed into law Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA as most people refer to it. ESSA was the reason I was in our Nation’s Capitol for the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE)Legislative Conference. We had the opportunity to work through what state boards’ role will be in the implementation of ESSA. I was reflecting on how much work there was to be done implementing this new and great bipartisan law that gives a great deal of power back to the states – Patrick Henry would be proud. Consensus has been reached to pass ESSA into law and now it is time for implementation. John Manning (2015) referred to this as execution in Lesson #40 of The Disciplined Leader. As I was reflecting, the pilot came on and said we had 327 miles left to Indianapolis. Because the Wright Brothers are my idols, I could not help but say a quick thank you to them for executing their plan for first flight. They took advantage of what John Kotter calls the “Big Opportunity.” Because of them, I am able to be home from Washington DC in a little over an hour. That is one big opportunity!
Secretary of Education John King & I
Manning (2015) discussed creating ownership in solutions. ESSA empowers many to take advantage of the big opportunities. I had the opportunity to be with our recently confirmed Secretary of Education John King, yesterday morning and we discussed the opportunities for state legislatures, state boards of education, schools, and many other stakeholders to work together for implementation of ESSA. This implementation really plays into John Kotter’s Dual Operating System approach to change. As we implement ESSA in Indiana I hope we will use the five premises from Kotter as our guide for taking advantage of the “Big Opportunity” – equity in education for all students. Secretary of Education King also left us with this very important thought, “Schools save lives!” Again, that is one big opportunity. These five guiding principles are:
- Having many change agents – by having state legislatures, state boards of education, state departments of education, and many other stakeholders involved in the collaborative implementation we should have innovation and creativity for coming up with the best practices for our students.
- Creating a “want to” not “have to” mindset – Now that the power has been placed in the state’s hands for implementation of ESSA, we must be excited and have a “get to” approach.
- Head and heart, not just head – This is easy when we are implementing law to serve our children.
- Leadership, not management – This is important for me as an Indiana State Board of Education member. I must do my part to provide the leadership to keep the strategy of ESSA implementation in tact.
- Many systems, one organization, lose the hierarchy – everyone must be a part of the “big opportunity.” Again, there must be collaboration from many different stakeholders.
Manning (2015) taught us to “stay the course” and execute. What “big opportunities” do you have on the horizon for implementation?
The Vital Few of Leading My Team
It is now time for my favorite activity that John Manning (2015) has readers do as part of reading the 52 lessons in The Disciplined Leader. The book is divided into three different parts and Manning (2015) instructs readers to pick their own three vital few from each part that he/she needs to work on. I really like that this is a part of the reading, as it provides a way to reflect on what has been learned in the reading and a chance to put the learning into my own real world context. In other words, the learning meets reality.
Click here to read my reflection and my vital three from Part I, The Responsibility To Lead Yourself. This post will be a reflection of Part II, The Responsibility To Lead Your Team. Part II included the following lessons:
- Choose the right words
- Put your game face on
- Be in the moment
- Focus on what is right, not who is right
- Don’t cross the line
- Treat everyone fairly
- Honor your commitments
- Don’t overuse the “I” word
- Surround yourself with great talent
- Hire who is right
- Empower employees
- Hold your team accountable
- Check up on daily goals
- Give effective performance feedback
- Spot opportunities to coach
- Demand more solutions
- Encourage disagreement
- Advocate for your team
- Recognize your employees
As you can see, Part II in The Disciplined Leader had some pretty heavy stuff. It took some studying and long reflecting to decide what my vital three would be. Since I had blogged about all 19 Part II topics, I also went back and studied all my posts. Here are my vital three:
- Empower employees
- Surround yourself with great talent
- Give effective performance feedback
Anyone who works with me or has spent very much time with me will probably not be surprised by these vital three. Empowerment and being surrounded with great talent is essential to the success of any organization. Performance feedback makes the top three because this is an initiative I just formed a task force of teachers to begin working on.
Empower Employees
This is a huge deal for me. I strive to create a “make it so” culture. Our team members are encouraged to be creative, innovative, and self starting. My desire is to have team members come to me with such great, thought out ideas that all I have to do is say, “Make it so!” What I have found is that the more I say “Make it so!” the more innovative and great ideas I get. This is such a powerful tool for employee engagement. We know that employees being engaged and and believing that what she is doing makes a difference is the number one item on the job satisfaction list.
Just last night we had the perfect example of this: A team of teachers presented our new vision, mission, and set of core values to our school board. This was a project of our Focused Leader Academy and our teachers worked through whole rewrite process as well organizing a board retreat session and other stakeholder feedback sessions. The beauty of the process is that the teachers owned it. And, one of the byproducts was the learning and professional growth that went along with the project. Therefore I would add to Manning’s (2015) on empowerment and say that with empowerment also comes professional growth. In fact, empowerment and professional growth are one of our core values:
Surround Yourself With Great Talent
This is so easily said and much tougher done. I am somewhat of a subscriber to the theory that talent is overrated. Skills must be developed. None of the great athletes, musicians, or artists were born with skills and talent at the top of their games. We all have had to be bad at something to get good and go on to be great. Therefore, surrounding ourselves with great talent also means we have the responsibility to help our team members grow and develop. I call this hyper-personalized professional development. This takes work. This takes a lot of work to imbed in cultures where this has not been a part before. It is, however, crucial for a culture of excellence.
This also relates to empowering our team members. If we want to empower our team members to make decisions and have autonomy to get the work done, then we must provide the hyper-personalized professional development necessary to help them become the great leaders they can be and have the necessary skills to do their jobs at the highest level. It would be ludicrous to empower employees to the level of a “make it so” culture without also provide the necessary knowledge to do the job. This would be the definition of chaos. Therefore, a vital part of my role as a disciplined leader is to go after top talent and then do everything possible to provide for the utmost personal professional growth.
Give Effective Performance Feedback
This vital part of being a disciplined leader is so related to my other vital three in this part of the book because at the core of performance feedback is professional growth. Our teacher performance evaluation process and tool that I inherited leave a lot to be desired. The reason for the deficiencies is how it was developed – top down. Basically, it was a “here it is” development process. There is pretty compelling research that suggests that affected by the performance feedback process should be heavily involved in the development. Leadership needs to come from those affected by it.
My goal for the task force I mention earlier is to come up with an evaluation process that is much more formative than punitive. There must be more regular check-in conversation and not just the once or twice per year evaluations. We are doing our teachers a disservice if all our principals do is check up on teachers once or twice a year. I am looking forward to seeing the work that our teachers do this.
Now that you have had the chance to learn about my vital few, what would you choose as your vital few?
Daily Huddles
Lesson #32 in The Disciplined Leader by John Manning (2015) deals with accountability systems and checking up on goals daily. Accountability, regular check-ins are very important. Many organizations, my own school included, use dashboards to keep track of the important data that needs to be regularly monitored. Disciplined leaders are goal minded and this dashboard data needs to be linked to goals both for the organizations, teams and individuals. Besides the dashboard looks at data, Manning (2015) provides three really great ways to manage performance daily. I would like to illustrate these by providing examples of how we do these while doing our state testing for the school I lead. Keep in mind, we are a statewide school and test in 23 different locations – a monster! Here are the three practices:
- Implement flash reporting – We do this by keeping a spreadsheet that is updated by our site leads at each testing location. An important metric for us is test participation. By law, we need to hit at least 95% attendance for our Full Academic Year (FAY), those students who have/will be with us for 162 days, students. Our goal is 100% of our students to be tested. The spreadsheet shows the sites, FAY students, non-FAY students, attended vs. non-attended, and whether a make-up has been scheduled for non-tested students. This report goes out every evening to our team giving us a flash update as to how we are doing.
- Manage by walking around – I am sure you have all heard of this practice before, but I practice this during testing by picking three to four locations across the state to just show up and be an extra set of hands. This gives me a chance to visit with teachers, parents, and students and see how we are doing with our testing first hand.
- Implement “daily huddles” – This is my favorite practice during testing and the one I believe does the most good. Each night we have a daily huddle debrief call with our testing staff, site lead teachers, principals, and myself to debrief about the happenings of the day. This debrief includes a discussion on attendance, things that went well, and areas of concern/challenge/opportunity/problems. The thing I like most about these daily huddles is the fact that it allows us to implement lessons learned the very next day. Another very important component in these huddles is the time spent laughing and telling stories from the day. Most of the time these stories start with, “You can’t make this up.” This time spent telling stories laughing and having some humor really makes the stress of testing go much better and builds camaraderie among the staff. Never forget – humor is an important leadership tool!
I believe these are great tools/best practices for keeping track of important accountability data and goals. Hopefully, my examples from just one area in a very complex school are food for thought to apply to your leadership setting. Do you have other best practices you would like to share or experiences? Please share by replying to this post.
Managing Strategies for Engagement
This post is an excerpt from the book Authentic Conversations by James Showkeir and Maren Shokeir. This book is included in BKpedia, a new digital subscription service from Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Please visit bkpedia.bkconnection.com for graphics, tweets, and other resources.
Managing Strategies for Engagement
Engagement means being able to make meaningful decisions and to have the resources to act on those decisions.
The marketplace demands results now. Your customers want attention in this moment. The necessity for flexibility and speed in the face of change is paramount. The question is how to create an organization that can:
• Quickly create and apply new knowledge
• Grant exceptions and deliver unique responses
• Foster passion and accountability throughout the entire enterprise
For these significant changes to occur, three areas in the organization must be affected: (1) culture and management/governance practices, (2) architecture, which includes the ways jobs are designed and how people are grouped, and (3) the ways in which employees are rewarded. For all these changes to be planted and take root, new conversations are required.
Individuals must accept personal accountability for the success of the whole business and be responsible for their own motivation and morale. The culture must generate passion for the work and action in service of customers and good results. This requires less focus on personal ambition and a sincere commitment to the success of others.
Organizations have to create and sustain universal business literacy and adult-to-adult conversations, one person at a time. Management practices, such as budgeting, meetings, training, objective setting, performance reviews, and so on, must be recreated to encourage partnership. Dissent must be viewed as healthy. Through different conversations, knowledge and collaboration are baked into the work process, replacing compliance and control as the operating values.
Where to start? If the longest journey begins with a single step, it won’t surprise you that our advice is to begin by changing the conversations. Better conversations will reap rich, diverse information. They will encourage an examination of who plays key roles in improving business results. They will allow you to address difficult issues in a constructive way.
New conversations will champion the kind of learning and resourcefulness that lead to innovation, cost efficiency, and personal accountability—essential elements in addressing the complex problems of organizational renovation.
*****
James Showkeir and Maren Showkeir are principals of Henning-Showkeir & Associates, Inc., whose clients include 3M, Ford Motor Company, Kaiser Permanente, British Airways, Coca-Cola, Hewlett-Packard, Levi Strauss, the Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership, and the Nature Conservancy. Together they authored Authentic Conversations and Yoga Wisdom at Work. James passed away in August of 2015.
Reading You Like A Book
Lesson #21 in The Disciplined Leader (2015) by John M. Manning is about how as leaders it is important for us to understand what kind of nonverbal communication cues we are sending. In reading this lesson I was reminded of the incredible book by Dr. Nick Morgan, Power Cues (2014). Power Cues reports new brain and behavioral science about how humans communicate, and the importance of authentic face-to-face interactions. Dr. Morgan goes into detail on the visual cues, subtle gestures, sounds and signals that elicit emotion. As Manning (2015) taught us, leaders who are not in tune with putting on the right game face on are not effective with their teams. Manning (2015) said, ‘Leaders tend to pay way more attention to their verbal communication than their nonverbal communication. Many leaders often aren’t aware of what their nonverbal habits are and how they regularly affect others (Kindle Locations 1216-1217).” Leaders who understand how to become more persuasive and how to communicate more effectively will create more influence in all dealings, and as we know, leadership is about influence.
“No one gets led anywhere they don’t want to go. Machiavelli was wrong; leadership is not manipulation, not in the long run. It’s alignment, the leader with the group and the group with the leader. But you first have to maximize and focus your leadership strengths in order to be ready when your moment comes.” ~ Dr. Nick Morgan
“What this means is that body language doesn’t lie and can make or break what and how well you communicate to others.” ~ John M. Manning
The first three Power Cues deal with non verbal communication (Morgan, 2014):
- The first power cue is all about self-awareness. How do you show up when you walk into a room?
- The second power cue involves taking charge of your nonverbal communications in order to project the persona you want to project— through your emotions. What emotions do you convey through your body language for important moments, conversations, meetings, and presentations?
- The third power cue helps you learn to read unconscious messages. What unconscious messages are you receiving from others?
So, as you can see it is important for us to think about the nonverbal cues we are sending, but it is also important for effective leaders to read the nonverbal signals of others. Morgan (2014) told us that body language always trumps the spoken content. He also taught us in Power Cues that most of the emotional colors and tones of conversation are set through gestures (Morgan, 2014). For those involved in education reading this, Morgan (2014) pointed out that researchers have studied how children learn and have determined that they learn nonverbally first.
The bottom line is we need to be very aware of what message we are sending in our gestures, eye contact, hands, arms, stance, and attentiveness. As Morgan (2014) pointed out, the nonverbal communications, such as gesture, happen in the brain ahead of the verbal (spoken) communication. These nonverbal signals send messages that speak to the whole person and influence our ability to build effective relationships with our teams, influence those individuals, and lead our organizations.
If you want to dig deeper I would recommend getting a copy and reading Power Cues (2014) by Dr. Nick Morgan. Combine that with reading Manning’s The Disciplined Leader (2015) and you are taking major leaps toward your professional growth and becoming an even more influential leader.
References
Manning, John (2015-06-15). The disciplined leader: Keeping the focus on what really matters. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Morgan, Nick (2014). Power cues: The subtle science of leading groups, persuading others, and maximizing your personal impact. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press. Kindle Edition.
Byron's Babbles 
leave a comment