Driven By Data
This morning I was so honored to have the opportunity to present at the Fusion East NWEA Education Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. The conference theme was “Tomorrow Starts Here” and my topic was How High-Performing Schools Develop a Culture Driven By Data. It was exciting to have a standing room only crowd and I hope I lived up to their expectations.
Here is the powerpoint I used for the presentation: Ernest_NWEA_FusionEast
Here are the handouts from the presentation: Ernest_NWEA_HOOSIER HYBRID 7-12 DATA MEETING PROTOCOL Ernest_NWEA_k-8_Data Meeting Protocol Ernest_NWEA_Data Meeting Rubric final
I learned a lot from this group and have shared a list of reasons why we need to create a culture driven by data as a picture in this post. This list was the guide for a very lively discussion. We also had some outstanding tweeting going on during the program using the hashtag #FusionDDI. I am proud to say that we had 66 tweets during the program from 34 different individuals. This was outstanding and further proof of the power of twitter as a professional development tool. In fact I awarded the top five tweeters during the session with copies of the two books I referenced during the session.
The books I referenced were Driven By Data by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo and Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck. Both of these books offer so much toward developing a culture driven by data.
Finally, I want to give you some bullets of top tweets from the program:
-“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over.” ~ John Wooten
-Data chats must be a regular part of your school culture.
-Data chats should be a safe place for teachers
-If your teachers change their teaching, can your students describe how it changed their learning?
-For a data driven culture to really work – there has to be coaching, observation, and feedback.
-Action plans developed after data analysis can be more effective if they are shared with your students.
-You have to describe the data without judgement
-If you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.
-Assessments are about growth, not gotcha!
-Effective analysis – dive deep! What happened and WHY?
-Effective interim assessments should revisit material from earlier in the year, not just graded unit tests.
-Assessments must be cumulative
-We tend to assess what we taught best
-Data driven instruction gives proof that what we are doing is working, or not.
-Just because you’re teaching…it does not mean they are learning
-I wanna be a Sherpa! Let’s get good at using data! Not just me…but the culture of our schools.
As you can see this was a pretty thoughtful group this morning. I hope I had a small part in helping them be Sherpas of their students’ learning.
“Deer In The Headlights”
I have been to several great conferences lately and I realized something about some of the so called “experts” that present at the conferences. Now I have to be careful here because I was a speaker at all of these conference. But, I realized that in some cases the person doing the presenting has not had the experience of being the “deer in the headlights.” Usually this term is associated with being a bad thing, but I have come to realize that it really is a great thing. To really become an expert or great at leading in a certain area or circumstance you really have had to be the “deer in the headlights.”
Having successfully served as a principal for a takeover/turnaround school that broke the failing school cycle and came off the “F” list; I can say I truly was that “deer in the headlights.” I still remember that first day of the students coming in, the looks on their faces and saying, “what have I got myself into?” Then a week later after our first round of NWEA testing and seeing that only 19% of our students were on grade level, I was not only the “deer in the headlights,” but the deer smashed in the front grill of your car. Then we began to navigate and I fell in love with our students, as did the whole staff, and we turned the school around. That experience is truly at the top of my list for my career.
My experience under fire really honed me as an educational leader. I learned so many things that I could have never learned had I been in an “A” school. There were so many issues to navigate: students not on grade level, behavioral issues, staffing issues, students’ personal and family issues, operations issues, facility issues, extracurricular issues, teacher coaching, and many, many more. Don’t think for a minute that I believe myself to be an expert leader in all of those areas, but let me tell you I did have to lead the charge on all of these areas and I did learn and grow from it.
So, my point in this post to my blog is to not be afraid to be the “deer in the headlights.” Don’t be afraid to take on projects or career changes where you will be that “deer in the headlights.” I seem to have moments like that every day, but I am better and growing from it each and every day. I can think of many leaders who have become very status quo about their own professional growth and development. Really, those individuals are like old farm equipment sitting in the fence row rusting. Don’t let yourself become rusty.
I have been reading Water the Bamboo: Unleashing the Potential of Teams and Individuals by Greg Bell. I am so excited to be speaking at the same conference (NWEA Fusion East) this weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina. I can’t wait to have him autograph my book. In his book he suggests developing a personal mission statement. I did. It is: In my professional life, my vision is to always be the “deer in the headlights.” As Bell says, “To accomplish a great vision you will need laser-like focus.” Just imagine the learning I will be doing!
Transformative Family Engagement
On day two of the 2014 National Quality Education Conference I had the pleasure of hearing Tracy Hill speak on the Power of Family Engagement. I was excited about this because I got to be with her this past August at Harvard for the Family Engagement Program. Ms. Hill is the Executive Director of Family and Community Involvement for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. You can check out all of my tweets I made during the session using the hashtag #ASQEd.
Here are some major points from her presentation:
– School is the only safe place that students have
– The same issues that plague students of poverty in urban districts are the same problems that plague suburban and rural students.
-Many of the issues we deal with in public education have nothing to do with the students. The issues are about the adults. This is wrong.
-Every staff member in a school needs to serve as a family liaison
-When you become a leader in a new school district you must become culturally aware of those families you serve
-Never use the term “Those people” when referring to your families
-We must change the culture from one where parents are seen as problems to one where families are seen as partners
-Create a culture where parents are welcome
-No parents sets out to be a bad parent. We must find ways to support them
-All parents have the capacity to support student learning
-Parents and school staff should be equal partners in the education of children
-The primary responsibility for building partnerships between home and school rests mainly with school leaders and staff
-Parents top reason for leaving the district is that they or their students were treated poorly
– Parents are important partners in the education of their students
-Building strong relationships with parents is key to having them engage with schools to advance student achievement and reform failing schools
-Family engagement must involve partnering with community partners and agencies to strengthen schools
-We must engage families and neighborhoods in school reform
-We must invest in children and provide more wrap around resources to our schools and families.
-Family engagement must be woven into the very fabric of our schools
Much of Tracy’s work is based on the book Beyond the Bakesale
Setting The Dominos For School Success
I had the opportunity to spend more time with Lee Jenkins during the second half of the first day of the 2014 National Quality Education Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During this time we looked at Guiding Systemic Action for System-Wide Improvement. It was an exciting time and I was able to get him to sign a couple of his books for me.
The theme was optimizing the systems of the school in three areas: 1. students; 2. curriculum; and, 3. employees. In other words optimizing the people and curriculum for student success. A great point he made is that we must collect the best ideas from teachers, and then systemize them.
Optimizing Process:
1. Define what perfect is?
2. Where are now?
3. What is our track record (what’s are data say)?
4. What are we testing/tracking?
What Areas Must Be Perfect be Defined for in Education
1. What does perfect instruction look like?
2. What is the perfect school finance situation look like?
3. What does perfect school operations look like?
4. What does the perfect personnel situation look like?
Every employee of the school must contribute to this process and the strategic planning process outlined below. If a person has responsibility, they should be writing countermeasures for improvement. A question I should be asking, as the school leader, of every employee is: “What hypothesis are you testing right now?” In other words, what are you tracking and how do you know if it is working and are you able to self correct the errors?
Outline For Strategic Planning
1. Identify the problem(s)
2. Identify the root cause(s)
3. Develop the counter measure(s)
Every person involved in the school must be a part of the strategic planning process. Also, everyone must understand what their role is in accomplishing the goals and key performance indicators (kpi) of the school.
Another key area for improvement is the way we write our performance standards. An example is how we look at attendance (I am guilty of this and am going to change). We report percent of daily attendance. You can’t come up with a root cause for that! We need to develop what the standard is. So, let’s say the performance standard is: “All students will have a 95% attendance rate.” Now, we can measure what percent of the students met the standard. We can ask the question five times, as W. Edwards Deming asserted, of what was the root cause for students who did not meet the standard. Again, we need to do a better job of writing acceptable performance standards so we can then get to the root cause and develop intervention hypotheses.
Eliminating Hoops & Hype in Education
I have had an absolutely incredible first day at the 2014 National Quality Education Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin put on by the American Society for Quality and the ASQ Education Division. I was excited to speak on my research of connecting school work to real life, but was more excited to hear the other speakers. Additionally, as always, I learned a great deal from visiting with the other program participants. This post is a compilation of my learning from the first half of the day. You can also check out my tweets from the day by using the hashtag #ASQEd or following my tweets at @ByronErnest.
The day started with Lee Jenkins as the keynote speaker. Lee is education’s expert in continuous improvement. He started by talking about removing the hoops and hype from education. Hoops were described as waste in a school’s time, money, and enthusiasm (staff and students). Hype is a change with no way of know if we’ve improved. The secret to removing hype, according to Jenkins, is to have baseline data to know if an intervention is working or not. Much of Jenkins thoughts on this come from the book: The Toyota Way To Continuous Improvement by Jeffrey Liker.
It is very important that we take an attitude of wanting to be superior to our former selves. If you think about this from a school improvement standpoint it makes perfect sense. We have a starting point and just need to keep getting better from there. Our goal here needs to be to outperform the year before. The secret to this improvement is root cause analysis. When you dig into root causes you find things you never expected to find. When we know the root causes we are able to remove what Jenkins calls “Blamestorming.”
Think about that term “Blamestorming.” We have all done it. We can blame the legislature, political leaders, school leaders, lack of time, too many standards, standardized tests, lack of money, too much money, too many programs, et cetera. But, these are not really root causes. We must dig down deep and find the root causes. Think about this question: Was it the reading program we purchased that improved reading, or the fact that the program required that we triple the amount of time spent reading every day? Think about that. If the root cause was needing to triple the amount of time reading we could have done that without any new program cost, professional development cost, or all the other woes that come with implementing a new program. It is why programs and initiatives don’t work – teachers do! That’s me talking there; not Jenkins.
Remember, if we eliminate the hoops and hype we can optimize our systems for our students and employees and optimize the delivery of our curriculum.
Connecting School Work To Real Life: 2014 National Quality Education Conference
The challenge to all of us in education is to find ways to make learning visible by connecting school work and real life for the students we serve. One of the ways to do that is to call on “the hand in the back of the room” and answer “why” with real world relevancy. Students understanding, mastery of basic science curriculum, and ability to use science concepts have been shown to improve when the science concepts were taught in the relevant and real world context of agriculture. Teachers many times fail to provide a context through observations, inferences, and actions appropriate for students to make the connection to the real world. These connections help the students to understand higher-level science concepts.
Through my research I investigated low student achievement in science and the social change impact of real world application through a study of agricultural science. Other current research on teaching science in a relevant context and the opportunities for cross-curricular collaboration were also investigated. I will be presenting on how to use transformative educational strategies to help students move from memorizing facts and content to constructing knowledge in meaningful and useful ways.
I am very excited to be presenting at the 2014 National Quality Education Conference this Sunday, November 16th in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I will be presenting my research on the effects of teaching science concepts in the real world and relevant context of agriculture. While at the conference I will be tweeting using the hashtag #ASQEd. I will be encouraging those attending my session to follow me on twitter @ByronErnest and also tweet using #ASQEd.
Here is the Powerpoint presentation I will using in my presentation: NQEC2014_Ernest
Here are PDFs of the handouts I will be referencing: Ernest_NQEC2014_Handouts_1 Ernest_NQEC2014_Handouts_2
Being an educator can bring an array of challenges. How can you continue following standards, make learning fun and innovative for your students, encourage creativity in the classroom, raise state testing scores, ensure students are college and career ready, and apply student learning in unexpected ways? Discover how continuous improvement strategies, tools, and support can be implemented in order to improve processes to help address some of these challenges and increase student achievement at the 2014 National Quality Education Conference.
Key Learning Outcomes for the 2014 National Quality Education Conference:
1. Discover innovative ways that processes have been made more efficient to allow resources to be applied in unexpected ways from pre-K–12 through higher education.
2. Learn how the Baldrige Criteria can be applied to improve learning, services, and fiscal health.
3. Understand measures that have been taken to narrow achievement gaps and ensure that all students are achieving their goals, regardless of baseline data, and socioeconomic background.
4. Learn advanced practices in continuous improvement as applied to classroom and broader institutional improvements.
5. Find out what tools, practices, and professional development programs designed to assist districts in implementing Common Core standards and in measuring achievement based on these standards.
As you can see it is going to be an exciting learning experience. Don’t forget to follow my tweets from the conference at the hashtag #ASQEd.
Different As Dilly Bars – 2nd Edition
With the end of October came the end of National Antibullying Month. In my opinion, however, every month should be antibullying month. What was fun for me was to bring an activity I had done in the past to my new school system, Hoosier Academies. A few years ago I did a project called Different As Dilly Bars. Click here to read the post I wrote then. Our theme this year was that we are all 99.9% the same. Genetically, we are all 99.9% the same and it is only the .10% that makes us different. Just like there are five different flavors of Dilly Bars: chocolate, butterscotch, Heath Bar, cherry, and mint; they are all vanilla on the inside and the only difference is the flavor they are dipped in. It was exciting to bring all the students together at our elementary school, middle school, and high school and talk to each group about how our differences are really our strengths. It is really asset based thinking – the fact that we all bring strengths to every situation we are in. Again, our strength lies in our differences not in our similarities.
I talked to the students about how there are five different flavors of Dilly Bars, but there is no, one best flavor. If I like Butterscotch and you like chocolate it doesn’t make one Dilly Bar better than the other. The strength is in the fact that we have both to choose from and you can have what you like best and I can have what I like best. The students were then able to pick a Dilly Bar flavor of their choice to eat!
People should be recognized and respected for who they are individually, who they are as defined by the characteristics they possess, and who they are as part of the groups to which they belong. At a minimum, when we think about diversity, we need to consider not only race but gender, religion, physical challenges, economic status, age, disability, sexual orientation, and learning differences. Indeed, some people define themselves not by their race but by one or more of these other descriptors. And, as I said earlier all of those differences become our strength when we all come together. Human diversity is what we espouse to embrace, but seldom do fully embrace. The 21st & 1/2 Century begs for an understanding among peoples and cultures. We have a mandate to teach our students the importance of attaining this understanding with an open mind and a willingness to challenge old beliefs.
Every student has unique cultural experiences, types and amounts of schooling, varied interests, and preferred ways of learning. As students learn, they approach each task with the beliefs, values, and information acquired through their respective backgrounds and knowledge of the world. It is exciting to me that they bring a wealth of experiences, knowledge of vocabulary and concepts, and hopes and dreams to the classroom. It is our job as educators to facilitate a way for our students to express this knowledge and their aspirations in a safe and nurturing environment. With asset based thinking teachers remove barriers to learning and replace them with sound pedagogical practices and culturally competent learning environment. Students’ differences are viewed as assets and respected when planning quality instruction and all students have opportunities to make connections between prior knowledge and new learning, build on existing schema, be active participants in a community of learners, and have numerous opportunities to converse and interact with peers and adults. Above all, in an asset driven classroom and school, all students are provided numerous opportunities to experience success.
Remember, we are different as Dilly Bars. But, it is in those differences we find our strengths.
National Standards Day
Yesterday was a great day at Hoosier Academies. We brought our entire staff together around the idea of making sure that all of our curriculum was aligned to the Indiana Academic Standards, we were teaching to the standards, and how we would use rigor, relevance, and relationships to be good stewards of our students’ achievement. Our teachers were very engaged and there was incredible collaboration all day.
As always, I am using my blog as a way to reflect on the day. For this post I am going to bullet point the top tweets that were done during the day using the hashtag #HoosierNSD. The tweets were great and so was the learning. Also, I have attached the powerpoint that I used to guide my introductory kickoff session to the day. Here is the link for the powerpoint: Ernest_NSD_k12_2014
Here are the top tweets from the day for you to think about and reflect on:
-21st Century Learners? That’s old school. #HoosierNSD is creating 21st&1/2 Century Learners!
-Push for best effort. With effort comes results.
-Acknowledge a student that reaches an expectation, praise a student that exceeds it.
-Assume every kid is your brightest and best!
-Focus on the now and move forward – not on what went wrong #teachlikeachampion
-Describe the next move, not what went wrong #teachlikeachampion
-Positive framing by modeling and narrating your workable goal! It isn’t impossible. #TeachLikeAChampion
-Relevance makes rigor possible; relationships make anything possible.
-Reviewing not repeating. That’s RIGOR.
-Rigor: ask higher level questions and push students to respond at a higher level.
-If they had to buy tickets to your class would they come?
-5 Steps to get to quadrant D. Reaching for the summit one step at a time.
-Less than 5% of high school lessons provide opportunity for student collaboration! This needs to change! We can do this Hoosier Academies.
-Was your lesson worthy of the student’s undivided attention???
-We have to bring the engagement up. Not just Hoosier, but all high school teachers.
-Teamwork makes the dreamwork
-Getting to know those you work with makes a difference
-Reflection is important. Why we are having #HoosierNSD.
-Thankful to have a minute to take a step back, learn the standards, and focus my instruction. #thirdgrade
-Make school work more like real work.
-Demonstrate the rigorous and relevant learning.
-My pillar of rigor would be action.
-Teachers have to make schoolwork more like real work.
-If you say it can’t be done, then you are doing it wrong the first time.
-Rigor and relevance and don’t forget motivation in our virtual environment.
-Great day! Real-world project based learning in HS English. How do literary themes connect with my students’ worlds?
-Real world application can only exist in the virtual world if strong relationships have been built for optimal engagement.
-Rigor and relevance and backwards planning are our best friends.
-Students need collaboration, critical thinking, oral and written communication
-Taking students to the 21st 1/2 Century and beyond
-We’ve been in the 21st Century for 15 year! We’re here. Think 21st 1/2 Century skills.
-As it relates to teaching, these three remain…rigor, relevance, and relationships. But the greatest of these is relationships.
-We’re spending a day breaking down standards.
-Teaching to one standard is not enough. You need to make them all connect together in a meaningful way with purpose.
-It is virtually impossible to make content relevant to students you don’t know – Carol Ann Tomlinson
-Key pieces of education: rigor, relevance and RELATIONSHIPS.
As you can see, some great learning went on. You can’t help but think about making education rigorous and relevant when you reflect on theses tweets. Additionally, the tweets reinforce the importance of building relationships with our students.
Just A KISS of Leadership!
There was a lot of reflection that went into preparing for this blog post. I am writing this at 7:32pm and I have to admit I started thinking about this at around 6:00am this morning during my personal growth time. In fact I have to admit that the inspiration for this post was disappointment. Disappointment in myself! As I was reading Sally Hogshead’s book, How The World Sees You, I was disappointed on two fronts. Let me be clear, though, none of my disappointment was with Sally or the book – both are AWESOME! I was reading the part of the book that describes the different archetypes and after the description of each she gives famous examples. As a part of the How The World Sees You experience you take a personality test to reveal how you can immediately command attention by putting your personality’s top advantage to work for you. After reading about the “Rock Star” I was disappointed I did not have this designation instead of “The Change Agent.” Now, I know there are no right or wrong archetypes and the whole purpose of the book is to learn to be all the you you can be. But, when thinking about the anthem (something you create while reading the book) for a Rock Star, I really thought that described me! The anthem example created for this archetype was: “Unorthodox Bold and Brave!” Now, if that does not describe me, I do not know what does! I’ll come back to that thought in a minute.
My other disappointment was that Sally did not use Gene Simmons, KISS frontman and CEO, as the celebrity example. Great job Sally, because if you had, I would not have done all this quality reflecting (I know you were thinking of me). If Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley (also a KISS frontman and chief songwriter), are not the ideal of this archetype I do not know who is. With over 100 million albums sold worldwide, KISS is arguably one of the biggest and most successful bands on the planet. Led by the marketing genius that is Gene Simmons, they continue to reach new audiences while engaging lifelong fans. Gene Simmons may be best known as the fire-breathing, bass playing demon in one of the most influential rock bands in history, but he can also teach us a thing or two about leadership.
Really my disappointment was more from the fact that these guys were (and still are) my idols growing up. Even though I chose a different career (and lifestyle) path, I want to be the Gene Simmons and KISS of the education world. That means everything from being polarizing to delivering the education that I wanted as a kid and that every child in the world deserves. I remember watching Gene Simmons in interviews and he would say,”We wanted to be the band we never saw and wanted to go see.” Let me tell you, if you have never been to a KISS show you are missing a great thing. Their anthem says it all: “You wanted the best, you got the best: KISS!” If that is not inspiring I don’t know what is!
Gene Simmons truly is a “Rock Star” and great example of a leader. He is a key member of my personal Mount Rushmore, which also includes, Thomas Edison, Woodrow Wilson, and Patrick Henry. To give an example of the KISS leadership example I go back to an interview in April, 2014 during a great town hall interview on XM RADIO 39 HairNation following their induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame where Gene said that he and Paul were always needing to try new “trepidatious” ways to perform! That’s what great leaders do! I promptly tweeted this (I’ve included an image of the tweet in this post). If you look up trepidatious you find the words: anxiety, anxious fear, and apprehension. So, that means they were being unorthodox, bold, and brave. Do you see the connection? Honestly, if you have not been to a KISS concert it will be hard for you to understand. Just suffice it to say, they were cutting edge. Heck, they redefined the edge…heck, there was no edge!
In fact that reminds me of another interview that KISS had with Jay Leno. Leno asked Gene Simmons where KISS got their edge. Without hesitation, Gene answered, “Edge starts with self.” Wow, that was several years ago, but is a perfect anthem for the great work that Sally Hogshead is doing and the great personal growth provided by the How The World Sees You learning experience. Let’s say that again: “Edge starts with self!” That gives me goose bumps!
I was in attendance at every KISS concert in Indiana. Yes I am a member of the KISS Army! I did not know it at the time growing up, but they were providing me with the greatest leadership lessons one could probably receive. The personal mission statement I have used for years has been: “I deliver wowful educational leadership!” I believe there is a little resemblance to “You wanted the best, you got the best!” don’t you? I have never had the honor of meeting Gene Simmons or Paul Stanley in person, but it is certainly on my bucket list! I would thank them for the leadership lessons I learned from them. Another inspiring quote from Gene Simmons is: “You have to understand that nothing appeals to everybody.” In other words you cannot be everything to everybody, but you must be the best you can be – another reason why Sally’s work is so important. KISS has always maintained a steady fan base by giving their fans what they wanted, and knew that they would never be able to please everyone. You are inevitably going to have critics; the important thing is to not let them derail your strategy. KISS has truly modeled for us how to be the greatest you, that you can be. There are none better at building a brand and trying bold and new ways to satisfy their customers. Think about if every child was as big a fan of their education as those of us in the KISS Army are of KISS. Watch out China and Finland!
Now, back to my archetype – The Change Agent. I was a little hard on Sally Hogshead at the beginning of this post, but really it was in respect for the way she made me reflect on my own archetype. I was falling in the trap she talks about in her book. I was trying to fit in another archetype and not my own. Again, I need to be all the me I can be. The Change Agent really perfectly describes me. Anyone who knows me, knows the adjectives that describe how the world sees me of Untraditional, Inventive, and Self-Propelled really fit me to a tee! My personal report (you all can get your own personal report when you get the book and do the assessment too) says that I am a creative thinker who thrives on reinventing, I am independent, witty, and sharp, I have a strong drive to come up with a different approach, and I bring alternative opinions to dull meetings, and fresh ideas to stale companies. I would say these are all the advantages that have enabled me to be a successful school, particularly turnaround schools, leader.
Then I went back and thought about wanting to be a “Rock Star.” In reflection I need to follow Sally’s advice and be all the me I can be. In my world as a public servant I cannot be as unorthodox as I would maybe like to be because I do have to worry about what the public thinks and desires. Context has to matter to me. Different contexts may require different strategies and maybe even different skill sets. Without context there is no meaning and then everything becomes unorthodox. In education I deal with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity on a daily basis. As a “Change Agent” I have to use hindsight, insight, and foresight on a daily basis to find creative, untraditional, and inventive ways to improve education for the staff and students I serve.
I am so excited to be a “Change Agent.” The anthem I created during the exercises of the book is: “Energetic Change Agent!” Pretty appropriate for a guy who believes that leaders make the future, don’t you think?
In closing, I want to give you all a personal challenge: Read Sally Hogshead’s book, How The World Sees You; and go to a KISS concert (or at least watch a video of one). It’s time for you to be all the you you can be, too!
Is Your Group Too Small?
Yesterday I finished the great new book, You Can, You Will: 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner by Joel Osteen. If you have not read it; it needs to go on your “to read” bookshelf. One of the comments Osteen makes in the book is: “If your the smartest person in your group, your group is too small.” I loved this comment and tweeted @ByronErnest it. I found that many others loved the comment too because it was retweeted several times. The comment also hit home because I just wrote the post, “Are You The Smartest Person in The Room?” a couple of weeks ago.
When I heard Osteen make this comment (I listened to this book on Audible during my commute) I immediately thought about the advice of always surrounding yourself with the best people. How can your team be great if you are smarter than everyone around you? I’m reminded of my dad’s advice to me at a young age: “Always marry better than yourself!” That’s hard advice to understand, but now coming up on 29 years of marriage; I completely understand it. I certainly married better than myself. Hope is smarter, a better parent, better leader of a household, and the list goes on and on. As I always tell everyone, she is the primary parent! I fail in comparison. In fact I am reminded of a comment my son, Heath, made to his teacher when he was in the fourth grade when asked if he had done all of his reading the night before: “I’m not sure; my mom is out of town for work and dad and I have no adult supervision.” That really is a true story, and of course he had heard me make that comment jokingly before. But, really, there is some truth to it. So, if your still looking for that someone, make sure you marry better than yourself!
The real point that Osteen was making was, however, that we all need to be taking responsibility for our own personal growth to be the smartest, most skilled person in the room, but we need to also seek those who are talented in the areas we are not. The quote from Melanie Joy sums it up nicely: “Educating yourself does not mean that you were stupid in the first place; it means that you are intelligent enough to know that there is plenty left to learn.” We all need to make sure we are constantly taking advantage of any chance to learn that comes our way. For example, I am excited to be presenting at three conferences yet this fall and early winter. I am most excited because of the chance to learn from all the other conference attendees and the other presenters’ sessions. I am positive I will not be the smartest person in the group of attendees and presenters!
So, think about your own situation and find some ways to get yourself some personal professional growth. It may be reading a book (I am always amazed at how much I learn from every book I read), going to a conference, taking a course (I’m proof it’s never to late to start a doctoral program), or finding a coach, mentor, or sponsor. I loved another comment that Osteen made in his book: “While it may be a lot of fun to hang out with Mo, Larry, and Curly; you probably won’t be getting any smarter or experiencing any personal growth.” In other words, who you hang out with matters!
Finally, don’t forget to give of your “smarts” to others. I am always amazed to watch others in leadership positions who seem to want to hire “dumber” than themselves, suppress the learning of others, and just not provide growth opportunities to others. I guess they think this makes them look smarter – NOT! It has always been my personal mission to make sure that when those I have worked with reflect back that they say, “My life is better and I grew personally and professionally because of being around Byron.” Actually, a pretty good epitaph, don’t you think?
Go forth and make your group big enough that you are not the smartest!
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