55 — Every Education Consultant Needs to Understand This About Change

- Real quick, before we get into it. - If you've been doing PD work for free that another school would gladly pay for, we made something for you. It's called the K-12 Consulting Cheat Code. - It is a live training, and in it, we hand you the exact way to package what you know into an offer schools and districts would pay premium rates for. - Like Glenn, who signed his first contract within months of starting his business. It was $2,200 for 90 minutes with a school to help them refine their international travel studies program. The training is just $7, and we run it live. You can grab your seat at the link in this episode's description. One of the biggest misconceptions aspiring education consultants have is believing they're in the business of delivering professional development workshops. You are kind of, but you're also not. You're actually in the business of helping schools change. And these are two very different things. We have seen incredible workshops. We do absolutely nothing. And we've seen relatively simple ideas completely transform schools and districts. The difference usually isn't the quality of the presenter. It's whether the consultant understands how change actually happens inside organizations. So today, we're sharing three of the biggest lessons that we've learned from studying organizational change and leading it ourselves so that you can go beyond a one-off workshop contract to lucrative, multi-year partnerships. (gentle music) - Welcome back to Unleash Yes. I'm Natalie Vardabaso. - And I'm Tom Schimmer. And yes, isn't just a mindset. It's an acronym that stands for your entrepreneurial spirit. This is the space where educators like you come to reimagine what's possible beyond your role in the education system. - In this podcast, we help you launch and grow your learning-based business so that you can share your expertise as an in-demand K-12 consultant and expand your impact far beyond one classroom or district. - Every other week, we dive into mindset shifts and practical strategies that turn your ideas into movements and you're calling into meaningful, liberated work. - Because when educators unleash their yes, their unique vision, courage and purpose, they don't just change their own lives. - They change education itself. (gentle music) - Welcome back, yes, club. - What's up, fam? (laughing) Haven't said that in a while. - You haven't. - You haven't said that on the stories in a while on Instagram all of this. - You gotta bring the fan back. - Gotta bring back. - I know, I think you're embarrassed since the one time that I swore at them on the story. - Just worth the fam. - I swore at the fam, and then you were sheepish. Tailed between your legs, you didn't want to address them. - Yeah, I was embarrassed. I just had to come back, but we're back with the fam. - We're here, it's summer. It's beautiful here in Vancouver. We hope wherever you're joining from. It's likewise summer season, you're on the patio, you got the flip-flops out, you know, we're just- - It's hot. - Hot. - It's not hot. - It's not hot. - Now, not Texas hot, or Arizona hot. - No, thank you for hot. - But thank you for hot. But the difference is that although we have air conditioning in our apartment, most people here don't have air conditioning 'cause typically you don't need it. - No. - Right? - We're very lucky. - We're very lucky that we have that in the apartment, but it's been quite warm weather's gonna turn, but it's been awesome. The weather's been great, the world cup. The whole thing is just the weather cooperated quite well. - Except for when my friends from Florida came to Vancouver and it rained, like crazy, for days. - Well, we went to Florida to visit them in January and we had eight degrees Celsius, the coldest stretch of time, or whether they've ever had in forever. - Lizard's were falling from trees. - Right, and so this was their payback for giving us that frigid temperature. - Well, that were even- - That were even that's for sure. Okay, I'm looking forward to this episode. This is a good one. I mean, we always kind of say that 'cause I think we are excited about these topics, but this really does dig into what consultants really need to know. And so most consultants, when they think about doing the work of a consultant will obsess over questions like, how do I make my slides better? Or how do I become a better speaker? Or things like, how do I get a standing ovation? - Yeah. - Right, how does that happen? And they're not bad questions 'cause everybody wonders like, how do I get a standing ovation? Or how come my slides be better? That's cool. But at the same time, they're kind of the wrong questions we should be asking 'cause they're a bit on the periphery and they're a bit about vanity as opposed to the substance, right? Schools aren't paying for just an inspiring day. Yes, sometimes you wanna inspire people. - Of course. - They're investing in a different future. They hire a consultant because they envision a different future and they believe that they can consult you and that will be the reason they'll be able to move forward because you have the expertise and the experience to do so. So if nothing changes after you leave as the consultant, you didn't really solve the problem you were hired to solve. So the most successful consultants don't really think like presenters, they think like change leaders. - This is huge and I feel it's important we just pause here for a second. Because this is one of the biggest secrets to our work when it comes to sustainability. Because when you think in terms of, I just have to book a whole bunch of one-off workshops or one-off keynotes or whatever. You gotta book a lot with a lot of different schools and that is incredibly hard to do. One of the most amazing things about consulting is that if you have this mindset of I'm here to implement a change, research shows us that's a three to five year investment. So if you can show schools that you have the expertise that allows you to do that, we're not just talking about one-off PD days. What, this is what tends to happen. Let's zoom out 'cause you're working on this module right now for our clients. So typically you get a one hour virtual session just so they can test you out and see what you're all about. If that goes well, they go, can you come on site for a one day workshop? So there it is. But if you really are thinking long-term and communicate that way, then they see that one day is kind of their ultimate test and then they go, okay, what is this really gonna take? And that's where you then lay out. Okay, here's what the plan looks like over the next few years. And then you're signing contracts that are nearly the same size as your former salary for just one school or district. So when you and I were with you're still full-time, I have now gone more into the remote coaching. When I was full-time though, it was really a handful of like five big schools or districts that were paying the vast majority. And then the periodic stuff that comes up on the side. And the hope is that the periodic stuff then turns into long-term stuff as well. But I think this is so true watching how your career so sustainable, you have these long-term partnerships that you're kind of always rotating through. Can you talk more about that? - Yeah, there's two kinds of long-term partnerships. One is the long-term partnerships you have with schools. And you're absolutely right. People will often either come to a webinar or they'll, I'll do the two-day workshop on grading from the inside out. And often it's school or district leaders who are in the room. And they're almost on a reconnaissance mission, right? They're checking you out. And so most recently I did a two-day training in Tennessee. And as a result of that, I've secured contracts in Arizona, Alabama, Tennessee, like people saying we need this person to come to our school. And so what that usually turns into is you do the one-day workshop then you have the conversations about follow-up work and that's how the long-term partnerships develop. - Yes. - The other long-term partnership often comes with people. Now I've seen this a lot in overseas schools where the long-term partnership is you do great work with a leader in a particular school and then they move. And they get to a new school and they go, "Hey, remember that work we did in Vietnam or Thailand?" Well, I'm now in Barcelona or I'm now in another school and or in Peru or somewhere, we want to do that here. And so that partnership is actually because of the deep rooted work. It wasn't because my slides were pretty, it wasn't because I was a better speaker in terms of like toast masters. - So you're a great speaker. - Fair, but I'm a good speaker, yes, for sure. But the point being that it's not because of those things because what can also make you a great speaker is the substance, right? - 100%. - And that long-term change. So that to me is where the partnerships come in. - One really quick thing to add because this is a question we get often around like when we say long-term, some people's eyes go wide and they're like, what would I do in a long-term way? So what it often looks like is we'll do a couple of PD days throughout the year, but the vast majority is coaching. Whether it's on site or whether it's virtual, it's teams coming together, whether it's the leadership team, department teams, to ask questions, get feedback, strategize on specific things. And then the PD honestly starts to become sourced from within. Like I remember that district in California I was working with for three years. And by year two, I wasn't the one, I'd figure out what the PD needed to be, but then I'd say hey, science department, what you figured out with this new style of assessment is incredible. Could you do a presentation for your colleagues and I'd help them put that together? So it's really not just you delivering content. That people, it truly is you being consultant in the truest sense of the word. - I always, always may be strong, but often. Schools will ask me, well Tom, you've worked with those schools, what have you done with them? Like sometimes they'll start as you gain experience in this field and a reputation and longevity, they will start to go, this person has worked with so many schools of school districts. Like what have you done with other schools to bring about this change? And I'll often describe it as a kind of funnel. In the sense that I said, I usually come in and I talk to the whole group with one kind of generic message to kind of lay a foundation, common language, common perspective. And they said with each returning visit, the groups get smaller. So now in the morning, I might be, you know, come back for a follow-up day and then I come back for a half day. with this group and a half day with that group. And it culminates in me sitting in a conference room with four members of the science department or six members of the English team and they bring their questions and we do that Q&A. So it's almost like it's the size of the group start shrinking, the more contact I have with them. But the increase is the specificity of the questions you're answering. So you start to kind of funnel it that way, but that's where the long-term contact. It isn't just going and doing a presentation eight times. No, no, no. So by the end of today's episode, you will understand three principles that every education consultant needs to know if they want their work to create lasting transformation instead of just becoming another forgotten initiative. And as an added bonus, we'll show this will show you how to fill your calendar and secure lucrative long-term contracts. Yeah. All right. Okay. So let's get into it. Okay. Today isn't really based on our opinions. We want to make clear that today is shaped by decades of research, by, you know, thought leaders like John Cotter and Michael Fullen and Peter Sange and Margaret Wheatley and others who have dedicated their careers to understanding how organizational change occurs. And I think one of the important things that we're going to focus on is that we know that a lot of folks will have their favorite change model. They'll like this person versus that person. What we're going to try to do today is synthesize because there are a number of characteristics that all change models tend to have, right? So this is shaped by the organizational change leaders that we are familiar with, but it is also shaped by our work with partnering with schools and districts around the world, where we've seen firsthand what creates momentum and what causes, you know, even great ideas to get stalled. I think what's really important to add here is that this isn't just something we've cultivated through our work as consultants. This really happened when we were in the school system, when we were leaders. So when I left to start my consulting business, I was an assessment lead. Tom was a district level leader, but just a quick backstory about the change that I actually led and what led me into thinking about change management. So as the assessment lead, I was given one of the strategic plan outcomes to redesign our assessment framework and implement an aligned progress reporting system in one year. It's hilarious in and of it. So given this huge, I think, set up to fail goal, the first thing I did is go to the books. I was like, okay, I understand assessment and grading, but how the heck do you move people and how do you make change happen? And so first thing I realize is that, like I said in the beginning, the research is definitive that if you want an initiative or an implementation of something to stick, it needs three to five years. So I went back and I was like, we're going to need more time. So we did this in three years. And then over that time, we were able to take what was a very kind of traditional old school environment when it came to assessment and grading. We did tons of testing. Every unit ended in a unit test. We started really shifting it to more authentic means of assessment. And by year three, we had completely changed our grade books to be outcomes based all the way up from K through 12. We had proficiency scales, like even the design of the gradebook was standards based. We got rid of four quarters to continuous reporting years. So they went from September to June. So there was an opportunity for go the whole year. Anyways, long story short, like the thing that for me was the standout in that whole story is when I told people this is what my job was, everyone kept saying it's going to fail. They tried that in this district and it went horribly. The media got involved. It was a circus. And so I knew that. And so I took the change management research very seriously. And when we rolled it out by year three, I'm not saying this to flex. But just as a true testimonial of where we got to, the staff cheered. And the majority of parents were completely bought in. Because we took our time, we did it well. This is super cliche, but moved at the speed of trust. And all of it came down to knowing enough about assessment and grading, but more importantly, also knowing enough about how to actually lead change. Yeah. A similar story on my end of it, you know, being a part of a transformation. When I left my job, I was at the district level, but the actual change leadership was happening more at the school level when I was there. And we were transitioning into, again, more sound assessment and grading practices. And similar was the idea of trying to implement things in a way and leaning on some of the fundamental principles we're going to talk about today. And how we were able to take a fairly contentious issue at the high school level, especially. So it was one middle school and then two high schools within which I was an employee where each time I got into the situation, it became a little bit easier, never easy, but easier and more efficient to go about this stage, because I had just come from a place where we had gone through the transition. In fact, the reason I was transferred from the middle school to the high school was because the superintendent basically said to me, we love the work that's happened here at the middle school. Go do that at the high school. Almost like a dare. It was almost like good luck with that at the high school level. So it's like I kind of want you to fail some challenge accepted. So we went about it, but you know, there are some fundamental principles not to give away. So we're going to talk about those principles. And I think we'll come back to these stories. Yes. As we talk about each of these principles and what consultants need to know, but that's ultimately what deep rooted the changes and why they were sustainable. And why they lasted beyond us, which is what it's all about. So let's get into principle one. This one's going to sound so simplistic, but we can't over emphasize the importance of it. Transformation begins with a shared vision. Schools rarely struggle because people don't care. They struggle because everyone is solving a different problem. People don't commit to someone else's initiative. They commit to a future that they feel like they've helped to create and that they believe in. So as consultants and as former leaders, whatever first responsibilities was not to deliver answers, but to help schools or our communities to build clarity around what we're actually trying to become. This is such a critical part that I see that gets omitted in so many places, which is we want to reform our assessment and grading practices. And then there's no articulation as to what we're changing to. What is the vision? What is the end result? And I think a precursor to the vision is what is the urgency? John Kotter talks a lot about this. Create a sense of urgency. Not panic, but urgency as to why this change is necessary. And then articulating a vision is a lot of people like let's change assessment. Okay, but what is the ultimate outcome? Right? And so as a consultant, whenever you have your first contact with folks, a superintendent, principal, or what have you, this is what you need to get crystal clear on. Like what are the outcomes? What is it that you're changing to? What is it that you're hoping I will help you accomplish? And so getting clarity about that because a lot of times are, you know, some of our clients have even said to us, you know, I get this email from a school district and they'll like send us a proposal and I'm like, stop. Don't send anybody a proposal until you're clear on what the proposal is what mark it's supposed to hit. Then maybe after that, you can say, okay, here's what I think the day would look like. But that whole blanket just send us a proposal and then we'll decide if it fits or not. That's just moving blindly, right? So when you talk to a school or a district, one of the first things that I'll ask them is, what are the outcomes you're hoping to achieve on that day or for that webinar or for that? Because there's two things you need to understand. One, what are the outcomes? That's the most obvious. Two, are they allotting enough time for me to achieve that outcome? If they say, here's the three big outcomes we want to achieve in a 90 minute webinar, my first statement to them is going to be, we're not going to be able to do that in 90 minutes. Now it's okay for us to do 90 minutes, but we're going to have to rethink the outcomes because there's only so much we can do in 90 minutes. So if we want that outcome, maybe we need to do two or three sessions. So we'll have to, you have to balance outcomes in time. But the ultimate message here for anybody stepping into the spaces, the first thing you want to get clear on on that clarity call is what are the outcomes they want to achieve? In other words, what is the vision that they have for this session or this reform that they're trying to enact? Yeah, and I think that begs the bigger question, which is how do we make sure they have a clear vision to even know what outcomes to suggest? And that it's tricky, because when you're having your first touch with like a, with an organization, like Tom said, number one is just get them clear on what are we doing in this session so we can have a sense of success. Now let's imagine it went well. They brought you back for a one day. That went well, and now they're like, now what? We want to change our XYZ system. This is where you have to really lean into the change literature and know how to co-create a vision. You're now not just doing it with your host on a sales call basically. You have to know how to do it in the organization. And this is where it gets juicy. And this is what you and I have done so many times with the assessment and grading work. There's a few different ways you can do this. I'm just going to drop a couple examples that have worked really well for us in the past. But a really simple one is a shared purpose statement. So if they say for in our context, we want to change the grading system. Okay, well, what's the purpose of grading? Now, we don't just want one person's answer. We want everyone's answer and we want to find some kind of consensus so that everything we do next, we all point to and we say we all agree. This is what we're doing is what we're doing now in terms of the work aligning with this or not. Does this old practice we want to hang on to align with this or doesn't need to go? Because we all agree this is what we're doing. We can't this that work, it'll slow you down a bit at the beginning, but it makes everything so much easier going forward and gives people a sense of we're in this together. This isn't just being done to me by this consultant who's saying here's what you should do. And I think that's really important. Another way that you can take this step further is building even a shared framework. So a purpose statement is just like a couple sentences. This is the purpose of X. Now a framework would be say you're implementing an assessment system or a new instructional initiative. So maybe it's a new approach to literacy. The framework might be five guiding principles that we can all rally around and here's what they mean. But again, it has to be done through the work of gathering key stakeholders, getting their perspectives, making sure all departments are represented, leaderships represented, student voice is actually a really great thing too. I think to sometimes bring into these conversations. I mean, obviously we're talking about the instructional. So it's going to emphasize the experts in the building. But student voice is important too to get there. Do you know what this means? Does it matter to you? Is there anything we're missing here? But the more you have a lot of people talking about why we're doing this, you don't then have to go back a million times as a consultant when you're doing workshops or coaching. And they're going, well, why are we doing this? It'll happen over and over and over and you'll never get any traction if you don't just spend the time clarifying that up. Yeah, the vision is the guard rail, right? Because now we have, if we can establish consensus around the vision, and this is really important, why this is important up front too is that you want to do this before things get contentious. Because in any change effort, things are going to get relatively contentious. So establishing the vision and the guard rail, right? It's a way to actually guide the conversations because we can remind one another, hey, we all agreed that this is the outcome we're trying to achieve. So these are some of the tough decisions we have to make as change goes along. So that is a very important part to establish right up front. And often as a consultant, and I think as time goes on and as you build your credibility, you will be asked more and more to participate in that, meaning they'll say, like I said earlier, Tom, you've worked a number of schools. What are the ways that other schools have articulated that? And the worst case scenario is that schools are just trying to draft off what other schools have done, which sometimes they do that. And that's fine. But the best case scenario is they're relying on you as a consultant. They know you have interacted with a number of schools and you have that kind of knowledge from across United States or North America or even around the world. I don't know how many times I've been in situations where I'm with one international school and I get a question from someone and I just go into the rolodex of my experience and say, hey, I remember five years ago talking to a choir teacher about this or talking to a PE department about that. You just end up having that institutional knowledge. So that helps us build that vision with them. Get a pause real quick and tell you about something. If any part of you has thought, I could take the show on the road or you've already launched your business, but the consistency isn't there yet. This one's for you. It's called the K-12 Consulting Cheat Code, a live training where we walk you through the exact way to package your expertise into an offer schools and districts will pay a premium for. Carly used it to grow her business so fast. She was able to resign from her grade one teaching job just six months after launching her business. And Nikola, she used it to finally get sales moving again after investing in a business coach that didn't understand the nuances of education. It's seven dollars just the cost of a latte and it's live for a reason. We personalize the whole thing to who's actually in the room that day. If you show up live, stick around to the end. You'll walk away with our educator PD pricing guide for free just for showing up. There's a replay for seven days if life happens, but honestly the room is where the real value is. Grab your seat at the link in this episode's description. Now let's get back to the episode. Now principle number two that we want to shift to is creating early wins. John Carter calls these short term wins, but the idea of early wins before you make the big changes, right? Yeah. Right. But it's one of my favorite cliches in this in this kind of reform effort consultant world, which is think big start small. And the idea that we want to have, you know, one of the biggest mistakes that we notice that many consultants make is trying to change everything at once. Small changes start to build confidence, right? What's the least I could do to bring about the greatest effect? I start to build confidence. Now once I'm confident that these efforts are going to produce a positive change, that's actually going to deepen my commitment to the long term reform effort. And once you have a deeper commitment to the long term reform effort, that builds momentum. Yes. And that ultimately is how you start to make bigger changes happen. It's almost like that snowball analogy where when a snowball starts going down a hill, it starts very small. And then as it goes, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. That's kind of the change process in some respects, right? Start small, get those short term wins, that gives us confidence that builds momentum. So when the bigger changes come along, we're able to manage that. So people, people don't believe in a change because you gave them the research. The research is really good and that's important and that's a technical underpinning, but they believe in the change effort because they themselves have experienced some success. So every engagement we have as a consultant should result in a quick win. We want intentionally to plan for teachers or administrators or everyone to walk out of that session or leave that online session with some sort of quick win that they can implement. That's how they start to have things feel meaningful and connected to the change. And they'll walk away saying, you know what? That wasn't just research. This stuff actually works. Like that's a huge deal. Yeah. So Michael Fullen, who is another change researcher, he specifically has worked in the field of education though in a lot of his studies. I remember in one book I read by him, he calls this the idea of an energizing cycle. So he said, when you're leading change, the hardest thing is sustaining that momentum. And you do that by knowing there's sometimes you got to dive deep and it's going to be a heavy lift and it's going to be hard and that's going to drain a lot of people's energy. So then you got to go back to that quick win that's going to kind of give them this, oh my gosh, we can do this and then back into the hard work. And I liked that concept that really stuck with me. But this is something that in the assessment realm, just to give everyone an example because it's like quick win. Like, what? So no matter what your expertise is, if I said to you right now, what is the thing when you were on your own journey to develop this expertise? That was kind of like your, hopefully this isn't inappropriate to say, but gateway drug. Like what was the thing that for you, when you got a little taste of like, oh, that was actually really cool. You got really hungry about this bigger topic or this bigger concept because you tried this one thing and it just was so inspiring in terms of what you saw in your classroom or what you saw in your school. You couldn't get enough and it was kind of like kind of like a drug, right? And for me, that was feedback. I always tell people when I'm doing any assessment work, I have to start there because for me, this was the like, aha moment because I was a high school English teacher. And so as everyone knows, a typical Sunday meant I had two giant tote bags over my shoulders, going home, my math colleagues are like, by scantrons or no, we all make choices. We do. And I was like, why I hate this, but I love books. And so then you sit down, you know, you've got your whole grading, marking, routine, you've got your special mug, you're at the counter. And of course, to get through the day, you have a new pack of flare pens, flare pens. If you know, you know, they're incredible. And you do all of this copious feedback, you know, you got detailed marginals. You got a color coded system. You know, you've got, please correct your run on sentences, please correct your run on sentences, vague dot, dot, dot, to this day. I don't know why we do that as English teachers. But you do this for your entire Sunday, your phones blowing up. They're going to brunch. Bottomless mimosa says, nah, come join a note, can't. I'm grading today. But you do it because feedback matters, right? And then Monday shows up. You've got all of your bags that you're coming back into the school with. You give it back to the kids because you're like, I'm bestowing feedback upon you. Be free to learn children. And of course, how many take you up on it? Basically, well, one, there's usually the one that like doesn't actually need the feedback. And she's like, thank you for giving that to me. I would like to improve. And it makes you feel like you're going crazy. So I felt like I was giving up my evenings. I was giving up my weekends. Nothing was changing. And then I started digging into some assessment research. And the first thing I learned is that we're giving way too much feedback. The best feedback actually causes thinking. It's a prompt, not a set of directions. That is such a small thing, but it's also the biggest thing in the whole world when you think about how much time you're giving up. So knowing that from my own story, because of course, then there's all so many bigger assessment and grading things you can do that are a heavier lift. But every time I share that, I think that's actually the only workshop I've ever done. You were with me in Madison, Wisconsin. We are at a conference. I had 45 teachers in a room and leaders give me five out of five on every metric for that set for that one session. I just call it how to give better feedback without burning out because I know that's my quick win. I'm like, this is such a high impact low effort move. That will blow your mind and change your career. And so then people are like, say more about this assessment thing. If that was that good, like, I'm in. But this is something I think about with you often, Tom, because you're entire like niche if you you will, which is building a standards-based mindset, which is what you've really become known for, is like a quick win in and of itself. It's totally a quick win. It really does follow that principle of think big start small, which is how do we think like we're in a standards-based or outcomes-based system while we live in the traditions of the report card and things like that? So it was the idea that when you don't have control over the external constructs, like a policy report card or a grading program or anything, the computer program, how do I make changes and the changes are often small, they're quick wins, like just introducing or refining my reassessment practices and not changing anything else, but just getting good at that. Where am I most agreeable with the reform effort? Or is it something to do with homework or practice or the use of formative assessment? Or is it thinking differently about how I examine evidence? So it's really about, rather than trying to reform the whole system, it's really shrinking and saying, "Okay, what's the one thing I can do?" And often what I try to do with the grading from the inside out content is give people multiple points of entry because adults like a bit of autonomy, right? So whenever you're presenting about a reform effort, it's, "Where's a good place for me to start?" Well, the best place for you to start is where you find most agreeable. And so what I try to do with the three big ideas, I don't want to go down the weeds of this because that's not what this podcast is for, but the idea of giving credit or redefining accountability or homework, there are three kind of pillars of what I call the standards-based mindset. And I always look at the participants in the workshop and say, "Which one of those do you find most agreeable?" Start there. Just start with that entry point. And I'll say that if you're a faculty, you can have multiple points of entry into this work, right? And I think that's one thing that is favorable about the grading from the inside. I always joke with the participants and say, "You know, shocking. The author thinks his model is favorable." But ultimately, offering not a sort of linear, this is the first step, this is the second step I'm saying. There are multiple points of entry into this work. What do you find most agreeable? Where's the least amount of friction? Where are you already kind of doing it? And that part can help bring those quick wins. That is such a golden nugget that I don't think I've ever heard you articulate that way before, that adults love autonomy, which they absolutely do. This is a fundamental treat to battle learning. And giving people multiple small wins and saying, "Which is the most agreeable to you to try?" It's brilliant, Tom. Yeah. It's brilliant, Tom. Thank you. I'll take that. I appreciate that. And I know you may be biased, but I actually mean a lot coming from you because of you. I can be pretty critical, too. You can. It's not of me. You like, don't get interested. No, but I do think it's important that adults like autonomy. But I think that word sometimes, just that word gets hijacked. And what it is is autonomy within the guardrails of the reform effort or the work, right? It's not a free for all. I can do whatever I want to. Yeah. Like we got a golf community of practice all of a sudden. Right. We're not talking from experience. We're not going there. Okay. Let's go to principle number three. Okay. Principle number three. This is a huge one. This is the one that was the massive unlock for me. Because I was one of those middle children of education who didn't have an official leadership title. I had a fake leadership title that was more responsibility, but not more authority and not more pay. So I truly had to do this in a grassroots way that through influence and not authority, which seems impossible until you realize there's a way to do it. And it's through creating and leading a guiding coalition. This is different than a committee, people. My first clarifier committee is a call to sack where good ideas are learned and then slowly talk to death until they die. Coalition is a group of people that come together for shared purpose, ergo, scene number one, to put it into action. So you're actually moving forward. So the truth is one enthusiastic principle isn't enough. Neither is one passionate teacher. People change will always spread and stick through a critical mass. Every consultant should always be asking who are the trusted people in this organization? Who has influence over the others, not just authority, but influence? Who will continue carrying this work long after we're gone in between my visits? How might we create this movement so that no one even remembers where it started? It's just this is what we do here. The real work isn't building dependence on you, it's building the leadership capacity within the school. That's so important next thing I want to say it again because so many people misunderstand this about consulting, you're not trying to work yourself into another job. The real work is not building dependence on you, it's building leadership capacity within the school. There's so many nuggets in here that I want to talk about. First is as a consultant, there can be, especially for those of you listening who are relatively early in this journey, and I don't mean this to be disparaging, but there can be an air of desperation around this consulting work, which is I need to make sure the schools need me. What we actually want to do is say I need to work myself out of a job in a way. I need to work myself out of this contract. That is to be celebrated because what you've done is you've built local capacity and you've built that whole sustainable kind of long term. They can't keep relying on an outside expert, and I know that feels counterintuitive because consultants will obviously say, well, how do I get paid? You get paid by working with the next school district or the next school district, right? And there will be more. The other thing you mentioned, I often call it street cred. Who are the people in the school who have the influence that if they stood up in a faculty meeting and said, I'm thinking of reforming my assessment practices. There's 13 other people in the room who'll do it just because she said so. Like I've worked with people like that. And on your guiding coalition, you want one of two things. You want that person who is that influential. You know who they are. There are teachers in your schools or in the schools who just have a bit of swagger when they get up and talk. The room pays attention because that teacher is one of the best teachers in our school, one of the most effective teachers in our school. And she's willing to rethink her assessment practices like, what am I doing? It's akin to being the hardest working player on a team and you're the best player. So when Kobe Bryant works harder than everybody else, everybody looks at this and goes, he's better than me. And he works that hard like, what am I doing, right? So bringing your guiding coalition together, it can't just be the newbies. It can't be all the veterans. What you really want is a group of people who are representative of the school, right? You want some veterans who have that experience, but you also want some fresh eyes on it, some newer teachers, right? You want a balance of everybody. A leader. Now, here's the second thing you can do. I remember working with one teacher asked her to be a part of our guiding coalition. And she couldn't. The meeting time didn't work with her family obligations, right? She just said, I can't meet after school. I come early in the mornings, but I have kid duty. I have to pick up my kids after school. My husband does the opposite. No problem. So plan B was, when we come up with some ideas, would you mind if we run? Then buy you. We've never talked about this. But I've done the exact same thing. You mind if we just run these things by you and just get your perspective because we really value your, oh, yeah, no problem. So we would always run things by her because we just thought, can you, what's your perspective on us? Because we really trusted her, her perspective. But the guiding coalition does a lot of the heavy lifting. They do a little bit of the research. They do some of the early adopting and they'll coach others who are interested in trying these new practices. None of us has all the answers, so we can't pretend like we do. And act like we do instead of bringing a team together of people who are like-minded, again, doing the advantage here is they're doing a lot of the heavy lifting for the faculty. So the team has to be credible. They have to have enough experience. They have enough credibility. They have to have enough energy. They have to have enough courage to try some new things and be prepared to stumble and fail and figure it out and figure out the best way to go. So to me, that's the best way you can develop that guiding coalition. So many thoughts. We should probably do a whole episode just on this. Another group of people that I would say don't overlook for your guiding coalition because they'll be your dark horses that will actually make the change tip is the critical resistor. And I say critical because they're not just an outright resistor who's against everything and angry and is just going to be like a cancer on the team. It's the critical resistor. It's the person who's slow to say yes. They've seen too many things come and go and not stick. So they're pretty critical. But people know that maybe they're not the celebrated innovator in their school. They do have a reputation of being a bit critical because if that person tips, it will change everything because I think of the one on R when I was leading this work in my district. He was a high school math teacher. He was very critical. He was not one people would point at, but there was something you just get a sense. And even if you're at the consultant, you talk to the leadership. You get a sense of getting it. And you get to know the staff really well for sure. And I was like, yeah, there's something about him though. I feel like he's been burned in the past. He's not actually a resistor. He's a very thoughtful deep thinker. He just has seen too many things come and go. And so people they're like, they don't, he's kind of just in the middle. You know, there's this middle ground. They're not angry resistors. They're not your passionate leave. There's like a blocker. Yeah, they're not. But they're like the person that if they suddenly got up and said, I believe in this in here is why everyone would be like, whoa. And so we brought him in. And I remember him saying is like, I'm going to be critical. I don't know if I believe in this. I'm going to ask too many questions. And I was like, that's why we need you. That's actually exactly why we need you. We're a little too like mine did. And I don't want that. I actually think we need you. need some healthy debate and dissonance. And he's like, no, okay. Came in. And you-- - That I can do. - You remember, you were, 'cause you were our consultant. And so you came in and were joining a lot of the coalition meetings as my request is just an outside voice. And you did something with math one day. You gave a math example and you had some drawings. And I remember we all joked you went into his thought palace and he was writing things on his paper and calculating the math. And then it was like ding, like a light bulb went off. Like he just got it. And I think the fact that he'd also been welcomed in was allowed to disagree in that context. He felt so included that when he clicked for him, he not only then presented this initiative to the staff and he opened it with you, no. You all know I don't agree with a lot of things that everyone laughed and he said, but here's why I agree with this, pin drop. And then he also was the person who presented to the board. - He's the champion now, right? - And he was like, it was so powerful 'cause he was the unexpected champion. - It's crazy how, but you know, honestly, that's not that uncommon. - I've been in situations with schools where initially this person is the arms folded, the eyes rolled. They want nothing to do with this change. And then a year later they're like, we should have done this four years ago. It's like, well, you were the reason we didn't do it four years ago. - I know, every time you're like, but I think there's, you know, there can be, this has gotta be more than 20 years ago. I heard Michael Fallon say we need to listen to the resistors because they may have ideas we haven't thought of. And they're either gonna share them with you or they're gonna share them in the parking lot. So the idea being that we can get into, if you're not careful, your guiding coalition could become a lot of group think. - It can. - An exclusionary to counter ideas. But the best case scenarios you've got enough diversity on that team in terms of thinking that you have the healthy conversations. And I've used this term a lot on this episode, but I'm gonna use it one more time because I've been using this term with the Grading Reform Leadership Lab online coaching program that I'm starting, is you want pushback to become a guard rail, not a gut punch, right? And that's the phrasing I've been using. So leaders have to, so we look at pushback as the way to guide us in terms of how far can we stretch the parameters, but it's a guard rail for us. It's not a gut punch. And we wanna get to a place where we're okay with that resistance and okay with those healthy conversations. So here's what we hope is we wrap things up. Here's what we hope every aspiring consultant remembers that your greatest value isn't necessarily your content. It isn't your slide deck and it may not even be your expertise. - No, your value lies in helping schools accomplish something they couldn't accomplish on their own, which is transformation. And that's why schools in higher and invest in consultants in the long term. - Right, so if you're thinking about becoming an education consultant, this is exactly the kind of shift we help educators make inside the educator freedom lab. We don't just help you package what you know, we help you learn how to create meaningful lasting change in schools. So your work is remembered for what changed, not just what you presented. - And if you'd like to explore what that could look like, we welcome you to book a free clarity call. There's a link in our episode description to do that. We'd love to have you talk to someone on our team and see if we can help you take that next step. And as we wrap up, if you do like what you're hearing, we would love to invite you to do a couple of things for us and we have a gift for you. So the first is you are going to, on whichever podcast player you're listening, you are going to rate and review this podcast. Hopefully it's good, but even if it's bad, we'll welcome the resistance. Take a picture, email it to us at [email protected] and then we will snail mail you a present in the mail. It is a book and no, it's not one of our books. - Sorry, tell me, but everyone should read grading from the inside, that is great. - Thank you. - Yes, yes. - But no, we're actually going to mail you one of our favorite business books that was pivotal, Wink Wink, in our business journey. So that brings us to the end of yet another wonderful week, Yes Club. We'll see you again in two weeks.