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MARK C. CROWLEY is a recognized visionary in workplace management, engagement, and culture. When the first edition of his book, Lead From The Heart: Transformational Leadership For The 21st Century, was published over a decade ago, many business leaders were slow to embrace it and misinterpreted its title as being synonymous with soft, weak, and ineffective management. Today, his pioneering philosophy on heart-led leadership has launched a global movement and Forbes Magazine has called his ideas “visionary” and “the blueprint for the future of workplace leadership.” As an educational resource, the first edition of Lead From The Heart has been taught in nine universities. Now, Crowley has released a new edition of Lead From The Heart (August 23, 2022), updated and revised to address the needs of those managing Gen Z and Millennial employees, supported by the latest global research on employee engagement.

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Show Highlights

Lead from the Heart to let your experience influence your work.

How negative feedback can be the catalyst to keep you connected to approaching the “hard sells” of leadership.

Mark shares his process on how to stay committed to your vision.

Take this first tiny first step to build a foundation for developing heart-centered leadership that will transform your school and impact the value you create for others.

You need a “mirror moment” and a key ingredient to build the right team to empower your learning community. Mark tells you how.

The formula for a competitive advantage, a leadership edge, and to take your school to the next level.

“I believe when I’m supporting people the way that I was, I made people feel safe. I made people feel appreciated. I found out what they wanted to learn. I knew about their families. I knew about their dreams. I supported them in unique ways and made people feel that I love them, cared about them, and they wanted to work hard for me.”
- Mark Crowley

Madeline Mortimore

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Read the Transcript here.

Lead From The Heart

00:00:02

Daniel: If you think soft skills are soft or emotional, intelligence is not something you need to focus on to take your leadership to the next level. If you don’t think that relationships and heart centered leadership matters.You really have a lot of waking up to do. This is the foundation of high performing leaders. It’s the foundation of being a Ruckus Maker , developing your emotional intelligence, developing your heart centered leadership will absolutely transform not only your leadership impact, but the value you create for others and the culture that you ultimately built. One of my heroes and mentors, Seth Godin, said a quote ages ago that really rocked me. He said, “You get the culture you deserve.” If you look around and you’re frustrated by, let’s say, teachers who are late to work right, or students in their behavior, and then you take Seth’s quote that you get the culture you deserve, Maybe it’s time to have a mirror moment, and maybe it’s time to look inward and see what you’re doing to actually cultivate heart centered leadership. So you’re really going to enjoy today’s episode. It’s with Mark Crowley, who’s a recognized visionary and has a book that’s called Lead from the Heart. He’s going to help you develop your leadership skills in this area. Hey, it’s Danny, and welcome to the Better Leaders Better Schools podcast or show for Ruckus Makers . If you’re a Ruckus Maker , that means you invest in your continuous growth. You challenge the status quo and you design the future of school now.

00:01:51

Daniel: We’ll be right back after some messages from our show sponsors. Learn how to develop your skills to identify challenges, incorporate and support innovation and plan and drive school improvement in leading school strategy and innovation. A Certificate in School Management and Leadership Course from Harvard. Teachers use Teach FX to record a lesson and automatically get personalized insights into their classroom conversation patterns in teaching practices. See for yourself and learn about special partnership options for Ruckus Makers at Teachfx.com/BLBS. All students have an opportunity to succeed with Organized Binder, who equips educators with a resource to provide stable and consistent learning, whether that’s in a distance hybrid or traditional educational setting. Learn more at OrganizedBinder.COM. All right, Ruckus Makers, we’re here with Mark C Crowley, who is a recognized visionary in workplace management, engagement and culture. When the first edition of his book Lead from the Heart, Transformational Leadership for the 21st Century was published. Get this Over a decade ago, many business leaders were slow to embrace it and misinterpreted its title as being synonymous with soft, weak and ineffective management. Today, his pioneering philosophy on heart led leadership has launched a global movement, and Forbes magazine has called his ideas visionary and the Blueprint for the Future of Workplace Leadership. The second edition of Lead from the Heart is available like as of today, so that is super exciting. The second edition has come out and it’s updated and revised to address the needs of those managing Gen Z and Millennial employees supported by the latest global research on employee engagement. Mark, welcome to the show.

00:04:00

Mark: Thank you. Danny Thrilled to be here.

00:04:02

Daniel: Wonderful. I’m super excited that we are now connected. I want to start with a story where a school really missed an opportunity. They missed this huge opportunity to support you and they acted in a way that lacked compassion. That’s how you experienced it. Do you mind sharing that story for the Ruckus Maker listening and watching today?

00:04:27

Mark: You and I had a little conversation about this a few weeks ago when we first met. And this was a story that goes back to when my mom was dying. I was in third grade and no one told me that my mother was dying. I knew that she was sick, but they told me that she had a ulcer, which didn’t mean anything, except it was the way that it was conveyed. Like she has an ulcer, so she’s going to be fine. I came home from school one day and was told that my mom had died of cancer, and it was completely devastating to me. A couple of days later, my sister came up to me and I went to a Catholic parochial school. My sister came up to me and said, “Would you like this statue?” And it was a statue about that tall. My wife still has it, interestingly enough, all these years later of the Virgin Mary. She said, “Would you like this?” I’m nine years old and I was thinking, “What would I do with that?” And then I said, “Why do you want me to have that?” And she said, “Well, your teacher, Sister Teresa, gave that to Mom.” And I said, “She came to see Mom?” At nine years old, I had the presence of mind to understand that the whole time that I was going through this experience of being shuttled off to different different places, different buses going going to different parents homes, having my whole life disrupted because my mom was sick and there was no one who could take care of me. I was so distressed about where my life was and never did I feel the compassion from my own teacher. It just astonished me that she was going to see my mom to comfort her. She had me in her class and I never once felt comforted myself. I remember thinking, Boy, did I need love in that moment. And I just didn’t get it. She knew obviously, So there could have been more compassion, more kindness. It’s a memory I’m never going to forget because of what a low hurdle it was and how badly she tripped over it.

00:06:43

Daniel: Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that story. I can only imagine how traumatic and what that loss felt like. As an eight year old, you said in third grade. For the Ruckus Maker, engaging with our conversation today, what could a school have done? You said it’s a pretty low bar, but what could the school have done to express some compassion and meet you in that moment?

00:07:06

Mark: Without revealing that my mother was sick, just demonstrating. “I understand your mom’s not feeling well and I just want you to know if you need anything. I’m here for you.” I mean, in those days, it was not unacceptable for a teacher to give you a hug. These days that there’s from teachers in my own family have told me that that’s much more of a conflict now, unfortunately. But in that era, it was totally acceptable and that would have been something, you know, just give you a hug. You’re going to be okay. I’m here for you. I’m here to support you. And so there were days anywhere. I didn’t get to school on time. I missed the bus because there was nobody. And I just remember feeling terrified about the strictness of the school and being late walking in on the class when everybody was already there and just a mark, it’s okay. Don’t don’t worry about being late. We’ll catch up. It’s all going to be good. Just simple little conveyances that could have made a huge difference. Instead, I just felt terror. I felt fear about going to school and having my life disrupted. She could have made a big difference.

00:08:22

Daniel: We talk a lot in our leadership community, too, to just the the intentional design for entrance to a school building, but also how we carry ourselves, our presence, our energy as educators. What are those messages we communicate when kids do finally arrive to school, especially if they’re tardy and late? A lot of times that message is like, get your butts in class. Here’s the things that fear in terms of discipline, so on and so forth. But the schools that show up with love and lead from the heart said, Mark, I’m so happy you’re here today. Glad you made it. We have a great day planned for you. And you’re especially going to love this thing that we’re doing. It’s just such a different approach. But it makes it engages the kid and it lowers the walls that you experienced. Coming to school and being a little bit late. So just encourage people to really think deeply about how they’re greeting students as they’re coming on the campus, especially those ones that are tardy. I’d love to to move us over to talking about Lead from the Heart. Congrats again for having the second edition out, which is super exciting. I want to bring us back to a moment when you’re talking to your publicist and I’m going to laugh here because I remember with my latest book Mastermind, which you can see back there, the first the first draft, right When the editor got it, she told me, like, this book sucks. It’s not so good. And that’s normal. The book has to go through multiple processes and Ruckus Makers have heard the story. But essentially, Mark, to make a better book, I stopped writing a book. I started taking long walks with my puppy and getting out into nature. That cleared my mind and it all came together and then flowed through my fingertips and created a book I’m very proud of. But your publicist gave you also very tough feedback, maybe even tougher than what I received from my editor. What was that feedback that you received?

00:10:24

Mark: I had a long career. I had a 25 year career and actually had great success in financial services, which is a dog eat dog, kind of a world where you don’t bring art into leadership. By the time I had this meeting, the book was now written and I was interested in securing a speaking agent so that I could take my work and go speak to companies and so forth. And she said, “You have no platform, no one knows who you are. You’ve never written a book before. Nobody knows you in any social media, and you need to cultivate that. You need to build that. And so I can’t help you with that. I want to introduce you to someone who will help you build the strategy for your platform.” So I took her on her word and secured this woman and paid her $10,000. And her job was to just lay out the plan for me. And she’s a very direct woman. And she basically said to me and she goes, “Look, what I’m going to do for you is just tell you what to do. I’m not going to do anything for you. So that’s fine. Just steer me true north.” So she said, “I’ve now read your book and I’ve read some of the articles that you’ve written on Fast Company, and I have option A for you, which you’re going to hate, and I have option B, which you’re probably going to want, but I hate.” And she was just spinning it this way and I just said, “Just give it to me straight.” And she said, “I hope I can say this with your audience, you’re going to fail. If you continue to use the expression lead from the heart, you must never, ever use that again.” She goes, “Use something like killer engagement. People don’t want to hear about heart in business.” And I remember thinking, I actually asked her. I said, Well, did you cash the check for this? But what you’re trying to tell me was that I was way ahead of the culture. She didn’t think the culture was ever going to catch up with this message. But what she was telling me was, you’re going to suffer. You’re going to have a lot of pain. Because when people hear the expression lead from the heart, they’re just going to dismiss you summarily. They’re going to think this guy doesn’t get business. And worse, he’s probably like a spiritualist or religious nut or whatever, but we’re not going to take this guy seriously. And so the interesting thing is the book is predicated on science that validates that the heart is much more than a pump and other. Wise, I wouldn’t have. I’m not using it as a metaphor. These days. You’re hearing more of Heartland leadership. I’m like the only person that’s saying, No, it’s legitimate. It’s like it’s who we are as human beings. There’s something else there than just the pump. And so I knew that I had to hold on to I had to hold on for dear life knowing that I was going to get punched in the stomach for a really long time. And interestingly, I knew there would be a tipping point where people would go, Oh my God, the guy is right. But what I didn’t know at the time was that it would be a two year pandemic that would change people’s perspectives of what people were really needing in a workplace and what kind of support they were needing. And it just basically laid out my whole thesis. So as much as I tried to convince through podcasts and I have my own podcast and articles that I’ve written, it was the COVID that I’m most grateful to for changing hearts and minds and consciousness.

00:13:54

Daniel: The pandemic we’ve all experienced and rough experience to go through collectively sort of opened up our hearts and minds to be open potentially to your message. I don’t know if you agree with that, but what do you think after going through that experience? It resonates with people so much these days.

00:14:14

Mark: The truth is, is that when I wrote the book originally 11 years ago, there was plenty of evidence that people were really unhappy at work but we also have this probably 100 year plus tradition of what we call traditional leadership theory, which is pay people as little as possible, squeeze as much out of them as possible. That’s how we’ve treated workers. And if they don’t do a good job, we get rid of them. It’s always somebody else that I can get in your chair. And so we manage with fear and intimidation. I think the truth is we we probably just acclimated to that. We just accepted that in a lot of reasons, A lot of cases, work is just things to do every day. I have to put up with it because I need to get paid. When COVID hit, two things happen. One was. People had two years to think about their lives. We had a lot of time alone, a lot of time without having to get on a subway or a train or a car to go to work every day. And being alone and being at home. We started thinking about our lives. I think a lot of people, as evidenced by what we call the Great Recession, were four and one half million people are quitting every single month in America, setting records. It’s demonstrates that people woke up and said, “You know what, I’m not I deserve more than this. I’m not going to suffer through working for somebody that treats me this way.” And the other thing that happened was that when people were suddenly sent to home to work, that was instantaneous. Everybody was sent home. So that meant if you had a spouse and you had children and you had a child going through education online, well, you’re a parent. You’ve got to make sure your kids are doing fine. And you may not have space for both of you to be working at the same time or not enough space to keep the sound from attenuating. Moreover, it’s just there were so many things going on in people’s lives that we were exposed to for the first time. And if you had a boss that just called you up at 8:00 in the morning when you’re trying to get your child dressed and fed and ready for online school and help your spouse get situated and help you get situated and the is “Hey, Danny, where are you on this project? I need this now. I need it. And there is no empathy for what your experience is”. People were like, I can’t do this anymore. So if they weren’t willing to say, “Hey, Danny, is this a good time to talk? Because I know you got a lot going on and I want to be concerned about that. Can we talk at 8:30? Would that be a better time?” Just those kinds of little thoughtful moves. Some managers got that, but might believe is that they were already managing that way in the first place. So they didn’t need to transition hard transition for people that just said, I don’t really care about what’s going on in your life. I don’t really care that your kid is struggling with online education. It’s like none of my problem. Get me my project, man.

00:17:19

Daniel: And the projects, do you know?

00:17:21

Mark: Projects do. Now all I care about is the work. And just none of us want to live like that anymore.

00:17:29

Daniel: My best when I call teammates or even principles that I’m supporting is as a coach at my best, I say, “Hey, do you have 5 minutes, 10 minutes just to check in?” Like, is now basically a good time to chat? I hear that’s what you’re saying. And now that schools are back in session and the students are on campus, you can do the same thing when you stop by and just pop in a classroom. Hey, do you have 5 minutes? Even though it’s not a phone call, but don’t just barge in and think like because you’re the principal or assistant principal, whatever thing you want to discuss with the teacher, like priority is a priority over everything else that’s going on in their lives. So check in. Let’s get practical, too, with the Ruckus Maker engaging with our conversation. And what are some other ways. They’re hearing you talking about Lead From The Heart. Conceptually, they understand it. And you’re saying there’s scientific evidence that this is this is the way the way to lead as well. But what are some things that they could do on campus with their staff, with their students, maybe with their parents to demonstrate that they’re leading from the heart?

00:18:34

Mark: One thing that just as you ask that question that people are asking me now, what would be your one solution to help all workplaces? We’ll put schools aside for a second because it comes back to this. And my answer is surprising. It’s take a look at who’s managing right now and confirm reconfirm that they love other people, that they really, truly want to help other people grow, thrive, be happy in their lives, get to fulfill whatever dream they have of their work. Not everybody wants to be CEO. They might still want to learn. So what are you doing to help them? And the reason that this is so important is because there are a lot of people managing other people that don’t care about other people. All they are is task masters. And my thesis is that feelings and emotions drive human behavior more than anything else. We think Descartes said. I think therefore I am, and we believe them forever. We always in business said, “we want to marginalize feelings. We want to we don’t really care about what feelings are. What we want to be doing is intellect, intellectually communicating with people.” So we’re going to hire the smartest people for management roles and we’re going to put the feelings aside. And so what I’m saying is it’s the opposite. You can get away with not being the smartest guy in. But you can’t get away without making people feel safe and valued and supported and that they mattered and that you’re there. Advocate So going back to your question, I can tell you I had a lot of teachers that just didn’t care about anything other than getting out of there at 230. And so this we talk about some of the other things that we’re going to talk about by the end of the conversation about schools. I have such tremendous admiration for teachers and feel that we have just allowed parents particularly to abuse them with their expectations. And when you see the numbers of students, I saw something the other day, coincidentally, that said there’s 300,000 openings, teacher openings in this country, which tells me that’s not a number you’re surprised by, But it’s a stunning number that tells me people are like, why would I want to go into that? There’s no love in that. It starts with saying make sure that the school is filled with teachers that really, truly care about other people. Start their making sure. And you can encourage that if you’re not demonstrating that of teachers, if students aren’t feeling it, if parents aren’t feeling, you can encourage the teacher to be more like that. But I think building the right team is the answer to your first question.

00:21:28

Daniel: It’s always surprising. It always gets a laugh when I talk to a group of principals and I talk about that teacher who doesn’t seem like they even like kids. Like, why? Why are they in the building? But that it keeps going up, too. So you talk about principals and then the central office, do they really, truly care? Are they compassionate and loving towards the adults? And that’s one of the ways to, I think, solve for the shortages in the retention problems, create a culture, create a space where people feel actually seen and heard and valued and not a commodity. Like I can get a teacher who’s cheaper and younger and whatever, but you create this other kind of environment where people are truly, truly valued, they’re not going to want to meet. I think that’s an important piece to think about. Mark, for this Ruckus Maker , engage in with us and they’re thinking, all right, I want to I want to lead more with the heart. I’m really excited about these ideas Mark’s talking about. Maybe my team’s not there yet. Maybe my supervisor or central office is not there yet. You talked about when the book came out, it was a hard sell this kind of leadership, how might they approach getting the other leaders on board with this style of leadership?

00:22:48

Mark: Who are you asking specifically about?

00:22:51

Daniel: Sorry if it was a convoluted question, but let’s do an example where I’m principal. I want to lead in a more compassionate way. I want to lead from the heart. I have two or three Aps. Two of them are warming up to the idea. One is more traditional, let’s say very smart, very logic focused. All about the numbers in the data and the stuff about feelings and heart stuff. They’re just they have walls up. They’re resistant to that idea. So how might you approach somebody like that to say, as a team, we need to create this kind of environment at our school?

00:23:31

Mark: The first thing I want to tell you is that the joy for me in being here specifically with you in your audience is to say that what sustained me. When I publish my book, I knew I had something really meaningful to say. And even though this woman told me you’re going to expect a lot of resistance, I didn’t expect quite the resistance that I was going to get because I was a very credible executive and did really great things and was really wonderful with people, but also driving great performance. I thought people are going to take me seriously. And business sort of went, we’re not so sure about you sir, but education embraced it. My book has been taught in nine universities. It’s still being taught in a Top Big Ten MBA program, an entrepreneurship program at Northern Arizona University and a PhD educational leadership program at what was formerly known Brandman University, which is now UMass Lowell. I’ve been intimately involved with them, and it’s because they saw it and said, “This is what we want to be teaching our students. That just made me realize, “Okay, I’m just going to ride this until business catches up. I’m saying, “Thank you. I’m saying thank you to the to the educational community for seeing this.” Interestingly, I just read a book, I have my own podcast, and I do a deep dive and. My guess work. There’s a Cal professor who has a new book coming out. It’s not out yet, but in it he said that the National Research Council has discovered this is something you probably already know, that teachers have producedm the best outcomes do two things. Number one, caring and supportive environment. And number two, they focus on learning and high expectations. When I read that it was like, this is lead from the heart. That’s what this is. If you were to go up to people who used to work for me and you’d say you work for Mark, was that a good experience? Oh, yeah, it was a great experience. So what’s the one word that you would use to describe Mark Crawling? You’d go, Well, it’s going to be hard 100 times out of 100. But guess what, Adam 100 times you’d probably get demanding 95. I believe that when I’m supporting people the way that I was, I made people feel safe. I made people feel appreciated. I found out what they wanted to learn. I knew about their families, I knew about their dreams. I supported them in unique ways and made people feel that I love them and cared about them, and they wanted to work hard for me, right? But when I gave them all that support, I remember just saying to them, it’s like, “Well, there’s no reason for us to be mediocre. We’ll work like supercharged, like when all of your needs are being met, let’s do something great.” And so your question is, you’re talking to a teacher or you’re talking to an assistant principal. Anybody that’s not on board with caring. I think part of it is that they assume that caring means soft. I can’t be an effective teacher when in fact you need to be both. You need to be caring and demonstrate to people that you care about them. And that the reason I’m challenging you, the reason I’m holding you accountable, the reason I’m wanting to see you do better in this class is because I care about you, because I believe in you. So this combination of being caring and demanding, caring and setting high expectations is really the expectation we should have for all teachers and especially assistant principals. If they’re not there, they’re missing a huge important dimension of their effectiveness.

00:27:29

Daniel: You want a competitive advantage, a leadership edge, you want to take your school to the next level. Mark revealed the formula, which is a high sense of care for the individual, plus high expectations equals great results. I appreciate you sharing that. Mark, We’re going to pause here just for a second to share some sponsor messages. And after that, I would love to ask you the final three questions I ask all my guests.

00:27:58

Daniel: Learn how to successfully navigate change, shape your school success, and empower your teams with Harvard Certificate in School Management and Leadership. Get online Professional development that fits your schedule. Courses include leading change, leading school strategy and Innovation, Leading people and Leading Learning. You can apply today at betterleadersbetterschools.com/Harvard. The BLBS podcast is also brought to you by Teach FX research shows that the more students speak in class, the more they learn and the better they perform. Teach FX has helped hundreds of schools increase their student engagement by visualizing for teachers what portions of class are teacher talk versus student talk. And you can learn more at Teachfx.com. Finally, today’s show is proudly sponsored by Organized Binder, a program which gives students daily exposure to goal setting, reflective learning time and task management, study strategies, organizational skills, and more Organized Binder’s Color coded system is implemented by the teacher through parallel process, with students helping them create a predictable and dependable classroom routine. Learn more and improve your students Executive Functioning at Organizedbinder.com.

00:29:21

Daniel: We’re back with Mark Crowley, who’s second edition of Lead from the Heart Transformational Leadership for the 21st Century. Go pick up his book anywhere that books are available. Mark, I love to ask you and invite you to answer the same three questions that all my guests answer. Number one would be if you could put one message on all school marquees around the world for a single day, what would your message read?

00:29:55

Mark: You tipped me off you’d be asking this question. Then I have a rather large Twitter following and I went out and asked that question. I have written down seven and the one that I would have picked, but there were wonderful they were really engaged. But here they are, number one be kind to that student sitting all alone, make your own adventure,.Everyone will make a mistake today, and everyone will be just fine, Throw kindness like confetti. Aren’t these wonderful?

00:30:33

Daniel: They are. That’s why I’m letting you go. Normally, I ask for just one, but these are great. So keep going.

00:30:37

Mark: You are good enough. Believe in yourself and know your unlimited and mine. Every student matters at this school and is loved.

00:30:49

Daniel: Brilliant. I’m going to try to find that Twitter thread and where your followers were connecting with you, retweet some of those. If Ruckus Makers see that and wants to join the conversation, we certainly welcome your contribution as well. All right, Mark. You’re building your dream school and there’s no limitations in terms of resources. The only real limitation is actually your imagination. How would Mark build his dream school? What would be your top three guiding principles?

00:31:21

Mark: I’m all about people, right? We all talk about the buildings or the technology or the playgrounds. But the very first thing that I would do is I would start with district leaders that put students and families first so that the students and the families are actually involved in deciding how resources are spent so that they have a sense of like, I’m part of this. It’s not being done to me. It’s being done with me. Second, hire someone awesome, truly awesome to coach, mentor and develop teachers to help them get mastery. In San Diego, we had a former district attorney who has made this superintendent of schools and he was he treated the teachers like they were on trial. And so then he said, we’re going to bring in coaches. Well, he brought in coaches, but they were with the intention of weeding out the the dead weight and we’re going to get rid of all. And so immediately he put all the teachers into fear. That’s not how you do it. Number three, a principal is experienced teacher, but also great and leadership. This is the gap. Is that just because you’re a great teacher doesn’t mean you’re going to be a great leader. And doesn’t just because you’re a great leader doesn’t mean you have the necessary background. So you need them both. But someone who builds relationships with all students so that this the principal is somebody who’s accessible, not high and mighty, and you see them graduation and first day of school teachers, custodians, cafeteria workers who love children and want to help them. Every single person who works on that school has to have that common denominator. And finally and I thought of this this morning, I walk every morning at 5:00 on the beach in the dark. I was thinking about our conversation. And there needs to be a pay scale, even if even if principals have to go out into the community and corporations and say, “hey, give us some money to help the teachers, but there needs to be a pay scale so that as you not not not grow in tenure, but grow in effectiveness, that you can grow into compensation package that matches what you would get in a workplace in a business that values you and says you have mastered this, you are the kind of person that I would want to put my child in their class because they know they’re going to grow. And we need to value you. We need to reward you. So compensation in my dream would be substantially more than we’re paying teachers today.

00:33:55

Daniel: Brilliant. And I know a ton of people will agree with that. Mark, we’ve covered a lot of ground and I really appreciate you bringing your insights and expertise to the Better Leaders Better Schools podcast of everything we covered today. What’s the one thing you want a Ruckus Maker to remember?

00:34:11

Mark: Love your People is really my mantra. And when I first said it, I realized, Wait a minute, I’ll tell you a quick story. But what I want you to know is when I first said it out loud, I was like, Oh my God, they’re going to battle the heart issue for so long. And now I’m saying, Love your people, and I’ve lost them all over again. So I said, Oh, this is love. You know, it’s like I was trying to, like, add some caveat to make it more acceptable. And then I just realized it’s love. But here’s the interesting thing. Human beings thrive on positive emotions. We know that heart. We are hardwired to thrive, to perform optimally when we are almost marinating in positive emotions. And life is hard enough that we get plenty of negative emotions in our lives. So we have to go out of our way to give other people positive emotions. So from a management standpoint or from a teacher experience. But here’s the interesting thing. Barbara Frederickson, who is a star in the positive psychology world, many of your many people listening to this are probably nodding their head saying, I’m familiar with her work. I just threw out a question. I was interviewing her for an article and I just threw out a question at the end. And I just said, you know, is there anything to do with emotions that would relate to the heart? And here’s what she said to me. She goes, No one’s ever asked anything close to that question. But what we know is when you think about positive emotions, it’s like gratitude and joy and happiness and love and attention. All of those kinds of things are positive emotions. What she said was we now believe she now believes through her research that any positive emotion is an experience of love. So you don’t have to go up to a kid and say, Hey, I love you, Johnny. You just have to say you’re growing so much. I can’t believe how hard you’re working on this class. And boy, what a great contribution you made today in today’s discussion. And mom comes into the class. I’m so pleased to have him in my class. What a joy he is. What a joy she is. Those create positive emotions. Those feelings is what allows people to thrive. And when people can thrive, they do their best work and they also do their best work in a school classroom. So when I say love your people, I’m saying just show it to them. You don’t have to say it. If you want to say it, great. But in our world today, that’s probably a difficult ask, but you can show it in so many myriad ways.

00:36:43

Daniel: Brilliant. Thanks again for being on the show. Thanks for listening to the Better Leaders Better Schools podcast Ruckus Maker. If you have a question or would like to connect my email [email protected] or hit me up on Twitter @Alienearbud If the better leader is better schools podcasts is helping you grow as a school leader, then please help us serve more Ruckus Makers like you. You can subscribe, leave an honest rating and review or share on social media with your biggest takeaway from the episode. Extra credit for tagging me on Twitter at @AlienEarbud and using the hashtag #blbs. Level up your leadership. Betterleadersbetterschools.com and talk to you next time. Until then, class dismissed.

 

 

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