Quote-A-Day: Day 296

#Truth = You can never make everyone #happy. Other truth = You can always make yourself happy. #QuoteADay #Day296 #edchat #edu #ASCDL2L

It’s a fact of life.

You can’t always please everyone, and if we spend all of our time trying, we’ll end up disappointing those who we can make happy, and just as importantly, ourselves.

But, on the flip side, you can always please yourself.  We are the keepers of our own happiness, and if we want to be happy, we can make it happen.

Leaders need to always be focused on their own well-being, for if we are never happy, then it will be impossible to make others happy as well.

And happiness is key to any successful initiative.  We don’t just need people to buy in, we also need them to be truly happy about where they are, and what they’re doing.

Rather than focusing on trying to always make everyone happy, we should focus on making those happy who want to be happy, and just as importantly, spreading the happiness around enough so everyone can be happy, if they want to be.

Happiness isn’t a characteristic that can be just dumped in people’s laps.  There’s a systematic design to happiness that prevents those who choose to be miserable from becoming happy.

Therefore, every leader needs to choose to be happy and positive.  While we can’t make everyone a “happy camper” we can show others that we choose to be joyful, and if nothing else, maybe, just maybe, our happiness will be contagious.  And happiness is always great to catch.

Quote-A-Day: Day 295

Beginning the morning with a positive thought will make even the gloomiest days seem bright. #QuoteADay #Day295 #edchat #edu #ASCDL2L

I grumbled a bit this morning. 

I woke up, and it was pitch black out (not abnormal at this time of year), and when I was packing the kids up to take them off to school, it was still pretty dark.

I’m a sunlight type of guy, and when the fall and winter start to come, and it gets dark earlier and light later, it can be tough for me to keep my positivity going.

So this morning, when I got to work, I took a few minutes to think about a bunch of great things that are going on in my life right now. 

Only about two minutes.  That’s it.

And, despite the chilly conditions, and the somewhat dark environs, I felt pretty good.

It’s amazing what a little positivity can do for us. 

Imagine how much it can do for others if we start our day by throwing a bit of positivity their way. 

Leaders need to be positive in all that do with their charges.  Sure leaders can be sad, disappointed, depressed, and all the other range of negative emotions.  But when it comes to interacting with those we serve, we need to turn the positivity on. 

Leaders should inspire and bring hope to those they work with at all times.  Leaders should never bring others down.

Yesterday, I had an interaction with one of my staff members where I answered a question with a response that was more negative than I intended.  I automatically saw the shift in his face and knew I should have rethought what I said.  And, the worst part is, I may have negatively impacted his day as well.

We all need to keep it positive as we go about our work.  Everyone is depending on us to do so.

Quote-A-Day: Day 294

Had a rough day? Consider how much of it is perception and how much is reality. #QuoteADay #Day294 #edchat #edu #KeepMovingForward

Today was a rough one.  Happily, it was the first rough one I’ve had in a long time.  At least I think so, because, as I’ve learned, rough days (and great days, by comparison) are some parts reality, and some parts perception.

Today had a number of fairly tense meetings going on with very little time in between to take care of the necessary “housekeeping” that any position has.  In addition, there were a number of small “fires” that needed to be put out (or at least cooled down).  This made for a day with little to no time (not even five minutes) to rest and reflect, and those days don’t sit particularly well for me.

But, I’ve learned in my life that the nature of a “good” or “bad” day is often created by how we perceive it.  Sure, things happen that definitely make some days bad (or, not exactly good), but in many cases, how I react to those stressful situations is really what determines how “rough” a day is.

For that reason, here are two “mantras” that I always attempt to live by.

1.        I always wait until a day is over to make a judgment on it. Even during those days that don’t seem like they will ever end, I do my best to wait until they do to decide whether the day was really “rough” or whether it was more my interpretation of the day.

2.       When things go wrong, I focus on changing what I do, so next time, they go right.  No matter what, bad days will happen.  And when those days are bad by reality, then I use that as a means to making changes so they go right the next time.  While this can involve quite a bit of work, it means that I’m not left in the exact same position when similar circumstances roll around again.

Remember that perception is both a blessing and a curse.  Without it, we wouldn’t be able to infer and our extremely necessary “gut” feelings would be gone.  But, with it, we fall victim to replacing what’s real with what we perceive.  The best leaders need to remember that perception and reality can often be very different.

Quote-A-Day: Day 293

#Easy? #Hard? No matter. What's important is that you did it. #QuoteADay #Day293 #edchat #edu #ASCDL2L #YouCanDoThis

The difficulty level of things doesn't matter so much.  Rather, what truly makes a difference is that we completed a task.

Easy or hard, the tasks we engage in are important for the opportunity they provide us with to complete them.  For through that process, we come out with more knowledge than we started with, and learning isn't about a range of difficulty, but rather knowing more after than before.

Let me tell you about my day.

I spent a good portion of today putting up shades in one of my daughter's rooms.  It wasn't a particularly "hard" job, but it was time consuming.  While it took me a while, I finished the task with a better understanding of easy ways to hang cordless shades (at least this brand. . . I've found that every different shade/blind manufacturer has "trouble points" in different spots :) ).

Then, I spent some time exploring the fuse compartment in my car.  The AC adapter port stopped working, so I figured a fuse blowing was to blame.  It turns out this batch of fuses was under the left instrument panel (as opposed to in the engine compartment0.  Getting under the steering column and into the foot well was a challenge and getting the fuse out of the array was incredibly hard, but I was able to see that it was blown, I ordered a new one off eBay (got to love eBay), and I feel confident I can pop it in without any problem (fingers crossed that it works).

Finally, I spent some time designing my Halloween costume.  We're going with a Wizard of Oz theme at work, and I'm going to be the yellow brick road.  This was neither easy nor hard, but simply a lot of fun.

These three tasks are examples of work I engaged in today.  Whether they were challenging or not is of no matter.  Instead, my increase in learning was based solely on my completion of these tasks, and figuring out how to work through them.

As leaders, we have to ignore the difficulty of tasks and concentrate instead on getting them done.  In this way, we can guarantee that our learning will continue, no matter what.

Quote-A-Day: Day 292

You don't truly know something until you know it from experience. #QuoteADay #Day292 #edchat #edu #ASCDL2L

I've been thinking a lot about my contribution during meetings lately.  I tend to be an active listener, but I speak quite a bit too.  One thing I do that I have been very conscious of over the last few weeks (and that I'm working towards moving away from), is I tend to share information that I "know" but I haven't yet "experienced."

There isn't necessarily anything bad in doing this.  We have to share information, and regardless of how we came across it, any information we share can be helpful.  However, when we speak from "knowledge" rather than from "experience" we're speaking from someone else's eyes, not our own.

This is a challenge, as a situation seen through someone else's eyes changes reality.  We can speak to an idea or situation we know about, but we can't do more than that.

When we've actually experienced something, we can speak to it, and we can also speak "through" it.  The power of the latter is that we can embody the situation, and that, in itself, builds trust, capacity, and understanding.

I've had a lot of experiences in my personal and professional life.  But, I haven't experienced everything (and who could).

Two goals?  One is to keep building on my experience base by taking risks and trying new things (that's the only way we can move from "knowing" to "experiencing").  The second is to spend more time speaking from experience rather than speaking from knowledge.

In reality, very few people want to hear what we know.  But no one can ignore what we've experienced.

Quote-A-Day: Day 291

What you don't know is meaningless. It's how you use what you do know that makes all the difference. #QuoteADay #Day291 #edchat #edu

Worrying about what we don't know won't help us know more.  In fact, if we spend all our time worrying about what we don't know, then we miss the opportunity to actually learn new things (how can we learn more when we're so worried about what we haven't learned?).

So, we should choose to focus on what we currently know, and how what we know can make us better at learning and leading.  And, if in the process, focusing on what we already know leads us to discover those things that we don't yet?

So much the better.  In fact, it makes more sense for our current learning to lead to uncovering, discovering, and internalizing new things than it does for those new and unknown things to serve as obstacles to what we currently know.

Plus, by admitting that we don't know everything (and we never will), it makes it easier for us to say, "I don't know, let's find out" and promotes a community that works with what it has and enjoys discovering things as they are unearthed.

A community that welcomes discovery?  People who are comfortable saying "I don't know?"  These are two of the ingredients to the development of a PLC that is always about getting better, and that is never afraid or disturbed by what isn't yet known.

Sounds good to me.

Quote-A-Day: Day 290

Treat your #learning as if it were via dry-erase marker, rather than a permanent one. #QuoteADay #Day290 #edchat #edu #ASCDL2L #Lead #Learn

Sure, learning is a continual process, but it isn’t good enough to just focus on that.

Learning also needs to be erasable; if all we learn is to be useful, we have to be able to overwrite some learnings and replace them with others.

As educators, we know the challenges that breaking misconceptions can bring.  Once learners internalize an idea, it can be extremely difficult to get them to a place where that learning can be edited.

Yet, we don’t often see this type of “dry-erase” style learning as applying to us (possibly because we think what we learn is somehow different).

We are just like all other learners, though, and are just as susceptible to misconceptions and the problems associated with “permanent marker” learning. 

For that reason, we should never hold onto any one idea or any one learning too tightly, as a given idea can be removed and replaced at a moment’s notice.  We also have to be certain we don’t hold onto our own ideas with an iron grip, simply because “we came up with them.”  This is important for two reasons: First, there are very few “new ideas” (which means someone likely was thinking the same thing), and second, just because an idea was “ours” doesn’t mean it is any better than an idea that is “theirs.”

So, as we continue to lead and learn, we should approach every nugget as one that has been drawn with a dry-erase marker, and that, whenever necessary, can be edited, replaced, or highlighted to showcase new thinking and the evolution of us as effective leaders and learners.