Empathic Partners: School Leaders and Teachers

All right, welcome, Tom. Thank you so much for being a part of our show today.

Hey, I’m delighted to be here. It’s always fun to talk about important issues and I’ve heard you before and I know it’s gonna be good.

Absolutely. So tell our audience a little bit about yourself, your background, and your work up until this point.

Well, for most of my life, I was a school administrator. I led schools for 37 years. I retired, that’s in quotes, nine years ago, because now I’m working at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, and I’m teaching would-be administrators. I’ve written a lot, written seven books, almost 200 articles, and…

The last book that I wrote is one about which I feel particularly passionate, and the title is, Principal as Chief Empathy Officer. In the reality, it should be every educator is Chief Empathy Officer. And the case I’m making is that leadership is about relationships and empathy is inter-world relationships.

Absolutely, and I want to jump into that book in just a moment, but first I want to kind of talk a little bit about your experience previously as a principal and a leader because and I wish honestly having read your book I wish that you had been one of my teachers when I went through my administrator degree program because for many administrators and I don’t know that teachers know this.

There’s so much out there that a leader has to handle that when you go through the training program It’s really just scratching the surface and I remember being a part of that going when are we gonna get to the real world stuff? Like when are we gonna get scenarios that we’re gonna have to like try to figure out? Professors just kept saying at the end At the end, how does that work? So I would love for you to share a little bit about what it’s like to be an administrator what it’s like to be a leader because I think it’s important that educators, no matter what your background or what you are doing in the field, understand what administrators do and don’t do so we can work together.

Well, I would start off and say by saying that I think principalship is a great job for somebody who is, has an attention deficit, because there’s too many things going on and you can’t get to them all. And like most jobs in life, I think, in fact, like most of life, success comes from prioritizing, from knowing what has to happen today, what can wait till tomorrow, what can wait till next year.

To that I would add, and I have to say this to be really candid, I talk and write a much better game than my reality was. I wish I was as good as the administrator that I talk about in my books.

But to me, the key job of a school principal is facilitating faculty growth. When kids learn this because they have great teachers. And I would argue that my job as a principal was to help every teacher be as good as he or she could be to create an opportunity for that person to grow, to get them out of their comfort zone and to support them. But to me, that’s the key. Focusing on staff, focusing on faculty is what yields benefit for students.

I couldn’t agree more, I think. And especially right now, since COVID, the last few years, principals have had to kind of been putting out fires, being those emergency firefighters that have to just kind of dump water on everything that you can. And I am looking forward to the time period when the leaders can really get back to focusing on faculty development. So…

In this, the newest book that you’ve written, the Principal as Chief Empathy Officer, I would love to know how you came up with that title and why you chose empathy in specifically for the CEO area.

Well, it’s interesting. As I said, I’ve written a number of books. One that I wrote a few books ago was called The Formative Five, and the case I made then was that if we want to do what’s right for our students, we need to prepare them to succeed in life, not just to do well on school. Doing well in school is important. Don’t misunderstand me. But if we focus on how are they going to be successful adults, what can we do to help them be the kind of people that we want to have as next-door neighbors? That’s a very different set of priorities, and I identify

I had five success skills there that I thought we really needed to teach very directly. Empathy, self-control, integrity, embracing diversity, and grit. And I went around the world, talking about this and people would say, well, what’s the most important? And I would always say, well, that’s like asking which one of your kids you love the most. There’s no right answer. Simical and however, comma, the more I talk, the more I became convinced that empathy is the base. If we can be more empathic with other people, if we can understand them, that’s gonna turn everything around on a very powerful way. And there’s lots and lots written about chief executive officers, people who run corporations, talk about, you know, the chief information officer. And to me, chief empathy officer made all the sense in the world because if the person who’s running your school has empathy, everybody’s going to be better off.

Hmm, absolutely. And so this idea of empathy and building relationships with one another and kind of snowballs into everything else, right? And so, and your previous book about those five focus areas, what I loved about that was that it wasn’t pitting something against each other or making a hierarchy. For example.

Sometimes when we advocate for arts integration or arts education in schools or creativity, some of the pushbacks, particularly from parents or from educators who are not as familiar with the approach is that, well, we need to place reading, writing, and math as a priority. And I love in your books that you share that it’s not about necessarily the subjects, it’s about the skills that we are cultivating. So if we need to cultivate empathy, and our leaders need to have that as a part of their toolkit, but as the grounding factor. How does empathy relate to the other areas that you talk about, self-control, grit, embracing diversity and integrity?

Well, empathy is really my shorthand definition is really understanding, appreciating other people and feeling with them. And it seems to me that if you’re a school administrator in any role, actually, if you’re a teacher, if you’re anybody working in a building to the degree that you take the time to really know and understand the people around you, you’re going to work better with them and they’re going to be better off. Too often, and I’ve worked in schools for many years, you know this too often schools are a little isolated.

There’s great things happening in this room. There’s wonderful things happening in the room next door. Super things happening down the hall. But we don’t really get together and share and collaborate. Roland Barth calls that collegiality. And that’s not the fault of teachers. I mean, when you think about it, schools in many ways are designed not unlike prisons. You know, you’ve got the hall and the cells. We have responsibility for kids. I remember as a teacher years ago having to go to the teacher next door and say, would you watch my class?

I can go to the restroom. You know, that’s just the norm. And so the degree to which a principal who uses empathy can facilitate the empathy among his or staff members, everybody’s gonna benefit, everybody’s gonna gain because now teachers are learning with and from one another, caring for one another rather than just coming and doing wonderful things with kids and going home.

Yeah. So when we’re having this dialogue, it’s reminding me of a previous guest that we had on, her name is Isis Clay, who focuses on helping teachers develop empathy as well as leaders and building that skill set. But she also talks about a very real phenomenon that you can become burnt out and almost traumatized by carrying so much empathy. How do you find that balance?

Well, it’s interesting. I wrote an article exactly about that call about empathy fatigue of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. And the term empathy fatigue originated from a medical setting when you were talking about people who worked in critical care, folks whose patients were dying or falling ill. But the reality is, it’s very applicable to education as well. The kinds of teachers that I wanted to hire, the kinds of teachers who made a difference in kids lives, kinds of people who listen to this podcast are the ones who are susceptible to empathy fatigue because they care too much.

And however much they do, there’s always more they can do. They’re the kind of people who, when you ask them to reflect on the past year, they tend to think about what they didn’t do as well as they wish rather than the successes. So to me as a school administrator, the first thing I do is I put empathy fatigue out on the table. I talk about it. I get the term out there. I cause people to become comfortable with it. Folks need to see that you want to care, but it’s curvilinear line is you’ve got to be strong. In my article I have a professional development plan for a day in which we talk about empathy fatigue. We wind up creating support structures for one another. Like so many other things in school, sunlight is good. The more transparency we can have the better.

And so when we’re working on this idea of bringing that out into the open and we’re focusing on the idea that this exists, this empathy fatigue, what are some strategies that you know of that we can set up that can prevent that kind of fatigue?

Well, the first thing I think is as a school administrator, I’ve got to push back against this notion that kids can be judged by their test scores and teachers can be judged by their test scores. Absolutely test scores are important, but they’re only a piece of the puzzle.

Years ago, for example, in an effort to do just this, we had our back to school nights. And like everybody else, you know, parents come and they’re in the theater and I’ve got them for 20 minutes before they go to the classrooms. That’s really who they want to hear, not me. And so they come in and they’re used to my, this is gonna be a great year talk. And one year when they came in, they were surprised because I had people handing them three by five cards as they came in. And I’m getting these, you know, curious looks, what’s this about? And I said, before we talk about this school year, a test for you. Everybody kind of looked up and I said on that three by five card do me a favor write down the two or three qualities that you think make a difference in the world what caused people to be successful. Well they did that I gave them 90 seconds I had a meet and groups and share and I know it was productive because I couldn’t get them quiet. Finally when I did get them quiet I said okay question

Raise your hand if you wrote down somebody who’s a good mathematician. I think maybe four hands. Somebody who’s a good writer, maybe six hands. And then I said things like, what about if you wrote down something about somebody who has confidence, lots of hands, somebody who cares for other people, tons of hands, somebody who’s a good listener. And basically what I said to them is the qualities that you’re saying are important are what we’re going to work on this year. And I had then a compact, if you will, with my community, that helped with the teachers because it took some of the pressure off them. And I said, sometimes we’re our own worst enemies. We all claim that there’s too much pressure on test scores, but that’s all we talk with parents about. And so I made a point of talking with our teachers about in their communications, if they’re open houses, they should talk about the things they were doing to help kids become better team members, to become better listeners, to take responsibility, to develop character.

When we talk about schools, we think about educating children, absolutely. But if that’s really going to work, we need to educate the parents too, because everybody needs to be on the same page. That kind of climate really reduces the empathy fatigue notion, because it reminds teachers, it empowers teachers to develop all of a child, not just the academics. The other thing, and then I’ll stop, the other thing is we need to remind teachers that there’s life outside of school. We need to provide opportunities to get that together whether it’s in a restaurant or after school for you know, cokes and marshmallows or whatever, I would always have book groups at my school and sometimes the book groups weren’t educational books. In fact, often they weren’t. We would find books that we thought had lessons for us but they were fun to read, they were voluntary, and it was my way of reminding folks you’re going to work your tail off here but you’ve got life outside of school. Let’s talk about how we can support that.

Yeah, I want to expand on that because I think something that is super helpful for teachers and leaders is to hear some specific examples like what you just shared of ways that they can build empathy while maintaining their own boundaries and priorities that they need to accomplish, but doing so together. And that’s such a tricky balance. So I love this example of book clubs that aren’t necessarily a professional book, but that have a theme of something that you want to cultivate. What are some other examples of ways that teachers and leaders can build relationship together? So building their empathy for one another.

Well, in one of my books, I’ve got a buddy, a friend of mine who runs a school in Iran and he and I corresponded and he talked about the fact that in his school not only did he have voluntary book groups, he had a voluntary movie group and he said you know they’re not going to stay for 90 minutes but he would have excerpts that he picked and other people and then they talked about it. What you want is a dialogue and we want to talk about kids but not only about kids so two things to come back and find that middle ground.

I’ve got a friend of mine who runs a school in Washington, Kim Belanco, and she doesn’t talk about her staff meetings or her faculty meetings. She talks about her learning meetings, because her point is by calling them a learning meeting that sets the bar for me and for everybody else, we’re coming here to learn, not just to listen. I thought, wow, that’s so cool. So I really worked at doing that. One of my favorite faculty meetings, and this is a good example, it ties into this whole child, whole teacher notion. These folks came in, sat down, bulletin board at the beginning and then on the screen I showed our mission statement, a paragraph long like most people’s and what I had done is I had underlined a phrase in our mission statement, joyful learning, because that’s something we really wanted in our school and I said okay I’m gonna come to about 25 and then I don’t want you to do turn into groups of two or three so that everybody participates. Let’s talk about what are you doing in your classroom for joyful learning? What does that look like? Well I have to tell you Susan, I

couldn’t get him to stop talking. As you know, teachers don’t say when they walk in the lounge, boy, I taught a great lesson. Nobody says, let me tell you what I’m really doing for these kids who are struggling. And what I was doing was empowering them to share the good, not to just focus on the frustrations. So that, that opportunity to use professional development as a way to raise people up and build bonds as a good one. Here’s another activity that I’ve done with my students at the University of Missouri St. Louis and that is I’ll have as an assignment for them. We meet on Monday evenings before the next week. What I want you to do is walk through all the halls in your building. Most of my students, they’re teachers, I’m sure like your listeners like me, I always parked kind of in the same area, same hall. My building was a four-story building built in 1901. I’m embarrassed to admit there were parts of the building that I didn’t get to hardly at all. And so by asking my students to do that and as you walk down the hall what do you see what does it look like? It’s amazing the messages from the hall is what we get from place. Then what I would do at a faculty meeting is say let’s turn and talk. I want to celebrate the work that teachers are doing. I want to create a because we know the cool things are happening, not just we are working too hard.

I’m just so blown away because what you’ve just shared are so many wonderful gems that I think so many of us can take away and they’re simple, easy things that we can do to build relationship with one another, to build respect for one another.

And it’s not hard, it doesn’t take a lot of time, but just to walk the halls. And if you come across your art teacher, what’s going on in the art room? Or if you see the PE teacher, or you go to the chemistry teacher and you’re like, oh my gosh, what’s happening here? And the fact that you’re focusing on celebrating, I think is so critical, especially right now. Because as you know, there’s so much dialogue around what’s wrong, what we need to focus on, what’s, you know, the gaps that there are.

Absolutely.

And we’re not focusing hardly at all on the game. And for those of us still in this and still in the work, it can be exhausting if we’re only ever focusing on what needs improved. And so thank you for sharing some of those techniques. I think that’s wonderful.

Test scores, I mean, the critical to positive articles about school are 5 to 1, maybe 10 to 1. And it seems to me we educators need to get in front of that and create a climate in our school that spills over to the community about how the good things that are happening. Very quickly, one of the things about which I talk, I think maybe in all of my books, there’s a guy named John Gottman, G-O-T-T-M-A-N, who’s a relationship counselor. And he talks about the 5 to 1 ratio of positives to negatives.

Any any relationship whether it’s you and a significant other you and a child you and a co-worker you and an employee You need to have five deposits five positives to every naked and that sounds really good It’s hard to do Maybe if you work at five you can get to two to two and a half to one The reason why I’m mentioning it now though is the example you cited five doing is even harder than we think because the negatives Typically aren’t things we’ve done. There are things we failed to do. So you’re my art teacher. I walk in your class, some parent called or husband called, I’m giving you a note, I walk and I give it to you, I leave. I think, well, I did my job wrong. My job was to give you the note, but it was also to make a point of saying, wow, Susan, that’s really cool. I want to hear more about that later. Those kids are really engaged. 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 15 seconds to make a point of observing. And that’s where empathy is really important. In my book, I talk about being transparent, using the word empathy, letting everybody know what it is, why it’s important, and understanding that we all have that responsibility, not just the principal. My job is to find things that you’re doing that you’re doing well and let you know them and let you know that I know them. Likewise, your job with your colleagues is to do the same thing. When you’re having lunch, it’s easy to come in, you’re tired, understandably, Fred’s frustrating you, but it’s really important to say to Mary, tell me something cool that happened your classroom today. Tell me about a child who’s making progress that just delights you. Changing the tone comes from focusing on and using empathy.

Yes, yes, I could not agree more. And I love that you’re modeling that as the leader and expecting it as well from the teachers. I think when you set that expectation and you’ve modeled it, there’s a lot of respect that will occur and people will actually do those things. And I think there’s nothing more powerful than somebody who sits with you, sits with you in it and also highlights what it is that you’re doing as if they see you. I mean, I think people need to feel seen and heard. I love John Gottman’s work. I believe it’s very strongly in what he talks about with his relationship work. And so I think you’re right. Finding five things can be a challenge, right? And even that, I would challenge our audience this week. Find five things to celebrate about another teacher, about a leader, about a student leaks, literally seek them out so that rather than immediately pointing to we need to fix this or we need to do that because our to-do lists are long enough already. You say in your book that you can reduce conflict by eliminating problems before they get out of hand. So how can we do that? Do you have an example of something that we could do with that?

Well, the key factor in empathy is beginning by listening. And going back to when this conversation started, I was guilty of it, so I’m not trying to criticize other administrators. I was the big, big problem. We have too much on our plate. And the way to get things off your plate is to do a whole lot and to do it quickly. What that means though, is unless you’re intentional about it, unless you work at it, there are many opportunities that don’t occur for you to listen to other people. One of the things about I talked in my book is the importance of looking leisurely occasionally. I had an assistant who came to me once and she said, Tom, you’ve got a problem. And I said, well, which problem is this? And she said, you’re doing too much, you’re too busy. And I said, well, of course I am. And she said, no, you’re so busy that teachers will say to me, oh, I don’t want to bother Tom with this issue. He’s got too much on his plate. Well, what that meant is they didn’t bother me. And then it got bigger and bigger. And then it did bother me about this again under transparency. I went to my faculty and I said I think this is a problem I have so I’m going to make a point of coming in the teacher’s lounge and just hanging around sitting in the hall after school one day a week and believe me it doesn’t mean I don’t have enough to do and I’m being lazy. I had to say that because I felt guilty but I just told them about that. The other thing that I did and I talked about this in the book too is several times a year I would have a 9 o’clock PD session and I would say to people, it’s up to you whether you want to come, no agenda, whatever you want to talk about is fine. I’d probably get a third of the staff there and basically people talked about whatever they wanted to talk about. And it was interesting for me to hear the issues that were raised. It was also interesting for me to be in that room and see that Susan raised this point that gosh, Sally was nodding over there in agreement. But again, it’s intentionality because you’re listening and you’re making opportunities for people to be heard. Some teachers are going to be in your office no matter what, some will never be in there and my job is to create a culture where everybody feels comfortable. They know that I’m going to listen.

I know we’re running out of time, but I’m curious as a follow-up question to that example. How do you, I’m going to pivot this a little bit. How did you ensure that those meetings with Tom, those breakfasts with Tom didn’t become a series of complaints for Tom, but rather truly raising issues and maybe highlighting and celebrating other things that were going on that you might have not been aware of?

That really wasn’t an issue for me. What I would do is I would always have a story starter. You know, we’d sit down, we were in a big circle and there’d be maybe 13, 18 people. And I’d say, so what do you want to talk about? And then if the silence was too long, I’d say, okay, let me start. Let me tell you what I’m worried about. And I would get the discussion going. If in fact, there had been a series of negative comments, and again, I didn’t really feel that, I would have felt very comfortable saying, this is really important for me to hear well. Talk to me about that too and get that out at the same time. It seems to me that thinking about people’s emotions is really important. There’s a need for folks to express concerns and sometimes to express frustration.

That’s part of the reason I had the meeting. And again, if it had gotten out of hand, I would have been very comfortable saying, we’re gonna come back to things that are frustrating. Throw out a couple of things that are working. I wanna hear from that. Who can share something? And I have no doubt that would have worked and then we would have gone back and forth.

Yeah, I’m sure it’s a balance. I know that I’ve been in those situations as well, where I’ve actually gone into schools to kind of work with their educators. And I’ve asked the superintendents or the principals to actually leave and not be in the room so that teachers could feel comfortable sharing and having a place to provide that feedback.

I do think that sometimes we have toxic positivity and that goes on that we always feel like we have to be positive. And so having a balance, right? Being able to feel safe. And I think that’s what you’re trying to express across the board is that you have a relationship between administrator and teacher that feels safe and does not feel as though there’s a, you know, me versus them kind of attitude, right?

It’s authentic. And you know, you used the word earlier, Susan, modeling, I think here too. It was important for me as a school leader to express times when I was frustrated, when I was afraid, when I had dropped the ball, my doing that was important because if I did that, that then validated other people doing that with me.

Absolutely. So now if there’s one thing before we leave that you would like people to know about school leadership, what would it be?

School leadership is important because the most important factor in a school is the teacher. And what school leaders can do is help teachers grow and learn. That was my job.

Wonderful. So where can people get their hands on your book and stay in touch with you Tom?

Well, you know, Amazon delivers tomorrow. And my email address is trhoerr, again, trhoerr at aol.com. I’m compulsive if people email me, I’ll respond within a day, probably sooner. We’re all on the same team, and if I can be helpful, that’s delightful, and it was really fun to chat with you today.

Absolutely, absolutely. We will make sure to put all of that in our show notes today. So if people go back there, they can stay in touch with you. Tom, thank you so much for your insight and your wisdom today. It was a true joy.

Cool. See ya!