Episode 83: The LeadPrinting Framework: 5 Leadership Actions to Build a Stronger School

The Question Behind Your Leadership

Principal JL 1:21

How are you Lead Printing in your school? That's probably a question you've never been asked before. And honestly, until recently, it's not a question I would have known to ask either. Over the years, I've had people ask me the question that has always been difficult for me to answer. And it's hey, how do you lead? Like, how do you do what you do? And for me, that's a hard question because I never walked into school thinking, okay, today I'm gonna implement this leadership framework, or you know, hey, I got this great thing I'm gonna just do. Like, I just led. A lot of what I do comes from experience and through my life experiences, such as a teacher, a coach, a military soldier, a principal, a husband, a dad, you know, a lot of things make me up as the person I am today. And I'm always just trying to get 1% better every day. The more people ask me that question, I got to thinking, well, how do I lead? What are the things I consistently come back to? What do I believe about leadership? And if I had to explain my leadership process to another leader, what would I tell them? And that's where the idea for what I'm calling the Lead Printing framework began. And today I want to introduce it to you. Not because I've created some perfect leadership for me, I'll tell you, I have not. This is a framework that's still developing. It's one of the reasons I'm sharing it with you now because I want your feedback. I want you guys to think about what I have to say. I want you to challenge it, and most importantly, I want you to ask yourself how am I Lead Printing in my school.

What LeadPrinting Really Means

Principal JL 3:23

Welcome back, everybody, to another exciting episode of the Educational Leadership Podcast. Today I am so excited. I'm going to share something with you that I've been kind of working on. It's been something I haven't really talked a lot about. I've shared with a few of my leadership friends out there that I connect with. And today I really just want to introduce to you guys what I'm calling the Lead Printing framework. And before I explain the framework, I probably need to explain the word Lead Printing. What the heck is Lead Printing? Well, every leader leaves an imprint. Think about the leaders you've worked for throughout your career. Some have probably made you better, some believe in you before you believed in yourself, some challenged you, some held you accountable, some gave you opportunities, and unfortunately, probably some of you guys have experienced some leadership that wasn't a positive experience. In either way, they left something behind, they left their Lead Print on you. Your Lead Print is the impact your leadership leaves on the people, teams, and culture around you. But I've been thinking that Lead Print isn't quite enough because Lead Print sounds like a finished product. Leadership isn't a finished product. Leadership is something we're doing every single day, and that is where Lead Printing comes in. Lead Printing is an action, it's an intentional process of shaping people, teams, and culture through leadership, decisions and behaviors we repeat every day. Lead Printing is what you do, your Lead Print is what remains. And whether you realize it or not, you're Lead Printing every day. And that Lead Printing can be positive or it can be negative. Therefore, the question is, are we doing it intentionally? That's where the framework came from. This didn't start because I decided I needed a framework to sell books or do a presentation. That's not actually what this is about. It's actually started with people asking me, how do you do what you do? And I struggled with that question because I would think, I don't know, I just do it, right? Like I just do what I do. I don't think about it, I just do it. But that's not a very useful answer. So I started reflecting on my experiences. I thought about my coaching, you know, career. I thought about my military experiences and being a leader in there. I thought about classroom teacher, like how did I lead as a classroom teacher? And I also thought about, you know, my becoming of an administrator and my leadership that I do today. And I think about things that I've learned as a high school principal over the last nine years. Sometimes I had success, sometimes uh things didn't go so well. But at the same time, I was learning through that process. So I started looking for patterns. What do I consistently

The Five Actions Explained

Principal JL 6:55

do when I'm trying to improve something? What happens when there's a problem in your school? How do we move it from identifying the problem to actually changing the culture around it and keeping it a pretty simple framework? So that's where Own It, Set It, Model It, Coach It, and Build It comes in. Those are five actions that are the Lead Printing framework. Let's get into those five actions. The first action is Own It. This is where everything starts. Before I can change my school, my staff, my students, my leadership team, or

Own It

Principal JL 7:36

anybody else, I have to look at myself. What can I control? What do I have the responsibility that I can do? Like, what is my responsibility? What can I do differently? Leadership starts with me. I think sometimes as leaders, it's easy to identify everything everybody else needs to change. Like, teachers need to do this, students need to stop doing that, parents need to understand this, the district needs to change that. And some of those things might be true, but none of them have the answer that's most important to leadership, and that is what can I do about it? That's ownership, and that's where Lead Printing begins. The second action is Set It. Once you've owned your responsibility, you have to set it. What are the

Set It

Principal JL 8:35

expectations? And some people like to call it standards. I like to call it expectations, but what are the expectations or what are the standards? What does success look like? Where are we going? What behaviors do we expect from one another? Because we can't hold people accountable for expectations if there aren't any. One thing I've learned as a principal is sometimes what I thought was perfectly clear wasn't nearly as clear to everybody else as it was in my head. And that's on me. Leaders create clarity. We establish the expectations, we communicate them, we reinforce them, and we make sure people understand not only what they're doing, but why they're doing it. The third action is Model It. When it comes to model it, this one is pretty simple to explain and sometimes

Model It

Principal JL 9:34

pretty difficult to live. If I expect it from others, I better be willing to demonstrate it myself. I've always told people that I would never ask them to do anything that I haven't done or would be willing to do. And that's where really modeling comes in for me. If I expect people to be positive, accountable, professional, prepared, willing to grow, willing to have difficult conversations, and willing to miss mistakes, I have to model that. We just can't put our values on the wall. We have to live them. People are watching what we do far more closely than they're listening to what we say. And our actions are Lead Printing every day. The fourth action is Coach It. Now, my coaching background comes in on this one. Coaching is a huge

Coach It

Principal JL 10:30

influence on the way I lead, and coaching isn't simply telling everybody what to do or what they're doing wrong. Good coaching is about helping people become better. Sometimes that's encouragement, sometimes that's feedback, sometimes it's asking a great question, sometimes it's putting your arm around somebody and telling them that you believe in them. And sometimes it's having a really difficult conversation that neither one of you particularly want to have. Now that's leadership. Accountability shouldn't be about just simply catching people doing wrong things or I got you. It should be about I got you, right? It should be about helping people grow. Don't just call people out, coach them up. And the fifth action is Build It. This is where leadership becomes bigger than the leader. Because if everything in your organization only works

Build It

Principal JL 11:28

when you're standing there, making sure it happens, you haven't built a culture. You've actually built dependence. Build it means creating systems, habits, expectations, and other leaders who can carry the work forward. Eventually, leadership has to spread. And then ultimately in a school, we want it to reach our students. Because

Why Leadership Works In Cycles

Principal JL 12:43

imagine a school where everybody understands I have ownership in making this place better. Not just the principal, not just admin itself, not just teachers, but everybody has ownership in that culture. Now, that's culture. So I've talked to you guys about the framework. Now I want to talk to you guys about why the framework is a cycle. Because I think that's really, really important when you're talking about the Lead Printing framework. Now, this isn't a checklist. This isn't like I own it on Monday, I set it on Tuesday, I model it on Wednesday, I coach it on Thursday, and I build it on Friday. Yep, and I'm a great leader and I'm all done. That's not the way this goes, right? This is a cycle. You need to own it, you need to set it, you need to model it, you need to coach it, you need to build it, and then guess what? Something's gonna change. We have a new challenge that emerges. Your organization grows, your people change, your students change, the environment changes, and suddenly you're right back at owning it. You're back to what is my responsibility in this new challenge? What needs to be different? What expectations need to be established? What do I need to model? Who needs coaching? What systems need to be built? And the cycle begins again. And that's leadership. It's not a finish line, it's what we're consistently doing. It's we are Lead Printing. Now, if you've listened to the podcast for very long, you've heard me talk about being 1% better. And I use this phrase going all the way back to the early 2000s when I was coaching football. I was always talking to the kids about, hey, what are you going to do to get better today? How are you going to get 1% better? You know, all the things,

The 1% Better Habit Mindset

Principal JL 14:39

right? And if you guys have read the book Atomic Habit, James Clear, I didn't even know that book was out there until someone asked me, hey, did you get 1% better from James Clear? And I'm like, who the heck is James Clear? Nonetheless, I read the book. I thought it was a great book because it fits my philosophy. And it's something that I've talked about for a long time as a coach. Now, the 1% better philosophy does live inside this framework because it's something that I believe in and it's something that I have used, you know, for 20, well, now 26 years, you know, 25, 26 years. It's something that I think is really important about improving yourself 1% better every single day. It's really talking about a mindset that you have. It is how do we improve something today? How can I become slightly better? How can my leadership communication be a little better? How can my teacher improve one interaction with the student? How can a student be 1% better and make good to better decisions? Those small actions compound and eventually become habits. And that's something that I have strongly believed in for a long time. Habits influence behavior, behavior influence people, and repeated behaviors create the culture. That's LeadPrinting Now, where do we go from here? Well, today's episode isn't mean to teach you everything about the Lead Printing framework. This is just an introduction. And as the framework gets more developed throughout the podcast moving forward, I'm going to share those

Help Shape The Framework

Principal JL 16:22

things with you. We're going to talk about what does it mean to Own It? What does it mean to Set It? What does it mean to Model It? What does it mean to Coach It? What does it mean to Build It? And I want to use examples from my leadership to help you understand what those five actions are in the cycle so you can get a good understanding of what that looks like. Now, at the end of the day, I want to be able to talk with other leaders about these ideas. I want to continually develop the framework with you. And so I want you guys to challenge it. I want you guys to tell me what you like, what you didn't like. You know, I want this framework not to be something that looks great on a graphic, but it's actually something that someone can use. It's something that is practical. I want educational leaders to hear this episode and think, I can use that tomorrow. I want teachers to see where they fit. I want leadership teams to use it to evaluate what they're doing. And eventually I want students to understand that they leave an imprint too. Therefore, I want your feedback, and this is where I need you. The Lead Printing framework is developing. It is something that you know you can tell me what you think, you can tell me, you know, what's missing, what resonates with you, where would you challenge my thinking? And maybe most importantly, how are you already Lead Printing in your school? I would love to hear your story. So you guys can reach out to me my social medias @Principal_JL or just shoot me a quick email at the.principal.jl@gmail.com and just tell me what you think because some of your feedback may help shape this framework as we move forward. I want to leave you with this. Every interaction you have as a leader leaves something behind. Every expectation you establish, every behavior you model, every conversation you have, every person you encourage, every difficult conversation

Your LeadPrint Starts Tomorrow

Principal JL 18:34

you avoid or choose to have, every system you build, every discussion you make, your Lead Printing. The question isn't whether you're leaving a Lead Print, you already are, positively or negatively. The question is, what's your Lead Print? And maybe even more importantly, the question for tomorrow is how are you Lead Printing today? Thanks for listening, and until next time, remember to be curious and 1% better.