Episode 217: Trust Based Observations with Craig Randall

Darrin Peppard (00:00.462)

All right, my friends, welcome back into the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. This is episode 217, and my guest on the show today is Craig Randall. Well, I gotta ask you this. Have you ever felt like your teacher evaluation system is more about compliance than it is about growth? Well, if so, today's conversation is going to hit home for you. My guest, Craig Randall, is the developer and author of Trust-Based Observations. He's a former counselor.

coach, teacher, and principal who now works with school leaders around the world to help them shift from checklists and ratings to meaningful, trust-filled conversations that spark instructional growth. Craig and I dive deep into how teacher observation can become the best part of your job again and how this simple shift builds a stronger culture, more confident educators, and better outcomes for students. You're going to love this conversation with Craig Randall, so

Let's waste no time and get right to it.

Darrin Peppard (00:01)

All everybody, welcome back into the show. My guest on the show is Craig Randall. And I'm super excited about this conversation, because one of the things that I love to try and accomplish here on the podcast is to get to something specific. Let's really get to a problem that as leaders, you're looking for a solution. And I think today's conversation is absolutely going to take us there. Craig, of course, the the creator, the founder, the architect of trust based

observations. And I hope those are the right ways to describe that man. I know if you've ever been called the architect of trust based observations. But if if it is the first time allowed me to to be that first one. So Craig, welcome into the show, man.

Craig (00:38)

That's a first. That's a first.

Thanks, thanks for having me. I never thought of myself as an architect before this morning. So thanks, Darren.

Darrin Peppard (00:51)

Well, there you go. Now you've got that title. Just real quick, let's do a quick orientation for the listening audience, the viewing audience to just get a little flavor of who Craig Randall is and then I want to dive into this conversation.

Craig (01:06)

Sure. Really, I've been in education my whole life. Started out as an elementary school counselor, did that for seven years, did a year in a middle school classroom. It was a severe behavior classroom, physical restraint every day. Detoured into college basketball coaching, small college basketball coaching for about seven years. Then went into international school teaching and was teaching PE and health.

principal said, Craig, I think you'd make a good principal. And after initially resisting, I thought, okay, and started a program at Western Washington University. that's really where I met my mentor and where trust-based observation started, really when he said you need to be in classes every day, supporting teachers, helping them grow, focusing on strengths, asking them what they could do, what they were doing to help students learn and what they could.

do differently and might do differently and then it just evolved and evolved and evolved from there until it became a book. That's about as quick as I can give you a rundown.

Darrin Peppard (02:07)

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, became a book became a movement and now has become the work that you do, which, which I think is really, ⁓ really exciting. I think it's really inspiring ⁓ that you are really leading heavily into that space. And I know it's something that so many administrators, maybe this is the place where we'll start. So many administrators, obviously we know it's part of the job responsibility that we have to can do, you know, we have to do teacher.

observations, teacher evaluations, that type of thing. But, you know, I see it, you know, you know, I work with leaders all over the country. And, man, we're all over the place in terms of evaluation, whether it's we're using the different, you know, all these different manual or models, you know, you've got the Marzano model, and you've got the Danielson model and on and on and on and on. But there's also a whole different

type of philosophy that people will have. Some people, it's a check mark, you know, it's just something we've got to do. Some people, you know, they try to lean into it a little bit and some really want it to be about helping teachers grow. Talk a little bit, I know where you land on this, but talk a little bit about how kind of the whole concept of trust-based observation came about and how it connects to that philosophy.

of really being about growing.

Craig (03:33)

Yeah, really it was in that class, the very first day in my supervision class. And I remember being frustrated with observations when they were done by people that were really good at it. Because you'd have an observation, they'd give you your feedback suggestions. If you were lucky, you'd have one more later in the year. And it was never discussed. The suggestions probably weren't even remembered.

And why do we even do this if I'm not gonna get feedback on how it went? And I remember telling people about my frustrations and they'd say, I know, I know, but what are you gonna do? And then when the first day in that class, when Warren said that, was...

It was the hallelujah and the light bulb all at the same time. It's not just me. And we would practice doing observations. We'd have these reflective conversation. We'd bring 10 minute mini lessons, have reflective conversations where we'd focus on strengths and ask those questions. And I didn't know anything about anything. But when I went out and got my first assistant principal job, teachers loved it. Just immediately they loved it. I...

Honestly, I didn't know anything. That was the only class I probably learned anything out of. But I had teachers old and new the first year saying, Craig, you're the best principal we ever had. And it wasn't me. It was that I was asking them about their practice, which is showing I care. And I'm sharing strengths. I can't tell you how often back then and every week when we're on the road, people say, my gosh, it's so nice to hear somebody say what I do well, because when I rate you the way we do now.

It's not, even if I put you in distinguish, that's not really saying what you're doing well. It's just giving you a score. And it all works against growth. If we want people to grow, that means they have to take risks. They have to try new things. For that to happen, they have to be in psychologically safe spaces. And though these other models are well intended, as soon as you put that rating on it, the research shows it diminishes our trusting relationship.

And now you play it safe and don't want to take risks. And I'm going to say more than this. It also shows that it doesn't improve teaching and learning. There have been two big studies, a Gates and Annenberg Foundation study. But more than that, it shows it causes harm. It causes anxiety and stress. The one that's most disturbing to me is the research. And this is from interviewing over 4,000 different teachers. Is it lowers a teacher's sense of self-advocacy? If Hattie's largest effect size is collective,

teacher efficacy and the way we do observations lowers self-efficacy, how can you ever get to collect the teacher efficacy?

Darrin Peppard (06:16)

Yeah,

it's just extremely counterintuitive. So let's let's break this down a little bit. Everything everything you're saying is music to my ears. And I think to a lot of administrators, yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, I'm actually I'll detour for a second. And then I'll come back to let's let's break it down. Listening to you talk. What's what's rolling through my mind are a handful. And it's probably an amalgamation of all of the

you know, formal observations, evaluations, that kind of thing that I did as assistant principal, principal, superintendent, right? And how even as the administrator, so you're talking about that opposite side of the desk, if you will. So as a teacher, you know, maybe I'm not feeling valued because I'm just being given a score. I'm losing my own self-efficacy. And I agree with all of that. But from the administrator lens, I always felt just,

totally hamstrung by this process, right? And I, you and I talked about this on a previous conversation that we didn't hit record on. We should have, we should have recorded that very, that very piece, but I always felt hamstrung because either the tool use language that pigeonholed me into giving a score that I didn't agree with or a rating or, or probably and

I didn't feel like the conversations that we would have would be just genuine pedagogical conversations. Because we have to talk about these 13 rubrics that my district used in rating. Yeah, I know. I know there are some when I moved to Colorado, it was like, oh my gosh, I mean, we don't even have a manual for this. We just use this online because it's so big, it won't fit in a manual, right?

Craig (08:00)

13th pretty good.

Darrin Peppard (08:13)

Anyway, so, so where I want to go with that is as the, as the school leader, and you talked about it from, from the word go for you that, know, Hey, I'm going to do it differently. So many of us as school leaders, we didn't get that opportunity or we weren't able to, to, make that step. When you want, I want you to break down trust-based observations. I want you to like, like give us the, the, the down and dirty. is what it's truly all about. But then also talk, talk from that administrator perspective.

of how the current thing versus doing something more in the trust-based observational world allows the administrator not to feel so hamstrung.

Craig (08:56)

And I'll tell you, you know, people talk, you talk about like people doing it early, putting it in the drawer, all the different kind of ways that people do it. And even if I'm somebody that cares a lot about doing it and wanting to make a difference, on some level, you have to know that putting that score on and seeing that face drop. Like we've had people that have leaders we've trained that said when my best teacher cried because she got proficient instead of distinguished.

Like I knew something was wrong and they said I can't do that to my people anymore. So when we're doing it the old style way, the traditional way, really since Danielson's framework became teacher evaluation in 2000, even if I'm super well intended, it's next to impossible to get growth because of the scores. now observations frankly are a drudgery.

even if I'm well intended because I'm dreading that difficult conversation where somebody that I care about, I have to give a score because that's what the system says to do. And when you're doing trust-based observations and you're focusing on strengths and you're not reading pedagogy, and I think we need to talk about that part related to state laws because it's important, and you're seeing genuine teaching by the way.

Because when we do the pre-observation conference, et cetera, that traditional way, we all know we're not seeing genuine teaching. We're seeing teaching that's to tick the boxes. So our conversations aren't even about what the teachers normally do. So it's a complete and total waste of time. So when we're doing unannounced observations where teachers are comfortable because they know it's strengths-based, one, I'm having a conversation about real practice. You said that even, like, I just want to talk about your pedagogy. I just want to talk about teaching. All of a sudden, when you're doing that, and when you see teachers, sometimes, criteria's of joy.

Darrin Peppard (10:45)

Mm-hmm.

Craig (10:50)

not kidding, because their strengths are shared. All of a sudden, something that's a drudgery now fills me as an administrator as I see my teachers being filled. So instantly our mindset changes. So I think we want to start with that. Do you want me to unpack CBO now or do you want to stop?

Darrin Peppard (11:06)

Yeah.

No, let's stay there because I think the unpacking is going to be obvious as we go. I really do. And if it's not, I'll make sure that we get to it. But, you hit a couple of things with me right there. One of the things that I tell administrators all the time that I work with and that I think for me was kind an eye-opener as a building leader.

Craig (11:14)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Darrin Peppard (11:38)

when I first became the building principal, we were having that conversation, you know, as a leadership team over who's going to evaluate which group, right? And many leaders had the same struggles that my team had ⁓ in that the teacher they want to evaluate least if they truly care about evaluation are the very best teachers because your very best teachers, what do they want? The most feedback. They're the ones who

really want to grow. They're the ones who really want like, give me something I can do to get better, right? They're hungry for that. I had a math teacher who was utterly brilliant, phenomenal teacher. None of my assistant principals wanted to evaluate her. They're like, I'm intimidated by her. I've never been as good a teacher as she is. How do I go and tell her how to get better? And I said, you know what, I'll take it on. Had a conversation with her from the beginning and just said her name's Julie.

Craig (12:30)

Yeah.

Darrin Peppard (12:36)

Julie, how do I help you? And she said, just ask me good questions. Just ask me about my practice. That has led me to the big thing I share with administrators all the time is just lead with a curious mindset and just ask because it gets you to those conversations about pedagogy. This is what I believe and you can tell me, know, ⁓ if I need to reshape my my beliefs that are not, but I believe that our role

from an instructional leadership standpoint is to draw our teachers into those conversations about their practices. Number one, just asking good questions allows them to discover the answers on their own because usually they know. And I think this is kind of where my point is with this. So many administrators think they have to have, here's what you need to do to get better. Here's what you, have to tell them what to do where

I feel like we just need to engage in the conversation. That to me is much more we're in this together versus I am doing this to you, which is something you said. I wanted to interrupt you when you said it because it's so spot on.

Talk a little bit about that balance between I have to do this to you and I would rather sit with you and have these conversations.

Craig (13:55)

Yeah.

One, we always want to sit with you because we already talked about the trust piece. If that's when we'll can go. I'm happy to go into that. There's great stuff. Brene Brown talks about trust, and risk taking and how you build that. But without that piece, we're not going to get anywhere. So if you start by asking questions, which we do, we don't start by telling, I'm instantly changing the tone. I'm instantly saying, I value you as a professional. I want to hear what you have to say.

their mindset they relaxed instantly. Oh you care to hear what I have to say? So we'll start with that and when we do around like when we train schools that's what I do I'm on the road and we train schools we do see 12 to 14 teachers a week when we train schools every time we finish we ask the teachers hey now that you've had a round of trust-based observations what do you think? There's two most common things they say.

It's so nice to have my bucket filled. It's so nice to be appreciated. But the other thing that they say is I'm already thinking about what to get better at without you even saying anything. And that's a combination of even that first time by starting the way we do and focusing on strengths, those walls coming down. And that our form is so detailed.

And even though we say that the absence of something being filled in is not a negative, their wheels start spinning right away. So that is really good. And I'm going to say this. We all have blind spots, even Julie, your amazing teacher. And I'll tell you that the example that I have is that every single week when I'm on the road training a school,

Some trainee will say something that will either trigger a thought in my head or they'll say, Hey Craig, what about this? Could we do it like this? And I'm like, ⁓ that's way better. So I'm the guy that developed this whole thing. And every single week I have so many blind spots that somebody can point out a blind spot so I can make what we're doing better.

So as a teacher, I'm not a content specialist, I'm a pedagogy specialist, and I will say this, during the course of training, because it's all about mastery, we pretty much make you a content specialist in our nine areas of pedagogy. So then you do have the confidence to talk about that. So our lens always is which one of those nine areas, if I helped you in, would do the most to improve your teaching and learning for your kids? So even if you're Julie, somewhere in those nine areas, there's room for growth, like there is for me every

week in trust-based observations. And so when it comes to that, I think this is a really, really important piece. And we don't begin to offer suggestions until as early as the fourth visit because we haven't built up enough trust yet. There's exceptions and we don't need to get into that right now. But traditionally when we offer suggestions, and not you need to get better at it, but sometimes we do say, I want you to work on this. One, nobody likes to be told anything. But oftentimes you want to say, I want you to work on this. Period. That's it. No help.

Maybe at best it's, hey, here's an article. Would we ever with our kids say, hey, those times tables, you know, they could do some work. Here's a fact sheet. I'll be back in a month. We would never do that. Hypocrisy is astounding. So what we do, our lens is always which one of those nine areas on the form. And we start at the end of the reflective conversation by asking permission to offer a suggestion.

asking permission to offer a suggestion. Hey Darren, I have a suggestion on cognitive load, the working memory section, especially adding in the reflection and processing activities. Would you like to hear? I could say Darren, I want you to work on that and you will, but instantly there's a little bit of resistance because I told you.

Just that slight change makes an enormous difference. But then one of the cool things about the form is it has hyperlinks in it in each one of the nine areas of pedagogy. So there's actionable articles. So we're going to guide you through the whole process. I'm going to say, Darren, let's look at this list of all these different reflection processing activities. Which ones do you like? Good. Let's look. If you were going to do this in just one of your classes tomorrow, which one?

Great, can we look at that lesson? Where are the natural places before their cognitive load capacity where we could build one of these in? Awesome, okay, which one do you want to do there? Which one do you want to do there? Great, let's do this tomorrow. There's three ways we can do it. I can model it for you. We can co-teach it, or you can do it, and I can give you suggestive feedback either in the moment or later. And then we do that, and then we have another conversation that says, what went well?

What would you like to keep working on with it? And how can I support you to build it into all of your classes so by the next time I see you, it's there? Contrast that once the trust is there. That's what we do with kids. Why shouldn't we be doing the exact same thing and modeling what we want our teachers to do with kids? I know that was a long rambling answer, but.

Darrin Peppard (19:03)

Absolutely.

No, that wasn't actually, I thought that was great. I think you unpacked a whole lot more for us too, which is good too. But I think what I'm hearing there is something that all leaders need to really take stock in and really think about. When we sat in the interview chair and we said,

I want to be the principal of such and such school. want to be the assistant principal of such and such school. And then ultimately we were offered the job and said, and said, yes, our belief was not that we couldn't wait to spend a bunch of time doing emails, dealing with angry parents and managing discipline. Right? We want to be in classrooms. Leaders want to be in classrooms. They want to help their teachers. So the number one thing I'm hearing you talk about with trust-based observations,

Craig (19:33)

Thank

Darrin Peppard (19:58)

is to actually be able to go do that work. I think it is just so important that as the instructional leader, I don't know if I could come up with a better definition for instructional leader than do everything you can to help your teachers be the best they can be instructionally. Yeah, well, you would, hope so. You know this, I know this, I face it all the time in, what I do, administrators tend to just

Craig (20:15)

Isn't that our number one job?

Darrin Peppard (20:28)

get stuck in this superhero world where they're just going to do everything else, right? ⁓ I've had two conversations today with clients to today where we're talking about buildings in their districts. And the number one struggle is that the administrators are task based. You know, they're just focused on, you know, the items they can check off the, off the list as opposed to outcomes based. You're talking about really being outcomes based with

your teachers ultimately. What are some things? Man, I got like three questions I want to ask. I want to ask this one first. Nope, I'm going to go this direction because this will take us in whole different direction. Sorry, I'm all over the place. You mentioned that there are nine areas, nine focus areas about pedagogy in trust-based observations. Let's talk about those. Then I want to come back to

Craig (21:24)

Okay.

Darrin Peppard (21:25)

the administrator pushback because that's going to take us to one administrators who say I don't have time and to what about the accountability state law job performance those things so we'll get to those so let's talk about the nine pieces first.

Craig (21:28)

Yeah.

Yeah, so I'm going to say this about these nine areas. It's core pedagogy. It's not the fancy new shiny penny. There things that no matter what my school is, if I'm a classics British education to just a traditional education to a project based to inquiry based IB, it's core practice that will apply anywhere. So they are learning targets.

learning, in depth, essential question, whatever language you want to use. And with that, by the way, next to that on our phone, we have a student interview where we ask the students, what are you supposed to be learning? Why does it have value in the real world? And that meta question of how do you know when you've learned it? And there's a power drawing that connection. All of these are research-based, by the way. The next two are closely connected, classroom teacher-student relationships and classroom behavior management. Cooperative learning, I'm a huge Caden Cooperative Learning fan. It's old school stuff.

brilliant. They need to update their graphics man though they're so 1990s cartoon. I reached out to them so many times. Anyway so if you're listening I can change it. The next is the cognitive load working memory which is really the neuroscience and how much information a brain can take in before it needs purposeful reflection of processing time.

Darrin Peppard (22:37)

It's so good. It's so good.

Yeah, I'll agree with that. ⁓

that's right

Craig (22:59)

Next is questioning and higher order thinking skills. We use an inverted Blooms taxonomy pyramid and we track your questions, see if you're providing think time, see if you're allowing all people to answer questions. My favorite, Kagan.

quote is why ask a question and have one student answer when you can ask a question and have all students answer because then they're all thinking and working. The next two are formative assessment or checks for understanding and descriptive progress feedback and the last one is differentiation and I'm going to say we have a tenth area on the form it's not pedagogy.

But we track on the working memory section the learning principles. And it's really the eight ways that teachers help students learn. And that's lecture, direct instruction, audio, visual, demonstration and modeling, reading, class discussions, pair team discussions, learning by doing and teaching others. And we track that and list where people go. And that's super, it's in another pyramid. It's super valuable for the teachers. So that's the core areas.

Darrin Peppard (23:59)

Yeah, no, that's outstanding. ⁓ Man. ⁓ Yeah, let's let's, ⁓ I want to go deeper on that. But I want to I want to be mindful of our time. ⁓ So I want to go to this. So administrators are listening to this. And they're saying, Craig, this sounds awesome. That is what I want to do. But boy, that sounds like a lot. And as it is right now, you know, I have I'll think about like my last year as building principal, I think I had 38.

teachers that I was responsible for formal, you know, formal supervision, ⁓ you know, in, you know, just, just for mine. And I had my, my assistants had probably almost as many ⁓ I'm responsible for this, this, this, this, this, I've got to do these things. I got to do this. I got to do this. The pushback from administrators will be Craig. It sounds great, but where do I find the time to do that?

Craig (24:29)

Yeah. Yeah.

It's a question. It's an important question and it's a reasonable question. So let's talk about it. I think if we think about, I was having a conversation with Kim Marshall a couple years ago and we were talking about just the traditional models and how long it takes. So if I'm doing a formal observation and I'm doing the pre-observation conference, writing it up, doing the observation, writing it up.

having the reflective conversation afterwards and writing it up. In Chicago Public Schools, that takes six hours. So for us, it's a 20 minute observation and a 20 minute reflective conversation. So you can get nine observations in of trust-based observations in the same time that it takes me to do one formal observation. So keep that in our memory bank. We also...

When I'm doing observations the traditional way, it's not fun. So it's hard to motivate yourself to do something that's not fun. When you see your teachers react with joy, when your teachers start to engage with you, and this happened, this next thing happens a lot. We all know people start out with, generally, with growth mindsets, but there people that along the way...

move more towards fixed mindsets and little stuck in their way. Maybe it's trauma from a bad boss. Maybe it's the observation process. Maybe it's baggage from home, but we know that exists. What we will see is almost all of those teachers will shift back to growth mindset. And we ask permission to offer suggestion. They're happy to engage with us on it. So when those things happen, all of a sudden, I can feel impact.

And I don't have to deliver bad news where I give somebody a basic when they think they're proficient or a proficient when they think they're distinguished. So my mindset towards it makes it a lot easier to do something that I want to do. And we will start to see practice improve when we see that. That's even more motivating. But we do need to talk about the laws. And also say, look, does that mean potentially I have to look at my schedule and my time and say, am I? Is this really mine?

Could this be my office managers? Because I think there is stuff that can be done. Can I use my office manager to be my email guardian and then meet with me at the end of the day to see she can do something? Yeah, we can do that too. I think that reasonably we can do eight a week, which really averages out to just slightly more than an hour a day. Without really the 60 hours we probably spend a week on our job, it's not that much.

Darrin Peppard (27:33)

Yeah.

Craig (27:36)

The law is the trickiest part. I'm working in my home state to try and get the law changed and we hope when we get one changed, it'll cascade. But the research is there that the way we've been doing it doesn't work. So right now, if you're in a public school, surprisingly, there's a fair amount of states that allow you to present an alternative option.

And we're happy to help people to prepare that for them. But in those that don't in Washington state, you have to do Danielson Marzano or CELF-5D at the University of Washington model. So what do we do? We finesse. So every five years you're on comprehensive and then the other four years you can sort of choose what you want to do. And so the schools that we work with in Washington, if you're not on comprehensive,

We basically, they've chosen to do like, let's just say one district is Danielson, and it's Danielson 4.8 or something, which is professionalism. So it's not pedagogy related. We can just talk about it. We can make our pre-observation conference a group pre-observation conference for all those, and boom, ticked off, and now we just get to do TB all year. Once the trust is developed for the comprehensive, we just say, look.

This is the system I got. I'm legally required to do this. And once every five years to do it, but we do it the most positive lens as possible. People do that different ways. Some people say, I'm your observer and the assistant principal will do your comprehensive. Some will just keep it open and if it's a really good one, the traditional one, they'll tick off the boxes and do it that way. People do it different ways. But do I think it's silly that we have to do that? Do I think it's right that we have to do that? No, but...

If I get to do this way that really moves the needle, it changes your culture to a culture of trust too. mean, in a week it transforms your culture. So if all those are going to be the benefits, then I'll play the game until I don't have to.

Darrin Peppard (29:39)

Yeah. So that's something that's been resonating in my head since the conversation you and I had about a week ago. You you talked at length, very similar to what you just said there, but, essentially you, you broke it down to the, difference between growth and employee retention. And certainly we know, I know, I know I, the question I had asked you about was, you know, employee behavior, you know, employee discipline, you know, some of those types of things. But, but what you just said is what's been kind of

Craig (30:05)

Thank

Darrin Peppard (30:09)

rolling in my head for about a week now is, is the more that we're developing those trusting relationships between the adults in the building. Now that doesn't mean adults won't still do silly things because they will. But the more we have those trusting relationships, probably the less we have to have a lot of those employee discipline related conversations. You know, I mean, I think back on most of the

man, this particular teacher, this issue, that issue, those types of things, in many cases, had them having more ownership in the school, them having more ownership in the direction of the school, which goes back to trust, probably we would have seen some of those things. So I really appreciate that you went there with.

understanding that yes, the law says you have to do this and yes, teacher observation is connected to their, their retention, their continuing contract status, their tenure, whatever your state ⁓ uses for that. You've been here more than three years phrase. ⁓ But, but I think it's really important that we, that we are focusing the efforts of teacher observation around growth.

and not necessarily having to focus on the retention piece. So I think you've pretty well broken down ⁓ trust-based observations or TBO as you've referred to it quite a few times. What might be one other thing or two other things that we haven't gotten to that people need to know about trust-based observations?

Craig (31:56)

I think I just want to dig a little bit more into the Brene Brown piece. So she talks about the connection between trust, vulnerability, and risk taking. Saying that vulnerability in itself isn't a bad thing. And I look at it almost like the amygdala. If our sense of vulnerability is too high, it's like a warning that maybe something's not there. And the way that we traditionally do observations.

really, really raises teacher's of vulnerability and there's evidence all over the place that points to that. And she says, the way we get people to take risks is by lowering their sense of vulnerability. And she has this great analogy of a jar and it's...

all the little actions that we do that build trust and each action is a marble in a jar. And I know it sounds so counterintuitive because of our schema of observations and reflective conversations. But reimagined, transformed, our whole reflective conversation is about the how, the specific actions

that we do to build that trust. And I'm just, if you're okay with it, just want to share like five or six little, what we call trust marbles. Just one, just focusing on the strengths and each little thing that we share in strengths because the form is so specific is a piece of praise that builds trust. But the very first marble is we have the reflective conversation in the teacher's room.

not our office. We say whether you're seven, seventeen, thirty-seven, get called to the principal's office. Feels like getting called to the principal's office. And I know we've all had that experience when we were teachers where we got called, freaked out, and it was nothing. The next one is when we get to the room, we ask permission. Hey, is now a good time? It seems like nothing. But if I say, Darren, let's meet on this, I told you and instantly people are more protective.

The next one is I said beside you, not across from you. Psychological research on hierarchy in the workplace says when I said across from you, that magnifies that difference. When I said beside you, it minimizes that difference. The next one is I'm transparent. Here's the form right in front of me. I'm not hiding anything from you. The next one is we literally tell you what the goal of trail space observations is.

Hey, the goal is for me and everybody else to build enough trust with each of you so that any of us can come into your room, observe you, see you trying something new, and even though it's highly unlikely, have that thing you're trying to be a train wreck, but as opposed to a traditional observation to where you're thinking, my gosh, this can't be happening to me today. You won't be worried when we're in there, Lee, because you know the next day when I come into your room, the first thing I'm gonna say is, Darren, I love it that you were trying something new. It's not always gonna work out the way we want. High five, fist bump. And then we say, because when we've created those conditions,

you're going to keep trying new things and so is everybody else and then we know we're going to improve and on and on and on and the whole conversation is all about that and over time the walls come down and now they embrace growth in ways that the traditional systems though well intended work exactly against that.

Darrin Peppard (35:08)

I love that because I think in so many ways, and you've talked about modeling a whole lot of times through this conversation, I think that's an opportunity further for leaders to model what you want your teachers to do in terms of how they build relationships with kids. Sometimes we tend to forget as the leaders of our organizations that we need to model what we want people to do and certainly creating those

those spaces where trust has an opportunity to grow and continue to grow and eventually to thrive is super, super important. ⁓ Man, I value this conversation so very much. People are definitely going to want to learn more. They're definitely going to want to talk with you and we'll share in a couple of minutes how they can get to you. ⁓ We are at that point though, I'm going to ask you the same question that

I ask everybody here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast, it's my last question for you, essentially. ⁓ You've shared so much ⁓ that ties directly to leadership, but what maybe, Craig, is one more thing you can share that you are leaning into leadership with right now.

Craig (36:18)

You know, it's funny, I'm always so uncomfortable with that word, leadership, and I just feel like I'm just working with you. But I think it is that. just don't feel comfortable with the word. man, it's about them. It's just like, how can I help you grow if you've got something there that's going to...

that's gonna do it, it has to come from a lens of support and it has to come from a lens of trust. You have to understand the importance of psychological safety and what are you doing to create that? Because if that piece isn't there, anything you wanna do is not gonna work.

Darrin Peppard (36:57)

Outstanding stuff. All right. So Craig, people, like I said, they're going to want to know more. They're going to want to get in touch with you. They're going to want to get your book, all of those kinds of things. How do people best get in touch with you?

Craig (37:10)

The books on Amazon or you can reach out to the website the website's trust based com to your UST BASED.com My email is Craig at trust based com On the website. There's areas where you can reach out to contact me and I really really do recommend training not because it's about me making money, but because a book can never fully articulate what a system is and and we build mastery and so I think it's really important

Darrin Peppard (37:39)

Yeah, outstanding stuff, folks. We'll make sure all of that is down in the show notes for you so you can get in touch with Craig, go over to trustbased.com and learn everything you can about trust based observations. ⁓ Craig Randall, man, thank you so much for joining me here on Leaning Into Leadership.

Craig (37:55)

Thank you, Darren. I had a great time. I appreciate the conversation.

Darrin Peppard (01:05.55)

All right, folks, as I said, conversation there with Craig Randall, some amazing stuff that he is doing with trust-based observations. Make sure you get down there in the show notes and get connected with him because, man, he has got some amazing stuff to share with you. Now, it's time for a pep talk. Today on the pep talk, I wanna talk about those things that we don't necessarily realize until somebody points them out to us.

You might consider them a blind spot. Maybe there are those glass shattering moments where you're like, whoa, you you can't go back. I can't unsee that. I can't hear that. I'll give you a simple example. I remember early in my administration career, one of my superintendents pointed out to me, he pulled me aside and he said, Darren, do you realize you say I disagree quite frequently? Whew, glass shattering moment for this guy.

I had no idea I was saying it. And then once you do, can't, you can't, you can't unsee it, right? You can't stop yourself from seeing that. I never said it again. I found that those words were pushing people away, that it was keeping people from bringing ideas to the table simply because I was saying, I disagree. I see those are the blind spots. Those are those glass shattering moments that I'm talking about.

And I want to challenge you this week to really think about those and to reflect on those and maybe even ask some people, know, hey, can you help me out? You sometimes we need somebody else to hold up that mirror for us, for us to see those things that are happening that we're doing that we're just simply not aware of. Hopefully you've got a leadership coach or a colleague or a teammate or somebody.

who's not afraid to say, hey, here's something worth noticing for you. Those are the type of mirrors that we need in our life. Those are the types of supports that we need in our professional careers. Make sure you lean into those people this week. That's what I've got for you this week, folks. Thank you so much for joining me here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. Get out there and have a road to awesome week.