Sep 10, 2020
Tara Jaraysi Kenning:
"Teamwork makes the dream work," John C. Maxwell. I'm Tara Jaraysi Kenning, and I'm a Tri-Cities influencer.
Paul Casey:
A good rule of thumb is before you speak, ask yourself, is what I'm about to say true, necessary and kind? TNK
Announcer:
Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington. It's the Tri-cities Influencer podcast. Welcome to the TCI podcast, where local leadership and self leadership expert Paul Casey interviews, local CEOs, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit executives to hear how they lead themselves and their teams, so we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience. Here's your host, Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services, coaching, and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success.
Paul Casey:
It's a great day to grow forward. Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Tony Howard. He is the assistant superintendent of human resources for the Richland School District. I asked him for a fun fact about him. And he said, "Well, during this Corona crisis, the family has decided to watch Survivor reruns." And I said, "You know what? We are too." So I think we're on season 23 going back. And we both said we would never do that in a normal time, but what are we going to do? It'll be our memory for the Corona season is watching survivor reruns.
Paul Casey:
Well, we're going to dive in with Tony after checking in with our Tri-City Influencer sponsors.
Preston House:
Hi, my name is Preston House, and I'm the local owner of Papa John's Pizza right here in Tri-cities.
Jesus Melendez:
I'm Jesus Melendez, vice president and commercial lender with Community First Bank and HFG trust.
Preston House:
When I moved here in 2009 with my family from Boise, Idaho, I knew I wanted to move from a franchise to a local business owner. I'd been working with Papa John's since I was 16 years old, so when it came time to open my own location here in my own community, I knew I needed some financial guidance from an organization who understood my needs as a small business owner.
Jesus Melendez:
Small business owners often have a lot on their plate: employment retirement plans, payroll bills. Our mission is to become your financial partner for life, and is motivated by providing people in our community, like Preston, with all the information and support they need all under one roof.
Preston House:
It's really simple. No matter what I need, all it takes is one phone call. No automated prompts, no call waiting. It's just a local business serving another local business.
Jesus Melendez:
For more information on how Community First bank and HFG trust can help you get back on track. Visit www.community1st.com. That's www.community1st.com.
Paul Casey:
Thank you for your support of leadership development in the Tri-Cities. Well, welcome, Tony. I was privileged to meet you years ago. Boy, how many years ago would that be?
Tony Howard:
I think in 2007, '08, '09? Maybe in there somewhere.
Paul Casey:
That sounds right, yeah. Yes. My kids were in middle school at Enterprise Middle School. And you were one of the administrators there. Since I was an administrator, I thought, I like to bond with my kids' teachers and principals, so I invited you to lunch or coffee, and you said yes. So that was great. We could talk shop together and I've watched as you continued to move up the chain since then in the district office. So thanks for all you do for our school system.
Tony Howard:
Well, thank you. I'm really glad to be here today. I appreciate the invitation.
Paul Casey:
Absolutely. So let's let our listeners get to know you a little bit. Take us through a couple of career highlights that led you to what you're doing now, and also throw in there why you love what you do.
Tony Howard:
Well, thanks again. I'm really proud to be a lifer in K-12 public ed. I started as a classroom teacher in the early 90s. This is my 27th year.
Paul Casey:
Wow.
Tony Howard:
Which I don't know where the time goes. The last 13 of it in Richland, this'll be the start of year 14 in Richland. Worked on both sides of the mountains in the state of Washington. I was a teacher and assistant principal, then principal. What really stands out to me is just the people that I've known along the way and the relationships I've made and people that have taken a 23 year old know-it-all under their wing and let me learn my lessons the hard way, but in a structure of support. I really did imprint on some of that and have tried to model that in my own leadership career with folks.
Tony Howard:
And now, here we are 27 years later in the middle of trying to redefine public ed on the fly in this brave new world. It's just been an exciting time. I've been in HR for 10 years, as a principal for eight prior to that. Just at every stop, I've had just a wonderful opportunity to work with kids and parents and teachers and staff members and community folks, and coffee with people like you, 12, 13 years ago, that paid off today. That's really been the career highlight for me, is being able to pay all that back to the people that have helped me.
Paul Casey:
Wow. That's fantastic. Let me ask you this. Was there a time ever in that 27 years that you just said, "Maybe I should think about doing something else?" Did you ever have those days?
Tony Howard:
I think that 99% of all the days are good days. Like in any career, there are days where you go, "Oh, wow." But I've heard this quote once, "A setback is an opportunity for a comeback." Something like that.
Paul Casey:
I love that.
Tony Howard:
Something like that. So, no, I am really proud of the work that I've been able to do with kids and parents and families and communities over the last 27 years, and I'm a pretty happy K-12 guy.
Paul Casey:
So throughout the journey, you probably hit some obstacles to success, even though you didn't consider making the jump out of there. So what's one of the biggest hurdles you overcame in your career?
Tony Howard:
It took me some time as a young administrator ... this is 2003, four or five ... to learn the concept of I versus we. I learned some hard, painful lessons about I versus we, and the damage that I can cause, and the power that we can cause. Learning from those experiences really helped my career as an administrator take off because I learned through some speed bumps that it's not about me at all. Leadership is, in part, checking your ego at the door and looking for ways to move the collective forward in a way that's positive for the system.
Tony Howard:
Has nothing to do with Tony being brilliant or not brilliant on a particular topic. And that took some time. I don't have to have all the right answers. I don't have to always have to insert my opinion everywhere. It helps build trust with the people who work with me and for me, both subordinate in my department and within the organization. But at the end of the day, my role is to facilitate the growth for kids in the public school setting. It's not about what I want, necessarily. That was hard. I was young and pretty headstrong and thought I had it all figured out and really didn't. And like I said, in the open, had some very special people take a liking to the potential that I had and worked me through growing up a little bit.
Paul Casey:
Wow. So if you're willing to be vulnerable, what was the lesson you learned the hard way? With the whole damage of I. By the way, love that Tri-City influencers. If you missed it, he said, "The damage of I and the power of we." That's a keeper. That's a tweetable moment right there.
Tony Howard:
I think my first year as an assistant principal way back when, on the other side of the mountains, we had a hearing or something going on with the principal. I was the assistant principal and got a call, "Bring over some stuff to the hearing." I brought it over and made a passing offhand comment, and kind of joking to the district secretary when I came in the door, "I'm here to save the principal." It was a total in jest kind of comment. It landed poorly. "I'm here to save," That's not going to work in terms of what leadership is.
Tony Howard:
While I maybe didn't appreciate it at the time, rightfully so, got my bell rung pretty good about the fact that, first of all, I don't do anything. Second of all, we don't say that to each other. And third of all, it's time for you to grow up and sit in the chair that you need to sit in. I remember, it was done at four o'clock on a Friday afternoon, which was always tactically brilliant when you're trying to deliver lessons of love, you know?
Tony Howard:
I got to chew on it all weekend and decided he was right and I was going to make some changes. Within 15 months, I got moved from an assistant principal to a principal, and we're off to the races. So that's that tough love, that invest in potential, that I think is important for leaders to see. While I didn't appreciate getting chewed out, it was the greater good and he was right.
Paul Casey:
Yeah. You mentioned that some people took you under their wing and maybe taught you some of those lessons. Were those some mentors in your life? Were those other educators? Who were those folks in your life along the way that you really respect them speaking into your life?
Tony Howard:
I think all was the answer to that. This particular example was a supervisor. The superintendent brought me in and let me have it pretty good. But I never once thought ... and I think this is important in leadership ... that he was attacking me the person. He was getting after a bad choice in an effort of growth. Because he could fire me if you wanted to. That's the way it goes. But he chose to invest.
Tony Howard:
So I've had really good experiences with superintendents and principal, administrative colleagues over the years. The strongest bonds I have are with folks that aren't afraid to question, or aren't afraid to push on me a little bit. I appreciate intelligent discourse. I work in human resources. All we do is manage conflict.
Paul Casey:
Whoo hoo!
Tony Howard:
Nobody calls us up and says, "Hey, great job." We're always working on some sort of thing. So I appreciate folks that, with the right intention, ask hard questions and we're looking for the common right answer. I wouldn't be who I am professionally without my wife, as a counterpoint. She's got insight. She's not an administrator K-12 and she doesn't run in the world I run in professionally every day, but there are times where she has insight into who I am. She knows me pretty well, and will bring me up and have me think about a couple of things, which I like. Because like I said, it's not about me being right. It's about what's right for the system. We all get stuck in our thinking once in a while and really need those people to trust, to kind of push you.
Paul Casey:
That's right. Receiving feedback is difficult for many people, and I think if you do approach like you do with that, let's move ego and put it to the side, because ego usually leads to defensiveness. Somebody said, "Ego is edging greatness out." That's a good little acronym for that.
Tony Howard:
Yeah.
Paul Casey:
That way, you can receive it better. So leadership is difficult. Tony, what's your biggest ongoing challenge as a leader? What's really stretching you either in a positive way stretching, but it's uncomfortable?
Tony Howard:
Well, we'll set COVID aside.
Paul Casey:
Yes. That's its own bailiwick.
Tony Howard:
That's a whole other podcast, I think probably, in terms of what the leadership challenges that are. For me, it has been ... and I have this discussion a lot with paying it forward to newer administrators and aspiring leaders ... is the difference between responsibility and authority. I am the assistant superintendent of HR. My job is to assist the superintendent and the school board in moving forward labor and human resources kinds of issues. I have significant responsibility in the org chart to bargain with unions and solve problems and address personnel, and all those things that happen in HR. But I don't supervise anyone. I don't have, necessarily, the authority to walk in and say, "You, principal or you, teacher have to do this."
Tony Howard:
I supervise my department, but I have all of this systemic responsibility and my authority while it's there. If someone's doing something illegal, I can say, "Knock it off." But much more, it's lead by influence because I don't have the supervisory direct relationship with 2000 employees in the school district. I like that. I liked being able to be a problem solver without the threat of evaluation and over the top of a conversation, or being able to coach because I'm not the one that's going to write your evaluation.
Tony Howard:
I find that causes different conversations sometimes with folks. But you have lots of responsibility, not a ton of authority when it comes to just, "You shall do this." The leadership art of that is being able to work with people to move an agenda forward without just telling them to do it.
Paul Casey:
That's right. Inspire them forward.
Tony Howard:
Exactly.
Paul Casey:
So, if you had a leadership philosophy that would be put front and center on a bulletin board in your office for all to see, what would some of those messages say?
Tony Howard:
I do presentations all the time for aspiring teachers. How do you get your first job? How do I interview? I think we'll get to the answer here. And I always talk about, don't throw away the easy points. Don't ... How do I say this? ... give up things that are easy, that you cannot be taught. And the examples I use is, I can't teach you to have a good work ethic. You can't do it. I can't teach you to be nice to each other in the workplace. I can't teach you to like kids, which would seem like a no brainer in our profession, but it happens.
Tony Howard:
I can teach you curriculum. I can teach you an assessment strategy. If there's some classroom management kinds of issues, there's a billion different strategies for that. But I can't teach you to fundamentally love the game. I think that has always transferred well in terms of a leadership philosophy for me: work hard, be honest, keep an eye on the big picture. I use a balcony example. I think I read it in a book once. Get on the balcony and look out over the organization, because your decisions sometimes impact in ways you don't even understand.
Tony Howard:
Be open to feedback, and don't be rigid in your thinking. There are times where you have to be. You did this and I have to fire you. Sometimes it's that simple in our discussions, but rarely. Most of our discussions are, if you've got a better way to build a mouse trap, I want you to be open to share it. Whether we can do it or not, the journey is sometimes more important than how you end up in an issue. But I always look for, those are the easy points. If I'm a principal and I'm looking to hire a teacher and the teacher is going to be combative with their team, with their parents, with me, with the office staff? Life is too short. Those are easy points. Remember that we're all in this together.
Paul Casey:
Yeah. It sounds like you're talking about the inside game, like the stuff within that you can work on, your personal development.
Tony Howard:
Right.
Paul Casey:
Which will then bleed over into your professional life.
Tony Howard:
Sure.
Paul Casey:
Most influencers I know have a bit of visionary inside them in order to take that next hill. So where do you take time to dream about the future? What does that look like for you?
Tony Howard:
There are days when that's hard because in the here and now, there's a lot going on in the here and now, even more so now. There's all sorts of things that aren't in any manual in terms of how to approach them from a leadership perspective. My dreams about the future are being able to look back with satisfaction that I was true to myself, and that at the end of the day, my 27 to 40 years of experience with K-12 helped kids.
Tony Howard:
My HR job is not necessarily a kid directed position. I don't work with parents very often anymore. I don't work with kids almost ever, but I was a principal and a teacher and a lifer in the system. I think that experience matters. If I'm making human resources decisions in the system that aren't front and center towards kids and staff in the school system, then what am I doing? I think that's what I look forward to in the future. I call it with my folks, the human side of human resources. We manage resources pretty well, whether it's a contractor, a stipend, or whatever it is. But there are times when just the volume of human, everyone that contacts us, almost, has got some sort of crisis. Like I said, no one rarely walks into HR and said, "I'm having a great day, everybody."
Paul Casey:
HR, grumble, grumble.
Tony Howard:
Yeah, exactly. Right. So, in that customer service, human side of things, we see people at some of their most stressed moments, and we need to make sure we never forget that.
Paul Casey:
Yeah. The best HR professionals I see are those that keep the human first over the resources.
Tony Howard:
Right. We have an employee will come in and a spouse is terminally ill, and all they need from us is the love to support them. They don't know, and they're terrified, and they don't need us closing off opportunities to help them. They need us to work with them. While those conversations are emotional, they're very important. If you don't have them, your system doesn't work.
Paul Casey:
It's right. Well, before we head into our next question on Tony's morning routine, a shout out to our sponsors.
Preston House:
Hi, my name is Preston House, and I'm the local owner of Papa John's pizza right here in tri-cities.
Jesus Melendez:
I'm Jesus Melendez, vice president and commercial lender with Community First bank and HFG trust.
Preston House:
When I moved here in 2009 with my family from Boise, Idaho, I knew I wanted to move from a franchise to a local business owner. I'd been working with Papa John's since I was 16 years old, so when it came time to open my own location here in my own community, I knew I needed some financial guidance from an organization who understood my needs as a small business owner.
Jesus Melendez:
Small business owners often have a lot on their plate: employment retirement plans, payroll, bills. Our mission is to become your financial partner for life and is motivated by providing people in our community like Preston with all the information and support they need, all under one roof.
Jesus Melendez:
It's really simple. No matter what I need, all it takes is one phone call. No automated prompts, no call waiting. It's just a local business serving another local business.
Preston House:
For more information on how Community First Bank and HFG trust can help you get back on track. Visit www.community1st.com. That's www.community1st.com.
Paul Casey:
So Tony, what's your typical morning routine? Before work, once you arrive at work, any rituals to help you start your day strong?
Tony Howard:
It's called coffee. Let me start there, I kind of have a tongue in cheek running joke with my assistant that no one can yell at me before the first cup of coffee is drank.
Paul Casey:
I like that.
Tony Howard:
It doesn't happen sometimes, but it's been kind of a running joke for years. I get up and get going in the morning. I like to take some time in the morning to review the overnights, what comes in, in the email overnight, if there were late stuff that didn't get finished, put a bow on the day before I go onto the next one. I'm pretty meticulous with things like a phone log, because it's been useful for me over the years to log what I do and when, so I want to make sure that's current, and just kind of the nuts and bolts of administrivia, of being an office guy.
Tony Howard:
It's a chance for me in the morning to connect with department staff if I need to, or look to see where the hotspots are or the day or what's in the calendar or whatnot. But it all circles around coffee. I'm not much good to anybody without that first cup of coffee.
Paul Casey:
When you say hotspots of the day, sort of previewing that, what would be some examples of that?
Tony Howard:
Well, do I have a contentious personnel meeting in the day? Do we have an investigatory issue? Do we have a grievance hearing? Some of those things are multi-day planning, but do I have an employee that's fired up about a particular issue and needs a little face time? Things drop into my calendar that I don't know what the context of them are. Sometimes you're going to meet with X and, well, why? And try to get my head wrapped around that.
Tony Howard:
It's also a good chance for me to check in with my staff. I have eight folks report directly to me and they do a variety of technical things for me. If you've been in the district HR's office, which we're moving out of happily here in a couple of months, but it's about as big as this room. No, it's a little bigger than that. But it's not a very big space and just making sure we're fine because if the staff's not fed and we're not taking care of our people, then it's hard for them to feel like they're part of the bigger picture, and they don't get to know everything I see. So just making sure we have that connection.
Paul Casey:
That's good. How do you deal with the everyday grind of your work without burning out, especially in this intense people, intense conflict job that you live and work in?
Tony Howard:
I have, more so as an HR director than I did as a principal. As a principal, you get knocks on the door… We're talking direct kid line issues. A mom is distraught or a dad is upset about A, B, or C. And those are real time emotional issues. The kids can't sit, and so they happen a lot. In HR, less so. My meetings are sometimes more formal, and I've been able to kind of balance out the two things. And I tried really hard ... like I said, we manage a ton of conflict and there's a ton of drama that comes through, 2000 employees and all their different needs and whatnot ... to keep it separate. My kids, I've always told myself, I'd never gave my writeup to raise my own kids and be a dad and a spouse in order to work.
Paul Casey:
That's good.
Tony Howard:
It feels like that sometimes, but that's the nature of the game. But I have always made conscious and tried to leave the work at the door, and I'm not perfect at that. COVID has messed it all up. It's just messed it all up. In fact, I don't know, June-ish, I started just coming into the office during the day. Not because I can't work at home, but I'm less efficient and it's just stuff I don't-
Paul Casey:
You needed that break.
Tony Howard:
It's a mental thing for me. Some of the conflict I didn't want in the house where kids are running in and out of the room and doing their thing, or my wife's coming through. We're a house, and all the kids are home, home learning too, so we're all trying to do that. For me, it was more appropriate to have a little bit of separation between those two things. I will use the drive home as the unplugged time, whether that's an audible or a podcast or whatever I've got, or some music. I like to drive and it's a few minutes just to physically purge the day and go home.
Paul Casey:
Yeah, it's like emotional white space, right?
Tony Howard:
Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. So I can be good to my kids and good to my wife and all those things that are important to me, because they're going to be with me far longer than the career, and it's not fair to them to overbalance. It's hard, though.
Paul Casey:
Yeah. There's a YouTube video. I'm trying to think what the name of it is, but it's like, we all blasted off of earth on these little spaceships, and COVID hits, and we have to make ... It's called maintain the vessel, I think. So we have to maintain our vessel, which is like our body, and each section of the spaceship, one is for work, one is for sleep, one's for eat, we shouldn't cross over. But it's like when you cross the threshold, that's all you do is work in the work room. So you've had to do that, and a lot of people have had to do that, when they go into the office, is create that separation so work stays work.
Tony Howard:
Well, there's an exercise to getting up and getting a shower and shaving and getting dressed and putting on your work clothes and going and doing that. Besides, I'm not going to be on camera for a Zoom at eight o'clock, so I'm going to roll out of bed and plop out in the recliner. It just didn't work for me. It just didn't. While I love being home, I want to be home and attentive, not home and, "Get off the internet, because I need to get on." It just didn't work for me.
Paul Casey:
Well, family is a big deal to you. It's a big deal to most people. I know it's difficult now, like you said, how do you prioritize family time, yet still be a high performer at work? So you mentioned already, trying to leave work at the door, not letting that creep into the family as much as possible. Any other tips you have?
Tony Howard:
You asked me earlier about it. I never thought about getting out of K-12, and this is one of the reasons why I'm not: because the fit is good. In my job, I flex time as I need to. If I've got a kid with a soccer game, I can go. I've got a cell phone and a laptop, and I will keep up and we'll communicate with that. But it's important. Our kids are in Richland in the Richland school district. I work in the Richland school district. My wife works in the Richland school district. We're invested in that time for them, and they're here and it's something that we can do.
Tony Howard:
Public is a good fit in that regard, which is another reason why I'm a K-12 lifer. It was very important to us that our kids were involved in the system that we were trying to lead. Otherwise, what's the point of all of it? If it's not good enough for my kids, then that's a moral bar for me. That is a good checks and balance. But there's a benefit to that. I have a ninth grader to be, whose life's ambition is to play Bomber soccer and while it's being delayed a little bit as we try to navigate all of these restrictions going to Bomber soccer games is just fine.
Tony Howard:
My oldest played at Hanford for a couple of years and that's great. Being able to be part of the system and be involved in those because I'm leading in the system, is rewarding to me.
Paul Casey:
Incidentally, how much vacation do you take, just to refresh?
Tony Howard:
Oh, four or five weeks a year. We get five weeks as administrators. I try to choreograph that around kid breaks. I'll take a chunk of time at Christmas and spring break. We just got back from doing some summer stuff. I try to balance that. I don't take all the five weeks some years. It just kind of depends. But the basic breaks like everybody else, I figure if they're in school and my wife's working, I'd probably be working too.
Paul Casey:
Do you try to stay disconnected during vacation? Like, like be "done" done? I'm asking because I've asked my clients, so do you check email and not respond? Do stay disconnected?
Tony Howard:
I've done all the different models that I think there are. I try really hard in July. Around the 4th of July, we'd like to do some camping and whatnot, that I unplug completely. Just for that seven to 10 days, don't check a thing. It's a dead time for us anyway.
Paul Casey:
Sure.
Tony Howard:
Buildings are closed. Kids are gone. It's relatively quiet as things get in the office. This year, I really wasn't able to do that because there was just too much going on. Well, I'm trying to, from a campground, Zoom into a school board meeting so I can keep an eye on what's going on, thinking this is just surreal trying to navigate all that. But I do try to unplug a little bit at Christmas, the in between Christmas and New Years, I'll try to unplug for three or four days.
Tony Howard:
The rest of it, I think the world we live in and the role that I have requires some monitoring. I'll keep an eye on things. I'll respond if I need to. Some of it I'll keep and I'll just flag it for when I get back to work. But where I sit in the org chart for the district and the emergent needs, I have to be able to respond to a problem with it comes up. I think it's just a leadership thing. I think I need to do that. And if not, then who? Is kind of the question that I have.
Paul Casey:
Sure.
Tony Howard:
That's kind of how I approach that. I try to unplug a little bit. I think it's healthy for me and it's healthy for the family. This year, we weren't able to unplug as much, but there are extenuating circumstances.
Paul Casey:
Yes. Work and life got mushed together.
Tony Howard:
They sure did.
Paul Casey:
Well, influencers aren't know it alls. They are learners. Where do you go, Tony, for the wisest advice? That can be live people here in town or they could be authors and motivators, education professionals. Where do you go?
Tony Howard:
I go to ... I think we talked about it in the open a little bit ... the people that I trust. It starts there. There has to be some degree of safety in order to be vulnerable to ask that question. I'm lucky in the sense that I spent all 13 plus years in the RSD and have a network of folks that I can reach out to and say, "I am missing something here." Or, "I'm thinking this, and I'm pretty sure there's a bucket there I'm going to step in. Can you tell me what I'm not seeing?" I do some of that with people that I trust.
Tony Howard:
I do some of the conference. All that whole world is going to change, the onsite stuff and whatnot. I find, it may be a function of just maturing a little bit, my attention span to irrelevant is less than it used to be. If I take a class or read a book or go to a session and it's just not clicking with what I need to do, it's hard for me to keep engaged to that. I find it's 50/50. There's a lot of influencers, as you put out there, that have a lot of good content, but it's just not possible to soak all that in.
Tony Howard:
I like to do some personal reflection, that driving stuff like we talked about and whatnot. I'll just chew on, all right, what's the larger issue that I'm not seeing? It's a question I ask myself a lot. Where's my blind spot? So whether it's a negotiation or a labor issue or a personnel issue, is where are we not quite right?
Tony Howard:
Our attorney works next to us, works in the district office. He really pushed on me, when I started 10 years ago in HR and to write better. Because now I'm writing for real issues. And I wasn't used to having him edit a letter and getting back three pages of red: change this and change that, and do this and do that. He was great. He's a terrific asset and a good friend. I tease that the highest praise I've gotten from anybody in the district in the past nine plus years is a letter he sent back to me a couple of years ago that says, "Looks good." That was like, I finally made it, a little bit. But I've got a network and I tend to lean towards the network of people that I know and trust more so than industry standard kinds of things. It's just my comfort level.
Paul Casey:
Sure, sure. I love that question: what's the issue I'm not seeing here? What's missing? What's the blind spot? These are questions to ask that open up creativity. They're good ones.
Tony Howard:
Yep.
Paul Casey:
Well finally, what advice would you give to new leaders or anyone who wants to keep growing and gaining more influence?
Tony Howard:
Be a sponge, good or bad. I've had this discussion with leaders before, principals before. You learn some times as much from a bad or a negative classroom experience as a student than you do from the great ones. I've done exercises before: think through your three most powerful teachers that you've ever had. Now let's think through the three most traumatic, poor experiences you've had in a classroom. People can do that. They can remember real quick, the good and the bad.
Tony Howard:
Then I'll ask them to think through somebody in the middle, and they have a harder time, because good and bad ... or good and negative, I guess, is maybe a fair way to say that, are telling learning opportunities. So be a sponge. Just because someone has a different style or you don't agree with their tactics, you can still learn from them. The other part of this that I would tell young leaders is not to worry about errors of effort. While there are always exceptions and there are errors we just, can't not deal with, for young administrators, you're going to mess up. For young leaders, you're going to make mistakes. I've been doing this a long time, I still mess up. If someone's not mad at me at least once a day, I'm probably not doing my job right.
Paul Casey:
That's right.
Tony Howard:
Errors of effort are correctable and coachable. Errors of apathy aren't. If you're just making the same mistake twice because you're just too lazy to change, or unwilling to take feedback in a positive way, that's where I start to get concerned about leadership being a failure for somebody. If you botch it: eat it, fix it. It happens. I've gotten up in front of staffs and said, "Well, that didn't work. Here's what we've tried to do. And now we're going to step back and readjust." And I have found over the years that adults respond to that.
Paul Casey:
Yeah. They respect you more, right?
Tony Howard:
I screwed up. Because I've always tried to work from, I'll take the hit if the building messes up. You guys are going to celebrate. It's not the I and we stuff again. But if you're wrong, you're wrong. I've seen leaders really blow up a room just because they're not willing to accept that, whether it may or may not be their fault, it's still them.
Paul Casey:
Yep.
Tony Howard:
I didn't make that teacher yell at that kid or throw that book or whatever happened in the classroom, but that's still a teacher under my supervision, and that reflects on all of us, and I'm the leader of the building. So, errors of effort, I can live with those. Errors of apathy or errors of stubbornness, I have less patience.
Paul Casey:
Wow. So good. So, Tri-Cities influencers, be a sponge and don't worry as much about errors of effort. Really be concerned about errors of apathy. Well Tony, how can our listeners connect with you if they wanted to reach out?
Tony Howard:
I'm on the district website, and email's up there and all of that. My LinkedIn profile is active. I think that's how you saw me.
Paul Casey:
I did. We reconnected through that, yes.
Tony Howard:
We reconnected here just not too long ago. But I'm not hard to find. I'm just at the district website in the HR department. I'm open to email and contact. The art of leadership is a career interest of mine.
Paul Casey:
Yes, indeed. A passion we share.
Tony Howard:
Well, I appreciate you inviting me in.
Paul Casey:
Yes. Thanks for all you do to make the Tri-Cities a great place, and keep leading well.
Tony Howard:
Aw, thank you.
Paul Casey:
Let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. The website is arealme.com. Arealme.com. These are really fun quizzes to take. You've probably seen some on Facebook, like what kind of animal are you? What kind of Disney princess are you? What's your super power? What chemical element are you? If you just want a fun little website of surveys, they'll even create some for you, arealme.com.
Paul Casey:
Again, this is Paul Casey. I want to thank my guest Tony Howard from the Richland school district for being here today on the Tri-city influencer podcast. We also want to thank our TCI sponsor and invite you to support them, appreciating that they make this possible so we can collaborate to help inspire leaders in our community. Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence. Sade said, "Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy." Until next time, KGF. Keep growing forward.
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Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams, so that they can enjoy life and leadership and experience their key desired results.
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If you'd like more help from Paul in your leadership development, connect with him at growingforward@paulcasey.org, for a consultation that can help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life or your team forward.
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Paul would also like to help you restore your sanity to your crazy schedule and getting your priorities done every day by offering you his free control my calendar checklist. Go to www.takebackmycalendar.com for that productivity tool, or open a text message to 72000, and type the word "growing."
Paul Casey:
The Tri-Cities influencer podcast was recorded at Fuse SPC by Bill Wagner of Safe Strategies.