BE MINDFULMindful Leadership Practices to Transform You and Your School

Deeper Learning Wednesday April 1, 2015

Kirsten Olson, Ed.D., PCCValerie Brown, JD

Hollis Watkins Sings Freedom Songs

1

I would love to liveLike a river flows,Carried by the surpriseOf its own unfolding.

-John O’Donohue

2

GOALS OF SESSION• The Leader’s Dilemma

• What is mindfulness? Why does it work?

• A Little Bit of Research

• Effectiveness for Leaders (but still too little in education)

• How do you practice?

• Let’s do some practicing

• Steps to begin...

3

Who are we? Who’s in the room?

Why did you chose this session?

4

“This  is  a  book  with  deep  wisdom  on  every  

page.”  -­‐Steve  Heller

Program  Director,  Leadership  Coaching  Cer:ficate  Program,  Georgetown  University    

5

Educational Leader’s Dilemma

• One of the most “difficult, challenging, complex” jobs in nation (Battle, 2010; City, Elmore, Fiarman, & Teitel, 2009; Hoffman & Johnston, 2005; Kegan & Lahey, 2009; Wagner et al., 2006)

• High stakes reform, public accountability, punishing policy-era, smaller budgets

• Meaning of work, purpose, and shape of “good” work less and less clear

• “Adaptive” challenges abound (Heifetz), fewer interpersonal resources

• Leaders’ effectiveness matters. Effects of leadership on educational environment very clear in terms of culture, climate, demonstrated results

• Few “new” approaches

6

Our overloaded world• Increased Task Switching

• Increased Rumination, Stress, and Worry

• Challenged Attention Skills

• The Expanding Science of the Brain

• Neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to change and grow throughout our life span

7

• Almost 10% of all children have been diagnosed with ADD

• Only 9.4% of audiences will watch a video 5 minutes or longer

• Only 4% of page views last longer than 10 minutes...

8

 

“School leaders have the power, the ability, and the compassion to make the world a better

place, but only if they have learned how to sustain their well-being.”

(Blaydes 2002)

9

WHY MINDFULNESS?“Just Breathe” by Julie Bayer Salzman (2015)

10

WHAT DID YOU HEAR?Why mindfulness?

What IS mindfulness?11

MINDFULNESS DEFINED

• “Awareness of one’s conduct, and the quality of relationships, inwardly and outwardly, and their potential to cause harm, are intrinsic elements of mindfulness” (KZ, 2012)

• “Mindfulness in everyday life is the ultimate challenge and practice.” (KZ, 2012)

12

13

What Did You Hear?

14

How mindful are you? Take the test...

Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS)

15

Practice Pause

• Breathe, Breathe

16

How we came to mindfulness...

• Grad student at Harvard

• Divorce

• 4 small children

• Working full time

• Wow this sucks; I’m in breakdown

• Live a different way?

• Trained with Jon Kabat Zinn

• Trained Center for Courage & Renewal

• Trained Georgetown Institute for Transformational Leadership

17

My Story

• Admitted, NJ & PA/Lawyer-Lobbyist

• Landed the ‘dream job’, representing 25,000 lawyers

• The Big Turn: Solo travel to India (1990) and worldwide

• Divorce & Multiple Miscarriages

• Met Thich Nhat Hanh, 1995, Ordained 2003

• Trained Kundalini yoga, 1999

• Trained Center for Mindfulness, 2008 and 2013

• Trained Center for Courage & Renewal, 2009

• Trained Institute for Transformational Leadership, 2011

18

Our work together

19

EXPLOSION OF RESEARCHExplosion of clinical research on the effectiveness of

mindfulness: more and more in education20

WHO’S PRACTICING MINDFULNESS IN SCHOOLS?

http://www.mindfulnet.org/page7.htmhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/mindfulness-in-schools/

Mindful Schools estimates it has taught or had influence on at least 75K school-age students in last 3 years

21

PRE-K AND BEYOND...

• Hundreds of peer-reviewed studies demonstrating clinical effectiveness...

• Black, D. S. & Fernando, R. (2013). Mindfulness training and classroom behavior among lower-income and ethnic minority elementary school children. Journal of Child and Family Studies.

• Program lasts 5 weeks, 3 sessions per week, focuses on practices that help students pay attention, build empathy and self-awareness, improve self-control, and reduce stress

• 400 students evaluated

• Immediately after the program ended, student behavior improved significantly in 4 areas measured—paying attention, self-control, classroom participation, and respect for others—and these gains were maintained 7 weeks later

22

EXPLOSION OF MINDFULNESS PROGRAMS

FOR TEACHERS IN SCHOOLS

Abundant clinical evidence of efficacy

Programs for teachers reaching thousands of per year

23

MINDFULNESS AND TEACHERS

• Jennings et al (2013) CARE program is an inservice professional development program for working teachers, one of 75 programs available in US in 2013

• Mindfulness and SEL interventions focused on emotional awareness, mindful practices, compassion for self and others, applying these to teaching

• 30 contact hours over 4 weeks and “booster” interventions

• Posits that teachers’ social and emotional skills and well being lead to healthier classroom climate and better student social, emotional and academic outcomes.

• Program produced statistically significant gains in participants’ emotional awareness, capacity for self-regulation, and compassion/receptivity to students

Jennings, P. A., Snowberg, K. E., Coccia, M. A., & Greenberg, M. T. (2012, April). Refinement and evaluation of the CARE for Teachers program. In M. Greenberg (Chair), Teachers’ Growth During Targeted SEL Professional Development and SEL Program Implementation: An International Perspective. Symposium presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association, Vancouver, BC, CA.

24

Text

Coatsworth, Duncan, Jennings, Turksma, Greenberg (2013), CARE Teachers Program

25

26

27

28

29

GLOBAL, WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

Wake Up Schools

30

Underinvestment in leadership renewal is a central feature of our work, although positions have become more challenging

than they have ever been.

WHAT ABOUT EDUCATIONAL LEADERS?

31

Dearth of Practices for Educational Leaders

Stress IndicatorsEducational Leaders:

-89% feel overwhelmed; -84% neglect to take care of themselves in the midst of stress;-80% scold themselves when they perform less than perfectly;

-Jerry Murphy, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2011

32

WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS OF YOUR LEADERSHIP?

• Draw a sketch of your daily leadership life...

• Find a partner and describe to each other

• Switch

33

DRAGO SEVERSON (2012)

• “The Need for Principal Renewal: The Promise of Sustaining Principals Through Principal-to-Principal Reflective Practice” (2012)

• Cross-section of 25 principals demonstrated very strongly desire and need for renewal and opportunities for reflection, although only 2 were actively engaged in such practices.

• “Principals receive too few resources to meet the expectations of outside stakeholders...The emphasis on accountability, coupled with insufficient support, is a leading cause of the principal shortage crisis, the new demands of leadership, the tendency to blame principals, and the difficulty of achieving a balanced life in this role. Excessive blame without time and energy to sustain a balanced life easily breeds anxiety—and principals are increasingly resigning because of this stress, inadequate training, insufficient compensation, professional isolation, bureaucratic micromanagement, uncertainty related to role expectations, inadequate support, and the responsibility to inculcate youth with a knowledge base on which leaders cannot agree.”

34

MINDFULNESS AND LEADERSHIP

• Improved ability to notice and slow down or stop automatic reactions

• Increased capacity to respond to complex and difficult situations

• Ability to see situations more clearly, or many dimensions of a situation

• More creative in designing solutions to complex dilemmas

• More balance and resilience

35

Hoy Mindfulness Scale for Educational Leaders

Hoy and Gage, 200336

(2013) Mindful Leaders in Highly Effective Schools: Mixed Method Application of Hoy’s M-Scale

• 149 public schools in Texas, interviewed top 10% of principals identified as mindful

• Principal mindfulness made “statistically significant independent contribution to to variance on student achievement”

• Kearney, Kelsey, Herrington (2013)

37

Practice Pause

• Breathe

38

GETTING STARTED...Let’s breathe...

39

40

Mindfulness Practices

• Formal & Informal Mindfulness Practice

• Sitting, Walking, Eating, Speaking, Listening, Resting Mindfully

• Practicing Compassion

• Reflection and Solitude

• Beauty Bath

• Stopping, Pausing, Observing

• Cultivating Awe, Wonder, and Gratitude

41

“Donkey work of daily practice...”

• “Your only path to success is through a continuum of mundane, unsexy, unexciting, and sometimes difficult daily disciplines compounded over time.”

• Transformation is ultimately somewhat unsexy and practical work

• “What does it take to become an authentic leader? You must have practices that you engage in every day.”

—His Holiness the Dalai Lama

42

Questions?Thoughts?

43

Mindful Speaking and Listening

44

“Being listened to is so close to being loved that most of us can’t tell the difference.”

David Oxberg

45

Tell a Story About a Workplace Challenge• IN PAIRS: 4 minutes to describe; 3

minutes open questions; 1 minute appreciation and noticing

• Speaker: sit in your truth

• Practice self-awareness

• Practice kindness, “be on your own side”

• Stay in your body when speaking; be present to what you are saying

• Speak your truth

• Listener: Hear your partner into truth

• Kind eyes, receptive

• No fixing, saving, or advising

• Turn to wonder if the going gets tough

• Offer open questions and supportive mirroring

46

What did you experience?

47

Authentic Leaders: True to Yourself, True to Others

Trustworthy relationships translate into more effective, wholehearted leaders,

teams and results

—Center for Courage & Renewal

Academy of Leaders

48

Six Foundations of Trustworthy Leadership

• Reflect on core values: the inner journey

• Ask open questions; listen deeply

• Hold paradox and tension

• Build trustworthy relationships

• Appreciate the value of ‘otherness’

• Grow through the seasons; value renewal

49

What’s a practice you’d like to explore?

50

A few words to close...51

We’d love to hear from you!

Valerie BrownLead Smart Coaching

valeriebrown95@gmail.comwww.leadsmartcoaching.com

Kirsten OlsonOld Sow Coaching and

Consultingkirsten@oldsow.net

www.oldsowconsulting.org

52