In Search of Catholic School Excellence

**Transcription is created automatically. Please excuse any errors.

Hey folks, welcome back to another episode. This week we're going to be talking about building your own advisory board, why that's going to be important. I'm joined this week again by Becky Wong, Freelance Leader.

Hey everyone. And interestingly enough, one of the folks on my original boards, as well, we'll talk a little bit more about today. But this is the idea of what does a school leader do? How do they make decisions? It's hard being the principal, you're the everything, right? You're the admin and you do have an admin team and you might have an official board that you are beholden to, but who do you turn to for advice when it really comes down to the nitty gritty? And so you want to be able to build up your board so that you have folks that you can lean on for making big decisions.

So Becky, thanks again for joining me. And let's talk about, let's, let's start off with how it is at the top. Not that I was ever at the top.

I was near the top. You know, when it comes to leadership, especially being the principal, it's hard because you can't be everyone's friend. You can't please everyone.

And definitely you have to make decisions that are unpopular at the time. Of course, there's more good times than bad times, but when you do have to make a difficult decision, just remember you're not alone. There's always someone out there that can give you perspective on things.

And a lot of times when you know what the right decision is, and it's hard to just decide on it. So who do you turn to to make sure that's the right step or the right decision or have to think like, Hey, you're 90% sure who's there to reassure you for that last 10%. Right.

Yeah. You don't want to have to make all your decisions in a silo. Right.

And sometimes someone could tell you like, Hey, have you thought of this? Or let's think of the positive things where perhaps you got a grant and you decide like, Hey, we've got this nice chunk of money. How should we spend it? You might have one idea, but getting outside perspective or ideas is very helpful. And it might be something you never thought of.

Yeah, it's so true. I mean, there's obviously you have boards in place and you have your team in place for a reason and that you're going to make sound decisions as a group. But sometimes you just need to ruminate on something or think through some ideas or brainstorm and having a different group of people, a different voice to bounce things off of can be so, so helpful.

I've also never really, never really been at the top, I guess, in my own way, I've been on the top of my own little world. And I know I've put together an advisory board for myself, but I've also, as you have been a part of other people's advisory boards, whether that be official or unofficial. And that's kind of what we're getting at today is like, how do you pull together people that, or how do you make sure you have a team, even if it's not an official thing? So Thomas, what do you think? What's the difference between a school advisory board and like a personal advisory board? What made you decide that that's something you wanted? Well, I think it comes down to the situation that may be in.

So obviously your school board or your own like parent advisory board or however your boards are put together officially, they definitely have a, they're skewed to a certain extent. Or biased, right? Yeah. And everybody has the best intentions usually, right? So, you know, we want to, we're not going to say that the boards are bad.

It's just that there's going to be a certain kind of response from those boards with anything that comes up. Not to mention, before you have to go and talk to those boards, you might be thinking about how do I want to approach this? And so this is not just for business. And of course we're talking about schools right now, but this is for life, you know? Who do you talk to before you have to go do the big thing? Who do you seek out examples from? Who do you run by scenarios with? All those things that certain people can be your, so your sounding board before you have to actually go make a presentation to the real board.

Right. So it's helpful. It's helpful in lots of different ways.

I think it's good to have it as part of a more steady routine. You might see your board four times a year, right? Quarterly, or it might see them once a month. It might even be more often, but like your advisory board is like having everybody at your fingertips to, so to speak.

And, you know, I think back to a famous quote with Henry Ford, and I think I've used this one in previous podcasts, but, you know, they're trying to grill him and make sure that he was, he was as smart as he thought he was, or everybody thought he was. And they kept asking him questions he didn't know the answer to. He finally got fed up and he said, listen, at the press of any one of these buttons, I have the answer to anything I could ever possibly want to know.

I have somebody in this building who can tell me the answer to any of these problems. Right. It's a waste of my time to know the answer to them because I have good people.

And so that's obviously an extreme, but the idea that like, we can press a button, we've got a pretty powerful button in our hand, that we can get ahold of folks and be like, hey, you know, what do you think I should do? And I think it's so important that everybody seek this out. If you don't already have your own personal advisory board, definitely as a school leader, you should have one. So who are some people that you can consider for your personal advisory board? Like who have you picked in your past or that you currently talk to? Well, I think obviously you have folks who have been in your position either ahead of you or behind you.

I think it's, without going off on a tangent, I think it's so important that you, you have mentors that you follow and then you also are mentoring other people because as you talk to other folks, you kind of solidify the important things for yourself as well. So it's good to have people above and below you in your position on both sides. And so in this case, we're talking about schools.

So, you know, former principals would be big, somebody who would be ahead of them, somebody who was maybe in the archdiocesan office sometime, maybe somebody who was at a university level had to deal with like not just 20 employees, but 300 or 5,000 employees, somebody who has perspective that can offer you that. We often get pulled in as tech directors. Oh, yes, for sure.

To sit in there and have a discussion about policy and things. And because we've both been administrators before, it's easy for us to listen and then offer advice. But that's kind of what they've reached out to us for, right? It's not just which gadget should we buy? It's a bigger thing.

For sure. And as you go down the list, you think about, well, maybe our problem is enrollment. So let me talk to somebody who's in marketing or let me talk to somebody who else has done enrollment before.

Maybe somebody who's retired in your school. You're going to have alumni. You're going to have people that care for this place who you may not want to have an official record, but that you really want to be able to reach out to them.

I can think of another story of being on a board or I was a fly on the wall for somebody else's board. I was an employee and therefore not on the board. But we're sitting in there and the meeting has got some pretty big decisions to be made and there's a very contentious thing happening.

And there's a handful of people that are really opposing the idea and really challenging the director on the ideas being put forth. And afterwards, or the next day, we're all sitting around the office and the director says, man, that person was just really, really giving it to us. It's so important that you have them, but man, sometimes it hurts.

But it's true. You need the naysayers, people who are going to challenge you. You don't want a bunch of yes people because that's just not going to help.

But if they can be critical and you know that you can turn to somebody when you need that criticism, especially with an idea, you're like, please poke holes in this. I think you need a little bit of all of that. Oh, yeah.

Totally agree with you where sometimes it's just, it's nice to hear when people do agree with you and you're like, oh, that's a great idea. Let's do that. But it's pretty important to hear from people who say, hey, is that really going to work? And that's true with even with our tech group.

We're like, hey, that's a great idea. Let's set up this event. And sometimes I'm the one who goes, I don't know if anyone's going to attend it or, you know, that's not something that teachers have time for.

So I think that perspective is important as well. I know it's like hard to hear sometimes where you might have a great idea and we're all excited, but there's someone goes, hey, but have you thought of this? It could be too expensive. It might be beyond the reach of some schools.

So that's pretty important to have someone that will tell you the truth. I think it's important to have as many people in this role as possible because some days you do want the friend who's going to be like, you're amazing. You're so awesome.

Everything you do is wonderful. And you're like, yes, I just need that person today. And so you can give them a call or go have a cup of coffee with them and just, you know, have that conversation.

You feel like, okay, let's reset. Other days you're going to need the person who's going to poke holes in whatever it is because you want to be ready for a big presentation or something. So I think it's important to have a variety of people.

I know in my own life, you know, I have friends who I talked to about business. I have friends who I talked to about being a parent. I have friends who I talked about my spiritual life and my being the best person I can be.

So like every little piece of your life, there can be somebody that can be an expert in that and can feed that part that you're needing and be that voice. And there's obviously lots of different ways you can go about that, but it's just wonderful to be able to put together that kind of team and without having to be like another meeting, right? You're excited. I know what you mean.

You're excited to go have coffee with your best friend who can tell you like, hey, you're doing a great job or maybe they're the person who challenges you all the time. But like you look forward to that much more than you would like, oh, I have to go present to the board next week about our financial status. Not really excited about that one.

But keep in mind, like a personal advisory team, it's not preventing, but the main thing is to get the ideas out there and get ideas. I would say it's so easy for us to fall into bad habits and complain about, oh, you know, this is what's happening for me and a lot of that. But treat it as a positive experience and to build the relationship itself so that it's positive and that you're moving forward with things that are happening at school, you know, whether it's your personal life, whether it's your relationships with the school families or teachers.

So definitely use this as a tool or a way to take care of yourself. I know the previous episode, we're talking about burnout. And I don't know if we mentioned, build a personal team.

These are things where you're not like holding all the responsibility and burden. It's so true. Yeah.

I think it's good to vent and get that off your chest sometime. But what you have to do is you have one person on your team who can take the venting and who's just like, yes, lay it on me. Then you schedule immediately afterwards, the person who you can say, let's talk about dreams, right? Because you need to shift that mentality away from the negative.

It's so easy to get stuck in that negative cycle and you feel like you're never going to get anywhere. But if you have a team of like 15 people, one of them is is that person who can take your venting and the other 14 are about being awesome. Like you're only going to get positive results from that.

It's so important. We're not talking about hours and hours. You're talking about 5, 10, 15 minutes with somebody, maybe a lunch.

Sometimes even just a text from that person is all you're going to need to get you back on track or to just to throw out an idea. I do it all the time. I've hit up my mentors.

Here's my crazy idea. What do you think? I just, I took out one of my business friends the other night and I was like, here's a crazy idea I got. And he poked holes, so many holes in it so quickly.

And I was like, okay, I'm glad I talked to you before. I wouldn't spend a bunch of money on that. Oh, yeah.

And your time too. Exactly. So how did you start building your team? You might already have one and you don't even realize it, but like how did you start? I would say that initially you can probably think of like two or three people right off the bat.

You're like, these are people I talk to, I trust. But I think what makes it more valuable is if you can look at it and say, you know, what role does that particular person play in this? And like, where do I need it? And I think it grows from there because you might come up with a situation. You're like, man, I really just don't know how to handle this parent situation.

Or I really don't know, understand how we're going to deal with this enrollment thing. And you can find somebody who fits that bill. And that's, that's the next person on your list.

And sometimes it's just a, let's have a conversation, a little quick conversation. Let's see if this works. Right.

You share your idea or your problem and maybe you feel better about that. And then you're like, yeah, I'm going to call them again. Or maybe not.

I mean, once again, this isn't formal. This is about putting together a short list of people that you feel you can call. They may not even know that each other exists.

They might not even be in the same zip code, same time zone, but you're just, you're finding that when you have a need, you can put somebody in that. So you take those first two, three people kind of give them, give them a role. Are they the person who peps you up? Are they the person who's got the experience? Are they the person who you want to unload on? And they, they're really good at like taking that and not feeling like it's a burden to them.

Are they somebody who knows your situation or the school that you're in? So you can talk about historical stuff and kind of really get into the nitty gritty. I think it's important to kind of give everybody a job, whether or not you tell them that that's their job. Yeah.

I think the most important thing is you don't need to make it official. Like, Hey, you're on my personal advisory board or you're my team, but just to get started, I think it's important to just know that you yourself need to build that and that you have that support system. So I was wondering, do you, do these members of your team, do they meet together or how does this work? Yeah, typically, I mean, at least for my, in my world, most of them are not related.

And so it'd be an awkward situation to try to bring them together. Although if I was doing something monumental, I might invite everybody out to a, you know, a meal and be like, here's my pitch. It's great networking opportunity for folks too.

Most of the time though, it's a one-on-one thing for me and whether it be in person or via text or email, zoom, whatever it might be, you know, it's going to be a quick kind of thing. And once we've built that rapport or that style of question and answer discussion, whatever, if it's not already natural, I mean, it's, I can think of the first time I took one of my mentors out for like coffee. It's like, this feels weird.

But you know, now it's commonplace. And then whether we spend 15 minutes or we spend an hour, you kind of got that rhythm down. You kind of get out the, how's everything going? How's life? How's your family? And then you can kind of get into like, here's my thing.

And you kind of get that flow down. So that's pretty much how it, how it happens, but it's not, it's not necessarily a big group. Yeah.

I think the most important thing is to just stay on track, communicate. It doesn't need to be frequently, but just make sure that you do check-ins once a month, whatever you feel like. Just don't call on that person just because you have problems, I would say.

Oh yeah. Yeah. You got to reciprocate too.

I mean, you, part of that conversation needs to be you listening as much as you venting or you sharing ideas. I think the best times are usually when, like anything, our tech groups, our professional development opportunities, anytime that we get a bunch of us together and you're talking about things, the best thing is what you're hearing what other people are doing. It's not, you're not talking about yourself, right? You're listening.

Oh, absolutely. You got to be the listener on the side too. So, I mean, that's, that's why when you're, you're building in that time, sometimes people know this is the purpose of our meeting.

That's why it can be 15 minutes. Other times it's like, Hey, I haven't seen you in a while. Let's catch up first.

But then there's gotta be an ebb and flow and not just constantly being the one who's asking. Oh yeah. And we're so lucky that we live in a time that there's so many different ways we can communicate.

You can always just drop a quick text, give someone a call, right? Meet up with the person, take a walk, have coffee, have lunch. Yeah. There's just so many ways and it just depends on the person's availability and don't feel like they have to be living next door.

They could be across the country, different state and, you know, have those people on your team. And something to keep in mind is that it doesn't have to be your best friend. It could be someone new that you just met that has like a different perspective.

And what's cool is that we've been doing a little bit of traveling and meeting new people. You know, sometimes you could just meet someone and just say, Hey, I'd like to run an idea by you. How do you do at your school? Yeah.

I think a couple of things there. One, I can't think of the artist names. Her name is, first name's Rebecca.

She has a song called Grace and the line is being able to tell the truth to a stranger, right? Oftentimes we have. It's so easy. She has a better way of saying it, of course.

I mean, beautiful song, beautiful artist. Maybe I'll find that and put it in the show notes. But just the idea that sometimes we're able to be completely honest with somebody who's not necessarily our best friend or is not attached to a situation.

So I think that's so valuable. So what do you think our listeners should start doing right now? Well, number one, I think you should get out your notebook, write down the three or four names of the people that you regularly call. And I would say, give them a job, if you will, in your mind.

I would also then take a problem that you have and think about who could you use in that situation. I shouldn't say the word use, but what kind of help could you use? Not that you're using the person, but the help that you need. And I think that you want to find right now, find somebody to talk to even for 15 minutes who you think might be able to help you.

And if your list is all a bunch of friends, going back to the kind of folks that we're talking about, it's good to have somebody inside, somebody outside, people above you, people below you, people who've done this in the past, people who might be just starting out because fresh perspectives and somebody who's outside of education altogether, I mean, is so valuable. Because oftentimes, you know, you'll share a story and they'll be like, if that happened at my job, this is how it would happen. You're like, oh yeah, that's kind of basic.

So like, yeah, outside perspective, the world is ending in our minds. And for somebody else, it's like, that's Thursday. So I think that's huge.

And I'm sorry to go off topic here, but just made me think again, thinking about when we're reciprocating, you know, one of the things I've, I've really found actually makes me feel a whole lot better. And I know that helps the person out too, is like, anytime that you think of somebody, for whatever reason, you hear a song on the radio, you have an idea, reminds you of a time in the past, whatever, anytime you think of somebody, send them the one sentence, just heard that song again, just thinking about you or, hey, we're at that fundraiser again this year. Remember how much fun we had last year.

Just want to say hello. Hope you're well. That is so, so valuable for the other person.

They feel amazing. But for yourself, you feel good. Like you feel good because you're, obviously you're sharing joy with somebody else, but you're, you're also acknowledging, you know, happier times.

So it's such a good thing. So as a part of this, as you're building your list, let people know how much you appreciate them. Not just you're writing their names on a Oh yeah, for sure.

Just to get a text from someone you haven't heard from in a long time, you know, just go, Oh, that's so funny. I was just thinking about you too. Or I was just about to text you off.

So isn't that crazy how the world works? Oh my gosh, that happened to me twice this week, where I was literally like, I really need to talk to that person. And then they sent me a text message. And I've known, I've told this one person how many times that's happened.

And he's probably like, yeah, whatever. You're just trying to be salesy or whatever. But I'm like, seriously, you sent me a text two minutes before I was sending you one.

So yeah, I think it's important that you build a personal team. If you are a head of a school, you are like the head of a little corporation with 20 employees and 300 constituents and you know, all of the finances and all of the chaos of managing a place. You can't expect to do it by yourself.

I know a lot people want to puff themselves up as like, I'm this all pro, but you're not pro because of the people that you put around you. So build a good team. Definitely.

So as we wrap up here, what would you say? I gave my couple ideas. What do you think folks should do? Same as you just start with three or four people who you might already know that's in your circle, or they might be someone you just met. Just reach out.

That's the most important thing. It's just reach out. Happy Friday.

I was just thinking about you or whatever event you met them from, or take a walk with a friend. Do a quick check-in. You never know.

And just like when we take walks, random conversations happen and all of a sudden inspired ideas. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's why I'd say like as a final thought, I would challenge, you know, everybody listening, go add somebody to your team that is not part of the regular circle.

Go meet somebody new, whatever it is, reach out to a distant connection, whatever. But like, I challenge you to add somebody and have that conversation and just see where it goes because more often than not, it's like thinking back to like playing music or playing in a sport. You can practice, practice, practice.

And then at some point you're just burnt out. You put the thing down or you stop playing for a couple of days and you come back to it. All of a sudden you can play the thing, right? So it's just like, sometimes you need to have a different conversation.

You need to have a different experience and things start to get clear. So I challenge everybody to go, go put somebody new on your team, go make a connection, even just to chat with somebody, somebody new. Oh yes.

And this goes back to like one of our last episodes on like building community. It's like reach out to somebody. You never know when everything's humming, moving along, all of a sudden crisis happens and you're like, I don't have anyone.

Who can I ask? Yeah. To even brainstorm, pitch the idea. And I think one thing, especially in the school environment, it's so easy for us to keep doing the same thing over and over every year.

Like, Oh, in August, this is what we do. We have that same fundraiser every single year during March or April or December. But just to think beyond what you always do, keep it fresh.

I hate to say nothing worse than being stagnant and just. Yeah. Keep it interesting for yourself, right? Right.

And you and I have been doing this a long time. I think this is like my 24th year with the Archdiocese. It's been a long time.

Like how do you keep it fresh, right? Yeah. Well, that's the thing is, it's the new challenges, it's the new people, it's the team that you build. I mean, we should all be getting better.

We've talked about this before too. If our entire career is a hundred percent, right, we should be getting at least 1% better every year. Right.

Right. Yeah. And I think about that.

It seems simple. I mean, maybe a typical, there's a great book by Warren Buffett's son, Howard Buffett called 40 Harvests. I want to say it's 40 Harvests.

Basically the life of a farmer, you have 40 chances to reap the benefit of your farm. And so it's a metaphor for everything else. We pretty much have 40 chances, right? That's typical career.

And for most of us, if you're an administrator, you've already put in a good 20 something, right? If not more. So you're, because you're at the top, you're probably, you're using a lot of experience, taking a lot of that experience. Let's make them better than, better than yesterday, better than last year, better than the last decade.

Like, let's just keep getting better. 1%, maybe 5%. I don't know.

But you know, building your team is only going to make it better. Well, thank you. That's some good advice.

I'm going to start building my team today. Hopefully I'm on it. I was about to say, you're my first, you're my first person on my team.

Well, that's great. I know I tapped in. We became friends 10 plus years ago and you've been helping me out along the way.

So I can say publicly in front of everybody. Thank you, Becky Wong. Oh, thank you, Thomas.

Same here. Well, another great show. We mentioned lots of episodes, the community engagement we just talked about, you know, reaching out to your community and finding folks in your neighborhood.

Perhaps they might be part of this advisory team, but also check out the episode on what makes your school different. Because I think having different ideas and trying different things and not just following the Joneses, you can end up being a better version of yourself, 1% better, if not more, and you've built something really cool. So that'd be another great episode and check out the show notes.

We're going to have our list of how we would go about doing this in building your own advisory team. So that's it. Thanks again for joining me, Becky.

Always fun. Oh, yes. Talk to you on the next episode.

See you next time.