Trusted with Jen Schwanke
Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in everyone. You are listening to the Authority Podcast here on the BE Podcast Network. Thanks as always for being with us, and it's a pleasure today to have a return guest, Dr. Jen Schwanke. Jen has been an educator for almost three decades teaching or leading at all levels. She currently serves as deputy superintendent in a district in Ohio, and she is co-host of the Popular Principal Matters podcast, along with our recent guest, Dr. Will Parker, who you heard here recently, and she's an instructor in educational administration at the Ohio State University. She was previously here on the show to discuss her book, the Principal's Guide to Conflict Management, and today we are talking about her fifth book, [00:01:00] all published with A SCD. This book is called Trusted Trust Pillars, trust Killers, and The Secret to Successful Schools. Jen, welcome back to the show.
Thank you so much. It's always an honor and great to connect again with you, Ross. We've known each other, I mean, coming up on 10 years now because you and I worked together on my first book and so we keep our paths keep crossing. You can't shake me. Poor guy.
Yes. Well, I don't wanna
shake ya.
Jen Schwanke: Good.
Ross Romano: but what, maybe I'll shake some answers outta
you We'll do that.
Jen Schwanke: Perfect.
Ross Romano: What I was thinking as I was reading about this book and thinking back to our previous conversation, is I love how specific the books are as far as the topics and really zeroing in on a particular topic of important school leaders, which is easier said than done, I think with the number of different books that are out there to, probably have the. Confidence to just focus on the one thing and there will be other books for other topics. Right?
And, but as you start to write about one thing, you think, [00:02:00] oh, but there's there's a
million different things that all matter.
Jen Schwanke: Exactly.
Ross Romano: I'm just interested in how did you decide on this particular topic to focus your book on?
Jen Schwanke: Well, you're exactly right. There's so many things that we can write about and there's a lot of people writing some really fantastic content out there. This one came to me actually as a kind of a sister project to my dissertation. I when I was doing my research, I kind of conned my university, the Ohio State University advisor into letting me do kind of a dual study of current educational leadership in terms of you know, administration, but then also a historical view of it too.
And so, oh boy, Ross, I went down the rabbit hole and I studied the history of education in the United States, and I started in 1604 and I went forward from there. And what I found the most striking part about it is I. The there's a direct correlation between [00:03:00] a society's stability and how it treats its educators.
There's a real truth to the idea that society reflects her ills or her cultural needs, her norms, her functions on its schools. And so, just as an example, when a country goes to war. And it's 1940 and enrollment's going to nose dive because soldiers are gonna go off to fight. And so that changes what the women have to do and how mothers are supporting their children.
And whenever things get really hard, people look to the next generation to fix it. Like not to do the work of fixing it, but to be prepared to fix it. And so that just was a huge moment for me because I thought we right now as a society are kind of flailing around, right? There's not a lot of understanding shared purpose.
There's not a lot of trust. And so guess what? There's not a lot of trust in schools either. So we hear teachers saying [00:04:00] we're not trusted. We hear teachers saying, I don't trust my administrator. We hear administrators saying, I don't trust my teachers or my community. And kids are saying we don't trust each other.
So. Then I started thinking about trust and what we mean when we say that. And it's kind of like love, right? We know what it feels like, but we have no idea how to describe it. And I thought, we all actually walk around the world knowing what it's like to be trustworthy, but we don't talk enough about being trust willing.
And so that was kind of the premise of the book. I wanted to do a really deep dive for people into the way our schools have been framed by what's happening outside of the school walls. And then also talk about what it means to be a trusted leader.
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Ross Romano: It's really timely for me personally as I hear you talking about that. 'cause I was a guest on a. Podcast just recently and was asked a question I wasn't really expecting which was if I had a magic wand and I could [00:05:00] change anything about you know, the education system and education in the country, what would it be?
Or I guess change anything about schools. And I'd said kind of the easy answer and a perfectly good answer that would cover a lot was unlimited resources, right? If there
was enough money to do anything that they wanted to do, that every school could have the same access to resources, educators could be compensated, and so on and so forth.
I said like, the answer that's a little bit harder and more intangible would be around public opinion, perception and attitudes and, and I was having a hard time, like really feeling like I was properly articulating what I was trying to say. Right. And I landed eventually on.
It's just more about how people treat each other and behave toward each other and the you know, mutual respect and the benefit of the doubt and just the belief in other's positive intentions. [00:06:00] Right. And I feel like that is present in so many aspects of society,
Right.
Whether it's in schools, in youth sports, in communities, in, in all kinds of places.
Right. But I didn't answer it well in that moment, but as I'm hearing you talk about the trust factor it's such a part of that. It's the willingness. To trust others, to earn trust in return, to understand why that's important and why that should be an objective. Right. That getting to the place of being able to have mutual trust is a good goal to have.
'cause it almost seems like there's so many people that they want to be trusted themselves, but it's almost their goal to never trust
anybody or anything else. right. And and you can certainly imagine and experience how that infects environments that are based on the [00:07:00] transmission of knowledge, the the educational process.
That if there's an
attitude that is almost idealizing mistrust,
that it's pretty hard to do
much there.
Jen Schwanke: Well before this became a book, it was an idea that I wanted to call no more us versus them. And you know, most of my work is with principals and supporting principals. And what I wanted to do was talk about this us versus them, the principals versus the teacher. And that was a seed that was planted with me.
Gosh, whatever it was, 20 years ago when I first became an administrator, I had been through this graduate program and that was the content of the program. It was those teachers aren't gonna like you, they're gonna lie to you. They got a union, they're coming after you. And it was, and you know, I spent hours in class with.
Teachers who wanted to be principals, they were in the program complaining about their principals. So it was like this weird swamp of negativity, but everybody thought they were gonna be different. [00:08:00] And so I started to think about that and I thought about how we can't just march into a building and say, okay, you need, I'm the boss, so you need to trust me.
Right. It's like respect or love or comradery or any one, any number of those things that connect us to other people. And I thought about many principals feel that they need to be the boss. And in that sense, they're not trust willing because they take on too much, they don't delegate. So when I talk with people about, who are struggling with trusting relationships with the people they work with, I will ask them, do you believe in your people?
Do you believe they can do this without you? What I'm getting at there is are you micromanaging? Are you being over overly critical? Are you highlighting people for their strengths? Are you not setting them up to do things that they can't do well and you know it, but still you have them do it and then they fail, and then you're like, see, I can't trust anybody.
So [00:09:00] we really have to, as leaders say I have to trust other people. It's incredibly arrogant and condescending to think I'm the only person that can do this work. I'm the only person that can write an email. I'm the only person that can supervise a fire drill. I'm the only person that can sit in this IEP with this parent whatever it is, because that's so demoralizing for.
You know, the staff of people who are like, I actually trained in this. I could do it. So that's just one component of being trust, willing. But that was the intent is to say, okay, what's going on in our society is hard. And it does mean that there is a lack of trust with our schools. But when you think about the areas that you can control or influence, it's probably your school.
And so work on that. Go there, that's where you might, you'll make a difference.
Ross Romano: What's the difference between being genuinely trusting and perhaps between being a. Overextended or [00:10:00] lazy
or over eager to delegate. Right. You know what I mean? There's trust and then there's giving people autonomy maybe over their jobs, but maybe in such a way that's not a true demonstration of trust.
And certainly it could happen in the case of there's too much to do and so I have no choice. Right. And it, maybe it's somebody who is, who might have a tendency toward micromanagement or may have certain people that they haven't necessarily taken the time to fully you know, define what their trust is in that person and have communication about it and develop it.
But they have to hand things over to them and let them do the job. But there could be, I would assume some things that undercut that from becoming. As productive, a trusting relationship as it could be.
Jen Schwanke: Right. Well, I think there needs to be a distinction made here in this moment between trust and workload. Those are two very different things. Or trust and output, for example. Trust is a mindset [00:11:00] and it is the bigger umbrella, and I could have called the book this instead, the bigger umbrella is collective efficacy.
And I talk a lot about this. There's just indisputable research about how if schools believe that they are better when they all work together, if they truly believe that they can make a difference for kids, then they do. And you know, when I work with principal groups, I say, you guys, this isn't.
No vendor is gonna come and sell you collective efficacy. There is not a workbook, there is not software, there isn't a program, there's not a curriculum. 'cause it's just a belief. It's not even something you can touch. And that really is the root of trust. And it's not just saying the principal's gonna trust the teachers to do stuff.
That's not it. The principal's gonna trust that. They have a staff of professionals that don't need micromanaged and don't need criticized. They want supported and they want training that is relevant and they want to, be seen as the professionals that they are. [00:12:00] But then there's the other side too, right?
That those teachers or the staff or whatever they need to be able to say, okay, my principal I believe that they will do the hard things. They'll pick up the broom, they'll call the they'll make the tough conversation, make that call. They're not going to call off every Friday and then complain when every, when teachers call off every Friday.
You know, it has to be that mutual respect and again, that belief that we all gotta pitch in and stir the soup here or it's not gonna get done.
Ross Romano: Yeah. What about the all the different. Constituencies
you know, with whom a, a school leader needs to have a trusting relationship. So we've talked about staff and faculty, but there's students, there's parents we've talked a little bit about parents, but we haven't talked that much about students.
But I think what the trust is different between them. Certainly as far as what it looks like to have that reciprocal nature of trust and how to develop that. You know, are there certain things to sort of [00:13:00] indicate or highlight in the relationships to those different groups?
Jen Schwanke: Well, absolutely, and I'm glad you asked that. And at the time of rec. According this, the book is still on pre-order, so I know you don't have it. So this question is like, you're throwing me a softball because there are actually chapters in this book for all of those. Not every constituency, but I talk about trust with teachers, which is really the most common and easy conversation to have on a podcast.
But I also talk about trust with parents and trust with students. And then I have a chapter in there about self-trust too, because that's a big component for to be confident as a leader. But to answer your question when we think about, for example, students and well, wait, no, let me back up.
Let me go with parents. I talk in this book about the historical trajectory of what principals and schools are responsible for. And parents don't know that trajectory because all they know is this moment with their children and they have [00:14:00] memories of when they were in school, but they don't know, for example, that it, when schools were first first came into existence, really the goal was to teach white boys a little bit about reading and a little bit about math, and that was it.
But every. Decade more things were added to the plate. More responsibilities, more asks of schools. And in the two thousands, I mean, it just exploded. Things that schools had never had to think about before. Internet usage, cybersecurity, college and career readiness, media literacy health and wellness, stem, common core credit recovery.
I mean, the list goes on and on. And then we have for the first time, well, not for the first time, but a significant reach of the Supreme Court and district courts and local courts about what schools were by golly, gonna do. Parents read the news, and a lot of the microscope is on schools.
And so [00:15:00] there's the principal going to work trying to do their best. And thinking, I got, I have all these bosses. I have the kids who are watching everything I do and going home and telling mom and dad if anything goes wrong. And then I get a phone call. I have parents listening to children or listening to Facebook about what's going on in my school, and they're coming at me.
Then I have teachers who are overextended and exhausted coming at me like, this is not what I thought it was. And so there are tools though, there are strategies that I think principals school leaders, teachers can do to ensure that in their little world, trust is a priority. So send the newsletter once a week.
And say exactly what's going on in the classroom. If a parent has a concern or a question, reach out to them. Have the dialogue. Do what you say what you're gonna do, all of those things. But also we need to stop as school leaders, as teachers, as educators, we need to [00:16:00] stop assuming that parents aren't doing their best.
I think parents are doing their best, and that's the trust willing part too, right? I've heard a lot of educators say oh, well, I just, there's no support at home. Well, does that mean we write off the situation or does that mean we take what the parent can give and build from there? So it's complex and it's always changing and every family's story is different.
But that doesn't mean we just say, oh, that's a terrible parent. And look, now we have this kid who's trouble and bemoan that for the rest of the year.
Ross Romano: Yeah, so I. You can add some color or some nuance to this. I feel like we've maybe established that the default setting is that there's not necessarily a default toward trust. And, but, and you know, in a sense it makes sense, right? And I think I talked about the instinct that seems to be more prevalent of kind of a resistance [00:17:00] to it, which maybe is more of a, an somewhat of a newer trend.
I don't know what new means, but,
you know, maybe it's not the historical norm. But also. I can it would be hypocritical of me to say, I just automatically walk into any place and say, okay
I trust you all until you prove that you don't deserve it. And on one sense, it's like, I would love nothing more.
I really want nothing more than people around me, people in leadership who I fully believe that I can trust. And I want nothing more than for others to feel the same about me. But I also know that I've been in plenty of situations where that trust was not earned or or it was broken at a point when I felt like I could trust someone.
So it's not like you just, it shouldn't be naive. It
needs to be a real thing. But I guess let's start with what are some of the pieces maybe that. Make that maybe whatever [00:18:00] the default is that make it the rightful default, what are some of the things that make it a challenge to get to that point?
But that they're the important starting point for establishing trust as the leader, understanding what you know. And I think we all, again, no matter what field we're in, can have a blind spot around almost erasing some certain parts of our brain once we shift roles. Right? Like
if you were a teacher for a lot of years and had. One or multiple school leaders and you had experiences with them and maybe there were certain things that you were skeptical of and that you may move into administration and automatically think everybody should trust you, right? And not
remember well how did I feel when a new person came into the role and what was I skeptical of and what were the things that needed to be demonstrated to me, right? But it's a good thing to think about because it's, okay here's what I need to focus on, [00:19:00] communicate about, et cetera. But I'll let you unpack that. If you can even
follow what I'm talking about here and you say.
Jen Schwanke: right. No I think that unpack is the right word because there's a lot there to think about. And you asked at, you said what about some of the. These are my words, not yours, but what are some of the barriers to this whole? I trust you, you trust me thing. And there's multiple barriers.
There's we all come with our stories. We all come with our history. We all come with a memory of our elementary school principal or the time that you know, in high school that we got in trouble for something we didn't do, or all of those feelings that we carry about our own school experience.
And then we also you know, when we look at a an entire staff, there's going to be a small percentage who just don't like you because you're the boss, period. I always this is completely unscientific and not research, but I always say there's a 25, 50, 25 rule, and that is 25% of the people are gonna like you and trust you because you are the one with the master key.
There's [00:20:00] 25% of the people who are can't stand you because of that. And then there's 50% in the middle who are gonna kind of go back and forth and they're gonna like some things and they're gonna not like some other things. So, what do you do with the people who, no matter how hard you try, are not gonna be trust, willing nor trustworthy?
And I always say, well, you trust around them just like you lead around them. You can't pour 99% of your energy into one or two people. You have to build the this collective efficacy. Around the people who will and can and want to join the team, so to speak. And there's a million reasons or ways that people can kind of get off track.
It's not like you're ever gonna get an entire staff to say, I love this work. I love this school, I love every student. I love my principal. But there's a lot of ways that we can model how much we value trust and how willing we are to make it a cornerstone of our schools. And we have to talk [00:21:00] about social media because we have to.
It's in our faces and we can't talk about trust unless we talk about some of the ways that it erodes. And when anyone can be a keyboard warrior and go on Facebook and say something about a teacher or a principal or their kids' experience, that erodes trust. It's not real. And by that I mean there's not a human interaction or a human relationship there that failed.
And so we can do one of two things. We can ignore it or complain about it, or we can take control of the narrative and we can say, okay, social media, we're not gonna beat it back. So let's join it, so to speak. Let's make a private Facebook page with our community a private group that they can ask questions and we can give answers.
We can train our community that this Facebook page or the website or whatever tool you use, that's the source of truth. So all the rest is [00:22:00] noise, but we recognize the noise is serving a purpose. So we're gonna make, create our own noise, and it's gonna be true, timely. On point. And we are going to train our community to say as they're in, at, sitting at the pool or they're running into each other at the grocery store over the avocados.
Well, you better check. Have you checked the website? Have you checked? We want that to be the narrative. So I've answered questions you didn't ask there, Ross but what you're really asking is how there's, it's so complex and there's so many components and how in the world can we be seen as trustworthy and trust willing?
And I think that's, those are just some examples and there's tons more in the book, of course.
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Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I am, I feel like the, a really strong foundation of trust is something that really facilitates to. People's willingness to kinda want to go along with a leader and buy in is like, do I trust [00:23:00] that I am better off because this person is in that role? Right.
And which is, it means, I mean, it means a specific thing, right?
Because it can't be they're a pushover. They just let me get away with things and I'm happy that I can just kind of get, because then eventually that pretty quickly turns into, well, if it's that easy, I should have that job.
Jen Schwanke: right, right.
Ross Romano: And it can't be that this person's so beaten down and
abused that I'm just like, well, I'm glad that's not me, because that's discouraging.
It has to be. I am better because of the leader we have here.
Our organization is better, right? It's better run. I have opportunities to develop. Right? It's like it's because, and I can see that, and I know that's beneficial to me. I know it's beneficial to the students, to my colleagues, and I can clearly see the value add of [00:24:00] having that principle in this case.
Right? Because I think there are cases I've had conversations about this sometimes on on this show I think I've had it explicitly one or two times with guess of basically what's, which is better, like having a bad principle or none at all.
Jen Schwanke: Right.
Ross Romano: took the person out of the
building and just said, just run it yourselves.
Right? Would that maybe be better than having somebody who. Not doing a good job in the role.
Not, and certainly these components, right? Not
engendering trust may be causing mistrust, contributing to a negative culture. Yes, having a really good leader is the best thing, but like, at what point good, average, like not so good, really bad.
At what point does it become a real negative.
Jen Schwanke: Well, I think that's it. It's absolutely happens. And a bad leader, I believe, can cause more damage than no leader, if you want it, my frank opinion, because a bad leader who fosters [00:25:00] mistrust or distrust creates factions so to speak, or cliques who then turn on each other and then it becomes a like survivor.
And it can take decades to recover from a really bad principle, but one. One of the things that I think is I don't want anyone to listen to this podcast and think, man, Jen Wanky is delusional. It's much harder than she's making it out to be. I know how hard it is. I think it takes years. I think people who principal hop never really get to that place where, or excuse me, where they building hop or they change jobs too quickly.
Or if it's a district that believes in moving leaders around all the time, I think that's exceedingly disruptive. And you schools like that never get their footing. They never get that feeling where I trust my principal. I really didn't agree with that decision they made, but I still trust 'em. I know they, they thought they thought it through and they did their best.
I will never forget, I was presenting to a associate, a principal's association, so this was probably about [00:26:00] five years ago, and a principal came up to me and he said. I feel like I'm failing. I wanted to be everything that my school's previous principal had not been. And so they all told me he didn't communicate well, so I said, I'm gonna communicate well.
He said, so there was an event and it was something like across the street there was a robbery. And so he sh he shut his building down and did the lockdown, did all the things, and then he thought, okay, now I have to communicate. So he wrote something like a 5,000 word summary in an email.
Okay, this is what happened then this is what we did then. Then I talked to the police department, then he went through the whole thing and he felt great about himself. Well, what happened is his staff who had been ter truly scared and truly uncertain about the event, they started second guessing him.
They started ripping the email apart, line by line. They replied to it and said, well, this isn't actually accurate. And some of them said, well, this is a time you should have reached out to us, not afterwards. I mean, he got absolutely obliterated by the [00:27:00] critique of his attempt to be open and transparent.
And so he said, all I'm trying to do is communicate well, and they're all mad at me. And I said, what you've done is you've tried to build trust by over information. What you need to do is build trust with relationships. You need to you know, if there's a robbery across the street, that's not where you build the trust, it's one by one in conversations.
It's by making a safety plan ahead of time. It's by saying, Hey guys, a robbery that wasn't on my list of things we thought would happen today, here's what went well, here's what we're not ever doing again. And you probably do that face to face, not in a in a novel sized email. But he thought over communicating with build trust.
What he found was that isn't the case, and he didn't have the relationships yet in a new school. He was just trying to be what the other guy wasn't. And that isn't solely a way to build trust. So that's a very long story to say that sometimes we think building trust is to do a [00:28:00] thing, and then when we find out that thing isn't the thing, we get really bummed and we feel like we've failed and that isn't the case.
We probably just need to approach it differently or give it more time.
Ross Romano: Yeah, the communication piece is difficult 'cause communication generally very important. But it matters how it's done, the routine of it the the understanding of how information impacts people and how they feel like they have the context or not to interpret that. And it, that it doesn't, that it answers more questions than it creates.
Right.
And when the which can happen with the overcommunication in the case where maybe it's not part of a standard routine or I don't understand the why or the thinking or the or I just. Feel like maybe there's, maybe the information is not telling the whole story, right?
And sometimes the more effort that goes into that it can have the [00:29:00] opposite effect. And it's hard because as the person who's doing it for the right reason, you have to not, you have to view it through the lens of the others, right. And not
how it's affecting you and be able to adapt when it doesn't go well.
Understand why, but and something that's really said, you don't wanna sound delusional. I mean, something that's really challenging about all of this, I feel is you certainly build up equity in the process of having earned and and developed trust over time, however. It can be the case that when we look at trust killers, right, things that break
trust that you know, I feel like a lot of times the contrast with expectations can have the biggest impact.
In other words, when somebody who you feel like you do and can trust does something that breaks your trust, it can be more, irredeemable than [00:30:00] somebody that you haven't made up your mind about
yet. And they do the same thing, but then they rectify it later. Or you know, somebody you don't feel like you trust does something that really like,
Jen Schwanke: right.
Ross Romano: you know, and now you're like, Ooh, I really trust this person, even though they didn't have a track record before that it can happen.
And that's the challenge of once you've earned it once, you have to really maintain that and stick with it. And it doesn't mean, again, that everybody's always gonna agree with everything you do, but you have to maintain that consistency and that conscientious approach and that attentiveness to it. And, which I think that's the authenticity, right? It shows that the objective of earning trust wasn't to. Fool
people into stop paying attention, okay? They all trust me. Now I can do what I really wanted to
do. Like you, you have to really stick with it. But it can be a challenge because everybody makes mistakes, right? And and there can be things that challenge that trust [00:31:00] level that are perfectly understandable, but that makes it that much harder when you know, you've put the work into it.
Jen Schwanke: Right, right. Well, exactly. And why does this matter? Let's talk about that for a minute. Why it matters is research has shown that a trusting relationship between principals and teachers has a positive impact on students. It has a positive impact on parents. I mean, literally academic growth is higher when teachers say they like their principal.
Okay. So we have to prioritize this. I think some of the mistakes that, that people make principals make is they want it to be instantaneous. They think I'm a good person, I should be trusted. But little things can break that trust to your point. I think about my very first year as an assistant principal, I wanted to be a hero, right?
I wanted to be the one that everybody needed and came to. And I remember getting a call and the walkie talkie and there was a student who was really having a very bad, unsafe situation. And so there I am and new and excited and in my [00:32:00] heels and so I start sprinting down the hall 'cause I'm gonna go save the day.
And I run down the hall in my heels and I get to the room and I think we handled the situation and later that afternoon a teacher came to me and she said, you know. When you did that, you scared, it scared all of us. 'cause we heard that da of your heels. We knew there was an issue.
Every kid's looking, wondering who the kid is that needs you to behave that way. And Ross, I was so mad. I was like, you're overly critical. I was going to save the day. It was an emergency. It took me about six months to be like, wow. She was right. She was right. I broke trust that day because there was no need for me to sprint down the hall.
And my heels sounded like a a thoroughbred running on concrete. If I got there one and a half seconds later, it was gonna be okay. But what I did is create a sense of urgency and emergency when it wasn't there. And. All I needed to do was slowly walk, get in the room, bring [00:33:00] my sense of calm, help deescalate the situation, and then go back to my office.
But I didn't, I was like, I'm gonna be Superman. Behaviors like that, I, it broke trust. So I had a choice. Then I could be really mad at this person forever and ever and say they don't get what it's like to be a principal, or I could go back to her. And I did. I said it was months later, and I said, I just want you to know you've really helped me as a leader.
You made me better because I needed some time to think this through, but you were exactly right. And so that's the part of building trust where I think we can go way overboard with the word vulnerable as leaders. I think a lot of times people need us to be strong and and confident, but we also do need to say, Hey, that was a misstep on my part.
I really appreciate you pointing it out. You made me better today. And then we want that to be reciprocal too. We want teachers to say, man, at that staff meeting, the principal said something that really made me a better teacher today. Or you know, my principal [00:34:00] sees me and values me and whenever I do something really amazing, she's gonna take the time or he's gonna take the time to tell me.
So it's that mutual appreciation. It's having a relationship where you can give and take constructive criticism and then that builds. It's just like in a family, it builds when you know you're doing this together for the right reasons.
Ross Romano: How can you find out if you
are trusted?
Jen Schwanke: That's a great question. You know what I'll tell you not to do? I do not make a Google survey and send it out. And here's why. I was talking to a principal who lives on the West Coast, and she was actually, she called me, she was actually crying and she said, my staff hates me. They don't trust me.
And I said wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. How do you know that? And she said, well, I sent out a survey. And I said, well, who wrote the question? She said, I did. I said, who answered it? She goes, well, about 75% of the people. And I they the, I bet I know who it is that's mad at me. She starts to like guess who had said certain things.
She's like, I know it's from, 'cause I told this person no. So she starts like, [00:35:00] deconstructing these questions. Well, they weren't normed, they were written by someone who doesn't know how survey questions should be written. There's there's literally graduate level classes on this. She sent it out and her expectation was, everybody's gonna tell me I'm wonderful.
And they didn't. And she was despondent. I mean, she was so sad. So I said, you don't know. Where this feedback's coming from, you need to figure out if you're trusted by asking some of your, the people that you do trust, right? It's reciprocal and say how are people feeling? What could I be doing differently?
What is it that people aren't telling me? And you talk to people that you trust to be smart and thoughtful and not vindictive to give you that information. You know, there's, every principal knows, there's always the teacher who comes in and says, so I just wanna let you know Morale's just really low right now.
And everybody kind of thinks it no. That's that person who's saying that to you. And so you need to really hone in on that. [00:36:00] Why do you feel that morale is low? What do you feel? Don't talk for everyone else. Tell me what you think. How could I help this situation? Let's talk this through. Do you feel if I had open office hours, people could come and talk to me?
What's the antecedent to this? Like I, I do think that whenever you send out an anonymous survey, that sounds like it's a good way to gather information and I think it's doomed to fail. 'cause you won't know what's at the root of all the answers. I think you've gotta talk to people, you've got to value the voices of people are there to make a difference for kids and wants the collective efficacy to be successful in the school.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to, I mean, it's not worth much if you don't know what to do about it or
why, or if it's authentic, right but certainly it's not whether the results are good or bad if you don't know
why or what to do next, or it's not too helpful.
Jen Schwanke: Well, and I also [00:37:00] think you can there is, as a leader, you cannot please everyone. That is, that should be 1 0 1 in what you learn about when being a leader. So stop trying do the authentic right thing. Explain it if it needs explained and to the right, to the appropriate audience.
And by appropriate, I mean you don't necessarily have to stand up in front of a staff of 200 and say, well, this is why I made this decision about the English department. Right. You go to the English department and you talk about that and you have this sort of communication protocol or systems in place where people can just come and tell you if something doesn't seem to make sense.
It's particularly, it's really hard at big schools because there's so many people with so many opinions. Right. But I think people do appreciate being seen and heard, and they do want to trust their leader and there's a lot of factors to mistrust. But I think, again, through those relationships, the [00:38:00] one-on-ones, the conversations, the, oh, hey, I'm I could have done that better.
I will next time. Those kind of admissions, it can it, it can build certainly,
Ross Romano: Excellent. Lemme ask you a couple quick more before we finish here. Just thinking as you're saying, is there one thing that stands out as it damages trust but leaders might not think about it or realize it or something they think they're trying to do a good thing, but they're sort of chipping away.
Jen Schwanke: Well, I would say the word support as a short answer. I have a very conflicted relationship with that word, because I think a lot of times teachers in particular would say, I just want my principal to support me, but they don't really know what that means. Often they'll, they mean. That I want my principal to agree with me.
And so principals think, okay, I wanna support my teachers. Of course we do. But that doesn't mean that we say to them, you're always right and everyone else is wrong. It means we say okay, how can I help you Call that parent, not I'll do it for you. Or okay, I understand you're struggling with [00:39:00] this kid.
How can we work together to work on these behaviors? It doesn't mean doing the work for them or telling them they're right when they're not. It means working with them alongside them rather than taking the hard work or making sure they feel no matter what they're right. So what I, let me shorten that answer.
If we're supporting teachers in a way that's fast and feels good in the moment, but doesn't make us better long term. That is something that is a mistake, I think because teachers, staff, parents pa parents, students even, they wanna be, be believed in more than they want told you're right all the time.
Ross Romano: I think we talked a lot about how trust is interpersonal how personal is it? Like how, in other words, can there be a number of different styles of earning trust and establishing what trust means in context?
Jen Schwanke: I think the short answer in my experience is absolutely yes. I [00:40:00] think self-trust is an essential foundation for building trust with others. I think we have to have a strong self-belief embrace vulnerability without compromising our authority or our effectiveness. And. I think sharing leadership with others is sharing trust with others, making sure that everyone thinks that they're on the same team.
All of that will lead to a positive impact. And I don't, I actually don't know if I answered your question directly there. But the foundational. Can it be different? That's what you let me answer better. Yes. I think it's very different on, depending on who it is that's leading the building. I, when I first started leading, I thought I needed to be a certain type.
I needed to be a principal with suits. So I went out and bought all thewe. I went to Talbots. I was like, I'm going to be this principal, but I wasn't myself. And I think people sniffed that out and they didn't trust it, right? They, because they're like, well, this woman is posing [00:41:00] as a principal, but she's not really a principal.
As I went throughout my career and I learned who I could be, which was myself, that's when I found my success as a principal. So I think if we're trying to fit. Our ourselves into a mold of what we think a principle should be. It's going to be tricky because people are gonna sniff that out and they're gonna know we're a little bit fraudulent in how we're presenting ourselves.
So my first, the number one tool I think is be authentic. Be who you are. You know, whether that's the way you present yourself or the way you sign off on your emails or if you give a little jig when you're walking off the stage after graduation. You know, just being the human that you are is going to mean that trust looks differently between principals, but it's gonna be more real.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think that's an important point. 'cause everybody may have a certain picture in their head of people that they trust or what they think and or, and it may make certain leaders or [00:42:00] aspiring leaders feel like it's extra difficult because they're thinking, I don't know if I can do this piece.
Or even certain of those relational dynamics that may be a d different folks. It's not. As much of their personality, their strength, but there's different ways, and I mentioned consistency earlier. There's certain factors that are really important, and it's people knowing, like once they understand you and how you operate, knowing what to expect, knowing that you will apply standards fairly right in value. And sometimes that can look like I, I don't know that much about this leader's personal life or whatever, right? I don't know their political views or this, that and the other thing. I don't know if I agree with any of that. It's not part of the equation. I know that they'll follow the rules as laid out.
I know that they'll make decisions based on these [00:43:00] criteria. I know that when something happens, I can trust that they will handle it the way that it. Is handled and should be handled in that. I can agree with that. There's other people who I feel like I know them really well. We get along, they, they
open up, they're more vulnerable.
They have a different style. Right, A different way of, they might be more of the over communicator. Right.
Versus, whereas that first type, if they were to over communicate on something, you might say, where is this coming from? What's going on here with,
Jen Schwanke: right. Right.
Ross Romano: or, and there's other styles as well, but those would be very different types of leaders and people who are used to one or the other might think, I don't know if I can do that
Jen Schwanke: Right, right. But there's foundational things that trust cannot. This is why the trust pillar is part of the book. There are things that if we do them, we're not gonna be trusted. So. The trust pillars that holds it all up. You know, we have to be reliable. We have to be kind, we have to be honest. We have [00:44:00] to be fair, we have to be professional and have an open mindset.
You know, I once did some executive coaching with a principal. Her superintendent required it, and she said, I don't know. You know, people are always they say they don't trust me. They're always just saying that I gossip. And I said, well, do you? And she said, I don't think it's gossip. I mean, yeah.
You know, sometimes people I talk about some other teachers, but I'm my intentions are strong. And I'm like, no they think you're a gossip. They're not gonna trust you if you think they think you're a gossip. So whether you identify it as gossip or they do is kind of irrelevant because the trust isn't there.
So there's certain things we have to do or trust has no chance.
Ross Romano: All right. Let's do one more
question, which is I would think an impediment to really stepping into, to fully embracing the process of earning, establishing, and trusting environment is an imposter syndrome. That, right, [00:45:00] that, that piece of feeling like you don't trust your own qualifications or your worthiness to be trusted. Particularly for a new leader. How can one confront and then work through and overcome that to get to
better?
Jen Schwanke: I, as you mentioned earlier, I teach aspiring principals graduate students and every intro class, that's exactly what they say to me. They say, I don't know if I can do this job. I don't know if people will trust me. I'm kind of. Of it. And so this last semester I was like, you know what? I'm doing something different.
I said, I had, I didn't exercise and I said, tell me when in your professional life you have done something that would make you untrustworthy. And they didn't have an answer. And I said, okay, there you are. You, there's no reason you're making this problem up. You are trustworthy. People do like you, you do want to be an administrator, but you've convinced yourself you can't [00:46:00] be the person you've already proven that you are.
So, honestly, the best way to discard imposter syndrome nonsense is to put it in a box with a lid on it and shove it away. If you are trusting. Trustworthy and trust willing person, yes, there's gonna be some naysayers. You're not gonna win 'em all. But we can't cripple ourselves before we even begin.
We have to say, you know what? I can do this. Many that. Hundreds of thousands of people are doing it right now, and they're very trusted. There are school leaders that are beloved and trusted, and why should I be any different? Why not me? Why can't I crack this code that I think exists out there for building trust?
Of course I can. Of course I can.
Ross Romano: Well listeners, the book Trusted is available from A SCD. We'll put the link below. You can also find Jen's other books there. Four more to be exact. You can hear her on Principle Matters. Is there anyth where in particular you'd like to [00:47:00] direct people to check out?
Jen Schwanke: Yeah, just go to my website. It's jen Schwankecom and there's a lot of information there. And then there's also a form you can fill out that will shoot me an email and we can be in touch. So thank you so much for having me, Ross. It's always so fun to talk to you. I feel like we need about eight more hours,
Ross Romano: Yeah, that's for the book, right?
People, we talked about a lot here, but there's still more there. So go check out the book, read all about it. It is it's a real deep dive on trust, so we trust that you will enjoy it.
Jen Schwanke: Well played. Well
Ross Romano: Go read that and and yeah, if you have not already, please also do subscribe to the Authority for more author interviews coming your way each week.
Thank you all for being with us throughout this journey of 150, 160 plus episodes. We've really been having a lot of success lately, thanks to all of you out there, so I appreciate that. If you're inclined, please give us those five star ratings and reviews on Apple, Spotify, or. Ever you listen. They help [00:48:00] more people find the show, or you can visit bpodcast.network to learn about more shows. Jen, thanks again for being here.
Jen Schwanke: Thanks Ross. Appreciate it.
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