By Kara Mallory

I was twenty-seven when I accepted my first teaching job. Being five years into another career, I was excited to venture into the world of the classroom. I also knew, however, that I had some growth ahead of me. I was like a fragile flower yearning to bloom but nervous about the bad weather I might soon face. Fortunately, a colleague found me and quickly became my “personal gardener.” When I approached her with a desire or a challenge, this master teacher would always respond with four words: “Bloom where you’re planted.” Then, she proceeded to help me do just that. These words became a mantra for me.

Four Ways “Gardener-Leaders” Help Others Grow

At Growing Leaders, one of my favorite Habitudes® is “The Gardeners Job.” A gardener nurtures plants to help them grow. Similarly, great leaders focus on developing their team members. If you are in administration or serving as a leader within your school, I want to challenge you to use these five principles for practical leadership. They will help you become like a gardener for those around you.

1. Use rich soil.

When I was growing up, I vividly remember springtime. My parents would have a truck full of soil dumped onto our driveway. It smelled of manure and earth, but when spread among the many flower beds, it provided all their beautiful flower buds with the nutrients they needed to bloom. Soil that slowly and constantly nourishes its plants provides a strong foundation.

Leaders must cultivate a positive environment for their people. Creating an authentic school culture is vital in fostering a growth mindset for those within your building. A positive school culture fosters academic achievement, personal growth, and well-being for all community members.

2. Prune more often.

Wilted flowers attract unwanted insects, pests, and diseases while wasting energy and sap. Most plants grow better and have more flowers if their wilted and faded blooms are pruned often. A great gardener knows that whenever they see the flowers, it is time to remove them so the plant can direct its energy to form more blooms and buds.

Leaders confidently identify when someone or something is wasting energy and potential. They take immediate action to redirect this energy toward cultivating new leaders. Though pruning may sound harsh, offering constructive feedback promptly and eliminating unproductive habits supports growth.

3. Fertilize the plants.

During the growing season, at least one night during a busy week, you would find my dad on the back porch, hose in hand, with a spray bottle attached to the nozzle. He was fertilizing the flowers he and my mom had planted. Plants must be fed at least once every other week with half-strength fertilizer to have more flowers. Specific ingredients in the fertilizer promote more flower buds than others, and a great gardener ensures they are not overfertilized. 

Leaders nurture their gardens by actively supporting their people. You can achieve this by holding regular check-in meetings, especially during the growing season. To provide nourishment to everyone, organize consistent Professional Development sessions. Invite knowledgeable speakers, facilitate book discussions, explore each other’s strengths, and empower different leaders in your organization to take charge during these sessions. Avoid excessive feeding by imposing personal agendas or micromanaging to prevent stifling growth.

4. Provide more sun.

I remember the first time I tried to grow a plant indoors. I lived in a house that provided little sunlight near my kitchen counter, where the plant sat. Needless to say, the plant did not survive. Light is essential for plant growth. Many plants require direct sunlight for long hours every day to become flowers. There is an exception for plants that prefer shade. These plants reduce the number of flowers when exposed to more sunlight. 

Great leaders understand who should be in the spotlight and who should be supported in the background. They place their team members accordingly, empowering them to lead in their own way. For example, veteran teachers could mentor new ones. Teachers with eight to ten years of experience need additional encouragement to avoid burnout. So, provide it. Offer encouragement, feedback, resources, and guidance. Position your teams for success, allowing them to grow.

It has been said that the development and growth of people is the highest calling in leadership. Like gardeners, good leaders can provide key ingredients that foster the development of people within their reach. It is important to remember that there is a season for everything. We must care for our blooms well in the growing season. 

As a leader, are you providing environments that nurture your team members so they can “bloom where they are planted”?

By Patrick Erwin

I LOVE Sci-Fi movies. Growing up, my parents watched a lot of Star Trek, and I got hooked on Star Wars. More recently, it’s easy to assume that nearly everyone has seen Marvel or DC movies. In all of these series, we find characters with extraordinary abilities. As part of my fascination with this subject, I found a list of the 12 most common superpowers in Marvel, DC, and other comics.  

Each of these powers helps a single, spectacular individual solve problems. But what if we could have them for ourselves? Which one would you take, and why? Consider this chart:

By Tim Elmore

Several years ago, I met with Rich Katt, Cory Epler, and their team at the Department of Education in Nebraska. Our focus was Career and Technical Education. We were determined to create a resource that would cultivate career-ready graduates based on Nebraska’s twelve career-ready standards. We wanted it to be different from any other curriculum we’d seen.

In those discussions, we began talking about what the workplace needed most. What were the top skills that textbooks or curriculums were not covering well? In retrospect, those discussions are more relevant today than they were a decade ago. A timely skill has topped the list most desired by employers, and it’s likely not found in a typical classroom lecture or textbook. 

The Skills-Based Revolution

Today, people talk about the skills-based revolution. Over a year ago, companies like Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Apple eliminated their long-held degree requirements for jobs to remove barriers to entry and recruit more diverse talent—much to the consternation of those who’ve borrowed tons of money for a college degree. Recently, LinkedIn analyzed a survey they took from their one billion users and discovered this top skill, which cannot even be learned watching a YouTube tutorial. The skill won’t surprise you, but how it’s developed just might.

That skill is adaptability. 

My friend Mike Griffin, CEO of ELAvate Training in Asia, says, “Its surging popularity comes as leaders scramble to understand what the rising popularity of artificial intelligence means for businesses.” Dan Brodnitz, global head of content strategy at LinkedIn Learning adds, “As organizations come to grasp the full extent of what AI can do, they’re also coming to terms with all that it can’t do—those tasks that require the uniquely human skills that all businesses need.” This is why being adaptable during these times is “indispensable,” states Brodnitz, and will only become “more important as the pace of change increases.” 

My question for you is simple: what are you doing to develop adaptability in your students? 

Chasing What Is Most Needed Today

Imagine a world where graduates enter their careers fully prepared to adapt to new contexts and adjust to new assignments, rather than getting stuck and quitting when problems feel too hard. Envision young adults ready for a 21st century marketplace because they cultivated this timely skill, which allows them to rethink what they’re doing and how they’re approaching jobs. Chasing this goal may just save them in the future.

We must help them become comfortable with discomfort. All of us naturally migrate toward a place of comfort. After all, anxiety levels are high and change is constant. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant shares that people who are most comfortable with being uncomfortable pass up those who love to learn, but don’t like discomfort. Those who welcome change even when it’s painful will lead the way into the future.

Allow me to provide a metaphor to illustrate what’s essential.

One of our new Habitudes® (images) is called The Chameleon Contortionist. Consider this double image. Chameleons are lizards known for changing themselves based on their environment. Contortionists are performers who can bend their bodies into all kinds of shapes to fit into a small container. Both are known for their ability to flex and change. 

Chameleons look like other lizards but have an amazing superpower. They can change their colors to match their frame of mind or situation. They don’t always change to match their environment; sometimes they change colors to match their attitude. They can avoid predators because they can blend in and not be seen by other creatures. Also, they can move their eyes separately, with each eye having a field of vision of 180 degrees. This means they can see 360 degrees if they need to! It’s quite amazing. The feet of the chameleon are also very adaptable. Their five toes on each leg are divided into two groups and can grip almost any surface because they can change and adapt to grip it. In a very real sense, they are agile, not fragile. 

Contortionists are fun to watch because they can bend their bodies into very strange shapes. I have seen contortionists perform as acrobats and gymnasts at magic shows, and I’ve been amazed at how small they can become to fit into a box. They’re able to twist their body into very unusual postures. They showcase their amazing skills in physical flexibility. Sometimes, it even looks like they don’t have bones in places where people have bones and can’t bend.

Chameleons can blend. Contortionists can bend. Like them, students are at their best when they can adapt to solve a problem.

When Kenton was a college student, he visited East Africa and spent time in Kenya working with younger children. While he was there to offer much-needed food and blankets, he noticed many Kenyan kids had no shoes, or their shoes had the ends cut off because their feet were now too big for them. Kenton shifted his focus and began designing “the shoe that grows,” an adaptable shoe that can widen and lengthen as a foot grows. It took years, but thousands of kids are now benefiting from this Shoe That Grows. It’s a great picture of adapting. Kenton adapted so he could make a shoe that adapted. It all began when he was a student.

Let’s build students who are agile, not fragile.

If you’d like to check out these Habitudes®, CLICK HERE.

By Michael Kobito 

As a teacher, my students were either excited by or puzzled by the constant positive energy I brought into the classroom. My first block class always accused me of having an entire pot of coffee before class started, as if that would be the only explanation for my cheerful demeanor. Whether it’s exciting or puzzling, this is just how I am, and how I try to be consistently for my students. 

Personally, I don’t believe that having positive energy is the same as being toxically positive. We know the world isn’t perfect. We all have days that aren’t great. We know that there are people who are cutting us off in traffic for selfish reasons. We understand that every action isn’t pure all the time. But more importantly, we know that our students learn more from us than just the content we teach. They are learning how to act, react, and respond to all the opportunities that life brings. With this, we have a responsibility: teach the art of consideration. Consider the whole picture before judging, reacting, or responding. 

To better equip our students for the world, we must allow them the opportunity to buy in to the importance of this exploration. Being great role models is the path to molding thoughtful students, stronger leaders, and considerate people. 

Four Ideas to Help Your Students Create Buy-In

Idea #1: Model the Model

One of the most impactful modes of learning is through mimicking modeled behavior. Even in high school, I had many students who were easily identified as my students because of shared mannerisms and catchphrases. As teachers, we need to model the model. This means we work on handling situations more thoughtfully. We own lapses in our own progress. If we want anything for our students, it’s that they leave our classrooms better people than when they entered. This is something we can and should actively model every day. If you don’t believe it, ask your students if they’ve ever noticed the way you respond to a certain situation or conversation. You’ll find that they are far more perceptive than you thought. 

Idea #2: Make Time to Understand 

Ask more questions that force students to think. Oftentimes, we spend our energy looking at the answer to the question. Sometimes, we will look to figure out how they got to the answer (especially when the answer is wrong). But very rarely do we understand the journey the students took to get to their answer. We rarely provide the chance for them to understand their process unless we are intentional about this. 

How do they know if they love science, or statistics, or STEM, or singing, or Shakespeare, if the only communication they have around those topics are “Did I get it right” or “What didn’t I get right?” Allowing our students to think deeply, not just when a negative action has occurred or a negative consequence is impending, is preparing our students for a world where they can safely explore their emotions and processing power. 

Idea #3: Lead by Listening

Keep your bias out and allow your students to feel as they feel. While the reaction to a situation may be inappropriate, the emotion that caused their reaction is still real for them. Don’t hear me wrong on this point — when a behavior is inappropriate and a consequence is required, that consequence shouldn’t be bypassed for the sake of the feeling. Rather, we must follow through with the proper process while ensuring that we allow the student to actually grow.

For us to help our students develop competencies in this area, we have to be willing to listen without being dismissive, and have a real conversation. While their feelings may not make sense to you, students need empathy to feel safe enough to grow. 

Idea #4: Notice Positive Growth 

If you are taking into account everything we have talked about, you are probably finding areas that your day-to-day can slightly shift to build up consideration in classrooms. You might be feeling some conviction, and that’s ok! We as adults aren’t too dissimilar from students when it comes to receiving feedback — it can be hard and make us sensitive, or even defensive like we talked about earlier. I bring this up because it is important for us to notice positive growth, not only in our students but in ourselves too. 

The school is one of the only places where the sole purpose is learning. All who walk through the halls of the school deserve to learn something while they are there. When we learn and grow, that deserves to be acknowledged and cherished, so congratulations! Keep it up! Share the good news! Just because you didn’t know something yesterday or just were reminded of it today, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t feel pride in the truth that you’ll keep learning tomorrow. So don’t phone in. Slow down, look around, and keep buying in instead. 

Phoning in is easy. Buying in demands effort.

Phoning in is common. Buying in is special. 

Phoning in is dull. Buying in is compelling. 

Phoning in is careless. Buying in is considerable. 

Buy in. Challenge your students to buy in. It’ll make a world of difference in the culture of your classroom, your community, your students, and your world.

By Kara Mallory

My daughter and I have, in many ways, grown up together. Most of my friends were still learning about their passions from textbooks. They took on study abroad semesters, with many still having mom and dad pay most of their bills. I had just turned twenty and was learning from sleepless nights, Sesame Street, play, and caring for someone other than myself. I supported and taught this little one about real life while still figuring out what real life was myself. As I look back over the last 16 years, as much as I have taught her, and now her siblings, they have taught me and continue to teach me so much more.

And guess what? You don’t have to be a parent to learn from kids! I have learned as much from the students I have taught, coached, and mentored as I have from the classes I’ve taken and the adults I’ve interacted with.

Sometimes, when we get busy or only see ourselves as drivers, teachers, or providers, we miss out on what our kids are teaching us. Focusing too much on standards, tests, or their achievements can make us miss the lessons they are showing us. Eventually, this can distract us as leaders, causing us to overlook the daily lessons we can take from children.

Young people are childlike in their wonder, attitude, position, and dependence in their early years. Yet we often are the very opposite. As adult leaders, we slip easily into a self-centered mindset. We tend to strive for positions of advantage instead of seeking a place of service. We often try to be strong and do it all on our own. We act childish — arguing over petty things — rather than being childlike with sincere and humble hearts. As it turns out, there is much we can learn from kids. Let’s look at four of them.

1. Kids are responsive.

Children fearlessly answer questions, even if unsure. They easily befriend strangers, help others, and show confidence in problem-solving. They don’t worry about being watched or liked, but this changes as they reach puberty. Teachers and parents should provide tools and experiences to help kids maintain their confidence. We, as adults, also should put ourselves in positions to continue to grow, see, and recognize others, and grow our own responsiveness.

2. Kids are curious.

Kids eagerly enter each new school year, ready to learn new things. They have a natural curiosity and set goals for themselves. For example, my four-year-old wants to spell his name and put on his jacket. My six-year-old is excited to ride a bike and tie her shoes. My sixteen-year-old is eager to learn to drive. Children approach learning with enthusiasm and curiosity, traits that often fade as we grow older. Kids remind us that we can keep learning and growing if we stay open to the possibilities available to us.

I have also noticed that even as kids are open to learning and growing, they rarely do it alone. Kids learn and grow best with others, like peers, teachers, parents, siblings, coaches, and teammates. Who is helping you grow? Children teach us that learning and growing is possible so long as we have support.

3. Kids are vulnerable.

Have your kids ever proudly shown you their artwork and wanted it front and center on the fridge (even if you weren’t sure what it was exactly)? Children love to share their work and are naturally vulnerable, but once they become teens, they transition to a world full of filters and fake news. Our world encourages teens to operate more privately even when they feel more desperate for something real. They crave authenticity and vulnerability because these traits have become scarce — even for us as adults as well.

Imagine being truly authentic. People would leave, saying, “They are real.” We’d talk not just about successes but also about failures with teachers, students, and parents. Sometimes, our most vulnerable thoughts are what others need to hear most.

4. Kids begin with belief.

For many kids, from their very first Christmas, parents set the stage for them to believe in the magic of the season, in Santa, and even maybe a little elf on the shelf. The same is true of the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy. It is not until they are a little older that they question their beliefs. They simply begin with a spirit of belief. While I’m not asking you to believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, I would ask you to answer this question: “What or whom do you believe in?”

Let’s unite as a community, bridging school and home. Let’s believe in each other. I challenge you to build trust in your homes and school. Always see the best in your students and fellow parents. Offer empathy and support. The days may feel long, but the years fly by (for parents and teachers alike).

Kids are responsive, curious, and vulnerable, and they begin with belief. We can weave these lessons together as we think about how we can apply those lessons to our own lives. Rachel Carson says in her book, The Sense of Wonder, “A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement.”  May our world be transformed by the children around us to be fresh, new, and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. 

How might you be able to apply these lessons to your classroom, your parenting, or your life?