“Forget dry statistics, real change comes from real feelings.” This quote comes from Chip and Dan Heath in a recent article in the February issue of Fast Company. I have mentioned before the powerful and practical books by the Heath brothers, Made to Stick, and Switch. These two books provide excellent mental models and practical advice for leadership and change in any organization, but especially schools.
Those of us in leadership roles in schools are likely to share the responsibility for some of the most significant future changes in education. We “cut our teeth” on standards and new Regents examinations and new accountability requirements. However the looming budget cuts and common core standards and next-generation assessments are likely to result in more significant changes than we have experienced in the last two decades. To sustain the burden of leadership, it is helpful to think of ideas from outside of our everyday education realms.
In the Fast Company article, the Heath brothers tell the story of an overweight young woman who, after many unsuccessful diets, finally had an emotional epiphany and committed herself to losing weight. She ultimately lost 150 pounds and wrote a book about her experience called the “Clothesline Diet.” The insight from this experience, is that this young woman knew intellectually what needed to be done, but until an emotional event triggered her passion, she was unable to make any progress. We need to recognize that organizations are not machines driven by carefully prescribed procedures that can be quantitatively measured. School organizations are comprised of people and those people are heavily influenced by emotions.
For example, the emotions around budget cuts and impending staff cuts are likely to generate more pain and loss of productivity than the actual cuts themselves. In the book Switch, the Heaths use a mental model of a rider and an elephant to describe leadership in change and the power of emotions. The rider represents, intellect and planning for appropriate change. Without plans there is little movement. So the rider (plans) are essential for moving an organization forward. However, the elephant is a metaphor for emotions, much more powerful than the rider. While the rider may direct the elephant in a specific direction, any emotional event can trigger the elephant to take control. When this happens, all plans are abandoned!
This is a useful metaphor for us to recognize that we not only need plans as we move forward but to engage the positive emotion and energy of staff. Leaders need to engage staff on an emotional level, with positive optimism to overcome negative fear.
