5 Strategies for Effectively Leading Your Team

Okay, happy Tuesday! I am really excited about tonight's Facebook Live because this is a really important topic that we're gonna chat about tonight. So tonight I'm sharing 5 tips for effectively leading your team, and if you follow anything I talk about, podcast, Facebook, you're in the membership or you took my course, you know, I talk about staff training all the time, but tonight we're going to put really, I think, a virtual spin on staff training. And I really want to focus tonight's tips on how to still be an effective leader when you are in a virtual classroom. So meaning you are not with your staff members every day or you were in some hybrid model or there's kinds of social distancing guidelines in place where it feels like, you know, there's gonna be some new complications with staff training, which already can be very hard. So I think this is a great thing to talk about because, as I said, if you follow me, you know I'm very passionate about staff training because it is such an important part of our job. We need to get our team members on the same page. We need to be working collaboratively as a group if we want to accomplish everything we want to accomplish. And this year is gonna be so different than other years, so our staff training needs to look a little bit different. Before we get started, I want to drop a poll in here. Let's publish this. Oh, I spelled virtual wrong. Okay, well, give me a little grace on that. Virtual. Um, what does your back to school look like? Is it virtual, maybe spelled correctly? Um, is it in person? Is it hybrid? Or is it don't know yet? Let me know where you are at. Again, sorry, virtual is not spelled right. Jocelyn just said the tip sheet didn't download. So in the description of this live, I added a link to my Back to School During COVID download. I'm gonna add the link again and see if it'll download now. I wasn't having an issue with it before, but maybe I'll I'll go ahead and double-check that, um, and see how that looks. So, so far we got about half virtual and mix of in-person and hybrid, so we're kind of all over the place, right? A little bit of everything. Let me get this a little bigger. Okay, so let's jump in. I want to share my 5 tips for for effectively leading your team, and then talk about— but keep answering that poll because I'm very curious always as to what everyone's back to school looks like. Was anyone's first day today or yesterday? If your first day with kids was today or yesterday, drop a comment in because you deserve some praise, right? Um, going back to school looks so different this year and is just a lot more complicated. So today was your first day, or yesterday was your first day, Hope it went well. Okay, so 5 tips for staff, for leading your team during this time. And I'm gonna put in one more poll to answer as you are jumping on, because I love getting the answer to this question, even though this is kind of like a question about things that are hard. What is the hardest part of staff training for you? When I asked this question on my webinar in the spring, spring. First of all, there were so many people responding. I don't know if you were on my webinar in the spring, the first one I did that was about the 3 biggest obstacles for behavior plans. I asked, what is the hardest part of staff training? And people were responding so quickly that the comments were scrolling. I could not even read them because people like talking about what's hard about staff training, right? So the options I'm giving you here: finding time, feeling uncomfortable, knowing what things to teach your team. Once you have the time and you're like, what should we even work on? And then getting your team members on board. Obviously there's other obstacles, but I think those are some of the bigger ones that can be the biggest challenges. So answer that poll of what the hardest part of staff training— I'm going to look back on it in a few minutes and see what the answer is because I'm always curious. So let's jump into our tips. So 5 tips for leading your team. Number 1 is share your vision. And I've talked about this before, but you really want to start to get everyone on the same page by sharing with your team members what you want success to look like. What do you want the end goal to look like? You really wanna paint that picture. I think a really important thing to do this year, and again, I sound like a broken record that I keep saying I've talked about these things before, but how these things apply is gonna be a little different. I think it's really, really important to do a team mission statement this year. I've talked about this many back-to-school seasons. This is one of my favorite activities to do with groups. I've actually done this in PDs. I've had staff members sit together with their paras, with their clinicians, and they get together and they write their team mission statement. My favorite way to write a team mission statement is really easy. It's by answering 3 questions. You ask, ask your team, what do we want for our students? What do we want for our staff? And what do we want for our community? And all write your responses. What do we as a team want for our kids? We want them to be independent. We want them to ask for help. We want them to be safe. What do we want for our staff? We want a staff that communicates, that's respectful, that values each other. What do we want for our community? So, go through and answer those questions. If this is something you've done already, great, but I still want you to do it again this year because your team mission statement is gonna change a little bit this year. Your goals this year are going to be different than what they normally are. This is a different year. We're not gonna get through every single big ambitious goal we have. The goal might be just staying safe, and that's okay. If that's just your main goal is we're gonna get in school and we're gonna stay safe. We're gonna wear masks, we're gonna learn to follow social distancing procedures. That might be you as a team, your goal for your students. Well, you want to talk about that. You know, if our focus right now is learning those safety procedures, mask-wearing procedures, and just keeping everyone healthy, get your team to see that vision and write that. As far as staff, if something that's important to you is like communicating about, you know, what you've been doing on the weekend. I want people that are going all these places, talk about that now. So that is something really, really important that you can do that's quick, that's easy. You can do that on a Zoom call. Get your staff members on a Zoom call, on a phone call, and say, hey guys, we're going to make a team mission statement. And I want— let's answer these 3 questions and let's kind of get on the same page with what that looks like. Now, 18% of you so far said the biggest challenge for you is staff— is feel— for staff training is feeling uncomfortable. So the thought of having a Zoom call with your paras and being like, hey guys, we're gonna do a team mission statement, you're gonna be like, oh my god, they're gonna think I'm ridiculous. This is like, they're so— this is gonna be weird. I'm gonna feel weird. They're gonna think it's weird, whatever. You have to get that out of your head. That is a limiting belief That is something that you've decided. They might think you're weird, so what, right? We have to get over that. We ask our kids to do new and hard things every day, and this is a new skill that you have to learn. So my non-sugarcoated advice is to just get over it. And you can blame me, you could be like, this crazy girl on the internet, Sasha, told me to do a team mission statement, and we're— it's weird, but we're just gonna do it. So go ahead and do it. If you've done a team mission statement before, drop a comment in here because I'd love to hear how it goes. I know a bunch of you have done them in the past. And I think it's going to be really, really important to do this year. Tip number 2, over-communicate. So if you think you are communicating too much, communicate more. Check in every day, check in every multiple times a day if you're virtual, send messages, send emails, do a little preference assessment. Ask your team members, what is the best way for me to communicate with you? Do you prefer email? Do you prefer a text message? Do you prefer that we have like a chat channel and like a messaging system? What is the best way to communicate? So really make sure that you are on the same page consistently. And if you don't get a reply back to every message or every email, that's okay. Don't let that kind of stop what you're doing. Keep going with that. So that's tip number 2, overcommunicate. Tip number 3 goes right along with this. Give feedback. This is something that I've said many, many times, you know, this can be a thankless field sometimes being in education, and as the leader of your team, you want to make sure that your team feels very, very appreciated, especially during this hard, hard year. So say thank you, say thank you every day. If it feels like you are saying thank you too much, say it more. So really show, you know, your appreciation. Give constructive feedback if you have to on things that you don't, you know, that aren't going the way you want. And really be consistent though. Don't let that die out. A lot of you said one of the biggest hard parts of staff training that's hard for you is getting team members on board. That is so hard, right, to get everyone on board. And I think that a way that you start to get through that process is giving a lot of feedback. And a lot— I've talked to many, many of you that have said, you know, it's hard with staff training because some staff members seem really resistant, some staff members, you know, get upset or have negative attitudes. And Jen, one of the bloggers from the blogger group, and I were just talking in the membership group tonight, and we were talking about how, you know, fear can really manifest in a lot of different ways. Fear can manifest as anger, as annoyance, as frustration. And a lot of A lot of people are feeling a lot of fear right now about change and going back to school and feeling anxiety and what that looks like. So to you, it might seem like, oh my gosh, this staff member is mad at me, being mean to me, being rude to me. They have all this anger, what's going on? But they might just be scared. So giving a lot of encouragement and positive feedback can really help that process. Tip number 4, involve them in the process. This year is all about the process, right? There's gonna be decisions you make that 2 days later you change, and then 3 days later you change your mind again, and you need to be constantly pivoting because what you think might work might not work in reality. You might have set up your whole classroom to be perfectly social distanced and doing all these things, and then the kids come in, you're like, that is not gonna work. For those of you that have been back in school already, drop a comment in if you've already had to make changes to your classroom, whether it's your virtual classroom or your in-person classroom, if you've already had to make changes. Because I'm sure even day one, you know, you've already had to make changes. Jen and I were also talking about tonight how, you know, when she went back in person, she didn't leave enough extra time for all of the extra things that this year is going to entail. Things like mask breaks, things like cleaning time, things like extra sensory breaks, because because kids are maybe staying in one table. So she had to really kind of pivot her schedule to be like, okay, we need a lot of extra time for all these things. So that's going to be a big focus of this year is pivoting, pivoting, pivoting. Yeah, Erin said so many changes, right? You want to involve your team in this process of all the changes, because if you don't, they're going to think you're crazy because you're gonna be like, hey guys, we're going in on boom cards. And then 2 days later, you're like, ah, never mind, we're doing this. And you want to let them know why you're making all those changes. Like, hey, you know, I know we thought the cubbies were a great idea, but, you know, Johnny came in, knocked over all the cubbies, this other kid climbed over them. This is why we're not using cubbies anymore. And now we're gonna try taping borders on the ground and see how that works. So involve them in the why and in the why behind making all these changes so they don't think you're losing your mind and they can roll with it. And they might be able to really contribute in a meaningful way to this process. And that brings me to tip number 5: ask them questions, ask their opinion, ask them what they think. It is so great when you're part of a team and someone asks you your opinion and values it. Imagine if your principal walked up to you and was just like, and asked you your opinion on something and then like followed through on it. And if you have a principal that does that, amazing, that's great, you are working for a great leader. When someone asks you what you think and then values that opinion and it shows that they are identifying you as an important member of that team. So when you set something up in your virtual classroom, and you're doing a Zoom call or you're live streaming your morning circle, um, after, after it's done, ask your team members like, how do you think that went? Is there something we could do differently? Is there a way we could set up online learning to make it more fun? Is there something we could do different in the class to keep it safer? Should we be giving more breaks, less breaks? Ask them. And then when they give you their opinion, try it out. You know, it really builds value and builds that, you know, feeling of being part of that team in an effective way. Not in like, oh yeah, sure, I'm just asking your opinion, but really, you know, value what they say. So those are my 5 tips though. Sharing your vision, number 1. Overcommunicate, number 2. Give feedback, number 3. Involve them in the process, number 4. And number 5, ask them questions. And yes, staff training is hard. We don't always have time. We feel uncomfortable. It's hard knowing what things to work on with our team, and it's hard to get team members on board. You know, these— this poll is really interesting. It's all over the board, right, on these answers on what the hardest part of staff training is for you. It's not something that is easy. This is a skill set of being a leader that we have to really work on. And if that's something that you've been working on for the past few years, that's great. But now with— excuse me— being virtual, it's kind of a whole new skill set, right, of trying to lead your team virtually when you're not there. And as you guys know, now having to do a lot of communication virtually, you know, via emails and texts, a lot of things can get lost in translation. So it's nice having video calls, to kind of get that face-to-face. Things might not feel as confrontational. So really, I know what— there's a million and one things to do right now in this kind of crazy back-to-school season, but keep staff training kind of in, in your head too, because that in the long run is going to make life easier for you and life better for your students if you can have your staff working effectively. And that probably seems like the last thing on your to-do list because there's so many things, you know, on there that seem more important. But this is really the key. Having your team members work with you will make all of those other things easier. I have a new webinar coming up in about 2 weeks. I don't even have the signup link quite done yet, so it will be coming soon, but we will be talking a lot more about staff training in that webinar. So I did 2 live webinars back in the spring. They were super, super fun. I think The second one, we had like 7,000 educators and parents and professionals enroll. We actually had so many people on the first one that it kicked a bunch of people out, and I felt awful. Don't worry, that will not happen. Um, we have upgraded our webinar plan, so there's plenty of room for everyone. But I'll be doing a new webinar coming up soon, and we'll be talking about staff training even more and some ways that you can incorporate your team and what you can really work on with your team, whether it's virtual or in person. Because, you know, right now when things are hard, we need our people, we need our community, we need our team more than ever. We always do. But when things get challenging and there's obstacles, that's when we really need our people the most. So we want to really kind of work on that skill set of being the leader and bringing our team together. So hope that everything is going, just going, right? It doesn't have to be going well, it doesn't have to be going badly, maybe just neutral is okay. If you are overwhelmed, anxious, scared, excited, all of the emotions, just know that you are not alone and that everyone is feeling that way right now. This is really, this has really bumped everyone back down to being a first-year teacher. So everyone's kind of on the same level right now, but good luck, keep checking in. We've got a bunch of new fun videos coming. That'll be showing different Zoom games and things like that. And I hope to all see you all at the webinar in a few weeks. So be back on the Facebook page with, uh, and I will have the sign-up link for that.