Be encouraged.
Join us for Just Leadership on February 3rd at Baylor University, a one-day professional learning event for school administrators – from instructional coaches to superintendents – that focuses on catalyzing change as a leadership team.
Register Now!
Connect with us:
Baylor MA in School Leadership
EdD in K-12 Educational Leadership
Jon Eckert LinkedIn
Twitter: @eckertjon
Center for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl
Jon Eckert:
Today we are here with Rachel Johnson, a friend that we've made through mutual friends in the UK who's doing amazing work. And I just want to jump right in to what you're learning and then we'll back into more of what you do. So what are you learning through PiXL? So you can give us a quick introduction to what PiXL is and then what you're learning from the leaders that you're supporting.
Rachel Johnson:
Yeah. So PiXL stands for Partners in Excellence. We work with two and a half thousand schools across the UK. And what we're learning is how important leadership is in the conversation in school improvement. So we believe in improving life chances and outcomes for every young person irrespective of background or status or finance.
But behind all of that is the ability for brilliant people in schools to lead well. And that's the conversation people want to have now more and more than perhaps they ever have because people are fascinated with how they can be better, how they can thrive, what's stopping them thrive. And that is the attention that I've been giving a lot of my work recently around that issue.
Jon Eckert:
So love that mission. We always push at the center for moving from some students to all students and now to each student, what does it mean to do that for each student so that thriving for each student is powerful. In order to have those thriving students, you have to have thriving leaders. So what are some of the things, I think you mentioned you have 3,200 people in leadership courses, what are some of those takeaways that are keeping people from thriving that you're finding?
Rachel Johnson:
Yeah, we're finding a lot of very common things. And actually it doesn't matter what level they are in school leadership, it's the same issues. So things like people pleasing, which is getting in the way of leadership and decision-making, not being able to hold a boundary, sometimes not having a boundary. So there is no difference between work and life. There is no stopping. We just carry on going. I think that's a real issue.
We're finding people not really knowing are structured to have difficult conversations or as I like to call them, crucial conversations. They shouldn't be difficult, but the lack of confidence in having those conversations. And then I think other things like how to create buy-in, how to get momentum, how to have that very delicate balance as Jim Collins calls it, between the brutal facts and the unwavering hope.
So what does that actually look like on the ground? How can I do both at the same time without going for hopium where you're drugging people on things that can't actually happen or being so honest and brutal that nobody wants to follow you because it sounds so depressing? So what does the reality of that look like in school leadership? And what we are finding is across nearly three and a half thousand people on our leadership courses, they're all struggling with those kind of issues.
Jon Eckert:
No, that's powerful. I think one of the questions that I'm always asking leaders because it's a hard one is, and I think it comes from Patrick Lencioni, but I'm not sure. It could be from another theorist, they all start to run together a bit. I don't think it's John Maxwell, I don't think it's Jim Collins, but is for who are you willing to make enemies? What ideas are you willing to make enemies over? So what are those things that like, "Hey, this is a non-negotiable for me."
And I think a lot of educators don't think about that because we have a people pleasing sense of what we want to do. And so that's a really hard conversation to have because I agree, we tend to lean toward hopium. I think that's a great term for what we do. And so how do you get people into those crucial conversations? I like that reframe as well. But how do you get them into that when you know that there's kind of a natural resistance among a lot of educators to those kinds of conversations?
Rachel Johnson:
It is really difficult, but not having the conversation doesn't make the issue go away. And I think as soon as people realize, "It's actually making me miserable. My department is underperforming, therefore young people are underperforming all because I'm not courageous enough to have the conversation." And what we find using Susan Scott's model of fierce conversations is when you give them that seven-part model of how to have the conversation in one minute where you say your peace but you stay in adult, as Transactional Analysis would call it.
So you're not giving it a kind of sly interpretation. You're not giving a mean tone to your voice. You're being absolutely clear and absolutely kind, but absolutely straight, then people respond usually really well. But I think one of the things that is most disconcerting for leaders and educators is you have to listen to what the other person says. It isn't just about us delivering our truth and how we perceive things.
It's about being quiet long enough to hear what they're saying and maybe more importantly what they're not saying. And so it's fascinating to me that what is stopping us sometimes is the courage. But this is really affecting our schools. And certainly in the UK, in a recent survey that one of our big agencies did called Teacher Tapp, 64% of teachers said they had worked or did work in a toxic environment in school. That's a lot of people calling their environment where we should be seeing young people thrive, and our leaders and our teachers are saying it's toxic.
So something's going wrong somewhere. And what stops us dealing with this I think is the lack of courage and the lack of tools to be able to know how to approach it, which is why that's where we put our weight in the practical tools that can help people unlock this. And people say things like, "We feel liberated, transformed. It's like a weight off and we feel like we can do it." And that is the kind of feedback we get regularly. And I think that is really very, very important that people are helped to do these difficult things.
Jon Eckert:
Really, really good stuff there. It reminded me of two things in what you said because you've shared a lot. And I love how much we've into right here off the bat. The book High Conflict by Amanda Ripley. I don't know if you've seen that book. It came out in 2021, so it's been out for a while. She introduces this concept, which I think is what you're getting at in that one minute conversation a little bit in the way we listen.
So it's not her idea again, but this is where I came to the idea. It's the idea of looping, that when you're in conflict with someone, the key is when you're receiving the feedback from the person where they're telling you how they feel, where they're upset, where they're disagreeing with you, you have to listen, then you have to distill what's being said.
Then you have to check for understanding and then question, "Did I get it right?" So that you're repeating back. Because I think sometimes, at least in the United States, some of the conflict is due to poor communication, and that looping provides an opportunity to correct that communication error and it's a form of empathy because it's taking on that perspective, did I hear you right?
Now, just active listening, you can really alienate people with active listening skills without being genuinely curious. So that's one of the things when you're doing that, you can't do it in a formulaic way that feels like you're just jumping through hoops because that's really alienating to the person doing it. Does that square with what you found or am I thinking about something differently than you are?
Rachel Johnson:
I think what's fascinating is that, and this is what I do really for my job now, is I take lots of different things like that from High Conflict from Chris Voss and his hostage negotiation techniques, crisis communication that we have over here with a fierce conversation and I kind of mush it all together in one model.
And so what all of these people are saying, including Nancy Kline who's written brilliant work on listening and thinking is we mustn't overdo it when we talk to people. We mustn't kind of interpret what they're saying and then tell them what they're thinking. We have to ask great questions. We have to be comfortable with silence and let the silence do the heavy lifting. Most of us are not comfortable with that. We have to summarize like you've said and say at the end, "Is that right?"
And if the person says, "No, that's not right," that's the opening of the conversation, not the end of it. That's when we say, "Okay, great. What did I not summarize well? What have I not understood? Tell me?" We've got to be more curious and less judgmental. But because I think educators are so used to making judgments, because that's literally our job a lot of the time is making judgments on grades, on behavior, on progress, to not make judgments on fellow adults, it's sometimes really hard.
Jon Eckert:
I always say educators are way more gracious with students than they are with each other. And-
Rachel Johnson:
Or themselves.
Jon Eckert:
Yeah. Oh. And typically that lack of graciousness to others is because of the lack of graciousness to self. I think one of the key points you said, and you mentioned earlier in tone when you asked that question, "What did I not get right?" You can say, "What did I not get right?" In a very curious way. Or, "What did I not get right?" With the eye roll.
And then you've either closed off the conversation or you've opened it. And I think the tone and the facial expression goes a long way to that, which is why I think we have to have this interpersonal connection. If you're doing this over text or you're doing it over email, it's pretty doomed to fail. I don't know. Would you agree with that, that this has to be kind of face-to-face as much as possible?
Rachel Johnson:
Yeah. I think a lot happens on Zoom these days or on Teams, which is difficult. And I think that is manageable if you get your tone right, if you get your eye contact right. I think one of the most damaging things in communication with anybody is the not listening, as you've mentioned, and the tone. So making it sound like a judgment. But the other thing I think is really difficult is when we speak in ulterior transactions. So the conversation we're having is not the conversation we're thinking. And people can smell it a mile off, can't they?
I think of all kinds of situations at home where I say to my children like, "Oh, did you not have time to tidy your bedroom?" And what I'm actually saying is, "You're absolute slobs. You round here making a mess of my house." And they can hear the criticism and then they say, "Are you having a go at me mum?" And then I go, "No, I don't know what you're talking about." And that's dishonest. And I think we fall into that a few times when we are not courageous enough to have the real conversation. So I think that's another trap we can fall into.
Jon Eckert:
Right. I think I had a couple of those conversations with a daughter and a wife this weekend potentially, so that I need to go back and do some correcting. So thank you for that. One other thing you mentioned earlier was, and I think it's a chapter in, I think it's in your first book, about getting buy-in. One of the things that I've been pushing on here, and I'm curious to hear if there's a cultural difference here potentially.
I found Gen Zs and millennials in the US, they do not want to buy-in to things because it sounds like an idea is being sold that they're just supposed to get on board with. And they don't do that. And I almost say that to their credit because they want to co-own what they're doing. And so buy-in is not something that they're interested in. They want to own it with you sometimes in ways that make it way better if we do that. Do you find that in the UK that there's less interest in buying in and more of an interest in kind of co-owning the work? Or is that still something that works relatively well in the UK, trying to get buy-in?
Rachel Johnson:
I think you're absolutely right, and I think this new generation are very different and I think they don't want to do it the way we did it. We wore tiredness and exhaustion like a trophy, like a medal. "Look how knackered I am, look how late I was up doing all my work." They look at that and go, "I don't want that. I want to have a sabbatical. I want to have a life. I want to go to the gym. I want to do what I want to do." So I think the way we are talking about buy-in needs to change. But I also think the way we get buy-in needs to change.
We, I think have thought buy-in means, "Here's my idea, here's what we are doing, join me in what I'm doing." And that isn't really genuine buy-in. Buy-in is saying, "What is the problem we're trying to solve? Let's get people around the table, listen to really healthy conflict within a boundary where we feel safe to be able to disagree." All that psychological safety stuff by Amy Edmondson, it's crucial. It's not easy, but it's crucial. And then I think people do buy-in when they're heard. I think all these things we're talking about are linked. If I'm ignored, I'm not going to buy-in whether it's a great idea or not, because you're not hearing me. So I think we have to create more time to be heard and to hear.
But I think one of the issues we have in leadership, particularly in education is we're always in such a rush. That hurry-up driver like, "Let's get everything done yesterday driver," can stop us really engaging and listening. And so where we can go fast, we sometimes do, and I think we lose a lot in that, especially this new generation who want to be heard, want to think things through, want to be well-researched. Great, that can really benefit us, but we have to give it time.
Jon Eckert:
Well, and again, leadership's always going to be messy and it can either be messy on the front end where you all own, where you're going together or it's going to be messy on the back end. So I'd much rather have it be messy on the front end.
That just takes some patience and some ability to avoid falling victim to the tyranny of the urgent where we constantly throw one change after another at people in a way that doesn't actually produce what we want because we're too impatient to see it happen.
So I'm curious how you got to this work. So this amazing work that you're doing through PiXL, which we can get more into PiXL in a little bit, but you personally, how did you end up writing these books, doing the podcasts, building out being a catalyst at PiXL to do this kind of work with leaders, but where did that come from?
Rachel Johnson:
So I think it started fairly young really when I was, my dad led a church and he was a leader in schools and so was my mom. So I watched all of that all of my life. But I was kind of old before my age really, and I always wanted to lead something. So I did Sunday school when I was 10, teaching three-year olds. I always took on more responsibility. And so what I wanted when I was 13 and 14 was to work out what does leadership look like? How can I be a better version of me?
How can I make change happen? And apart from reading people that you've mentioned, like John Maxwell, there wasn't an awful lot for people my age. And so I never had anything age appropriate. So I read all the adult stuff. And I was looking back at my old journals actually yesterday. I was clearing out the loft and I look in my journals at me at 13 and go, "There she is, there's the person I am now.
There, I can see her so clearly when I look." But it wasn't usual back then. And so I was a bit different and did different things, but I was absolutely committed to leadership. And so from that point on really, wherever I was I wanted to lead. And it wasn't that I was bothered about promotion or position or title or money. I'm not bothered about any of those things.
I want to go where I can be to make the biggest difference. And so for me, leadership is where you make the biggest difference, where you could have the agency to make the difference. And for me, that has become the driving force really to try and do good in the world, to try and help people create their own change. So yes, that's where it started, very young.
Jon Eckert:
Love that. And so now at PiXL, what do you try to do organizationally? You gave us a little bit of what PiXL stands for, but how are you doing that and what different avenues in different countries? I know you have a number of ways you're trying to serve leaders who want to become the kind of leaders you wanted to become as a young person.
Rachel Johnson:
Yeah. So we do conferences, we did big conferences in the UK and those are hugely attended. We work with different types of leaders. We have two podcasts, PiXL Pearls, which are just 10 minutes leadership reflection. So not heavy, but just a moment of reflection to think about our own leadership. And then we have the PiXL leadership book club where we take non-educational school books because that's another really important thing of mine, to look outside of education, not always within.
And so I interviewed two school leaders about a non-educational leadership book and how they've applied those messages into their context. And that's the kind of thing I'm interested in. I'm interested in looking at what other people in the world are doing and how we can take that from marketing or that from branding or that from hostage negotiation and how we can turn our schools around based on the lessons that've been learned elsewhere.
So that's become a really big thing. Now I write all kinds of things on that. The books which I wrote that two have come out already, the chapters in those are all of the things that I asked our leaders, "What do you struggle with?" And that's what they said. And so I wrote the chapters for them really to try and help us all get a little bit more unstuck. Because we all get stuck and sometimes it's too difficult to find a great big book and read all the way through it when you haven't got time.
So it's really short, bite-sized chunks to help get us unstuck. And so with that and working and with how we have resources and strategies, a whole range of things to help school leaders get the support they need. But I think one of the most important things we've just started doing is named after the book, we have something called Time to Think where leaders are able to book time with my team to just think a few ideas.
We're not going to talk, they're going to book 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes. And that time is for them to talk through their ideas, for us to ask questions to help them get clarity, but for them to leave more empowered than they came in. And what school leaders are telling us is they don't have enough time to think.
It happens on holidays, in the mornings, in the middle of the night. And it shouldn't happen then, it should happen in working hours too. But sometimes people need a bit of a helping hand to get there. So that's one of the most exciting things we're doing at the minute, creating that time to think and walking with people as they do that.
Jon Eckert:
I love that. I tell people when they start masters or doctoral programs at Baylor that the biggest gift we're giving you is time to think through what you're doing with the kinds of books that you're talking about. I totally agree, we need to look at education, but we need to look beyond education. So I love that conversation you're having with school leaders about books.
Everything you described from the PiXL Pearls to everything else is trying to give people this catalyzing force to spend more time thinking and just carving out that space is a huge gift. So I think you mentioned that you primarily work in the UK, but that you have some connection into 46 different countries. Are there things you're seeing that feel like they work cross-culturally, like, "Hey, everyone is dealing with this." Because I know most of our listeners are in the United States and we can spend way too much time navel-gazing at our challenges and opportunities here.
I'm wondering those conversations that you've had where they identify challenges that leaders have, are there any things there that you're like, "Hey, this feels like a common challenge. It does not matter where it is. This is..." Maybe it's the Time to Think, but if it's something other than that as well. What are some of those challenges you're seeing that cut across contexts?
Rachel Johnson:
Well, how I would kind of evidence that really is it's the podcasts that have gone all over the world in different countries. And we haven't really pushed those out. We've had them in the UK and they've gone everywhere through Apple or Spotify. But the ones that are most listened to, that's what's really fascinating. The biggest episodes are Dare to Lead with Brené Brown. So clearly if that's our leading episode, it's because people don't have courage like we've touched upon.
The other one that is massive is the People Pleasing one, which is based on a book by Emma Reid Terrell called Please Yourself and is around the real problems of people pleasing. That's been another massive hitter. And then the third one, which has been a really big hitter, is based on Cal Newport's work on Deep Work and Time To Think.
So if that's the three places where people are going across all of the people who listen to our podcasts. And I think in total there's about 195,000 downloads now maybe. I think that says something about where people's attention is, that's what they're craving. And I think we should listen to that because I think these things are quite deep-rooted and I think people don't find solutions to how to handle those three things either.
Jon Eckert:
Well, I love Brené Brown, I love Cal Newport. I need to read the people pleasing book, so.
Rachel Johnson:
Wonderful.
Jon Eckert:
I'm getting good recommendations. Yeah. The Slow Productivity by Cal Newport that just came out is kind of the latest manifestation. I still think Deep Work is his best book, but Slow Productivity I've worked into some of my classes because I do think this idea and his premise there is that we do less things, work at a natural pace and obsess over quality.
That's how we provide the human value that is going to become increasingly value as AI and other things automate other pieces. It's what are we uniquely suited to build and do? And that's really to me, the extension of deep work. That's the critical component. And you have to have time to think because-
Rachel Johnson:
Yeah, you have to have time to think. And then you kind of think, why are we not doing deep work? Why are we overstretched? And I think it comes down to what I would call now toxic productivity. I think when you have a profession full of people who love to be efficient and love to-do lists and tick things off and feel great about themselves, the danger is we become addicted to productivity.
We can't rest, we can't stop, we can't switch off. We have to be doing something productive. We even monetize our hobbies for goodness's sake because we can't do them for free, because that's a waste of time. It is quite astonishing. And we are obsessed with adding things, not taking things away. So I don't speak to many leaders who say, "We're reducing our efforts by half because we don't think it's working. So these five things are going and these five things will replace them." They should add more things. No wonder we're all frazzled, so.
Jon Eckert:
Well, and social media has turned us into the product. So our attention is what is demanded and that is what is being sold. And that's new and I think devastating for especially adolescents who are coming into leadership, those 13-year-olds that dreamed about leading the way you do. "Oh, I can do that through my followership on this as I sell products for someone else." And so you become a conduit for other corporations to grab other people through you.
It's not real leadership. And so I worry about, I do not want this to happen, but my email box, I worry that I will be getting AI-generated emails into the box. I will then have AI-generating responses, and I'll just be a spectator watching AI talk to AI which by definition, Darren Speaksma says this all the time. AI is consensus because all it is scraping from large language models.
It is not wisdom. To get wisdom, you need the human. And that's the point of deep work. How do we pursue joy through truth and love? How do we do this and this? And AI just, that's not what AI is designed to do. It can summarize, it can collect, it can scrape. But that's the part that I'm like, "Oh." And that's the life-giving work.
And so Greg McCown, UK guy, Essentialism, that was the book. And then it became how do I? I've reduced all the small rocks out of the jar and I've just got big rocks and now the rocks are too much. And I feel like that's where we're at. So I love his work as well. So based on all that, those common challenges that we see, where do you see hope? Where are you most hopeful?
Rachel Johnson:
I'm hopeful that people want the conversation. I'm hopeful that in a room of thousands of leaders, I can say, "Put your hand up if you're a people pleaser." I've been a recovering people pleaser since 2020. I often say to people, I went into recovery in March 2020 when I read that book, Please Yourself by Emma Reid Terrell. And thought, "Oh my goodness, I don't want to be that." She says, you can either be an authentic person or a people pleaser.
You cannot be both. And I was really convicted by it because I thought, I want to be the best kind of leader, but if I'm people pleasing, I can't be. This has got to change. And I am with roomfuls of people now virtually and in person who are embracing this, who say, "I want to go in recovery too. Enough. I realize it's holding me back." And wherever there are people who are willing to change and are up for the work and up for the debate about it all, I think there's always hope.
And when we face our own brutal facts and we believe we can change, then I think there's always hope. And that is the kind of message we want to talk about in education in the UK and further afield, that we are not stuck. We don't have to be stuck. Human connection, human understanding, human wisdom, as you mentioned, these things that we can learn to be better and overcome our stuckness can change our lives first and foremost before we change anybody else's, but then help other people to change.
And I think there is a great deal of hope. I think sometimes we have to look hard for it because social media and the news don't talk hope, they talk despair. And so we have to be very open and vocal about the hope. But that's one of the things that I hope to always be, the voice of hope. Not ignoring the brutal facts. We mustn't do that, but always saying, "We'll find a way if we think about this. If we invest, we will find a way." Because I believe we will.
Jon Eckert:
Love that. The next book I'm working on right now is "Gritty Optimism: Catalyzing Joy in Just Schools." How do we build on what we know can change in schools and what they can be? Because there's so many great stories out there and there's so many ways to do it. So this conversation has been super encouraging that way.
So I'm just going to end us with a quick lightning round here. You've already given me at least one book recommendation I need to read. I'm just curious, in the last year, what's a book that you've read from any field? It doesn't have to be from education, that you would recommend to me and to us?
Rachel Johnson:
I'll give you two, Ruthlessly Caring by Amy Walters Cohen about the paradoxes in leadership and the Friction Project by Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao.
Jon Eckert:
Yes. So I have been reading pieces of the Friction Project, remarkable. Have not read Ruthlessly Caring, so I've got to get on that. Thank you. All right. What is the worst advice you've received or given as a leader? And then follow that up with the best advice you've either given or received.
Rachel Johnson:
The worst advice I've ever been given is that humility is putting yourself last. Because it's not true.
Jon Eckert:
That's good.
Rachel Johnson:
That's a very blunt and terrible definition. The worst advice that I've probably given would be in my early years of leadership when I was first new and basically said to people, "Maybe don't cause a fuss about that." Because I was a people pleaser, I didn't want to make a fuss. And so sometimes I told other people not to make a fuss and that was a mistake.
Jon Eckert:
That's good. So if you were, oh, so I had a quick break on the connection. So our connection broke there a minute. So don't make a fuss, that's also bad advice. Correct? Yeah.
Rachel Johnson:
Yeah.
Jon Eckert:
So what's the good advice that you've received or given, what's the best advice you've either given or received?
Rachel Johnson:
The best advice I think I would give is make sure when you have any interaction that you are okay and you're seeing the other person as okay. And what I mean by that is that we're not coming with an attitude of judgment or superiority or anything that someone can sniff, which is going to put their back against the wall immediately. So be an adult, be in control of yourself. And if you're not in control of yourself, be vulnerable, but don't do it and create a mess in front of somebody else when it's going to damage them. I think that is unfair.
Jon Eckert:
That's great advice. Love that. What is one word, if you had to describe the schools you work with right now, what would be one word you'd use to describe the schools or the leaders of the schools that you serve?
Rachel Johnson:
Resilient.
Jon Eckert:
Love that. Love that. No, that's right. If we're still in education right now, we're resilient people, so good word. And then what would be one word you would hope would describe the next year in the schools that you serve?
Rachel Johnson:
I'd hope, it's a dramatic word, but I'd say transformational. Because I think if people can grasp this stuff, if they can make the time to think, if they can put themselves on their thinking tank first, I honestly believe we'll overcome challenges that we didn't think were possible. And I hope that in turn doesn't transform PiXL. It's not about that. It's about transforming them first and then transforming the way that they lead because that, I believe, unlocks everything else.
Jon Eckert:
That's a great word to end on. Well, Rachel, this conversation has been great for me. Huge encouragement. Thank you for the work you're doing and thanks for spending the time with us.
Rachel Johnson:
Thank you so much. I have loved speaking to you.
More Episodes
All Episodes>>Get this podcast on your phone, Free
