Embrace the New Experts!

COVID-19 has brought no shortage of new experiences and ways of life to our current existence. Obvious changes have significantly altered the way we work, play, and generally navigate our lives. There are also some more subtle changes afoot. Changes that need to be recognized, nourished and developed.

Our division hosted a virtual professional learning event this week. During one of the sessions, my mind drifted off; nothing against the presenter as my mind has a natural tendency to wander. In this particular mental meander, I asked myself the following: “How many educational experts have direct teaching experience during a pandemic?”

Not surprisingly, I couldn’t think of a single one. This doesn’t detract from their expertise but it does put an asterisk beside it. The presentation I attended was excellent and relevant, but I couldn’t help but ask myself: “But how does this look through the lens of teaching through our current context of COVID-19?”

The answer was, “I don’t know because we are working in unprecedented times.”

I’m not trying to detract from the expertise of the experts, after all they’re experts that have worked hard to gain the requisite experience to be an expert. However, since COVID, the context has changed significantly. We can’t negate past expertise, but moving forward, we must be judicious about how we use past practices in our new context. We will also need to develop new practices if we are going to thrive in our new and changing context.

We need new experts!

I previously wrote on the unprecedented times we are in. How each day, week, and month moving forward our teachers and support staff are establishing precedent through their hard work in our current context.

Our school has been up and running with in-person learning for a little more than 3 weeks now. That’s three weeks of experience and expertise we didn’t have in August. It’s actually much more than that. We have about 20 teachers, each with 3 weeks; that’s 60 weeks and in school calendars, that’s a year and a half! And we’re not the only school. It may only be September, but the teaching profession has literally amassed hundreds, if not thousands of years of new experience in just a few weeks!

Our new experts are our teachers, educational assistants, librarians, therapists and everyone that is working directly with our students and families in our new context. First and foremost, we must acknowledge our new experts!

Next we must be prepared to learn from our new experts. As a school leader, I now must put myself in the position of lead learner. I have so much to learn from my staff and coordinate opportunities for staff to learn from each other.

As leaders we are regularly asked for input and advice, but providing advice can inhibit the overall learning culture of the school. Not to mention that in our current context there are situations where I literally have no advice to give, as I have no direct experience in the context.

The good news is that as leaders we still have a big role. We may not be experts in the current context, but we are still leaders entrusted to empower and coach our new experts as they problem solve their way forward.

This is uncomfortable for many of us, but fortunately there is help out there. As leaders we have an opportunity to put new tools in our tool kits. Embrace our lack of expertise and learn alongside our new experts. I have found myself turning to a couple of great resources from Michael Bungay Stanier to help me along this path. Two of his books, The Coaching Habit, and The Advice Trap have become regular fixtures on my desk.

Our role as leaders when working with our new experts is nicely summed up in the subtitle of The Advice Trap:

Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever

Our new experts may have expertise, but they still need leadership and guidance as unprecedented becomes our regular practice. However, we can’t simply rely on advice. We need to arm ourselves with authentic curiosity and coach our staff, and think alongside them.

We must be humble and truly empathize with our staff. I can’t say “I’ve been there”, because I haven’t been there. But I can acknowledge the difficulty of the situation and commit to work alongside our staff.

We must be authentically curious and ask the questions that will put context on the table and help our staff see the solutions they've had the whole time. We can ask about what, and ask about how, but we can’t ask about why. We have to be careful about why, as why has a nasty way of bringing judgement into the room, even if it’s not our intention. Be humble, stay curious; pretty good guidance for the foreseeable future!

Let’s thank, celebrate, and most importantly learn from our new experts as they help us make sense of our new COVID way of life. Don’t worry ‘old experts’ we still need you too, we need all the expertise we can muster these days.

*Full disclaimer: Our “New Experts” have always been our experts. But now more than ever these are our vital experts. As leaders, if we don’t embrace their expertise we will not thrive moving forward!