Developing Stronger Relationship with Vicky Essebag

Interactive Transcript

Speaker A Foreign.

Speaker B Hello everyone, and welcome back. I'm Joe and TJ and you're listening to season six of our Focus Ed podcast where we cover all things education to help you lead better and grow faster by Staying Focused is a collaborative.

Speaker C Program of work with our partners from the Delaware Department of Education and Wilmington University.

Speaker B Partnerships we're very excited about. So don't forget to follow us@the schoolhouse302.com for more leadership content and to contact us for leadership coaching, professional learning, and much, much more.

Speaker C As always, we hope that you enjoyed this episode of Focused, and we can't wait to hear from you.

Speaker D Hello, everyone, and welcome to Focus Ed, where we invite expert guests to join us. And we are thrilled to have Vicki Essebag with us today. Welcome to the show, Vicki.

Speaker E Thanks so much, Joe. Nice to be here.

Speaker C Thank you.

Speaker D Today we are focused on relational communication and the way that school leaders can build effective relationships with all of the various stakeholders that they serve. So, TJ with that, can you please tell us a bit more about Vicki?

Speaker C Sure, Joe. Vicki Essebag is a relational communication specialist and author. She pairs her extensive background in education as a teacher, back guidance counselor, head of guidance curriculum consultant, and administrator with her experience as a family therapist and solution focused coach. Vicki is widely known for adapting the Solution Focused Brief Therapy SFBT model to support effective relationships with all stakeholders and families. She sets the tone for supportive and compassionate learning spaces and she inspires with the power of prioritizing communication to encourage effective and inclusive relationships, something we're going to be talking about today. She's a public speaker, instructional leader, consultant, and coach. She's the founder of the company Relations Spaces and the author of Relation Spaces, a Solution Focused Handbook for Parents. So, Vicki, we're going to get started with this concept. Tell us as we start what you mean by relation spaces. I think I'd like to get a definition of that before we dive into the other concepts.

Speaker E Yeah. So what I'm talking about with relation spaces is how we bring ourselves to the space of relationships when we communicate with each other. And of course, when we bring ourselves to these spaces, we have choices. We have both, I suppose, conscious and unconscious choices that we make and whatever choices we make have an impact on our relationships. So when I speak to relation spaces, I speak to the very many choices that we can make and the types of strategies that we can use to develop the most productive relationships.

Speaker D If you in mind, Vicki, just to go down that road a little bit more, that makes a lot of sense. I like how you said how we bring ourselves to this space. Can you describe that a little more and maybe even a little situational, and especially within our professional world, you know, we may go to a professional learning community meeting in one way, but then we have a tough meeting with a staff member, with a parent or something, and we may bring ourselves to that a little different. If I hear you correctly, can you walk us through that a bit more?

Speaker E Yeah, sure. So I think that what happens sometimes is we have our own cognition, we have our own mindset around the kinds of relationships and communications that we're having. Whether it's a teacher walking into a classroom and relating with students, or whether it's an administrator walking into a staff meeting and relating with the staff. We have a certain idea, a preconception of how it is that we communicate with these people. And sometimes it's effective and sometimes it's ineffective. And so what solution focus helps us to do is it helps us to sort of reframe how we're engaging with other people and so to say, are we being our best selves in this communication? How can we reshape the way that we're communicating people to achieve the best outcomes and, you know, the greatest level of success, not just in how we communicate, but in what we can actually create together?

Speaker C I want to. I want to double click on that a little bit. The part about our preconceived maybe bias. And then sometimes it's effective, sometimes it's not. What I'm taking from that, and I just want to make sure that I'm clear, is that we think that we have a way that we're communicating, and we think that that's working, but it might not actually be landing on the person we're communic with. Can you tell us some of the traps for that, the mishaps, and am I getting it right?

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E Absolutely. So, you know, you have a student, let's say, who arrives late to class every day.

Speaker A Okay.

Speaker E Or almost every day. And what is one of the first things the teacher is going to say? The teacher's going to say, you know, you're late again.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E And so if we think about the kind of impact that that has on the student, if we really start to parse through it, we realize that the student has no alternative but to behave po in the way that they react to that.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E So we can reframe that and say, well, instead, you know, what helped you to get to school on time today?

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E Or not notice the lateness, but only notice when they're arriving on time. And make some communication to that effect. We can do the same thing in staff meetings or with our staff members. We know that sometimes staff members arrive late. We know that sometimes staff members sit at the back of the room and, you know, do their marking during professional learning. We know that that can happen.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E So instead of pointing that out and pointing the finger at that and it lands very poorly, we can reframe that and, you know, ask for their positive input and notice their positive contributions and celebrate their positive contributions. So we're trying to minimize noticing the not so desirable and maximize noticing the desirable. So noticing is the way in which we notice is a very important part of solution focused understanding.

Speaker D Vicki, with this idea of noticing solution focused understanding, can we walk down this path a little bit? Because I do know we what the two situations you just described are common. You know, they happen, you know, they happen all the time.

Speaker E Absolutely.

Speaker D So I also hear you say that, you know, we're creating safe spaces here as well and where people can thrive. Do you have a follow up conversation with the individual? Like, can you just help me? Because I'm, I tend to be very on the nose. I agree that if you say something during the meeting itself, it could go awry. You know, all you're doing is engaging in a power struggle. Never works. Kid or adult, doesn't matter. You know, it rarely goes the way you want it. But if you aren't getting the cooperation, the level of input, like where do you take it from there? Because you know, on this call, a lot of the. Our listeners, listeners are brand new administrators and we want them to have the tools to say, look, all right, I'm going to reframe in the moment and use this as an opportunity to engage. But if it goes awry or just doesn't get to the level I want of discourse, say, how should I handle that?

Speaker E Yeah. So my advice in the moment would be not to deal with, let's say, the staff member who is disengaging not to deal with that in the moment. My advice would be to deal with it either post meeting or pre meeting. And in solution focus, there are two key pieces that we work with. One of them is what we call the exception orientation. So that is to say that if you have a staff member that's misbehaving, they're not doing it 24, 7, every day of the week, all year.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E There are days and there are times when they're doing wonderful things.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E And so what we want to do is to capitalize on that. What are their Strengths, what are their resiliencies? What are their abilities? What can we talk to them about to really help, to help them to see those fantastic attributes, right. So there's that piece of the conversation that is so strength building and so positive, right. Then there's the other piece in Solution Focus that we also talk a lot about and we call that future orientation. And future orientation is basically what does the person want and what do they want instead? And when things are different or things are better, what might that look like? And so now we're asking the individual for their input, but we're asking for real input in a judgment free type of conversation.

Speaker C I'd like to, I can't help but to ask, like, but sometimes there are just bad behaviors and they occur, they recur. And so can you talk about that? Because I think, you know, I think there's, there's somebody listening here and I, it's in part of my head right now thinking, I love a strengths based approach, but we can't operate with a toxic culture if some people are just tearing the system down all the time. How do you, how do you address that when you're coaching somebody and they say, yeah, but the person's just, they're not responding.

Speaker E Yeah, and I completely agree with you. And you. We will see that sometimes. And the important thing to understand is that there are no overnight miracles for success.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E And one of the, one of the tenets of solution focus is that success happens in small little increments. The same way that we perceive assessment as learning.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E As educators, we think about that from an assessment as learning context, that we learn things in small chunks and that learning builds upon itself and that change happens gradually. And the same thing happens with our staff. There are no overnight successes. So that's the first piece of it. The second piece of it is as administrators we need to take a few steps back sometimes from what we, from our own agenda.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E What we want to see as the outcome. Just because we want to see a specific outcome, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's exactly how it has to be. Sometimes we might want to think about perhaps co constructing ideas with our staff that may be more meaningful to everybody involved.

Speaker D I love the idea of co constructing, bringing people into the, the conversation even earlier so they do feel part, like you said, with the exception orientation, like there might be someone has a lot of value and input and somebody quit asking them years ago because they are a curmudgeon.

Speaker E Exactly, exactly. Yes.

Speaker D With that, Vicki, if you wouldn't mind, because I We, we have literally some people have just started within like the last, you know, week, month in their new positions and so on. And I'm always thinking about, you know, how do we build those meaningful relationships. So if we could just take a step back and think about as a, as an administrator because we're constantly building relationships. It is a verb. I don't think people realize that is never static. So this constant idea of building relationships, growing, what are some just tried and true steps a leader should take to be build those relationships to make even some of those down the road conversations even easier because you already have the relationship.

Speaker E That's right. That's right. And Jo, honestly, there's nothing more important than that. If we want to have any type of success in schools, whether it be academic success or relationship success for all stakeholders, we have to prioritize the development and the building of relationships from the very, very start of the school year. It cannot be something that is an add on. It cannot be something that we've decided, oh, this month our theme is relationships. It cannot be like that, right? And there's this, this wonderful, wonderful book. It's actually a whole program. It's written by Tranter, Carson and Boland and it's called the Third Path. And effectively they've done a lot of research and what they're saying is, look, there's the academic path, which is a really significant path that we have to prioritize in schools and there's the well being path that we've been capitalizing on and talking about for the past 20 some years. And we've been trying to build all kinds of well being programs in our school. But what they're saying is that the only time that we or the, the most effective school well being and achievement and such a big part of what they find to be well being are the relationships that we create in our schools. And what that means is it's relationships are not an add on. We think about how we're relating when we go into a meeting. We think about how we're relating every time we meet with a staff member, a student, every time we're walking down the hallways, every time there's an extracurricular event, every time we communicate with parents, it's always front and center. It's the most important thing. And when we do that, and we will find our teachers actually building well being into their lesson plans. And that's what we want. We don't want well being and relationships to be the last item on the staff meeting agenda that gets dropped off because assessment is more important and is taking up more time. Not that assessment isn't important. It's very important. But we cannot treat relationships as an add on.

Speaker C Joe was the director of assessment and accountability. So I think with him, we want the assessments to be first.

Speaker D I was gonna say nobody wanted a relationship. No, I, I did all the data, I did all the assessments, teacher evaluations. Like, I, I was just anything that teachers didn't like, I was in charge of.

Speaker C Okay, yeah, I'm glad you brought it up as it might be the antithesis of relationship building, but I want to know. So I'm bought in. I'm a leader. I want to be a relational leader. I want to do my best to prioritize relationships. I need some action steps, like what are the do's and don'ts of that? Because I think I can come to work tomorrow and prioritize relationships and mess it up pretty bad. So I need some. I'm sure there's some skill development that you do when you coach people. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Speaker E Yeah. Well, firstly, the premises of solution focus. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's the first thing. The second piece is if it's working, do more of it. And the third piece is if it's not working, do something different. And that's where we begin. That's where we begin. We also begin with the understandings that people actually know what it is that they want. They may not be able to verbalize it, they may not be able to conceptualize it, but they know what it is that they want and they know ultimately how they can change it to be more improved, to get to where they want to be.

Speaker A All right?

Speaker E So we need to try to help people to do that. And one of the ways in which we help people to do that is by the kinds of questions that we ask them. So, for example, in a staff meeting, rather than saying, look, this is the way we want you to do it and this is how you're going to do it, we can instead say, okay, so we've got this scenario that we've got to deal with. We've got a practice that we want to put in place, whatever it be. So what do you think about it? What do you think will improve when it's different? How can it be different? So these are all future oriented types of questions that we can ask and we can put that over to our staff as soon as we start asking them these kinds of questions. They interpret this as oh, you know what? My administrator really wants to know what I think. My administrator really wants to know what I think might be some good ideas. And so they start to share, and they share more when they know that we're not going to veto what they say, that we're not going to stop that conversation. We're actually going to entertain what they're saying, what they're thinking and what they're feeling. And, you know, they may not always get what they want, but it doesn't matter. We can have an open and educated conversation. So that's just a little bit, you know, just to give you an idea of some of the questions that might be asked in conversation. And these types of questions we can ask in the classroom, we can ask with students as well. You know, one of the. As a matter of fact, very recently I was in Maryland, I was very close to you, and I was doing a training for mental health providers and educational leaders on how they could use solution focused conversations with their students, presenting with school refusal. And one of the activities that we did together was that everybody in the room pretended that they were a young person and they actually created a visual diagram of a machine that would actually help them get back to school. And what that exercise showed them, I mean, the. The outcome was amazing. It was amazing, the machines that they came out with. And what was even more amazing was their descriptions of these machines. This is actually how I'm going to be able to get back to school. And what that demonstrates is the power of giving people the opportunity to actually share what's on their mind and to be creative about it and that we all have the ability to resourcefully find our own solutions.

Speaker D I love the idea of that empowerment and them having to use their own level of creativity. It's there. Got to tap into it. So very, very powerful. Vicki, just switching gears a little bit. You mentioned the third path. We'll definitely link to that in the show Notes. Is there other person book podcast that inspires you, you continue to learn from that you just feel is a wealth of information.

Speaker E Yeah, well, you know what? I just, I just read actually a beautiful book, fiction over the holidays, and I'd like to talk about it a bit because it's called the Forest of Wool and Steel. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's written by a Japanese author by the name of Miyashita, and it was beautiful and I would really highly recommend it for schools because while it was fiction, it was a story of a piano tuner. But it really took us through that whole learning process and how it happened in small, very dedicated stages and steps. And the author does such a good job of describing that, how the, how the individual meaningfully evolves and develops. And it really, to me, it really speaks to the learning process. And so I think that a great tool for staff, for a staff to talk about, if there's a book club in a school, that kind of thing. So that stands out to me. Another book that really stands out to me was written by Dr. Susan David with the Harvard Medical School, and it's called Emotional Agility. And she talks about the need for spoken and unspoken messaging to human beings about it's okay to be distressed. Human distress is okay. We all get distressed. And so to me, you know, that messaging is really valuable because we need to be sending more of those messages. Right. It's all about, well, we have to live up to a certain type of way of, of behaving, of following the norms, of following the rules. You know, in the case of the work I've been doing recently with students with school refusal, you know, they're really, really stuck in this idea that they have to get back to school and they have to follow the rules and they often can't. It's not that they don't want to, it's that they can't. And if we can just get across this message to people, whether it be students or staff or families, that it's okay to be distressed, it's part of the human cond, you know, and we can try to give them tools. I think we'd be a lot better off. So. So that stands out as another book that I've read that has really made an impact on me.

Speaker C Vicki, are you, are there people who you follow and strategies you use to continue to grow as a leader and to improve your knowledge? And can you tell us a little bit about that?

Speaker E Sure. So I'm a. I'm certified with Canada. I'm a. I'm a national certified solution focused. And what I'm doing right now is I'm working toward my international certification as a solution focused coach and working up the, you know, working through the stages of that. Because I do do a lot of international work. And so it's something that I do. I'm a learner, I continually learn. And so that's where I'm at right now. I'm growing my business and working with schools and companies and with individuals and families. So I continue to evolve in that as well. Does that answer your question?

Speaker D Yeah, I believe so. All of that just speaks. This goes back or speaks to this whole idea of getting better at communication, learning, growing, anchoring this in relationships. And it just made me think, this is a question we love to ask, but I'm glad it fell to me. TJ so is there something you used to believe, Vicki, that you don't believe anymore?

Speaker E That's a really good question, Joe. You know, when I first started out many years ago, I was working within the school system and, you know, in different capacities. And while I was doing that, I was also being trained as a therapist and as a, as a. And I, you know, fell in love with Solution Focused and so got the coaching, training as well. In those first years. If you would have asked me, if you would have said to me, you know what, these solution focused questions, there's so many of them, they're so complex. How am I ever going to wrap my head around all of this? How am I ever going to engage people in productive conversations? I would have said to you, well, Joe, you know what? Take a question, ask it on one day, next day, build on it by trying another question. And you know what? That isn't wrong. But if I was asked, you know, what is the most important thing about Solution Focus today? I would say the most important part is our presence in how we communicate to other people. And quite frankly, like, if you think about someone in your life who has had an incredible impact on you, right, Somebody who you think very fondly of, it could be somebody you know today, somebody you knew in the past, it doesn't matter. It could be somebody you, you've had a relationship with, or may, maybe you just knew them for an hour. But if you think about that person, you'll know that they had an impact on you, not so much by what they said. You may not remember what they said, but you'll remember how you felt in their presence. Maybe they were kind, maybe they were supportive, maybe they really listened to you. And to me, that is the most important part of relationship and of communication.

Speaker C It's funny how the universe works. Our first book was called Candid and Compassionate Feedback. And the compassionate part is a lot of the work we do. And then Joe and I are working on a concept around kindness right now as being a superpower for leaders. So I'm so glad you said that about the presence part. I do want to go back to the questions though, just for a minute, and I'll prime this with. You know, a lot of administrators are thought that they should ask questions in pre observation Post observation questions with kids and something that Joe and I are, are keen about and train people is not to ask questions to lure people into thinking they made a mistake or to not to ask questions to bait people into thinking something you already think. Which I think those are kind of sometimes more natural questions when we're trying to get people to reflect with us. And I love the future oriented types of questions because the way we teach it is that you should ask questions about things you don't know the answer to, like be curious. Can you give some other tips about how to formulate questions that aren't condescending in some ways that we do, you know, often think of on the fly. Like planning questions is far better. We talked about that earlier with a group today. But I'd love some tips for our listeners on questioning techniques, if you will, like how do I develop better questions?

Speaker E Okay, well, so the best questions are open ended questions, questions that really leave it up to the receiver to decide how they want to respond. And if we have, let's imagine we have a staff member that's really struggling. Let's say that they're feeling really down because they've got a class, let's say it's a history teacher and they've got a class that just isn't working out and they're going to class every day and they just feel like they're just running up against a wall every day.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E So rather than focusing on the problem itself to say, you know, what's going wrong with these kids and oh my goodness, and you're feeling so terribly and horribly about this and it's not working out, we can spin it to say, the last time you were really feeling effective in one of your classes, what did that look like? And so now we're looking at that resilience, we're looking at those abilities, those strengths, and we're asking them, you know, tell me about it, tell me about how that helped, tell me about how you felt. Tell me about how students responded to that. How did your colleagues respond to that? So we're helping them to focus on and celebrate what they did that they feel really proud of. And usually what tends to happen in a conversation like that is it completely lifts the staff member out of the problem and it reminds them of why they're there to begin with and it helps them then to say, okay, so if I was able to achieve success in my classroom in the past by doing X, Y or Z, I know that I can do that again because I've done that before. And so it helps to elevate their level of confidence. So that's another strategy. And there are many strategies like that. The scaling questions are marvelous.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E On a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 you're feeling completely frustrated and 1, you're not frustrated at all.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E Where are you on this scale? And now you can talk to the individual based on where they see themselves on the scale.

Speaker D I love all of that, Vicki, and I think it's powerful. Going back to what you had said about the belief question as well, I think sometimes you do have to memorize questions like this is not an easy thing you do. You have to have some in your tool belt to be able to take out and have those conversations with individuals. And having a bank of 5 to 10 that are your go to.

Speaker E Absolutely, absolutely. Yes. I completely support that.

Speaker D It's funny because end what else has become a favorite line of mine. And I felt cheesy doing it the first time. Yeah, but reading different things from the coaching habit to other books, it is like the second question you're supposed to ask. I'm like, well, then people are going to figure it out that I've read this book. And then I'm like in my own head about it, you know, and. And asking questions. But I do think when you start memorizing some of these, they help. I love the reframe, though. And then I just want to make sure we underscore this because getting the person to go to a place where they were success is crucial. And I do think like reframing and helping them reframe the problem because I just read something very interesting about pain versus suffering. Pain is where we can say I'm distressed, I'm anxious, I'm fearful.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker D This suffering, though, is where I'm angry at myself or what's wrong with me or this is never going to get better. And we can find ourselves easily along that path if somebody isn't there some help sometime to help us. Course, correct?

Speaker E Yes. Well, I, you know, I think what you're talking about, Jo, is hope.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E You know, hope is a funny thing.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker E It's not going to solve our problems, but it's going to help us get through them a little bit more easily. So if we can inspire someone with a little bit of hope and help them to see things a little differently, why not?

Speaker C I actually think that's a really nice place to kind of wrap up Vicki, if you will. Inspiring people with hope. And I love the why not part. If you can inspire people with hope, leaders Leaders. If you can inspire people with hope, why not?

Speaker E Why not? Yeah.

Speaker C If you can do it, which is not easy, but if you have the moment and the presence of to be able to get people to a point of hope, and let's do that, that seems like something we can push our chips into.

Speaker D PJ I wanted to say that if we truly entered every conversation, like my major takeaway right now with this, Vicki. I mean, I've had a few obvious. But one major is just every moment you're going to engage with somebody, truly be present. And I've heard that before. Right, That's. I've heard it before. But if we do approach it that way, that's a game changer in and of itself.

Speaker E Yes, absolutely.

Speaker C Vicki, is there anything else that you would like to add for the listeners? A question we didn't ask, Something that is a call to action for school leaders. I feel like the one thing that I wish we would have talked more about is parenting. Like, but that's maybe a selfish thing. But for school leaders out there, is there a message, any last words?

Speaker E I guess I'll just go back to this idea of really think about how you're starting the year, really think about that and prioritize relationships. And now actually, I mean, for those of us in high schools, we're starting semester two. I think you guys are also starting semester two now.

Speaker C Yes.

Speaker E Yeah. So this is another great opportunity to really think about how we're going to build our staff awareness around relationships and how we're going to help them to really be supportive of students. And if I can just add as a last bit this idea of fresh starts, let's give everybody a fresh start every day. We'll have students and staff with less anxiety at night. They'll sleep better. They'll be better prepared in the morning if they know that they're going to be forgiven for what happened the day before. Or let's have fresh starts every day and let's start our day like that and let, let's let people know that it's okay to make mistakes and that we learn from our mistakes and we move on.

Speaker F It's great.

Speaker C It's a great call to action. Fresh starts every day, prioritizing relationships. Let's think hard about that in the new year as we set our goals. This has been fantastic. Vicki. You heard it here, folks. On Focus Ed, Vicki Essebag, everyone. How about a virtual round of applause and live round of applause for the folks who are on the call. Don't forget to follow theschoolhouse302.com for podcasts, blog posts, books to read, and more. Lots of books on this podcast. I took copious notes. We'll be back soon with another episode of Focused. Until then, stay focused. Thank you Vicki.

Speaker E Thank you very much.

Speaker B Hey leaders, before you go, one more announcement. We now have available for you our Candid and Compassionate Feedback Masterclass.

Speaker D Really?

Speaker B Because of high demand, we are thrilled to offer this. This is a course that we run live and in person all the time and leaders love it. They learn to give feedback with skills that they can use right away, including better praise to lift and celebrate your team. It's now available in a virtual online format that you can take on your own, self paced from the comfort of your office or home.

Speaker F Here's what you'll get. There are 11 lessons with a focus on nine candor cancellations that we wrote in our Candid and Compassionate Feedback book. These are mistakes that leaders make that we don't want you to make anymore. We'll teach you models so that your feedback is meaningful, and we'll give you tools necessary to build the culture that you always wanted. Trust us, without these critical skills, you're not capitalizing on your own capacity to lead better and grow faster. Go to the site the schoolhouse302.com Click on Shop Courses.

Speaker C Add this course to your cart and start learning today.

Developing Stronger Relationship with Vicky Essebag

Interactive Transcript

Topics Covered

Related Episodes

Win New Hampshire | 10

Why a University Proactively Sought a Merger

Welcome to Astronomy 161

Want to Speak Real Japanese? Get our Free Travel Survival Course Today!

Share Episode