Learning To Say No

There are days when I feel overwhelmed by the number of people who are asking me to get involved in different opportunities. Some offers are from people who think that I can help their initiative, they are looking for people to get on board to move their initiative forward. In other cases, it is a hard sell they are making on what they see as something that is required for kids. Either way, I personally have a hard time saying no to many of these new opportunities. They often sound as though they would have a positive impact on students. I get caught up in wanting to help. At the end, I often end up feeling overextended and overwhelmed. I believe that accepting to take part in many of these initiative contributes to feelings being overwhelmed. What I have learned is that if I am to be effective and truly make a difference to my students I need to focus on the essential initiatives that will bring the most benefit. In other words, I need to focus and say no. I have used Learning Sprints to help set up the process of choosing what we are going to focus on and also to allow us to pivot when we see an initiative that we believe will have a big positive impact on our students. Here are some essential steps to maintaining laser focus.

Setting the Direction
First, you need to have a deep and honest discussion about what the students that you serve need most in their learning. This leads to choosing the interventions that you believe will have the greatest impact on their learning. If you do not spend the time to discuss what is important and to come to an understanding on what the improvement direction will be, it is likely that you start saying yes to initiatives that arise. Everyone should know what the focus is. Everyone should work towards what you have agreed is the most important things to do. Everyone should have the freedom to say no to things that come up that don’t align with the direction.

“Short” Learning Sprint
Having a shorter time period for your Learning Spring (professional development initiative) is important to the success of your initiative. My experience is that longer initiatives often: 1) Lose their focus, the team members forget what they were working on. 2) Do not have the ability to adapt to new high-quality opportunities that arise. 3) Continue with practices that are found to be ineffective. 4) Encourage team members to start other initiative not related to the main goal.
Keeping a tight timeline and short interval keeps the team focused. It allows them to see what works and scrap what do not work. It allows them to get on board with new initiatives that actually align with their improvement direction. It allows them the ability to say no to new things that come up.

Review & Reset
Having time to speak about the initiatives that we have put in place and to measure the efficacy of the interventions has worked really well for us. Asking “What worked?” and “What did not work?” has allowed us to discover what our students respond to. It is at this time that we decide how to proceed. It there something new to try? It is now that appropriate time to perhaps say yes to new initiative that align. Once this process is over and the new direction is set, we are back to saying no.

Through this process I have seen an increase in positive impact on learning, as teachers are now selecting what they will do and giving themselves the mental time and space to actually do it. I have also seen a reduction in teacher workload, as teachers have the ability to say no to things that come up not related to their main area of focus. The Learning Sprint process has also helped me as a leader to say no to many things that I don’t think will positively impact the learning of our students.