In this engaging episode of the Engaging Leadership Show, host CT Leong delves into the unique and compelling leadership journey of Jim Shoemake, the superintendent of Rescue Union School District. Jim shares invaluable insights on the cultural and operational strategies that have led his district to thrive, despite national challenges in recruiting and retaining educators. His emphasis on creating a supportive, safe, and grateful work environment, combined with a commitment to continuous improvement, sets a stellar example for educational leaders everywhere.

The conversation explores how Jim and his team have successfully fostered a culture of excellence by prioritizing people over programs, encouraging grassroots initiatives, and implementing methodical one-on-one dialogues. Key topics include the importance of psychological safety, the dynamic challenges of modern educational leadership, and practical techniques for garnering trust and cooperation within a team.

Key Takeaways:

• People First, Programs Second: Investing in passionate, committed individuals leads to the development of successful and sustainable educational programs.
• Continuous Improvement: Engaging in regular, thoughtful feedback and improvement processes helps identify areas for growth and innovation.
• Value of Gratitude: Implementing a culture of gratitude through simple gestures like thank-you notes can significantly boost morale and interconnectedness within the district.
• Psychological Safety: Ensuring leaders feel safe to experiment and make mistakes fosters a collaborative and innovative work environment.
• Effective One-on-Ones: Structured, predictable one-on-one meetings focusing on four key questions ensure clear, open, and productive communication.

Chapters:

0:00

Leadership Insights from Rescue Union School District

3:04

Investing in People to Drive Program Success

11:30

Building a Culture of Excellence Through Continuous Improvement

17:04

Challenges and Joys of Being a School Principal

21:17

Navigating Leadership Challenges in Education

26:39

Leadership Evolution: From Unpredictability to Methodical Stability

30:31

Four Key Questions for Effective School Leadership

32:31

Systematic One-On-One Meetings for Effective Leadership

37:19

Effective Leadership Questions for Engaging and Supporting Teams

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Jim Shoemake: linkedin.com/in/jim-shoemake-391087182/

Music Credit: Shake it Up - Fesliyanstudios.com - David Renda



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I'm also the co founder of Engage Rocket, and we're a leadership listening and insights tool that helps school district leaders to improve teacher retention, engagement, and ultimately student achievement outcomes. It's a great privilege for me to have in our studios, Jim Shoemake. the superintendent of Rescue Union school district to talk about his leadership journey.

Welcome to the show, Jim.

The focus is always being on kids and the fact that we're able to do that like I said, in a really nice environment, just lends us to a really great situation for us, just geographically and with the people we've been able to recruit.

And we create some amazing programs. We have a garden program that we started three years ago when COVID was up, just trying to get kids outside. And the person that we selected for that had such a passion that it just became infectious and contagious. And if I just dropped a garden program onto a site and said, Hey, we want you to start a garden program and run it.

I would imagine it would look like my garden. It wouldn't be very pretty. But the fact that we've got someone that's just constantly thinking about it, that wants to nurture, That is invested at their core, it's what they're about. We've just seen whatever we pursue, if we put the right person in there and when we invest in that person, it just accelerates what we're trying to accomplish, which has been really nice.

I probably throughout this podcast, I'm going to drop quite a few isms. But I often talk to our leaders about we don't do things to people. We do things with people. And dropping programs. Implementing some type of pet project that someone wants to implement it. I've just experienced over my time that it typically doesn't get the traction that it needs to.

How do we support it? How do we invest in it?

But having people be challenged with that question really gets them thinking about I have a role in creating a culture of excellence. This isn't just Jim working hard towards that or my principal or just the food service folks or the board at wherever, whatever role I have in the district, I have some ownership in that. I think that empowers people to realize. For me, it just might be tomorrow's our first day of school, how am I welcoming kids into my classroom in those first seconds, that's how I'm going to contribute to a culture of excellence. I'm going to make sure that those kids feel welcomed, safe, excited about learning, excited that I'm going to be their teacher.

It's always that little thing day by day that you're doing. And I think was it Toyota and Kaizen that started this idea of continuous improvement, which you alluded to. And it really was that, right? We were starting out with the smallest pieces welcoming children back into school, giving them that sense that excitement that they want to be there. They're already coming with certain preconceived ideas, and then just bringing them into the fold and school bus driver, right?

Just making sure that the kids get home safe, making sure that they feel good about the bus ride. All of these things. You had a ton of examples, but I'd love to hear them.

So anyone that's challenged with their mobility attends the school and we have a playground and there's ability for them to get around, but they need to be assisted. It's bark. They can't access all the elements that are on the playground. And really what started is just this small notion of we can do better for our kids. And we're talking at the school site. I think we had seven kids there, the population of probably close to 400 and some odd kids that roughly. That one little kernel of we can do better led to a conversation, which led to another conversation. It just started a bubble about, we can do better.

Just her ruminating about these kids aren't able to access a playground the way they should ended up with really the region's first all abilities playground on our campus. When we talk about just building this culture of excellence it's identifying an area where we can get better and then what steps can we take?

And this was one of those ones that we could have not gotten any traction but in this particular case we had a person that was determined that was driving it again, back to that investing in people. My job was just to get out of her way and support her the best that I could.

No sooner had the cement dried we're talking about what's the next thing that we can improve upon and on that continuous improvement vein, we're doing quite a bit of work with that.

You guys go get it done, right? It was this sense of purpose and the set and collective energy. Which spread out and it became very grassroots, which then took hold and it became what it became, and it continues to grow. And I think that's such an amazing example to bring up. But I'd love to get into that continuous improvement story that you've got on the back of your mind.

We still had spacing issues that we had to comply with. It felt for quite some time for our leaders and probably for our staff that worked here, that we were just in this reactionary period, every day we were responding to something and I felt like we did it really well, but it wasn't aspirational.

It wasn't inspirational. It was just we got to show up and get this done and we got to do it well because the community is relying on us to make really thoughtful and good decisions. And I feel like we did that, but there was just this nagging this with our team that, man, we talked about building this culture of excellence.

And so that was an opportunity at that time for us to revisit this culture of excellence to say. We got to figure out something different. But really everyone just doubled down and said, now's the time we've got to lean into this. We just decided to invest in people versus program.

And so we spent last year with our leaders, just learning about what does continuous improvement look like and how do we ensure that as we're trying to improve, we're going to have missteps. That misstep there's no cost to that.

If you make a mistake in the name of getting better. Okay, but that didn't work. Let's try something different. So really trying to create a level of safety for our leaders to be able to put their necks out and say, I'm going to try this out and not fear that anything negative is going to happen to them.

Now every single meeting starts with an opportunity for our leaders they have a thank you card in front of them at every single meeting. And our task is just to start off that meeting with writing a thank you card to someone in the system. There's 400 employees, 10, 000 parents and a lot of organizations that we can be thankful for and just reminding ourselves that we have a really great environment here and how do we just maintain that. As we learn more and more about continuous improvement, we just decided that the only way we could get better is if we started getting feedback from the people we work with.

Now we know where the continuous improvement can occur. We asked everyone five questions about each department. Every department lead got their results. I and the two assistant superintendents met with our departments really with this idea of, what are we going to celebrate out of this data because your team needs to hear that they're doing a lot of things really good.

And the data was really good, but it was also very compelling about where we needed to work. The next step was pick one area out of this data that you feel like you could move the needle on before next fall. And then meet with your team and discuss how are you going to move it?

They've been doing that work now for about seven months. We're going to be surveying our departments again in November. The idea is, did we move the needle? What I have been emphasizing with our team is, even if we don't move the needle, anecdotally, what I'm hearing when I talk to people is they're appreciative of the fact that we listened to an area that needs to be improved upon, and we're working to fix it.

If we can't move the needle, the next question is, was it the efforts that we put forward that was lacking, was it that the manner in which we tried to tackle it that was lacking? And I'm looking forward to receiving that data in November. Again, in hindsight, it just has sent a message to our staff that we're all accountable and in a positive way, and we're all committed to just getting better. And now we know what to get better at rather than just guessing. This spring we just did the employee experiences survey, which allowed every employee to just tell us what's their lived experience in our district.

You've got to be able to create a safe space. You've got to be comfortable in your own skin. If not, everything's going to go well. And for some people you go into teaching, it's just all about loving on kids and getting a hug every morning from your kids as they walk in or a fist bump.

And that's not what a principal's job looks like on a day to day basis. So yeah there's definitely a decline in the number of people that are interested in this job.

They do some things that I just wish I had thought of when I was a principal and I thought I was doing a really good job as a principal, but I look at what they're doing, with the environment that they create. We're starting school tomorrow. And the way that we welcome kids with the red carpet and the balloons and staff out there, and it's all about, I'm glad to see you.

I think our principals do a great job of the way that they support our teachers. They really get very granular. The way they do classroom placements now is super thoughtful with balancing and making sure that Every kid has a friend that's in a class that they feel comfortable in that first day.

The level of thoughtfulness it's not required. And then you layer on the safety aspect, there's a lot of weight that these principals carry, just keeping their kids safe.

On the news especially over the last couple of years, just weighs on our principals and it's a lot of stress to think about. Do I really want to take that on in my life? There's so many other avenues. You could be a counselor or teacher on special assignment.

There's other ways that you can still serve kids if you're ready to move out of the classroom.

Maybe I'll segue a little bit to your own experience and then I'll talk about how that's influencing the way you're approaching the others. When you first became a leader in education. How was that transition like for you?

So it was challenging. But I think what it just taught me was If you're not listening to everyone around you, you're making a big mistake. So if you're thinking like, I know the right answer, I don't need to ask anyone, I'm passionate about this. So this is what we're doing, you're pushing that proverbial ball up the hill and in the moment you turn your back or slip and just gonna roll back on you and rather than getting a collective group to assist with it. I did find that early on in my career that walking down to people's classrooms and talking to him about, hey, this is what we're thinking. I want to give you some pre thinking before we get to the faculty meeting where we're gonna have a larger conversation. Just creasing the skids a little bit for people and getting some just really honest feedback from people has been so helpful. I feel like that's something that I've carried on in my career.

And then you restart that the next day. So I didn't feel equipped as far as like classes or anything like that. I had been a coach. I'd been a teacher. So I did feel very well equipped about how do you interact with kids, how do you interact with adults? How are you honest and truthful and have the highest of integrity because they're going to remember if you don't do that, and the word is going to spread pretty quick.

So I felt like all the soft skills, I felt very prepared in that space but there was no classes that I took that I felt like, oh, that really helped me.

Oftentimes I felt like my career has been this evolution of learning and trying to do the job that was in front of me the best that I could, and not worrying about the next job or thinking about preparing for the next job, just learning and doing what I could with what was in front of me.

By the time I became a principal, that VP job I'm not sure there's a tougher job than being a site leader, vice principal and principal both. So when I migrated into the principal role, I think the hardest part for me was now people were looking to me as the VP, no one's looking to the VP as the leader of the school.

My first couple of years as being a principal is how do you try to get the parts all moving in the right direction and moving well?

It was always a challenge. I had this reservoir of Life's experiences that I could defer to and that I gained some knowledge from that helped me navigate a new job versus when you'd first become a principal. You've never probably managed people and you've never dealt with really upset parents that are upset on a topic that's not necessarily behavior, but it's something bigger.

Looking back, I think that the more and more experiences I had, the easier the transitions were for sure.

I think what I have learned that this level of predictability that you can provide to people. I didn't realize that, how important that has been for me and my career, what are the sayings I say all the time is if you're unpredictable, you're unpleasant. And I don't know that I felt that when I was young.

You're a V. P. You make a decision, and then the next time you might make a slightly different decision, and you don't understand why that's upsetting to people. And you're not grounded in what predictability should look like. And you're really just not grounded in who you are as a leader. The more that I've led and had opportunities to lead, I just find myself being a lot more grounded and a lot more even keel with how I approach things.

And I think The thinking that I implement when we're having difficult conversations is a lot more, like I said, predictable now methodical versus emotional. This is what I feel like we should do today. So that would be a change I think in my leadership for sure.

But even along the way, the VPs, the assistant sups, like everyone along the chain, how do you think about developing them as leaders?

So it really was about problem solving with people. Had I not come in when COVID and a lot of the dramas that were going on at the boardroom I don't know that the trust level would have happened as quickly as it had has. I think us going through a shared experience that was traumatic a lot of ways, but also forced us to sit down and say, okay how are we going to navigate this? And problem solving, sitting down with someone at their desk that's really struggling with a situation on their site and letting them know you're there to help them. And then knowing eventually getting to understand that, yeah, he is here to help me.

I don't know that it was as strategic as it is now or thoughtful is probably a better word. So now it's just about four questions. It's what are you doing really well? Because I want to be able to celebrate your successes with you. When I see other people, I want to tell them about some of the amazing work that's going on at the school site.

And our leaders are great. It's never about what they're doing well. It's about what their site is doing well. I think we've got the most amazing leaders in our district. From top to bottom. Really great people. That second question is what's keeping you awake at night? And really what I'm just trying to elicit there is what are you struggling with?

So really to amplify this idea of gratitude and also that your job impacts other people. So when you are doing your job thoughtfully and at a high level, it makes everyone else's ability to do their job easier. And then the last question is just, what do you need from me? That's where that conversation, you can go anywhere cause everyone is at a different spot with what they're looking for and what they need. My job is to make sure when they share with me, what's keeping them awake at night on all of these, what are you doing really well? How am I celebrating that publicly at board meetings and at events that I'm at?

So I modeled that this year, and all of our leaders are going to be implementing this with their one on ones district wide next year. It was well received, and I'm excited to see what it looks like when everyone starts to roll this out.

And how regularly do you revisit the information? I'm going to get nerdy about this with you.

But what I can share with you is that there is some thoughtfulness when we meet about, I want to meet with every site leader at least once a month for a one on one. I meet with them every Tuesday as a group. So we have five opportunities a month where we have face to face time to talk, but one of them is a one on one it's scheduled for an hour.

This is your meeting. Let's talk about these. And then I do have directors as well. Many of them do not report directly to me. They report to the assistant superintendents, but I do meet with them about every six weeks just to check in on how we're doing.

So that would be the logistical side of that.

I might have a couple of points that I wanted to maybe bring up. If they weren't willing to share something that they are doing great. I always want to make sure I have something in my head that I'm able to tell them. Don't you remember?

The first two years we were not asking these specific questions. We were just trying to triage whatever was in front of us. But last year, when I first decided to model this. I decided that I wanted to maintain this relational conversation piece, not take too many notes.

Usually I'll write a couple little notes to myself on a piece of paper, or I'll ask for their forgiveness and open up and put a little note in there just so I have it as a reminder. What I have found is with the people that I interface predominantly with, which is the assistant superintendents and our site leaders.

We're in a kind of a cadence now where I know what's going on at the site. I'm present enough on the side. I'd love to be more present, but I feel like I'm present enough that I know what's going on. And so I don't feel like I've got to look back in the notes and say what's going on with this person.

This has been such a great conversation, Jim. If anyone wanted to follow up with you and continue this conversation, what's the best way for them to reach you?