Summary:

Explore how Dr. Pete Hannigan, Superintendent of Hawthorne School District 73, transformed his district by focusing on listening, communication, and accountability. In a conversation with Dr. Jim, Dr. Hannigan shares his approach to navigating change, building trust, and enhancing culture and climate in education. Learn about the importance of engaging stakeholders, leveraging professional learning communities, and balancing infrastructure and people needs. This episode offers valuable insights into effective leadership in complex educational environments.

Key Takeaways:

• Listening and Feedback: Dr. Hannigan highlights the importance of conducting structured interviews with stakeholders to identify district strengths and opportunities for improvement.
• Communication and Trust: Effective internal and external communication and rebuilding trust are pivotal in transforming district culture and mitigating staff attrition.
• Focus on Culture and Climate: Prioritizing a positive work environment and collective responsibility can address compensation grievances and enhance staff morale.
• Building Leadership Capacity: Developing leadership skills across all levels of the organization is crucial to managing a large-scale educational district successfully.
• Strategic Planning: Implementing and communicating clear operational and infrastructure plans help manage expectations and foster community trust.

Chapters:

00:00

Building Leadership Through Listening and Accountability in Education

04:25

Improving School Culture and Climate Amid Budget Constraints

07:05

Building Relationships and Prioritizing Growth in Leadership Transition

10:45

Building Trust and Culture to Combat Staff Attrition

19:16

Building Leadership Capacity Through Collaborative Training and Communication

21:36

Building Leadership Capacity Through Professional Learning Communities

23:28

Overcoming Communication Challenges in Large Organizations

26:16

Managing Accountability and Culture in Large School Districts

27:51

Building Trust and Communication in School Districts

34:25

Building Accountability Cultures Through Listening and Adaptation

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

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Dr. Peter Hannigan: linkedin.com/in/peter-hannigan-30a18294

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



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That type of thinking is what can get you in trouble. Whenever you start a new leadership role, it's important to demonstrate your commitment to listening and accountability. Building an organization that is full of leaders who listen and act with intention and accountability is one of the hallmarks of a high performance organization.

Today's conversation will focus on how you can build this framework or build this type of organization in any sector in any industry.

So who's going to be helping us build this framework? Today we have Pete Hannigan joining us. Dr. Pete Hannigan is an accomplished educational leader with A strong commitment to ensuring quality education for all. He holds a doctorate in educational administration and educational specialist degree and a master's of science and education.

He leads a diverse student population of approximately 3, 400 students across nine schools and is committed to providing equitable opportunities and a world class whole child education for all the students in his district. Welcome to the show.

[00:01:28] Dr. Jim: Yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to this conversation and we'll try to keep the nerding out to as much of a minimum as you can in these sort of conversations.

But I think the first order of business for us is for you to share with us a little bit more about your story, both from your career trajectory perspective, and also from a district perspective, that's going to help the listeners understand your philosophy.

You talked about my education. I'm a lifelong learner. As soon as I graduated college, I immediately started my master's degree and went all the way through my E. D. And that brings us here today. I specifically, when I was interviewing and looking for that next step and becoming a superintendent, I was looking for an organization.

I was also in a position where. Hawthorne had interim superintendent. So I wasn't fighting the narrative of trying to transition with a sitting superintendent. So I had a lot of flexibility, but what that allowed me to do is [00:03:00] really start to dive into the work right away. I provided my board of education with a 90 day transition plan and embedded in that was me soliciting feedback from the entire community.

One is the fact that you came into the big chair in the district from an HR position. So one of the things that I'm curious about, because we haven't had a lot of folks on the show that went into district superintendency coming through the HR lens. So I'm curious, how did that experience and time in HR inform some of your viewpoints as a superintendent when you took on those roles?

But I think the biggest piece was just understanding the importance of culture and climate. And being able to measure it, making sure you're creating an organization where you can recruit, retain and promote staff from within. So that was really like the biggest takeaway that I took from the HR seat in overseeing 28 buildings was just that primary focus on culture and climate and how important that is to a healthy organization.

That in any organization, one of the top complaints that you'll get from your staff or any employee is that compensation is a big issue and nobody's happy with it. You could have an entire organization that makes a hundred grand and people will still complain about not getting paid enough. So that's [00:05:00] a bigger problem in education because we all know that teachers are underpaid.

So when you look at that complaint that exists within the K through 12 space, what are some of the creative things that you did to mitigate some of those concerns and build more connectivity with teachers and the district when you know that pay is going to be an issue or a complaint that comes up on a regular basis?

Now, twice a year, we take it in September and in February. And from there, you get, specific recommendations. Results. It's a measurable tool that can measure our culture and climate and specific components. And one of the things I did as I transitioned into the organization was we started every education organization has a school improvement plan.[00:06:00]

And so we embedded. So beyond just. Yeah, English language arts school goal, a math goal we embedded a culture and climate goal, and we utilize the results from that survey to drive our improvement efforts at both an individual building level and also at a district level. And so utilizing those rights results to drive that 90 days school improvement plan, where teams of teachers, teams of buildings are really focused on the results.

Looking for those opportunities for improvement to make everybody's job and life easier when you're in the workplace.

What were your priorities during that gap between when the announcement was made and when you officially took over?

And I was very deliberate. I didn't want to send out a survey to the entire committee and have them fill out a survey and give me feedback on, what's working well, what are opportunities, improvement, where do you think the district should go? And so I dedicated because I had the. That time, before I truly hit, sat in the seat I was able to meet with over 450 individuals, one-on-one in person where I asked the same questions to every individual.

And then from there, those opportunities for improvement really were the springboard into me taking over July 1st.

Were there any particular questions that you had specific focus on that you wanted to pay attention to as you were conducting these interviews? Were some questions more important than others?

As when you sit in the top seat, you're constantly getting filled up from everybody, good, bad, and the ugly. And so one of the things I constantly looking at what is the scope of a particular issue? Or, is it just one person that's upset? Two people, a hundred. And so I really focused on, understanding currently our current reality, where are we at and where did we need to go?

So then from there, I was able to formulate a long range plan of how we were going to. Make the district better for all of our students in the community.

What you did is before you officially took over the seat, you went on this listening tour and this listening exercise. What was pulled out of that set of conversations and how did that help you prioritize what you took action on once you were officially in the seat?

We had to build trust both internally, whether it was from the board and the administration to the staff to the administration. The district to the community. So we really had to focus on building trust again and rebuilding the brand, the Hawthorne brand collective responsibility.

And then just really bringing back the pride in the district. We were in a, we were at a point in time, you talked about salary and benefits earlier on we were getting poached from neighboring school districts, a lot of Staff were leaving the district and we really, and there was a referendum that was passed, there was some stuff with that, and so we really just needed to bring back the pride and the focus on Hawthorne and focus on all the great things that are happening here.

Against attrition from other districts being able to poach your people

We were deficit spending. And so we also had that referendum, but I knew that I wasn't going to be during that bargain. I knew I wasn't going to be able to match the surrounding districts. And so we really, made a primary emphasis on making sure our staff had the tools and the resources in order for them to be successful.

And then also just work focused on that culture and climate about, setting norms, that communication piece, like making sure everybody in the organization knew who was doing what roles and responsibilities chain of command make it back to the resource piece. Like our devices were eight years old.

So we really focused and we created a comprehensive plan on. how we were going to accomplish that from a resource standpoint, as well as the climate. And right from day one, that August, I launched the 90 day school improvement planning and letting our staff understand and know that we are going to measure culture and climate.

It's going to be a priority, and we're going to put it in the 90 day school improvement planning process.

[00:13:47] Pete Hannigan: It was accomplished at the building level. So I felt like that was important. We trained our administrative team. How do you utilize the results? How do you analyze it? In this particular tool we use, it gives you your top 10 and your bottom 10. [00:14:00] And so what they would do is they would go through an exercise with their school leadership teams and identify looking at the bottom five.

What are things we really focused on? What are things that you can control? We, and we had to do a lot of different exercises around the difference between culture and climate. And so people were like the air conditioning, cause our buildings were in bad shape. So they would say, okay, the climate the air conditioning never works in my classroom.

Or it's loud or things that like, we can't control that, but we have a 5 year capital improvement plan. We're going to improve that. So I had it basically pushed out at the building level. But then we also did 1 as a district office as well. And and the reason I did that is, from the day 1, as we were starting to implement the systems and structures.

[00:15:02] Dr. Jim: The thing that I like about The overall approach is that you're leaving this in the hands of the people that are most directly impacted by whatever the situation is that's happening on the ground. So at the building level, you make the decision as a building leader. When you look at the issues that you've just touched on, you have a bucket of those that fall into like people related issues and you have another bucket of those that fall into infrastructure related issues and you talked about sustainability and when you're grappling with, should we prioritize infrastructure needs for remediation versus people needs for remediation?

What was your calculation in terms of how you tackle those across the district in a meaningful way?

We communicated that across the system. So people knew, okay, my the carpet is. 25 years old and is stained that they knew, okay, I'm going to get new carpet in our new tile in five years, four years. So there was no, everybody understood what was going to happen. People knew from a device standpoint.

Okay. Every three years, we're going to have a new device refresh. People knew. So we rolled out what the timeline was. So people knew what was going to happen and when so from once we did that, and that was not a one month process that took two to three years to really establish that piece of the puzzle, but The focusing on the people side of it, like you said, I wanted it to be at the building, the people that are on the ground in the classrooms doing the work.

It's everybody. Everybody has a stake in it. And and that was one of the hardest things we had to overcome was again, going back to that collective responsibility and the finger pointing. It was always, it's the superintendent's responsibility. It's the board of education's problem. It's the building principles problem and really yeah.

I stood up in front of our staff in one of the first institute days and said we need to start pointing the fingers at each other, at ourselves. How are we going to improve? Hey, we want to make this a great place to work and educate students. What are we all going to collectively do? I, I stood up in front of our entire staff and I, when I rolled out all the feedback I received from by listening to her, so to speak, as I transitioned in, and we said if we want to change the culture and climate we all need to do this. I am as a superintendent, I am. I do. I have a lot of stake in it.

[00:18:06] Dr. Jim: So I really like how you reframe the conversations to, everybody talking about, you need to do this. You need to do that too. We need to do this and changing that language from, I, me, you, to we, and us is really important. I think one of the things that, that I'm wondering about now, you, we talked about how You didn't want to micromanage the process and you push things down to the building.

That's a good first step. What were the building leaders doing to get ownership from the people that were most impacted by whatever initiative that was happening? Walk us through how those building leaders mobilize the front line folks to help push this forward.

And so what we did is we modeled it for our administrative team. So we trained our administrative team first, and then our administrative teams Then we trained the people on the guiding coalitions so that they were aware of, what the tool is, how do we utilize it, how do we focus on change, leadership, things of that nature.

And so we train those individuals, and then from there, they would take it back to their respective groups.

So how did you navigate that process where you can have the conversations that you need to have [00:20:00] without people getting hurt? And this can apply getting their feelings hurt. And this can apply from the district level all the way down to like team lead level. That's a different skill than just saying, Hey, this is what it shows.

We need to do this.

And we did have to have. There were some tears, I'm going to be honest with you, and some of our meetings, obviously, I wasn't there, but but there were those difficult conversations and that individual provided training on how to have difficult conversations, [00:21:00] how to analyze culture and climate things of that nature, and really starting to try to build people's capacity, and we utilize that leadership team as that vehicle, we're constantly trying to build up the capacity of all of our teachers and all in the everybody in the organization.

We constantly, one of our taglines is lead from every seat. You think about it like, you look at it from a corporate standpoint and a education standpoint, our building principals, they oversee 80 plus individuals, right? And that's the leadership structure. You have a principal, potentially an assistant principal, and then you have your staff.

You look at the corporate, my wife's in corporate and she's a manager. She has 15 people under her. And so you really have to focus on those systems and structures and really build up the capacity of your staff to take on inform, to be informal leaders within the building, because as a building principal or an assistant principal, you can't oversee 85 people and what they're doing day in and day out.

So you're leading from every seat.

We implemented PLCs at a building level at a teacher level and how you're educating students and the kids in front of you, but we also did it from a district, from an organizational standpoint at the district office, the superintendent's office, that's made up of four or five people, we are a [00:23:00] PLC, we function the same way as our buildings do our business department, HR department, our teaching and learning department, and we model from the district office level, which then.

Cascades down to the building level.

[00:23:28] Pete Hannigan: I think the biggest thing is messaging, cause when you're talking about nine different buildings, you have leadership teams, so you have nine, eight to 10 people and that cascade, the cascading, the information out, the biggest challenge was messaging and communication and. What I did with that piece is to address it.

We call it the Hawthorne advantage. So we did it from a district level. How we're going to build it like specifically, what are those systems of structure? How are we going to build a cohesive leadership team? How are we going to create clarity across the organization over communicate clarity and reinforce clarity.

And now this year, now we're five years in, I'm starting year six. In fact, next week, I'm going to be doing this with our building leadership teams and they're going to create. The specific building Hawthorne advantage and how they're going to like, how are we building that cohesive leadership team and communicating effectively?

And and as we're building up the organization we call it the farm team we, who are those next, who's the next person up that can take, whether it's a instructional coach position, whether it's a leader on a specific grade level team, whether it's an assistant principal.

Assistant superintendent, potentially superintendent, hopefully in a couple of years but it's really, developing those systems and structures to, build up leadership capacity and then how are we going to explicitly communicate across the organization?

You just mentioned it yourself. You have a span of control over a lot more people than you would typically see in the corporate setting, like your typical manager in a corporate setting is probably clocking in around 8 to 10, 8 to 10. People on their downline. Your principal is probably at 80. So when I think about that, there is an accountability piece that we talked about that. I have no idea how you would manage the accountability piece after all of these communication and development exercises. You're still running into a gap where you don't have line of sight across 80 people and you can hold them accountable. So how did you solve for that when you when you worked on this transformation within your district?

And so what we had to do is we had a lot of [00:27:00] conversations about, managing adult behaviors essentially is what it boils down to. And how can you strategically do it so you, you have the pulse of the, because we, what I don't want our principals doing or anybody at the district office is micromanaging.

It goes back to culture and climate. You have to build that or that culture and climate built around trust communication, collective responsibility. Because if you don't have that type of culture, it's going to be a free for all. You're going to get, parents are going to be calling you.

You're going to have student discipline issues. You're going to have low student achievement. And so what they did is, whether it's from strategically scheduling across the day, when students are going to be take partaking in different opportunities in the school setting, but then also managing their calendar so that they can manage, being visible in the building.

I know exactly, month by month, 70 percent of what has to get done is cyclical, right? And I constantly am talking about, we need to control the 70%, proactively. I wrote my back to school letter for this coming school year. This year I'm doing a video, but I did it back in April. Because I know there's things in a cup because when that 30 percent pops up, you have a major student discipline issue.

You have a bus accident, you have a fire, whatever that case may be. Those things take up significant amount of time. And if you're not organized and strategic in what you're doing, going about your work, managing the 70%, you're going to struggle as a leader.

How did you tackle the communication process to those external stakeholders that don't have the level of line of sight that you do

And that's how they're going to consume the experience. And so one of the things we had to really focus is, my first two, three years, it was focused on the product. What are we delivering? Getting consistency across the organization. So it didn't matter if you were a third grade at Aspen Elementary or third grade at Townline Elementary, you were getting the same experience.

Because one of the challenges we have, something we didn't talk about is we have two campuses. I have four schools on the North campus, four schools on the South campus, literally across. One road and our boundaries all intertwined. So you could be neighbors with somebody that goes to a different school and they're sharing their experiences.

And it's typically on a Friday, but people would start posting. Posting questions and comments and that was our fault. We weren't effectively communicating. And so we just Strategically started to create a communication plan. I hired a PR person which helps tremendously but we had to get that out there and then our stakeholders that don't have students in the organization something we started this last Year was we call it Hawthorne helpers Where we're trying to get, especially on the heels of COVID, we wanted to bring people that don't have students in the system into our buildings to volunteer.

And so it really was a conscious effort of one, improve the product we are delivering. For our families and our students, but then communicating out, we do a lot of different things. Social media is a huge component. We're getting ready to launch. We, every year we do an annual report, like a 10 page glossy document that we send to all of our businesses in the community, all of our families, residents, just so people have an idea of, because you look at an Illinois, a significant portion of their property taxes go to public education.

And they want, I want to show our community. We want to show our community. This is the product we're producing with your tax dollars and it's improving your value of your home.

And what are they even teaching these kids? I think that is a good mitigating exercise to get, keep people out of this adversarial relationship that they have with the K through 12 system. So great stuff. What I'd like you to do is when you think back to everything that we've talked about so far, and you're looking at, The issues are looking at the problem of building a strong communication and accountability culture within the district.

What are the pillars that other leaders need to be thinking about putting into place in their district so that they can be as effective as what you've seen over the last number of years that you've been in Hawthorne?

We're talking about five year olds, six year olds, 12 year olds. Everybody with technology, you're a text message away. You're an email away. One of the strategies I have employed to if I have to respond to an email more than five sentences, I pick up the phone and call some, call the parents.

I know every November I have to do a state of the district presentation. I know in March I have to take a staffing plan to the board of education. I know in September I have to take a budget to the board. The more, all those things that you can control that. And. So making room for that 30 percent, but it really when you're transitioning into a new or a new system, the most important thing to keep in mind is you're no longer at the former organization just because it worked in Schaumburg District 54 doesn't mean it's going to work here.

In the new in Hawthorne 73 and you have to be mindful of that and because you have to take just because like you have background experiences to draw on And to avoid pitfalls and things of that nature because you've probably done a lot of the work But at the end of the day you have to start fresh and you have to bring the organization along with you

[00:34:53] Pete Hannigan: The best way is email.

There's a handful of things that caught my attention that I think is worth mentioning. When we're thinking about building this sort of accountability culture, that's rooted in communication. And I think one of the biggest things that is worth calling out is when we think in terms of communication, we automatically can fall into this trap of thinking, this is just stuff that comes out of our mouths externally.

I think the most important aspect of what you did when you took over is that you took the, A significant amount of time to listen. First, you went through an exercise where you interviewed 450 people using a standardized set of questions to really understand what's working and what isn't working that set the stage for whatever you're going to do going forward from there.

And I think in doing both of those things, you're setting yourself up. And in a position to be successful, but the other piece that I think is important to call out, and you just touched on this in the last part of the conversation is that you might have all sorts of playbooks in your head and all sorts of systems that you have used before.

That have worked in those other environments. That doesn't guarantee that it's going to work in this environment that you're in. It's almost the same as the coaches that have an offense for a particular player type, and you think that you can just plug the players that you walk into that system, and then you get irritated when that system doesn't work.

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