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In This
Issue...
 A Lesson In
Leadership
Holding On
Microfiching For A
Solution
Solving The Presentation
Puzzle
Reopening "The Diary Of A
Shutdown"
Features...
Peter Block
Column
Views for a
Change
Pageturners
Brief
Cases
Return to NFC
Index
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 A Lesson In Leadership
Inspiring Others by Unleashing the Power to Work Their
Passion
Think back to your
favorite teacher in school—the one that inspired
and challenged you, the one that encouraged learning
through energy and creativity and really made a
difference in your life. Talking to Dr. Lorraine Monroe
might just bring such a teacher to mind.
Few people can legitimately claim to have
had such a profound impact on education and leadership
as Monroe. She has dedicated her life to the
improvement of schools and has boldly rewritten the
rules of the classroom. She empowers teachers to be
“creatively crazy” and has turned around
even the most destitute inner city schools. Dr. Monroe
was the founding principal of the Frederick Douglass
Academy in Central Harlem, a school well known for poor
attendance, violence and low academic achievement. Her
strong, charismatic leadership helped 96 percent of the
first graduating class go on to college and it remains
one of New York City’s best high schools.
Founder and executive director of the
School Leadership Academy at the Center for Educational
Innovation, a New York-based nonprofit group, she helps
others see the benefits of creative educational
leadership. Her groundbreaking work has been featured
on “60 Minutes,” in Reader’s Digest,
Ebony magazine, The New York Times and Fast Company.
Dr. Monroe is the author of “Nothing’s
Impossible: Leadership Lessons from Inside and Outside
the Classroom” and the anticipated “98
Things Great Bosses Always Do,” due out by the
end of this year.
Dr. Monroe’s message awakens the
creativity in all of us and unleashes every
person’s potential to be an inspiration to others
and a stronger leader in their organization.
NFC: You say that good leadership always comes
back to what leaders say and do to make that vision
active. You describe these as “vision
acts.” Can you give an example of behavior that
would qualify as a vision act?
Monroe: First and foremost, the leader must
exemplify the mission in his or her behavior. If the
mission is about the improvement of people and the
improvement of instruction, then the followers should
see the leader getting smarter and learning. Leaders
should be able to do anything on the instructional side
themselves that they’re asking the people to do.
They should have the ability to train people to do the
work of the organization and make the mission happen.
It’s very important that you honor what you
expect and what you respect, and that you model what
you expect and respect. It’s one way of showing
that the vision is real as opposed to a statement
that’s on paper or posters.
NFC: Can you share an example where you’ve
gotten smarter in order to lead?
Monroe: Just this morning our organization was
discussing what we have learned this year that we are
either going to jettison or do better. We frequently
revisit things and say, “How can we smooth this
out so that it’s better?” One of the things
we do is train the leaders before beginning intensive
work with the rest of the organization. Then sometime
later, generally upon request, we address the staff of
those leaders. What we’ve come to realize is the
importance of training the staff immediately after
training the leaders so that they know, when we come in
as consultants, who we are and what we stand for.
NFC: So, the lesson you learned is to provide
staff with training immediately after providing leaders
with the training?
Monroe: Yes, because you train the leaders to
believe in your particular system and how to work your
system; they understand the “Monroe Model.”
But it’s difficult for them to make it work
without the staff having some grounding in what it is
they are talking about. We’ve found that people
say, “Why didn’t we know this early on? Oh,
now I see, now I see.” It’s giving second-
and third-party support to the school leader.
It’s very hard to begin to change if people
don’t understand what the change is about and how
to work the change to their benefit.
NFC: I know one of the things you do as part of
the “Monroe Model” is walk around and
observe people as they work and provide them with
immediate feedback. What else do you do in this
model?
Monroe: We have training tools that we teach
people to use. We train the principals to observe
instruction. We say, “If the leader doesn’t
go, then the leader doesn’t know.” So we
train principals to be highly observant as to what is
really going on in their schools. That behavior is good
for any kind of leader. People will give you glorious
reports and tell you, “Yeah, everything’s
hunky-dory. Don’t worry, we’re on top of
it!” And when it comes to the outcome you think,
“Why did this happen?” It happened because
you relied on written reports or second-hand
information. We train people to delegate some
administrative and supervisory functions, but primarily
to put their eyeballs on it. In fact, in our madness,
we hand out eyeballs to principals and conduct entire
sessions on, “What are you going to put your
eyeballs on?”
NFC: What do you encourage them to put their
eyeballs to?
Monroe: Exactly what the teachers are doing.
This is very important because teachers can write great
lesson plans and talk a great lesson, but nothing beats
the administrator going in the room and watching the
person at work. This process works just as well on a
factory floor or in a corporation. The point is to
understand what is really going on.
The second part of our
technique is, “What do you do with what you
see?” How do you, on the basis of what you have
observed, train people to become better? That’s
very crucial in turning an organization around. You
want people to get better all the time. You want them
to be as reflective as good executives are. A good
executive is always looking, trying to get better,
trying to facilitate for staff. And you want people to
become what we call “reflective
practitioners.” That is, they themselves become
very reflective in terms of, “How good was I this
time and how can I be better next time?”
NFC: How do you encourage them to become better?
How do they know when they’ve gotten
better?
Monroe: We give teachers and administrators both
written and oral feedback. Before we leave a school we
are visiting, we give the principal a one- or two-page,
post-observation paper that says, “this is what
we see and here are three things that you should be
working on.” We almost never give more than three
things and they’re generally things that we have
taught in the beginning. It takes some people a year or
more to get it. We believe that leaders have to observe
their people and do internal staff development. A lot
of corporations have people come from the outside to
train their people, which is good, you need that third
party support. But the other real help for people comes
if the leaders in the organization are able to address
the particular needs and the specifics that people
should be working on. That’s the best use of
staff time and staff meetings. The leaders are able to
say, “When I walked around to your rooms, I saw
that we need to hone our questioning or getting-started
skills.” The specificity of this type of training
helps staff to get better and better because it’s
not something that is handed down from on high. It
isn’t the state or the government that said it,
it’s the leader who has been in the building, has
visited the classrooms and has seen what needs to
improve.
The other part is that staff respects the
leader because he or she not only knows what he or she
is looking at, but also demonstrates how to make the
staff better. It’s rare for an individual to come
to work and not care about getting better or not have a
sense of pride in what they are doing; particularly in
our work of education, which is sacred. Transforming
children’s lives, hearts, minds and spirits is
more than ordinary work. This work is not to be taken
lightly, and part of the leader’s responsibility,
particularly in schools, is to inspire people to
comprehend the incredible weight of this work and the
incredible possibility of doing phenomenal things with
children.
NFC: Creativity is a thread that you’ve
woven throughout your work and career. You talk about
being “creatively crazy.” How do you teach
people to get crazy about creativity?
Monroe: Initially, you give people those bread
and butter skills that will allow them to survive in
the classroom and thrive in instruction. I just did a
workshop with a group of 40 people and said,
“You’ve got the basics, what is important
now is to move from craft to art.” And when
you’re moving people from craft to artistry, they
begin to open up. When leaders go around they begin to
see people who have this spark or see them trying to do
things in different ways. What you want in any
organization is a group of people who not only know the
craft, but who are ready to do the wild and crazy
positive things. For example, “How can we do a
study that allows us to know the universality of human
beings when we are doing poetry? What is the
universality across three novels or three different
cultures? What key theme do we see running through all
of this?” The creatively crazy teacher actually
takes the kids to these communities where diverse
people live; they have an opportunity to eat the foods,
listen to the music and learn the dances. That’s
the creatively crazy person who knows how to teach and
who loves teaching our children. The other person says,
“You read the book and write a good report
because that is required for the standards or the state
examination.” The creatively crazy person has a
passion about what he or she is doing and the ability
to communicate that passion to others.
NFC: I think when we recall our school days and
remember that unforgettable teacher who sparked
something special in us; it now seems to me that it was
always the creatively crazy one.
Monroe: Exactly. When I observe people, I say,
“You have to communicate to the children the
reason you chose to major in this subject. Otherwise
the subject is not going to live—facts and pieces
of information don’t move kids.” It really
doesn’t matter what the subject is. If the
teacher loves it the kids will love it. If the teacher
knows how to bring the outside in, whether it’s
through technology, speakers or food and music,
children long to be with that teacher. I think a lot of
teachers are hungry to learn the basics in how to do
this so they can become the magic. I see that most
people want to be good, rather than just come in to
collect a paycheck.
NFC: Creating that magic certainly puts a new
demand on people in the organization, but it must also
put a new demand on the leaders, like you, to create
this environment. Can you speak to your passion for
creating an environment that sparks this magic?
Monroe: When you create an environment that
gives off the “organizational
hum”—that is when you walk into a school
and you say, “Something’s going on
here”—you can just feel it. You have the
pride of a leader because you have put not only the
instructional level in place, but you have given people
permission to work their passion. You get to be better
at releasing people and spotting the person who’s
just kind of waiting. But you are also surprised, as I
have been, by making the statement, “I want you
to be innovative, I want to support any creative ideas
you have that will further children’s love of a
subject or love of learning.” It is so pleasing
to me to see people that I had never expected would
have those abilities come out of the woodwork and
release a kind of energy that is so powerful. People
will surprise you when they are trained and
released.
NFC: Who or what influenced you to become the
leader that you are? Were there other leaders early on
who influenced you?
Monroe: My mother and father were wonderful
examples of human beings. I had a father who was highly
charismatic; he could walk into a room and take the
room. He had a gift of speech, he was handsome and he
was very, very smart. My mom was all that, but quiet
with it, with a high level of stability; she was the
person you could rely on. My father was wild and wacky
in a good way, which I liked. I certainly have gotten
characteristics from both of them and have amalgamated
them into something that is me.
I also had great teachers. In third grade I
started student council. As secretary in the fourth
grade, I learned about public speaking and leadership.
To watch teachers who worked their magic and be taught
by them was certainly very powerful to me. I learned
leadership by watching leaders who were charismatic and
highly forceful about what they wanted.
NFC: Is there anything else you would like to
share about education in the future or anything that
you have a passion about?
Monroe: There are two things I would like to
share. One, just in terms of quality and participation;
there is no question that as a student, as a kid, as a
teacher and as an administrator, I’ve always
worked for quality and equality. I’ve worked
predominantly with poor, discounted, at-risk,
disadvantaged kids. I have found the only disadvantage
they have is they’re undereducated. So it has
been my passion that I would “give to the least
of these what the best pay for,” i.e., provide a
rigorous private school education to kids for free. I
am highly democratic when it’s appropriate. There
are times when a leader has to say, “this is what
it is,” but I like participation. I like working
with people who are smart, who think quickly, who
don’t necessarily have my style, but who
understand the power of this mission to transform
children’s lives. I love being with people and
participating and exchanging ideas with other smart
people, people who have ideas and who think outside of
the box.
In answer to your second question about
education in the future, I have some very deep concerns
about the urgency of the need for fundamental change in
the education of poor, disadvantaged and at-risk kids,
whatever the color.
The reason I’m very interested in
leadership, particularly school leadership, although I
talk to corporate leaders also, is it’s
fundamental to the good working of our country that
something positive happens to the children who have
been underserved and disserved. School, for most kids,
is the place where their lives can change. It’s
the only stable, predictable element in a lot of poor
kids’ lives; therefore, the school experience has
to be sterling every single day. Every single day a kid
should leave school knowing more than he or she knew
when he or she walked into the building at the
beginning of the day. And for me, that means I need to
train school leaders on how to make that happen. I need
to train them on how to create organizations so that,
“no child is left behind” and all children
have a shot at what is really pure and wonderful and
that because of school they believe life is full of
limitless possibilities. It is our responsibility to
remove the limitations, to remove the shadows, so our
children can finish their schooling and live lives of
very few regrets because of the fundamental skills we
have given them and the love of learning and the
cherishing that we have had for them as
individuals.
June 2001 News for
a Change Homepage
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Issue Highlight —
A Sad and Grateful Remembrance
