1. Relational Leadership: The Foundation for a High Performing Culture
A systems
Vern Hazard
Senior Leadership Solutions Executive
Joe Pellerito
Leadership Development Strategist

2. What’s the Flippen Story?
Flip Flippen is a psychotherapist by profession. He worked with inner city kids in Houston and surrounding areas who were in gangs, abandoned, abused, neglected and some violent…social outcasts. The question that haunted him was, “How can I build a process to teach these kids that helps them intrinsically be motivated to become productive members of society?” Soon he had his answer! He took a common sense approach and created a process called the EXCEL Model and developed an after school program called Teen Leadership. Soon participants were getting off drugs and alcohol, restoring their relationships and attending school and making good grades. One evening, at a graduation of a teen leadership class, a Texas principal had been invited by one of his students to attend because her parents were not willing to go. He saw it and told Flip, I need this for my teachers. Soon, Flip created Capturing Kids’ Hearts to train teachers in the process of creating great leadership skills, superb teaching skills and relationship building techniques. Twenty six years later, we’ve worked in over 8,000 schools and trained over ½ million educators in a method for transforming school cultures and changing lives! (NEXT SLIDE)

3. If you have a child’s heart, you have a child’s mind.
What Flip Learned!
If you have a child’s heart, you have a child’s mind. “ ”
Flip Flippen
Kids want to be with teachers they like. They learn less from teachers they don’t like.
They want to be challenged, but with the expectation that they will have the support to empower them to succeed. 3

4. How would you describe your district’s culture?
We all have some elements of a good culture! But, how do we take it to the next level? Is there a process that unlocks the potential of everyone in every district, every school and every classroom that promotes high achievement, increases teacher satisfaction and student attendance while decreasing discipline referrals and dropout rates? Stay with me and I’ll show you a Model Process for growing greatness!

5. Culture Defined Climate Defined
the collective behaviors of the individuals within an organization; what we do; how we do things. the effects of what we do within the organization; our perceived experience; how we feel.
I recently saw an RFP that stated they wanted proposals for cultural improvement and a separate proposal for climate improvement. First we have to know what climate is! It is the result of your culture. It is the new effect of the collective behaviors within your organization.

6. Cultural Insights Cultures are either random or intentional!
Ignored behavior becomes accepted behavior.
It has either been taught or it has been tolerated.
Who defines your culture?
Why do people quit?

7. Leadership Drives School Culture
Intentional – Nothing left to chance
Relational – Open, transparent, genuine
Transformational – Inspiring, visionary, accountable
It takes tools and heart -- They need to SEE both!

8. Culture and Climate Research
The evidence is overwhelming. Improving children's social-emotional skills and school culture and climate has been found to lead to an
average gain of 11 percentile points on standardized academic achievement test scores as well as
significant declines in conduct problems and disciplinary issues and
increases in measures of emotional and social well-being.
(Berkowitz & Bier, 2006; Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011)
Why is it important to have a positive school culture? Aren’t these the results we are all after? The problem is many of us are chasing the elusive test scores based on our students’ efforts, with very little student accountability. Instead, we should create a culture that establishes connectedness between the teacher and the student, and between students. Creating high performing teams is the answer! This requires everyone to model a leadership skillset!

9. Relational Leadership
A leader is someone who sets aside a personal agenda and embraces a greater agenda of serving others. “ ”
Flip Flippen
We say leadership is about skills and a heart for service.
We also say that anyone who has interaction with kids is a leader.
CKH is about building relationships through leadership and teaching – and sometimes use words!
“I will be the emotionally mature adult at all times.”

10. “No organization rises above the constraints of it’s leadership.”
Flip Flippen
How does the leader take the performance lid off his or her organization? By determining the personal constraints that holds him or her back. If we elevate ourselves and do not grow others, we stifle the organization. If people need answers from us that will help them know their level of empowerment, we create synergy! Albert Bandura posited in 1988 that at least 70% of all learned behavior is through modeling! Leadership is truly about modeling. People know what we think is important by what we do rather than what we say. If we say we want everyone to get along and treat each other with respect, and yet do not do it ourselves, people can’t hear the message because our actions are speaking louder than our words.
© The Flippen Group, , 10

11. Any thoughts? Self Awareness What’s in your mirror? Feedback
Relational Capacity
Model the Process
Model Greatness
Any thoughts? How self aware are we? Our lack of self awareness may create blind spots for us or give us a false image of ourselves. How we see ourselves without appropriate feedback can be disastrous for the organizations we lead. Without relational capacity with our closest reports, how are we going to get relevant feedback? Relational capacity and a process with real tools help us to give feedback that is crucial – this is where organizations go from good to great. They are able to be truth-tellers, not just give thin answers to thick situations.

12. How Do Leaders Intentionally Create a High-Performing Culture?
1st Create safety.
Socially
Psychologically
Academically
2nd Align individual behaviors to outcomes.
3rd Create connectedness.
When everyone has a model process for creating social, psychological, and academic safety consistently, it becomes the foundation for intentionally developing a high performing culture. When individuals have a process for developing high performing groups and know the techniques for self management, their behaviors more easily align with organizational goals. And, creating connectedness systemically is difficult to do without a process that works for you. Creating connectedness may be the most important thing we can do in schools (next slide)
© The Flippen Group, ,

13. “School connectedness was found to be the strongest protective factor for both boys and girls to decrease substance use, school absenteeism, early sexual initiation, violence, and risk of unintentional injury (e.g., drinking and driving, not wearing seat belts).”
Center for Disease Control and Prevention. School Connectedness: Strategies for Increasing Protective Factors Among Youth. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 2009.
In a replicated study of a 1998 survey about perceived school connectedness
© The Flippen Group, ,

14. What Motivates Kids to Learn?
Appropriate healthy relationships with mature, competent, and relevant adults.
The best process for connecting with kids is the EXCEL Model. Let’s take a look.

15. Copyright ©2014 Flippen Group. All rights reserved.
THE EXCEL MODEL TM
Capturing Kids’ Hearts
The EXCEL Model is the central theme of the 2 day Capturing Kids’ Hearts workshop. Within this model are activities and fundamental behaviors that helps teachers get to know their kids, connects kids to kids and creates high performing teams.
Copyright ©2014 Flippen Group. All rights reserved. 15

16. ANXIETY DOWN When is up Performance is
What we know is that when ANXIETY is up, PERFORMANCE is down.
I’m talking about “social anxiety”, anxiety that negatively impacts our performance. Have you ever experienced social anxiety?
ALTERNATE LONGER EXPLANATION FOR BRAIN RESPONSE TO ANXIETY AND HOW IT IMPACTS LEARNING
Here’s how it works.
Messages come into the brain through the occipital and temporal cortex, cognitive, visual and auditory cortex.
Then the Amygdala scans the environment for threats and rewards. As the central switching station, it relays the information to other areas of the brain for processing including the hypothalamus and limbic system, which promote physical and emotional responses.
If we feel stressed or threatened, our fight, flight or freeze response kicks in and now we are in defense, escape or defenseless mode.
Adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol are released into our blood stream. Our respiratory rate increases, blood is shunted away from our digestive tract and directed to our muscles and limbs, which require extra fuel for running or fighting.
Our pupils dilate. Our awareness intensifies. Our sight sharpens. Our impulses quicken. Our perception of pain diminishes. We scan the environment in search of our enemy.
During fight or flight, when we try to access long term memory, which is transferred and stored in the hippocampus, we may have difficulty.
When we are in attack mode, we perceive everything as a threat and rational behavior is evacuated! And, even after the threat is removed, our body takes longer to adjust back to normal. Ever see this?
If we have been exposed to multiple and frequent episodes of crisis and stress, our senses are more acute and we develop the ability to move in and out of fight or flight quickly. So, is anxiety something we want to lower? 16

17. What Can Emotions Do to You?
Anxiety floods your body with adrenaline (“fight, flight or freeze”).
Adrenaline makes it hard for the neuro-transmitters to carry messages across the synapses in your brain.
This causes “blanking out” on a test, which is known as test anxiety!

18. Safety is the #1 job of leaders
Safety lowers anxiety
Safety is the
#1 job of leaders
Create Safety! Our teachers and students need to feel safe if we want their best and highest performance. If we as leaders don’t make our teachers feel safe, they have a tendency to pass along their anxieties to their students in the way they treat them. When students feel safe, safe from rejection by teachers and other students, safe from failure because they receive the necessary help and support, they tend to perform at very high levels. Our tool for building safety in the classroom is called the social contract (go to next slide) 18 18

19. Social Contract/Behave in-Behave out
The fundamental component for building trust, empowerment and relational capacity is the Social Contract, or agreement of behavior. It becomes the solid foundation that provides support when we mess up, and we’re going to mess up! Most importantly, the students build the contract with teacher facilitation, which gives them ownership and purpose.
Students get an opportunity to collaboratively construct an agreement of behavior and how self-management can create the impetus for higher performance!
The Social Contract is closely associated with the discipline model. When the teacher has tools and techniques, he or she feels competent to address conflict when it arises and in a way that protects the relationship. As a by product, student will achieve at a higher rate; fewer students leave class, less time spent on discipline referrals and more time for teaching and learning.
We, as administrators, should model the social contract for them by supporting what our teachers are trained to do and create one with our office staff and at home.
When the students and teachers know that the principals are also using the model, the consistency creates a blanket of safety. We reduce the unknowns, fears and variability, therefore increasing the potential for higher achievement.
Behave in/behave out is our discipline model. When students mess up, and they are going to mess up, they need an appropriate way to get back into good graces of the class and the teacher. This create safety again. When a you have a social contract that the students have helped build and have agreed to, the teacher can bring all behavior back to SC, how we agreed to treat each other. When our relational capacity with kids improves, they begin to trust us more. You know what can happen when kids trust you?
© The Flippen Group, , 19

20. Vern Hazard II Joe Pellerito Senior Leadership Solutions Executive
Joe Pellerito
Leadership Development Strategist
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