The Leadership Vision Podcast

Sturdy Leadership: Building Systems That Work Without Losing Your People

• Nathan Freeburg, Linda Schubring, Brian Schubring • Season 9 • Episode 5

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“Being nice” isn’t the same as being human—and it’s often not good leadership. In this episode of The Leadership Vision Podcast, Dr. Chip Kimball reflects on 37 years of leadership and shares why great leaders refuse to separate systems and people, why hard conversations are an act of care, and how belief, challenge, and clarity create the strong foundations teams need to do hard things—and do them well. This episode will leave you with a clearer sense of how to hold people and performance together as you navigate change, uncertainty, and growth.

👤 About Our Guest

Dr. Chip Kimball is an educator, innovator, systems thinker, and former superintendent with 37 years of leadership experience across U.S. and international education systems. Recently retired from formal educational leadership, Chip now works as a consultant supporting leaders, organizations, and boards through complex change. He is known for his ability to define vision, build strong teams, and design systems that deliver meaningful results without losing sight of the people inside them.

🔑 Three Key Takeaways for Leaders

1. Systems and humanity are inseparable

Strong systems don’t replace human leadership—they depend on it. Chip argues that meaningful change only happens when structure, strategy, and systems are intentionally built around people, relationships, and purpose.

2. Hard conversations are an act of care

Avoiding difficult conversations doesn’t protect relationships—it weakens them. Effective leaders approach clarity with compassion, knowing that challenge and honesty are essential to helping people reach their highest potential.

3. Teams—not individual performance—drive lasting success

Over time, Chip’s leadership shifted from prioritizing individual excellence to cultivating strong, healthy teams. Leaders who focus on trust, shared purpose, and collective effort create environments where people—and results—can thrive.

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The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in discovering, practicing, and implementing a Strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. Contact us to talk to us about helping your team understand the power of Strengths.

SPEAKER_00:

Every time I would put out a hard challenge in front of the team, it was coupled with building social capital inside of the ecosystem by doing the work with a leadership vision. Because they were building this confidence and, like, oh, so this thing that I get criticized for in a staffing, that's actually a gift. And actually, I could use this positively and productively. And just because I'm disagreeing doesn't mean I'm a bad person, actually. Maybe if I could do it in this way, knowing that these people are in the room, I could actually turn it so that we work better together. And so it's always coupling a big challenge with something that is self-empowering and engaging so that people can bring both of those together. So you talked about systems and humanity. That's the whole concept.

SPEAKER_04:

You are listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years so that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. To learn more about what we do, you can click the link in the show notes or visit us on the web at Leadership Vision Consulting.com. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg, and today on the show, we are joined by our good friend and new teammate, Dr. Chip Kimball, an educator, innovator, systems thinker, and leader with experience at nearly every level of education. Now, Chip recently retired after 37 years in education, including leadership roles across the United States and internationally, and he now supports leaders, organizations, and boards through complex change as a consultant. He's known for defining vision, building strong teams, and designing systems that deliver meaningful results. Now, I've also known Chip for quite a while and first met him back in 2012 when Brian, Linda, and I traveled to Singapore to work with his team there. Even then, what stood out to me was the way that he led, with warmth and kindness paired with clarity and decisiveness, a kind of sturdy leadership that people feel steady around. Now, in our conversation here today, Chip shares the unlikely beginnings of his own story, the mentors who believed in him early on, and how that shaped his approach to leadership. And we also explore what it really takes to lead complex systems without losing the human heartbeat at the center of the work. How leaders design systems that work while still honoring people, purpose, and possibility. All right, here it is, my conversation with Dr. Chip Kimball. Enjoy. Chip, hello, welcome to the Leadership Vision Podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, thank you. It's great to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

SPEAKER_04:

Absolutely. You know, Chip, I have known you for 14 years, and the first time I met you was traveling to Singapore, and you let us stay in your amazing apartment. It was awesome. And it's so fun that you're now a part of our team and we're getting to do this. But I feel like I've known you in such a deeper capacity because of how much Brian and Linda talk about you, the impact that you've had on our team over the years. So I'm really excited to ask you all the questions that I've been wanting to ask you for 14 years. So thanks for doing this. Great.

SPEAKER_01:

My how time flies. And I know, right? If you have 14 years of uh pent-up questions, we're in for a ride, aren't we?

SPEAKER_04:

My first question here to kick things off: have you been able to find any good water skiing in Arizona?

SPEAKER_00:

No. No, there is water skiing in Arizona, but it's typically in the Phoenix area, and we're in the Tucson area. Okay. So no, I've put my water skiing on hold during the winter months, but all summer long in the state of Washington, that's where I'll be water skiing.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. The first time I ever waterskied was in 1994. My uncle lives in the Seattle area, and he, I don't know, found a boat and he took my family and I water skiing on Lake Washington, and I loved it. Is that where you kind of spent most of your waterskiing days on Lake Washington up there?

SPEAKER_00:

So actually it was Lake Sammamish. Oh, okay. Which is just a few miles from Lake Washington. We actually lived on that lake, uh, and the goal was to ski a hundred times a year. Oh, wow. Okay. I wish we hit that goal a few times. It did require some winter water skiing, so I have been known to water ski while it's snowing. Are you serious? It's pretty cold, but so much fun.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well, I spent two summers in college. I had a roommate who had a cabin on one of the 10,000 lakes in Minnesota, and we did a lot of water skiing. I never really got that good at it, but I was able to drop a ski once and do the slalom thing, which I was pretty, pretty excited about. See, I'm surprised you're not water skiing more because now that you're retired, I would just have assumed you've got all this free time. Is that not the case?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it is the case, but as most retired will tell you, I you get so busy you don't actually know how you had time to work. Yeah. And that seems to be the case. But you know, we will be skiing six months a year pretty consistently. Okay. It is still a passion of mine. As long as my body will hold up, I'm gonna ski.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. I actually wanted to ask you about retirement because in my sleuthing of you to learn more about chip and all the backstory, I found this great LinkedIn post. You basically wrote something to the effect of you never should have been in education. You were kicked out of two or three high schools, you barely graduated, you're like the most unlikely person to spend, was it 35 years, six years, four years? What was it?

SPEAKER_00:

37 years in education.

SPEAKER_04:

37 years in education. And it was just such an incredible, unlikely path. So what I'm curious is if we can go back in time, was there a crucible moment or kind of this pivot moment where you got onto this path, the education path, and really more specifically the leadership path? And if there's any of those unfolding moments or whatever that you can point back to and say, oh yeah, when I was 22, 25, like this thing happened or this mentor guided me in this direction. Like, did you have any moments like that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. It's a great question. And as you described, I struggled as as an adolescent. I was in a large comprehensive high school, public high school. It was a good school, a good community. And I did not connect and I didn't feel like I fit. And as a result of that, my escape was absenteeism. So I just didn't go to school. I missed a hundred days of school, my junior and senior years. Wow. So I was pretty crafty about how I did that. Was again kicked out a couple of times and found myself out of my house, out of work, out of school, and really a pretty lost soul in the grand scheme of things. Bounced around for a couple of years, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I had always had going to school, going to university in the back of my head, and found myself landed at the small liberal arts college in Washington State called Whitworth University. It was a Whitworth College at the time. Actually, quite miraculous that I even was able to get admitted. I had some friends who were going there. I liked my friends, I liked what they were doing. I picked up the phone, called the president of the university, made an appointment, drove a thousand miles for this appointment with the president of the university, and talked my way into school. They said, even in light of my 1.1 GPA out of high school, which you have to work at, by the way.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, that's impressive.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, that if I took the SATs and scored adequately, they would admit me on academic probation, which they did. Still had no money. I had been kicked out of my house, had no parental support, threw everything that I belonged in a small car that I cobbled enough money together to buy and drove to Spokane and started a new life. And so the question about what was one of those crucible moments, it was a series of crucible moments, was which was predominantly driven by people investing in me and believing in me when I didn't believe in myself. And the crucible moment at Whitworth was that for the first time in my life, I felt like I was valued as a person and I was surrounded by community in order to accomplish the academic challenges that were ahead of me. And that ended up becoming the basis for most every leadership position I ever had.

SPEAKER_04:

And you had never had that before in life.

SPEAKER_00:

And I had not had that before. I broke it down into these three kind of big concepts, which is a person needs to be valued, valued for who they are, valued as a human being. Secondly, is they need to be connected. They need to be connected to community, they need to be connected to mentorship, they need to be connected to peers. And thirdly, is they need to be challenged, intellectually challenged, emotionally challenged, spiritually challenged in some cases. And so that value, connection, and challenge were the three foundational elements that I experienced at this college, which then created the basis for the kind of professional I wanted to be. And it was later in my experience at Whitworth. So ironically, uh, when I had enrolled at Whitworth, you know, 1.1 GPA, weak academics, et cetera, I declared pre-med as my major. Of course. Of course. Because what does one do? And after I had had this experience of really feeling valued and connected and cared for, I started actually performing academically quite well. And so I was a biology uh major and a chemistry minor. But at this point in my life, I didn't think that I actually had what it took to become a doctor. I didn't see myself being good enough to get into med school. But I was achieving academically, and I had had a lot of history of working with youth in youth programs. And so I put the two together, which is science, which I was really enjoying and loving, and youth. Oh, I should teach science. And so that was that moment. And then once I entered into the profession, it was I've got to help make this environment look different for kids. Because so often educators come into education because they had a great success in education. I came into education because it was a miserable experience for me. And I thought that we could create a different set of conditions for kids so it could be a better kind of experience. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

I love that. And that seems to be the thread. Personally, what I've experienced, so you've been working with our team now the last few weeks, and there's this thread of kind of systems making things better and humanity and kind of bringing those together in the various articles and YouTube videos I found about you. That seems to be your superpower or what you're particularly good at. And then I don't know if you've read Brene Brown's new book, Strong Ground, but I came up with this quote that I would love to get your reaction to. And then I think this might set up the rest of our conversation. She talks about from her experience in organizations, some of the best leaders at any level have the ability to cast a poetic vision that excites people and gives them a sense of agency and can oversee the building of systems and communities of connected people that are able to deliver against that vision. I feel like that's what I know of you and tangentially is this ability to come in, we're gonna do this well. Oh, and I will actually care for you as a human being. Talk, just respond to that, I guess, to start.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I I I love Brene Brown, and I think that the quote that you picked out of her latest book is spot on. So as I was thinking reflectively upon the work that I do, the work that I do always starts with casting a vision of what's possible.

SPEAKER_04:

Sure.

SPEAKER_00:

And it's not just what's possible, but what is achievable by this group of people so that people can see themselves in it. I have a this core belief that most individuals want to be part of something, part of something that's bigger than just them, part of something that is bigger than their own achievements and their own success that gets them excited when they wake up in the morning. So while it is work and while it is hard, they're motivated by this thing that with their team they're trying to achieve. And I would make the argument that when you're asking people to do something hard, the only way for them to get through the hard is to actually have something they can attach them to that gets them through it. Because most of the systems that I've been a part of, we're asking people to do things that are really hard. And as a matter of fact, this question around systems and humanity, the interlinking of the two. Quite honestly, I don't know how to do it differently. I think you can only do something hard if you link systems with humanity. Because that system work is how you're gonna get it achieved. It can't be a one-off, it can't be based upon a personality, it can't be based upon an individual's effort, it has to be a team effort, it has to be collective, and that's how you achieve big things. And if you ignore the humanity in that, or neglect the humanity in that, it will fall apart. It will absolutely fall apart because every single thing that I am aware of, whether it's a school system or a software product that somebody is trying to build, or the excellence inside of a law firm or an accounting firm, in all cases, humanity is at the core. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

What does that mean like specifically? I think we hear that term humanity. It's like, oh, just be nice to people. But when you reflect on your 37 years of leadership and the different changes that you've led and systems that you've integrated, how would you define humanity in that context?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And it's interesting you said uh just be nice to people. Because sometimes just being nice to people is actually the most inhumane thing you can do for them. Ooh. Say more about that. I think that our not just our objective but our uh moral imperative as a leader is to help the people that we are leading become attuned to and and lean into their highest and best use as people and their highest level of potential. And that is not about being nice. That's actually about challenging and it's about asking hard questions, and it's about stretching people beyond where they think they can go. And that's not that's not a nice conversation. No That's a conversation that looks like, hey, you're doing great, but you know what, we can do better. Yeah. Let me help you think about this. And it's interesting as I was thinking about this conversation. Often people will say I build relationships and then the work is a complement to those relationships. Another thought is you build the scope of work and you build relationships through the work. Right? So if you think about a sports team, for example, you don't sit around in a circle and get to know each other and then say, Let's play ball. You say let's play ball. And then we get to know the character of one another through those challenges that we're faced with. The work environment, from my perspective, is often very similar. Of course, you get to know one another, and of course you want to know details about people's lives, and of course you invest in that time. But the essence of true relational capital is built when you're in the trenches together doing something really hard, and you understand the character of the person. And when you mess up, which you will, everyone does, including the leader, you find grace and forgiveness and a pathway to being coming together and overcoming that failure, or overcoming that transgression, or overcoming that broken relationship, or overcoming that sadness or crisis or whatever. And what comes from that is joy and accomplishment and self-confidence and cohesion and all of these beautiful things that you can only accomplish when you're in the middle of the mess. The middle of the mess only comes when you're trying to do something that is big and hard and beyond what you believed by yourself you're capable of.

SPEAKER_04:

It reminds me a little bit of Unfolded in the dream chapter. What advice would you give to other leaders that when you're coming into a new system or maybe even changing your own system, where do you start? Like with the systems, with the humanity, I assume they have to happen at the same time. But where is the, you know, if I'm looking to change that, all that you just said, like where'd I start? Like that seems like such a giant task, and obviously it's conceptual, but by way of example, do you have any sort of tips for us? That's a giant question I just landed on you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's interesting because the majority of the systems that I've worked with in my career have been high performing systems.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. Early in my career. Already you mean like you've come into high-performing systems? Already, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And so it's the whole notion of good to great and that Jim Collins popularized. And how do you take a good system that is good in many regards and really help it to become exceptional? And that's kind of my sweet spot is the good to great concept. I did work in very broken systems early in my career, but again, very young, I, you know, 29 of my 37 years I was in high-performing systems. And so uh a few thoughts. One is that people are consistently looking for formulas, and there is no formula for this work. Right. There are there's guidance, but there is no formula. So, with that being said, the first thing is because there's not a formula, the first step is always about listening and learning. You know, trying to understand where are the gaps, where are the places where the improvements are going to have the highest leverage for what you're after. So, what I was doing in Lake Washington, for example, was very different than what I was doing in Singapore, which was very different than I was doing in Prague, et cetera. Because there is this time where you listen and you learn and you try and figure that out. And then bringing people together, once you figure that out, and you've listened and you've learned, is bringing people together, a core group of people. Around what it is you think that you can achieve. Because you have to build some capital, if you will, amongst your constituencies. I'm not sure how we're gonna do it. I trust that you're gonna you're gonna help me think about it. But yep, yep, I'm in. I'm in. So one of the examples that I'll use was it was probably one of the parts of the work of my career that I'm most proud of. And it was the most difficult to achieve, hands down. So thank Singapore American School. We're a high-performing American curriculum school in Asia. We are an advanced placement, which is the college-level academic programming in the United States predominantly. We're an advanced placement machine. We are administering 2,500 AP exams a year. We have 300 students per class, so juniors and seniors, about 600 kids were taking 2,500 exams a year. We've got kids that literally are taking 12, 13, 14, 15 AP exams during their time with us. It was insane. And we interviewed listening and learning. We interviewed our community, we interviewed kids, and we interviewed colleges. And what our community was saying, what our kids were saying is it's enormous pressure. And I don't know that I'm really learning much other than how to memorize things for the AP exam. What parents were saying is yeah, we're doing pretty well, but I want our kids into even more elite colleges. And what our colleges was this we interviewed a hundred colleges. And what the colleges said is after a student has taken four or five AP exams, we know they know how to do this. Right. What we're looking for is the cross-section of smart and interesting. And your kids demonstrate time and time again they're smart, but they're not very interesting.

SPEAKER_04:

It's the classic L. Woods. I don't know if you remember legally blonde. I do. It's the classic.

SPEAKER_00:

And so what they said is if we were advising you, we would say you should cap your AP program so that your kids can start doing something interesting. And if you don't cap it, then we're going to look at how many they've taken. But if you cap it, we will look at have they maxed out that program and have they and are they doing other interesting things. So that's exactly what we did. We created a program called Advanced Studies, which was partly a part it was AP, advanced placement, and then what we called advanced topics, which were college-level non-AP courses that we developed, and kids could take a combination of those. Now imagine, remember the context, right? Parents want more, and they want the ability to access elite colleges. And we've just told them that their perception is the that the that the pathway to that is more advanced placement. And we just told them we're cutting that down. You think that was a little controversial?

SPEAKER_04:

I can only imagine those parent meetings.

SPEAKER_00:

They were intense to say the least, and controversial, and lots of action, and lots of upsetness, et cetera. But we had a vision, which was that we wanted to continue to make sure the kids were achieving, but we wanted them to achieve in a way that was going to be most meaningful for their life. Yeah. Which included incorporating what we called 21st century skills into these advanced topic courses so that they were learning other kinds of skills beyond just how to regurgitate content. And it was extraordinarily controversial. Now, in order to do that, I needed a vision for what was possible. I needed data which came from the learning that would suggest that this is a viable and credible approach. I needed a cadre of teachers who would come along with. I needed a board of directors who was supportive. And I needed a runway of programmatic implementation. Now the question is, where does all the humanity come in? The humanity comes in engaging people in meaningful ways with where their strengths are in order to make sure that by making these changes, suddenly they aren't devalued as a person. So imagine we had a teacher on our staff who got a letter from the college board that said that your scores in your AP course are the best scores in the world. In the world. And we're saying, oh, and by the way, we are moving your cheese, if you remember that. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Who moved my cheese?

SPEAKER_00:

We're moving your cheese. And so what we needed to do is figure out how do we embrace somebody who has phenomenal skills, perfected skills for many, many years. And now we're asking them to take those skills and transform them into something else. And you have to do that by embracing them, encouraging them, seeing them, valuing them. Again, go to value connected challenge, value who you are and what you've achieved, connecting you with people who can help bring you to this new place and challenging you with new ways to think about your practice, your profession in your life.

SPEAKER_04:

It reminds me a little bit of have you seen the movie Miracle about the 80s? Reminds me a little bit about that just from the perspective of they brought all these superstar, they're college athletes.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And it's like, we're going to be playing in a different way. And they're like, we want a national championship doing this. It's like, yeah, but that's not going to work at this next level. Are those people at the top, are they so eager to stay at the top that they'll do anything you say? Or are they so set in their ways because they're at their top that they're super resistant? Like, how do you help someone go find their cheese over there now when they're, you know, you talked about embracing this vision and this bigger thing, but it like, how do you actually do that? Because it seems like superstar fill in the blank profession is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm here for a reason, buddy. Who are you?

SPEAKER_00:

Like it's interesting that you bring up that particular movie because there's a scene in that movie where they're running the lines and again, again, again, again, again. And and and the scene in that movie that was so compelling where he identifies himself as I'm a member of the U.S. hockey team.

SPEAKER_04:

Team USA. Yep. Yeah. Team USA. Not the college or whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And so to your question is when you have a top performer and you've moved their cheese, will they resist? Will they jump on board? And it depends. The nuance of leadership is figuring out where they are going to be on that continuum and if they are highly resistant to change, figuring out why. And in that why will help you determine what it is you're going to do with that particular set of talent. So in some cases, they become very protectionistic. I'm great at what I do, and you asking me to do it differently is a threat to me. It's a threat to who I am. And in some cases, they can't overcome that threat. And what I've said consistently is that I will always, and if you follow at all some of the work around team that Patrick Lincioni has popularized, so his book, The Ideal Team Player, for example. It's a good one. I subscribe to a view that says I will take an average performer who's an amazing team player over a phenomenal performer who's a lousy team player any day of the week. Early in my career, I did not do that. Earlier in my career, I prioritized individual performance over team performance. Not deliberately, but in my decision making, reflecting on that. That was something I would do over. I would do it differently now. And so part of the leader's job is to discern whether that high performer is going to be able to adapt to the new normal with support, with encouragement, with challenge, et cetera, or not. And if they're not, are they more productive or destructive to the team environment? You've got great or organizations that are filled with good to great performers that are a phenomenal team. And then you've got awful organizations that are filled with A players. And if you look at sports analogies, if you look at basketball teams, for example, it is the team that is the important component in order to actually win championships.

SPEAKER_04:

I wasn't even intending to talk about Miracle at all, but it's interesting because I think that was the last time that the U.S. won a gold medal. And shortly after that 80 team, they went to these quote unquote dream teams of NHL players or whatever. And they just could never play as a team in that way as they did under Brooks that time. I'm wondering if we could maybe flip to the other side of the spectrum. You've talked about caring deeply for people that don't fit the system, maybe the underperformers or the lower performers. How do you know as a leader when it's time like the system's not working or this person needs to do something differently? How do you kind of manage the other side of that? Is that easier? Like what does that look like?

SPEAKER_00:

I would say that one of the biggest challenges of leaders is that I've not met a leader yet who's had to have a hard HR conversation with a person where it wasn't really personally very hard. Oh, yeah. Leaders who take those conversations on easily are callous. And I would say they aren't actually very good leaders. And I also think that as a leader, our moral obligation is to the organization and to the organizational outcomes. And our job is to place our people in the best place for them and for the organization. And so if we modulate such that we are worried about the impact that a decision may have on a person, even at the detriment of the organization, if a leader neglects their institutional responsibility for the organization, because they are trying to care for the impact on a person, they're actually not doing their job.

SPEAKER_04:

That's so true.

SPEAKER_00:

Now that said, that doesn't mean that you just willy-nilly fire left, right, and center. The nuance is that the leader's responsibility is to actually find best fit. So it could be that a person is in the right spot and needs a different team. It could be the person is in a wrong spot but could be a part of a different team in the same organization. It could be that actually this is no longer a good fit at all, but you have a responsibility to help them find that fit through coaching with them, counseling with them, supporting them with, et cetera. So I just have this fundamental belief. There aren't bad people. There's just bad fits. And if not, your moral obligation is to help them to find their way.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. I had a boss once who I really liked, who basically said you've kind of topped out in this organization. If you want to get to the next level, you're going to have to leave. I wonder if there are any sort of markers that a leader can look at to say, this person's great, they've got potential, but this or my skills, like they do need to leave. Like that is in their best interest. Like, is there I don't even know what that would look like, though. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Does that make sense? It does make sense. And the way I would respond to that is there is no easy checkbox. Yeah. I know. And often when somebody has topped out, it's no longer a fit, et cetera, there is actually something inside of that person they know something's not right. Yeah. And the leader's job is to actually help the person they're working with, their teammate, their colleague, their employee, discover that. And so that is done through a series of good questions that the leader is asking of them. You know? How has it felt to be a part of a member of this team? Do you feel like you're reaching your full potential? If you had no limits, what would you be doing with your time and energy right now? Have you grown this year? How do you feel about the vision of the institution? You know, there's a dozen questions that are simply probing questions to try and help them uncover whether or not they feel like this is still a good fit for them.

SPEAKER_04:

What's striking me about what you're talking about is nothing that you're describing is necessarily that difficult. It just takes time, it takes intention, it takes, I think, self-reflection and humility. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's not like we're trying to, you know, this isn't the Manhattan project we're working on here. But why do you think it is that leaders skip all that? Like the time and intention and you know, the way that you go about that you've gone about your work, I think is so missing in so many organizations that we've worked with.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think part of it is honestly time and pressure. Often leaders are bound by extraordinary expectations, extraordinary timelines, and limited responses. And so it's like that's part of it. Part of it is fear, honestly. It's fear of not being liked, it's fear of confrontation, it's fear of all of those things. And part of it, honestly, is it just takes a lot more time and a lot more risk.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, it's like, do you want to have 12 conversations or do you want to make a decision and have a 12-second conversation? And sometimes we make this trade-off between efficiency and effectiveness. And you do have teams that have the opposite problem, right? And those teams go round and round and never actually achieve anything. Because I also get impatient with that kind of team behavior. So I will drive to, okay, that's fine. But now what are we getting done here, gang?

SPEAKER_04:

That's kind of our default at leadership vision. And uh, you've done such a great job allowing for some of that banter, but then be like, all right, back on task, guys. Let's go. So good. It's so good. I have two questions for you left here. So when I first started working with Brian, was when he was in the work with you at Lake Washington.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And then you moved to Singapore and we went and did work in Singapore. And then you moved to Prague, and we went and did work in Prague. Not to get too naval gaze, but what it is about the work that Leadership Vision does that you have found so valuable that you have carted them around the globe to help your teams. Like, and maybe not even specifically them as people, because we know they're amazing, but just the type of their work, what is the value in that? And it's not just strengths, it's more than that. But why is something like that helpful for people that are wanting to build high-performing teams?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So, you know, if I start with my work in Lake Washington, they started working with me when I was a regional superintendent. So I wasn't a superintendent at this point. And work with the region of schools. Lake Washington is a big school system, 50 schools, 30,000 kids. And one of my more cynical and very experienced principals came to me after the team had worked with them and said, this was the most impactful and effective professional development I've ever had in my career. And I'm like, wow.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. It was the anecdotes from the people who worked with them that kept filtering back to me that kept causing me to believe that there was something unique and special about this. Because if we think about that combination of keeping our eye on the prize around the strategic objectives and what we want to do, and the personal work that is done through individual understanding of who we are and how we're built and what we're capable of, and taking work from the textbook of positive psychology, which is focusing on strengths, which is what leadership visions process is, that combination of those two has had phenomenal impact. And so every time I would put out a hard challenge in front of the team, it was coupled with building social capital inside of the ecosystem by doing the work with a leadership vision. Because they were building this confidence and like, oh, so this thing that I get criticized for in a staff meeting, that's actually a gift.

SPEAKER_02:

That's actually okay.

SPEAKER_00:

And actually, I could use this positively and productively. And just because I'm disagreeing doesn't mean I'm a bad person, actually. Maybe if I could do it in this way, knowing that these people are in the room, I could actually turn it so that we work better together. Those are the kinds of things. And so it's always coupling a big challenge with something that is self-empowering and engaging so that people can bring both of those together. You know, so you talked about systems and humanity. That's the whole concept.

SPEAKER_04:

That's a ballgame. Yeah. I love that. Well, Chip, as we close up here, I'm reminded that when I met you was before I had my first kid. I now have four, which is just too many. It's a lot. And I remember sitting in your living room and your wife was a labor and delivery nurse, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, right.

SPEAKER_04:

And so we were talking about kids and you know, here's how to help your wife, and here's, you know, la-da-da. There's kind of this advice about, you know, becoming a new parent. And I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about. You know, and now, I'm not an expert, but now I'm like, oh, okay, I get it. Fast forward almost 13, 14 years, whatever. My son's gonna be 13 here in a couple months. You're retired.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And so I'm wondering if, from your wisdom, if you could do, and we won't bring Sherilyn for this, do a similar thing of what are some, you know, in this season of life, literally. Lessons or looking back, things perhaps that you wish you had known earlier, like the wisdom of the Gandalf, the whatever wise wizard we want to refer to you as, looking back of like, this is what I wish I maybe would have done differently. Here's a lesson I learned the hard way that if I could wave a magic wand and you know, make it so nobody learns this lesson the hard way, although sometimes I think that's how we have our best learning. Uh, what are some of those lessons that you wish you'd learned earlier?

SPEAKER_00:

So, from a leadership perspective, I think that I learned the core of everything that we do is gonna be built around the effectiveness of our teams. Team, team, team, team, team, team, team. And I preached that hard. I I emphasize that more vigorously and more unapologetically the further I got in my career. I think early in my career, I still had this core belief that individual performance was at the heart of what we do. And that shifted over time. So that would be number one. Okay. Number two is that often we avoid hard conversations, hard challenges for fear that it will put us in a relational deficit with another person. And more often than not, you're simply deferring the deficit rather than avoiding the deficit. I would say fear of hard conversations, take on those conversations. I didn't learn until later in my career how to handle those conversations head-on rather than kind of bouncing around the edges. You need to do them respectfully, of course, and with deep care and compassion. But you need to have them. And not having them is neglecting your responsibility as a leader. Tell us how to handle them.

SPEAKER_04:

Like what what did like specifically what did you learn? Because I think everybody struggles with that. Clarity is kindness. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Hear them, see them. Um so you know, don't start with statements and don't start with platitudes, and don't start with what you're you start with questions. Even in the middle of this conversation you're having, you start with questions, you be clear, you build a pathway to improvement. And then when you're done, you summarize, you reinforce, and you always, always end with your care for that person, whether or not you've had to say something super, super hard or not. So those are kind of the bookends of how I think about those conversations.

SPEAKER_04:

I love that. Sounds like someone's at your door. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And then the third thing in this genre would apply to children, apply to parenting, apply to systems. And that is that doing hard things, not unachievable things, but hard things, is going to be the best thing you could ever do for a child, a student, a colleague, a team. Because we often are avoiding the hard things. I think about my own parenting. Too often I was trying to shield my kids from those hard things. And really what I needed to do was come alongside them and not solve for them, but come alongside them and empathize with them and be with them and then just let them experience the hard thing. And I often say, you know, having just come out of 37 years of education, this generation of students, I call them the bubble wrap generation. Oh, yeah. We've just we've bubble wrapped them and thrown them out into the street. Total bubble wrap. They don't actually know what anything hard looks like. This is a huge generalization, of course. But that would be my encouragement. And the last thing, get them off of social media. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04:

Get every honestly, I think everybody should be off social media. I drives me crazy. I can't not get sucked in.

SPEAKER_00:

I try not to be on it, but one of my last salvos as I was exiting education to exiting Prague was we made a decision to go no-cell phone. School-wide. Yeah, bell, the bell, no-cell. And you know, often I I tended to be very engaging in these kinds of questions, et cetera. And I didn't. I just said, we're doing this, I'm the leader, this is my responsibility, and we're gonna go no-cell because it's what's best for kids. And if people want to take me down, that's fine. But I'm doing it on the moral imperative that we have, because I would say that the superpowers of kids for the next generation are about their ability to focus, their ability to think deeply about any given topic, and their ability to relate to other human beings. And that is, as an educator, it's our moral responsibility to make sure that those kids are getting those skills as they learn all the things that they learn in school.

SPEAKER_04:

I think that applies to everybody. Like that's such a good word to leave us on. Chip, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. Yeah. I have so many other questions that I wanted to ask you, and even like prepared things and things that just kind of sparked as we were talking. So maybe we'll have to talk again another time. But I'm wonder if to give you the final word, and you can take a moment, what sort of summary or synthesis or final encouragement might you want to leave our listeners with to just help all of us think about how to do systems with humanity as well as we engage in whatever sort of change process or business parenting, whatever it is that we're doing?

SPEAKER_00:

I think I might end with something that I started with, which is that relationships are at the very core of who we are as human beings. We are relational animals. We are a relational species. And we should never neglect or forget that relationships are at our core. And as a matter of fact, I would say in retirement, now retiring, I've often been told, and we're trying to follow this, that movement or activity, community, and purpose are the three core elements of successfully living the fourth season of your life, the last act of your life. And so we shouldn't forget that. But if we think about those things together, because it's not just one of them, it's all of them, right? You can't forget the purpose. So while relationships are at our core, they have to lend themselves to a reason. And so that systems and humanity coming together, purpose and people coming together, relationship and hard work coming together, relationships as a part of the work, not as a set-aside to the work. All of those things, I guess my encouragement to leaders would be to think about it in that way. You can't think about the higher purpose of the work that you're doing and why you're doing it and should be doing hard things. And you cannot forget about the people and the teams and the processes around the people and teams in order to make it possible. They are married, they are inextricably connected, and any leader who tries to disconnect the two will not be doing their best leadership work.

SPEAKER_04:

I love it. Chip, thank you so much. I love talking to you.

SPEAKER_00:

Take care, brother.

SPEAKER_04:

Bye.

SPEAKER_02:

Bye.

SPEAKER_04:

Chip, thank you again so much for the conversation today. I really enjoyed talking to you, and it'd be great to someday somehow go water skiing with you. But one thing that I really want to take away from this conversation and re-emphasize for our listeners is this. The best leaders don't choose between people and performance. They build systems and they ask the hard questions and they they really set the vision, but they do it in a way that helps people feel valued, connected, and challenged. I just love all of those ideas you shared with us. That's the kind of sturdy leadership that makes teams better and that makes the work that they're doing actually last and be sustainable into the future. Thank you for joining us for the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. If you found value from this episode or any of our other work, we would appreciate it if you could review it on iTunes or Spotify. Subscribe on any of those channels. You can join our free email newsletter. Click the link in the show notes or go to Leadership Vision Consulting.comslash subscribe and share this with someone that you think could benefit from the messages today. My name is Nathan Freeberg, and on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening.