Getting Unstuck – Cultivating Curiosity

If you're a leader or teammate, you're going to need to support the social and emotional health of your colleagues. To do that effectively, you must first establish and be secure in your own emotional intelligence. It's a variation on the axiom: if you're going to lead others effectively, you must first lead yourself effectively. We're joined here by Teresa Quinlan, a consultant and coach who specializes in personal and team transformation through emotional intelligence training and coaching.

We all have a superpower – a unique gift to share with the world. The question is, how are we going to unlock, grow, and share it? Schools can help tap into our natural curiosity, but we also have to be willing to experiment and turn down the volume of our inner critic. Today we're joined by Stacy McCoy Prime, a former New York City school principal and now the inspiration behind the "Upstream Design Lab," which creates transformational learning products and experiences for educators, students, and parents.

Today we are deeply fortunate to sit down with two amazing guests: Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander. Ben is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and the Boston Youth Orchestra. Rosamund is a therapist and an accomplished painter. They are the authors of The Art of Possibility what can be a life-change book if you practice its twelve practices. Roz is the author of a follow-up volume, Pathways to Possibility.

It's pretty accepted today by thought leaders that you can't effectively lead others until you know yourself and manage your behaviors appropriately. Understanding our various mindsets is key to building that self-awareness and the appropriate behaviors that follow. We'll dig into those mindsets in this conversation with Ryan Gottfredson PhD., a cutting-edge teacher, consultant, author, trainer, and researcher who helps improve organizations and leaders by improving their mindsets.

School discipline has traditionally seen administrators and teachers mete out punishment for inappropriate student behavior. There's another way advises social and emotional consultant Jim Collin. It relies instead on a social and emotional approach – one that seeks to help adults and students first understand the underlying cause or causes of the disruptive behavior. Central to success is the need to for adults and students to create and operate within a safe, calming space.

Leading complex changes – especially during a crisis – requires leaders to be master balancers in that they have to manage both the human aspects of change , e.g., resistance to change, motivation, and consensus decision making, as well as the more technical aspects of change, e.g. What concern do we attack first? How do priorities shift over the life of a complex change? We hear the details from change expert, April Armstrong.

People think "virtual distance" is a function of geographic dispersion, but it's not. It's really the psychological and emotional distance that is created when we put a piece of machinery between us when we're talking. When virtual distance is high, this disconnect starts to affect how we feel, which affects how we think, which affects the decisions we make, which affects performance, which impacts achieving desired results. So how do we reduce virtual distance? Author Dr. Karen Sobel Lujeski explains.

As authors Chris Mason and Dr. Melissa ("Missie") Patschke describe it in their new book, Visioning Onward, "visioning" is more than just another prescription for a lofty sounding Mission or Vision statement that we see adorning the walls of most schools. Instead, "visioning" is a step-by step process that helps schools and communities imagine in a heart-centered way what they want on behalf of their students. It's a process that can lead to transformative change.

It's our pleasure to welcome Chester Elton back to Getting Unstuck. The thematic river that runs through Chester's books, coaching and consulting is staff engagement and its impact. His research shows that performance and results improve when leaders authentically and purposefully engage their staff whether it's in business or education. And the expression of authentic gratitude is one key way to engage staff.

Why are children more anxious, aggressive and shut down than ever before? And what can be done to reverse this course? In this episode of Getting Unstuck, we'll get answers from educators Tamara Neufeld Strijack and Hannah Beach, authors of Reclaiming Our Students: Why Children are More Anxious, Aggressive and Shut Down Than Ever – And What We can Do About It.