Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
My guest today is author, speaker, and podcaster Casey Watts. Casey’s book is The Craft of Clarity: Six Steps to Bridge Gaps, Foster Commitment, and Create Sustainable Alignment.
We talk about:
- “Not Another Unrealistic Book of Complicated Ideas”
- Misaligned perspectives between teachers and leaders - living in different worlds
- “Clarity precedes capacity.” What does that mean for leaders?
- Strategy is simple. Clarity is complex.
- Many teams think they’re collaborating, but really they’re just coordinating. What’s the difference, and how can leaders move their people from faux collaboration to true collaboration?
- When a team is stuck in silos or cycles of dysfunction, what’s one practical move a leader can make right now to start turning things around?
Learn more about Casey
About today’s guest
Casey Watts is a passionate speaker, author, and thought leader in team leadership with over 20 years in education and 10 years of experience coaching educators, entrepreneurs, and leaders. She is the creator of the Clarity Cycle Framework, helping leaders bridge gaps, foster commitment, and create sustainable alignment. Casey is also the founder and host of The Catching Up with Casey podcast, where she and her guests bring clarity to the seemingly small things in leadership that make a big difference.
About the host
Ross Romano is a co-founder of the Be Podcast Network and CEO of September Strategies, a coaching and consulting firm that helps organizations and high-performing leaders in the K-12 education industry communicate their vision and make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. Connect on Bluesky or LinkedIn
I also host Sideline Sessions, a podcast for coaches and parents of student-athletes. The show features conversations with coaches and performance experts in the NFL, NBA, NCAA, Olympics, and more. Listen here: https://bit.ly/3Rp0QGt
Creators and Guests
What is The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders?
Are you looking for proven ideas to increase your influence, hire and develop an excellent staff, build a stronger culture, lead meaningful change, and form a strong foundation for learning and leadership success? This is the podcast for you.
Whether you're a leader to seeks to refine your command of core educational strategies, learn new management techniques from those who have used them at some of the world's largest corporations, gain fresh perspectives on personal development or student success from practitioners across fields, or a little bit of everything, you'll find powerful content on The Authority.
Join leadership coach, storytelling strategist, and edtech advisor Ross Romano as he interviews the prominent education authors you already admire, up-and-coming voices, and experts from the worlds of business, personal development, and beyond — including Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Amazon bestsellers — to take a deep dive into their wealth of practical insights.
Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in everybody. You are listening to the Authority Podcast here on the Be Podcast Network. Thanks as always for being with us. Thanks for joining us for what's going to be another great conversation Casey, welcome to the show.
Casey Watts: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Excited to have a conversation about clarity. It's always what I love to talk about, so
Ross Romano: Yes, we're going to attempt to have a very clear conversation here after a long day that I'm sure we both had. And we'll really challenge ourselves. We're able to do it then we're pretty good at this. Right. I wanted to start at the beginning of the book, the introduction, which you titled, not Another Unrealistic Book of Complicated Ideas which I love as an introduction.
I often [00:01:00] bring some version of that concept into interviews here at some point as I, I call it introducing the friction to the conversation. And if everything is just, here's what to do, this is the great practice to this, it's like too smooth, right? It seems too easy. And as you're listening, you're kind of nodding along and it all sounds good.
And then at the end you may realize. We didn't really talk about what makes this hard and what why everybody doesn't do this if it sounded good, right? And so I love the fact that you started the book with that. And so I would love you to talk through that, the introduction, the things that you had in mind and what you address in that piece, in setting the book up as something that is doable.
Casey Watts: Yeah. You know, it's so interesting. Clarity is this thing we talk about all the time, right? We want to have clarity. People are eager to gain clarity. Like you hear it in conversations here and there. You either hear it before when people are [00:02:00] frustrated, like, I just need clarity around whatever it might be.
Or it could be after the fact when they've gained clear and they're like. Okay I finally have clarity around this. And so it's just really an interesting concept in really in any organization, but I think specifically for schools and nonprofits, when people are trying to gain clarity. So often we think of it as just verbal communication, right?
And. There's a fallacy in that because it's so much more than just verbal communication. And when I start thinking about the complexity of this idea of clarity, and it's something we talk about and we know we want it, and when we have it, we know we've got it. But how did we get it? Like what is the process?
Can we put a system to that? And so that's really what my thought process was in the beginning of writing the book. And that introduction is how do we take this? Very complex idea and simplify it so it's doable. And how can I give [00:03:00] people something that is not this high theory, like it's so beyond what's realistic that we're not able to accomplish anything.
And so yeah, I get a couple of ideas and then I set the book down and move on. Instead. I wanted this book to be something that is more of habits that you are building in order to be a clarity driven. Leader. And so yeah, that's enter the clarity cycle framework. It is a system for cre gaining clarity for yourself as a leader, but also creating clarity for your people.
Ross Romano: Yeah. And the part, another piece that you write about in that, the introduction is where some of the challenge. Comes in is the misaligned perspective between teachers and leaders. The sometimes reality of living in different worlds. And you write about moving between those worlds and seeing where those things are happening.
And so I, I would love for you to speak to that a little bit 'cause that's important context for this too, for us to be thinking [00:04:00] about as we're going through. What are the steps, what are the goals here? Who's involved what. What's the starting point, I guess often, right? For initiatives for a leader decides, okay, these are the things I wanna do and they have great ideas, right?
Great practices. But until you're in the mindset of. My people starting from, right. Am I launching into this thing and I'm coming from, I'm just almost dropped into the middle of the story and they weren't thinking about this at all. It might be a great idea that I'm super excited about, but everybody's looking at and be like, what's happening?
Vice versa. Right. So I would love to have you speak to that.
Casey Watts: Yeah. That's really where this stemmed from, is, man, I've lived so much of my work in education in this, what I call in the book this intermod, right? Like you're getting to see. Two different perspectives as though an author has written a book and they're going from one perspective to another. And that's what I felt like the, that's the world that I lived in for most of my career, [00:05:00] even as a teacher, because I became a teacher leader pretty quickly, and so I.
Kind of served as this in-between person, between classroom teacher and administrators? Well, time and time again, what I'm noticing is we have leaders who are consistently saying, man, we were trying to get people on board, but no one will commit. We can't get our people on board. They're resistant.
We've set the expectations time and time again. Still we're seeing the same problems, but then on the opposite end of that, I'm hearing from their teachers who are saying, we have no idea what's going on, or We don't know what the expectations are. They told us to do this. But we don't know really what that looks like.
What do they mean when they say that? And so there's just this gap between the adults on the campus and in the book, like the subtitle of the book says Six Steps to Bridge Gaps And Those Gaps. Really what I'm talking about is the gaps among the adults on campus, because we [00:06:00] can't bridge the gaps between the adults.
It's gonna make it really difficult to bridge the gaps in student learning. And so I talk a lot about really bringing, taking clarity from this idea of just a communication tool to how do we put clarity into action and put action to it.
(ad here)
Ross Romano: Yes. Yeah. I mean, that dynamic that you just described is. Foundational to everything that happens in the school from implementation and usage of a particular tool or program, right. To, of course how we cultivate school culture and climate and all of those elements. The work, the work environment for.
Faculty and staff, all of those pieces start with that. The alignment between the adults and the ability to have it or not. Are our purchasing decisions aligned with our understanding? Of what works, [00:07:00] doesn't, what we can do. Do we have clarity on what our practices look like, and are they all contextualized within the realities of what happens here?
Right? Because they, it can be very straightforward. Okay, all you have to do is this, and this. But when does that happen during the day? Sometimes it's, oh, this is really simple. You can do it in. 30 minutes a day or whatever. I'm like, okay, which 30 minutes there's a lot happening here. Right? And then nobody benefits.
Certainly students don't benefit. The adults don't benefit. Everybody's frustrated by that. And you right as well. That clarity is kindness which I think you have a. Better understanding of that concept. Once you have been in an environment where clarity is achieved and you have had to live through the discomfort that that creates at the beginning, right?
That discomfort and being the person who is [00:08:00] providing the clarity of discomfort and receiving it, a lot of times, whether that's feedback, an evaluation of how something went and then it went. And sometimes it's going to be this wasn't good and here's why, or this didn't work, here's where we stand.
Right? But when you know what that is, you're so much more informed. You can come up with a better strategy for what you wanna do. Next time you can think, you then you're not having to guess. What's happening around me, like sometimes we almost wanna be in that ambiguity because we don't have to confront the black and white reality of what the problems are.
And yet, once you are able to step into the the development of clarity you understand that it is the, it's the kinder option, but yeah.
Casey Watts: So I, I wanna address that actually, because what. What you're talking about sounds like. So we, I think we often [00:09:00] prefer to live in this am this state of ambiguity because it's what we're, what we know. And I write about that in the book as being like a quiet chaos on your campus.
So a lot, a lot of schools experience a quiet chaos, and it's not like this visible outright thing we see, but instead it's just kind of living under the surface and we don't. No any different because we haven't experienced any different. And when you start to develop a clarity culture, you're gonna notice a difference that ambiguity and that quiet chaos is going to be unveiled.
And that's. Exactly what you're talking about. That's going to be uncomfortable, but it's so much more kind to be clear. So that's the second thing I wanna address is we here, Brene Brown is so, is, has coined the phrase. Clear is kind and I think it's so familiar to people, but we equate it to. Just verbal communication.
And we also tend to equate it to [00:10:00] discomfort and uncomfortable con conversations. Like we equate clear as kind to having the hard conversations, the fierce conversations. But if you read on in what Brene Brown says, she says, clear as kind, yes, but that also means that we have to paint done. And so essentially in the book.
I'm teaching people about how to paint done and it reminds me so much. There are two different definitions in the dictionary for clarity that I want to read really quickly because there's a very big difference between the two of them. The first one is the quality of being easily understood, and I think when we hear the term clarity or when we're trying to provide clarity, we are trying to get people to understand us.
The problem is if you stop at the verbal level of communication. People aren't going to understand in a way that impacts their work and impacts their capacity because [00:11:00] we, I may be communicating the expectations again and again, but my perception of the expectations could be very different than the perceptions of someone else's.
Like someone else's perceptions of the expectations. So we've gotta take it a step further. And I love the second definition, and this is what my book serves to do. It is the state of having a full detailed and orderly mental grasp of something which is so much more detailed than the first definition.
And so in my mind, at the. Like we're putting clarity into action. So yeah, we wanna communicate, but let's take it a step further and let's paint done for our people and give them a mentally an orderly mental grasp of what we're trying to get them to get on board with. Yep.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, it's rooted in the empathy of it, right? I mean, it's clarity is contingent upon. The receiver of the, that message, that action behavior. Right. And so it [00:12:00] requires taking a step to think, okay, like sometimes it's a little more preparation organization, as you said, the pre-work to say, okay, how can I organize this, communicate it, piece it together, whatever it is.
In a way that will be clear to the person who's reading it, and I think putting myself outside of my own head, who might understand it fairly well inside and out, and I'm, I can start at any point in the story and start to just rattle off ideas and I'm thinking, oh, this is very clear. The person I'm talking to is completely lost and.
Not always easy to do. And I certainly can catch myself doing that and thinking I don't, is this making any sense? Right. Like,
Casey Watts: Right.
Ross Romano: is anybody following along here? And I think it's also, it's a lot more than, it's, everybody will have a different way of doing this and when people are authentic in. What they say about how to [00:13:00] engage and their willingness to answer questions, say or to. Repeat things or to present a different way, that's good. But it's, I think it's not always sufficient because it can shift the burden of that to the receiver to basically say, let me know if this isn't clear.
Ask a question. And it's like, of course it's not clear, right? So you're going to have to ask a million questions to get to it, and then you're uncomfortable because you're thinking. Oh I feel like I'm not getting any of this, but if I ask, start again from the beginning, then it seems like there's something wrong with me.
Right.
Casey Watts: Right.
Ross Romano: So it's it really requires some reflection and thought to say, to the best of my knowledge, how can I be clear about this? How can I be concise?
Casey Watts: Mm-hmm.
Ross Romano: What was it?
Casey Watts: Yeah.
Ross Romano: You know,
Casey Watts: Concise is the other piece of that. Yeah. And I don't really talk about that too much in the book. I mean, there are [00:14:00] pieces of it where I'm talking about. Being concise in specifically like what is it that you're focusing on? How are we communicating that concisely? But man, what a, what an important thing to think about too is, which kind of adds to that piece of clarity doesn't always mean that we're communicating verbally, because I can talk for.
30 minutes and still not be clear. You know, you think about those people who go on and on, and we're just the more we continue to talk, the more we're muddying the waters. So yeah, that
Ross Romano: Well, it's like awares. Where's Waldo or something like, the picture of Waldo is clearly drawn, but I have no idea where it is in this mix of everything else. It's not clear to me. And so it's okay, how do I, like what is the main point here? How do I prioritize that? And get on the same page.
You, you say that. Clarity precedes capacity. So going into some of the other elements here of the book. And would like to talk about that [00:15:00] piece and what that means for leaders, how they can start creating that clarity and then developing the means for capacity.
Casey Watts: Yeah. Yeah. So in the book I do talk about the phrase I use a lot is clarity precedes capacity. And the idea is exactly that. We have to not only gain clarity for ourselves, but create clarity for our people in order for them to build the capacity to support student learning or whatev whatever it is that our goals are, that we're working toward.
And so the way that I address. Building clarity in the book in a way that builds the capacity of your people is by going through a six step framework, which is called the Clarity Cycle Framework. And when I am teaching about this in the book, really what we're looking at is yes. These are six steps that you're going through, but essentially we want these six things that you're going through to be habits that you're building, clarity, building habits of a clarity driven [00:16:00] leader.
And so I'm just gonna talk about really quickly the six different steps that you might go through and how they should form as habits as you're going through them. But the first is deciding what is your area of focus. We've gotta decide what is the essential one thing that we're focused on. When you decide your area of focus, we then go into the second step of the clarity cycle framework, which is analyzing the area of focus to determine goals.
So you should, as a leader that. Thinking about the area of focus, that first step, really the habit you're building is trying to decide what is essential. I've got to get into the habit of figuring out what is essential that's gonna carry through all areas of leadership for you, what's essential that second step, analyzing that area of focus, to determine goals.
We are deciding if this is our area focus, then what are the couple of goals that are gonna help us to target that or [00:17:00] reach that area? Focus. And then the third step is gaining insight from people. And this is missed so often, but so we notice so often how leaders will have this area of focus, this is what I know we need to focus on.
Here are our goals. Then they start pushing it out and communicating it to their people. But what we're missing is. Gaining insight. The third step, gaining insight is another habit we have to build. How are you continually reaching out to your people and listening to what they have to say about this area of focus and these goals?
Because if you can gain insight, then you can go into step four, which is casting vision and scripting critical moves. I've gotta know what's going on in the minds of my people before I can start to cast vision about. Where we're headed. And before I can tell them all of the small steps we're gonna take to get there, because whatever they say when I'm gaining insight, that's going to inform our path because I've gotta decide [00:18:00] what are the strengths I'm gonna leverage and what are the areas where we need to pay close attention to help them move forward instead of feeling stuck or moving backwards.
And then the fifth step is another big one that we miss. That's celebrating systematically and providing feedback regularly. So that celebration, we see it so often at a surface level or we're celebrating things that seem a little bit removed from what our goals are. But if we're celebrating systematically.
Our celebrations are directly correlated to our area of focus and our goals, and so is our feedback. Our feedback is so intentional, and I can't tell you the number of times that I've heard instructional leaders say, I just don't know exactly what to provide feedback on when I go in. So their feedback is really almost random.
Right? But if we're. If we're going through the clarity cycle framework, then our feedback is really intentional and targeted. [00:19:00] We're providing feedback by design and then and again, that becomes a habit of celebrating, systematically, providing feedback regularly. And the last step is calibrating to sustain progress, because how often do we see.
See schools that are trying to implement an initiative or trying to reach these set of goals, and it becomes a really neat poster on the wall. Or we've stated it in like, in service and then nobody hears about it again. You know? And so we start to see those cyclical problems occurring. And so that last step is just really in a.
In a very formulaic way, trying to decide how do we calibrate and sustain this progress? We don't lose momentum. So that's in a nutshell, the whole clarity cycle framework.
(ad here)
Ross Romano: even in your description there, you may have indicated, you know why you say like, strategy is simple. Clarity is complex. Right? Because there already steps and. Also, as [00:20:00] you pointed to in the name Clarity Cycle framework that cycle means something in particular, right? This doesn't just happen one time.
Casey Watts: Yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It doesn't happen one time. But the other thing too is. I could go back into any piece of this cycle at any point. So I might get through the third step, which is gaining insight and I'm starting to cast vision and script critical moves. But you know what? I'm probably gonna be gaining insight from my people, from stakeholders again and again throughout the entire year.
So this is absolutely not a one and done. You are continually doing this work. In fact, I, I've been working with the school in Los Angeles. They started the Clarity Cycle framework last year, went through the Clarity Cycle framework, and they have started this new school year with kind of reflecting on their progress from last year.
And they're going through the clarity cycle framework again to get really clear [00:21:00] about their new goals or just the shift in the goals that they set from last year. So it's really beautiful to see that continuation and to know that the people that are working there. Have that consistency to lean into so they can place their attention and focus on what is the real work that we need to do, because I'm not guessing at the direction that we're headed or how we're gonna get there, or how I'm a contributing member of this organization.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. And I love that chapter is about gaining insight. 'cause it's because, that's a great word that. That connotes that clarity is in there, right? I mean, I've been talking about this recently, like provide insight, not information, right? The difference
Casey Watts: Yes.
Ross Romano: like, you need to identify what is the piece of this that is relevant, interesting, compelling, motivating to my audience here, and pull that out and spotlight it and not [00:22:00] just.
Do an information dump of all the stuff that is not it sure. This is all, it's valid. It, the information is you know, there, there's good data behind it, or it's based on a lot of expertise, and yet it's a lot of filtering. It's not service oriented. Right. And that way, going back to the empathy piece that.
I'm not really helping you if I'm saying like dropping a book on your desk and saying, here, read this. Right. Versus saying, let me tell you about the key idea. And then if you find that really helps you, then yeah, you might wanna learn more or something but what's the insight?
Casey Watts: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
There.
Ross Romano: So there's, I, there's so much more to, to dive into across I think the cycle here. But I think one place to maybe hone in on a little bit is the, [00:23:00] collaboration required at each step. Across the process and like probably the revisiting of the importance of that. How's it working? Are we remembering to commit to collaborating?
One collaboration versus not collaboration versus like we collaborated at step one and now we're just gonna keep moving, but also. You say about a lot of teams that they think they're collaborating, but they're just coordinating
Casey Watts: Uhhuh.
Ross Romano: what's the difference there? But would love to hear about that in this context of what is the difference between coordination and collaboration?
What does collaboration actually look like, but how is it sustained throughout the cycles when I'm sure it's like it takes intentionality.
Casey Watts: Oh my gosh, it so does, and that's another piece of this. You can, we can't, and I [00:24:00] will say sometimes, and it depends on who, it depends on the leader that it is sometimes with. Just like with a lot of things, like we want the magic bullet, right? Like we want the quick fix and so we go through the steps, but we go through them superficially and you, I will never advocate for anyone to go through anything superficially, but definitely not something like the clarity cycle because you do, if you go through it superficially, and if you try to go at it on your own as an individual leader.
You are not going to make the progress that you're hoping for. You're not gonna see the changes that you're hoping for. In the book just a little bit, I've actually, I'm writing another book that really talks about clarity of three different things, but one of those things is clarity of collaboration, and I talk about the difference between authentic collaboration.
faux collaboration, which is to say fake collaboration because we have this idea for whatever reason, that where two or more people are gathered, [00:25:00] collaboration is happening. Well, you and I both know that's not actually the case, and I can't tell you how many times I'm meeting with instructional leadership teams, or I'm meeting with teacher teams, and when I say, tell me about the collaboration on your team, they say things like, oh, oh, we, we collaborate really well.
Like. You know, or, and then I'll continue to say, okay, well, tell me what you mean by that. Like, what do you mean you collaborate really well? And so they go on to say. Well, we get along really well. We share resources and that's pretty much where it ends. Like we get along, we share resources, but that is not collaboration.
That is just coworking. That's coordinating. That's I'm getting along in order to share resources, but then we go back to our own spaces and we. Continue in our default state, which is to say we're not making any changes that are moving the needle of our organization. So, when you're going through the clarity cycle [00:26:00] framework.
We have to start at the beginning. I start with the instructional leadership team really getting clear on what are the norms that we're setting for? Like what is it that we're really wanting to do? What is our purpose and goals here? And then if this is our focus, then what are the norms we're gonna set?
And how does each member, each team member contribute? So that our norms are being adhered to and so that we don't lose momentum as we go through this. And that's, it's so, it is challenging going throughout the school year. You know, we can be pulled in a million different directions. It can be easy to kind of let go of things or let a meeting slide like, well, we just didn't really have time.
It's okay, we don't have to meet. We'll just kind of talk about it in passing. No. We have to have intentional touchpoints where we are having the hard conversations or celebrating the great things. Those things have to happen [00:27:00] and we have to make those the essential things and make it a priority, because if we're not prioritizing that.
Then guess what? We are prioritizing. We're prioritizing the chaos that's going to continue if we don't prioritize the other things. So, yeah. You know, I, there's so much I could say about collaboration. Listen, that's another podcast episode, but it's. It can be so challenging for people to move into authentic collaboration if they've only ever experienced FO collaboration, and most people have only ever experienced fo collaboration, unfortunately.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Right. And you said contribute there, which I think is you term, it's moving from like co-work to co-create. It's a much more proactive, it is all parties or whichever parties are involved really contributing to. What the plan is, what does it look like? What's strategy? How are we doing it?
Why are we doing it? [00:28:00] And then being in alignment but not just. You know, getting aligned within whatever lines were already drawn and saying, okay, well you take this spot and I'll take that one. And we're not butting up against each other and we're all kind of it's less fulfilling.
It's, It's a lot, it's an opportunity cost. Like what ideas are we missing? How could we be making this place better? How can we be uniquely benefiting from. The ideas, insights, and talents of those in this community, right? To make it thrive and alive. And again, like going back to the discomfort piece, people on both sides of collaboration, if they have only experienced that folk collaboration are, may feel some initial discomfort.
'cause you have to be willing to. yourself out there in some ways, not just like go along to get along, but to say, okay, here's really what I think and let me give you the benefit of my expertise and my experience, and share that as the other [00:29:00] people. Like a lot of people will say they want to be collaborative, but they don't like really.
Open themselves up to hearing what other people think. Right? And again, it's not, it, it's just missing, missing the mark on what's possible, right? That it's not just about achieving harmony necessarily, but but amplifying that.
Casey Watts: Yeah. Right. And once people experience that, like if you, once you experience true collaboration where your working geniuses are alive and well, you're thriving and your team is thriving, like individually, you're thriving and your team is thriving. You don't want to go back. You don't wanna go backwards, like you want more of that.
And those are the kinds of teams and environments that we're trying to create. And I will continuously say there's no creating that if we don't know how to gain clarity and create clarity for people. I.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Happens when you have a team that [00:30:00] is. Maybe not doing this very well. They're stuck in their silos. They are cycling through dysfunction. How does the leader, like, make a move to break out of that. Figure out how to start turning things around?
Casey Watts: Yeah, that's a tough one. And I'm gonna go into clarity cycle framework because, and this is a great thing about this framework in that it is habits that you're building because I will always be a proponent of if you're noticing that you have to get in front of people and hear what they have to say, and you've gotta gain that insight to figure out where is it that this dysfunction is truly.
Coming from because it's sometimes as leaders we have this eagle eye view of our organization and we can get caught in. Yeah, we can get caught in the clouds, I think, and our teachers and staff can get caught in the weeds. [00:31:00] You know, they're zoomed in and so we've gotta be able to gain perspective from both parties or from both.
Well, I guess perspectives is the right word to use there, but I've gotta be able to meet in the middle to see what is it that they're seeing that I'm not, what is it? I'm seeing that. They are not able to see, and how do we bridge that gap? So the only way to do that is to have the conversations.
But here's the thing about that. So often leaders want to have the conversations, but when they start listening, and I talk about this a lot in the gaining insight chapter when they start. Talking or having those conversations instead of listening to understand. They're listening in order to justify or they're listening to respond, and we can only sit in the space of listening to understand if you're wanting to get out of dysfunction.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. As anybody who's ever posted a podcast can say, right? And that it's not that easy to get out [00:32:00] of listening to respond because you're like, all right, thinking ahead of what are the other things I want to talk about? Right? And you're realizing at a certain point, like, what are we talking about here?
What did I miss? And, but it's the same thing here, that it can be well intentioned. I have this vision in mind for these things we want to do, and I'm really excited to be able to move us to the next step. And, but like, it just takes time because everybody's, you're bringing them along from wherever their starting point is.
They need to. Ask their questions, get the the micro clarifications within the big clarification and clarity and and be ready to go step by step. And that it's not just about willingness or buy-in, so to speak, but it's about
Casey Watts: Yeah.
Ross Romano: legitimately being ready to achieve the next step. And. Getting there.
Right. And not dissimilar from concepts [00:33:00] within instruction and intervention and all these things that are right. Like if I'm not, if I'm missing some key component skill here for what we need to do next week. Now I'm just, I'm like. Remaining behind, or I'm continuing to have gaps and that'll compound week by week.
And there's always going to be something missing in my understanding. And eventually that's like there's a crack and everything's not fitting together because there's something, and and it just would require some patience in this case, some ability to. To be able to reinforce. But yeah, that all tracks back to seeing past our own enthusiasm
Casey Watts: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So when I take people through, like usually there are a couple of ways people can partner with me to learn about and go through the training for the Clarity Cycle framework, but the. M [00:34:00] most appropriate way I, or impactful way to go through it, is to go through the a two day training.
So we spend one day just learning about the clarity cycle framework. We put together some plans some action plans, and then the second day is really important too, because it's all about the, like what ifs. So we learn how to have the hard conversations or what's gonna happen if. You know, my people start to push back or there's resistance.
So, yeah, you, it does take time and effort, but any great thing is going to take time and effort if you're willing to put forth the time and effort. I,
Ross Romano: Yeah. Well, how do you sustain that as the leader when it's not working and I, when you are not seeing evidence of results, how do you keep yourself from reverting to an easier approach [00:35:00] or to I guess just. One way. Accountability in a sense, you know what? I'm just going to say what I want.
And you're accountable for understanding it and doing it. And if not, well, I did my part. And that's tempting. That's tempting. And and it can be felt to be. Straightforward, right. I was clear about what I wanted. I didn't, there, it wasn't ambiguous in the sense of I didn't mince words, I didn't hedge, I didn't hold back.
But it may have been ambiguous as far as what's the real, the why, what's the motivation? What, and what's the like, how to make this happen and yeah.
Casey Watts: Yeah. There are a couple of things I think I can say about that first, and they're gonna sound really like opposite things and they actually are opposite things, but first. We have to be so self-reflective, which is so interesting we're bringing this up [00:36:00] because that's also a part of the second book is clarity of identity as a leader.
So we have to, for ourselves, have emotional clarity, social clarity, and goal clarity in order to be a reflective leader. And so constantly self-reflecting and just considering like. Why, like what is it? Where have I potentially been ambiguous and why? Like, are we getting down to the root cause of why people just, were not making progress with this?
But also if you're noticing such struggles, then I'm wondering if you're going at this. As a lone writer instead of with a solid team of people. And when I talk about instructional leadership teams going through the clarity cycle work, a lot of the times it ends up being like campus administration, but then also a couple of classroom lead teachers.
And that's important too. But here's the [00:37:00] opposite end of that, that I'm gonna say. Sometimes you're gonna find yourself. In just not the right place for you. So I have been in the position where I have tried desperately to put things into action and implemented what I felt like was best practice. And you know what?
The school that I in was just not a good fit for me. And so I had to make the hard decision about where am I gonna go so that I am feeling that. I contribute and I feel empowered, but I'm also empowering the people that I'm working with. I'm not saying that's the case a lot of the time, but it can happen.
So one of the two things have to happen. You have to either be really self-reflective and decide where is it that we're kind of misaligned here, or I have to decide is this the best fit for me where I am in my career?
Ross Romano: Yeah, so. Last question here is what are some indicators that it [00:38:00] is working and how, what would you look at and see, okay, we're making progress here. This thing is improved, or these are some of the key look fors.
Casey Watts: Key. The number one look for is, and I ask people this when I start working with them in the clarity cycle framework. I say, if I was to walk your halls and go up to any person and say, tell me about what your area focus and goals are. If they can tell me. They're all using a similar common language, then you are golden.
And that's what we want by the end of the Clarity Cycle framework. We know it's working when people are all starting to speak the same language and you're going to hear it in meetings like, Hey, this is our area focus and goals. So for this meeting, it means that we need to focus on these things or this is essential to talk about.
And so that's when, that's where you're gonna know you're making progress, is when people are speaking the same language and you're seeing it consistently show up in different pockets across your campus.
Ross Romano: Awesome. [00:39:00] Well, Casey I, referenced at the beginning of the show that you also have a podcast catching up with Casey. And of course you have the book, you have other work you do. Tell our listeners about your podcast. Tell 'em about other resources or things they can check out.
Casey Watts: Yeah, absolutely. So the podcast, the Catching Up with Casey Show is a place where we talk about the seemingly small things in leadership that make the biggest impact. So we're gaining clarity around those very small things that make a big impact. And then, on the website, you can find out about everything that I do as a speaker and consultant with schools and other organizations.
Again, that is catching up with casey.com and you can find me on socials, catch up with Casey. That's where I am. Just imagine you're catching up with me over a cup of coffee.
Ross Romano: Excellent. Well, listeners will put all those links below in the show notes so you can check out the book, wherever you get your books. It's the Craft of Clarity so that you can check out the podcast, connect on social [00:40:00] media, all of the above. Put those links below so you can check those out.
Please. Also, if you have not already, we really appreciate those ratings and reviews on Apple or Spotify. Wherever you listen they're really beneficial to helping new listeners learn about the show and know what you like about the show. So, so please do that. Casey, thanks so much for being here.
Casey Watts: Yeah, thanks for having me.