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Welcome to the 'Lead Smarter. Not Harder' Podcast by David Kent, your window into the minds of visionary leaders, trailblazing innovators, and savvy business owners.
Get ready to immerse yourself in the captivating stories and invaluable lessons from the best and brightest minds in the business.
David Kent (00:01.048)
Kate, thank you again for joining us on the Lead Smarter podcast. I'm really excited to chat with you again. I really enjoyed the chance getting to know you when we first connected and getting to hear a little bit about the background in terms of leadership in areas that I don't even really think about how it impacts our lives and our communities in education. I know that you have experience beyond education, but the fact that your depth of experience and knowledge there was very exciting to me. I'd love to learn more about.
Kate Anderson Foley (00:04.941)
Thank you.
Kate Anderson Foley (00:20.852)
Yep.
David Kent (00:28.504)
that and have our audience maybe get a chance to learn more about your experience and leadership in different areas that affect businesses even outside of that. One of the topics actually I wanted to dive into with you is the leadership void and generational shifts. What do you see as the biggest factors driving experienced leaders to leave earlier than expected?
Kate Anderson Foley (00:43.143)
Yep. It's such a good question because we're living in this time, but I'd have to go back to COVID.
when that happened and I'll speak specifically about schools and then we can broaden it out to business in general. In schools, COVID hit and many people at the leadership level were almost to retirement because that's just generational turnover, right?
But when COVID hit, there was a level of exhaustion, a level of uncertainty, a level of volatility, right? If you think back to the technology world of VUCA, the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, school districts felt it in a way that they'd never felt it before. And so many just said, I'm done. They couldn't do it. They're exhausted. They were this close. I'm out the door.
And that left a big void. The generational shift then became younger people who wanted to get into administration or leadership roles, but maybe weren't ready yet. We're all of a sudden pulled up into those positions. And that left a void of the, I should say the disconnect between what you learn about leadership and what actually happens when you're sitting in that seat.
And sometimes those are two different things.
David Kent (02:23.598)
I, you know, reminds me when we were first chatting, one of the things that I think stood out to me, you had talked about one thing you're talking about right now is leadership in schools. And what it struck, what stood out to me when we first were talking was the realization that schools are government bodies and that, and that obviously there's in even small organizations, leadership has political impacts or political
Kate Anderson Foley (02:35.597)
Mm-hmm.
Kate Anderson Foley (02:43.575)
Great.
Kate Anderson Foley (02:50.061)
Mm-hmm.
David Kent (02:51.478)
I guess nuances inside of a small business, but obviously much greater in government bodies or larger organizations. It's interesting to me when you're talking about those shifts, we're talking about now how these will affect our communities. now we've got in, I think the leadership you're saying is changing. We're getting younger leaders that are just trying to step up into these empty spaces.
Kate Anderson Foley (03:14.779)
Right.
David Kent (03:17.087)
What would you say are unique challenges younger leaders face when stepping into senior roles sooner than planned?
Kate Anderson Foley (03:24.312)
So the younger leaders, be it in, as you said, the school districts, which are government agencies, or any kind of business, public or private, you have younger people who value collaboration over the traditional hierarchy of an organizational chart. Now, that doesn't sound like a lot because you think, well, it's just a piece on a paper, right?
it's not, it's the operational side of things. And so younger leaders struggle with the pressures of the traditional bumping up against how they came up and how they perceive leadership, how they perceive feedback and all that, all the work that we do at the leadership level. And so that's a big one. The other is leaders, young leaders don't appreciate
because they don't have the knowledge yet of how it was back in the past. So it's not that you abandoned the past, you take the learnings that are going to serve you, pull that thread, but you got to pivot to the future. And so younger leaders are looking for direction and they're looking for support. I always share that the higher up you go in leadership, it becomes very lonely.
And again, I'll use my professional experience. When you're the chief of districts and schools and departments and states, there's only a few of you. So it's lonely. probably more important, leaders don't feel that they can necessarily be vulnerable to say, don't know all the answers. And so that's where the newer leaders actually benefit.
David Kent (05:13.57)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (05:17.901)
But I'm going to use the term Agile Leaders because I've done some work with this. That's how I like to coach. There's Agile Leaders and Agile Coaching. Agile Leaders, regardless of age, but you were talking about the younger ones, they value, again, the collaboration. They value teams. They value that flat organizational structure rather than the hierarchy.
Because when you do that, then you're more readily to say, hey, here's our mission. What are your ideas? And then to be able to collaborate and be flexible and then make those iterative changes that actually lead to the goal. So that's the difference, I think, in a very positive way of younger leaders. And that bumps up against the older, or I should say more veteran leaders, who go, wait a minute, let's just be more traditional. And so I think you're seeing it in variety of industries.
David Kent (05:44.812)
Right.
David Kent (06:11.437)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (06:14.741)
right now because there is some generational shifts that are happening.
David Kent (06:19.884)
Yeah, I definitely, I can say for myself, obviously I have clients that are just outside of education. They're in small business, maybe even medium sized business. And that's, that's a lot of what I'm seeing as well as what you've described where it's like a flat leadership style, even almost like leading by what is aligned, like company values versus leading by somebody pulling from the front and just do what I tell you to do. I think that there's been plenty out there that shows that that's more effective literally in general.
Kate Anderson Foley (06:27.095)
Mm-hmm.
Kate Anderson Foley (06:38.508)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (06:42.679)
That's right.
David Kent (06:49.704)
And that might be why, but I can see in my own experience with businesses that, let's just call them really established leaders struggle with that because that's not traditionally how they would have led.
Kate Anderson Foley (07:01.259)
That's exactly right. So not by training nor experience, right? So history says, this is how you lead, you know, but that's not how the world works now, but the shift and people that are coming into those leaderships roles, they don't see the value of that. And so I think there's real important work to do to kind of weave them together to say, well, what works out of those? How can you take those and have a strength-based approach?
David Kent (07:08.92)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (07:30.881)
So that leans into your leadership style, but understanding what the team needs and what the organization needs and the culture you're trying to bring into that organization.
David Kent (07:43.991)
And I think you also like kind of led into this conversation a little bit by talking about where some of those shifts occurred, maybe not occurred or initiated during COVID, but maybe became more visible and palpable during COVID and people realized this throughout. I'd consider that like a time of basically crisis and change. What are your, have you seen what you've described as a positive change that was
Kate Anderson Foley (07:56.809)
Mm-hmm.
David Kent (08:12.262)
deeply impacted in that moment that has continued forward. you or do you see, I mean, I feel like I'm starting to see it even starting to curb back where people are starting to maybe reroute in those more established like, no, we don't want you to work from home and maybe shifting. What are you seeing with your own clients or even in education if there's a shift back?
Kate Anderson Foley (08:28.244)
That's right. Yeah.
Kate Anderson Foley (08:35.245)
Yeah, so COVID in all industry, right, we all were sent home. Work didn't stop, so we transitioned very quickly to remote, however that looked, be it whatever the setting of education, business, and everyone thought we'll never go back, especially in business, we'll never go back. We don't need offices, we don't need, you know, hoteling stations anymore, like we're on our own.
David Kent (08:42.094)
You're right.
David Kent (08:57.39)
Sure.
Kate Anderson Foley (09:05.279)
solid research that says you're actually, you got more done when you were remote. However, however, this is the bump up. There's social implications of why you want to have people come back to the office. Maybe not all the time, but some of the time you want to have opportunities for professional development. want to opportunities for, again, the culture and the
David Kent (09:10.936)
Sure.
David Kent (09:21.091)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (09:29.709)
of the organization itself. And so those are real important things that aren't tangible when you are remote, you're a screen in between. Same thing happened with schools. In overnight, there was a transition from I am standing in front of you students to I am on the screen and I'm trying to orchestrate everything, but I don't really have the skill set to do that, right? So many people just didn't have the skill set to do that.
You talked about the shift, you talked about the gap, the divide, therein lies a perfect example that there were some veteran people, whatever the business is, who just couldn't pivot to what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to do it? How do I get support? All of those things. And so now we are post pandemic. Five years out, I'll speak to education.
David Kent (10:25.838)
Sure.
Kate Anderson Foley (10:27.873)
The students that left and were virtual checked out. Many checked out. There's a huge national issue with absenteeism. The students never came back. We've got thousands upon thousands of students where we don't know where they are. That's an issue. That's a societal issue. Yeah. Yeah.
David Kent (10:50.966)
I had no idea until this moment that that was gonna, okay, wow.
Kate Anderson Foley (10:54.955)
There's a societal issue that's going on and people don't understand. I don't think people truly appreciate that. And so I, I'm a big advocate, obviously for public education, education in general, that it is the single most powerful investment that the country can make. But if the students aren't there, IE future workers, what will we do? So we really need to start looking at, in my estimation, a combination of how do you.
David Kent (11:16.023)
Right?
Kate Anderson Foley (11:25.095)
Never go back to the old five days a week, 10 hours a day, heavy commute, you all the things that were the emotional drag on people. And how do you create a thriving organization that is more flexible and responsible? Again, I'll go back to that agile methodology where that is actually seen as part of the value system within the organization. So I like
David Kent (11:34.318)
Sure.
Kate Anderson Foley (11:53.943)
I'd like to work with people to help move in that direction. And I think it's real important to not say, well, I'm being flexible and nimble and blah, blah, that it's fluffy. Absolutely not. Agile leaders really are zeroed in on what it is that they need to do. But they recognize that the team, I need to radically collaborate with my team. Right? And I value that.
And that's where that flat org chart comes in, right?
David Kent (12:26.366)
Yeah, I've not heard. mean, I love that term radical collaboration. I think I love that term one because collaboration is just a leadership style that is something I deeply align with and I align with it. I don't know if it's because it's a core value of mine or because it just happens to be better suited to my skill set. And if I was to be working on my own independently, I would I just know I would naturally get less done. So I almost use it as a crutch.
Kate Anderson Foley (12:39.33)
Yeah.
David Kent (12:54.616)
Like, let's get all our team together, because I know I get more done together than I will on my own. But I, no, no, no, please.
Kate Anderson Foley (12:55.668)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (13:00.075)
take a look, I'm sorry, go ahead. But but take that and now make it into like a scientific or a leadership theory that if if you the leader have the knowledge, skills and dispositions to do what you just said, you trans you translate that into your team at ethos, right? And so you're supporting them while still working on the mission or the goal, I should say.
David Kent (13:15.341)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (13:27.721)
of what it is that you're supposed to be working on. But the other, the positive side of that too is it becomes more iterative rather than, well, you know, we've got these key performance index and we've got these metrics and these metrics and we'll look at those six months out. It becomes a more dynamic process. And that's why I mean, there's like this radical collaboration and extreme agility, not extreme like
David Kent (13:41.784)
Yeah.
Kate Anderson Foley (13:56.735)
again, haphazard, very focused, right? You never leave what it is that you're supposed to do, but you're adapting, you're adaptive because maybe circumstances change. You have to be responsive to that while still working on the goal that you all set out to do.
David Kent (14:01.07)
That's, mean, yeah.
David Kent (14:18.21)
That description that for me, it kind of resonates in terms of like the working remote structure of my own business, like hyper collaboration or like what you were describing in terms of within an environment where we need to be really agile. And the reason I think it works so well, and you said that being that adaptive does not mean being loose. The reason I think that works so well is because
Kate Anderson Foley (14:43.202)
Right.
David Kent (14:44.394)
in a remote environment, like your infrastructure is collaboration. Like you don't have a business. I'm not managing you by line of sight or managing by collaboration, iteration and output. So what you produce is what I'm not, what I'm monitoring, not your physical body behind a desk.
Kate Anderson Foley (14:55.51)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (15:01.931)
That's right. you're at the same time, you're working on the building trusting relationships. You're building that relationship, that psychological safety to say, I might fail. That's okay, because we're gonna learn from something within that. And then we're gonna be able to take it, pivot and go on. Like that's the culture that you're trying to build, right? And that's the difference. But that's the difference.
David Kent (15:09.602)
Right.
David Kent (15:25.246)
I mean, that's the culture I'm trying to build. it's so refreshing to hear too.
Kate Anderson Foley (15:30.189)
Yeah, but that's the difference between the, I'll use the word traditional versus where we really need to go. As an aside, I've got two daughters and they're thirties and I always get these, oh, they're those kids, those millennials or whatever. It's like, you have no idea how fantastic these people are and how they've been raised.
because they are the ones in this world. So we better support them because they are the ones, right? They have amazing ideas, but don't put them into the traditional box of the hierarchy. We've got to support them in a different way.
David Kent (16:10.762)
It's, did not, I was not anticipating the conversation dipping into hierarchy as much as it is. one of things I love about it is just from my own background, I could always draw what I wanted to do in life, down to like a single statement, which is like, I want to be able to do something that is substantially greater than I could accomplish on my own, whatever that is. don't, I care to a degree. but without that element, I'm not interested in it at all. Like if it's only what I can do.
Kate Anderson Foley (16:14.45)
Yeah.
Kate Anderson Foley (16:34.646)
Right.
David Kent (16:37.09)
then I'm basically doing it on my own and that's the least interesting space for me to be in. I didn't realize it, I should have, I guess, realized, but I didn't realize it had generational, I guess, similarities. And I love that you've given it a perspective that even traces it through organizations and how people work together and lead. I also didn't realize that that didn't translate well to the
Kate Anderson Foley (16:49.489)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
David Kent (17:06.378)
like to current like established leadership. I think it's maybe too simple to separate the generations. I know there are people that are in older generations that do embrace that and they do embrace. So I don't want to like blanket anybody, but I definitely align with I think the values that you've outlined in those collaborations.
Kate Anderson Foley (17:17.808)
Absolutely.
Kate Anderson Foley (17:25.355)
Yeah, and that's why I said it's traditional because it's a traditional thinking. It's a traditional mindset versus a flexible and nimble mindset. Agile.
David Kent (17:33.144)
That.
David Kent (17:37.59)
I was actually, that was gonna bring up also when you say agile, I'm thinking basically project management, right? Basically that's, is that what you mean by it?
Kate Anderson Foley (17:48.909)
No, Agile leaders, you're in the leadership position. You're not like, so take the project manager hat off. As leaders, be it a CEO, a chief, could be a police officer, whoever that leader is, they're adaptive. They have an open mind similar to what we were just talking about.
David Kent (18:18.168)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (18:18.189)
They're able to work on teams. And so therein lies a big part because sometimes you need to be coached on how to collaborate. It sounds good. How do I do that? And then how do I know it's effective? Right? So again, agile leaders listen, they build trust and they're radical collaborators. And because of that, they're able to be nimble or flexible as
David Kent (18:30.368)
Yeah.
Kate Anderson Foley (18:47.701)
circumstances arrive and go through that adaptive or I say iterative process of improvements, right? That's how companies exist.
David Kent (18:56.63)
Is that free for your own clients for the work that you do? Is that a, is that a pillar or something that you particularly focus on? And makes, I was actually going to go, basically the reason I ask is, one of the topics I want to talk to you about was coaching and supporting emerging leaders. how does coaching you provide or how does the coaching, provide the support that emerging leaders often lack inside this, their organization?
Kate Anderson Foley (19:04.161)
Yes. Yes.
Kate Anderson Foley (19:23.213)
So I've talked a lot about agile leadership, but the coach has to be agile and meaning understanding the tenants of that. I do a lot of performance coaching. So I work with C-suite. I work with in schools, know, principals, et cetera. Those are leaders because they have that tangential relationship to outcomes.
And so I really work with them to say what you do and how you do it and the questions that you ask of the people that report to you, you know, are vitally important. And then you need to listen and observe for the evidence of the impact that you're having. And so we do a lot of work around that tied to the improvement process. Any continuous improvement project, it a process, I'm sorry, be it in a school district,
David Kent (19:50.403)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (20:20.117)
at the state department, private business, every organization is through some type of continuous improvement, right? To be stagnant means to become obsolete. districts, I'm comfortable talking about districts in this sense, high performing districts say, we're always good. We don't have to do anything. But when I ask deeper questions and ask,
Are all students growing? Like all those different groups, even your high flyers, are they growing? And you look at the metrics, oftentimes it's like they're aha because they're like, my gosh, our, our kids are growing the way that we wanted them to grow. Now it's, it's a school district's obligation to grow students at least one year in one academic school year. So if
David Kent (21:06.627)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (21:19.593)
If they are, that's great. If they're doing more, even better. And if they're not doing it, why not? And how do you start to change that? And so I really like to work with people on things like that.
David Kent (21:31.968)
And one of the things you'd mentioned to me, one is that there's becoming a gap in leadership in education as an example. And I'm assuming you're doing a lot of coaching to these emerging leaders trying to step up into that space and to the now open roles that they're having to maybe elevate themselves faster than they were ready for.
Kate Anderson Foley (21:36.151)
Thanks.
Kate Anderson Foley (21:41.239)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (21:51.894)
Mmm.
Right. So that's been the work that is creating opportunities for the younger leaders, but it's also creating some anxiety and it's also then creating some people to say, I'm out, I'm done. I want to go back to the classroom or I just want to be done. So there's initiative fatigue because here they are brand new leaders bump up against what
David Kent (22:08.6)
Sure.
Kate Anderson Foley (22:24.333)
you know, the federal accountabilities are the state accountabilities, the local accountabilities, and then the politics that go along with that strand. so leaders, so I said in the very beginning, it's one thing to know part of your leadership training, but it's real different when you hit the street and you go, oh, oh, oh, I see what's happening. And then how am I supposed to wrap my arms around all of them?
David Kent (22:39.277)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (22:52.145)
and move a large number of people and where kids are in a forward direction. And that's the difference.
David Kent (23:00.749)
That's.
What you've described to me translates really actually cleanly in pretty much any organization when I would say, one of the there's lots of jobs a leader has, but one of them, if they're developing and growing an organization is being able to effectively foster leaders underneath themselves, which is very hard to do, especially if people aren't ready for it. I've done it myself and I've been excited about somebody who showed lots of promise who could definitely handle the responsibility, but didn't.
Kate Anderson Foley (23:20.087)
That's right.
Kate Anderson Foley (23:24.758)
Yeah.
David Kent (23:33.196)
wasn't ready for the weight of that responsibility. Even if they were currently executing the responsibilities, I just changed, you're now responsible for the outcome, not just the activity. And that weight, even if the work is exactly the same, has an impact mentally on them. And actually, I wanted to ask you, what advice would you give to organizations on how to better support and retain their new leaders so that they don't go through this process of,
Kate Anderson Foley (23:35.841)
Mm-hmm.
Kate Anderson Foley (23:44.959)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (23:50.231)
Mm-hmm.
David Kent (24:02.496)
trying to fill this spot and I've got to start over because I put so much pressure on them and they decided they didn't want to be there.
Kate Anderson Foley (24:08.092)
Exactly. one is, and this is the most important, invest in your people. Invest your time, your resources, and resources doesn't always mean money, right? Invest your resources in the people. If you saw something in them, let them know, but then say, this is how I'm going to support you so you can grow into your position. And then two, I would be remiss if I didn't say, you should
David Kent (24:20.248)
Sure.
Kate Anderson Foley (24:36.809)
organization look at a coaching opportunity, I'll go back to the strong research that coaching is one of the highest levers of professional development that you can provide to any organization. And so, you you think about sports and all of that. It applies in the business world. It applies in the political world. It applies in the educational world.
So invest in your people, support and support and support. Get very, very clear on how I'm gonna support you and then say, and this is one of the ways that I'm going to support you. I can, I just mentioned one thing. Sometimes people, again, maybe depending on where they are in their career, they could see coaching as, you don't think I'm very good, so you're giving me a coach, right? And so...
David Kent (25:31.575)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (25:33.351)
A leader who's adept at that will be able to look at the language in a different way to say, actually, I believe in you so much. I'm going to give you this resource from the organization. Take good care of it and let's do it. Right? Because we're going to be able to see the outcome.
David Kent (25:53.996)
Right, right, don't look at it as some sort of penalization or homework. We're literally investing in you.
Kate Anderson Foley (26:00.849)
Right, so let's go back to the newer leaders, be it millennials or just new leaders who've been tapped up from all of the stuff that's going on, this VUCA world that we live in. They want real authentic feedback. And that's the other thing we talked about, the flat versus the hierarchical org chart. The same thing applies for performance reviews. They want something that's meaningful, a feedback.
David Kent (26:04.931)
Right.
David Kent (26:12.108)
Right?
David Kent (26:22.508)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (26:29.759)
where if you're a good leader in that sense, you're going to be able to provide that. Coaches are going to be able to provide that for them as well. And so that's, that's how you grow by getting good feedback, but very specific feedback, right? You can't just say, David, great job. It's like, doing what? Versus David, I really liked how you executed on X. Maybe have you thought about next time doing Y?
David Kent (26:48.856)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (27:00.237)
Z would be, do you need a resource for me? Let me know and I'll try to find you that resource. One, two, three. I gave you a positive, I gave you a wondering like, how can I stretch this? What do you need from me? That's how you grow people.
David Kent (27:00.258)
Right.
David Kent (27:18.882)
That's, mean, I'm, I don't always work with organizations that are big enough that invest in their leadership because maybe they're just a small five person team and they've been doing it for a few years. but then I've worked with some organizations that are multi, multi-location, multi-regional. and maybe they recognize leadership, but maybe they haven't reached the point themselves yet to be investing in coaching. and if they were, it'd be, it'd be completely new to them. They'd be starting from the beginning. how would you identify?
Kate Anderson Foley (27:46.902)
Right.
David Kent (27:48.482)
Like I'm going in, how do you identify for somebody who's looking at coaching and let them know, this is how you know that you need it. This is what you should expect as an outcome from doing it and why, why you would invest in this.
Kate Anderson Foley (28:04.225)
Well, first, I'd really acknowledge that they're even looking at it, investigating it as a possible strategy, right? Coaching is a strategy. And so I talk about what coaching is and what coaching is not. Be very, very clear, right? The coaching world has a set of ethics that we follow. We're not therapists, you know?
so being real clear on that second of all, I'd say, so what is it that you see the value of coaching to be not just for you, David, as the CEO, but for your organization as a whole. So a lot of times I do group and then I do individual. I do it onsite, virtual hybrid. mean, it's what the organization wants. Part of that too is because of the.
David Kent (28:53.197)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (28:56.535)
coaching on the professional side. I can see the themes emerge. I can share those with the CEO and they say, do you have any training that you can provide on such? Yes. Or I'll say pull in some other people and provide that. Right. That's how a CEO is responsive. Hmm. There seems to be an emerging themes from the five people that I'm coaching. Why don't we take a look at, you know, some development? So along those lines and then the metrics for that.
David Kent (29:11.95)
Okay, right.
David Kent (29:19.34)
Right.
David Kent (29:23.501)
Okay.
Kate Anderson Foley (29:25.933)
It's always about, well, what is it that you want to improve upon? Is it culture, climate? Those are other things. But then is it finances? You know, we're only this, you know, one million dollar company and we need to get to five million because X, Y, and Z. Or, yeah, in the school sense, it's like, well, we have a group of students, know, many groups of students who aren't learning. How do we get that? And so I work on that.
David Kent (29:43.339)
Okay.
David Kent (29:54.358)
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I know that one of the things I wanted to also talk to you about was culture, climate, and agile leadership. You often talk about culture and climate, and I'm interested, how do you define the difference between the two in an organization?
Kate Anderson Foley (30:03.244)
Okay.
Kate Anderson Foley (30:10.359)
Yep, so the easiest way to think about culture is the big macro. What's the organization's mission statement if it's not just a couple sentences that are stuck on a website, right? It's gotta be real. So what is the culture of the organization? That's the macro. The micro is when you walk in a building, when you walk in a Zoom,
David Kent (30:24.364)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (30:37.291)
room, when you walk in a department, you can feel how people have been treated, are treated, and how they interact with one another. So as an example, if you go into, again, I'll go back to schools, if you go into one school and you're like, wow, this is like, it's fresh, it's light, it's neat, you know, there's positive statements on, you know, the walls or whatever.
David Kent (30:48.405)
Okay.
Kate Anderson Foley (31:07.659)
You go into another school and it's dark and it's dirty and it's discipline oriented. You're just like, the climate in there is negative. The climate over here is positive. So macros the big, and then how it translates into each department or each building or in each area of the business.
David Kent (31:23.491)
Right.
David Kent (31:30.006)
Okay. that it almost, for me, I've heard it sounds like similar to like, I've heard leaders, bring the weather. So the mood and energy that they're bringing into the environment affects everybody else. that's technically their responsibility, right? Like I feel, I feel it's my responsibility as the leader to bring as positive energy as possible, because I'm not actually doing the executables, but I can, I can influence them and I can influence them negatively. If I am.
Kate Anderson Foley (31:40.489)
Yeah.
David Kent (31:59.65)
bringing heavy critique, low mood. mean, it sounds like basically managing emotions and energy in that space, but that, I mean, has a lot to do with it for me, at least in my own leadership is what I end up having to manage myself.
Kate Anderson Foley (32:11.21)
Right.
But if you're a site leader, and this is where you make the connection between the culture and then the climate, if you've been given an order to execute on something or you're not doing a good job on whatever it might be, you bring that back into your department. And then it becomes, David's my supervisor and he is not happy. Now I don't have trust. Now I'm kind of closing in.
David Kent (32:19.437)
Right.
David Kent (32:25.197)
Mm-hmm.
David Kent (32:32.866)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (32:42.155)
I'm doing things just to get by and then I'm out the door. That's the climate. It's a negative climate. It's not a supportive climate, but it's always connected to what the organizational goal is. So there's a ton of research on the difference between climate and culture, but they are connected and they have to remain that way.
David Kent (32:42.402)
Right.
David Kent (32:48.098)
That makes sense. Right.
David Kent (33:02.349)
Okay.
Well, you said there's a ton of research and I mean, I would be interested. Is there any that you might be able to share and I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I know I am. would be a resource you would share on that?
Kate Anderson Foley (33:14.225)
Yeah, if you, I mean, literally, you can just go and look up scientific articles on climate and culture. Go to Harvard Medical School. Yeah, you can go to social emotional learning. And that's not just for students, social, emotional and culture and climate. And you put those prompts in, you will get some good research.
David Kent (33:26.316)
Okay, I didn't know if maybe there's anything.
David Kent (33:43.384)
Great, well, thank you on that. And I think I wanted to ask, can you share a story where understanding street level realities helped shape more effective policy or leadership decisions?
Kate Anderson Foley (33:53.133)
Mm-hmm. So I was the chief in Chicago Public Schools, and I stepped away from that. And a week later, the Department of Education at the state level called me and said, come work. And so I did for a year. What I was able to do is work on the state policy for education. Not only
within the federal law, but how it translated in this state, because I brought the knowledge that I had from my experience at the district level. And so by that street level, I mean, I understand the barriers, I understand the challenges, I understand the students, I understand the political makeup. And so I was able to then weave that actually into what's called the state.
David Kent (34:34.638)
Okay.
David Kent (34:43.47)
All
Kate Anderson Foley (34:51.597)
plan. Every state has a state plan for education. So I was able to bring that in, but I was able to also bring it in from a strength-based perspective for students who are at risk of failure, maybe wrongly identified as student with a disability and things like that. So I was able to authentically bring in what's important to me, my North Star, and say, this is how we can do it.
So all kids really can learn, you all kids can learn as a, whatever that means, but sure. It's like, no, no, no. So I'm, yeah, and then a miracle happens. It's like, but this is, understanding the street level, what goes on on that street, you're able to then pull it in. And then the second component of that is the legislation for a fair funding model. That was big because the traditional said,
David Kent (35:26.762)
Sure, then a miracle happens.
David Kent (35:35.341)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (35:49.705)
Leave those kids out. Just do, you know, the titles, let's do, you know, whatever, but not in the general fund. Those kids, those kids, and I kept pushing, no, they need to be in. And some of it was at the table and some was behind the scenes. Because that's how you advocate. But that's what I mean. When you understand what's going on in the street, you're able to do things at a higher level.
David Kent (35:56.012)
Right?
David Kent (36:09.25)
Right.
David Kent (36:14.474)
I, it's what you've described to me, just now I've, I've actually was just chatting with a couple of other people, basically saying that you really want to give as much authority to people that are as close to the actual activity as possible. Cause they're, they're almost always going to be more accurate than you are.
Kate Anderson Foley (36:27.597)
That's right.
Kate Anderson Foley (36:31.117)
That's right. And again, the more you're removed and up and up and up in the Yashalan, you know, unless you're getting a good sounding board that says, I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to know versus versus would you like me to tell you something? Right. That's that's true leadership. But that's a vulnerability. You know, if I say, David, you got to tell me like it is. I need to know what's going on.
David Kent (36:45.975)
Right.
David Kent (36:58.178)
Mm-hmm.
Kate Anderson Foley (37:01.203)
A real leader would value that and not be threatened by the positional power, right? It's not positional power.
David Kent (37:03.948)
Yeah, I've actually.
David Kent (37:08.076)
I've, yeah, I know I've actually, I've told my own team members, I'm not, like, I don't want you to just take what I say at face value. Like, even if I am in the driver's seat, if you see a cliff coming and you don't say anything to me, I'm going to, is your, we are both responsible for driving off that cliff at that point.
Kate Anderson Foley (37:23.948)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (37:29.069)
That's right. That's right.
David Kent (37:30.226)
so I fully, I fully align with that. I did want to, we had mentioned resources earlier. and, and one of things I wanted to ask is, right now, what would you recommend to anybody, anything that you're reading on professional development or leadership that you've been finding interesting lately?
Kate Anderson Foley (37:47.553)
Well, there's a couple of different things. One is I wrote a forward to this one book and it's called Trusted. The trust pillars, trust killers and the secret to successful schools, but you can apply it to an organization. It is fascinating how many people when they get into the chair forget that it comes down to psychological safety and trust and how, but how do you do it? You cannot mandate trust.
You have to build it into the culture and the climate. So that's, that's a big one that I've been rereading because of the, you know, the work that I do. So, because that seems to be very resonant right now. People are, don't know what's going on. So the trust is what happens if you're not, you kind of go, I'm closing in, I'm closing in walls up, no trust. We got to stop that.
David Kent (38:38.432)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
David Kent (38:44.142)
I forget, I personally forget, if I think back on my own journey growing and becoming a leader, I forget, I remember now if I think back on it, there wasn't implementations of psychological safety. I had to eventually become gradually more comfortable with larger responsibility and make mistakes and find out I'm still okay. And that wasn't built in. I know because of that, it took me longer to get to a point of being more effective as a leader.
Kate Anderson Foley (38:50.401)
Yeah.
Kate Anderson Foley (39:04.843)
Right.
David Kent (39:11.788)
So if I think about that for my own team, I want them to be better at it, I have to be better at creating that space for them to grow.
Kate Anderson Foley (39:17.313)
That's right. That's right. And it's not loose and haphazard. It's intentional.
David Kent (39:22.858)
Right, right. And I wish I had grown through an intentional, I wish I had that. I don't feel like I'm fantastic at developing it myself, but I do know it's important. So in fact, that's part of why I'm chatting with, yes, I was going to say that's exactly why I'm talking to you. I'm talking to people that really actually know what building that intentionally means. Is there anything you're reading for pleasure? Anything that you're reading just for fun?
Kate Anderson Foley (39:32.769)
Yeah. Well, that's half the reason you're here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Kate Anderson Foley (39:49.133)
So it's fun for me. It's called the Book of Alchemy and I've started on a hundred day project. I've taken, it has a lot of examples of how you can take a writing prompt and then start writing for 100 days. so I started to write on my mantra and I'm just kind of pulling it out and just writing.
longhand and just taking my time and we'll see where it ends up.
David Kent (40:22.478)
I, is it too early? Is this not the right space for me to ask what your mantra is?
Kate Anderson Foley (40:29.165)
So I will share it with you. I'm going to pull this out just so I have it.
Kate Anderson Foley (40:40.609)
So my mantra has always been, am enough. I am all I need to be.
That sounds simple, it's not. Because you have to show up for yourself, but show up for others. And how are you going to show up? And so I've just started right at pulling all of those concepts down.
David Kent (40:52.255)
Yeah.
David Kent (41:07.054)
I love that I have not done the work to build my own mantra, but I'm glad you have. I'm inspired to now do some of that work myself. Thank you for sharing that, by the way. I know that we didn't talk about that ahead of time, so it was very transparent for you to share that. I did want to ask for listeners that have been listening to your advice and your resources and your background.
Kate Anderson Foley (41:17.077)
There you go.
Haha.
Kate Anderson Foley (41:29.154)
Yeah.
David Kent (41:37.058)
What would be, where would you point listeners to if they wanted to learn more or to be able to get in touch with you?
Kate Anderson Foley (41:43.223)
Sure. Sure. So if you go to my LinkedIn, for sure, I've got all my contact information. If go to my website, www.edpolicyconsulting.com, you can call me at 440-554-1789. I am available for people. And when you do those things, I'd be happy to set up
David Kent (41:57.208)
Okay.
David Kent (42:03.822)
Wow.
Kate Anderson Foley (42:12.461)
like a 30 minute discovery call to see if some if you we want to work together in that coaching space or whatever space but typically coaching and go from there.
David Kent (42:23.822)
That's great. And I, before we go, one of the parting questions I meant to ask you earlier, and I just want to make sure I get this from you. You, you're giving people coaching advice all the time. It's your profession. If you were to give yourself advice in the past and you go back before all of your learnings up to this point, and you only had 60 seconds to give yourself one piece of advice to be successful in life, what would that piece of advice be?
Kate Anderson Foley (42:35.52)
Right.
Kate Anderson Foley (42:49.045)
or invest in myself.
Simple as that. If you invest in yourself.
it's going to work out the way it's supposed to work out.
Not passively, right? We're taking, we're active in our lives. But it's just a way to invest in yourself. If you believe it, well then what are you gonna do to do it? Walk, walk the walk.
David Kent (43:13.538)
Well, invest in yourself. I would say that is a, that is a great piece of advice. You have 60 seconds. So where would you tell yourself to start investing in yourself?
Kate Anderson Foley (43:24.077)
But with the belief and the mindset that I'm capable goes back to my mantra, I am enough. I am enough. Even when people, I mean, there's a whole set of stories I can tell you and people didn't believe in me and I was marginalized. I was pushed to the margins. I had to believe in myself. I had to invest in myself, put myself through school, know, worked all the crummy jobs.
David Kent (43:51.395)
Yeah.
Kate Anderson Foley (43:51.893)
and I went all the way to get my PhD and I've hopefully will leave a better mark on this world.
David Kent (43:59.554)
Well, I believe you will. I believe you have for me in this conversation. Thank you so much for joining us, Kate. I really appreciate the time. Yeah, and we'll look forward to chatting with you again. Thanks.
Kate Anderson Foley (44:04.971)
You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Kate Anderson Foley (44:11.446)
Okay, sounds good.