Unlocking Creativity and Purpose with Kathy Kolbe and Nicole Loucks

Unlocking Creativity and Purpose

Thanks for the hit and play. Do you feel like a square peg trying to fit into the round hole of education? If so, then you’re in the right place. I’m Danny Bauer, and this is the Better Leaders Better Schools podcast, the original Ruckus Maker podcast for visionary leaders who want to do school differently and make a legendary impact on their campus. Thanks to Ruckus Makers just like you, this show ranks in the top 0.5% of over 3 million worldwide podcasts. In today’s show, I spoke with Kathy Kolbe and Nicole locks from Kolbe Core. Ages ago, Kathy created something called the Kolbe assessment. It is Ruckus Maker approved. I’ve taken this. The coach team has taken it. And there is not another sort of personal assessment, getting to know yourself, that is more powerful in my opinion. This report gave me permission to be me. Now listen, I didn’t have an upper limit challenge. It wasn’t likeI was asking for permission. Can I do this? Can I do that? That’s not the way of the Ruckus Maker. But when I say it gave me permission to be me, here’s what I mean. It all made sense. And in the podcast, I’ll preview it here as well. When you take Kobe Assessment, you get a report and it tells you who you are. It’s a book about you, basically. It tells you how to build on your strengths, the things you should do and the things you should avoid. And here’s the best part. There’s no right makeup or wrong makeup for your score or yourI’m a 3393, which you’re going to find out what that means. How do we just take our natural way of showing up and solving problems and continue to do that and be great? We’ll also cover topics like the mismatch between standardized tests and building on student strengths, why knowing your staff and students’ purpose is valuable, and why that could be a great starting point versus teaching what’s on the pacing guide. Once again, thanks for listening to the Better Leaders Better Schools podcast. We’ll be right back after a quick message from our show sponsors. Hey, Ruckus Maker, I’ll make this quick. If you’re listening to this message right now, you’re missing out. When you subscribe to the Ruckus Maker newsletter on Substack, you get access to micro books focused on how to do school, different tools, and other resources that will help you make a ruckus and do squirrel different stories and case studies of the worlds most legendary Ruckus Makers of all time access to my calendar to schedule coaching sessions and you’ll also get bonus podcast content that won’t be released on the main podcast feed and podcast episodes without any advertisements. If you love this show, if it’s helped you grow and you want access to more tools and resources that will help you make a ruckus and do school different and become a paid subscriber at Ruckusmakers.substack.com. The truth is, most leaders weren’t taught a robust way to set their goals. Everyone knows how to choose a goal, write the to-do list and pick a due date, and as a result they’re not optimizing their potential. When you download the Ruckus Maker eight step goal setting tool, I’ll send you the tool in a short eight minute coaching video that shows you how to work smarter, not harder, and create more value for your campus. Are you ready to accomplish more with less effort and in less time? Download the Ruckus Maker eight step goal setting tool by going to betterleadersbetterschools.com/goals IXL takes the guesswork out of lesson planning for teachers IXL’s ready made lesson plans are aligned to your textbooks and state standards so teachers can turn to IXL for the exact content they need to help their students get started [email protected]/Leaders. As a principal, you can’t be everywhere at once, so how can you help support every teacher in the building? With Teach FX, teachers can gather their own feedback without relying on classroom observations alone. The TeachFX instructional coaching app is like giving every teacher their own instructional coach whenever they want it. Imagine teachers gathering their own objective, private, research supported feedback with just the push of a button. Learn how Teach FX could help your teachers get students talking by visiting teachfx.com ruckus. That’s teachfx.com/ruckus. When you work with quest food management services, you’re going to feel good about the food you serve your students. That’s because the food is real and it’s made from scratch and locally sourced. Learn more about Quest food management [email protected] or follow Quest food on social media. That’s questfms.com dot. All right, and welcome to the show. 05:41 Danny Kathy Kolbe and Nicole Lautz. 05:44 Nicole Wow, thank you for having us. 05:46 Danny Absolutely. So I thought it’d be fun to introduce myself to you through my Kolbe score. I’m a 3393 and Kathy, I don’t know, Nicole, if you want to reveal what your scores are and maybe, like, I think it might be interesting for the audience to let them know, what do you know about me? Knowing that I’m a 3393? 06:10 Kathy What do I know about you because you’re 3393. What I know is you resist details. In the three and factfinder comes the first part of your four modes that make up your MO with the Kolbe result is the fact finder mode. And in that fact finder mode, the way you deal with information on a scale of one to ten in terms of energy, is you put very little energy into the details. You are very wise. You have a great deal of wisdom. From everything I know about you’re a guy who’s really on top of getting data, getting history, but you don’t have to keep all of it in front of you. You don’t have to remember all of it. You can selectively pick it out and use it so you don’t get bogged down in specific, in the follow through, you’re also on the scale of one, three. And that means you also resist planning and doing things in a certain way. So you are very unstructured. You’re very much a person who will try it and see what works. So you won’t have a system or calendar that you stick with closely. Now, that may drive some of your friends and acquaintances and people you work with nuts because they can’t be sure you’ll do what you said you would when you said you would. You don’t sit tightly to a calendar. 07:36 Danny Yeah, put stuff on there. But the fun thing about the calendar is you can move it around. 07:42 Kathy So for you, that’s true for some of the people you work with is, oh, no, he changed it again. Because for you not having to be stuck with the calendar or with the timing, you need flexibility in your scheduling. You need flexibility so you won’t go to the same restaurant every time you go out. You like to try something new, and so you don’t put on your calendar that you’re going back to the same place, the every Tuesday night deal. And that makes you very interested. It makes you a person who’s fun to be around and see what happens. But for people who need structure, it’s like Danny doesn’t stick with the plan. This is not who Danny is. Quick start, where you have this nine. That’s phenomenal. On a scale of one to ten, you’re a nine. In innovation, you are an innovator, you are a person who will come up with new ideas. You’ll do it at the last minute. You’ll surprise people. And that makes you a really interesting person in business because you aren’t afraid to fail. In fact, if you don’t try it and fail, you’d be a little disappointed because you got to try things out and see what works for you. It’s always, let’s see what happens. And you don’t plan it, and you don’t know the details of it, and you don’t keep the history of it in the background or the follow through, but you come up with the neatest, most fun, most unique things. And people are saying, what made you even come out now? 09:19 Danny It happens all the time. And it’s hard to sort of answer, how’d you come up with it? Because it just came up, to me, and it wasn’t difficult.  It was there. 09:29 Kathy So your nine in quickstart makes you good at selling because you don’t have to have a rehearsed way of doing it. And you’re always looking at the other person and then trying it out. This work, will that work? So you’re always on the edge and you’re always willing to try it. You’ll do trial and error. You’ll do a lot of making it open and just let it happen. You’re very spontaneous, and that’s what that nine and quick start and that mode is showing us. In each mode, there is a bell shaped curve from resisting it to accommodating in it to prevent it. Well, that’s resisting and then insisting, or let’s go with it, is at the top. And 8910, so you’re at the top in terms of being highly innovative. And you will resist doing things with. You’ve always done it and followed through or had to explain yourself. If people tell you again what you want to do, it’s like, now I’ve been there, done that. You don’t repeat yourself very often, and you don’t get stuck in the weeds. So what’s happening in the fourth one? That’s also a trade? That’s fascinating, because here you are with a podcast and you’ve got technology, but you’re terrible at technology. You’re terrible at hands on if you want. Are you married? 10:55 Danny Yes. And when she buys stuff and asks me to put it together, I would rather jump in front of a train. 11:01 Kathy And if she’s wise, she doesn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t want to see it. She doesn’t want to know about it. She needs to hire someone else to do it or get it already made, or if she has some influence. And in relationships we really have fun saying, okay, which person in this partnership, whether it’s a personal relationship or a business relationship, the differences in your insects, because all of what I’m talking about is your nature. It’s this natural way of doing things. And I found the word for it several decades ago. It’s the cumulative part of the line. Now modern psychologists, psychiatrists and people who deal with the mind dropped connection just about the time I started learning about it. And they decided, oh, that’s an archaic word. Well, that’s their problem. It is a very modern term because it’s a part of the human being as we live today. It has been a part since Plato and Aristotle talked about three parts of mind. The thinking, the feeling, so the intellect and the emotions and the doing, which they said tied to the Konitas or conation. So I did not make up the term conation, but I figured out what was missing in our understanding of humankind was it’s not just what we want to do. It’s not what we’re smart enough to do. It’s what we will and won’t do. And in your case, you will make it up as you go. You will experiment, you will explore, and you won’t keep records, and you won’t explain what you’re doing. And you mess it up when you try because you don’t use tools well. And you’re just not a three dimensional problem solver. You talk your way out of problems and into them, by the way. But you’re a storyteller. 12:56 Danny I am building my old bio. I talked about how I went to Mister Rogers class. That was my 10th grade chemistry teacher. And Kathy, Nicole. I was about to get suspended as a sophomore because my friend Lindsey, my best friend, would pick me up for high school. And she was always late, right? So I was late. And instead of. I could have gotten to school, whatever, it doesn’t matter. But Mister Rogers had it. Danny, you’re getting written up. You’re going to be suspended. I said Mister Rogers. This time it was different. It was a house, it was on fire. It was filled with girl scouts.  It was filled with girl scouts and I was so concerned about their safety. I had to be late to school. I saved the troop and Mister Rogers, I have some Dos i dos here for you, Rich. That’s the peanut butter.  I don’t know if it was the very real peanut butter dosy dough cookie or the very made up story at that moment, but I got off and I didn’t get in trouble, didn’t get suspended, thank God. But it taught me the power of storytelling in that moment. 14:10 Kathy Well, that’s what people with your MO (modus operandi). It’s your natural way of doing things. So the cognitive part of you is natural. It is the native you. It is the part of you that didn’t have to learn to be you. You are you. What you have to do is learn how to get other people to understand you and learn how to fit in by being you. Our schools don’t meet the needs of students like you. Our schools have a lot of teachers who lead with Factfinder. You are resistant to detail. Most of the teachers who go all the way through learning the process of teaching and being teachers really value specificity. I went too in five minors, so I have even less detail in my brain than you do. And when I read a book that I love and I close the book and I’m done, I don’t remember any of the names of characters for the studying, the year it was in, I don’t remember any of them. I will remember some of the dialogue and I will remember the bottom line to the story. Which is what you remember, right? 15:22 Danny Yeah, absolutely. 15:23 Kathy Well, that’s fine if what we’re doing is reading fiction, but if we’re reading about the history of the ancient Greek, we’re just sliding through the pages pretty quickly and we have to highlight. So we have to learn how to highlight what we think will be in the test. And that’s more important for us than learning all the right spellings and all the right this and that. We narrow it down to an expectation. This is we’re studying the teacher, you’re out what the teacher’s going to ask. And we don’t learn all of the course. We learn what we think we need to learn and that’s the way we go through life. That is not understood by most teachers. You don’t see why you wouldn’t learn all that. The things they say are the priorities. We’re not interested in their priorities. We’re interested in what’s going to get us through the class and so we get a decent grade. It’s interesting to me how education is designed to fit the needs of the teachers more than the needs of the students, because most teachers are fact finders, with the second student following through or vice versa. So in high school, most of the teachers lead with Factfinder, but in the primary grades, most teachers follow through. And then the other mode of those two will be the secondary mode. But you don’t find most teachers being the quick start, make it up as you go. So depending upon if you’re in science, the goal is we’ll have a little more implementer, maybe because they’re used to putting things together and doing hands on work and the people in recreation programs, the people, there are certain areas of education where it helps to have that hands on and blur. But almost nothing in education is designed for kids like you. So for you, school would be, and I dare you, and you would be there trying to mess with the teachers minds. You’ll be playing games in your head. I mean, I teach kids. That’s okay. I see you hiding. Don’t hide. That’s a good thing. 17:33 Danny The amount of teachers that ask me, do you want to be here, Danny, or would you rather be in the hall? And I would say, can I be in the hall? 17:41 Kathy Is it all nap, the home storation? I can get up and move around. 17:46 Danny And I would go there and still ace the test. So everybody was happy. 17:50 Kathy For those kids who have a lot of energy in the implement or the fourth of the Kolbe modes, they need to move around.  I teach them to put things in their pockets that they can play with in their pockets to learn other people, hopefully, but they’re hands on and they learn by touching. At the time they were hearing that, and they needed to move. I work with teachers and parents on how to help each child be who they are, and we now have an assessment process where we can tell, just as I know your Mo and could tell you who you are, and they’re saying, yep, we can do that with really all ages now. We can even do it with babies. It’s a slow process because I have to sit and watch each baby one by one, but it doesn’t take very long, actually, for me to see the pattern for even a six month old by two. It’s so obvious. And why do we have the terrible twos? Well, because we’re terrible to twos. We’re terrible to two year olds. When we tell them to sit down and be quiet, that’s the last thing that there is in their nature to do. And if you have an uncle or quickstarter little kid, two years old, can’t explain to them why they have to sit still and why they can’t touch.  I love it when I take little kids to play, sit, and I say, why would you touch anything you want to touch? And you can scream at the top of your lungs.  And then they don’t do it because they will do it because they shouldn’t, and they don’t worry about doing it. Nicole has two of the sweetest little kids, and I love going on field days with them, and she gives them the freedom to be themselves. And when I’m around them, I nurture it. I love it. I engage them. An opportunity to be who they are. Cause I know they’re about. And we have wonderful play days, which I do with a lot of our companies. They play skip. 19:48 Nicole And it’s so interesting you mentioned a parent, but a teacher is the same way, right? If you’re providing that freedom to do things in their own way, they’re able to get to the end goal in a way that works for them. It’s not, you’re not putting your natural bias of doing it a certain way on that child in whatever situation they’re in. 20:10 Kathy Every great philosopher has known to himself, be true. Do it your way and it will work. Trust your nature. Give the opportunity to be you. Be you. There’s so many phrases, so many things over the course of history. If we want to get into literature, there’s no great thinker right now in reading Emerson. It’s just how much Emerson argues with Plato. I just love what they’re arguing because they have conative differences and Emerson isn’t as much of a quick start as Plato was. I’m able to pen, reverse engineer, and see the philosopher’s emoj, just as I can go into any organization and see the mo of their leadership team. Now, they can take the Kolbe index and see it for themselves online or through us or whatever, but it’s kind of fun. When I go in and give them an activity, and then, by the way they do the activity, I can see any age. I can also help people. Teachers are always saying to me, we’ve got these handicapped kids. Well, first of all, stop calling them that, because maybe they do it differently. It doesn’t mean unless you’re handicapping them, unless you’re doing it to them, their situation in life may not be handicapping them. You’re the one doing it because of your expectation. Often what I say to them is, this kid who you’re calling, is capable of doing so much more thinking and so much more in this realm or that realm, then other kids. We need to talk about building on strengths. If we do that in the workplace, we have better employees and we build better teams. We do it in relationships. Maybe we’ll stay in the relationship. Maybe we won’t have so many divorces. And fortunately, when parents are learning about how to raise their kids according to their nature, we’re having happy family relationships. We’re having constructive conversations. The worst thing is for a parent to tell a kid, I really hope you’re good at this. We need you to be good at this. We want to major, and you major in it so you’ll get better at it. A kid should always major in their strengths, in what they naturally want to do with who they are. Don’t ever let your kid major in something in order to improve. Do it because that’s their strength. That’s what their purpose is. Think about purposefulness as the goal. I want you to be able to live a life of purpose. I want you to be able to be who you are. I want you to be able to show your abilities. I want you to create and every human being, I can prove this. Every human being is equally creative. It’s one of the probably only ways that we can prove equality. I have never met a human being who isn’t as creative as their siblings, their parents, their teachers, their friends. Me, I love saying, some of these high school kids I work with, you’re as creative as I am. Oh, no, I’m not. You’ve done this and that, and I said, do you know how old I have a lot of time to create things. You’ve had a short period and look at all you’ve created. And then I love just walking into their mindset about, tell me what’s in your bedroom. Tell me what’s in your life. You look at all the things you created, but you didn’t think of it as creativity. Sometimes you think of it as getting away with something. 23:50 Danny And, Danny, don’t let my secret out there, right? 23:54 Kathy And you got away with something. It’s because you were being created. I love naughty little kid. Doing is creating their own path. And if parents would stop being so uptight about, oh, my kid doesn’t do the same thing your kid does, or this is what they were taught to do in kindergarten. What they were taught to do in kindergarten is the last thing. I care about what they came up with on their own. 24:21 Danny Two things just to reflect back to that. I deeply resonate with this idea of building on strengths. Which is so important and the freedom that comes from that saying, here, Nicole, here, Kathy, this is where you’re great. Let’s keep amplifying that and see what we can do. So that’s a beautiful thing. The second part that I’m deeply resonating with is this idea of purpose. Whether it’s your students or your staff or yourself as a human or in this case, Ruckus Maker leading a school, if you are highly aligned to your purpose, there’s no better place to be. This is it. And so I think one of my questions before the break would be some of the implications, like what are some of the implications for a leader of a school and maybe a leader of a school like me who’s a Ruckus Maker, who’s a high quickstart when the majority of your staff is going to be higher fact finder and follow through, because we don’t want to frustrate them to the point that they run for the exits. We want to build on their strengths and have great team synergy and all that. 25:34 Kathy To me, purpose is why you get up in the morning and save some of it, your energy to do one thing and then use it up on another thing. It’s what gives you the greatest sense of purpose, what matters most in your life. What do you want to accomplish today? What do you want to accomplish in your life? I think when people start too big and say, well, this is what I want to accomplish in my life, they’re not looking at what is it going to take to get there? I think, more important to say, what do I want to accomplish today and how do I build on today’s? How do I make each day a step closer to my bigger picture? It’s not a matter of did you meet every goal? 26:18 Kathy I want to say it differently, not I’m going to say it again, reaching every goal. It is staying with your purpose. So you may not get the ball in the basket, but if your goal is to play well and learn each day to play better, if you’re getting closer to scoring at keyflight, if you’re working hard at it, then you’re being true to your purpose. For so many kids, they don’t understand the difference between a goal and a purpose. And being purposeful in learning can resonate with your student if you explain it as a natural process to bring out the best in you not to change you or stuff your mind full of things you don’t need to know. How do you get to be you? How do you take charge of yourself? What do you need to learn so that you’re following a purpose? I think if every kid went to school with a sense of purpose and we understood that and they understood it’s my purpose to get better at spelling, or it’s my purpose to be captain of the team, or it’s my purpose, whatever, and let’s help them reach their purpose. But for the most part, that’s not even discussed. It is the purpose of the cool record or it’s the purpose of the tougher. Yes, passing a choice that’s not a student passing the test is not the kid’s purpose. That’s the school’s purpose. If each kid knows their purpose, and I love part of it being my purpose is to help my fellow students. I see some of the kids in my classroom need help and so I like to help them. As a student, I always loved helping to informally tutor other kids. So that was a part of my purpose. I was teaching while I was learning as a part of my purpose. If my purpose is to get out of there as fast as I can, I don’t want to be in this grade. I want to go on to the next grade. Well then my purpose is to learn as fast as I can and take the test earlier than the rest. If you know a student’s purpose and can help them get there, you are their savior, then you are truly a teacher. 28:34 Nicole And to add to that, I love the idea that you brought up with purpose is we have all these Ruckus Maker principles and they might have this long quick start or a lot of energy in that quick start innovation. They’re trying to change things up, but they might potentially be getting a lot of resistance from their teachers. And we see that all the time. Because you have this really innovative approach, you’re going to change things, but you get buy-in from the people who are going to be on the front lines.  And when you have educators who mostly have a lot of factfinder who follow through with energy with a principal who might be different, you see some potential for cognitive conflicts. So we see some interesting communication possibilities because they’re selling it like you would. This is who knew? This is an amazing new approach. We’re going to change everything.  That’s super stressful for a lot of people to hear in that education field. So it’s all about how to communicate and deliver work collaboratively together with those differences so that you are able to reach that purpose. I don’t know any educator who’s gone past the first year principal or teacher or assistant, right. Who’s not there because their purpose is to help kids, but you have to understand their approaches to help. Being kidde, it’s different. 29:55 Kathy So bottom line, I say to educators, if your purpose is to help kids learn, I think the first thing they have to help is how they learn. They need to understand themselves and how they learn best. And by helping students learn how they learn and the joy of learning, then they become purposeful in their learning. And then the teacher feels I’ve accomplished a goal. I’ve reached a purpose in so many classrooms where I sit, and I’ve taught preschool through master level university. If there isn’t a purpose on the part of the teacher, then there isn’t purposeful learning in the class sheet, right? 30:36 Danny I’m really loving this conversation with you, Kathy and Nicole. I think we’ll pause here just for a second to get some messages in from our sponsors. When we come back, I’d like to touch a little bit more on purpose and then talk about your Kolbe student aptitude quiz. 30:54 Danny Teachers love the support that IXL provides in the classroom, and Ruckus Makers love it as well because IXL also gives school leaders meaningful insights into every level. Put your finger on the pulse of student performance via the IXL dashboard or drill down to see progress and growth for individual students. You can even customize reports to hone in on the information that matters most to you. IXl helps Ruckus Makers make data informed decisions that will benefit their student growth goals. Get started [email protected]. Leaders that’s ixl.com leaders. What do you see in your classrooms and how did you see it? As a principal, you can’t be everywhere at once. So how can you help support every teacher in the building? With teach FX, teachers can gather their own feedback without relying on classroom observations. 31:53 Danny The Teach FX instructional coaching app is like giving every teacher their own instructional coach whenever they want it. Ruckus Makers can pilot Teach FX with their teachers. Visit teachfx.com/betterleaders to learn how. For some students, the meal or two you serve them, that’s going to be it. That’s what they get for the day. Which means we’ve got to get this right. Quest food Management Services elevates the student dining experience, serving scratch made meals using high quality ingredients that are sourced locally and responsibly. Now, you might be thinking, okay, Danny, I get it, the food’s high quality, but do the students eat it and enjoy it? Bottom line, students love the food. Quest is one of the fastest growing companies in the school food service industry and has been consistently ranked in the top 50 food service providers by food Management magazine. Learn more about Quest food management [email protected] or follow Quest food on social media. That’s questfms.com. All right, and we’re back with Kathy Kolbe and Nicole Laux. And thank you so much for being here today talking about Kolbe. And years ago, I took the Kolbe assessment and I just want to let the Ruckus Maker listening know that this is Ruckus Maker approved.  Google Kolbe assessment and take it. Get it for your team. We’ll link it up for you in the show notes as well. The reason is,I’ve never learned so much about myself. Like, oh, now it makes sense. Before I didn’t get it right and people didn’t get me. And what I love about the Kolbe as well is you get this report after you take the assessment and it, the book of you, it tells you all about you do this, don’t do that. That was one of my favorite parts because it gave me permission to be me. And for a long time, it’s not like I was walking around asking for permission. However, sometimes I might be confused, like why are other people not getting it and all this kind of stuff? And so hopefully, the Ruckus Maker listening is understanding that this is such an illuminating tool, and I definitely want to want you to check it out. 34:25 Danny So we were talking about purpose in the first half of the conversation, and I’m just curious, like, how would you approach identifying that, whether it’s within your staff or your students, is it as easy as asking or is there something else you might do to figure out the purpose? The Ruckus Maker listening, he or she wants to identify the purpose of their staff and their students. Because what we’re asserting is if we know what those purposes are, you know what that purpose is, we’re to have a highly effective school. 35:02 Kathy One of the things I found over years of working with schools is oftentimes people feel the purpose of a school is to cram information into kids’ heads and to get them to be able to do well on standardized tests. I don’t know a human being who is better off in the way they live because they did well on standardized tests. It’s not an appropriate measure, in my opinion, of anybody. Whether it’s the teacher who gets rewarded because the kids did well or the kids get rewarded because they learned how to deal with a standardized test, I’m not opposed to doing them, but I think they should be a part of a total package of how we teach and why we learn and how we know what we’ve learned. To me, Emerson’s one of my heroes, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, I was reading him in middle school. I don’t know why, but I had a fondness for him that I still have, and I still go back and read his work a lot. And he’s always talking about nature, and it is the nature of the human being to learn what they need to learn and to keep the knowledge that is purposeful. If the knowledge helps you will remember it. Those things that don’t matter to you get lost. And the way he writes about that is just absolutely, incredibly beautiful. The bottom line to me is why are we trying to teach kids things they won’t remember and test them on things that don’t matter? Because we know they know this, but who cares? And because they didn’t care, they didn’t try to learn that. 36:48 Kathy So that which might have been most important got forgotten because it wasn’t on a test. And so are we teaching the highest and most important things for students to learn? Are we being purposeful? If we have to give a test so that the teacher knows the kids abilities for that purpose, for that standardized test? Okay, probably the teacher needed to know, but why does the student need no. To what benefit is it to tell a student they’re dumb? First of all, they’re probably not, but they didn’t do well on the test. What is their point? 37:23 Nicole What we know, and through your work with school, what we know is that if you are not being taught or you’re not able to learn in a way that naturally works for you, and if you’re not able to demonstrate your knowledge in a way that works for you, it looks like you have a cognitive deficit. And that is totally not fair because truly you’re not being able to demonstrate that you learned. You’re not able to demonstrate if you’re an implementer or you’re not able to tell a story necessarily. 37:52 Kathy It’s so interesting here. Way back in the time of Plato and Aristotle, they knew that it was more important to know thyself than to know some stupid fact. We don’t teach kids to have the freedom to be themselves through knowing who they are. We don’t help them see. They don’t look in a mirror and realize this. Oh, that’s me. This is how I learn. The greatest thing that we should be doing to teach our kids k six, is who they are and how they learn. And then in middle school, they can start taking charge. I do remember taking charge. I know where I speak. 38:32 Kathy I told myself I went through all of the tests on my own and got done very quickly because I can, as you, have a lot of quick starts, so I can remember the questions and I can come up with the answer quickly, but then I need to move on. And so the faster I could take a test, the more likely I would get the answers right. And it’s just so interesting because I grew up in a family. Those of you who’ve taken the Wonderlic personnel test, my maiden name’s Wonderlic. I grew up understanding cognitive testing. Well, cognitive testing is stupid. All it tells you is how intelligent you are. It doesn’t tell you how well you use your intelligence. What I want to do is say to kids, every one of you is equally creative. They need to know that. 39:18 Kathy They need to celebrate. I’m as creative as all these other kids in this room, including all the popular ones and all that. This is the last. You’re all equal in one way, and that’s your creativity. Now it’s up to you to figure out how to use it, and your smarts are to figure out when to show your strength and when to hide and how to make that work. And it’s really telling kids, you have the ability to own who you are, be who you are, and pretend who you are. So don’t worry if something doesn’t work, because there’s something else you’re good at, because you’re equally creative. You’re as creative as Michelangelo. I always give them examples of different kinds of creativity, but most kids never hear that. I think that’s shameful that our schools don’t prove equality, show equality, and give the opportunity for equality. 40:14 Danny That was something that really impacted me, too, with the report being understanding, 3393. You could say, oh, three is bad. Three out of ten. Because that’s what school teaches you. But something the reportsaid, no, that’s just naturally you. There’s no good or bad. This is just who you are, and it’s back to the purpose and how you’re naturally made up. 40:33 Nicole Unfortunately, you were not put in a situation or you didn’t have the opportunity to show how valuable was getting to the bottom line, not needing a lot of information to spur you can being able to be really adaptable, you don’t have to follow a plan, a fire drill goes on, you’re able to leave, you can come back, you can switch things really easily. Those are all really amazing strengths that in the business world are really valued, but unfortunately in school are not valued. And so we kind of beat that out of it. 41:06 Kathy As Nicole says, I have to just always laugh when I see results like yours, Danny, you are so interruptible. You thrive on interruptions, you hope for interruptions, whereas other people like me, Nicole, who is a mega follow through systems person, if I interrupt her, I always have to apologize. And my apologies, I just gave you the gift of interruption. No, I know better. Danny needs the interruptions. Nicole needs to stick to the plan. If we know that we’re better managers, we’re better leaders, we’re better principals, we’re better parents, if we look at all of our children, I’m the youngest of four, I get told how great everyone else in my family was. Dyslexic, dysgraphia and ADHD. Oh, yay for me. I love that I have those characteristics because it fits me. I’m also excited. I’m an eight in that quick set where I love interruptions, I love being able to do it differently. But the education system never rewarded me for that. Didn’t you either, right? So on our record, the teachers would say, Kathy, you didn’t do well here and you missed questions there and you skipped that, and you didn’t write in the upper left hand corner, and I should be dinging you with this. And I said, go ahead and ding me because I didn’t care about graves. I just absolutely didn’t care. 42:31 Nicole And it’s so interesting because school, I’m a 5824, and so school was really built for somebody kind of with my MO. It wasn’t until I was a teacher in the classroom, seeing how I taught affected different students, did I fully understand that the way I did things was definitely not going to work for everybody. Even though I had figured out the best ways for me and some really great processes process being an aid and follow through, I didn’t have that, the empathy for some of the other students until that point, I think because I didn’t realize that my way wouldn’t work for everybody else. 43:12 Kathy I’ve worked with a lot of principals, and it’s so much fun to hear. I have to prepare to go into the classroom and remind myself to be quiet and not do this. I said, why wouldn’t you go in and be you? At least half the students are going to be really happy to see you if you’re you. I think so often what happens is we get a false image of what perfect is for a certain role, and we don’t realize you can serve in a position, in a role and have a responsibility and do it differently, but you will only do it well if you do it your way. So a principal who is able to be themselves freely and show that is helping everybody in the organization. If you go in and you have your own rules and expect everybody to follow your rules, this is really not going to work. You’re not going to be that great a principal doing that. 44:09 Danny Permission to be you. So here toward the end of the conversation, I mentioned the student aptitude quiz, and I don’t have a lot of knowledge about that. I’ve taken the Kolbe A, but is there anything you two want to add to this conversation? Because I think obviously it might make a lot of sense. 44:28 Kathy It’s enormously important to parents and teachers to know young people’s mosaics. The Kolbe A index is an index with written questions that can be scored online. Just go to Kolbe.com, comma, go to take the Kolbe index and you can get your result very quickly. And by the way, every single piece of advice and every single possible result, I personally wrote. 44:53 Nicole And there’s an audio and it’s. And it’s Cappy’s love letter to every strength. And I tell people that because people listen to that and tears sometimes come to their eyes because they do feel so heard. 45:07 Kathy I am talking to you in this recording, and I spent a long time visualizing the person behind the result. And the person is every man. I love doing that. And I felt just terrible when we don’t have that written questions for young kids. So what we have are two kinds of questions for the littlest guys and then the middle guys, the littlest guys who are crawling on the floor and throwing mashed potatoes in your face while you’re trying to talk to them. What I’m doing with them is what I call instinct id is the name of the assessment. Instinct ID is a bag of stuff, safe stuff for little kids. 45:47 Nicole Three and up. 45:48 Kathy Three and spoke about.  Didn’t actually do it, too, but I don’t say that because, yes, you can, but be careful with the chokehold. So you give them this stuff to play with and you have a video going. You send me the video. I can watch the video, and I am the only person who scores those. I feel very strongly until I have heard people with proven experience with it. I will do it myself while I’m training others, but I can watch that video and I can see their MO come out through their actions because remember the cone of his actions, not thought, not feelings.  I see the little guy’s actions and I can. I don’t give you numbers for little kids. I think that’s too restrictive. But I give you the kind of zone that they do this a lot or a little or somewhere in between when they get to be how old? 46:42 Nicole Ten years old is about a fourth grade reading level. 46:45 Kathy At that level, so you see, Kathy is a two, in fact finder. I don’t know what my age is. 46:50 Nicole That’s why teamwork is important, by the way, when we’re talking to an assistant principal. Got to have some people who do things in a different way and complement strengths because that’s busier. 47:01 Kathy I came up with this whole theory. I did all the research on it, but I have to have someone correct my mistakes when I’m talking about it 100%. My spelling is terrible when I can speak all day long on big stages. And that’s who we are. Okay, so those kids who are the. 47:27 Nicole Tenant at fourth grade reading level. 47:29 Kathy For those kids, I created what I call the student aptitude quiz. Kids that age love a quiz. The whole design of it’s through technology they get on a computer, and the way it’s designed is, have we thought through carefully what kids that age respond to and what they respond to, and then the kind of result they get tells them their strength. We never, ever tell kids they have weaknesses because they don’t. They’re creative. But they may resist, just as you and I both resist in a couple modes. Kids may. So we want to say resistance is a strength also. And I also have the audio for. 48:13 Nicole The kids, and it gives tons of tips and tricks for how they can use those strengths in a really positive way and when they’re not given the opportunity to use those strengths in certain situations, just like how we’re talking about you, Danny. In the school environment, it would give you some tips or tricks or conables that call them to use your strengths productively to get things done. 48:34 Kathy Sometimes if you have teachers and principals listening to us right now, I tell kids little tricks. Here’s how. There’s a trick for how you can remember things. Here’s a trick for how you can avoid this mistake and that mistake. You have my permission to listen to those for different kids and then use them in your classroom. I encourage you to share some of the language. It’s. Kids really like it when I tell them it’s okay if you do this and it’ll help you get a better grade. 49:08 Nicole And the amazing thing about the student at your quiz is that a short report is written to the child, the student. But we also have an accompanying report called the parent guide. And really we use it with teachers, too, and principal, the system principal that really showcases how you can help those students really use those strengths well. So that is rated to a parent, guardian, teacher, anyone in a position to kind of help that student. User strengths. 49:34 Kathy So for me, the bottom line is, I think you, Danny, and I know Nicole and I, our purpose is to help kids do their best. I’m not trying to test them to see their weaknesses. I think that’s a disparaging, terrible thing to do to a child. I’m not looking for their weaknesses. I’m trying to see what their strengths are and to build their self esteem and their confidence by saying, ‘You’re equally creative. Here’s how you create a solution. Here’s how you do your best.’ And I know you and I, Danny, have this little itty bit in five pointers where we don’t remember the detail, but if we colorize it’ll help. Some of the tips. Do you sometimes put a big swatch of color on an idea I’ve got? 50:22 Danny Well, I have a lot of colors, but I also draw. I draw a lot. 50:26 Kathy For us, it’s not writing down a whole bunch of words. It’s colorizing and doing little funny pictures. We know how to help kids be who they are, and we know when they’re who they are, they will do their best in the classroom. So I love what you’re doing. I love the people who are listening and what they do. If you are an educator, if you are a parent, you are the most important person in the world. You are the person who will help give purpose to our youth. 50:57 Danny Back to how do you recall information? I remember getting trouble in a meeting? I didn’t realize the perception, but I was doodling, creating a comic, essentially, of the meeting and got called out on it because I had a leadership position and it didn’t look professional and all this stuff. But the misperception was that I was screwing around and my head was in the clouds when I took the picture. I was able to recall everything discussed in detail because I had my map that I created. That was a good learning moment for me and a great reason, if we all knew how we were built through the lens of Kobe assessment, how powerful that discussion could have been. Well, I think the way I like to end each conversation is just to give you an opportunity. If you could put one message. So this is short, right? One message on every school marquee that they have out in front of their building that the parents would see, the students would see, the community would see. What would each of you put on that marquee, that billboard? What would your message be? 52:06 Kathy I would say central school Colin, giving kids the freedom to be who they are. 52:14 Nicole I have two in quickstart, so let me take a moment. 52:18 Danny I was thinking,  if I should not ask you, because I didn’t. 52:20 Nicole I didn’t preorder, but honestly, it’s such a funny thing. You’re probably interviewing for some longer quick start lines, but it would be something, I’m not going to give you a specific, but it would be something around that this is a place where everyone can be successful doing things their own way, and I like that. 52:41 Kathy Good job. I know. 52:43 Danny Brilliant. 52:43 Kathy What would you say? 52:45 Danny Oh, I’m on Marquis if I picked it today. Today is a great day to be alive, so make use of it. 52:50 Kathy Good. 52:51 Danny Well, Kathy, Nicole, thank you so much for being on the podcast. This has truly been my honor. 52:56 Kathy You’re so welcome. I’m delighted to meet you. Let’s stay in touch. 53:00 Nicole Thanks, Danny. 53:03 Danny Thanks for listening to the Better leaders Better Schools podcast. Ruckus Maker, how would you like to lead with confidence, swap exhaustion for energy, turn your critics into cheerleaders and so much more? The Ruckus Maker mastermind is a world class leadership program designed for growth minded school leaders just like you. Go to betterleadersbetterschools.com mastermind, learn more about our program, and fill out the application. We’ll be in touch within 48 hours to talk about how we can help you be even more effective. And by the way, we have cohorts that are diverse and mixed up. We also have cohorts just for women in leadership and a BIPOC only cohort as well. When you’re ready to level up, go to betterleadersbetterschools.com mastermind and fill out the application. Thanks again for listening to the show. Bye for now and go to make a ruckus.