The Minimalist Educator Podcast
A podcast about paring down to focus on the purpose and priorities in our roles.
The Minimalist Educator Podcast
Episode 062: Unlocking Empathy in Educational Leadership with Dr. Tom Hoerr
Discover the transformative power of empathy in education with Dr. Tom Hoerr, a distinguished educator and author whose 37-year journey in educational leadership is nothing short of inspiring. As we discuss his insightful book, "The Principal as Chief Empathy Officer," Tom explains why empathy is not just a buzzword but a crucial element for nurturing growth among students and staff. Reflecting on our first encounter at a conference in Dubai, we unravel the profound impact of his "Formative Five" approach, which champions character and emotional intelligence over mere academic accolades. This episode promises to enlighten listeners on how fostering empathy can cultivate compassionate and responsible future citizens.
Explore the pivotal role of empathy in educational leadership within the framework of social emotional learning (SEL). We introduce an innovative virtual doctorate program centered on character development and leadership, reinforcing the idea that genuine leadership is about relationships grounded in trust and respect. From gathering honest feedback through surveys to embracing diversity without succumbing to initiative overload, Tom shares actionable strategies for embedding empathy in education. As educators, prioritizing self-care emerges as a critical theme, ensuring we’re equipped to support others. This episode is an essential listen for those aiming to create empathetic and inclusive learning environments.
Dr. Tom Hoerr led schools for 37 years and now teaches prospective principals at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where he is a Scholar In Residence. Tom has written many articles – he was The Principal Connection columnist in Educational Leadership Magazine -- and seven books. He wrote about success skills in his Formative Five books, and his most recent book is The Principal As Chief Empathy Officer (all published by ASCD). He believes that school leaders, regardless of title or position, must bring empathy to all their interactions. The role of school leaders is to help everyone grow.
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Welcome to the Minimalist Educator Podcast, a podcast about paring down to refocus on the purpose and priorities in our roles with co-hosts and co-authors of the Minimalist Teacher Book, Tammy Musialski-Borneman and Christine Arnold.
Speaker 2:In this week's episode we speak with Dr Tom Herr. We talk about his role in education and leadership, the books that he's written, as well as a big emphasis on the role of empathy in the work that he has done.
Speaker 2:Dr, Tom Herr led schools for 37 years and now teaches prospective principals at the University of Missouri-St Louis, where he is a scholar in residence. Tom has written many articles. He was a Principal Connection columnist in Educational Leadership magazine and seven books. Columnist in Educational Leadership Magazine and seven books. He wrote about success skills in his formative five books and his most recent book is the Principal as Chief Empathy Officer, all published by ASCD. He believes that school leaders, regardless of title or position, must bring empathy to all their interactions. The role of school leaders is to help everyone grow interactions. The role of school leaders is to help everyone grow.
Speaker 4:Welcome everyone to this week's episode of the minimalist educator podcast. Today, christine and I are talking with tom her, who's an ascd author, longtime educator and someone that I met um, I want to say it was in 2017 at a conference in Dubai. That was our first meeting, so welcome to our podcast, tom. How are you today?
Speaker 3:Oh great, it is good to be here, and your memory is right, it was Dubai and it was a good conference. And the one thing I do know is, everywhere else I've been, it's been cooler than being in Dubai. Yeah right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a little bit hot there, that's for sure. And how are you today, christine?
Speaker 2:I'm doing really well. I'm excited to be here and have another great chat.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm excited to you know, thinking back on, just like when we meet people in our journey as educators. It's a little bit crazy because Christine and I started teaching in Singapore together 10 years ago this year and I did two years of full time teaching, so I quit the full time in 2017. And then it was that fall October of 2017, that I went to that conference in Dubai and but I was still living in Singapore at the time. So, christine, where I made another great connection that I still have so you know, that's like eight years ago already, and or almost eight and Tom, at that conference, I mean you've got tons of experience in education. So, like I should just pause for a moment and let you talk a little bit about your journey before I dig into the questions.
Speaker 3:And to the listeners while she's pausing, let me just say that she says I have lots of experience in education, and that's really nice. What that also means is, tom, you're really old. So, yeah, I do have lots of experiences. So, to come back to your question, yeah, I'm a longtime educator and I believe that the roles we have are the most important in the world because we're changing the future. We're really really having an impact on the lives of everybody tomorrow, not just the kids with whom we work.
Speaker 3:I taught, I led schools for 37 years, and one of the beauties about that is I'm old enough and I did this long enough that many of the kids that I first encountered in kindergarten and fifth grade they're adults and it's really fun talking with them. And it's not me, and I always say that schools are important. Families are more important. The right parents are what matters most. Semicolon, however, comma schools can help a lot. Semicolon, however, comma schools can help a lot, and when I talk to our kids, who are now young adults, feel good because they're the kind of people that you want to be around. They're the kind of people who view their role in society as an important one. They're the kinds of kids who want to make a difference, and that makes me feel very, very pleased.
Speaker 4:So thanks for just giving a little bit of background there, tom. But I mean you've done a lot more in your career. You've written a bunch of books that you know. I've read them all because the information in them just really can support teachers in their journey as teachers. But also with that thinking that you know we're supporting kids to become good citizens. And so at that conference in Dubai you were talking about the formative five. So can you give an outline of what that is and kind of how that's played out in your career?
Speaker 3:Sure, sure. And let me begin by saying that, as I said, I led schools for lots of years and I always, even when I was a teacher, I rebelled against the notion that test scores should be the be-all and end-all. And you know, it's too easy for educators not us but too easy for politicians to view kids as stay-nines and they're important based on the number. I'm like that's wrong. But I knew that as a teacher, I knew that as a principal, I led the New City School in St Louis Missouri for many years and we were a multiple intelligence school and that got me really into what Howard Gardner called intrapersonal, interpersonal. Then Daniel Goleman came along with what we now call emotional intelligence, and so I developed the formative five shorthand, for this is very, very quick and that is simply who you are is more important than what you know.
Speaker 3:Let me say that again who you are is more important than what you know. That is not to denigrate academics. I'm a real pain on colons and semicolons. Kids need to learn how to read, write and calculate period. However, that should be the floor, not the ceiling. What we should really be doing is helping kids become good people.
Speaker 3:I've been saying that for lots and lots of years, and I would argue that it is even more relevant, more valid today, with what's happening with technology. Many of the tasks on which we focus in school are important, but guess what they're going to be done by a computer. What is not going to be done by a computer is caring for other people, working to make a difference. So I did lots and lots of work. I did lots of reading and developing the formative five. As I said earlier, I led school so I could see my kids, my students. I could see students who were seven and eight, who became 12 and 13, who became adults, and what I began to notice was that the qualities which cause people to be successful in the world are not only the ones that are on the back of the report card. And so I read, I observed and I came up with the formative five, and I call these success skills because they're skills that we need to succeed in the world Empathy, self-control, integrity, embracing diversity and grit. And when I give presentations on this, I talk about empathy, self-control, integrity, embracing diversity and grit. Often, a question asked me is well, you know which one's the most important, and I give the flip answer you know which one of your children do you like the most? But the reality is, I began with empathy for a reason and, tammy, as you said, when we met in 2017, I think the book had just come out I would suggest that empathy is even more important in today's world than it was back in 2017.
Speaker 3:And one of the things that frustrates me about schools too often and again, these decisions are not made by us, they're made by people who are in a distance is if you've got a kid in first grade or second grade. This kid's six, seven, eight years old and she's having reading problems. Absolutely, we throw all kinds of resources at this kid to help her learn to read, because we know that kids who are not reading a grade level by age three, their trajectory is not a good one. We know that. However, I would argue that we can look at these same kids who are six, seven and eight, and we can ascertain whether or not these kids have the social skills they need, the emotional intelligence that they need, and we can, and should, then apply those same resources. We tend not to do that, though, and so what you will get are kids who are off the track social emotionally at age six or seven, and they just continue in that way, and so, even if they're successful scholastically, I would argue their life chances of successes aren't nearly as strong, and so let me play with empathy for a second and give you an example. I appreciate your comment when you said about my books I've written seven books and the fact that they're really directed toward educators.
Speaker 3:Again, I taught, I led schools. I'm now teaching at the university, preparing prospective principals, but, as a K-12 educator, the last thing I had was time, and so what I needed was something that could help me, and so the books were written with that purpose, so one of the examples that I give in my chapter on empathy. My first grade teachers did this, like most good leaders. I was good because I had better people around me. They came up with this on their own. It was their idea. They did it with first graders. You could do it with any grade, you could even do it at a faculty meeting. So what they did is they spent some time talking about emotions and they had the kids generate the list of kind of emotions that you know we would know Happy, angry, sad, surprised, disappointed, frustrated and so forth and so on. And they then had the kids sit in a semicircle around a chair and they would take turns, and one child from the class would come up and that child would actually sit behind a prop, so that only his or her face was showing, and the kid sitting behind that chair had a three by five card, and then that card there would be an emotion. It might say happy, it might say angry or whatever, and what that child had to do was make a facial expression to demonstrate that emotion without saying anything, and the other children had to guess what it was by what they were seeing with the face.
Speaker 3:There's a classic way to teach interpersonal intelligence. The teachers said it was amazing. They said there were some kids who were just spot on. They could get an Academy Award. There were other kids, however, who, regardless of what was on that piece of paper had the same facial expression. They thought they were trying to show something else and they were unable to do that. Likewise, there would be kids in the audience their peers who immediately knew what it was, and there'd be other kids who could not discern that at all. And what the teachers did, of course, being good, wonderful teachers, is they use that as a learning opportunity so they could say Christine, you were really right. The cart does say surprise, what was she doing? That you knew that? And Christine could tell the rest of the kids what it was. So Tammy could hear that, could learn it, could understand it. I would argue that that kind of an activity and we did that kind of thing in all the grades all around, we believe in New City School, where I said the personal intelligence is the most important, but we believe that if you work on that, kids are going to develop it and it's going to be a life skill. It's going to be again what I call the success skill. So that's the kind of thing I think that we need to be looking more at in education.
Speaker 3:In my work at University of Missouri-St Louis, our graduate program, we, by the way, we're starting a virtual doctorate next year. If anybody's interested in character development, social emotional learning and leadership, send you or me an email. I'll get them the information. But in this doctoral program, one of the things about which we're going to be talking is character, and that is social emotional learning by itself is amoral, not immoral. It's amoral. You could use it for good or ill purpose. So we're talking about using social emotional learning for the good purposes to make life better for the people around you and for yourself, to make a positive difference. So that's my formative five and I can play with any of those. Talk more about them, whatever you think would be helpful to our listeners.
Speaker 2:That's really cool. I've never thought about it being amoral before. That's a really interesting thing. It could be for good or evil. I've never really thought about that before. I'd love to hear, because you've talked a lot there about empathy and I know your most recent book is also with the focus of empathy, but in leadership, in school leadership so I'd love to hear a little bit more about the role that you feel empathy plays in our school leaders.
Speaker 3:Well, I'd be happy to do that. But let me say, as I always do, that I do a much better job of talking about something than doing it. And so the book to which you refer is called the Principal as Chief Empathy Officer, and what I'm really arguing is that every educator, irrespective of his or her role, should be a chief empathy officer, using empathy and leadership. And again, I wrote the book. It's a good book, but it was hard for me to write. Because I'm writing it, I'm thinking I wish I'd done that. I wish I'd done that better. It's much easier to talk about it. So the case I make in that book not unlike who you are is more important than what you know is that leadership is all about relationships. We don't follow people because of their title. I mean, they do what they tell us to do, but we don't really follow them because of their title. We follow them because we respect them, because we trust them, because they've respected us, they've trusted us, they've listened to us. So when I talk about the principle of chief empathy officer, playing with my formative five empathy, the case I make is that leadership, again, is based on relationships and that doesn't happen by sitting in your office with the principal. It doesn't happen by sitting at your desk if you're a department chair or a team leader or whatever. It happens by getting out and listening and talking to other people. One of the things I do when I will do presentations on this is you know, I'll have a crowd and I'll have everybody get out a piece of paper or their iPad or whatever and I'll say to them do me a favor, write down at your school the initials of three to five people with whom you talk most frequently and you know they quickly do that, whether they're a principal, third grade teacher, high school science teacher, whatever. And then I'll say all right, write down the initials of three to five people with whom you don't talk very much in your building. No surprise, that's harder to do. And that's harder to do because we all live and work in a bubble. It's inevitable that in a school building, whether it's Singapore, whether it's St Louis, whether it's Dubai, that you find out people who you find, people who are like you. You know whether it's the same age, same interests, maybe the rooms are across the hall from one another. Chances are you agree educationally, you've got the same view of the world. Maybe it's that you don't like your principal, but you come together for those kinds of reasons and, particularly as a school leader, you have to work against that, and that means you consciously have to get out, walk around the building, get to know people, get to talk to people. Again, I should have done much more of that than I did. It's hard to do because when you leave your office the work doesn't leave, it piles up. But leading as a chief empathy officer means taking the time to actually practice empathy, and that means you've got to know people, understand them, appreciate them and then act on them. Act on them.
Speaker 3:One of the misgivings I hear when I talk about empathy is people think it's a word. And sure it's a word, but it's a word that means action. If you have empathy for other people, it's not enough that you simply feel that. That's emotional empathy. It's not enough that you understand that. That's cognitive empathy. What you need to do is do something about it. That's actionable empathy. Okay, now that you've got empathy, what are you going to do? These people disagree with you. It's not enough to just say, well, they're wrong, even though you may think they are. What you need to say is why do they think that. What's that mean? What does that look like?
Speaker 3:In my book I talk about a couple of the practices I did that I think were pretty effective. One is I use lots of surveys more surveys probably than anybody I know and I would survey my parents every year in the spring. I would survey my faculty a couple of times during the school year anonymous surveys and one of the things I found if you're listening to this, this may be helpful if you're a school administrator during my initial years I would ask teachers what are Tom's strengths, what are Tom's weaknesses? And I never got much of a response. Not that I lacked weaknesses, but what I found then is if, instead, I said to them what should your time Start doing? What's your time Stop doing? What's your time Continue doing? All of a sudden I got all kinds of data. They were comfortable doing that, which was really helpful to me. So I did lots and lots of surveys.
Speaker 3:In my book, one of the things I talk about is a mistake people can make when do surveys is they'll give surveys and they don't follow up. Even if they do what the survey suggests, they don't articulate it. So one of the things I would do, for example, every spring at the New City School I would do a big survey and then every fall in a parent letter I would say thanks to those of you who submitted survey information last spring. I really appreciated it Good ideas. Some of it was painful, but I needed to know. Here are three things that I'm going to do based on those surveys, and I would let people know that and I might even say interesting. One of the surveys was that we need to be more understanding of families who arrive at school late because traffic is a problem. I get that, but no, we're not going to be more understanding. That was a way of letting people know that I had heard them and I had listened to them.
Speaker 3:The other thing that I did and in a way I think this probably hopefully it's probably rationalization on my part counteracts with the fact that I wasn't out of the office as much as I should have been is that several times a year I would have breakfast with Tom and that would be on a morning a PD morning, conference morning, something when we were starting late and at 8 o'clock it would be an optional breakfast and I provide the donuts. We'd meet in the library and I'd say to folks the agenda is yours, what do we want to talk about? And I'd just sit down. We'd be a semicircle. I had a faculty of 45 to 50. There typically would be 15, 18, 20, about a third. And I would say, what do you want to talk about? And I would just wait. And and I would say, what do you want to talk about? And I would just wait. And it didn't take long. After 20 or 30 seconds, somebody would say what about or why, and we'd have a wonderful discussion.
Speaker 3:It was good for a couple of reasons. After I got over the fact that I wanted to say to people that was in the bulletin, didn't you read it? Well, it would not have been helpful, right? So they would ask that they would make their point, but it was good for me to know what was on people's minds. It was also good for me because I was able to read the room, if you will. When somebody made a comment, I listened to him, but I could also hear how many other people were nodding. I could also hear how many other people were raising their eyebrows, so I could hear that through my eyes. So it was a good way for me to get a sense of the pulse on the room. It also reminded teachers that I was there for them, which I was.
Speaker 3:Tell me what I can do, what does this look like, and if you're going to do this, if you're somebody who's listening and you're going to practice this, I always had in my back pocket a way to start the meeting. I probably did the breakfast with Tom 30 times, 50 times, I'm not sure. And, by the way, I also every year would have a breakfast with Tom at 4 pm, because I had some people who could barely make it to school on time, much less get there early. So, breakfast with Tom at 4 pm, and you know what I learned? Even at 4 o'clock, people eat donuts in any event. So I would have in my back pocket a story so I might say tell me what's on your mind, what do you want to talk about? Rarely, but occasionally 15, 20, it felt kind of trunny and I'd sit there and finally I could bite the bullet and say all right, let me tell you what's on my mind. Here's what I'm worried about, and I could share a worry, share a vulnerability, that that was really, really important. The other thing I did and I did this for years before I stumbled across empathy in terms of the word and what it meant and formulating the formative five and all that kind of business is.
Speaker 3:Every year at the end of the school year, teachers would come in and they would get their summative end of year evaluation and prior to that, I would ask people to give me a piece of paper, share with me candidly what went well for you, what was frustrating for this year, what would you like to do differently? Because I really wanted them to reflect. It was far more important that they reflected on their performance candidly than they heard what I had to say. I wanted this to be an interactive process and I wanted to be able to work from what they said Generally. Almost always, a couple truths emerged. One is this won't surprise the two of you teachers are particularly self-critical. Almost always, people praise themselves less than I thought should be the case. Also, they were more critical than I thought should be the case. So this was a wonderful opportunity for me to talk about that and say well, hold on a second, they should leave that meeting feeling really good. The other thing and this was a practice that I had and people knew it is at the end of every meeting I would say Christine, what can I do to make your life better? And they knew that was coming and the wording was particularly important. I didn't say what can I do to help you be a better teacher? What can I do to help you be a better teacher? What can I do to help you be a better administrator? So what can I do to help your life improve, to be better? Because that opened the door. I want to say, more often than you might imagine, but probably not Quite often people would talk about personal issues.
Speaker 3:They were having something with a child of theirs, maybe with a spouse, whatever, and often I couldn't solve those. But it was important. They wanted me to know, you know, and depending on the conversation, I would say I really appreciate that you need to help me. Is this something you want me to try to solve with you to find a solution? I would just want me to hear you and it was important for them to be able to tell me what role they wanted me to play.
Speaker 3:But those meetings were really productive and they got to a point where you know it was routine and I'd have my interview we call them professional growth conferences with every teachers and you know, often you know we'd be having the meeting and I would say okay, and I'd look at the clock and there's five minutes left. I said this is really great. I hope it was helpful for you. It was really helpful for me. I appreciate that Humanist stuff.
Speaker 3:What can I do to make your life better? And they would open their purse or pull out their pocket and they had written down on a piece of paper. Here are the three things. It was really great for me to hear that. And again, my job is not to make everybody happy. My job is to create a setting where everybody grows and empathy is a key, key component of that, because I need to know who you are, what you value, what's important to you and how I can help you. You know I may not agree with everything, but we need to get aligned and we start by me taking the time to appreciate, to understand and to work with you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I certainly appreciate and I know Christine does as well just the the focus on your people and spending the time. You know, having all these ways to build empathy and just listen in to what what people needed to say, and that it feels so simple, right, like just really just focus on your people, build the relationships, listen and like that's just such a strong culture building piece that you know it's. It's easy to let it go when you get caught up in the rat race of all the things, but something that I was wondering was is there one of the five or the other four? Then that's a little bit harder to work on with your staff.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, and let me just throw in a thought. When you talk about how easy it is and of course we know it's not easy One of the things is a subsequent book I wrote in fact I think it was the book between the formative five and principal or chief empathy officer. I wrote a book called Taking Social Emotional Learning Schoolwide and I used a model of culture there, because what I heard after the format of five, everybody agreed but they said we don't have the time. So, as we're doing what I'm saying all that now to you, tammy, is one of the things I had very heavily in. That was the importance of vocabulary.
Speaker 3:So if you're going to be using empathy, if that's your forte, and when I get presentations I say to people don't try to do all five of these at once, go slowly. If you're a teacher and you want to embed empathy in your curriculum, do that for a semester. Do that from now until spring break. If you're a principal, pick one for the year. The worst thing we can do is try to do too many and overwhelm ourselves. And when you pick that one, you use the term a lot. It's accountability when I say I'm going to lead with empathy and my faculty hears that that raises the ante. They know that's something I want to do. That's an expectation. If you're a classroom teacher and you want to teach your kids empathy, you talk about that. It's on the board, it's there. To your question is there anyone that's particularly harder?
Speaker 3:Unfortunately, I think probably embracing diversity is the one that has become terribly politicized. If you think back to the formative five, when I wrote them again, I was writing in 2015. I wrote about empathy, self-control, integrity, embracing diversity and grit. Well, embracing diversity is the only one with two words, and that's because back then, even in 2015, I thought it wasn't enough to say diversity, we need to do embrace diversity. We don't tolerate it, we don't accept it, we embrace it.
Speaker 3:Well, politically, that's become a hot button and I would argue that's unfortunate because everything you read all the work Google has done, tons and tons of work on problem-solving teams, what makes them effective and what we know is that diversity makes teams better. Now there's a diversity of diversities, you know. There certainly is race, which we see, gender, which we see, but there's also things like educational, training, age, philosophy. When people come together with different backgrounds, perspectives, with different diversities, it makes it more difficult to get to the answer, but that answer is a better answer, and so when I give presentations to schools or conferences, I talk very specifically about things you can do to embrace diversity even in these politically tenuous times.
Speaker 2:Wow, I feel like I'm a little sponge here, just soaking up all of the wisdom at the moment. So thank you for all of that, but unfortunately we do have to start wrapping up the episode. So what we like to do at the end of each of our episodes is to ask for a pare down pointer, so something that will help anyone in education or just in their lives in general. Just to pare back and simplify, strategise a little bit. Do you have anything that you can share with us?
Speaker 3:Well, coming back to Tammy's point about what's easy, that's not easy. I've given a whole lot of ideas, but I would end by saying that the people who are listening to this podcast, what I would like them to do when they stop listening after they think, well, that guy was interesting. Hopefully I'd like them to think what can I do to take care of myself? It's too easy and educators are great at this, greats in quotes it's too easy to give all of your time to everybody else and to take everybody else and forget yourself. You know we talk about an empathy deficit and what I don't want people to do is get all charged from this, come back and not take care of themselves.
Speaker 3:So two things. One is, if you get all charged, can't do it by yourself. Talk to somebody else, pick one idea that I talked about and think, hey, what do you think of this, and play with it. You probably change it and that's good. But then your second thing is to say, okay, how much time am I spending on my job? And that isn't just in the building, it's emotionally. What does this look like? What does this feel like? What do I do to need to take care of myself? It's a marathon, it's not a sprint and unfortunately, if you don't take care of yourself, it's also hard for other people to take care of you.
Speaker 4:Thank you so much, tom, for all of your wisdom. I think we're going to have to schedule a part two with you, because there's just so much to talk about, and you know, especially the embracing diversity, because it is such. It is politically charged, but it's essential. In the world that we're in, we just this is we need to embrace each other and work with each other's strengths, and so we'll definitely schedule a future time to continue the conversation. But thank you so much for being with us today. I can't wait for our listeners to hear this episode.
Speaker 3:Hey, thanks for the invitation. Everybody, Take care of yourself.
Speaker 2:Today's episode was brought to you by Plan Z Professional Learning Services forward-thinking educator support. Find out more at planzplservicescom.
Speaker 1:Be sure to join Tammy and Christine and guests for more episodes of the Minimalist Educator Podcast. They would love to hear about your journey with minimalism. Connect with them at planzPLS on Twitter or Instagram. The music for the podcast has been written and performed by Gaia Moretti.
