Episode 104: Clarity-Driven School Leadership with Casey Watts

“We’ve told them the expectation” can be true and still leave a staff completely unsure what to do next. That gap is where frustration grows, where initiative fatigue sets in, and where leaders start calling normal uncertainty “resistance.” We sit down with Casey Watts, a clarity-obsessed speaker, author, and consultant, to get painfully practical about what clarity in school leadership actually looks like when you’re trying to move a campus forward.

We dig into the real costs of unclear expectations: inconsistent classroom practice, fast burnout, and teams that can’t commit because they don’t share the same picture of success. Casey explains why “clear is kind” isn’t just about hard conversations. It also means “painting done” so teachers can see what meeting the goal looks like in real life. We also talk about why sending more messages rarely helps, and how leaders can name the true priority, identify the critical moves, and stop flooding people with extra noise.

A key turning point is insight. Casey shares how listening tours and simple, intentional questions reveal what your staff actually believes about the focus and goals. You’ll hear a memorable example of how a term like “tier one instruction” can mean totally different things across a campus, and how getting a shared definition changes everything. If you’re leading a school improvement plan, trying to align a leadership team, or rebuilding trust after miscommunication, this conversation will give you clear next steps.

Subscribe for more minimalist leadership and teaching strategies, share this episode with a colleague who needs clarity, and leave a review so more educators can find the show. What’s one initiative at your school that would improve overnight if everyone had the same definition of “done”?

This episode is sponsored by Casey Watts Coaching and Consulting. 

Transcript

Minimalist Educator Welcome

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome to the Minimalist Educator podcast, where the focus is on a less is more approach to education. Join your hosts, Christine Arnold and Tammy Musiowski, authors of The Minimalist Teacher and your school leadership edit, a minimalist approach to rethinking your school ecosystem, each week as they explore practical ways to simplify your work, sharpen your focus, and amplify what matters most so you can teach and lead with greater clarity, purpose, and joy.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

On this week's episode of the podcast, we're joined by Casey Watts. Casey leads us through a great conversation about clarity in school leadership. And her peer down pointer is all about asking people about their focus and their goals. Casey Watts is a clarity-obsessed speaker, author, and consultant helping leaders transfer ownership of campus goals to staff through the craft of clarity.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

So, you know, we're just gonna look chat around probably for way too long. But anyway, welcome, Casey. It's nice to have you.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here, excited for our conversation. It's gonna be fun. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

So tell us how did you land in the space of clarity?

SPEAKER_04 1:52

What took you there? What a good question. And this is a great segue. Usually people ask me what's your journey and everything. And so it's like this long drawn-out story. But I love the way that you asked this because it's very direct, direct towards exactly how I got into the idea of clarity. So for many, many years, I mean, I've been in education for over 20 years, and half of that time I spent as a classroom teacher, and then half of that time I spent in instructional leadership in a variety of different roles. But in the 10 years that I was in instructional leadership, I a lot of those roles required me to partner both with teachers and with instructional leaders. So my very last role when I left the class or when I left public education, I supported, I was a district instructional specialist and I supported teachers and administrators. And the goal was to bridge that gap between the administrators and the teachers. And it was in that role specifically that clarity just became the thing that I felt like we had to pour into. And it was so interesting because I would work with administrators who would say, we have set the expectations, we've told them what the initiative is, we've given them all of the rules that we need them to implement in order to follow this. Like they were, they felt like they were being really clear. But then I would meet with teachers and it was almost like the exact opposite narrative was present. And they would say, We don't have any idea what's going on. Or they would say things like, we don't know what exactly we're supposed to do or what our role is. And I even had a lot of people saying, I just want clarity around this. Clarity kept coming up again and again, not necessarily from leaders, but from teachers. And then it's also interesting too, when we started to kind of bridge that gap, I would hear teachers finally saying, I just feel so much better because I have at least a little bit of clarity. And it just took a little bit for them to feel more confident, more empowered, and just better about showing up for work every day. And the light bulb went off. And I was like, oh my gosh, I've got to take a look at what exactly it is we've done that has helped them to have this clarity. And that's when I started kind of analyzing what our process was and that transitioned or turned into the Clarity Cycle Framework. And then after I developed the Clarity Cycle Framework, I wondered what could this look like on other campuses? And so it just evolved into, I mean, I've been doing consulting on the side for many years. But you know, as as you grow and change yourself, what you focus on grows and changes. So while in the beginning I was consulting and focusing on like in like reading and literacy, it transitioned to leadership because that's what my role and passion was. And so I just I don't know, I ran with it and I was able to implement it with other schools in other districts across the nation, and it has been so beneficial for so many people.

The Hidden Cost Of Unclear Expectations

SPEAKER_02 5:08

That's amazing that you were able to really sort of focus in on one area that was so impactful for for everybody. You mentioned there about the the misunderstanding of expectations between different groups, the leadership and the teachers. But if we don't have that clarity in schools, what is the cost? What goes wrong? What does it look like when that clarity isn't present?

SPEAKER_04 5:33

I write about this in my book, and you can see it in lots of different ways. So you can see it in that when you go from one classroom to another, it almost feels as though you're function, you're in a different like on a different campus altogether. So that could be one thing that you notice. You may notice teachers feeling defeated really, really quickly because they're just not quite sure if what they're doing is to the level of expectation that they're shooting for, right? Because that expectation, while leaders may think they've been clear, teachers still don't know exactly what it looks like. So we haven't painted a picture. You know, Brene Brown talks a lot about painting done. So we hear the phrase clear is kind, and we equate that to we've got to have really hard conversations and we've got to lay the law down about what's expected, but we don't always get to that next very, very important step of painting done. And because we haven't painted done, no one's really gained clarity about where we're headed and how we're going to get there. And so teachers start to feel defeated, and that defeat turns into burnout. And they have, they're confused, but it's not the productive kind of confusion that we're going for, right? It's just the type of confusion that leads them to try to figure it out on their own. And some high achievers will do that. But then if you are dealing with people who are not necessarily high achievers, they're going to resort back to the way things have always been done, which we as leaders consider resistance. It's not necessarily resistance, it's just I'm not clear about where how I'm supposed to get where you're asking me to go.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

That is so enlightening to really think about the resistance might not actually be resistance because it's just unclear of the direction. I have so many thoughts and questions. I'm like, where do I go? Okay. So thinking about then, you know, we need to have clear understanding for educators to move in the direction that we'd all like to go. How this is kind of a forward question, we might go back, but anyway, yeah. What has been the impact then when that moment or like the that kind of period of clarity happens, and then teachers go into their classroom and they're operating from that place of uh a clearer vision? How has that impacted classrooms and what has that looked like? Man, what a when you did that.

SPEAKER_04 8:12

Such a good question. And and I'm getting goosebumps thinking about like what has been the impact. And it is obviously, listen, you guys know and we've heard it time and again, there is no magic bullet, right? There's no magic pill. There's there's just not this magical thing that immediately happens when we try to implement something. However, the Clarity Cycle Framework was developed as a series of habits. So it's six steps that a leadership team, because I really believe in the power of a team doing the leadership work together, but a leadership team goes through those six steps. But as they're going through these six steps, they're thinking about habits that they are building in order to create clarity for their people. So because it's a habit that you're continuously building, obviously the impact that you're going to notice will be over a long period of time. It will be gradual. But here's what I have noticed and has been so wonderful to see. First and foremost, just I think part of my passion in doing this work is because I want so badly for teachers to love the work that they do. I want so badly for leaders to love the work that they do and feel eager to go to work every day and contribute because they know they are an essential part of that organization. And that's probably the most impactful thing for me as someone who takes people through the Clarity Cycle Framework is you get to see how they just you can see someone's presence, their light, their load lightens, right? Their shoulders kind of raise a little bit, their head raises, and they go into classrooms eagerly versus someone who's not quite clear about the expectations, but they're forging ahead and they are doing what feels like grunt work day in and day out. So I would I would say first and foremost, the individual, you can tell a difference in the individuals in classrooms across your campus. But the other thing that I feel like creating clarity has such an impact on is the collaboration in teams and across the campus as a whole. Because our people have clarity around where we're headed and how we're going to get there, they can better commit. You we hear about buy-in all the time. Well, if you have clarity, you actually can commit to something. And I talk about this in the book. Like we hear a lot about collective efficacy too. And I think about collective efficacy is the idea that we believe we can do this together even when, like even when things get tricky, even when there are bumps in the road, even when things happen that didn't go the way we'd planned, we're going to commit to the bigger purpose regardless. And we're going to lean into our people to help us to do that. So the collaboration or the authentic authenticity behind the collaboration improves dramatically when people have clarity.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

Yeah, absolutely. It makes so much sense when you say it like that. It just seems like, yeah, of course, absolutely. So you mentioned earlier on about the thought around being clear is, you know, I have to have difficult conversations. I feel like another one that I've seen is clarity equals more information and just being a little bit overload of information. So, like, how do we how do we find the balance? And probably we need a little bit of hard conversations and a little bit more information, but like, how do we find the right balance to get that clarity?

Habits That Build Clarity Over Time

SPEAKER_04 12:05

Yeah, and the hard conversations are not going to go away. It I mean, if you are in a strong community of professional learners, we should be having hard conversations. And I wanna I wanna shift our narrative around that a little bit. We we talk a lot about difficult conversations, hard conversations, but really in a sense, we could just think about them as productive conversations. Like, I need to have a productive conversation with so-and-so because there are some things that are unsettled we need to get past in order for us to move forward together. But you know, if we can have the hard conversations and we also can paint done, you know, we've talked already about painting done, then we don't have to necessarily overload people with information. And you're right, we we have this idea that communicate, communicate, communicate, well, I'm gonna give more information, more information, more information. More information doesn't mean that it's clear information, you know, and I think that's sometimes where leaders think I've given I've told them the expectations time and time again. Well, how exactly have you told them the expectations? What did that look like and sound like? And more importantly, how did they perceive those expectations? Or how did they perceive this goal that you've set? Because the perception may be very different than the reality that we're trying to spin for the people that we're leading. So when we when I teach people about clarity-driven leadership practices, we're really looking at what is the priority? What are the key essential things that we're working towards? And based on those key essential things, what are the critical moves that we have to communicate both verbally and in action to help people prioritize those things that we've said are the priority. That helps us to kind of weed out like what's all of the extra information that we don't have to put out there or we don't have to put it all out there at once. It can be a bit at a time.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Yes. So many yeses. And again, my brain is like, uh, so many things to ask you. But what was sticking out there was communication can feel very complicated, right? Because we do get it from different places, from different people. You have to kind of determine who you're listening to and and who you're tuning out. And so how do what are some of the tips that you share with your leaders that are kind of like starting points? So it's like, this isn't about necessarily communicating more things and more often and and the frequency, but how do you just tighten your language or just be really more pinpointed in the message that you're trying to share?

Clear Communication Without Info Overload

SPEAKER_04 15:04

Yeah. I typically when I'm working with leaders, again, I'm working with a leadership team. So most of the time I might work with individual leaders and we're talking about their communication specifically, but a lot of the time it's the leadership team. I want them to be able to hone this habit together and hold each other accountable. We always start with what is the campus's area of focus? Like above all, and it could be related to their campus improvement plans or just their district level goals, what is it that we say at this school, we are focusing on this? And then we take that and narrow it down to if that's really our broad focus, and then we're saying this is what we want to be about this year, then what are goals that are gonna help us to live that out? After we have goals set, we gain insight from our people. And this is a critical piece that I think people miss out on. And the reason we I think it's so important is because this is where communication, the crux of communication is. So if we are not gaining insight from our people, then number one, we're not understanding where they are right now and how we can meet them where they are, but we also don't understand or we can't utilize the language that's familiar to them. And that's where I want to pause because we have a tendency to make assumptions about what people understand or know about. For example, if my if our area of focus was tier one instruction, I can't go into that assuming that everyone has the same or common definition of tier one instruction. Case in point, I was working with a school in Los Angeles and I was I worked with the elementary campus and the middle school campus. And before we ever started our work together, I said, okay, I'm gonna be focusing on tier one instruction, but I want to be sure that we have a common definition of tier one instruction. Otherwise, I'm just building knowledge on top of a shaky foundation. And that knowledge is just gonna fall right through. So I met with them, I said, I want to ask you guys what is our definition when we think of tier one instruction, what's a common definition you guys anchor to? And it was crickets for both campuses. And the reason is they had never had that discussion. And with the elementary campus, they could kind of come around, like individuals were kind of coming around some different definitions that were similar, but at the middle school level, one teacher said, I just remember this so vividly and I bring it up a lot. He said, Well, tier one is your students that need the very most support. Like they have to leave the classroom. And I was like, Ooh, I'm so glad I started with what is tier one instruction? Because we had to, we had to come around some kind of common definition. And it's like that with so many different definitions. I think because of that one time, one situation, it changed the way that I work with teams of teachers, teams of instructional leaders. It changed the way I do professional development sessions. Anytime I come across a word that I'm like, hmm, this could be something that we have varying definitions around. We pause and we say, okay, wait, before we move on, what do we mean by this? Just to get a baseline of this is what we mean. Okay, now let's build our learning on top of that.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

Yeah, I can absolutely imagine that happening in many different situations and contexts for sure. You mentioned that you you work mainly with leadership teams, but I can't help but feel like that improvement of clarity from that level would trickle down a little bit so that the teachers are becoming more clear with their students, with parents, like there's more clarity in the whole community. Is that what you see ending up happening?

SPEAKER_04 19:14

100%. And one of the things that I think I love most about working with leadership teams, and this is an enlightening thing for a lot of them, because I don't think we practice this a lot, but when I work with a leadership team, one of the things I encourage them to do is to let people know like, if you are working on building this habit, tell people you're working on building this habit and tell them why you're working on this habit. Like, what is it that has been going right for you as far as like communication goes or creating clarity has go has gone? And what are things that are not working for you? And you know they're not working because of the insight that you've gained from teachers, then you can have those very frank and vulnerable conversations and say, listen, you know, one of the things that I know I've struggled with over the last year or so is this. Here's a habit I'm trying to build in order to rectify that so I can be a little more clear with you guys and you feel more confident. So as I'm practicing this, you might notice me trying XYZ, whatever the strategy or skill might be. If they know you are practicing that, guess what? They are watching how you're practicing that. And when they notice that it's effective, they're going to turn around and implement it themselves. I can't tell you the number of times that when I was working as a district's instructional specialist, I worked with teams all the time. It was the bulk of my work, and I love working with teams so much. But it was so encouraging. And I and I don't want it's not a pat on my back. It's not me being cocky or anything. It's just really cool to watch teachers start to lead their own team meetings and start to implement the things that you have modeled, which is the goal, right? That is the goal. It's the same thing with your students. You want them practicing the learning strategies that you have modeled.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Yeah, I just had that similar conversation with the teacher yesterday about when your students start using the language that you use, it's just like, yes, you are, you're there, like you're there with me. And so it's it's probably just like you should pat yourself on the back, right? Like when you do see the change in a community and it's it's making people do better at their job, and it's probably really improving their relationships. Is that something you've noticed as well?

SPEAKER_04 21:40

Oh, for sure. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, and that's true for any relationship you have. Just think about your spouse or your kids. I write in the book a lot about our time traveling with the kids. It's the very beginning chapter, and the the chapter is titled, Why Did We Do This? And we had started this like seven-day journey across the United States to go on the national parks tour. And so we were going to go to five different national parks and we started the road trip because we weren't flying anywhere. We we were driving. And one of my kids just asks questions all the time. He's just a question asker. And I love that about him. But in a car on a really long road trip, it's just like you find yourself saying, What were we thinking getting in this car with these three kids driving across the United States? But what we didn't think about was what his intent was. His intent was to gain clarity. And we were kind of ignoring that. So finally, hours into the trip, we were like, okay, wait a minute. What could we do differently? And so we gave a tentative schedule. Like, here's where we think we're going to be at this time. When we get to this hotel, we're probably not going to have time to swim. And because we were able to give him, even though it was tentative and he was okay with that, it gave him some clarity and it allowed us to appreciate our time with him more. So, you know, even outside of your work, your personal life, people want, we're we're wired to gain clarity. And so it does improve any relationship you have.

Listening Tours And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_02 23:30

Yeah, and it's just so much easier to be there for other people if you know exactly what they're looking for, what the intent is, as you say. Absolutely. Oh my goodness. I am really reluctant to head us towards the end of the episode, Casey, because this has been such a great conversation. But one thing we like to do before we wrap things up is to ask for a peer-down pointer. So any tip or strategy that you would like to leave our listeners with or viewers as well.

SPEAKER_04 23:59

Yes. Okay. Here is my peer-down pointer. And I'm going to say three different things. Okay. Number one, what are you focused on? Number two, what are goals that are related to that focus? And then number three, this is really important. Ask your people about that focus and those goals. The most important thing anyone can do when they are really trying to gain clarity for themselves and create clarity for other people is gain insight. You have to know what other people are thinking, what they're what thoughts they're processing, what they've done and what they haven't done in order to gain clarity for yourself and create clarity for your people. So one of the strategies I talk about in the book and that I teach to instructional leadership teams is going on listening tours. And you are simply listening. You're asking some really thoughtful, intentional questions, and then you're just stepping back and listening, taking notes and saying, thank you. That's it. That's all we have to do. That's a first step to starting to gain clarity and create clarity.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Thank you so much, Casey. I feel like we could just talk for hours about this. Of course. It's been so great to chat with you about the work that you do and get some insight into your thought process around clarity. And we're excited for our listeners and viewers to share that with us too. Thanks so much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

Thank you. This episode is brought to you by Casey Watts of Catching Up with Casey. If you're a school leader struggling with misaligned teams or just feeling stuck, Casey helps you find clarity, set meaningful goals, and lead with confidence. Find out more at catchingupwithcasey.com.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Thank you for listening to the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Join Christine and Tammy and guests again next time for more conversations about how to simplify and clarify the responsibilities and tasks in your role. If today's episode helped you rethink, reimagine, reduce, or realign something in your practice, share it in a comment or with a colleague. For resources and updates, visit planzeducation.com and subscribe to receive weekly emails. Until next time, keep it simple and stay intentional.