Creator of Culture: Amy, it’s great to see you. Thanks for coming on… Creator of Culture, to talk about a very interesting topic, a mystical topic, it’s one of those areas where people see it from different perspectives, there’s a lot of other sub-concepts that roll up into it, and I would love to pick your brain. You know… we are here today to see, given your background and what you do, I’d love to hear about you, what you’ve been doing, and I guess to start off, and then you brought up some interesting discussion points and some previous conversation together that would definitely love to dive into but first, welcome. Thank you. And can you tell us, tell us some stuff about yourself, Amy, before we do this topic, and why you’re passionate about this topic…
Dr. Amy Cislak: Yeah, so it’s awesome to be here today with a fellow eagle, so I haven’t seen and really spoken with you at length since we graduated from Boston College, so it was fun being able to be a Division 1 athlete there, and I think that really set the tone for how I wanted to live my life, I distinctly remember sitting on the bus after we were unfortunately defeated in the Big East Tournament, and thinking what was going be next, what was going to be my legacy, what was next in my life, because that had being an athlete it was such a big part of my life and I was unsure about my next steps, I was very fortunate that I was actually accepted to law school upon completion at BC, but I wasn’t sure that was my right path, and it was really important to me that I was involved in influencing and improving the lives of others, and I just wasn’t sure the best plan of attack for that, I had the opportunity that summer to compose… To give back in our community. It’s always been really important to my family that I’m giving back and serving others has always been emphasized, and I had the amazing opportunity to actually start coaching softball that summer.
And that’s when I realized that I really wanted to be involved in education. There were certainly students that had opportunities when I was at Boston College that were vastly greater than the opportunity that I had growing up and education, and then… But I also met a lot of individuals that my own education background was vastly… I don’t want to say superior, but at least more academically-focused, and the inequities in education was something that I was stately aware of, and it was really important to me, so from coaching, I do right? Into teaching, I was an English teacher for six years. From there, I went and got my Master’s degree in Education Leadership, and then I entered my next phase because I thought I really had the influence of over 160 kids a year, and my next step was How can I influence… How can I impact the lives of even more people, and so the next natural step was to go into school administration from there, I had the amazing honor to be the assistant principal and then the principal of nationally ranked and celebrated High School University High School and Tucson Arizona is always a top 20 ranked high school…
And the opportunities that students had, the school or tremendous… We had, in my time there, tripled the number of African-American Latino students, quadrupled the number of students who are in free or reduced lunch, so that we could really eliminate the poverty gap through high quality education and provide students an amazing opportunity to go to amazing university. And then finally, I think the last capstone in my education journey was steps to get my doctorate in Education Leadership, because it was important to me of how can I continue to widen that sphere of influence, so…
Creator of Culture: You’re being very humble. I think one of the things that people need to know about is what you’ve been doing between those lines, between those milestones that you’re having some major impact… I have been following what you’ve been doing over the years. And I know a big thing for you is setting that right tone and the culture and having that impact that you want to have and that you’re passionate about, that you’ve put a lot of effort in to get into where you are now. And what are you looking to do with all those in the future, so
Dr. Amy Cislak: No, I appreciate that. And I think a lot of people assume that it can just, you buy a certain curriculum, you have a certain practice in place, that great things will happen, and there’s certainly processes that you really have to have to have a really good system or organization, but those have always been secondary to me. My main goal has always been to invest in my people, our joke has always been people over props people over process, because if you have an outstanding people in your organization… That your organization is going to be successful. And really, the impact that I’ve always wanted to make was finding the best people that I possibly could… I’ve always had the motto that I want to be the least talented person in my organization, I always want to find people who are more knowledgeable in certain areas, have experiences that I’ve ever had, because ultimately that’s going to make our organization better, and I think as a leader, what my job is to really provide the structures and the opportunities so that amazing people can be left essentially to their own devices to do an outstanding job, and that my job is to eliminate barriers, and my job is to support and validate those efforts, which I think is really important, I really try to adopt a transformational leadership model where I’m providing the resources so that my community and my employees can be making decisions and they’re not just my decisions, and that can be frustrating as a later, because it’s certainly faster and certainly short-term, more efficient if you’re making all of the decisions that that more transactional approach doesn’t build outstanding culture and climate with your faculty and staff, it’s really important in your community, if you really want your employees and the other constituent groups that make up your organization to feel valued, to feel vest it.
And to feel like it’s really their organization and they’re not just employees of the organization, they have to have some things, and there’s certainly opportunities in areas where it’s not… It doesn’t make sense for everybody to weigh in at all times and ultimately use the leader have to sit on those decisions, but I think where my success is really why that… Only a few times. And it never fails, every time I think, Oh, I don’t need to bring in the whole group to weigh in on this choice, every time I think that… And I play that light it, it bites me. And because you really want to set up a culture where your community trust you as a leader, and if they know that you’re going to come them for their pain, for their insight, you’re going to ask them to also help co-lead these initiatives, then they own it as well. And then it’s not just you pushing this agenda, this is really an idea of value that your entire organization likes, and then truly the few times that you might have to just make that call as a leader, because sometimes you do, and that’s not always fun because it’s always, a lot better when you can involve everyone, but I think then you can go back to your groups, to your leadership councils, your department heads, or whoever you break up those conversations with.
If you can tell them, “Hey guys, I have to make this decision on my own. I just want to give you a heads up”. This isn’t coming out of nowhere, they tend to then value when you have to make those hard choices as a leader, because they know that 9 times out of 10 that you’re really coming to them for their opinion and their insight, and then I found that they trust you… You have to just make that managerial executive decision…
Creator of Culture: Well, you brought up a lot of really interesting topics and a lot of things roll up into this thing we call culture, which is again, it’s a mystical in the sort of sense, there’s a lot of things that roll up…One of the things you brought up was trust… One of the things you brought up was leadership, another thing you mentioned was influence, and an approach that you mentioned was about people over process. I was wondering if we could hone in on that one in particular, unpack it a little bit, and maybe you can give me an example of where that really applied and worked out for you and really what does that mean?
Dr. Amy Cislak: Sure. So I think in education, there’s always that next hot initiative, and I’m sure that is common in other industries as well, is the next big thing, this is what’s happening. And I think that people get really tired of the next big thing, they get tired of an initiative because they wonder How long is this going to last… How long should I buy into this idea? What I’ve really found is that if we’re a values-based organization rather than kind of an initiative-based organization, your values are going to test, test, and that’s what’s really important is that your value should be able to pass that test of time and… So in education, for example, alright, what the state testing and accountability assessments is always a big thing, and there’s a lot of approaches that you can do for that, so there’s some schools that have decided to have a real transcribe curriculum and tell teachers you’re going to teach this on this day, at this time, and you don’t need good teachers, if you’re going to do that, you don’t need creative employees that want to be innovative, if you’re going to do that, and I always like to say, if your employees could be YouTube videos, then why do we have employees, why do we have people if they can be replaced by a video online, and what we’ve really looked at always is what are our values, what are expectations, and how do we trust people? How do we trust that we hire the best people imaginable for this position, and how do we involve them in solving these problems as opposed to investing a really expensive curriculum or a really expensive professional development that’s just not going to sit and support our core values and I’ve been to otra that are amazing, but they don’t necessarily support the values that we have in our organization and that culture, and so when you bring in those extra ideas and those external view points, then you’re also second guessing and you’re showing your community that you don’t trust them to solve the problem. And so what I’ve always found is that before we look at external opportunities, whether it’s a curriculum, whether it’s a training, whether it’s an initiative, is that we talk to our people first and say, What do we already know, what do we value about this, what do we don’t know. And so that we can really tailor and design opportunities to support our community versus bringing someone in that shows…
And that when you bring someone in without talking to your community, it shows that you don’t necessarily trust their experiences and that you want to know their experiences, because truthfully, I think sometimes the best training and professional development comes from within your community and asking people What do you want to learn and then what are you willing to bring back to our community so that people can learn from you, because that’s top-down initiatives just don’t work, and it doesn’t matter what kind of level of trust I build with my community. They’re not going to be well-received. They’re going to be really well-received when they come from within and they really defend that value…
Creator Of Culture: That’s very interesting. To recap that point, the process that you refer to was maybe a new curriculum, like the process to get to the process that the curriculum offers, but does it match up to the values, is it match up to what people expect, which is your staff yourself, your peers, and so forth… The voice has been heard to get that feedback to ensure that it doesn’t match up, because we could have assumptions, but it may not be always correct, but getting that buy-in and that information from people, therefore… I think I’m catching what the saying is, people first, before that process can get you that sustainable bought into high performance system, so to speak, and then maybe processes can help tweak up that I captured that you correctly.
Dr. Amy Cislak: I think so. Another example is I change school, so I was at… I was in a really large school district, over 100 schools to those nine years when I was at that I… That I had an opportunity, again, this is a people move to move school districts to a much smaller district in a very different type of high school, but I made that decision to move because the Superintendent that I wanted to work with, and then I wanted to be mentored and I wanted to grow, and so I… When I describe that to my community, saying like, Look, I’m not leaving because I don’t believe in what we do, is that I want someone to guide and work with me, and as much as I think it’s important that I provide that to my employees, I wanted to model for them that I need that too as a leader, so that I’m always growing and learning. But accepting a new job in the middle of a global pandemic presented challenges where I’m asking people right away, I need you to trust me, I’ve had zero time to build relationships with you, I’ve had zero time for me to prove to you that I have your best intentions, and so I had to show them right away that I value you and who you are and your experiences, regardless of what I know about you as a teacher or what I know about you as a professional, it’s just I value you though as a human, and in order for us to get on board, I need to know about what cultures exist, what process exists, what are the values, so that when we were creating strategic plan to get through a pandemic, but also not just to survive a pandemic, but to come out better than the school ever was at the end of a pandemic, it required a lot of trust and also required a lot of opportunity for teachers to weigh in, employees to weigh in on decisions that they had never been asked to weigh in on, and that process was cumbersome, but I think valuable because if you are going to go through some of the changes that we’re pursuing right now, it’s incredibly important that people know that what my expectations are, that you can trust me that If you do X, Y, and Z, that This is what I need from you, but also that they know that if they offer me insight and opinions that I’m going to respect it and use that in my decision making, because it’s incredibly sevens on earlier, every time you think maybe this little thing would be a big deal, as it always ends up being a big deal.
So I think that’s always one of the big piece of advice I give to leaders that if you’re going to ask for input and you’re going to ask for your employees to collaborate with you, and you don’t at least acknowledge the feedback that you receive and reflect on that with them that you’ve heard done, it’s going to be a little bit of a disaster because no one wants to then waste their time with a leader that doesn’t value them.
Creator of Culture: Yeah, this is a theme that I’m seeing for sure, is that the approach is the people in the most valuable asset, and the created culture sort of speak, that there’s natural cultures that we use that term of the experiences that are either people have born into… Grew up in influenced by and constantly reminded of, everyone brings these types of things into a… like a workplace culture, and it may not be “people first”, what the culture that you’re trying to create and have created with others, but with leadership from yourself, no doubt. It’s interesting that you mentioned to something about sustainable and transformational approaches, and I wanted to ask you, from your perspective, that’s a motto and a method of operating of people first that you’re delivering with your staff, for example, what have things have made… Done that you’ve picked up on that they’re buying into the people first, and what have they done… You have any examples of that? Maybe you could talk about something like that.
Dr. Amy Cislak: So I think that there’s different ways. Ultimately, you want everyone to have an opportunity to provide feedback and to be leaders on campus and your organization, if it’s not a school, but everyone has different comfort levels and experiences as well as just time, some people who want to give more time, they want to be more invested they want to be mentored, other people, they just want to do the job, and so I think it’s important to have different layers of expectation. I have 19 standing community groups that I met we every month. It’s a lot, but these are all different groups that provide a tremendous amount of feedback to me that I then can put into two plans, and there is a mechanism that the information from all these different groups all come back to each other so that everybody also knows what’s happening? And not everyone needs to do that many groups, and I think once I’ve been at this particular school for a while, I won’t need to have that many community groups, but especially this year was important for me to learn from as many different angles as humanly possible, but what you want, I think it’s important to provide those different types of opportunities, and some of the…
These are leaders on campus already, they’re already valued as leaders, and so I need them to be able to carry this message of leadership as well as a message of what we’re doing, what our culture is, who we are, what we want to be, so that that can be distributed, and some people don’t realize their leaders… They are the ones that are not the ones in charge, but there are people that listen to them, they watch them, they admire them, and sometimes those leaders aren’t necessarily providing great leadership and they don’t, and they might get frustrated if you were to call them on it, saying, I don’t want to be a leader, I’m not trying to be a leader, but they’re indirectly influencing how your organization is working, and if they’re having a bad day, if they’re disgruntled, that message is being carried whether they intended it to be or not, and so I also think that’s a really good opportunity to get people in your group that… I call them the contrarian, that every good leadership group has to have someone on there that’s going to find fault with every decision and every idea, and sometimes that can be exhausting and cumbersome, but the contrarian are also, I think, really good checkpoints for the bright and shiny people too, who that everything is an exciting idea and let’s do this, and they have maybe no concept of time or money or efforts that a lot of those things might take to improving your organization, so I think it’s always good to have a criterion or two, because they tend to have really good valid reasonable suggestions, I’m like, Hey guys. Did you consider this? Or did you consider that? And so I think it’s also important to bring those people along, sometimes leaders say, Get the people who they perceive as negative or who don’t want to jump on board with everything you want to do, they don’t want them around, and I get it, because sometimes that can be draining and you want to surround yourself with people that are like-minded, but you’re ultimately not going to understand the full organization that you’re a part of, you’re not going to understand everyone, if you’re only hearing what you want
Creator of Culture: You could be blind-sided with risk that was never considered. So that’s where diverse perspectives, and making sure that those people are great doubles advocates, and you need to know that information to plan for it.
Dr. Amy Cislak: They are, and I think the best compliment that I received when I left my last school, one of my teachers said, Your teachers have no idea how lucky they are going to be to be tricked into leadership roles that they never knew they wanted, and I… But ultimately, at the end of the day, this is how you keep really outstanding people in your organization because they feel like they’re not just employees, they’re leading this charge, and ultimately then this is how you attract top talent because they want a voice and they want to know that their efforts are valid, that if they’re going to go above and beyond that they’re going to be recognized and celebrated, and you want to have an organization that’s known for being innovative and being bold, and in order for that to happen, you have to have that trust and people that feel really supported. And taking some of those risks.
Creator of Culture: Yeah, to kinda unpack one more topic that is related to this, and I know it’s something that we’ve talked about offline a few times, but this sounds like ownership, ownership and being a part of this culture, whereas you mentioned the leaders, they may not know they’re going to become leaders, but they will… And the process will lead to ownership, whereas you’re using committee groups to voice concerns, and I’m sure there’s a really good mechanism to capture that feedback to make sure… So there’s an ownership of the being part of developing the culture as well, you mentioned before to me about giving up control in a transformational environment, and that’s sometimes scary for people, but it can lead to great things… If we can sum that up, because we talked about people first, not process, sustainability ownership, is that encapsulating the it rolling into this created culture? If we can finish off our discussion about a transformational approach and what about giving up control? And can you unpack that a little bit for us?
Dr. Amy Cislak: Sure, I think every eater that I’ve been a leader in a school, there’s been an initiative that I’ve been really passionate about, I’m like, This is going to be great for our kids, this is going to really support our school, and I brought it to my leadership teams and they’re either quick or there to say no, or they’re passively saying no, and it’s disappointing, and I think I will always try to convince a group saying, Did you look at this, here’s the data, did you consider this? But ultimately, if your groups aren’t ready or aren’t positive and they’re not receptive to it, what that also means is that you have to trust your people and you realize they’re not there yet, and it doesn’t mean never, it just means that at that point, that’s the pulse of your organization at that point, it’s not an time, because again, and if you decide to take that transactional approach and just kind of Ramon the initiative through, you’re showing your people, I don’t trust you, I don’t care about your comfort level, I don’t care about… What else is going on at work that this is more important than you.
And you can’t do that because it’s going to fail because ultimately, I’m guessing just about every single time when you’re going to push something through, you’re going to need all those people in your organization to carry that message and it’s not going to be done with authenticity, so… That’s happened in the past when we’ve looked at certain curriculum changes or structures in our school that we wanted to do, or ways that we were going to support students or teachers, and… I’ll give you an example. So I was really looking at… I’m kind of… I am the devil’s advocate of the College Board and advanced placement. Right now, it’s one of the only games in town to show Advanced Learning and college preparation, but it’s expensive, there’s some flaws with the curriculum, and you’re kind of at the mercy of the college board, and so we’ve been really the last Coos that in the school to looking for more opportunities for dual enrollment, because you can collaborate with universities and you’re not tied to a test, you have more opportunities for deeper learning, so with that being said, we were trying to move away from Advanced Placement, English verse seniors and move entirely to polar Ting and our community of teachers just…
They didn’t get it, they didn’t like it. Only one or two teachers had the special degree to teach it, they felt like, I don’t this and it’s comfortable, and it’s frustrating and disappointing as it was, because I think our kids were excited. Our parents were excited. We had a table for Ashford, 18 months later, a teacher came forward and said, I think this would be a great idea. Then you’re like, fantastic. I think that you have a great idea instead of a case, it just takes time to let those ideas seep and people… To see how they will respond. There’s other times where maybe that idea doesn’t come back in its original form at all, but ultimately it didn’t matter how badly I wanted or how important I thought it was for our particular community, if the people who actually had to implement it or not ready and didn’t feel supported or excited about it, it was going to fail, and I could have forced those teachers and said, You’re going to teach this anyway, but the message that the kids would have received either directly or indirectly was my teacher doesn’t like to teach this, they don’t feel comfortable teaching it, why do we have to have this new curriculum, and whether they intended that message to be shared or not, kids would have felt it and then he would have failed, and that’s a lot of power to give employees sometimes, and sometimes it’s scary as a leader to say that.
But when you… They then knew my teachers, that point said she actually does trust and validate our ideas, and so when I was bringing up things later on, they said, You know she hurt us on that, maybe we should meet her halfway and figure out a way to implement another idea. And so I think those are just things you have to really consider too, because any time you force an issue, unless you’re the one that’s carrying the message 100%, then you’re taking a risk if your organization doesn’t feel ready to carry that same message
Creator of Culture: That’s very interesting… it’s almost reminds me of a proof of concept in a way where it takes a good quality initiative that’s successful in proven and to form that trust, then to do the next one in a way, Your insight is gold, and I really appreciate the same… I think there’s a lot of nuggets, and I’m not for one thing out at you, a little curveball, just in one word. Okay, maybe two words. What does culture mean to you?
Dr. Amy Cislak: So the culture is everything. I mean, Culture eats process for breakfast is what I used to tell my teachers all the time is that that it doesn’t matter how great your process is, if you don’t have an outstanding culture, that culture will eat a good process for breakfast. And we say culture is everything.
Creator of Culture: Alright, Amy couldn’t say any better, thank you so much and I look forward to doing more of this with you.
Dr. Amy Cislak: Always a pleasure, thanks.
Dr. Amy Cislak holds a B.A. in English and Linguistics from Boston College, a M.Ed. in Educational Leadership from Northern Arizona University, and a Doctorate in Organizational Leadership from Grand Canyon University. No stranger to innovation, Dr. Cislak actively seeks out and collaborate with business and university leaders in the community and around the country to create strategic partnerships that benefit students. Due in part to these collaborative efforts, she was named Arizona Education Leader Trailblazer of the Year by A for Arizona in 2018, a Southern Arizona 40 under 40 Awardee in 2018, and was the Principal of the Year in Tucson Unified School District in 2017. Dr. Cislak’s dissertation, “Rejecting the Status Quo: A Qualitative Descriptive Study of Arizona Principals in High Achieving Schools,” represents her passion in advocacy and leadership by ensuring that every child has the opportunity to go to an outstanding school.
Dr. Cislak has lead some of the top high schools in the country including University High School and now Tanque Verde High School where outstanding relationships, culture, and community are at the forefront of every decision.