New View EDU Episode 67: Leadership Through Listening

Available November 12, 2024

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We most often focus on how we are educating our students. But how are we also educating our leaders, across every level of our schools? In the Season 7 finale of New View EDU, NAIS President Debra P. Wilson sits down with three education leadership experts from top programs at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Vanderbilt University. They discuss the importance of listening in developing the leaders of the future, and how to help them grow the skills and capacities to meet the evolving challenges of our times.

Nicole FurlongeCarrie GrimesSteve PiltchNicole Furlonge (left), Carrie Grimes (center), and Steve Piltch (right) are seasoned educators who head programs for education leaders and whose careers developed through deep experience in independent schools. They have created a strong collaborative relationship and a shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing educators right now. They begin the conversation by delving into the topic of listening and how it shapes their work.

Nicole talks about the need to develop the ability to listen deeply to one another in order to build relationships, which are at the core of school communities. She theorizes that as our world becomes more digital and more information is easily available to us through impersonal sources, our capacity and patience for truly listening to understand another’s point of view has diminished. Steve agrees, commenting that the decline of our listening skills as a society has fueled political divides and deepened divisions while eroding trust in one another. He says trust is a fundamental need in schools, and that listening is a core leadership skill that’s necessary to get different points of view. 

Carrie raises the value of listening not only to those who are more experienced, but also to those who are just emerging in their leadership. She shares her experiences with hearing the perspectives of young professionals building their careers in education, and how understanding their needs, passions, frustrations, and motivations has shaped her work. Debra poses a question about how, in the era of the emerging four-day work week and other work-life-balance perks within the business world, schools can better respond to the needs of younger educators who may be motivated to stay in our schools but need the kinds of restorative benefits their corporate peers receive. Steve points out that the push for well-being in our schools often seems not to rise to the level of the adults in the building, but that growing our focus on the well-being of faculty and staff can have positive effects on the quality of the student experience as well.

Nicole shares thoughts on helping leaders create restorative practices for themselves that fit into the difficult and fast-paced schedule of a school day, as well as encouragement for schools to purposefully design more sustainable models of leadership. She notes that leadership is not a “solo performance” and that more shared leadership models may help make the jobs more sustainable in the long run. The panelists all discuss how retention, although important, may not be the true end goal—instead, they recommend building a strong ethos within all educators in a school community, creating teachers and leaders who will carry good work with them wherever they go.


Key Questions

Some of the key questions Debra and the panelists explore in this episode include:

  • What is the importance of listening in the work of developing leadership? As we listen to leaders and emerging leaders, what themes and trends do we hear?
  • How can we be responsive to the increasing need for work-life balance and space for well-being in leadership roles?
  • How can we develop leaders across all roles within our school communities, and help create an ethos that they carry with them throughout their careers to uplift the work of all schools?
  • What is the role of a school leader in this moment? How has it changed over the years, and what capacities do we need to strengthen to meet the challenges?

Episode Highlights

  • “So for me, listening, building people's capacity and understanding around listening as a giving audience, as something that you do not because you agree with someone, but because you are giving them the dignity of space to articulate what is on their mind and heart. For me, that is both urgent work, it is important work, but it's also quite joyful work.” (10:51)
  • “Since the pandemic, we've seen every year that there's one quote, ‘crisis,’ after another.  … It used to be that those things were the exception rather than the rule. And I, for one…don't believe that's ever going to happen again. I mean, we're going to find different ways to deal with the issues, but I don't believe you're going to go through a year without something happening outside the realm of your school that's going to have direct impact in one way or another. That even if you're able to take what I'm going to call an unbiased perspective on what happens, you're going to have to deal with the well-being of your community around the given issues.” (17:16)
  • “The research behind this is really powerful, that leaders who carve out intentional time—as little as five minutes a day—will experience more integration and balance in their leadership, better self-regulation in terms of their responsiveness, enhanced self-awareness, improved relationships at work, inner calm and peace. And so I think it's the idea here of just start small. And setting aside a small amount of time every day for mindfulness can have, in the aggregate, a significant impact not only on your own well-being, whether you're leading in a classroom full of first-graders that are bouncing off the walls, or you're in the head's office.” (35:50)

Resource List

Full Transcript

  • Read the full transcript here.

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About Our Guests

Nicole Brittingham Furlonge, Ph.D., is professor and director of the Klingenstein Center, Teachers College at Columbia University. She also serves as an instructor in the narrative medicine program at Columbia Medical School and is co-founder of LEARNS Collaborative, a catalyzer for human-centered, equitable, and sustainable work in organizations. A first-generation college student, Nicole earned her Ph.D. and B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.A. from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining the Klingenstein Center, she served as director of teaching and learning at the Holderness School (NH). Nicole’s book Race Sounds: The Art of Listening in African American Literature (University of Iowa Press) demonstrates listening as an essential interpretive and civic act and uses literary and other cultural texts as case studies. Her research examines intersections between listening, systems thinking, cognitive science, belonging, and teaching and leading. She is working on several book projects: the first, titled Citizen Listener, considers listening as an essential democratic practice; the second, How We Listen, amplifies listening practices that are active in schools; the third, Unsealed, is a cultural memoir that explores adoption, race, and class in 1970s New England. 

Carrie Grimes is professor at Peabody College at Vanderbilt University and also serves as director of the school’s independent school leadership master's program. She completed her Ed.D. in leadership and learning in organizations at Vanderbilt, and her research focuses on promoting leadership retention and leadership pipelines. Carrie's career has been centered in education leadership, including roles in administration, teaching, counseling, and institutional advancement in schools and programs in New York, California, and Maryland. Throughout her career, she has focused on community building and imaginative problem solving across a wide range of stakeholder groups including toddlers through young adults, parents, adult learners, donors and alumni. Carrie has a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a M.A. in applied psychology from New York University.

Steve Piltch, Ed.D., is the director of the school leadership program at the University of Penn Graduate School of Education. Previously, he served as head of school for 27 years at the Shipley School (PA), a pre-K–12 independent day school. Committed to collaborative learning, good governance, and the well-being of students and others, Steve has served on the boards of charter and independent schools as well as other nonprofits dedicated to the growth and healthy development of students and adults. Currently, he serves on the boards of Young Scholars Charter School, Dream Camp, SpeakUp!, Minding Your Mind, and Children’s Literacy Initiative. Steve received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Williams College and later worked at Choate Rosemary Hall (CT) as a teacher, coach, adviser, and dean. He later pursued graduate and doctoral studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, taught in the Newton Public Schools, and served as assistant director of athletics at Harvard.