May 2015
Ducks to Eagle School Outline
Here is a fairly detailed outline of my thoughts regarding the story about Don’t Send Your Ducks to Eagle
School.
After recapping that leadership is influence, nothing more nothing less I will move into this discussion:
In leadership there is what John Maxwell calls 21 Irrefutable Laws. He says that if you’ll follow these,
people will follow you. In his book by the same name, he tells that Law #1 is the Law of the Lid. This law
simply states that you can’t succeed past your ability to influence ie lead.
Imagine holding your left hand in the air about shoulder high. This is your ability to influence others. All
of your content knowledge and pedagogy lives below your left hand. You can increase it and increase it,
but if you are unable to influence folks with it than you hit your leadership lid.
You have an effectiveness lid on your life, school, work, everything and that lid is leadership.
No individual, company, school… has ever out succeeded its leadership.
For educators in particular the problem is that we are all schooled in content and pedagogy, but not in
leadership.
So we are together to do this. The best news is that you can raise your leadership lid.
Raising your leadership lid will benefit you with family, at work, and as a member of your community. A
virtual 3-fer hee hee.
So let’s bring this to life with a story. I’m going to share with you a story Charles Swindoll tells in his
book Growing Stronger in the Seasons of Life. As you are listening to the story, jot down some =notes
about how this story relates to your classroom and to your school or if you serve at the district level,
your district.
At the end of the story, We’ll talk about these relationships and then use this to take your leadership lid
up a notch.
** Story time**
Once upon a time, the animals decided they should do something meaningful to meet the problems of
the new world. So they organized a school.
They adopted an activity curriculum of running, climbing, swimming, and flying. To make it easier to
administer all the animals took all the subjects.
The duck was excellent in swimming. In fact, he was better than his instructor was! However, he made
only passing grades in flying, and was very poor in running. Since he was so slow in running, he had to
drop swimming and stay after school to practice running. This caused his webbed feet to be badly worn
so he became only average in swimming. But “average” was quite acceptable, therefore nobody worried
about it- except the duck.
The rabbit started at the top of his class in running, but developed a nervous twitch in his leg muscles
because he had so much makeup work to do in swimming.
The squirrel was excellent in climbing, but he encountered constant frustration in flying class because
his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of from the treetop down. He developed
“charley horses” from overexertion, so he only got a “C” in climbing and a “D” in running.
The eagle was a problem child and was severely disciplined for being a non-conformist. In climbing
classes, he beat all the other to the top but insisted on using his own way of getting there!
** end story time**
Discuss some of the ways this story relates to our classrooms, our schools, and our districts.
Audience participation and we record answers on 3 separate charts in the room.
We clearly recognize some problems with the model and unfortunately some of these problems exist in
our classrooms, schools, and districts.
Many of these issues are wrapped up down here in the content and pedagogy. (model with left hand as
leadership lid, right hand motion shows area below left hand)
To make a greater impact- to rise higher and to lift others to their greatest potential, we have to work
on our leadership lid.
As a leader you have to have followers, right? Otherwise if you’re leading the charge up the summit but
no one is following behind, you’re really just taking a walk- and a lonely one at that.
Let’s step back for a moment and look at the concept of the team or followers. It is important to
understand something about teams in order to raise your leadership lid. Your team could be your
students, your colleagues, your principals… At home your team may be your kids, husband, parents…
Here’s what we know about teams. In his book 17 Indisputable Laws of Teams, John Maxwell outlines
Law #1 as the Law of the Niche. It says, “All players have a place where they add the most value.”
Getting the right players in the right places on the team increases individual and team effectiveness.
Her are our 2 key point to this law. 1. Successful people have discovered their niche. *Okay, successful
folks, have you discovered your niche? Do you know where/how you add the most value? The second
key to the law of the niche is that successful leaders help their people discover theirs.
If you’ve already discovered yours it’s time to think about how do you help your team members discover
theirs?
It is stepping up your game of leadership into helping others discover their niche- the place where THEY
add the most value that will begin to change what happens when we send our ducks to eagle school.
The place to start within ourselves is with these 4 leadership skills/laws:
1. Connection-Leaders touch a heart before they ask for a hand. (old saying- no one cares how
much you know until they know how much you care)
2. The Big Mo-Momentum is a leader’s best friend. (visual of the old merry-go-round with the
metal bars)
3. Vision Casting4. Navigation- Anyone can steer the ship, but it takes a leader to chart the course.
These are the tools that we sharpen to raise our lid so our influence blossoms. So when we go marching
up the hill we have folks taking that journey with us. We are not just out for a walk.
We take our 5, 6, 7… year olds along and in our schools we take along the teachers, the cleaning crew,
the café workers, the office staff.
If we are all working toward the goal of helping children reach their highest potential then we have to
raise our leadership lids- our ability to take others on the journey.
 End of presentation—
From here I’m thinking I’ll set up the strength evaluation. I’ll give the general directions on how to
complete it. Then we break.
When folks come to you from the break, I think it would work well to tie up any final thoughts on the
Ducks to Eagle School exercise. There may be things people didn’t want to say to the whole group or
there may be things that need clarification or that the various people in your group saw things
differently or during break heard someone say something that sparked a new idea.
During break I think we (me and y’all) should be listening for these comments so that we can expand the
thinking in the mastermind groups.
As you close up that conversation, re-introduce the strength evaluation tool. Give participants time to
complete this on their own. We will ask for a quiet room at this time. When your whole group is finished
begin the discussion about what folks learned about themselves. I slated 10 minutes per person for this
in a mastermind setting (one person talks uninterrupted, one person takes notes) I think people may
struggle here- or not- but if they do, then I think a good thing to do would be to ask the group to
brainstorm ideas for one of the persons areas to work on OR for the person to list and celebrate what
makes them successful in one of their areas of strength. *need your thoughts here*
At the end of this time, you will have the handout of Appendix B which is 21 Laws Growth Guide to give
to each participant. Give them a moment to search out which Laws they are working on, which are their
strengths… we will have onsite many of the books mentioned in this handout so you can tell them that
during lunch they can look over the book table and purchase some of the resources they need if they
want to.