Lead With Love, Not Fear: People Strategy, Talent Systems, and Rebuilding a Career in K-12 Education (with Sean Precious)
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01:06:19
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When Sean Precious was thirteen, he finally told his father what middle school had been like: he was bullied, picked on for his last name, and struggling to make friends. His father told him that everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time. He did not understand it then, but he believes it planted the humility that has shaped how he leads ever since.
In this episode of Ronderings, Sean Precious, chief academic officer of Together4Schools, a consulting firm that coaches leaders and helps school districts, charter networks and state education departments carry out their plans, talks about people strategy in K-12 education, why becoming a manager does not make anyone good at managing people, and leading from love instead of fear.
He began his career as a teacher through Teach For America, led a school in Washington, DC, supervised principals in Denver Public Schools, served as charter authorizer for Chicago Public Schools, and most recently was interim chief people officer at Alliance College-Ready in Los Angeles. Along the way he has watched systems fill vacancies without a talent strategy, promote strong teachers and coaches into management without teaching them to hold a one-on-one, and blame downhill, from state departments to districts to principals to teachers.
He is just as candid about his own career. After his role as an assistant superintendent was eliminated, hiring managers told him more than once that they had wanted to offer him the job, but he had bombed the interview. He paid for coaching he did not want, and he made a list of 100 people from LinkedIn and asked each of them for advice, conversations that led to his first three clients.
His Rondering is to stop thinking you have to have all the answers, and to remember that there is a human at the end of every decision, every Google Doc and every email.
Chapters:
(01:46) - Teach For America's 35th anniversary summit and Ron's paternity leave
(02:42) - Principal for a Day through Pencil, and Ron's face on popsicle sticks
(03:48) - Respect and humility, the Teach For America values Sean still carries
(07:21) - From principal to principal manager and assistant superintendent
(08:37) - Talent systems, and culture as what people repeatedly experience
(10:45) - Interim chief people officer at Alliance College-Ready, and NAEP growth in DC and Denver
(12:05) - A rare career across district and charter schools
(13:44) - Falling enrollment, tighter funding and cuts to talent teams
(15:13) - State education departments, from Bluebonnet in Texas to early literacy in Mississippi
(17:10) - The most generationally diverse workforce, with no talent strategy
(18:45) - Filling vacancies instead of building strong people managers
(20:47) - Instructional leadership versus people leadership
(24:05) - Promoted into management without learning to run a one-on-one
(24:44) - The classroom teacher as a leader of others
(25:53) - A high school swim team and respect for others
(26:56) - Bullied in middle school, and his father's advice at 13
(29:34) - Hiding his sexuality until he was 32, and learning to read a room
(31:27) - Leading teams at 25 on Teach For America's staff
(32:53) - Fear tactics, pressure on principals and turnover at every level
(34:48) - From 15 candidates for every principal vacancy to empty pipelines
(35:51) - Questions anyone can ask about where HR sits
Sean Precious is an education leader, executive coach, and strategist whose career has spanned classrooms, schools, districts, and organizational leadership.
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Episode 119
