A New Generation of Growth and Evaluation Part II
Estimated Reading Time: 20-22 min
In part I of this article series, I made the case for a different mindset and belief structure forming a foundation to re-imagine these systems and structures. If you have not read that article, you should start there.
We like to think that we can think our way into new behaviors. But we don’t. The overwhelming majority of our thinking is unconscious, and this type of thinking, often characterized as fast, automatic, parallel, and high capacity, is happening without our permission.
In contrast, conscious thinking is characterized as slow, attention-demanding, deliberate, and low capacity. Experts estimate that the divide is not close, with up to 95% of our thinking being unconscious. A new generation of growth and evaluation must grapple with this reality.
We don’t think differently - then act differently. We act differently - then our thinking evolves. Like all of evolution, this happens slowly for adults. Our patterns are etched over time with idiosyncrasies, and they act as bumpers to keep us in the lane traveled before. So, when we design a new generation of systems and structures, we need to prioritize acting differently first, even as our old ideas, belief structures, and patterns of thought persist. If done well, it will feel uncomfortable - as most learning does.
The Breakup
Before we design new central structures, we must break up with the old structures that are unconsciously recycled in most schools. Below is an emerging list of things purposefully left out of a new structure:
Rubrics as an assessment or communication tool of “good ________ (teaching, leadership, etc.)”
Administrator-Driven Observations where leaders dole out praise, suggestions, or critique
Scores or checklists that serve as proof of process-based compliance
Admin write-ups (summaries of growth or vehicles to deliver judgment of performance)
Spreadsheets, graphs, checklists, Google Docs, or any piece of technology aimed to ensure uniformity in how we capture growth or performance.
Systems or structures that separate growth from evaluation
For some readers, I have just listed the central structures in your school’s current system. Most of the time and energy in our current systems is wrapped up in ensuring we are doing these steps, not spent wondering whether or not we are gaining anything from the completion of these steps. Many of you may be reading this knowing that your school uses your current system barely, or with fraying fidelity. Many schools I work with stopped using their system in 2020 during Covid, and have struggled to re-start this work. I am choosing to see this as our opportunity to design something new. You may be embroiled in high stakes conversations where faculty say, “we cannot grow if the person helping us is also evaluating us.” This is often translated as, “I am afraid that I will be judged unfairly, and I won’t have control over how I am seen and perceived by the system.” This leads to hoop jumping behavior, and I describe this as performing growth for an administrative audience - not growing. We are pretending to engage for a variety of reasons. We perform to keep our job, to gain approval, to gain control, to feel competent, to avoid conflict or rock the boat. We are playing a game, and nobody seems to know who is making the rules.
This highlights a core challenge for most school evaluation and growth systems. They lack two essential ingredients:
Ingredient #1: Agency - Loosely defined as the ability to act intentionally - to be the cause of effects and not just shaped by forces outside of self.
Ingredient #2: Simplicity - Most evaluation and growth systems are designed by thoughtful people, however, they are impossible for a normal human to implement. They are far too complicated, time intensive, and it is impossible for school leaders to use them at the level of fidelity required to produce the results promised - full stop.
Central Structures of a New System of Growth and Evaluation:
The Three Ways of Being: In this new system, we have identified three different ways of being that anyone using the system could easily be observed doing as this work unfolds throughout a year:
Exploration/Truth-Seeking: Trying to understand reality, ours and others, is a core part of any design process, and as Seth Godin has said, “We don’t need more data, we need more understanding.” Much of what we do in our current systems is rooted in a deep lack of understanding, and in a new system, exploring together is a primary mode of being. Adichie famously highlighted “The Danger of a Single Story,” and this way of being is meant to capture the enormous capacity we all have to be curious. All learning rooted in agency starts with curiosity. Seeking truth is not something you accomplish, document, or measure; it is a way of being. In practice, it means asking better questions and delaying the desire to solve without sufficient work to understand the nuance and complexity present in all adult learning journeys.
Acting/Experimenting: Try it. Do it. See what happens. When you remove judgment, it opens up play space. Call it a sandbox or an experiment or call it whatever you want, but the core idea is that we need to spend way more time experimenting as adults. Right now, in 2025, there are so many adults that have strong opinions about things they know nothing about experientially. Recently, I asked an entire board to use ChatGPT/Perplexity during a board meeting, and 100% of the board had a strong opinion about it before we started. Upon investigation, only about 33% of the board had actually ever used a large language model AI chatbot. Learning is a verb. At L+D, we sometimes call this build to think, a concept clearly in contrast with talking to think or just thinking without ever testing our thinking in the world outside of our brain.
Reflecting: We know reflection is essential to learning, and we almost never make time for it. Reflection is a central structure at L+D. Our first program, The Santa Fe Seminar, is built around doing the inner work of leadership. We must structure time in our work life to deeply disconnect from the outer world and connect back to ourselves. We need time to unpack the experiences and understanding we are building in the first two ways of being. The deep and quiet space needed to reflect is not easily found in a school. Educators are prime targets for parents, colleagues and students to project their fear and anxiety onto. All day long we hold our own emotions and those of others underneath the surface. Growth only happens when we consciously mine our depth and actively reflect on what is ours and what is just residue we have stuck to us. The emotions that are ours need to be felt deeply and converted into meaning. This takes time, silence, and a few other ingredients that only you know because they are unique to you.
The 1 on 1 Conversation: The central building block of what a supervisor does with someone they supervise is talk to them. In the book, “The 9 Lies About Work,” Buckingham and Goodall argue that it is a lie to say people need more feedback at work. They argue that it is connection, often found in attention from supervisors, that helps employees grow. We already talk to people in our current system, but the core shift I am proposing in this new system is that we engage in these conversations differently. Different how? More, more human, less technology, less metrics and judgment, and ultimately, the goal is completely re-imagined. The following is a prototype to make my thinking visible.
Meeting 1: 2-3 Hours over a shared meal (Aug/Sept)
Meeting 2: 1 Hour - No Technology (Nov)
Meeting 3: 1 Hour - No Technology (Jan)
Meeting 4: Shared Experience (Explained Below)
Supervisor Pre-Planning: Supervisor thinks about supervisee for one hour with a scripted video protocol.
Supervisee Pre-Planning: Supervisee watches video reflection in preparation for Meeting 5
Meeting 5: 1 Hour - No Technology (Pre-Contract)
Meeting 6: 2-3 Hours over a shared meal with an option to bring a few other colleagues that have been a part of the growth trajectory.
Generously, this is about 15 hours of attention a year for each person that an administrator supervises. If an administrator supervises 20 people, this is 16% of one’s overall available time if you work 10-hour days, and 20% of your time if you work an 8-hour day. So it is safe to assume that the above structure would take somewhere between 15-20% of your available time. Keep in mind - this structure, in and of itself, is an experiment and a meal can be looked at as a metaphor. Do you really need to do this meeting over a meal? No, of course not, but the metaphor suggests that you must get off campus where we are not tempted by the thousands of potential distractions, and you need to find a venue and space where 100% of your attention is on the person you are supporting. As school leaders, we are experience designers, and we want to design an experience that feels warm and conversational. Our current 1 on 1’s often feel like going to the dentist – and I know we can do better. No offense to my dentist, but I don’t look forward to seeing her.
Prototype Questions for the Initial Meeting:
Why education?
What drives you?
Tell me the story of the best mentor or learning experience in your adult life?
What are your superpowers as a _______ (teacher, leader, etc.)?
How did you get them?
Where do your professional curiosity and the school goals/priorities overlap?
What does support look like to you?
What inspires you?
How does your outside of school life impact you?
Do you have people in your life that love you unconditionally and work to support you when you are struggling?
What does flow look like for you? When do you experience flow or lose a sense of time?
No Technology or Notes from Supervisor: No phones, computers, notes or Google Docs for the supervisor. If the person thinking about their growth and performance wants to take notes, record the conversation, or create artifacts from the meeting, that is their choice, but it should not be required. The pedagogy behind this is that growth and performance is not the work of the supervisor. You are no longer holding someone accountable, you are holding them capable. They are responsible for artifacts of their learning, and this will and should take many forms – including potentially no form at all. What are we worried about? Are we worried we will have no record of their learning or growth? If so, I would argue you are living this reality right now, so there is no way that removing our note taking could make this worse than it is already.
Supervisor Video Protocol: Once a year, this newly imagined system includes an audio protocol where a supervisor is prompted to think about each person they supervise and record themselves thinking out loud responding to prompts. This practice builds in reflection time, and allows a supervisor to wonder out loud about the work of the people they supervise. Sample prompts:
If my job was to be this employee’s hype person, what would I say or highlight?
What am I curious about when I think about this person and their work?
When I think of the top three priorities in this person’s work, what am I thinking about?
Supervisee Audio Protocol: As someone being supervised, you are able to listen to your supervisor think about you and your work, and you then work through a series of reflections that help to guide your listening and reflection. You could even record yourself responding and become audio pen pals.
Sample prompts:
When I listened to the recording, what were my feelings?
When I listened, what areas did I want to have more conversation about?
Your solo retreat: At least once a year, each employee is invited to spend a full day reflecting on their work alone. This could be a full day in March or it could be two half days throughout the year. We recommend that this work is analog - technology free - with access to nature - and of course, at L+D we are creating tools that schools can use for this paramount allocation of time to think. Think of this as a mini sabbatical, and we recommend that schools intentionally design and curate these days in collaboration with the people that will be doing the reflection. Give each person a budget of 100 dollars to ensure they are fed well and hydrated and prepare to be dazzled by educators who will probably try and bring back the change. (That is if change still exists).
Research and Development Project: In this new system, everyone is experimenting and learning. This project can be of any size, and the only requirement is to capture and reflect on the things you are experimenting with. For some faculty, this could be the fourteen small experiments they did throughout the year, and for others it might be one larger experiment.
Each project has a simple structure:
What am I curious about?
Why do I care or how does it relate to my job?
What am I going to do to research and experiment with my curiosity?
How will I reflect on my work?
How will I share my learning?
Sharing and Reflection: Each school that takes the risk to design this new set of structures will commit to creating points in the year where faculty, staff, admin, and students are allowed to share learning with each other. There are no rubrics, no grades, no assessment - just sharing what you are learning, why it matters to you, and how it informs your work at school. The goal should always be to let the needs of the people learning drive the way the sharing works. Some adults love to present their learning with an audience, and that is great. Some adults would rather present in a smaller group or 1 on 1. The key to this structure is to keep the format and output open and flexible and allow the projects and people to dictate the best format to share. This structure is also the place for faculty or staff to share learning from outside PD/workshops they attend or to even run mini-workshops on topics that they are excited to share. It is important to note that learning is universal in a school community – everyone does it, and anyone can share it.
For any sharing and reflection, it is the job of the supervisee (the learner) to collect artifacts that represent or are the direct result of learning. These artifacts are meant to tell a story, not make a case or prove competence. When a participant asks, "How many artifacts do I need?" Enjoy being able to respond with, "How many do you have?" You need what you have - that is how learning works.
In summary, the entire system and the central structures are simple:
The ingredients are:
Agency and Simplicity
The Structures are:
The 1 on 1 Conversation (Re-Imagined)
An R+D Experiment
The Solo Retreat
The Venue to Share Learning
What about Evaluation?
Where is the grade? Where is the summative write up? Where is the rubric showing the areas one can improve? Where is the document that helps an organization hold people accountable?
They are gone. They are not needed.
Teaching isn’t to be graded by inaccurate and subjective tools wielded by subjective and inaccurate assessors. These structures and tools are a barrier to learning, and a barrier to growth. Much of what we do currently undermines our intentions, and this is the core insight that is driving my work in this area. We don’t need to evaluate teachers beyond the basics, and the basics don’t require complex systems to see and address. If you worry that in this system, we will allow bad behavior and have a low bar, I would suggest this is our current lived reality. While we do sometimes avoid dealing with problems because we lack skills to have critical conversations, the vast majority of problems with growth and evaluation systems reported by those of you in schools is our inability to create systems and structures that engage the overwhelming majority of educators in our organizations who want to learn and grow.
Independent schools are not filled with struggling teachers. They are filled with amazing teachers that are not being engaged in ways that target agency and simplicity. The unmet need is best personified by the 11th-year teacher who hasn’t had any attention from an administrator in 4 years. They are doing fine, and we don’t need to watch them to ensure there isn’t a problem. They are feeling unseen, uncared about, and their growth stagnates because they are human and they need connection and attention from leaders trained to listen deeply and spend their limited and valuable time joining them as they explore, experiment, and reflect without an agenda to sort or judge them.
Am I an excellent teacher they might be wondering? The real answer is that this question is the wrong question. Anyone that has taught or worked as a school leader long enough knows that the question is far too simple for what it is trying to address. Teaching can’t be measured on a 4 point scale, nor should it. I am embarrassed that I have participated in this overtly obtuse practice, and I even, at one point, wanted a good grade. Luckily, I taught for almost twenty years, and I learned experientially that I was both a good and bad teacher. Sometimes I found a way to be both at the same time, and I learned that regardless of the answer on any given day, I had the ability to learn from both realities. I can learn from things I do well, and I can learn from my mistakes, and it is always my choice to learn. I have the agency now, and I am not giving it back.
Part III Preview: In November, I will close this line of inquiry with an exploration of how this work is, at its roots, culture work. If we build a new system and new structures, but we don’t work to evolve our culture, we will live out the line from Peter Drucker, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Peter Drucker said strategy, but I think he would agree that culture eats many things for breakfast. As I stated in the opening article, I am looking to form a cohort of schools that want to do this work next year, both individually re-imaging these systems in their school but also joining together at times to share their learning with each other and cheer each other on. If you want to explore this, I would love to talk to you.
Learning is a universal human need, and I would like to leave you with a video to watch. When you watch this video, ask yourself why this person is doing what they are doing? Why are they putting themselves through what it takes to learn? Teaching is hard, skateboarding is hard – they both require skin in the game and a willingness to look at performance as a never-ending search for something that transcends grades and scores. The person in this video is probably in your school, and he may feel like the learning he does after school doesn't count -- does learning mean less if we don't measure it?
As we explore this shift in the way we design our systems and structures, I hope the answer you imagine is rooted in a deep and expansive curiosity about why human beings do what they do. Not because they are told, not because they are rewarded with approval, not for money or fame or clout - but for the simple and profound experience of learning itself. To learn is to be human, and we are capable and connected to each other in this universal human pursuit.
