The First Follower

Often when people learn about self-regulation, they begin this journey with a goal of helping others – students in their class, their own children – but what ends up happening is that self-reg impacts their own life as well. When we start to see others with soft eyes, we turn that same lens on ourselves.  Instead of chastising our own lack of self-control and willpower, we ask ourselves “Why this behaviour and why now?”

And once we realize what a profound impact self-regulation is having on our lives and our relationships with others, we want to share self-reg with everyone!!! Principals want to share it with their staff, teachers want to share it with colleagues and parents want to share it with other parents.

At the Self-Regulation Summer Symposium, Catherin Lethbridge spoke about this during her presentation: “From a single tweet to system-wide implementation….lessons learned.”  In her work as a school administrator, she fundamentally believed that the well-being of students is directly linked to the well-being of the adults in the building. She knew that if self-regulation was to take hold in her school (and later across the entire district) that she had to begin with the adults. Adults are the ones who help students by co-regulating, and you can’t help someone else if you are dysregulated yourself.

But she also knew that to shift the paradigm from behaviour management to self-regulation, she had to issue an invitation, not a demand. She believed that this type of paradigm shift would occur, not as the result of a top-down mandate, but by creating a group of people who willing to join in the learning.

Catherin shared this video of The First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy to illustrate her point:

As a leader who is looking to share a vision, whether that vision is self-regulation, inquiry based learning, or some other shift in thinking and practice, we don’t need management to mandate everyone on board.  Mandates often lead to superficial implementation, not long-lasting, deep implementation. We need to create invitations and find those first followers, who will then help to create a space where others feel safe to join.

When our board introduced Interactive White Boards many years ago, we began with four primary teachers who didn't have a lot of technology experience but who accepted an invitation to be part of this project. Initially they received support from Doug Peterson, myself and other members of our program department, but quickly they took ownership of their own professional learning. Just like the self-reg learners, these four teachers, our first followers, became advocates and started offering workshops in our board and across the region to share their enthusiasm about IWBs as a powerful teaching and learning tool.

Think about your vision for change. Who are the people inside and outside of your school, your community or your organization?  How are they engaged in the work? Might some of them be your first followers?