How To Turn Pressure Into A Diamond

A surprise meetup at NCASA turns into a deep dive on what values based leadership looks like when you actually practice it every day. We sit down with Gina Watts, VP of U.S. Student Transformation at Growing Leaders, and Molly from the student transformation team, to talk about the Maxwell Leadership principles behind their work and why those principles still matter in real schools with real constraints.

Website: spotlight4success.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to Spotlight for Success with American Book Company. I'm your host, Derek Mantozi, and we're here at NCASA in North Carolina. And I'm here with our guest, Molly and Gina. Gina. And could you guys tell us a little bit about yourselves?

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Sure. So my name is Gina Watts, and I serve as vice president of U.S. Student Transformation for Growing Leaders. Growing Leaders is a company powered by Maxwell Leadership Foundation, as in John Maxwell. If you don't know who that is, he wrote a lot of leadership books. Like 936? About to come out with another one. Yeah. Best New York Times bestselling author. He's also done a lot more than that, but that's what most of the people remember and know him for.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Yeah. And here's here's Molly. Hey, I'm Molly. I get to work uh with Gina on our student uh transformation team working in events, so creating experiences for both students and school administrators and all the above. So yep, yeah, glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Yes, we're glad to have you here. And uh I just want to say that this is these are very special guests because Gina actually made the program that I learned most of the skills I use today from Maxwell Leadership, their youth program. So it's just it's really cool to finally meet her.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

And we didn't even know you were here.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

We didn't, I didn't know she was here. Not even planned, not even. This is organic right here.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Seriously.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

This is really crazy. And she works with my mom. She saw her, what, last week?

SPEAKER_02 1:29

I did. Gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

Gina’s Maxwell Journey And Integrity

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Hug and kiss on the cheek. You heard that. This is not planned at all. This is just the universe is working. So, anyways, um, tell us how you use the Maxwell skills in your everyday life.

Making Values Simple With Images

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Yeah, oh, that's a good question. So do you want me, you want to go first? Do you want me to give you something big? Oh, yeah. Oh, I knew she was gonna make me do that. Okay, so um, well, let me tell you, can I tell you a brief, brief little thing? So 13 years ago, I was introduced to what's called the Maxwell Leadership Certification. And um, I was actually teaching at a Big Ten school, uh, Penn State University. Yeah. And um I was like, I loved my job, but I didn't, I I like needed I needed something else. I needn't need another degree, I didn't need another training, I needed like something to help me connect the dots, right? I was often called upon for leadership, I was well trusted. I was like 26-ishish at the maybe I was a little bit no, I was probably like about 32 at the time. I know you can't believe I'm older than that right now. But anyways, I was about 32 at the time, and I I said, um, all right, let me find, let me find what I'm looking for. So I happened upon this program. Now I knew who John Maxwell was. He's an often called upon leader. Um, he's an amazing, amazing human being and so humble and cares so deeply about individuals in our world. And so, anyway, so I I found this certification and I went to this event and I was overwhelmed in the most wonderful way. And and it gave me what I needed, which was these values-based leadership principles that sometimes we kind of touch on in our everyday lives, but we don't necessarily have it in a practical way where we say, like, this is what initiative looks like, or this is what um responsibility is, or this is how you lead well. Um, and he knows how to do that effortlessly. And so um that's when my journey started with him like 13 years ago. I now am on staff working um under our nonprofit, and um so in my everyday life, what I'm what I deeply value is leading the team that I'm gifted to lead and helping them see how what what resources we have, what services we provide, we adopt and we lead that out every day. Like that we are people of integrity, and integrity means we say what we do and we do what we say. So, like if we say we're gonna do something, we deliver it in the manner that we commit it to, and we do that day in and day out. And so my job is to make sure that those folks feel seen, loved, and valued, and then they get to live out these leadership values every day. So that's probably how I do it. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. That's nice. That was so long. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

No, it's so true because uh I'm on Gina's team, like I said, and she leads so well through all the principles. Um what I was thinking about is what I value so much and what I still live by and use in my everyday is how we take complex and challenging and not difficult but complex concepts, uh like values, and make them easy to learn for students, but also for myself. We'd have a we use images to teach those leadership principles to make it easier to digest and understand and and learn and remember. One of our one of my favorites uh we use for pressure and like challenging situations, we use a diamond as an example. Diamond's something beautiful, but it comes through pressure and time. And so it's just a reminder of like the pressure in the situation you're in, um, through time, it could turn into a diamond. But if you allow it to shatter you, uh it won't be beautiful. So I think that's just like a complex idea of like pressure. How do we like put that into like how can we make this come into like a beautiful outcome? Um, but through the the image of a diamond makes it easy to like grasp and understand. So that's a great example.

Serving NCASA With I Lead Curriculum

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Awesome. And another thing I want to ask you guys is how do you use these Maxwell skills inside of the um NCASA community?

Building School Culture With I Love This Place

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Yeah. So uh this year we get to be a um uh president circle sponsor um and a part of what we're doing is building relationship. This is our first year at NACASA, so it it we're it's allowing us to build relationship with teachers and teacher leaders and those who care for students uh faithfully day in and day out. Because while we have content um and curriculum to serve students, we also know that uh things can come and go, but like caring for our teachers is actually how it is really a core way of how we can affect the next generation. Um so there's two things we do. One is we have a curriculum, it's called I Lead. Um, and this curriculum is a little bit like what Molly was sharing, is like we take images, and the images have a leadership principle attached to them. Uh, and so young kids from kindergarten through uh 12th grade are sitting in circles. Yes, kindergartners are sitting in circles and they're talking about commitment and initiative and responsibility and forgiveness. And maybe we need adults to do it too. We'll talk to you about that later. Actually, his mom can talk to you about it. But I've heard a lot. So we do we so we're we have those curriculum that tools for the students. Um, and the way that we're serving the educators is there's no lesson planning, there's no like having to create an experience. We do all of that for you so that the students can have these really rich conversations. And then for the for the educators and for the teacher leaders, we're providing professional development and training and caring for them well. And Molly could tell you about like a really a brand new resource that we have. Um one of our um uh authors and uh dynamic speakers just launched uh his new book, and it's one of the things that we're serving um, we're using to serve educators around the country. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Oh yeah, I'd love to share. Great transition. Um but one of our values is um or like our mission is to add value to leaders who multiply value in others, and so that's also something we love to get to do in this community is empower school leaders and administrators and and teacher classroom teachers to add value to their students who then get to turn around and add value to others. Um the resource that Gina was kind of talking about is like like is this new book that uh one of our colleagues wrote. It's called I Love This Place. Um, it comes from a story that a tea a student wrote on the wall of their classroom. Before the walls were being painted, the school was like, You guys can go in and write something on the walls. Um and the student wrote, I love this place in a sharpie, um, which was just a really cool way of looking, stepping back and looking and being like, wow, this student wrote, I love this place, um, but more so this place loves me. Uh and so he wrote this book all about practical ways. Our the author was an educator for 18 years as a band director at a very large uh public school in a district in Atlanta. Um but all about how do you create a culture on your school campus where not only the students love the place but they feel loved. Um, and so through challenges and through overcoming different groups of students or or peers or teachers and school, uh, you know, parents, all the things, how do you connect them together to create a community that's loved and uh loving to their their students? Um and so that's the resource that we have, and that's how we get to we do this through books, through our curriculum, through speaking events, public um professional development.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

Um we have so much fun. Yeah, like as you were talking about that, one of the I I think one of the reasons why Patrick wrote the book, I love this place, is because he is he is one of our culture champions. Yeah. Like he literally every time we have a team meeting or an event, not that everything has to be fun or a game, but he uh creates experiences. And so the man has 200 different virtual games that we play all the time. All the time. And he's like, you know what, we're gonna play a game about name that value. And I'm like, how did you make a game out of our values, right? Like that, because he's thinking about how do we love each other well and how do we love this place, and so he just is a phenomenal um uh presenter, he's a phenomenal um uh teacher, he's a phenomenal author. Um, but we have a very deep roster of people who do that and create memorable, um, unforgettable experiences for leaders around the country. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

That's amazing. I I really love what you guys have to say. It's really inspiring.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Um, do you have any last words for the NCASA community?

SPEAKER_02 10:26

Yeah. Well, we're newbies, but we don't bite. First year. And we uh love serving educators and the next generation. It is our deep passion. You're talking to two ladies here who not only uh get paid by profession to do it, but spend significant amount of time volunteering in our local communities to add value to the next generation. Um we know that our next generation are leaders of now and not tomorrow. And we need to take action and care for um our young people in ways that maybe we wish we would have had.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Yeah, that's what I would say. I'd say we're here to serve you. Um, we're here to serve the community here in North Carolina, and so we're really honored to be here, and neither of us are from here, and so um we want to empower you guys. But also if you have any good restaurant recommendations, we'll take you up on that. We're foodies.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

So and uh one last thing. Um where can we find out more about um the Maxwell Leadership Program?

SPEAKER_02 11:29

Yeah, you can actually go. I know it's confusing because I we gave you two names, but you can go to growingleaders.com. That's g-r-o-w-in-g L E A D-E-R-S.com.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Great. Well, there you have it. Go to growingleaders.com, find out more about what they do. They do great work, and I'm an attestament to that. They have to know you. They taught me well, so I would highly recommend checking them out. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you guys for coming on.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

Thank you. Thank you.