SCHOOL CULTURE

Striking a fire inside

From working as a teacher in juvenile corrections to coaching leaders and teams through major cultural change, Brian Fretwell says it’s all about finding the fire that everybody has inside, and throwing gasoline on it. He chats to Chelsea Channing about his early days working with at-risk youth, how a 15-year-old meth addict shaped his views on leadership and how school leaders can support their teams through the uncertain times ahead.

So Brian, you started your career as a teacher in a juvenile corrections facility, can you tell us a bit about that role and what it involved?

Teaching contracts usually go fall through spring and I graduated in December, so there were no real teaching contracts available. I worked in a youth shelter for about three or four months, and then I applied for a job as a teacher in a corrections facili ty and I didn’t know much about it. But essentially the kids are there for 24 hours, seven days a week, incarcerated six to nine months or longer. During the day they have classes, but in the classroom you might have a 12-year-old and a 19-year-old and all points in between, and then different learning abili ties and styles, obviously mental health issues, and thin gs of that nature. But there’s a group of 13 and you give them everywhere from their general edu cation diploma, to some of them still going to high sc hool, you’re managing the learning, but you’re also managing their behavioural change and their

program, which really, the education tends to actually take a bit of a second seat to what they call their ‘program development’, whether that’s getting off drugs, or re-entering the community.

And what was it that made you take on that role? Did you just think ‘I’ll give it a go’?

It was timing, but it was also the fact that I had worked in an at-risk youth home, so it was kids that had been in correc tions that were going back out and my job there was not teaching, it was pure program, helping them process c ognitive behavioural change, all of the psychology, and I actually kind of fell in love with that par t. Juvenile corrections just allowed me to kind of extend that and get really immersed into the behavioural change and psychology part of edu cation at the time, not knowing it would be something that would be part of what I do for the rest of my life.

How would you say the role shaped your views on leadership?

It was really the idea that the potential for change is in anybody. As was in my TED talk, you can come in with the best idea, you can come up with the best solution, you can know how to solve the individ ual’s problem, but until they’re on board, none of that matters. And you trying to solve their problem or trying to come up with their answer is actually more about you and less about them. For me, it was in those roles, really bringing the person out in that

whole kind of ‘educo’ philosophy. Really it shaped my view on leadership today, that it isn’t about set ting a direction or like I say a lot of times, it’s not a bout providing a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s striking a fire inside someone so that they can illu minate whatever path they’re going on, on their own. You realise working in juvenile corrections that you can get the kid to comply in front of you, but what you’re really trying to do is prepare that child to re-enter their community. And so they need to have the skills, the strength and abilities on their own. And to do that, you have to be able to pull it from them, you have to be able to let them see their strength, let them see the things that they do well and grow the belief in themselves, and then all of the other stuff about direction and strategy have a place to become much more relevant.

You gave a TEDx talk in 2018 called ‘What a 15-year-old meth addict taught me about leadership’. It has since had more

than two million views. Did you expect it to have such an impact?

(Laughs) no. First of all, I hope it’s had an impact. I’m not sure views and impact are the same. But we joked that there’d be somewhere between 2000 and 5000, and that would just be most ly my friends and family re-clicking on it to help me out. So no, we had no expectation of that and quite honestly, every time I remember when I got to 10,000, and then 20,000 and 100,000 and I just thought, ‘wow, this is interesting’, and all of a sudden it really took off.

“...it’s not about providing a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s striking a fire inside someone so that they can illuminate whatever path they’re going on...”

For those who haven’t seen it, can you tell us a bit about the talk?

Yeah, the talk we designed as a story, the story of a kid I was working with in juvenile corrections at the time. It’s also a similar story to many instanc es I had in juvenile corrections. There was one kid N athan, who sticks in my head pretty specifically, and I was there trying to tell him what to do, try ing to tell him where to go, and Sal, another individual that worked with me at the time, who really brought me on to this idea of using questions and the concept of an ‘educo’, which is Latin for ‘to extract from’ or ‘draw without’, which coinci dentally is the Latin root of the word ‘education’. And so the talk is really about the process and how that changed the interaction and as much as it allowed him to say something new, it also allowed me to change my view on him. And so it was this kid’s confidence, this kid’s ability to step into those questions that made me realise my own shortcoming, that there’s a lot to be done, and a lot more that the individual in front of you brings that needs to be utilised, and a lot less of your own expertise that really makes the difference.

You now work as a leadership consultant and coach, is that right?

I do a lot of coaching right now and [have] worked primarily for the last 10 years in larger culture change specific to neuroscience, psychology and behaviour change. Right now a lot of the coach ing and consulting I do is really about, ‘how do we find the fire inside and make it bigger?’. Loosely defined we talk about it as intuition, we talk about it as the core of an individual or even the core of a group, being able to lead the way as opposed to trying to change them...

What made you go into this line of work?

Well, I spent a lot of time speaking and facilitating, and I always wanted to do facilitations, perhaps just naturally being a teacher. But it was also , when I left juvenile corrections, I knew that most of the issues that we’re seeing that lead kids to those areas, actually are structural issues that you can see out in the workplace. You know, they’re children of parents that are burnt out, overworked, frustrated, angry, all these other things, from environments that don’t support life. And then that gets handed down to the child and you see larger behavioural things, and by the time

the kid is in juvenile corrections, statistically it’s too late, 70 per cent of them are going to be coming back.

Tell me about some of the work you’ve done with companies and individuals around ‘culture change’.

So when we look at culture change, you can then categorise different types of culture. So I’ve done a lot of work in ‘safety culture’, I’ve done a lot of work in ‘leadership culture’, even diver sity, like unconscious biases and those sorts of thin gs. Those are all different cultural change initiatives specific to a target area. The bulk of my

“... even if you’re doing a large scale change, like big, big transformation, you’re actually generally only changing 10 to 20 per cent in the big changes.”

[w ork] has been with safety, actually starting out I used to work for a company in Brisbane, they’re called Sentis, and they do a lot of work in the heavy industries, doing brain-based safety cul ture change. So a lot of the work I’ve done is with them and with other companies, really going in and analysing ‘what is the current culture? What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses?’ And then ‘how can we use the core of that culture to move it more in line with what it is they’re look ing to develop from an outcome standpoint?’ So the culture is the input, the habits, behaviours, the thoughts and feelings of a collective, and you can look at that and make a pretty good ‘guesstimate’ of what outcomes are going to be created fr om those. And so, if there’s different outcomes they want to be created, then we go through facilitation, through process and different controls and w e try to help them guide it into a different direction, primarily by learning how to bring the better par ts of the culture out.

Are there any projects which stand out in your memory?

I’m always fascinated, especially in team culture, when you can get a really strong cultural indicator. For instance, I think I’ve seen this a lot in Australia, especially in the very work-central cultures, where the mateship is really solid. These folks go to work together, they go to the pub together, they consider each other family, and then they use this idea of family actually, against themselves, meaning like, ‘Oh, that’s my best mate over there, I really have their back’. Then you kind of dig a little and say, ‘well, how do you have their back?’ And they’ll say something like, ‘well, they were supposed to be wearing this harness’ or on the leadership side, ‘they’re supposed to be giving time for somebody to talk’ and they’ll just tell you, ‘but they didn’t have time this time, so I made sure nobody found out that they were doing the wrong thing’. So mateship happens to be about protect ing you from getting caught doing something bad as opposed to holding you accountable or helping you do the thing that would help you and everyone. And it’s the same thing with juvenile corrections, gang culture is the same, they have very c lose ties, ‘I will put my life on the line for this

individual, but what we’re going to go and do is actually detrimental to both of us’, as opposed to, ‘I love this person enough to protect and actual ly help them’.

OK, so in cases like that, what kind of advice do you give?

It’s really kind of a process of clarifying the goal. So whether I’m working with a leader to help his team clarify the goal or working with the leader themselves to clarify the goal, it’s really about, what is it that we’re trying to cre ate here? Oftentimes, what they’re actually trying to create, the explicit goal, is actually taken o ver by an implicit goal. So it’s having a really good conversation about what are the values? And what are the goals? And then having a v ery frank conversation about ‘OK, what are the actions to lead there? And what are the thoughts that will then lead to those actions?’ And in that process, essentially, helping them be a better steward of that, or rather for them to be able to say, ‘Oh, you know, this way of thinking that we have isn’t actually taking us to where we want to go’. And in that case, that’s where, while I’m the coach or the consultant, it’s actually about cre ating a container for them so I can take myself out of the process. So it’s not me that’s telling them what they should do or what they should think or how they should go, but helping them create a process where they can see where their own thinking needs improvement or their own behaviour isn’t aligned with what they’re doing, or the goal that they have needs to be changed. And I think really good coaching is about creat ing the skillset in the individuals to be able to do that with each other. Not just by themselves but with each other on a more consistent basis.

For school leaders looking to create a culture shift among their staff, are there any ‘dos or don’ts’, from your experience?

One of my biggest don’ts, is don’t try to change people. And what I mean by that is, leaders inherently come in with this grand new idea, and say ‘ we’re gonna change everything’. And all of a sudden just in that statement, you’ve overloaded the br ains of the individuals on the other side, and you’ve also discounted all of the work they’ve done up until that point, you’ve invalidated all of the effort, all of the inputs, not because you did it on purpose, but because you’ve said ‘we’ve got to change everything and move here’. Well, even if you’re doing a large scale change like big, big transformation, you’re actually generally only changing 10 to 20 per cent in the big changes. The majority of what people do on a daily basis, the majority of their interactions, the majority of even

their effort, is going to either stay the same or just be a little bit modified. And so, we want to really work with the strength that is there, work with the emotions that are there, work with the energy that is there, to then, just as I always call it, ‘find the fire and throw gasoline on the fire’, right? Instead of trying to light a new fire each time, every indi vidual has fire within them, and our job is just to find it, to help grow it so they can see it, and work with them to direct it into the right destination. And I see over and over again, people are just try ing to light new fires for other people. You can’t li ght a fire for somebody else, it’s really just you finding the embers and throwing gasoline on it.

Coronavirus has thrown the whole world into great uncertainty. For schools in Australia, many are in lockdown and trialling full online delivery in a ‘sink or swim’ fashion. What do you see as the role of the leader in such times?

Empathy, empathy, empathy – which I think we see a lot of right now. But then after empathy, transparency. I think the tendency to want to pro vide certainty for your team, for the environment is there, because we have a fundamental, neurobiological need to have certainty, it’s one of your br ain’s primary social needs. But in these environments we don’t have the luxury of providing certainty, what we can do is provide clarity. Clarity and certainty are different. Certainty says I know the way out. Clarity says, I know that we have the tools, I know that we have the strength, I know that we have the ability to find our way through anything. Clarity is about understanding who we are, understanding what we bring to the table and knowing that we’ll rely on that ... to take us through whatever is in front of us. Certainty, again, is really trying to say ‘I know where we’re going’, and every time I say ‘I know where we’re going’ and that gets changed, then my clarity actu ally gets affected. And so you provide clarity by r eally spending tonnes of time helping people see ‘here’s what we’re doing’, ‘here’s what we’ve learned’, ‘here’s what we’re getting better at’. While we’re inundated with the challenge and the uncertainty, the leader needs to continue to point the direction towards the growth, the improve ment, the resilience and the tools that people are brin ging to get through, and the brighter you shine

“... every individual has fire within them, our job is to find it, to help grow it ..., and work with them to direct it into the right destination.”

the light on those things, the more confident people become in using them.

A ctually since the pandemic started I’ve been holding free Zoom calls on a concept that I’ve been using in my own professional life, where we have a group of five friends and we call each other once a week. It’s an inquiry-based process, but essentially our job is to find the fire in each other. So ‘what’s going well this week?’ ‘What are you proud of this week?’ And so on the Zoom call now, I’m teaching other people how to do that, whether it’s for their family or for their teams, or just for a few friends. We call them ‘fire sessions’ ... because I think it’s those group things that are going to take us through this stuff.