Meet Daniel Bauer
DANIEL BAUER is on a mission to unlock the potential of global school leaders. He’s an international speaker, the host of the Better Leaders Better Schools Podcast, and the author of The Better Leaders Better Schools Roadmap: Small Ideas that Lead to Big Impact, published in 2018. He supports school leaders in individual and group contexts, and when he’s not coaching, he’s creating content or reading in order to further develop his skill set and bring even more value to the leaders who seek his mentorship.
A Leader in Conflict
Danny is currently working with a school principal who is experiencing significant adversity. Still new at her position, she was hired to bring about changes to a learning community, but reactions to some of her first moves have not been positive at all. Instead, her decisions have been met with strong resistance from staff members, and district central office is not offering support. The conflict has even been reported in the media, and this leader is struggling to salvage positive outcomes from a seemingly toxic situation. The writing seems to be on the wall in terms of where this is headed.
When it comes to problematic situations like this one, Danny says, it really isn’t about assigning values of good or bad to the conflict. It’s about learning from the challenges and responding in strategic ways that align well with our personal values.
The Mission of Better Leaders, Better Schools
In The Better Leaders Better Schools Roadmap: Small Ideas that Lead to Big Impact, Daniel spends the first two thirds of the book describing what inner journeys of personal and professional transformation can look like. In the final third of the book that he gets into the tactics and challenge-setting that mimics his coaching and mentorship.
As we dig deep into our own journeys, we often come to find that we are caught up in limiting activities that don’t contribute to our Great Story, the vision we hold for the impact we want to make. To achieve the things we want to achieve, we need to first clarify our key priorities and then make sure the game is fun and winnable.
Shallow Work vs. Deep Work
When asked for an example of an activity that educational leaders often spend too much time and energy on, Danny points to email. When you look at the effort invested in crafting and drafting emails, the returns on investment are simply not justifiable, he says. Too often, carefully crafted emails are either ignored or fail to deliver the impact to stakeholders that leaders seek.
Yes, leaders must spend time on these platforms, and they must communicate effectively with their communities, but Danny makes a distinction between two levels of work. Shallow work doesn’t result in big wins – it simply allows one to maintain the status quo and keep their job. It’s the deep work that makes legends, produces organizational wins, inspires tribes, and creates meaningful change.
Why We Need to Tell Good Stories
A recent guest on the Better Leaders Better Schools Podcast that Danny found especially inspiring was Jared Horvath, author of Stop Talking, Start Influencing: 12 Insights From Brain Science to Make Your Message Stick. Horvath writes and speaks about how the brain operates and how content creators can package their messages in ways that resonate with their audiences. People respond to stories, and whatever or wherever we communicate, we must invite the listener to make an emotional connection with our message.
Whether you’re a leader in a business, a school, or a classroom, people are going to tell a story about their experience of working with you. What do we want that story to be? Education and certification has little to do with the story – instead, it’s really about how we make people feel.
Simon Sinek talks about the Golden Circle and the importance of starting with our WHY. The WHY for Better Leaders Better Schools is that everybody wins when a leader gets better. At the end of the day, that’s really what it’s all about: every stakeholder winning.
What Else is Setting Danny on 🔥 in Education Today: Vision
Danny is thrilled when education leaders create unique and compelling visions for the future of their learning communities. Ignore the education buzzwords that have saturated the majority of schools, Danny advises, and craft something that is different. Seth Godin calls this a purple cow – something remarkable, something unique, something that inspires.
His own Vivid Vision is eight pages long, Danny says, and it reminds him exactly where he intends to go and what he plans to achieve over the next three years. When we write our vision down and publish it, we add the leverage of public accountability. With that accountability comes increased focus and intensity, and we tend to achieve exactly what it is we project.
In Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, author Cal Newport writes about Bollingen Tower, a physical retreat center that psychologist Carl Jung built as a place to focus and do great work. Danny is building on Jung’s ideal of physical separation to offer a two-day vision-casting retreat in the summer of 2020. Set in New Mexico and held on July 9-11, 2020, the purpose of this time is to help leaders recharge, build relationships, and clarify their own Vivid Vision for the next three years.
Professional Development: The 10% Rule
Danny is a strong believer in personal and professional development, and he makes it a policy to invest 10% of his income to those ends each year. In February, he completed Seth Godin’s AltMBA, something he calls a profound, life-changing event. He took a course in finding mastery, an exploration of how to live and execute at your personal best, and a storytelling seminar also put on by Seth Godin. He’s also currently plugged into courses on public speaking, coaching, and mindset.
“I can’t help others develop personally or in terms of their leadership if I’m not doing it myself,” he observes. He recognizes that not everyone can afford to invest 10% of their income in personal development, but he also thinks it’s worth asking the question of “What is the cost of not investing in yourself?”
A Personal Passion: Mountain Climbing
Something that has been invigorating Danny lately is the practice of climbing mountains in Scotland, his current location. It’s an activity that yields obvious physical benefits, disconnects him from screens, boosts his mental clarity, and renews his perspective. It’s a generous gift to be reminded of just how small we are and be humbled by the vastness of the nature that surrounds us, he says. He’s done some hiking in the US, particularly Colorado, but the experiences of hiking in Scotland have been thoroughly enjoyable and he looks forward to more.
Personal Productivity: Identify Your OKRs
When it comes to personal productivity, Danny points to a book called Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs, a title from John Doerr. In it, Doerr writes about phenomenal leaders who understand how to leverage OKRs – objectives and key results.
It starts with identifying your objectives, those big ambitious goals that you don’t even think you can achieve, Danny says. From there, it’s about quantifying the key results that help you work towards the realization of those grand objectives. For more on OKRs and the ways that school leaders can leverage them, check out Danny’s in-depth blog post.
Right now, Danny lives by five big objectives: He wants to …
- Help more school leaders level up,
- Create amazing content,
- Increase his brand awareness,
- Launch a live event, and
- Improve his personal fitness.
He allows these five big rocks to guide all of his decisions in terms of where to invest his energy, time, and resources, and he makes it his goal to chip away at each rock a little more each day. The Japanese have a proverb that vision without implementation is merely a daydream, and in Measure What Matters, author John Doerr writes that ideas are easy – execution is everything.
Define your OKRs, Danny says, and then take action to move the needle on at least one of those objectives each day. In addition, he urges, make those objectives public in order to raise your support and accountability. Tell your partner, your teammates, your colleagues, and your PLN about your objectives, because isolation is the number one enemy of excellence.
A question Danny asks in his leadership mastermind group is “What is your one big thing?” From there, Mastermind members hold each other to account. Are your words and deeds aligning with your stated objectives?
Voices and Resources That Inspire His Practice
Over on Twitter, Danny recommends following Aubrey Patterson @PattersonAubrey. Aubrey is building an education consultancy called Nohea Kindred, and his message is ‘Simply. Amplify. Clarify.’ He’s doing a great job of achieving just that, says Danny.
In keeping with his earlier comments about limiting the time we spend in our email inbox, Danny recommends a digital tool called SaneBox. SaneBox uses AI technology to help you streamline your inbox, block unwanted marketing and promotions, and give you helpful prompts and reminders.
A book that he calls personally transformative is The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander and her husband, Benjamin Zander. The Zanders describe twelve life practices that redefine what is possible in our personal and professional lives, and Danny was so taken with their principles that he named his company The Twelve Practices.
Danny swings from audiobooks to podcast binges, and when he’s in podcast mode, two of his favorites are Akimbo: A Podcast from Seth Godin and The Knowledge Project by Shane Parrish.
A YouTube channel that keeps things light and adds necessary levity to Danny’s life is The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. And when he’s at the end of his day with no energy left for the five big objectives, Danny has been tuning into Watchmen on Amazon Prime, a series that follows what some call the greatest comic series ever written.
We sign off on this fantastic conversation, and Danny gives us the best ways to reach out and connect with him online. See below for details!
You can connect with Daniel Bauer …
- On Twitter @AlienEarbud
- On Instagram @AlienEarbud
- On Facebook @BetterLeadersBetterSchools
- On his website at https://www.betterleadersbetterschools.com/
Connect with the Teachers on Fire podcast on social media:
- On Twitter @TeachersOnFire
- On Instagram @TeachersOnFire
- On Facebook @TeachersOnFire
- On LinkedIn: Tim Cavey
- On Medium at The Teachers on Fire Magazine
- On YouTube: Teachers On Fire
Song Track Credits
- Intro: Stand Up (by Mike Cosmo — license purchased at https://taketones.com/)
- Outtro: Bluntedsesh4 (by Tha Silent Partner, courtesy of FreeMusicArchive.org)
Teachers on Fire 