335: Walk, Notice, Appreciate: The Secret to a Happy Childcare Team

In this episode of Child Care Conversations, Kate and Carrie dive into making staff appreciation a daily leadership habit. Inspired by the concept of "management by walking around," Carrie shares how doing quick, intentional classroom walk-throughs twice a day helps leaders truly see their staff in action. 

From jotting notes on paper to sending a quick video message saying "I saw what you did, and it was amazing!", the focus is on timely, specific praise. Even small gestures matter more than you'd think. Consistency is the real secret here!

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Childcare Conversations with Kate and Carrie. Sometimes we think that staff appreciation is harder than it really needs to be. And today we're going to talk about how you can make this a habit. And as a director, one of the things I learned from my boss, who is also now my co-host at the time, was that catching people doing good is something that should become an everyday thing. So, Carrie, talk to me a little bit about how this became just part of your everyday routine. Was it something that came natural? Did you have to practice? I mean, by the time I came to work for you, you were on school number four. So talk a little bit about how that process came to be. And was it something you were inspired to do by somebody else?

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Or I don't really know. Um, I mean, it's probably from that book, Management by Walking Around, which I think was Leayakoka. Um, I could be wrong about who wrote it, but it was Management by Walking Around. And it just made sense to me that when I had worked with people who didn't seem to know what was actually happening, then they gave me feedback that was not valid. So, you know, in what is in my head about what was in that book was you don't need to know everybody's name and you don't need to have everybody report to you, but you need do need to know what is happening throughout your business. And so walking around, sometimes you will notice problems before the people who are actually supervising that section because you're not the one that's there all day, every day. So when you walk through, you notice aha, this is different than normal. Um, so that's kind of my thought process is that every day, twice a day, the um manager of that department, that business, that school needs to walk around the whole thing once in the morning and once in the afternoon so that they can see what is happening throughout the program. And if you're an off-site owner or if you're an owner of any kind, when you get to the building, you spend a short amount of time with the administrator of that school, with the director, the principal of that school, and then you walk the building. Because if you try to walk the building first, they will hound you because they have all these questions, you know, all these things that have been in their head that they wanted to see you to talk about. So you've got to start with the conversation with them, and then you walk through the building. And again, doing it at the beginning of your visit to the school and at the end of your visit to the school without an agenda, like just with paper. Or yeah, I I still think paper. I don't I'm not good enough on a tablet to do it on a tablet, but if you're good enough on a tablet, do it on a tablet. I've never been able to get the Apple pen to really work for me.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

Okay, but I wanted to say something because we know that you and I, um, and a lot of other people that we know are starting to go to AI transcribers that are worn as rings, bracelets, necklaces. Uh, you can have them as things that go in your pocket. Uh, so you know, it might be something that this is a great opportunity to um use one of those, right? It doesn't have to necessarily be um now, it does require you to talk unless you had one of the secret video cameras, but yeah, and I think it's gonna have a hard time getting all of the content of what's happening in a classroom.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

So I don't know that it's the best because then you have to step out of the room and go, okay, Monica was doing a great job at circle time. Um, let's put a note in there. Where if I've got the tablet or a for me, a pen and paper, for Kate it would be a pencil and paper. Um for one of my daughters, it would definitely be the iPad and the Apple pencil. Um, just taking a quick note, and then I can take if I'm using the I guess uh an advantage of using the tablet is you could take a picture of the thing that you're seeing, and that'll make it more real for your visual uh team members that they can see what you saw that you're telling them is a good thing. Well, and that's my and that's a my goal is actually to get the three positives to one negative.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Which is a great resource, and it is gonna be my only plug, maybe, um, is that Childcare Conversations actually has a whole group of content that we have inside of one place childcare. So if you've never checked out one place child care, one of the things that we have is a catch them in the act, and it's for good and bad, and it's open to staff, it's open to parents, it's open to everybody. It's a QR code that you can have, and then it will record exactly what Carrie just said. So totally unrelated and kind of popped up in my head. But I think that's really important is so one thing, let me just make sure I I clarify this for everybody and I can delete this um tab that I have open, which is management by walking around was origin the original book was written by Tom Peters. And the wrong name. That's okay. And so we will have that. Um, you can find that in our Pinterest. If you go to Childcare Conversations, we do have a Pinterest page and it says director's bookshelf. And in there, you will find that book and the link to order it if you are interested in maybe coming up with your own version of your three-minute walkthrough. And I think that what Carrie said is a really good and really important thing to remember that leaders need to be visible. If you are a director or an owner and the only time they see you is when they come into your office, that visibility piece is just not there. And the walkthrough really strengthens relationships. And that was one thing that I saw Carrie do time after time is because she had already talked to them before she did the walkthrough, the walkthrough had that intent. And I think that that's what I really admired was that when Carrie was present, she was present. And so she got to watch the kids without being distracted. She got to watch and engage with the teacher without being distracted. It wasn't I'm making notes because I'm going around to see who's doing something wrong. I'm just coming to be.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Yeah. And I think when we say the three-minute walkthrough, somebody who has one of those centers with 100 to 250, they're going, yeah, I can't do my building in three minutes. What we mean by the three-minute walkthrough is you're not spending more than three minutes in each room. And again, if you have an elementary school's worth of classrooms, you're not going to hit every room every day. So, you know, this is adaptable. If you have an elementary school's worth of classrooms, then you have to make yourself a rotational chart. Um, and it's over the five days you get all of your classes. And um you do that in a different order each week so that maybe your two-year-olds are the la are Friday on the first week. Don't make them the Friday every week because nobody wants to see two-year-olds at the end of a week every week. Like we need to we need to mix it up. So, you know, if if you're a chart person, make yourself a chart so that you start like one age group in each week. Whatever works for you. But you're spending three minutes per classroom, and the goal is to get to all of the classrooms. If you have a smaller school every day, and if you have a larger school at least once a week, if you've got a middle-sized school, um, you know, where you've got seven to ten classrooms, I think you should be able to get to all of them twice a week. If you've got 22 classrooms, that's hard to do every day.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

The real key point here is that this is a leadership habit. And so start with doing it a couple of times a week. But the best way to start a habit is doing it 30 days in a row. So um get out in your program, set yourself a time. So if you've only got 15 or 20 minutes to start with, start with 15 to 20 minutes and then get yourself into a routine because that is absolutely going to be key. Now, Carrie, loop the way.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

You said a thing, and so I want to it and it made something pop in my head, which is start doing it. And I want you to realize that when you start doing it, the teachers are going to pounce on you when you walk in the room because they haven't seen you in the room if you haven't been doing this. So be aware that the first few times you do this, you may not get a whole lot of observing done because the teachers are like, oh, they're in my room. I can ask the 27 questions I've had waiting. And that's okay. That is a normal part of the adjustment. And then if they see you every day or every other day, you know, depending on the size of your program, they will have less stored up questions. And then you can actually do the observing. So just be prepared that there will be a little bit of pouncing when you first start doing this, if you haven't been doing it, if you've been in the office. Or if they're used to you coming in to just shoot the breeze with them, and so they think that when you come in, you're just coming in to chit-chat. No, this is a time to actually get some work done. It's not chit-chat time. So you may have to have some sort of nonverbal signal that this is not chit-chat time, like having the colorful clipboard with your paper on it, or you know, I have the iPad and the Apple Pencil, whatever the thing is, so that they can tell, aha, this is chit-chat visit versus this is observation visit.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Absolutely. Now, over the last couple of days, we have been talking, we have been doing um a series. So we have a six-part series on staff appreciation. This is episode four. Carrie, what does this have to do with staff appreciation? We're 11 minutes into today's episode, and I'm not sure that people understand how this actually is staff appreciation.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Because you're seeing what they actually do. And if they're dealing with a child who is having a complete and total meltdown, you see how they handled that complete and total meltdown, and you can give them positive feedback. Once they're done, don't try to do it in the middle of the meltdown, but you can send them, you can send them. One of the things that I think is great about um what we have available in technology is that you can record a short video and send it to them via text message or through um a communication app and say, Hey, I saw this in the classroom. I know it was hard when uh Pay Lynn was losing uh his mind, but I really appreciated the way you were able to keep your composure and how you just kept singing songs that you knew that Pay Lynn usually liked. Um, it was really inspiring to see that. And so you can send that video ten minutes later, and then they'll get it when they get their phone to go to the bathroom because everybody knows you obviously need your phone to go to the bathroom. Uh and that will give them a smile for the rest of the day because you actually saw them going through a hard time and you appreciated that they were going through a hard time and you recognized it. So absolutely. Absolutely. So I've already seen Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

So hopefully, one of the things that you're getting from this is that staff appreciation isn't something that happens um only when you think about it. In other words, it needs to be what you think about all the time. And I'm gonna come back to um leadership habit because that's exactly what this is. I think that if you get the book, maybe go back and listen to this episode a couple of times, take some notes for yourself. Um and if you're one of those people and you've got a lot on your to-do list, actually put this on your calendar as a reoccurring standing appointment. Maybe not something that blocks you as busy. So, in other words, if somebody wants this time as a tour, let them have the time as a tour, but put it in your calendar again as a habit every single day, uh, just like you would do if you were working out or you were exercising, trying to get more water in your day, any of those things that we know make us a better person.

unknown 14:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

Um, so regardless of what your daily habits are, if you need to anchor it to something that's a daily habit, and I'm gonna use a cup of coffee. If one of the things you do every single day that you're at your program is you go get your second cup of coffee from the kitchen or from the break room, why not anchor it to your three-minute walkthroughs? This doesn't have to be a whole new thing. So all right. So, Carrie, is there anything else that we want to give folks as tips on getting started with a three-minute walkthrough?

SPEAKER_01 14:54

It is a great thing to do when you're frustrated. When you are frustrated with some paperwork or you are frustrated because somebody has called out for the third time in two weeks, instead of sitting in that frustration, get up and walk around and look for some of the awesome things your team is doing, and it will change your whole mood. And take a bottle of bubbles with you because maybe somebody's class is having a little bit of a meltdown and you can go in and blow bubbles and make their life a little bit easier.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

Bubbles are great. Um, again, you can do the observations, but that doesn't mean that you can't include some sort of a nice something, ooh, excuse me, nice something. Um, whether it's a non-traditional gift, or maybe you got something in your office, maybe you got flowers, or maybe you're one of those people who always has fresh flowers in your office, and you can hear that classroom down the hall. And so you just go ahead and grab one of the flowers out of your vase and you give it to that teacher. Because again, the unexpected is always more appreciated than the, oh okay, it's teacher appreciation week. My boss is gonna get me donuts and breakfast tacos and all of those things. And it's one thing when it's expected, and it's also not appreciated when it's expected. So all right. Hopefully you got something new out of today's show, and we would love for you to continue to listen to the next two episodes as we wrap up the six-part series on staff appreciation. And with that, we'll have you in a few days.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Thanks for tuning in. We love bringing you real talk and fresh insight from the world of early childhood education. Be sure to follow us on social media to stay connected and catch all of the latest episodes. And if you're planning a conference, training, or special event, Kate and Carrie would love to speak to your audience. You can learn more about their keynote sessions and workshops at kateandcary.com. If you learned something today, share the show and leave us a review below. We'll see you next time on Childcare Conversations.