We start each new school year with lots of goals but these have a way of being easily pushed aside in favor of more immediate concerns. There is a way to protect yourself and your staff from the inevitable pressures of the school day that can sweep away anyone’s focus.

It is called goals and guardrails and it’s a fantastic method for achieving goals.

A goal is the outcome you desire to reach. Guardrails are the mechanisms or the tasks that will make sure you do so. Goals are the big picture and guardrails are the nitty gritty. The clearer and more measurable both your goals and guardrails are the more likely you will succeed.

For example:

Let’s say your school goal this year is to engage more with the students.

First, the goal of ‘engaging more with the students’ is too ambiguous and therefore difficult to measure. How will you know when you’ve accomplished it and does engaging with students mean talking more with students or standing in the hall more—or both?

It is always better to narrow the goal down to something easily defined as well as simple to measure. Our human nature wants to accomplish good things, but we also get tired and disheartened very quickly if we can’t see our success. If you’ve ever had a great goal sort of just fizzle out and disappear, chances are this is what happened.

Instead of ‘engage with students more’ I would suggest— ‘every student receives four points of contact during morning arrival’.

This goal is incredibly specific, easy to measure, and well within our skills and capabilities. Now we just have to create guardrails that will ensure that we’re doing the tasks that will enable us to reach our goal.

For demonstration purposes, let’s say that morning arrival starts at 7:15 and ends at 7:35am.

Guardrails:

1. All meetings are postponed until after 7:35am.
2. Except for office staff, no one will sit between 7:15 and 7:35am. Everyone else will be standing for the brief 20 minutes of morning arrival.
3. Unless it is an emergency, no one will be looking at a phone or a computer for these 20 minutes.
4. At precisely 7:15, every teacher and staff member will post in their neighborhood (predetermined engagement zone).
5. 1st point of contact (bus drivers): Bus drivers will welcome, greet, and encourage each student getting on or off their bus.
6. 2nd point of contact (bus and parent drop off zones): Staff in the bus and parent drop off zones will welcome, greet, and encourage each student passing through their zone.
7. 3rd point of contact (entry points): Staff at the doors will welcome, greet, and encourage each student entering the building.
8. 4th point of contact (teachers): Teachers will welcome, greet, and encourage each student passing through their neighborhood in the hall and when entering their classroom.

Teachers and staff members please try to greet all students passing through their neighborhood, this will make up for the lost point of contact for students who do not ride a bus.

If we follow these guardrails during morning arrival—for these brief 20 minutes—we’re guaranteed to reach our goal of engaging more with students this school year. As we increase our student engagements we will also improve our culture, raise our quality of life, enhance our safety, set a fantastic example for the students, and show the students just how much we love them and that they matter to us!

In every set of goals and guardrails, there’s a hinge task or one guardrail that is more important than the others. It’s the one guardrail that if followed will almost certainly ensure that the other guardrails will also be accomplished and therefore reach our goal.

For this particular example, I think it’s ‘no one will sit between 7:15 and 7:35am’. If I had to pick the second most important guardrail, I’d say it’s the one requiring every teacher and staff member to be standing in their neighborhood or predetermined engagement zone at precisely 7:15am.

Why these two guardrails if our goal is to engage more? Why not one of the points of contact—after all isn’t that why we’re doing this?

Guardrails are not goals but mechanisms to keep us focused on our goals especially when life gets busy. Without guardrails it’s difficult to reach our goals. In fact, I think our chances of success are greatly diminished or maybe even impossible without the right guardrails. With that in mind, if teachers and staff members stand for these brief 20 minutes—there’s a real chance they’ll stand in their neighborhoods. If they stand in their neighborhoods then they’ll engage. If they engage—everyone wins.

Also, standing is extremely easy to measure. Either you’re standing or you’re not. Either you’re standing in your neighborhood or you’re not.

I know the guardrail of standing for 20 minutes each morning might be kind of weird but to be honest, we’re a weird kind of group that likes weird things. In fact, we’re often at our most successful when we embrace weirdness.

From schools that play music over the PA system (like musical chairs to hurry students to class) to teachers and staff members who dance with their students, dress like Dr. Seuss, develop individual and personalized student handshakes, cover their rooms and halls with wacky and fun images, and principals who ride unicycles and juggle down the hall—this is who we are. We don’t shy away from being a little eccentric because we know that the more diverse our approach the more students we will reach. Afterall, no one became a teacher to have it easy but to be successful—to improve the lives of students.

Setting goals with guardrails will help you reenergize your passion and achieve this purpose.

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If you like this concept and want to learn more, schedule a Safe & Loved Leadership professional development for your school or district.

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