Irreverent Curiosity = Innovative Leadership

Thank you, Ned Kirsch, for your irreverent, curious leadership @betavt

Grieving the loss of @betavt, a fellow innovator, transformer, and educational dreamer has brought lots of my work to a slow crawl. Vermont's educational community came together yesterday, for a celebration of his life. This of course, made it real. My remedy brings a return to the blog I started after one of our conversations about the importance of seeing and creating opportunity. My doctoral students will have to (continue) to wait. This one's for you, Ned.

It amazes me how much innovation happens because we give each other permission to think differently - to be crazy - to be #irreverent. Ned Kirsch, as others mentioned yesterday, was indeed irreverent. I didn't like that about him when we first met. In my youth, I found irreverence to be synonymous with arrogance. I was much more comfortable with an outward nod to the expectations of others, while inwardly taking my own direction. Ned wasted no such time with this type of duality.

Of those with whom he surrounded himself, his irreverent confidence often led him to ask #humblequestions...

- I’m not the expert. What do you think?

- I value the differences you bring to this. What's your perspective?

- What can you add to these ideas? I’d like you to think big on this.

- What would be your greatest aspiration for the project?

- Bravo to you for your work here. What was your biggest insight?

- What can you add that I missed – is there something you'd really like my support with?

- I trust your judgment on this. It was a tough decision to make – what were the things you were thinking through? I’d love to see it from your perspective.

Of course, these suggest the antithesis of arrogance, but sheer commitment to finding a way through to something new on the other side of something routine with someone known. Innovation in the presence of a relationship is the most powerful and #sustainable kind. Ned knew this in spades.

The best way to find opportunity is to make others feel welcome - we all run out of good ideas, but we never run out of the ability to co-create them or to run across them (sometimes in the most obvious of places) while walking with others. Judith Glaser reminds us that #curiosity connects the mind to the heart - which sparks the courage to open up the world of new.

There is no more curious endeavor than sugaring in Vermont, which Ned took an interest in as well. This picture, one that he posted on his famed Twitter account as he chose to "seize the day" after a #satchat session with educators around the country, exemplifies for me how he saw the world.

Inside the beautiful blue buckets (which would never pass as acceptable for VT traditionalists), would hopefully be a treasure from nature that could be transformed into a golden wonder. Who could resist looking into the buckets, and seeking anything others might know about what might flow into them given the right conditions. Of course there would be something there - and of course it would be the base of something good.

@betavt, I so enjoyed sharing an innovative landscape with you. I hope you will always let us know you're looking over our fences and prodding us to hang buckets on our trees. I, in turn, will be unapologetically irreverent - curiously so. #betavtcurious