Inquiry, Magic and Project-Based Learning | E169

Picture a future where half of all schools are dynamic hubs of project-based learning—a future where education is a canvas for curiosity and real-world problem-solving. That's the vision we unpack in this episode, and with February's focus on inquiry, inspired by Trevor MacKenzie's "Inquiry Mindset," we're stoking the flames of this educational revolution. Our special guest, Steve Haffner, illusionist and performance strategist, exemplifies the spirit of inquiry, using his unique blend of magic and strategic thinking to challenge and engage, proving that the thirst for knowledge can extend beyond the classroom walls.

The PBLShare.com portion of this episode highlights the classroom work of Rosa Parks Elementary School in Indianapolis, IN. Their work is changing the way their learners interact with the world. Learners are using their standards based work in the classroom to change lives out in their city. Listen and be inspired!

Ever wondered how the art of illusion can reveal the inner workings of the human mind? Steve Haffner takes us on an enthralling journey through his pivot from the corporate grind to the allure of the stage, illustrating how the principles of magic—misdirection, storytelling, and the element of surprise—mirror the cognitive processes we navigate daily. Steve's narrative is a masterclass on how cognitive dissonance is not just a trick of the trade for magicians but a powerful tool for educators and leaders alike.

CONNECT WITH STEVE HAFFNER
stevehaffner.com

Cognizance weekly newsletter sign up

 7 Strategies for Making Great Decisions ebook

Social Media Handles:

•  LinkedIn: Steve Haffner
•  Twitter: @stevehaffner
•  Facebook: SteveHaffnerSpeaker

JOIN THE ONLINE PBL COMMUNITY

https://resources.magnifylearningin.org/join-today

SIGN UP FOR THE MAGNIFY LEARNING NEWSLETTER

https://www.magnifylearningin.org/newsletter-sign-up

SHARE A PBL WIN!

www.pblshare.com 

ORDER THE BOOK PBL SIMPLIFIED

https://amzn.to/3VLsBtG

SCHEDULE A PBL TRAINING WITH MAGNIFY LEARNING

https://resources.magnifylearningin.org/onsite-workshops

CHECK OUT RESOURCES MENTIONED ON THE PODCAST

PBL Simplified Podcast Links

ASK RYAN A QUESTION FOR THE PODCAST

https://www.magnifylearningin.org/ask-ryan-your-pbl-questions

FOLLOW RYAN ON TWITTER

https://mobile.twitter.com/ryansteuer

BOOK A MAGNIFY LEARNING DESIGN DAYS WORKSHOP

https://www.magnifylearningin.org/design-days-sign-up

Some of the links above are affiliate links which means we get a small commission on anything you purchase using that link (at no more cost to you). As Amazon Associates we earn from qualifying purchases.

Transcript

Ryan Steuer: 0:00

Welcome to the PBL Simplified Podcast, where we believe that you can teach the way you've always wanted to teach and you can lead the way you've always wanted to lead, with vision and power and integrity and trust. And when you do that, schools should be a better place. Your learners are going to go from passive to empowered and overall, we believe the world be a better place. So our goal is to have 51% of schools using project-based learning by 2051. We call it 51 by 51 and it gets us fired up. I am your host, ryan Stoyer, and I'm excited to be on the mic again with you today in February and I don't know when you're listening to this exactly, but you know that February is a tough month in schools. Spring break seems a little too far away, you're in the groove from winter break and it's just a tough month. So we've taken February and we've gone into Inquiry. So if you listened to the first podcast episode, the one before this, the first one in February, I talked about Trevor McKenzie's book Inquiry Mindset and you're going to find out that we love it here at Magnify Learning A great book. If you're using project-based learning, you are in the Inquiry pool somewhere, so you should go back to that episode and check it out. You can also. This next episode is going to come next week. Make sure you subscribe so you can get that one. We're also talking about Inquiry.

Ryan Steuer: 1:15

Today we've got an interesting guest. Steve Hafner is an illusionist mind. Performance strategist is one of his titles. He's a keynote speaker. He'd be a great one to have come in and work with your staff, or maybe at a district level, to bring some motivation and also a bit of curiosity. So when you can have a magician, mentalist person in, it's like Inquiry Month. That seems to make sense, right. That gets us leaning in and asking questions and wondering about things. So we'll have Steve on today. Before we do that, though, you've heard me mention now if you're a listener that is on consistently the pblsharecom. You go to pblsharecom and we've always had where you can submit a question. But we added the share because we want you to add some wins, right, we want to be able to share wins on the podcast. So today's PBL Share is a win story.

Ryan Steuer: 2:12

I want to share what other schools are doing around the country so you can be inspired and realize you can do this too. Every story that we're going to highlight in the coming months and over the years are going to be schools that started just like you did. They're maybe traditional and they're like, hey, wait a minute, we're not serving our students the best way we could. Let's turn some dials and see if we can ramp this up. And we're all passionate about this work and we want to find ways to serve our learners better, and this is a great example of that. So Rosa Parks Elementary School in Indianapolis, indiana, is doing some amazing work and their leadership is on board. They're trying to figure out, like, how do we navigate this? Well, like they've been a traditional school in the past and they want to make some tweaks that can serve their learners best. So their principal, matt Bush, is he's been through design days with us and he's thinking differently and what he's doing is trying to look at a staff who is filled with energetic, passionate teachers who want to do amazing things for learners right, and trying to figure out how do you balance personalities and gifts and talents and move towards project-based learning, but also very wisely, like not just dropping the hammer and say we are a PBL school, now right, like that doesn't always work for your culture. So these figure out ways to do this and I think this is a great way to do it. It's to have amazing stories to share, right? You can share it within your school, you can share it within your district and some of this stuff. I'm just going to tell you the story because you can just see it come full circle. I'm not sure you could plan it, but I think when you're moving in the right direction, with passion and joy and integrity, that these kind of things happen.

Ryan Steuer: 3:47

So Rosa Parks did this PBL unit, where they reached out to a local homeless shelter and their kids created these lunch bags and they didn't just like give brown bag and say, here you go, like they put some motivational sayings on there, they made some drawings right. Like they added some flair to it to say, hey, this is personal and we care about you, which, if you've ever been like a homeless ministry, that's almost more important than the actual lunch, right? So the learners are learning about you know what food insecurity can look like, and people in the homeless shelter are understanding that there are people out there thinking for them and rooting for them and encouraging them. So they do this PBL unit and it's like wow, this is great, this is amazing, like we're changing lives. And then they come back to the homeless shelter, you know, months later and they're taking a tour because, again, just being exposed to some other things in the city can really start to open up the eyes of your learners.

Ryan Steuer: 4:41

So they're doing this and a woman in the homeless shelter says, oh, where are you guys from? And they say, well, rosa Parks Elementary. And boom, like instantly, like she starts to get emotional and she starts to tell the story to the kids of how she received one of those bagged lunches that they had made. She had seen the encouraging note that was on there and she was had to do a job and she didn't have lunch to take with her and she was able to take this bagged lunch that came from these elementary students and it just really really affected her. And now she gets to tell the story back and she says she's so thankful, she's like thank you, thank you, thank you. And she gets to tell the story about how impactful it was for her. Like how neat for these learners to hear that. Except that it goes a little deeper, because the girl that actually made the bag for this woman was there.

Ryan Steuer: 5:34

So here's this learner that went through a PBL unit standards base, doing school, if you will she gets to see the woman that she was encouraging and serving and she has to see the impact that this work that started in her school has now rippled out into someone's life and changed their life. That's why we do this work, folks. So there's so many different connections that we can make and maybe we should have them come on the podcast to make it a full PBL showcase. But I want you to see a couple of really big pillars here. The administration was open to these ideas. The teachers come and say, hey, we've got this idea, do you think we can make it work? And the principal's like, yes, how do we make this work? So he becomes part of the planner, the coach that's helping these teachers be excited and try something new. And their learners get excited.

Ryan Steuer: 6:27

And now, through a standards base unit, these learners get to see that they are in fact changing lives. They're changing little parts of their world. That's not just language of teachers, it's happening. And when that happens, your learners are changed, they're different, they're no longer passive, they become engaged and they want to continue this work. So when I say share something on PBL, share, this is what we're talking about, like there are more of you doing these amazing things.

Ryan Steuer: 6:52

You're seeing the connections happening with the work that we're starting in schools. We're starting standards based. It moves to employability skills, but ultimately it's moving towards change and when our learners are the change agents, it's literally changing the world, changing their lives, changing the opportunities, letting them figure out who they are and what their place is in the world. So please go to pblsharecom. Again, you could ask a question there. There's a button for that. There's also a place to share your win and, yes, you do want to brag on your students, right? You want to brag on your learners and the work that they're doing and share that, because it allows another teacher that's listening, another principal that's listening to go yeah we could do that and they get to take the first step in their PBL journey Awesome.

Ryan Steuer: 7:35

So another great place to start on your PBL journey is to bring inquiry into your classroom. It's a great place to start and we're going to continue this conversation that we're having here in February about inquiry with a guest. So here's Steve Hafner mentalist, magician, extraordinaire great speaker. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

Ryan Steuer: 8:00

Hey, visionary leaders, we have another leadership guest episode for you and, as I tell you each time, we're going to bring you folks from, yes, education, but also business and sports and, today, the world of magic. So they come from all over so we can help up your leadership game. Today we've got Steve Hafner with us, and he is currently a magician, a mentalist speaker, whose highest level goal is to help people find their new ways to think and make decisions so they can elevate their ability to solve the problems and achieve their goals. You're going to find some words in there that we really appreciate in the project-based learning world. Let me give you one more sentence on him from his bio. He strives to use this unique combination of experiences, education, talents, passions and crazy ideas to bring a new perspective to thinking and mind performance. So somewhere by the time I've got my watch on today, but I feel like by the end, somehow Steve's going to have it. Steve, thanks for being on today. I appreciate it.

Steve Haffner: 8:56

Thank you, ryan. It's really good to be here and I wish I could reach through the screen and grab your watch, but I can't. Haven't protected that method yet.

Ryan Steuer: 9:05

So Okay, I figured by now you'd have that virtual down. I'm still watching, I'm going to keep my hand on it, so, but I love that you're taking this, this kind of segue of humor, magic mentalism, and then combining that right with a message that moves people, right, that creates change. So every guest on the podcast gets the same first question, and so that is what is your why for the work that you do.

Steve Haffner: 9:31

Yeah, well, and, and you know, I had a couple of major pivots in my careers and each one, you know, I thought about what is? Why did I do this? You know what was that was driving me? And, of course, the biggest one was I had a. I had a 30 year corporate IT career where I was a systems developer and a programmer, and then I moved into management as a vice president at one company and then I quit, just quit my career, walked into my boss's office that I'm quitting to become a magician. You know that would be. That'd be like if you're the best, comes home one day and says, honey, I quit my job, I'm going to join the circus. You know, yeah, that's right, I did. I did get a lot of interesting responses, you know, when I told people that. But you know the and the reason that I did it is I've always had a very creative side. That's always kind of being a big part of me, and I felt at that point in my career I wasn't enjoying my career as much. I had made a couple of pivots inside that that career, and I didn't wasn't only enjoying it. Plus, I really wanted to use my creative talents to make people happy to bring, you know, bring some joy to people. So that was my main why for transitioning from the corporate career into my own business as a magician. Yeah, the big tada, that's awesome, yeah.

Steve Haffner: 10:58

And then then I pivoted into speaking from just performing entertainment. You know, magic shows. And so what I discovered when I became a magician was that magic doesn't actually happen in the magician's hands, it happens in the minds of the spectators, that's all, you know, in in the mind. And so, as a magician, I had to learn psychology. I had to learn what are the things that are going on in people's heads, what and what are the natural assumptions and misperceptions and distortions that, as a magician, I could tap into and take advantage of to create the perception of magic. Right, and it's for in a magic show, it's for everybody's mutual benefit. You know that I manipulate their thought processes and because everybody wants to have fun and wants it, you know, wants to experience the wonder and the delight of of magic. So so I had to learn how people make assumptions, how they process information, how perception works.

Steve Haffner: 11:59

I had to learn about cognitive biases and heuristics, or mental shortcuts. You know that can keep us from performing in our business. And you know, I discovered, hey, these things help people if they understood these and could learn strategies for overcoming them. That could help them in any area of their life to perform better, you know, at work as, as professionals, as leaders. So that's what drove me, I guess, to speaking programs rather than just doing entertainment, because I thought I could add more value. And there was also a practical reason as well, and that's because a lot of events, they all have education budgets, but few have entertainment budgets. So I wanted to be able to reach them as well. So if I have actual content with practical takeaways, bring me in they. They still want it to be entertaining. They just can't call it that, you know.

Ryan Steuer: 12:55

So so, yeah, well, that's a line that educators understand, right, you, there needs to be some, maybe, entertainment, but we say engagement, right, there needs to be an engagement value, but there's also some rigorous learning. That has to happen, right, like those things go together well and you want both of them. You can't just have entertainment and engagement. You know, there needs to be the engaged, the learning side of things too. So I think that makes sense. I think I'm sure your audience appreciates the, the humor that comes along with the message. As you're talking to businesses and organizations saw that you, you know you talk about decision making and trust and in project based learning.

Ryan Steuer: 13:33

We're building cultures within schools. That are those two words are things that we talk about. We talk about decision making with learners. We talk about trust within cultures. So, as you're using magic and humor to deliver this, it's really a serious message, right? We're talking about decision and making, trust and relationships. Like, how do you bridge that gap between the magic and the humor with kind of the serious talk?

Steve Haffner: 13:55

Yeah, well, and I. But you know, if you've ever been to a conference where you're watching a speaker and they're extremely smart, extremely, they're an expert in their field, have a lot of expertise in it, but maybe they're not professional speakers or presenters and it turns out to be rather dry and, you know, maybe the deaf by PowerPoint and you have trouble getting your attention on it. You know so experts who become speakers have to learn to be more, to be engaging and entertaining. People like me who came from entertainment, have to learn to become subject matter experts. You know so. You have to. You have to have both. And when I'm reaching out and talking to people, before I do a program for them you know, a keynote or wherever for them I always have a conversation about what do their people respond to the most? Do they want to be energizing and and entertained and have fun something different from their educational sessions, or are they really more concerned about the practical takeaways? And then I can adjust the program a little bit in whichever way they want that, that particular balance, to go. You know, yeah, so what? What? What great speakers do is they engage not just the brain but the heart as well, and they do that by telling personal stories that people can relate to, right? You know, science shows that that story telling is, is really compelling and gets, makes messages sticky, and so people remember them later. So it's, you know, it's getting to them and making them feel and get in. The more engaged they are, then it makes the message easier to recall. So magic works similarly.

Steve Haffner: 15:43

What, what happens? So this is interesting. I didn't know this before I became a magician, but what happens when you experience a magic trick? It's you experience cognitive dissonance. So that's anytime that you experience, you see or you hear something that doesn't align with what you know about how the world works, you know. So you, you know that gravity keeps you stuck to the ground. You see a magician levitate and it's like, ooh, what's going on? What I know and what I just experienced don't match up and your brain, at least at the subconscious level, wants to resolve that conflict.

Steve Haffner: 16:21

Yeah, because it feels that uncertainty, feels unsafe, and your brain is focused on keeping you alive, your survival instinct, right, and that's where a lot of these, these hiccups and cognitive biases you know that they come from. So when you watch a magic trick, it's really an exercise and problem solving. Your brain is trying to solve that cognitive dissonance. Even if you don't want to know how the trick is done, because you want to enjoy the mystery and the wonder of it, your brain still has to try to figure it out, at least to some degree and come up short, in order for it to feel like magic. Otherwise it doesn't feel like magic, because it could be anything. But once you've thought, well, he couldn't have done this. You know that, wow, how did it happen? How did it work? And then my job as a magician, of course, is to thwart your ability to solve that problem of figuring out how the trick was done.

Ryan Steuer: 17:14

Yeah.

Steve Haffner: 17:15

Right and magic. Most people love magic Not everybody does, of course, but it's interesting because they like it and it's fun to experience wonder, you know for most people the impossible and it engages your brain in that way in trying to solve the cognitive dissonance. So your brain's working on the problem. That's engagement. You know. If you're watching a magic trick, you're more involved with that that cognitively than you are. If you're listening to a singer on stage, for example. Yeah, you know your brain is working more and so that that helps it become more memorable because it's more engaged, you know at that level.

Ryan Steuer: 18:00

Oh, it's so good.

Steve Haffner: 18:01

Yeah, and I was gonna say, if I could have the entire audience perform a trick, which I do, and most presentations, then they're really involved.

Steve Haffner: 18:12

Yeah and then, yeah, how the heck you know. So that's a lot of fun and, and you know I had. Everybody loves to laugh, everybody it feels good. And then if I provide humor and get people laughing I mean I'm not a comedian or I'm not even a humorist, but I do have, you know, sprinkle in some funny things in there. I have kind of a dry sense of humor. Everybody loves to laugh. They're gonna remember later. Hey, I liked that program. They might not remember a funny or single funny thing that I did or said yeah, they'll just remember what they felt.

Ryan Steuer: 18:44

Right, yeah, I think those things are important, as you're, as you're talking through those, steve. It's like the idea that we're creating this loop that our brains automatically need to close. Right, there's some piece that cognitive dissonance of here's the vision, here's where I'm at, like our brains automatically want to close that, and there's an engaging portion of that. And if I can just connect it in a geeky, geeky way to like our work with project based learning, we do these things called entry events and we tell our learners like, hey, here's the really cool stuff that you're about to do. We're going to go out into the real world, we're going to solve this problem. Like there are parents that found out their kid has a genetic disease and you're going to create a pamphlet to put in a doctor's office. Like you're connecting dots for me, like you're helping me figure out this cognitive dissonance.

Ryan Steuer: 19:31

I think what happens, the engagement that happens, is that learner is like man, how am I going to do that? Right, like that's the question. Right, as they start asking how am I going to do that, and they don't know how yet, but they kind of lean in a little bit because they're engaged in that cognitive dissonance piece. Yeah, yeah, I love that. So I don't think I can go tell my wife that I'm going to become a magician. I don't think that's going to go over well. But maybe we can take a couple of things that you've learned and you know, bring it into our schools. And one other thing I'd like you to talk about just with your journey is you went from like the corporate gig, which is generally considered, you know, pretty stable to magicians, which might not seem that way, and I think you could argue some of those points.

Ryan Steuer: 20:12

But were there any voices of doubt? As you were taking that leap and as our visionary leaders leaders listen, like we're in, we're taking schools that are doing schools traditionally often, which feels safe and seems appropriate and right IE, your W2 gig right and we're moving to project based learning, which seems a little bit different, still like we're still not the majority as far as an instructional model. So there's a little bit of a leap that's happening here. There's change process, so our leaders sometimes have this, you know, kind of voice of doubt in there. So can you talk through what that looked like for you?

Steve Haffner: 20:48

Oh, yeah, and I sometimes in some of my programs I actually go through this a little bit. But you know I had when I was young. I was always into creative things, writing. I used to write short stories and songs and poems, and I love performing on stage. I would get on all this. You know, all the school plays and it was kind of an introvert, but so that kind of gave me an outlet, I guess, and so I always had this creative side. But I got into computer programming. So that's where I went with my creativity. Actually there is a lot of creativity there on that side. But but you know, I started my career in program because I like puzzles as well, after things.

Steve Haffner: 21:34

You know, after being in there for a while, pivoting into an area I wasn't really didn't feel that comfortable with, I didn't like that. I had picked up the hobby of magic several years earlier and thought, you know, I know there's people making their living doing this and I thought about it. Every time I thought about it and thought, hey, maybe I should try to be a magician. I had a voice and I was like I don't know. I'd say are you crazy? You know what? Are you thinking that you've got this stable, high paying career and you're going to just give it up to do magic tricks, you know. So it's like okay. So I put the fantasy of becoming a magician kind of in the back of my mind and but then it would keep coming up. I would love to try that and I thought, you know, the biggest regret I would have is if I didn't even try it. So, but I had a lot of depth.

Steve Haffner: 22:27

I mean, anytime that you're going to make that bigger of a change away from what you're comfortable with and familiar with into unknown territory you don't know how it's going to work, work out, you know, or if it will, you know, then it's, it's, it's scary. Our brand doesn't want us to do that because it feels unsafe. So we have to really overcome that resistance and those self doubts, as you mentioned. If, if we want to move forward now, we've got to do it in a smart way, right, you don't, you don't want to take unnecessary or irrational risks, right, because you know I had enough money saved up for a cushion if things didn't work out for me at first. So you know, I had a little bit of a safety net. I guess you could say, but yeah, you know, and that those, those two voices. It was actually really difficult Because the two voices the one that really wanted me to try this and the one that said it is the dumbest idea ever that we're going to get it, and this is, this is kind of odd.

Steve Haffner: 23:29

I was sitting in my car, I driven to work. This time I, you know, I wasn't thrilled with my job. I was thinking, man, I would love to be do the magician thing, but that that struggle was really difficult for me. And I've been sitting in my car. I wasn't getting out yet and a song came on the radio I had never heard before. In fact, I've never heard it on the radio since that's another weird thing about this, and it's the lyrics of the song were like they were speaking right to me.

Steve Haffner: 23:57

There comes a time when you have to ask yourself where am I going? What have I done? Am I taking the rules that? Are you taking the rules that you've been given, or breaking the rules with your own decisions? Isn't it time you tried? And that just kind of it was like a tsunami of emotion hit me when I heard that at that moment and I'm tears. I'm not. I'm not a cryer honestly, but I had tears. It was. It was a feeling of relief. This is how I think about it now Relief that I knew what I needed to do, what I wanted to do, and this is the direction I need to go. And I don't have to struggle with this anymore because I've made the decision. I'm going to go ahead and do it.

Ryan Steuer: 24:39

Yeah, I love it. Thanks for walking us through that, steve Cause. I know we've got some leaders that some leaders are like what's fear? Like I don't understand the question. You know, when I ask him about this idea of doubt or some voice of fear, like we have those leaders like totally good with that, like their fear is that they would be a part of the status quo, right. But we also have some leaders that are coming on that there's a lot of inertia in schools towards traditional teaching and lecturing and cause it's just happened for so many years, so many decades.

Ryan Steuer: 25:06

So when you start doing something different, there's a sometimes there's that little bit of doubt, but it's like grab the vision, go with it. It's freeing once you move that direction. But also do your research. You know, I heard you say that. You know I didn't just jump like I did the math right, like I was going to get to eat, still right, gave yourself some runway, and there's a lot of ways you can do that in schools too. So, as our leaders are thinking about this, like we're also building teams, because we use teams with our learners, we use teams with our staff. So, as you're talking about trust with different groups across the country like why is trust so important to our teams?

Steve Haffner: 25:45

Yeah, there's a survey that was done several years ago. That was well. This more speaks to leadership. Like you were saying, it was of human resource professionals. They surveyed 700 of them and they wanted to know what were the most important leadership traits for engaging employees. And, of course, you need to engage your employees and want them to stay you know, staffing and retention.

Steve Haffner: 26:15

You know it's a big thing right now, and the number one leadership trait that those human resource professionals identified was trust, and it's really. It was amazing I got into the subject of trust because as I was studying the subconscious mind, it came up over and over again how our need for survival, or survival instinct, the part of our brain trying to keep us alive it was always working in the background and one of the things it does is it gets us to lean towards mistrust, because mistrust feels safer, you know, is it? Does it feel safer to trust somebody if you don't know if they're trustworthy? Go ahead and extend some trust or make them earn your trust first before extending trust. Okay, well, feel safer, you know, I don't know about this person to wait, although that's a huge disadvantage because the benefits of trust are so huge. So, you know, with teams, some of the benefits are speed the fact the very first book on trust that I read is called I got right in front of me the speed of trust, stephen and Mark Covey. Yeah, more done and less time.

Steve Haffner: 27:29

If you have high trust relationships, you know, then you can otherwise communication. If you think about you're going to, you have to sit in a meeting with a parent or an administrator or a teacher that you know doesn't really trust you or you don't really trust them. That's uncomfortable, that's stressful. Nobody looks forward to doing that Right. But if you've got a high trust relationship with the person you're about to have to work it through a problem with, that's, that's fun. It makes your job more fun, it's more pleasant and you can again do it faster. Get through things because because you don't have the doubt and you know the extra red tape that comes with low trust and trust also.

Ryan Steuer: 28:15

The message there, steve, too, is you know, as we're doing change process, for you know we're moving things in school systems like a lot of our high flying leaders just want to go like let's go do this, but it's like really you need to wait and establish trust before you start moving or changing things right, because your initiative is going to move at the speed of trust, whether you want it to or not. I remember I had somebody who was working on a learning management system and they wanted to work it through magnified learning and we're really careful with those relationships because we really value our partners. And the gentleman just said you know, can we just skip like all this, get to know you stuff and just jump into the work? No, no, no.

Ryan Steuer: 28:57

No we can't Right Like this is all going to move at the speed of trust that I don't know you. It's like we have to trust before we can move.

Steve Haffner: 29:05

I have an excellent example of that for my magician base.

Ryan Steuer: 29:08

Yeah, I was in.

Steve Haffner: 29:10

Have you ever seen a restaurant magician who stores the tables while you're waiting for your food to make the time go fast? Right, but I was working as one in a restaurant. I approached the table about six adults and you know, I said, would you like to see some magic? And the alpha dog of the group apparently spoke up and said, oh, how much is this going to cost us? And I was like, oh, it's not going to cost you anything. I said the restaurant's actually paying me, so for you, nothing. And he said, oh well, you're going to ask for a tip? And I said, well, no, I never asked for tips. I never expect any tips Again. I'm being paid, so it's pretty. Then he turned to somebody and said, yeah, we'll just wait until the end. He's going to try to get some money out of us.

Steve Haffner: 29:54

And at that point I decided it was a lost cause. Yeah, cut my losses. And I said you know well, you know it's fine. Enjoy your meal and hope you come back and see us. So then I went on restaurant magician forums online. You know every, every group has their own forms online. That's right. I presented the situation. I said hey. I said what would you do in a situation like this and by God, everybody said it was my fault If you can believe that the audacity they said was what.

Steve Haffner: 30:24

That's right. And the reason is just what you were referring to a minute ago is that they said I have to create a connection first. Before I can't just walk up and launch into a card track, I have to establish. Even just a small connection can can build trust and remove mental barriers and obstacles, right? So if I had a poster table and said Hi, I'm Steve and what are your names, what are you celebrating tonight? If anything, you know, how do you get each other? Maybe mention my kids a little bit, just that little bit of connection, yeah, and that guy probably wouldn't have been so confrontational with me, you know right.

Steve Haffner: 31:09

So so I, yeah, that was an important lesson I learned early in my magic career.

Ryan Steuer: 31:13

Yeah, and great lesson for us as as leaders too, right, Is we start all of our meetings. We start we connect as humans first, right? So even if it's a short two minute protocol, give us a personal professional win. We want to connect as humans before we get into the work and we find that, you know, those times we're like man, we're pretty busy. Should we just skip that protocol? Every time we do that, right, we always regret it. It's like we'll even have to stop and say, hey guys, we need to take a break. Let's, let's connect as humans again. And that's the wording we'll use, right? Like, let's just connect as humans before we get into the work, because humans are more important than the work, right? And so I think that's a great example that can stick with us, Like I'm sure that's uncomfortable, as the kind of touring magician going around and the uncomfortable guy says, oh, this guy's just trying to get money out of us. That's, that's a great story we can take with us, Super good.

Steve Haffner: 32:07

Yeah, yeah, and I hadn't had that happen before. I had people who declined to watch magic, because every now and then you'll find someone who doesn't like magic or whatever. But here now, as far as teams at schools, my daughter is a teacher and she's this is her second, second year, second full year, but when she first graduated and she got out was right after the COVID lockdowns, it's, and she got into this experience. Well, I won't talk about all of the difficulties. There were a number of things that just added up, but one thing was that she did not get any support from her team.

Steve Haffner: 32:47

The other, the other teachers who taught the same grade level. They're supposed to be working as a team on the curriculum and and everything, and there was incompetence. They weren't reliable, they weren't willing to work together. They first of all. There were two other ones plus my daughter, and they didn't like each other. It was a parent. Yeah, there was no trust there at all and she got no support and she ended up having to leave before two weeks was over. Yeah, good news is she immediately got hired by another school. Situation was completely different. The team was extremely supportive, you know, and connected about more like a family, and there was a lot more trust there and she's been there since and she absolutely loves it. So, yeah, it makes a big difference for a team.

Ryan Steuer: 33:41

Right, it's a. That's the tale of two cities right there it's, and the systems that we see that are working really well have that culture of family. That really is something they would say like when we see schools, whether they're doing PBL or not, there's a lot of school systems where the staff is family, like somebody sick, like everybody comes around and supports, and it's one of the coolest things I think about the education world is the way that staff can bond together. Even if there are some things that they disagree on, right, there's still trust that's built in. Like, I know where you stand, I know that we're all here for the good of kids, to provide them great opportunities, and that's what the great school systems really provide. And that doesn't happen by by happen, chance. Right, there's there's leaders that understand that trust and respect are really important pieces to a culture.

Ryan Steuer: 34:35

So, Steve, as we're talking to principals and some teachers here, as you look at teams and kind of the magic, the engagement pieces that you have, what are some things that you might suggest to them as they're looking to build trust in classrooms or with teachers?

Steve Haffner: 34:52

Yeah, well, one of them is it's a term I think I made it up, I don't know if anybody's used it before called preemptive transparency. So, and here's how I tie it to magic you go because it actually will perform a trick on stage and I get the end. It's a rope track and I get somebody from the audience up on stage to examine the ropes. Make sure they're regular, normal ropes.

Steve Haffner: 35:17

Anytime a magician gets out of prop right, whether it's a deck of cards or a big trunk on stage or some ropes audiences automatically suspicious, right, because I know I'm a magician. So they're suspicious about, about, because they have uncertainty about the prop of, whether it's real or tricked out in some way. Yeah, and when you have uncertainty, that's when mistrust and suspicion come in, when you have uncertainty. So what I do is I preemptively provide that information, that transparency, in that case about the ropes, by having the person one of them, I call that the trust proxy come up and examine the ropes, give them the information hey, these are normal ropes, they don't have that uncertainty. So now that suspicion is gone, at least about the ropes, they still know I'm going to lie, cheat and steal, but at least not suspecting the ropes, you know, so you know how that translates back. I didn't wait for somebody in the audience to say, hey, let us see the ropes, you know, or those tricks, ropes. I anticipated what the objection or the, the misperception or the uncertainty.

Steve Haffner: 36:30

I anticipated that ahead of time and addressed it right up front and doesn't give mistrust a chance to hold and never have that uncertainty. So I think with you, know with principles and staff, if there are things that you know that people may be wondering about, they may be wondering about your, let's say, decision making. If you make a decision that's going to have a big impact on other people, you need to provide the rationale, especially if the impact is negative and make somebody's job harder, for example. If you don't live in the rationale, provide that transparency, the mind automatically goes negative, think oh, you know, there's some other reason they're doing this and you know it's just we have a negativity bias. Our brains are engaged more with negative thoughts and positive ones. So that's the direction that goes when we have uncertainty more towards negativity. So you know that preemptive transparency is really important. So, yeah, and involve them in the decision making.

Steve Haffner: 37:37

When other people stakeholders are involved in decision making, them likely to buy in to whatever decision you make because they were involved in the process. Even if it's not the decision they would have made, at least they saw how that decision was made Right. So it engages them. And, again, engaged employees or employees that are more likely to want to stick around, right? So another thing and this is no matter who your relationship is with is congruence being consistent with your goals and your values and that of your organization. So your school or your district, whatever the mission statement is, make sure that what you are doing is aligned with that. Otherwise, people aren't going to trust you and they're going to think you've got other things that are more important to you than what you say on your mission statement. Right, right.

Ryan Steuer: 38:32

Yeah, that's good it's going to be. I think, as I'm coaching leaders, I'm going to say, hey, you got to show them the ropes, right, like. Show them the ropes, like, tell them why you're making this decision, because, I mean, leaders have to make hard decisions, right, and not everybody's going to agree with them. It's just something that we do. But if and so some I've seen this happen where leaders make the decision and say, all right, well, let's see. If anybody complains, well, let's show them the ropes first. Right, like, let's show them like, this is why, right, doesn't that get us in just kind of a better frame with the folks that we're working with?

Steve Haffner: 39:07

Yeah, absolutely, I love this.

Steve Haffner: 39:11

My daughter told me this after she started her new school, her good situation there. She, at the beginning, the first day or the first week, she had the and I don't know, maybe this is common among teachers she had, she and her students together, created a contract for each other and they talked about here are the things that I expect of you. You know she would say to them, unless maybe three things, and she asked them what do you expect of me, what do you want from me? And you know, the number one thing that they wanted, and these were let's see, what grade was it at the time? It was fifth grade. She teaches first grade now, but she was fifth grade.

Steve Haffner: 39:55

And they said we want you to do what you say you're going to do. That's good, that was the number one thing. Well, they had had experience. The former teacher had left. It was a very strange situation, but so their trust was already shaken in teachers a little bit. So so you know that was the number one in their minds and in their hearts was please, you know, be consistent, do what you say you're going to do. Yeah, that was really interesting.

Ryan Steuer: 40:28

Oh, that is. I mean, that's what we all want, right? I mean that's a great definition of integrity, really right Is that we do what we say we're going to do. When we say we're going to do it, and I'm totally appropriate for those learners to ask for that and then to say, hey, you know, you said you're going to say you're going to do what you said and you said this, and then your daughter can be like oh, you know what you're right, I messed up, right. And then and kids love that, right, that's that transparency.

Steve Haffner: 40:54

Yeah, and it's on a big contract is at the front of a room, really big, and the kids can point to it, you know, if they think that the teacher is not living up to it.

Ryan Steuer: 41:03

Yep, that's good. Give them some voice and choice. That's what we call it in our geeky world. Steve, thank you for coming on and sharing. Oh, I don't know how you did it.

Steve Haffner: 41:14

Man, I wish I had a watch for it.

Ryan Steuer: 41:16

We should have planned it ahead of time. Steve, I would love for you to be able to hold it back up.

Steve Haffner: 41:20

It'd be so good.

Ryan Steuer: 41:22

But no, I think we made a lot of great connections for our leaders. I think I am going to use this term, I'll have to kind of TM it with you. But this idea of showing the ropes right, like let them come up on stage first, tell them what's really behind everything, so we can get people on the same page. Hey, steve, we're going to put all your resources in our show notes so people can connect with you there.

Ryan Steuer: 41:43

What's the best way for them to just reach out and connect with some of your work social media or whatever?

Steve Haffner: 41:48

Yeah Well, go to my website, it's SteveHaffnercom, and then you can. You can reach out to me there. You can check out my speaking programs, because I do other programs besides just the trust in education. I have problem solving, how to handle the stress from disruptions and the effects that it has on our decision making. Have a newsletter comes out once a week, just a quick three minute read, with links to interesting articles on performance and decision making and problem solving, and you know all those things that I love to talk about.

Ryan Steuer: 42:22

Perfect, perfect. Thank you so much, steve, for being on, I appreciate it.

Steve Haffner: 42:26

Thanks, ryan, great to talk with you.

Ryan Steuer: 42:28

All right, visionary leaders, you need to show your people the ropes right, and you've got to be transparent with them. And you take the first step. It starts to show that that's what we do at our school, right, that's what our people do. We're transparent with the work that we're doing and as you do that, you'll see your culture grow and be really positive, and as you do that, you'll engage your learners, tackle boredom and transform your classrooms. So go lead inspired.

Ryan Steuer: 42:55

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the PBL Simplified Podcast. I appreciate you and honor that you tune in each week. Would you please take two minutes to leave a rating and a review? When you leave a review, it lets the next person know that this is a podcast worth listening to. When they go into their player and search project-based learning, and PBL Simplified popped up, when they see those reviews, they know that high quality, visionary leaders are listening, so they tune in too and they can find their way into the PBL journey. Thank you so much for leaving a review. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you.