Session 1: Manage Stress or It will Manage You

"On life's vast ocean, diversely we sail. Reason the card [map], but passion is the gale."

Alexander Pope (1.1)

The large red-tailed hawk flew effortlessly above the fields of swaying grain and green grass blending together on the landscape surrounding the heart of Gartree Center, Iowa. The predator, common to the fields and skies of this area, glided gently with the air currents of the sunny afternoon sky painted with an occasional wispy white cloud. Its objective was simple, to feed its young located in a nest not far from Gartree Center's training facility. Gartree Center, located near Interstate 80 and about sixty miles west of Des Moines, Iowa has prided itself on the development of this training facility. The facility, since its construction almost twenty years ago, has provided a service to farmers, Farm Bureau trainers, bankers, state and local officials, farm equipment company representatives, educators, and other individuals committed to the growth of this once primarily agricultural area.

As with other parts of Iowa, a state where 90 percent of the land had been devoted to agriculture (1.2), change has taken over the region surrounding Gartree Center. With fields of dark soil valued for its fertile nature, the area for many years had been considered to be a major provider of food to the nation's kitchen tables and the cattle industry's feedlots. However, in the last two decades, instead of seeing the annual conversion of the fields from one crop to another to preserve the quality of the soil, the land has been converted to vast tracts of home and condominium communities. These communities now provide employees for the companies that have sprouted up around Des Moines and along the area's interstate highway. Business centers and malls have risen from the ground to support this burgeoning population. The vast fields of corn, besides providing for cattle feedlots around the region, have in recent times become the source for fructose in our beverages, or ethanol for our gasoline engines, or the home of massive wind farms. Below the blue sky, now with heavier white clouds floating over the horizon, much still appears the same. However, much has also changed.

Gartree Center's public schools have been a window for the changes in the surrounding area. There has been a dramatic increase in class size and the need to expand the building capacity to accommodate the growing population. Along with this boom in population there has been a change in the culture of the community including expanded diversity among the families served. Add to this mix the heavier demands placed on the schools from an increasingly competitive world and the result is a learning environment that has been constantly evolving, and leaders who are looking for ways to respond to the changes and move forward. In this mid-sized Iowa town, the superintendent, the principal for the centralized K-12 school and the single department head who oversees curriculum and student services, comprise the leadership team tasked with keeping the learning field thriving.

Gartree Center has had a long history of supporting the growth in its community, regardless of whether it is in the fertile fields producing rows of corn and soy bean, or in the lively classrooms of its public schools. It is this tradition of concern for growth that had led to the construction with great pride of the training facility in town. In line with this background, the school board has had a solid record of supporting its leaders and encouraging their development. As part of this ongoing effort, Char (short for Charlene) Borde, its head, has engaged the services of a highly regarded trainer to work with the leadership team to help them develop strategies to reduce the stress typically connected with managing and leading an organization. The board has recognized that in an era of diminished resources, it is important for an organization to support its leaders in their efforts to utilize approaches which increase their focus on the existing goals. In education, this goal is about helping young people develop to their fullest potential and to become productive and contributing members of the community.

On this warm summer day Trey Norman lumbered out of his dusty and road weary SUV, walked across the parking lot, and headed through the doors of the training facility, navigating down the hallway toward the A-1 Training Room off to the right. Trey, a mountain of a man, had driven his SUV, which he affectionately calls Sushi, from his ranch in Jardine, Montana, a community of under a hundred about six miles up a winding road from Gardiner, Montana at the northern entrance of Yellowstone National Park. Growing up in Jardine and attending school in Gardiner, he has spent his entire life in the shadows of Montana's splendid mountain scenery. The trip to central Iowa was a pleasant change of pace for him. "Where else," he would say to the group as part of his introduction, "could you see this much flat land."

A star athlete in high school on a football team that fielded only eight players on each side of the ball, typical of small town Montana sports, Trey married his high school sweetheart, Mia Culpa. Mia, the eldest daughter of two attorneys, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, but had moved to the area from Seattle, Washington with her parents. Her family lived north of Gardiner in another small town, Emigrant, located in the vast Paradise Valley. After finishing high school, Trey and Mia, newly married, headed up the road to Bozeman to attend Montana State University. Having both graduated with a major in education, Trey and Mia decided to try a new world and go to Boston, where Trey ultimately completed a CAGS degree in school psychology and worked in a suburban school for eight years.

"Just loved the city," he told the leadership team as he stood before them in the training room. "Became quite a Red Sox fan and loved eating the fresh fish. For a guy who grew up eating trout caught in the rivers and lakes near my home in Jardine, learning the names of the variety of fish and seafood that could be ordered on menus in Boston was like learning a new language. At one point though, it got to be that I missed the family of elk or the occasional grizzly bear that would sometimes parade across our back yard in Jardine. It was then I knew it was time to head back home. When we decided to move, the family van, now with three active children in the rear, headed west. After a stop of three years in Minneapolis to complete my Ph.D. in organizational psychology, it was off to Montana for us." The chance to provide training and consultation for a school leadership team and to be in Iowa in a new setting on the Great Plains was an opportunity he could not wait to begin, Trey thought to himself as he looked around the training room table for someone else to talk....