Learning Human Skills Through the Montessori Framework

Episode Transcript

Kelly: [00:00:00]  Welcome back to let’s talk about skills, baby, the podcast, where we discover what skills can help you live your best life. I am your host Kelly, Ryan Bailey. And each week I chat with inspiring visionaries about the skills that make them successful. You’ll get a firsthand account of how they develop those skills, as well as their innovative approaches to improving skills based, hiring and learning around the world.

Now let’s talk about skills, baby. This week, I’m joined by Leonor from Montessori Group. Let me go ahead and quickly introduce her. So Leonor spent the entire part of her professional life in the private sector. However, she has been involved with charities since the age of 18, when she co-founded the amnesty international working group for children. During the Balkans War, she worked with children and women who were victims of the war.

Upon coming back to London, Leonor started working with UK charity Fields In Trust. Her next role was for human rights charity Index On Censorship. Before becoming the first Executive Director of the Galapagos Conservation Trust. Her next CEO role was at Medical Institute RAFT.

During her time there at Leonor created a life sciences company, was it’s CEO for five years concurrently serving as CEO of RAFT. In June 2018, Leonor took her fourth CEO role at Montessori group. And she has personally won several awards for her leadership. Leonor, this is such a fantastic accomplishment.

I hope you don’t mind that I gush on you there for a moment. Thank you for taking it so gracefully.

 Leonor: [00:01:50] I was even impressed listening to it.

Kelly: [00:01:53] We got to hear a little bit about the highlights and what I would love to do is just to hear a little bit more detail about led you to Montessori Group, where you are today.

Leonor: [00:02:03] Well, everything I’ve been involved with, I mean if you guys sort of go back to when I was 18 and helped set up the Amnesty Working Group for children has very much had a child focus to it. So in a way it was inevitable I was going to end up doing something like Montessori. Everything I’ve done has had a sort of very strong component of supporting children.

So there’s that bit. The second bit is for me, I’m passionate about the opportunity that education gives to children. I am living proof of that. I’m the first woman in my family to have a career. That’s because I am the first woman in my family to have had the opportunity to have been supported and encouraged to have good education.

Finally, I think that what Montessori does, it creates such a big impact in terms of allowing children truly become the adults that they could become to fulfill their potential. That has to be something that we must support, we must do for our children.

Kelly: [00:03:00] That’s wonderful. Tell me a little bit more about when you started this journey, because it sounds like maybe it was your personal experience that led you to become so passionate about helping children.

 Leonor: [00:03:12] Well, yes. It definitely is my personal experience because of my family background. My family were originally refugees from Spain to the UK. I also grew up and obviously only one that could actually go back to Spain during that time, and I went as a child. I saw my cousins didn’t have the opportunities, particularly my female cousins didn’t have the opportunities that I had.

And I just grew up with a sense of privilege to have had that opportunity that I’ve always felt it’s important that I give back and give others the opportunities. I was lucky because of the choices that my parents made that allowed me to do that.

 Kelly: [00:03:49] of curiosity I’m wondering now, based upon you being at Montessori school, did you happen to have a Montessori education when you were a child?

Leonor: [00:03:58] I think I probably did without realizing. Because I went to the state school in the UK, but I think my teacher was Montessori trained because a lot of the things that I now know of as Montessori, we did in the classroom. It was very familiar. The fact that I still remember that teacher years later shows what a big impact she had on me.

Kelly: [00:04:21] Wow. that I’m thinking about your work with Montessori I’m also curious, did you have an interest in working with Montessori Group or did they come looking for you?

Leonor: [00:04:31] It was very strange actually, because I’d been at my previous role for 11 years. I’d said I’d stay for 10 and then we had to change chairs so I said, I’d stay for another year to vet the new chair. And I was looking for another job and there actually two jobs on offer.

There was Montessori and then there was another job. And the other job was closer to home and it was actually more money. You think logically that’s the one I’d go for. And it was really strange cause they rang me up and they said well, Montessori, we want to offer you the job.

And immediately I said, yes, I’ll take it. All the books say you don’t do that. You say, “oh yes, thank you. Let me think about it, let me call you back.” I know I’d never done that before. I put the phone down and I said to my husband, I don’t know why but I just knew I had to do that job.

I knew that was it. And I just said yes, straight away. 

So.

Kelly: [00:05:24] That is so fascinating. When you have that feeling it’s hard to let that go. I wonder, throughout that process, because now understanding that this passion that you have around helping children. When you were evaluating this opportunity, is that when you first went into one of the classrooms? 

 Leonor: [00:05:42] I went to visit the nursery and I thought these children are, there’s just completely different vibe to it. They’re so engrossed in what they’re doing. They were very happy. They were quiet, not silent, but quiet, calm, really engrossed in what they were doing.

I thought wow, that’s a really interesting vibe here.  I remember it was a child came in and they were trying to take the coat off and hang it on a peg. My normal instinct was to step in and the teachers said to me “No, no. They’ve got to do it by themselves.” And this child could not reach the peg.

And I was watching this child and the child went off. This little toddler, three-four years old,   obviously to process this. Went on, got a little stool, came, put the stool in front, stepped on stool and put the coat on, got off the stool, carry the stool back.

And I thought, wow. That’s when it struck me the power of Montessori. Here’s a child who at that age has discovered how to problem solve.  That’s the skill we would call it as an adult. That child was problem solving. Had a problem. Had to think about how to solve it, solved the problem and was creative in how they did it. No one told that little boy how to do it, went off and, and discovered it for himself, and I thought this is really powerful stuff.

Kelly: [00:07:09] So powerful.

And the interesting thing about skills too, is that  they’re sort of like habits. can’t just learn something one time, you have to be presented with an experience that allows you to… In the last podcast that I did, we were talking about skills is sort of muscles.

To be able to use that particular muscle, if we don’t allow, in this case, a child to be able to figure it out on their own, then what would be the point in their life when they actually start to utilize or discover that they have this skill, this power.

Leonor: [00:07:47] Exactly. And this is what I think is so fascinating and so powerful about Montessori. We’re teaching children at such an early age and as you say, it’s becomes ingrained, it becomes muscle memory.

 It then becomes, like as an adult, when you learn how to drive a car. When you’re getting to a car, once you’ve learned and you’ve driven several times, you get to the stage where you’re not really thinking about it.

 You’re just doing it because you remember how to do it. You have that skill now. The fact that we’re teaching these young children to have those essential life skills. I refuse to call them the kind of soft skills because they’re not soft skills at that age. We’re already giving them an opportunity and a foundation on which to grow and blossom and I think that’s amazing.

Kelly: [00:08:30] It sounds like you’ve seen children at all various ages experiencing trauma or challenges or crisis in their life. And it sounds like to me, and just what you’re describing, if you have started to experience in a light way, something like trying to figure out how to hang a coat.

But if you learned that things in life aren’t always going to be just said and done easy. Then it’s not so daunting and overwhelming when something comes along because you know it’s just pause and let it settle in your mind and then move forward. Now you’ve been with Montessori, is it three years?

Leonor: [00:09:09] Coming up to three years. Yeah.

Kelly: [00:09:10] Wow. Did you have something in mind about some change that you wanted to make with Montessori?

Leonor: [00:09:16] Yeah. For me there were a couple of things, so I felt I could add value, or I felt that could do something different. And so the first is I felt that we have to slightly demystify Montessori for most people because people have some strange and weird and wonderful ideas about what Montessori is, you know?

Kelly: [00:09:37] Well, I’ve heard it too. Like, how is that classroom gonna stay orderly? If the kids can just do whatever they want.

Leonor: [00:09:42] There’s an element of sort of demystifying it. And I think that what a lot of people don’t realize is this is a pedagogy that’s actually grounded in science. Maria Montessori was a doctor, she was the first woman to become a doctor in Italy. She created this pedagogy out of observing children and learning.

And so she sort of took those scientific principles to create this. This is grounded in reality, this is not some weird and wonderful thing that was brought up at some point. This was built up and it evolved. So for me, I thought there’s something we have to do about kind of grounding Montessori in that reality of life.

 So last year in October, we launched a ‘That’s Montessori’ campaign online, where we talked to both parents and children at Montessori schools, and just talk about what are the sorts of things you do. And what was really fascinating, and we did some sort of surveys afterwards in the UK was that,  a lot of parents who knew nothing about Montessori or had some strange ideas about Montessori.

We’d say to them, okay. So do you allow your children to put their own shoes on? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, that’s what we do at Montessori. You start to sort of bring it down to things that parents were probably already doing. And in one of our surveys, I think we worked out that something like 87% of parents actually said, we’ve been doing Montessori in the home but we didn’t realize it.

Because it just seemed logical and sensible or they read about something they didn’t quite know it was Montessori, and thought that’s a sensible thing to do with my child. I can see how that’s going to help my job and we’re doing it. And so, I think that was a big part to say let’s kind of demystify it.

Let’s bring it back to say this is grounded in something very sensible.  The second thing I think is, you go back to where Maria Montessori started and Maria Montessori’s first school was in the slums of Rome.

And when we talk about slums, you think about 19th century/early 20th century.  There was no welfare state. There was huge poverty.  One of the first Montessori nurseries in the UK was actually set up by the suffragettes in the east end of London, which was a very poor part of London, again for vulnerable children.

So I feel that we need to also go back to that a little bit and say, what can we do for vulnerable children? How can we focus our social impact work to support those families? And we know that the Montessori approach, the Montessori method of education, is really good at reducing the achievement gap between rich and poor children.

There’s actually been longitudinal studies in the US that have shown this. Where you have children from deprived socio-economic backgrounds who have gone through Montessori, and by the time they get to high school, are performing as well as children from wealthy backgrounds. And that’s really important for society. That’s a marker of how important education is.

After all don’t we want adults to be productive and have good healthy lives. Doesn’t that just enrich society when we do that?  So those were the two things where I thought I really want to focus on those two areas,  also just kind of get the message out there.

Just keep talking about Montessori, about it is the pedagogy of the future. I know it was sort of developed a hundred years ago, but yet here we are. And if you think about it, the parallels in history are really interesting. Maria Montessori was developing this at the time of the Industrial Revolution, a time of great socioeconomic upheaval, terminal change, political change.

She created something that was going to be impactful and support children. Here we are at a time of huge change, not just with the pandemic, but also, cause what the pandemic has done is basically accelerated what was already in existence. Fourth digital revolution coming along, the world of work is changing, and everywhere I go around the world people say to me “we need an education system that teaches these skills of collaboration.”

 I’m going, you’ve got one!

Kelly: [00:13:34] We have that.

Leonor: [00:13:36] We’re here. Here we are with a method of education that speaks to what is relevant to our lives today. And that’s another sort of myth that exists around Montessori. I’ve had people say, oh yes, but it’s an old fashioned. No, it’s not. This is actually what we need now.

There is a piece of work which know has been done. It hasn’t yet been published, where they looked at adults at different ages. From sixties, fifties, forties, thirties, and looked at what were their lives like in terms of their mental wellbeing, in terms of their physical wellbeing, and then looked at what early years education did they have.

And they compared adults who’d been through mainstream or traditional early years education, and those that have been through Waldorf Steiner, and those have been through Montessori. Those that have been through Waldorf Steiner or Montessori had much better mental health and physical health by a massive margin.

And those that have been to Montessori actually were the ones that had the best. So this is work that I know will be published soon, and so that shows that it has an impact not just on economic outcomes, but actually physical and mental wellbeing. As I said, they looked to adults in their sixties.

Kelly: [00:14:51] I’m waiting for someone to also do some research around how this changes someone to be  ready for work, because like you said, people have the wrong opinion of this type of education. And the thing is that, like you described, and I think like we’ve learned in this COVID time period, that these skills, problem solving creativity, the list can go on, but these life skills are the ones that are hardest to find for employers.

Leonor: [00:15:16] Absolutely.

They’re in demand. Accenture did a big piece of work around this and said then exactly that these are the skills that are needed. And pretty much said the education systems that we have around the world today, don’t deliver that. So this isn’t just me saying it was Montessori.

This is actually people out there taking a very hard business look at this and going, we are missing these skills. We have to have these skills in the future. If we’re going to be successful as organizations, as companies, as countries, as economies. So this is something that has been said over and over and over again.

And I think that you’re right. Those skills do translate into success. A lot of the Silicon valley entrepreneurs are ex-Montessorians and credit Montessori for their success.

 We are losing the traditional work base of, you have a company or you go and work for a company and you’re there for 20 years or 30 years and then you retired. That went even before the pandemic.

You need people who can be entrepreneurial and inivative even within a big organization. You need people who can say okay, how can we do things differently? You need people who have  the confidence and the ability to do that sort of problem solving. To say, okay, I know we’ve always done it this way. Well, what if we did it that way?

What would happen? We need employers, we need bosses who are familiar with that ability to say, look here’s a framework and I’m giving you a freedom within that framework. That was one of the things that struck me when I went into Montessori and I learnt more about Montessori.

I sat there and I thought, wow, this is just modern leadership. I have an MBA and then I thought, wow, I am reading Maria Montessori, a woman a hundred years ago talking about things that. All these amazing management gurus wrote lots of textbooks. She was there.

She was there. Apply that, instead of children, to how you manage an organization, how you manage people. These are leadership skills.

Kelly: [00:17:14] Education and up-skilling and talent mobility, and all of these words that we like to use, their focus was really more based on technical business skills. But all of a sudden, we’re starting to see all of these organizations focus on mental wellness. And to me, that mental wellness is truly those foundational life skills, which like we’re saying right now, are these leadership skills.

Leonor: [00:17:37] And also the ability to communicate. We will have been working remotely for a year now. That requires a different type of communication skill. That requires leaders not to assume that everybody knows everything. And how do you communicate without over-communicating?

Without inundating people with information, with data. Right or wrong, I’ve always taken the stance that I employ adults and I treat people like adults. And if there’s a problem, I’m going to be honest about it because you’re an adult. You should be able to understand that I’m telling you this because I respect you enough to tell you that there’s a problem or that things are going to be tough.

I’m really astounded sometimes where I’ve seen leadership across the world, whether the political leadership or organizational leadership talk about when things get back to normal. That ain’t gonna happen. What we have all experienced globally is going to create such a shift.

 We are really going to have to ask some difficult questions and we’re going to have to face some difficult times. If you don’t actually talk about it, if you don’t tackle what that has felt like for people, then you create problems for yourselves way down the line.

 We know this from history. Conflicts rise because something wasn’t really tackled and that’s where leadership comes in and that’s that skill that we as leaders are all having to learn. Because this is all new to all of us.

Kelly: [00:19:14] So true. Everything you’ve already described, already had all of these amazing leadership skills at your fingertips. And it sounds like you still a place where you needed to learn more

Leonor: [00:19:26] yeah.

Kelly: [00:19:27] this there something in particular that helped you up these important skills through this process? Or was it just- 

Leonor: [00:19:34] Just going through it. And I tell you the one thing that I have done a lot more of is, I think the pandemic has done this, is people are more open to talking about their experiences. And I think that’s been really powerful. So I’ve spoken to a lot of peers and said, right so what are you going through? 

And what I’ve found the really very positive and very interesting change is people opening up about how vulnerable they felt. I’ve never seen that before. I’ve never seen tough alpha males, say, I’m actually struggling. I’m finding this really hard.

Kelly: [00:20:13] So all of these skills that we’re learning over this timeframe that are outside of the normal way that our education system Montessori or not, and our work system like to talk about skills, right? We like to talk about, I have this degree. I have this particular work experience. And that’s what these things mean.

But you and I we’ve just had a whole conversation about all these fantastic skills that have been gained in a totally different way. How do people now recognize that? Like for you, even as an employer,  has this made you stop and think about how you look at potential employees or your current employees?

  Leonor: [00:20:50] I’ll be honest. I have always employed people on who they are as people rather than their skills. And I learned that a long time ago, because you can get some people who on paper look amazing, and are just awful employees because they’re missing those key human skills. And I’ve employed people who haven’t got a qualification, barely finished school, and had been brilliant. Brilliant.

Kelly: [00:21:16] How do you evaluate that?

Leonor: [00:21:18] To some extent it’s been trial and error. I’ll be honest, I’m not going to lie about it. But I think it’s quite liberating when you think about employing people, if you don’t look at their CVS. Because I think in other parts of the world, but certainly in the UK there’s this thing about people having to have a degree. I don’t think so, necessarily. I don’t think so.

And I’m hoping that we can kind of get past that. we talked about the fact that I’ve got an MBA. I don’t even remember if I put it down on my bio and I don’t think I even put it in my  CV.

Kelly: [00:21:49] you did now that I think about it.

Leonor: [00:21:51] No one’s ever asked me. You get to a certain stage where it’s about what you’ve achieved.

Kelly: [00:21:56] Yup.

Leonor: [00:21:57] No one’s ever asked me. I’ve never been to a job where, I mean, yes, of course there are jobs where you need to have those technical qualifications. But I’d never been to a job where someone said, okay, can you forward me your certificate? I want to see your degree. I think that if we can move away from that, that would be a good thing because I think there are some fantastic people out there who can make such an impactful difference to people’s lives and we need to value that.

And I think hopefully that’s what COVID has done, is helped us. It’s certainly new UK, there’s been a new found appreciation for people that actually do what you would have called kind of low level jobs.

But actually what we’re realizing is if we didn’t have the delivery people, if we didn’t have the person that works in the shop, if we didn’t have the nurse, if we didn’t have those people who may not be paid the highest salaries, the plumbers, the electricians that keep things going.

If we didn’t have those people, where would we have been?  And so I think it’s important that we don’t get hung up on those qualifications. And I think that’s actually very Montessori. Of course, because we’re part of all the traditional mainstream education systems, we follow the curriculum.

But we’re not big fans of testing people and test results and stuff like that because, I didn’t actually do my degree until I was in my late twenties. In the UK, we did this a levels and we’re supposed to get certain grades. I didn’t get those grades. We had a difficult year in the family. And it hasn’t stopped me.

And I think that we can get very, very hung up on that. It really is about the person and what does that person bring? And I think that’s a really important discussion to be had around motherhood. Because you don’t get a qualification to be a mother.

Kelly: [00:23:51] Nope If you think about it, anyone who’s not a mother, just so you know, they send you home with the baby, no one trains you or tells you what to do by the way. And this is not like, oh, work where something happens, not a big deal. This is a life.

Leonor: [00:24:08] And again, it isn’t about getting a degree in it or something, but it’s an important skillset.

Kelly: [00:24:13] It’s so important. I think what you’ve just shared in terms of the way that you’ve been talking about people and the way you’ve hired people and the way Montessori, I just think that is such an amazing lesson.  The one question that I have before we wrap things up was that, when you meet someone for the first time that you are thinking of bringing onto your team, what’s the first question you ask them?

Leonor: [00:24:37] Wow. That’s good. Let me think. I think the first question I ask them is, tell me about yourself. And if they start launching into, “well, I have this degree in that degree, in this, this, this.” I think, Hmm. If they start talking about themselves as a person then you think, okay, I’m dealing with someone who’s going to be able to interact with other people in my organization as a person.

And at the end of the day, it’s all about people. Teams are all about building relationships, respecting the differences because not everybody’s the same, but building relationships, being able to work with people you don’t like, that’s a really important skill.

You know how to interact with people, you have to be able to respect them or show them respect. You have to be able interact with your customers or with your stakeholders. You have to be able to do that. And that’s all about relationships. It’s all about being a rounded human being effectively.

Kelly: [00:25:32] I hope that there’s a lot of hiring managers that are hearing this right now, or a lot of recruiters because it’s been a little while since I’ve been at an interview myself, but it’s just really funny. When you think back about the questions, I actually also interviewed someone the other day, so I’ll second what you said.

That’s the same first question that I asked and when they started to go into their qualifications, I said, no, no, no. I mean, just you. What are you passionate about? What do you like? Tell me about you as a person. And they were so thrown off.  They didn’t know how to answer that. It was sweet, but then once they realized like, oh, okay, I have to shift out of what I’ve always been asked and always supposed to answer into this other mind frame and to see them shift the look in their eyes.

 Leonor: [00:26:20] Think about it. If you hire someone, it’s hopefully hiring them for the longterm.  It’s like entering into a long-term relationship.

Kelly: [00:26:28] It’s almost like a marriage. It’s a little bit of a marriage, right? You spend more time with them than maybe your spouse.

Leonor: [00:26:34] Exactly and what you’re looking for is someone that you can kind of get on with and hope that they’ll share the same passion and drive that you have, and hopefully some of the same values. If you went to a date and somebody whipped out their certificates, you’d be going, “okay, thank you very much. Oh, look. I’ve got a phone call to go to or something.” You want to know about people. That kind of human element is really the thing about where we all have to be in the future. This goes back to the digital revolution.

We are going to have machines to do a lot of the mechanical stuff. It’s the human stuff.  Someone said to me that really resonated with me. And it was a conference about AI. And they said “in the future, with artificial intelligence the work that lawyers do of absorbing all these case studies and stuff, the machine will be able to do it in seconds. Audit’s. Machines will be able to do that. Now, would you trust a machine to cut your hair?”

I thought, wow. That was a point well made. That human  interaction. I probably wouldn’t trust the machine to cut my hair. Would you trust a machine to look after your child? Probably not.

So it’s kind of those human skills that are going to be the ones that are coming back to this conversation about the future worker that are there. And I thought it was a really quite a profound thing to say in a sort of funny way, but quite profound thing to say that .

Kelly: [00:27:54] It’s actually a great way to put it because it just makes people stop and think there for a moment.

 Leonor: [00:28:00] Well, I said, I didn’t say it, but it was when he said it, I was like, Oh, yeah, that’s right.

Kelly: [00:28:06] true. Well, I’d like to ask you one last question, because I love the idea of inspiring our listeners to take action. What’s the one thing that you would suggest people could do in their daily lives to grow right now?

Leonor: [00:28:21] Ask questions. Learning is all about curiosity in a way, isn’t it? We talk about continuous personal development and lifelong learning, but that’s really about having curiosity. Ask questions, find out why is this happening? And I think also as a society, that’s important as well. But it’s asking questions not in an accusatory way necessarily, but in a way of, I want to understand.

What does it feel like for you to go through this thing? What does it feel like to experience this?  Why do you do that in that way? Why don’t you do it in another way? How can we make things different? So just ask questions.

Kelly: [00:28:58] Such fabulous advice. Thank you so much Leonor for joining me today. I highly suggest that you all learn more if you are not familiar with Montessori. Head over to Montessori-group.com. Just some amazing information.

In fact, I have submitted my son, my youngest, my six year six-year-old into, because we were all virtual this year. My hope fingers crossed that we will back to school next year.

And he will hopefully be at our local Montessori school. So I am a big fan, but go and check them out. fabulous. I think even like you described earlier for young people, but also for parents, and I would say just adults in general, the ideas around this really is leaders of the future.

And

Leonor: [00:29:46] Yes.

Kelly: [00:29:46] be you as an adult. Maybe your eyes haven’t been open to that yet. So check them out is available

on LinkedIn and also on Instagram montessori-CEO

Leonor: [00:29:58] I’m going to tell you my LinkedIn, it is Leonor Stjepic. Which is my name. And yes my Instagram. I’d love you to check out my Instagram. Be warned, it does also show pictures of my dogs. So, know it’s not all Montessori. 

Kelly: [00:30:12] This is the whole point of like you as a person. That’s what I love about this. We just talked about all these human aspects and it’s like a person.

Leonor: [00:30:21] It is me as a person. 

Kelly: [00:30:22] That’s fantastic. I’m myself inspired by our discussion today, so thank you. We’re just so thankful for you doing this work and helping all of these children across the world. It’s been a pleasure.

Leonor: [00:30:35] It’s been a pleasure for me too. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot, Kelly.

 Kelly: [00:30:39] You’ve been listening to let’s talk about skills, baby, a growth network Podcasts production. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and share it with your community ratings, reviews and suggestions are great sources of feedback and always appreciated. please reach out and connect with me on social at Kelly, Ryan Bailey.

I’d love to meet you and continue the conversation. we’ll be back next week with a new episode. So until then keep growing your skills and have a great day.