Ep #42: Seeking Approval

Hello, Empowered Principals, welcome to episode 42.

Welcome to The Empowered Principal Podcast, a not so typical, educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy, by refining your most powerful tool: your mind. Here’s your host, certified life coach, Angela Kelly Robeck.

Hello, my friends. How are you doing this week? Really, I mean, really, really, how are you? How are you feeling about this week? Are you noticing the thoughts that are creating your feelings? That is what the STEAR cycle is all about. I hope you’re running cycles this week.

For those of you who are new to our podcast, welcome. We are so happy you have joined us. This podcast is designed to support school leaders and all the drama, all the workload and all the overwhelm that comes with the job. We keep it real up in here, ladies and gentlemen.

School leadership is like becoming a parent. You know that first time when you get pregnant and you’re ready to have the baby? You are so excited beforehand and you’re daydreaming how beautiful life is going to be and how perfect this baby is going to be. And right after that baby arrives, you are stunned with the reality of parenthood and you are a walking zombie thinking, “What just happened to our life? What is sleep? Did I even shower today? Is he ever going to be able to feed himself?”

Remember those days? I have a girlfriend now who is in the thick of it. She and I are telling stories and I’m trying to support her through it. I’m on the other side, but she’s in it, and it’s thick. So take that feeling and multiply it by the number of students, staff, and parents that you interact with on a daily basis at school. That’s how it feels because this job is no joke.

You are inundated with hundreds, if not thousands of interactions on a daily basis. So that is why we gather here together. We talk, not necessarily about all the technicalities of the job but why we feel the way we feel on a daily basis. I know of no other podcast that is talking about this in our profession, and I fully believe we should be talking about this every day in every school.

Empowerment comes from the ability to manage our thoughts and emotions and show up in a way that provides amazing service and support to our staff and our students, which in turn produces incredible results for you and your school. So I’m fired up about this podcast and I am fired up about serving each of you.

So today we are going to talk about needing approval from others and why this underlying belief is so powerful in derailing us from setting wildly improbable goals. Now, on the surface, you might say to yourself, I don’t see myself needing other people’s approval. And on some level that could ring true for you, but in my experience, both as a principal and as a coach, what I found is that all of us on some level hold on to the belief that we need or at the very least, we crave approval from other people.

So the question is why. Why do we want other people to approve of us? Or as some of my clients say, “I just want to be liked. I want people to like me.” What is it about others liking us that has us people pleasing or making decisions based on what we believe others will approve?

The simple answer is that we are wired to seek approval. Humans are social beings. We’re wired to seek love and belonging. So even though your brain might be telling you that working with other people drives you crazy from time to time, and trust me, I believe you, that is true, there is a deeper fear of being disliked or ostracized or publicly shamed that tempers how we show up.

And when I mean show up, I mean things like we hold back in saying what we want to say, we procrastinate decisions because we fear of making the wrong one or making somebody upset. We go back on our decisions and we teeter back and forth because oh-oh, somebody didn’t like what we said or did and now we’re caught between this approval and disapproval and we teeter back and forth.

Or like, we fear that angry parent is coming at us because it actually feels really crappy to have someone yell at us and we want them to like us. So we do what we think they will like because we want to seek their approval, and so on and so on and so on. You could come up with endless ideas. But we hold back on who we are because we want that pat on the back from others more than we want to be authentic. Even when others do not approve. Does that make sense?

So the need for approval, it’s very powerful and it’s a very powerful motivator. Behavior motivator. You see it with kids all the time on campus, and I’m sure you see it in your staff. Adults are driven by the same basic fears and wishes as kids. They’re just big kids, right? The reason we crave approval so badly is because of what we make it mean about ourselves.

We make being approved by our peers mean that we’re liked, that we’re popular, smart, that we’re included in the group and that we’re good enough. We’re good enough to belong, right? We make it mean that our ideas are savvy and we actually gain social status in a sense of contribution when others love what we do.

So we base our opinion of our own selves on the opinions that others have of us. And what I’ve noticed is that as you move up the ranks in the educational industry, the less people are willing to approve of you, right? When you become a school leader, there are peers who feel envious or jealous of your upward movement and you will have parents who are just waiting to place blame on you just because of your title and status. Not because of who you are, but just because you are the principal. They don’t care that you have been an amazing teacher. They need somebody to blame.

And you will also notice that a portion of your staff will groan at any decision you make no matter what because they want that decision to benefit them 100% of the time. So when it leans their way, yay. When it doesn’t lean their way, blah, right?

So this means as a school leader, you must learn how to detach from the belief that you need everybody’s approval. Now, this can be a challenge, especially for us educators. Think about this: we went into education because we loved school. I don’t know too many educators that weren’t fans of school. Either you absolutely loved it or you hated it so much you wanted to go in and create change.

But most teachers loved school, loved being a student, and loved the environment of school. We thrived in it, right? We thrived in that school environment and that environment heavily promotes valuing the approval of others, specifically the teacher, but definitely your peers as well.

So as educators, unfortunately, we perpetuate this cycle of approval seeking as teachers and then move up as school leaders and we do the same thing. So how do we stop this cycle of seeking approval? Well, the fastest way I’ve learned is to shift the focus of the approval and what it means.

So first, I humble myself very quickly, while at the same time empowering myself through valuing my own opinion of me. So here’s what I do. Number one, I put myself in check. It is not about me. It’s about those I serve. So whenever you’re seeking approval, you’re thinking about how you are feeling. You’re focusing on you. And when you focus on your feelings, your thoughts, how people are perceiving you, you are losing sight of how you’re serving others.

Leadership is about serving others. Not about getting the approval of others. So there are times when you need to lead and serve your people and that decision may not be the most approved or the most liked decision, but it is the most powerful in serving them. There is a difference between them liking your decision and that decision serving your people.

We often get in our heads when we are preparing to serve others, and our brain starts to question us. It’ll say things like, “What will they think? Will they like what I’m doing and how I’m leading? What happens if they don’t like it? What happens if I say the wrong thing?” And you get into this whole blunder of like, questioning yourself and then you don’t want to be empowered and stand in your leadership.

Other questions that come up or thoughts that serve no useful purpose are things like, “I’m an introvert. I don’t know how. I don’t feel comfortable putting myself out there.” So when those thoughts are starting to come up, know that the focus is not about how you are feeling or how approval makes you feel. It’s about how you serve others.

So moving on, number two, remember that approval is simply an opinion. It’s not a fact. You don’t feel better when someone approves of you. You feel better because of the way you are thinking about that approval. You like the approval because you make it mean that now you can like yourself and what you are doing.

This is so disempowering because you are relying on somebody else’s opinion of you in order for you to like you, to take the actions and get the results you want. So you’re not actually leading when you’re seeking other people’s approval to take action.

And think of the flipside of this. When someone gives you approval, they’re not thinking about you as much as they’re thinking about how they are feeling. It’s kind of a mind trip, right? They approve of you as a leader because your decisions get them what they want. They are concerned about how your actions impact them. When it favors them, they’re all in. When it does not favor them, they disapprove.

So keep in mind that the approval you are seeking is number one, just an opinion, and number two, in the eye of the beholder. Because they are more worried about how they are feeling than how you are feeling.

Number three, for every person who approves of you is another person who disapproves of you. It is a win-lose, lose-win, win-win, lose-lose. So if approval is just an opinion, then for every person who approves of you will be another person out there who disapproves of you. And as my coach says, some people will never like peaches no matter how juicy of a peach you are. You can be the ripest, most beautiful perfect peach on the tree and some people will just never like peaches.

So the goal is not to try and get everyone’s approval. One, impossible, so you’re barking up the wrong tree. And two, the goal is to know that the more authentic leader you are, those who like peaches will be following you and they will be loving everything about you. This is my personal rule of thumb: a third of the people are always going to like you, they’re going to be fans, even if they disapprove they will follow your lead because they like you, they trust you, they want to work with you.

A third will always find something to be disapproval of. They’ll always disagree, they’re always not going to like you, they will always find something about you or your decisions or your actions or your results that they want to argue and negate.

And the other third, they’re just neutral. They’re just along for the ride. They’re not really caring one way or the other about you or the situation. So here’s what I say: focus on the one third that love you and shine for them. Shine big. Be the biggest version of yourself possible.

And what you find is that the more authentically you show up, that neutral third, they’re on the fence, right? They’re either not paying attention, they’re not aware, or they don’t know what to do with you, to know you, like you, or trust you. They’re watching and noticing you. So if you can show up as your authentic self and fully be present in your leadership role, that third, a portion of those people are going to follow along.

So don’t focus your energy on the negative Nellies, the one third who are going to disapprove of you no matter what. You’re not ever going to change them. If they don’t like peaches, they’re not going to eat the peach no matter what so let it go.

Finally, this is the nugget. We get caught up in wanting everybody to approve of us but the truth is this: the approval you should be seeking is your own. When it comes down to it, who makes you feel good? Who gets your results? Who lives your life? You do. Your thoughts create your emotions. If you approve of yourself and the work that you do, then you can go home every night knowing you did the best job you could, by showing up as the best version of yourself possible.

If you go to that school and you show up with all of your energy and enthusiasm with the intention of seeking to serve others, then you can go home at night and lie your head on your pillow approving of yourself. And that is the key to self-empowerment. Self-approval is self-empowerment.

So practice approving of yourself. Notice what you’re doing and if it feels good to you. That, my friends, is empowerment. So go on, get it, be empowered. I will see you all next week. Take care. Bye bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit www.angelakellycoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.