Ep #110: Leading in Alignment with Your Values

Hello, Empowered Principals. Welcome to Episode 110.

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.

Well, hello there, happy Tuesday, and welcome to February, leaders. I hope that you are having an amazing week. I have to tell you, as I’m recording this, it’s the middle of January and it is just dumping here in California, let me tell you. At least up here in Northern California. Oh my gosh. It was so loud. I was on a coaching call just a little bit ago and the rain was so loud, I had to stop and ask my client if they could hear the rain because it was so distracting to me, I couldn’t believe it.

Anyway, we are floating away here and as you listen to this, it’ll be February, so we probably are still in the rainy season here in the Bay Area, but what I love about February, at least in California, it wasn’t true when I taught in Minnesota, but it was true for me here in California, was that February is another short month and I loved February.

Number one, my birthday is in February, but two, I really loved February because we had a week off from school the week of President’s Day, so there was a President’s Day or President’s Week second or third week of February and we always had that week off for, we called it winter break, but it got dubbed in the Bay Area as Ski Week because a lot of families would use that week to take vacation and head up to the Sierra’s to get some skiing in for the week.

So, it’s usually one of the last big ski weeks of the season unless we get late, heavy snow, which sometimes we do, and then people go skiing on their spring break in April. But, I loved February as a school leader, at least in my district, because we had this Ski Week.  So, it’s like January, you come back slow and there’s that magic that happens after the holidays where everybody’s calm, the kids are excited to be back, everyone’s happy.  January’s a nice little month, and then February we had a short, little break, and then you get into March and April and May where spring fever hits and all chaos ensures.

So, enjoy the beauty of this season. I feel like December, January, and February are such beautiful, fun months at school. They go by really quickly, so really embrace them, have fun.  And I hope that wherever you are leading, across the United States or in another country for that matter, I have several clients who are out of the US, I wish that you are having an amazing winter. I hope you’re getting some fun in and some play outside and you’re getting some exercise. So, wherever you are this February, I wish you well and I wish you lots of fun.

So, okay, we are going to talk about being aligned to our values. And what I mean by this, having aligned leadership and aligned values, it really means knowing what your values are first and foremost, and then working towards your thoughts, emotions, and actions, and having all of those things be in alignment with your values.

And the reason this work as a leader is so important is because when you are in full alignment with yourself, the thoughts that you’re having about your values and your belief systems, your thoughts are in alignment, your feelings are in alignment, your actions are in alignment, will create results that are in alignment. And even when they don’t create results that are in alignment, you are going to be so much more grounded in who you are as a leader and you’re going to be less influenced by other people’s opinions of you and their reactions to your actions.

So, you can take actions in your position that even when others do not agree with you, or they don’t like the decisions you make, or they don’t like the actions that you take, you get to stand in your confidence and be comforted in the fact that you are aligned with what you believe in. It’s a very powerful mindset to be in. It’s extremely empowering.

So, before we break this all down, the first step that you need to take when you want to experience aligned leadership is to know your values. We don’t often stop to think about what are my values on a daily basis. And if you want to know your values, look at how you spend your time and your money.

Those two things will show you what you value. We can say we have all these values, but how we act in our time and our efforts, who we spend our time with, what we do with our time, what we do with our money, those are our other assets, right? How we use our assets and how we allocate them, that really shows you what you actually value.

So, before we get into aligning with our values and being an aligned leader, we want to identify what those values are. So, take a moment, and actually take some time with this. This takes time, and I’ll tell you why. Because you want to write down everything that you think is important, thoughts that you think about at school, belief systems you have about education and about students and about teachers and about yourself as a leader.

Anything that comes up for you just write it all down and then you’re going to notice that there are things that come up such as, let’s say I value productivity, I value efficiency, I value being timely, I value equity, I value choice and voice for kids and for teachers, I value creativity, vulnerability, honesty, trust, humor. You could have a list that goes on and on and on.  So, get them all down onto paper, and for every single one of those things that you value, you need to answer the question, why? Why do you value what you value?

And it’s very important to do this because there are things that we say we value because we feel like it’s the right thing to value, and then there are things that we value because we just love to feel value for them. For example, if you’re a principal who is very committed to equity in your school and when you think about the value of equity and its importance to you and why it resonates so deeply with you, that value is coming from a place of love. It’s coming from loving your kids and wanting the best for them, wanting the best experiences and opportunities possible for every single child in your school.

Values like that are aligned with love and you need to decide if each of your values are coming from a place of love or fear. And take some time with this. You’ll have to decide what you value the most. You’ll have to prioritize your values because sometimes they’re conflicting, and that’s okay, that’s just being human. So, let’s break this down and put it into an example.

Let’s say that you value having a large amount of money in your backup school account. You know there’s that account where it’s kind of like for a rainy day or you’ve got a budget item that’s just there for when you need it. And some principals want to spend that all the way down every single year, and other principals like to build it up and save it because they either want to buy something that’s bigger or more expensive or they want to just feel the security that comes with having that money in the account.

Perhaps you don’t want to spend the money because you’re afraid of spending it wrongly and getting in trouble by your boss or the school board. Or maybe you worry that the money you spend won’t be of good value. Maybe you buy a project, or you buy a program and then it doesn’t really get the results you were hoping for, so you hold onto the money out of fear of making a wrong decision. That type of value comes out of fear. It’s a fear-based value.

We fear letting go of something because we’re going to be wrong, or we might not make the right decision, or our boss will be angry with us, so when you look at your values, just notice why you value them. Is it because it resonates with your core and it feels like love, or is it coming from a place of fear, like scarcity, like we’ll run out, we won’t have enough, or I should value this, like other people will judge me if I don’t value this?

So, just be thinking about what you value, why you value it, and if the value is disguised as being important to you because it’s fear-based. Just notice that, notice the why. And on the other hand, when you think about valuing something like vulnerability, the reason that you might value vulnerability is because you believe that being vulnerable will open the door for authentic conversations and inspiration.

And that even though when you experience vulnerability there’s fear involved, you’re worried about what other people will think and you feel that judgment, the reason that you value vulnerability is because it creates love and connection.

Do you see that difference? So, just be sure to notice your why for every value and dig into that why a little bit, and you’ll know if it’s based out of love or fear based on how you feel when you explain your why. The feeling will come up for you as you’re thinking about that why or writing it down, so just notice that, okay?

So, let’s break this down even further. As a principal, you have thoughts that you believe to be true for you, for your work, for your staff, for your students, for the way you lead your school. You have all kinds of thoughts and belief systems about them and things that you value. For example, you might believe that teacher turnover is detrimental to students.

That might be a thought that you hold and that you believe very closely to your heart. This means that you value teacher retention as often as it’s appropriate, right? There are cases where teacher retention is detrimental to kids and we want to dismiss those who are not helping kids in a good way. So, obviously there’s that, but for the most part, you believe that good teachers, strong teachers should be retained. The longer a teacher is at a school, the more stable that school is, the better it is for kids. Maybe you have that belief system.

So, when you believe that teacher turnover is not good for kids, you’re going to experience distress every time you have to release a teacher, or if a teacher decides to either quit the profession or leave your school and go somewhere else, but anytime there’s a teacher turnover and that butts up against your value system and your belief about what you believe to be true, you’re going to feel distress in some way.

So, in order to avoid feeling distressed, what you’ll do, and you won’t want to be out of alignment with your belief system, so what you’ll do is you’ll take lots of action that you believe will support teacher retention. You might offer tons of support for your staff, maybe you hire an instructional coach to support them, maybe you get classroom assistants to help them part-time, maybe you schedule in planning time for them, there’s endless opportunities for you to take action in ways that you believe will retain your teaching staff, right?

When you take these actions and you commit to them and you believe in them, those actions are going to result, hopefully, in a low teacher turnover and improve student progress at the end of the day, right? So, when you take those actions, your goal is to get the result of lower teacher turnover and improved student progress. And if that result happens, you are going to feel extremely alignment as a leader. You have a belief, you felt committed to that belief, you took actions that are in line with that belief, those results aligned with the belief, and that is what aligned leadership is.

Now, of course, in this example, you could take all of those actions and teachers still might not stay, meaning that your result didn’t end up fully aligning with your belief, but you as a leader are still going to feel committed and aligned to your value of teacher retention because you acted in accordance to that value.

I want to say something about aligned results. So, there are times when we have a value, we think it, we practice it, we fully believe in it. We don’t even have to practice the belief because we already believe it, and we’re committed, we’re aligned, we take all the action, and we still don’t get the result, and then we’re like, “What the heck? What happened? Why didn’t I get the result?” and we can get very bitter and very discouraged when we felt very aligned and then we didn’t get the result, so I want to approach that a little bit and talk about it.

There are many, many times as a leader when we won’t achieve something we want to, and when we reflect back, we look at our actions and we’re like, “Wait a minute. My actions were aligned with my thinking and my emotions. What happened?” So, using this example of retaining teachers, you may strongly believe in teacher retention efforts. You do all of the work, you align your thoughts and emotions, and you take action because you believe in the importance of teacher retention.

And your thoughts that you were thinking throughout the year might be, “I really enjoy taking the time to support teachers. I value teacher retention. I’m spending my time on teacher retention. I’m spending my dollars on teacher retention, and I believe that supporting teachers is valuable because it helps kids.”

So, actively thinking all these thoughts are going to bring up emotions of commitment, assuredness, certainty, and when you’re feeling those emotions about teacher support and retention, you will plan and prioritize your tasks during your workday that actually support teachers. And all of this can be aligned, and you still won’t get the result of teacher retention, and it’s at this point where our brains often chastise us, right?

They chatter at us. They doubt us. They’re like, “Hey, what happened? This didn’t work. See? You took all this action, nothing mattered. What happened? What didn’t I do, wasn’t enough? Why did this even matter?” but I just caution you, those kinds of questions, going down that rabbit hole of, “I didn’t do enough. This didn’t work,” that little sneaky thought, “This didn’t work,” those kinds of questions don’t serve you or your teachers or your students.

If you want to continue valuing teacher retention, you have to shift into the types of questions that will soften your brain’s message, soften your response to yourself, and shift from having failed to noticing that your efforts did have an impact, you didn’t quite get to the results yet, but you’re going to keep moving. Because when you’re aligned, it might take you a while to get the results you want, but staying in that alignment and holding true to your value as a leader is what eventually gets you the results and into complete alignment as a leader.

So, I want to look at a few different examples from real situations that I’ve coached principals on. The first one is this: Deciding a consequence for a student. So, this client was telling me, she brain-drained, right? She told me all the things that were going on in her head about this situation, that the parent was accusing her of things, not being fair, she was being blamed because the parent was upset. The parent was sticking up for her son even though he clearly did something wrong. There’s a lot of thoughts that she had about this situation.

And then her brain shifted into, “Wait a minute. I made a decision about this student. I was worried I didn’t follow protocol. The parent threatened to get a lawyer after me. I thought I did what I needed to do.” So, she shifted from being upset and feeling like a victim and getting blamed and being a victim of that circumstance and being angry at this parent into, “Oh my gosh. What if I did something wrong?”

And then fear set in, all in one brain-drain, and then the questions started happening. “Why did the call go this way? Maybe I didn’t do something right. Was I too harsh? I’m feeling insecure. Maybe I didn’t do the right thing. I feel like I did something wrong.” She went on and on and ultimately what we noticed was that the principal, when she made her decision, she did it from a place of love for this child even though the parent wasn’t happy with the decision.

She followed protocol, she made a decision, she felt her decision was in alignment with her values and the policies and the expectation. It was completely within her rights as a principal. Mom was upset. And she realized that she actually was in alignment with her decision, that she had thought clearly about what is in the best interest of the child, “What’s an appropriate response to this? How can I support mom through this? How can I support child through this?” and interestingly enough, the child was not as upset as the mother was about the –

And you can imagine, I’m sure you’ve had the same experience, but my point is that when you make decisions as a leader, when you make them from a place of alignment, with what you believe to be true for yourself, what you believe is appropriate, fair, just, and in alignment with policy, and you make that decision, you can stand grounded in your alignment even when somebody outside of you is very upset or unhappy.

You can hold space for that person’s emotions, and you can stay neutral in the stance of your alignment while that person is having a reaction to their own thoughts about the situation. You have done nothing to that parent. That parent has their own steer cycle going on and their own set of emotions about their child’s behavior and consequences.

And when you feel aligned, you don’t have to worry and take offense to the attacks of this parent because you will know in your heart that you have done what you believe is best. Can you see that? We got this client to, “Wait a minute, I was aligned. I did what I felt I needed to do.”

So, that was really, really special for her to shift into first being angry, then being fearful she had done something wrong, but when we dug into it deeper and we started looking at the thoughts behind her decision-making process, she was able to see that no, she actually was in alignment with her values. Really, really good stuff.

So, another example from a client was deciding whether or not to apply for a position at a different school. This principal is a new principal and had planned to be at her site for five years, let’s say, several years, to establish herself. Another job came along, she got an invitation to apply, and was feeling a lot of guilt about considering the position.

She had to go through the process of deciding why was this position even interesting to her. Did she value staying and establishing herself at a school long-term, or did she feel the need to apply, and why? What did she value? We went through the process of determining what her values were, why she was feeling what she was feeling.

In the end of that process, of using the tools to get to her why and to aligning herself, even in the midst of her husband having an opinion about what she should do, her boss having an opinion about what she should do, she had to get clear within herself and make that decision completely on her own.

Asking for other people’s input onto your decisions as a leader, it muddies what you value. It muddies your alignment. You aren’t aligned with yourself when you have to ask for other people’s input. Because you’re not asking yourself, “What do I value? What will feel good to me? What does alignment look like for me?” You’re asking other people to give you that input and make the decision for you, but then you don’t own that decision, so you can’t take responsibility for its success or its failure.

So, when you succeed, it wasn’t your decision. Somebody else made it for you. Your brain’s going to know that. Or, if it fails, your brain is going to want to blame outside of you, but either way, you’re disempowered because you have now asked somebody else to make your decisions for you.

So, when you’re making a big decision about your career or about anything at school, getting quiet with yourself and answering yourself, “What decision do I want to make? Why am I considering these different outcomes? What values are coming up for me in this decision?” and then make the decision and go for it.

No looking back, no second-guessing, no judging yourself. This is something I’m working really hard on, and I’m practicing the belief that I am not held to my past decisions. I can make new decisions. My past mistakes do not influence my future. I can be in this moment right now making the decision that feels most aligned to me. And even if this decision ends up feeling like it was wrong or I want to change that decision, that it’s all okay, that it was just learning.

A decision isn’t right or wrong, it’s just learning. We’re constantly deciding and learning. But I implore you to consider getting very into your own alignment as a leader and being very clear about why you decide what you decide, why you act the way you act, and having that feeling of alignment, because once you have that, that’s your full power. No one can take that away from you and no one can shake you when you’re grounded in what you believe works best for you and for kids and for your staff. No one can penetrate that, so keep that in mind.

A third example, and this is a sensitive example, but it’s a true story about a principal who held a staff member accountable for his or her actions, and that teacher called the principal out as being discriminatory. So, the principal asked a staff member to be accountable to his or her responsibilities and that teacher accused the principal of discrimination, the district held an investigation and found that no evidence was clear that there was discrimination, that the principal was acting in alignment, in accordance to his or her ethical and moral obligations as a leader.

But the principal now feels terrible, and feels highly uncomfortable around this teacher and doesn’t want to feel uncomfortable. She still has to do observations with this teacher and is feeling extremely uncomfortable. She’s worried she’s going to make a mistake or she’s going to be viewed as discriminatory. She feels like her character’s been questioned, and she’s extremely uncomfortable.

So, here’s my coaching on this. If you look at the situation and you felt that you did your very best to be in alignment with your values as a leader, if you believe you treated that person fairly and respectfully, and I’m just going to make up an example, like let’s say the principal told this person to be on time, that they weren’t showing up on time at work or something. And so, you value them being on time, obviously, for reasons that make sense, right?

You want them to be on time for duty so that kids are kept safe and that they’re being supervised. You want them to be on time to work so that they can be prepared for their day. All of those things, right? You can decide that you acted in alignment and feel the certainty even when things outside of you are very uncomfortable with the other person.

Keep in mind, our emotions come from our thinking, not somebody else’s thinking, not somebody else’s opinion. The principal’s feeling of uncomfortableness is being created by the thoughts in her head, the thoughts that she is thinking.

Now, I’m not saying that the principal should or should not think thoughts that bring her discomfort. That’s totally up to her, and it might be a challenge for her to not think those thoughts. I completely understand that. I would be uncomfortable as well. I can imagine being uncomfortable in that situation, but what I’m pointing out is that our emotions are coming from the way we are thinking, not what the other person is thinking.

So, they have their own set of thoughts and emotions and opinions and actions, and then we are responding to that with our thoughts. So, we have to be careful that we’re not using and blaming the situation for the reason that we’re feeling uncomfortable. We get to decide our thoughts and know that we have a choice to believe those thoughts or not.

A principal, let’s say another principal was in this situation and that principal decided to believe thoughts that don’t make her feel uncomfortable. Somebody else might think thoughts like, “I did nothing wrong. I have no reason to be uncomfortable. I’m continuing to stay in alignment and holding every member of my team accountable in an equal manner.” Those kinds of thoughts are going to help somebody feel in integrity and in alignment, and they don’t feel the need to be uncomfortable because they feel very closely aligned as a leader.

Now, again, I’m not saying right or wrong. It doesn’t matter which you think. Either are okay, but notice that if you choose to think thoughts that make you feel uncomfortable, that your work now becomes holding space for that discomfort. You could have acted in full integrity and in full alignment and feel discomfort and hold space for both of those.

So, just know that the thoughts that bring up discomfort for you, if you feel very aligned to those thoughts, then your work is going to be in allowing that discomfort to be present. Having somebody be mad at us or accuse us of discrimination is not comfortable if you decide it’s not, right? Our work comes in allowing that discomfort to be present without impacting the way we show up as a leader.

The discomfort of the situation doesn’t go away, but you can allow the discomfort and be assured that you’ve acted out of integrity from that place of alignment, and from there you get to feel peace because you are aligned and acting out of integrity. Really important concept as a leader. I know it’s really deep, but it’s been so powerful for my clients the last few weeks that I had to share the work that they’ve been doing.

I’m so, so proud and honored to work with these folks. They are just killing it. Most of them are brand new principals and I’m so impressed at their ability to navigate their minds, to look at their thoughts, to ask for the help when they need it. I had a client just call me today, say, “Hey, I’ve got a situation. I know it’s not my regular scheduled time. Can I talk with you?” Yes, absolutely. That is my job. That’s why I’m here, to help you, so just know that.

I hope this has been helpful. If so, please give me a shoutout with a 5-star review on iTunes. We want to increase our 5-star reviews so that more people can find the podcast. I love doing this podcast for you guys. Have an amazing week. Talk to you soon. And hey, oh my gosh, I almost forgot to tell you, P.S., I’m going to be offering a free master class training on Tuesday, February 18^th at 4:00 PM Pacific, which is 7:00 PM Eastern time.

All you have to do is join my mailing list and the link will be in the show notes for the mailing list link to my website. When you sign up to be on the email list, many of you already are, but if you’re not, what the heck, get on the email list, because you’re going to get access to these free trainings. I’m going to be teaching and coaching, so you will want to be live for this event, so put it on your calendar and block off the hour. It’s only 60 minutes.

I’m going to teach and I’m going to offer coaching for those who have issues they’re struggling with so I can help you on the spot, in the moment. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter. Be sure to sign up for the link. Register for the class so that you can get access to the training and the coaching totally free just because I love you. All right? Hope to see you there live. Have an amazing week. I will talk to you next week. Take care. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit 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.