Ep #125: Staffing from a Distance

Hello, Empowered Principals. Welcome to Episode 125.

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 empowered leaders, and happy Tuesday. If you are new to the podcast, welcome. I am so happy you are here. I truly hope that this podcast finds you well and well-adjusted to your work-from-home routine. I personally am getting into more of a groove. But I have to say, I cannot tell you how much I miss being outdoors and just breathing fresh air without a mask.

So, for those of you who are new to me, new to the podcast, my husband Mitch and I recently bought a new townhome in downtown San Jose, California. We had been living at our beach condo down in Santa Cruz and we decided to move back into the Bay Area. And we moved into our new place a week before the quarantine.

We decided to move back primarily because of the commute between Santa Cruz and San Jose, and the amount of time that I was spending in airports and on airplanes, flying and presenting at conferences, attending conferences, trying to network and meet all the people. So, we just decided it was a good use of our time to be much closer to the activity of work and just networking and connections.

So, we bought this place and it’s quite lovely. We’re happy to be here. It’s much more spacious than our beach condo. But it also has no private outdoor space where we can go outside and relax. We don’t have a balcony. We don’t have a patio. We don’t have a deck. We don’t have any front yard, back yard. It’s truly a townhome in the middle of downtown.

Which is exciting because we had envisioned ourselves taking walks around the downtown area and checking out all the really cool bars and restaurants and venues in the area. But the coronavirus had other plans for all of us.

So, here we are. And I’ve had to make sure that I’m putting walks and outdoor time on my calendar, physically adding it to my calendar to remind myself and make sure that I take a break from coaching and writing to decompress and get some sunshine.

And I really want to invite you to make sure that you are also taking some time just for you; not for the kids, not for hubby, or for wife, or for partner, but for you. My husband was just saying, “You know, I love all this time with you and with Alex, but there’s no me-time and there’s no downtime.” And I’d noticed that, so we’ve been trying to give each other as much space as one needs just to kind of ground yourself and reboot yourself.

So, please, be sure to put yourself on the calendar. And I know you might be thinking, “I barely have time to get everything else done. How can I do that?” I think the same thing too. I am coaching more than ever and working to expand my services to include full service professional development for entire districts.

And I’m super-excited about the new programs that I’m offering for this fall, offering personalized customized coaching programs, not just for principals but for everybody in the district. It’s super fun and cool and I’m so jazzed about it, but I’m consuming myself with all of the work that it’s taking to create all of the content.

And what’s happening is my brain has so many ideas that it’s telling me things like I can’t keep up with all that I want to create, I’m falling behind, there’s so much going on, there’s more and more that I can be doing and I’m pushing my personal self-care to the side. Do not let your brain do this.

These thoughts feel so innocent and they feel really true. They sound completely reasonable and justifiable, right? But what I’m here to say is that if you’re saying them to yourself now, I can bet that you were saying them before school closed for the year, before quarantine.

You were probably telling yourself you were too busy then and you’re telling yourself you’re too busy now, which means you’re going to tell yourself that you’re too busy in the future. I know this has been a problem for my brain and I have to say, I laugh at it because my brain is super-committed to my lack of time story.

It’s been a really tough one for me to shift into more abundant thinking about time. And these three months of quarantine have left me with nothing but time. I have just me, myself, and I to worry about. My husband is here. He’s a competent adult. My son is 21, he is a competent young adult. Everyone can take care of themselves. I don’t have toddlers at home at this time. I’m not caring for an elderly parent like I was when my mom was alive.

And so, I really have the gift of time and it’s making me have to bust myself in terms of my lack mindset. Like, there’s no more excuses when it comes to time deficiency, when I’m thinking about not having enough time.

So, to be honest, I’m swimming in time. And my brain is still telling me to hurry up, to rush, to get things done, to get up earlier, to work a little bit longer in the day, to cram more things in. And what’s happening is I saw myself starting to drop my personal activities from my daily schedule in order to squeeze out one more work project.

And one morning this week, I woke up and my brain was, like, spinning and swirling, my to-do list was going on and on and on. So, I just sat there and watched it for a few minutes. And then I said to myself, “Enough. We have all the time we need. Stop this silliness. I’m not going to entertain thoughts that are time-scarce. I hear you, brain. I know it feels like there’s not enough time to do all of the exciting fun things for work.”

But I promise you there is. And if we don’t call our brain out on this, there will never be a time where it feels like there’s enough time. I had to remind myself to use my very own planner that I created for school leaders. I think that’s so funny.

And I share this story with you to say that even when you manage your mind at times and you’re really on the ball and you’re honoring your schedule and you’re honoring your self-care, you can slip back into those old thought patterns and then you have to become aware again, you have to remember to get out of that loop and guide yourself back to thoughts that you want to think and feelings you want to feel.

My personal goal is to fully believe, just as a way of who I am and how I operate, that I have plenty of time to work, plenty of time to be with my family, plenty of time to connect with friends and with clients, and time to take care of myself and do the things I love, like being outdoors and breathing fresh air.

It sounds so simple. But it requires us to be intentional with our thinking. So, if you’re finding that your brain is giving you a hard time about time and it believes that there is a lack of time, please check out episodes number 97 and 98 on time mindset and how to get it done. I might have to listen to them myself again. But they are great episodes, they have a lot of great content. So, if you’re struggling with time or thoughts about time scarcity, lack of time, please go check out those episodes. When you have time, put it on your calendar.

On with today’s show. That was just a whole side note for 10 minutes. But it’s really important to share what’s going on my brain in real time so that you can understand what’s going on in your brain in real time.

So, I want to talk today about what my current clients are dealing with, working on, stressing out about, and how they’re coaching with me to solve through the problems that they’re facing.

Several of my clients are new principals. They’re either wrapping up their first year, they’ve been coaching with me all year, or they are just now entering, they’re hiring me now because they’re entering into their first principalship.

And most of them have been focused this last month, in addition to all the chaos, they’ve been focusing on staffing from a distance. You still have to wrap up your year. You have to let go of people. You have to hire new people. You have to onboard new people.

And all of this still has to happen, even if you’re doing it from a distance. So, today I’m going to share a summary of some of the conversations I’ve been having with my clients in order to help you navigate staffing from a distance in your school and in your district.

So, situation number one is interviewing. If you are a principal who is interviewing for a job or you’re wanting to interview for a position, you want to become a principal or you want to interview at a different site or district, or maybe you are a principal who wants to go up into the district office or central office, how do you get yourself ready for that?

So, I’m working with a client right now who has been preparing to interview for a director position. She suffers from extreme anxiety. She has for her lifetime. And this interview process has been really challenging for her to manage her emotions. This is actually why she ended up hiring me.

She knows at a deep level that she definitely has the skills and that she is capable of handling the new job. But her brain keeps telling her that she’s not prepared enough for the interview and she’s questioning her abilities and it’s making her feel really intimidated by the interview process.

There’s a large panel interview process she’s going through with several rounds of interviews. So, as she was preparing for round one, you make it through that round you have to go to – I think there were three rounds in her case. So, there were several rounds and it was very stressful for her.

When I asked her to do a brain drain, let’s just list it all out, what is she worried about? What are her thoughts? She said she was worried that she was going to lose focus during the interview. She was going to lose her place or that her pacing for the interview would be off and ultimately, she would feel or look incompetent to the team.

She was very, very focused on trying to figure out what they wanted to hear, what she should be saying, what the right thing was to say, and who she should be showing up as. She wanted to know ahead of time what the panel was looking for, like what kind of person. And then she wanted to step in and be that person.

And she was doing it from this space of, “What is it they want to hear form me?” And you can see how her thoughts – she was thinking things like, “I’m not sure I’m prepared, I’m not sure if I’m totally capable, panel interviews are really intimidating. I need to figure out what to say and who to be and how to show up.”

And these thoughts she was having about this interview process were lots of worry and doubt and intimidation or feeling intimidated and very anxious, very nervous about the interview. And she was visualizing this interview going poorly, being very nervous, tripping over her words.

And you can imagine, if you’re playing that scenario in your head, you can imagine how that actual experience of that interview is going to go. Going into an interview with these thoughts are always going to result in an unpleasant interview experience for you.

When you are filled with worry and doubt and anxiousness, you are going to come across to the panel as under-prepared and not fully capable. Even if you truly are capable and prepared, if your thoughts around the interview process are generating beliefs that you’re not prepared, that is how you come across. Those beliefs will come evident through your actions and the way that you show up, your energy.

And remember, the people interviewing you are basing their decision on this short interaction with you. So, you have to clean up your thinking. If you don’t clean up your thinking before the interview process, you’re going to be much more likely to come across as lacking confidence and skills.

What you want to do before you interview is decide ahead of time how you want to feel before the interview, during the interview, and after the interview. So, when I asked my client how she wanted to feel, she said, “I want to feel comfortable. I want to be authentic. I want to be myself. I want to feel calm and confident and competent.”

And then I asked her, “What about fun? What would it feel like if the interview could actually be fun? That you went in expecting a good time?” And she was like, “What?” But as she wrapped her head around it, she was like, “Yeah, that would be amazing, to walk in with confidence and calmness and just to go in expecting to have a good time, a good experience.”

And I was like, “Yes, that’s what we’re talking about.” These are amazing feelings to have during an interview. Imagine walking into an interview with all of these emotions.

Now, in order to get yourself into a space where you’re feeling this way, you have to come up with thoughts that generate these emotions. The emotions aren’t just going to be there. You have to think thoughts that create these emotions. And you can do this.

The key is to make sure that the thoughts you are choosing actually ring true for you. So, through the process of figuring this out, my client said the thoughts that felt good to her were, “I have all the time I need. It’s best just to be myself. I’ll communicate exactly what I need to communicate. My brain knows the answers. And this could actually be fun.”

So, she spent time before the interview imagining these thoughts, thinking these thoughts, feeling the feelings and being really comfortable and being at ease and having some fun. And guess how the interview went.

Here’s what she sent me back after the interview, “The interview went really well. It felt calm during the interview. I felt warmth towards the interviewers and in general. I felt really comfortable. I’ve been selected to have another interview conducted as a finalist.” I’m so excited for her.

So, if you are interviewing for a position, know that your mindset matters even more than your skillset. Work on how you want to feel and then what you would need to think in order to generate those emotions. And her, even if you don’t end up getting the job and you feel some disappointment, know this; you will have shown up as the best version of yourself. And you will have enjoyed the interview process so much more.

Not every job is the perfect fit for you. Keep interviewing and keep practicing your mindset in the interview process until you land the job that you were meant to have.

Okay, situation two, being on the other end of this, hiring when you can’t be in person. A new client of mine is currently an assistant principal at an elementary school and was recently hired as the lead principal for a middle school.

Now, he’s nervous because he’s never taught middle school. He’s always taught elementary. So, of course, his brain was having thoughts about his qualifications. But obviously, it’s the right job for him because he landed it and he’s ready to go.

And one of his first decisions as the new principal was to hire a teacher. It was fascinating to listen to his brain and to coach him through this process. His brain, as do all of ours, had some preconceived notions about who might be the best fit for this open position at his new school.

And in this case, his thought was that an experienced veteran teacher would be the best candidate over a teacher who is brand new to teaching. He didn’t even realize he was thinking that. But in his mind, it was like, “I’m not hiring a new teacher. Veteran teachers are going to be so much easier to hire. I can just plop them into the position and then off they’ll go and then I can worry about my job, they can worry about their job, everyone will be in a good position.”

And he was thinking about the current staff. The current staff has several veteran teachers, a veteran teacher would naturally fit in better, right? So, it was funny because watching his brain and hearing what he was saying, of course, it made sense to him. It felt very reasonable and it felt very responsible of him to choose a veteran teacher over a new teacher.

So, of course you can imagine what happened. The interview process took place. There were three finalists, a couple of veteran teachers. There was one veteran teacher. There was one who was in district, a teacher who was within the district already, and there was a brand-new teacher, so three different flavors here of interviewees.

His mind had pre-decided that the veteran teacher was the Rockstar, was going to just kill it in the interview, nail the virtual teaching lesson, and was going to be amazing. His paperwork looked perfect. Have you ever had this? It’s like, “Wow, this person, their resume and their paperwork looked great,” and then, when it came to the virtual interviews, the opposite experience was true.

The person who he expected to be the Rockstar actually choked during the virtual lesson. And the teacher who was brand-new to teaching nailed both the interview and the lesson. Super-tech-savvy, super-engaged with the kids. The panel who was interviewing unanimously loved the new teacher.

And so, this new principal, this client of mine felt stuck, felt like it was a lose-lose, even though he saw, he said, “It was evident that the veteran teacher I wanted kind of crashed and burned. But maybe it’s because they just had a bad day.” Because his brain was still believing that a veteran teacher was the best selection, even though the evidence right in front of his face was proving otherwise.

So, he felt this dissonance within himself and he felt very torn about what to do. So, we coached through the decision, and he actually made the decision prior to coaching with me that day and he was feeling kind of disappointed. Like, he was worried about this decision. He was worried he had made a wrong decision, like what happens if this brand-new teacher doesn’t make it? What if they don’t know what they’re doing? What if they just had a great interview and they can’t pull it together on a daily basis in the classroom?

So, his brain was freaking out and he was so convinced that this new teacher was going to need tons of support, which for him, was going to mean tons of time to support them. And then, he was worried about, “I’m a new principal and I need time to figure out my job, let alone help somebody in their new job.” And he just was so worried this was going to crash and burn.

Now, his brain kept telling him, “I’ve made a wrong decision. I’m questioning my decision.” He couldn’t get over the fact that hiring a veteran in the end was still the best choice and that the candidate, who was brand-new, wasn’t going to make it. So, in the end, we had to dig down into those thoughts and clean them up.

And when we unveiled what was going on in his brain, of course, it was clear that he was having some thoughts about past experiences he had himself as a brand-new teacher and as an AP with some new teachers. So, his brain had plenty of evidence to prove to him that hiring new teachers was a risk and that it was going to be time-consuming.

However, I want to point out that that feels very reasonable and it feels like the correlation is necessary and that we draw that conclusion and it’s like, “Yep, that makes total sense.” But what I want to point out is that it feels reasonable to conclude that experienced teachers are better than new teachers in some ways.

But here’s the thing. Could the opposite be true? It is true – I’m not denying that in some cases, hiring a veteran teacher is your best choice, definitely. But I’m also saying, could it also be true that new teachers are the perfect choice? Is it absolutely true that every single veteran is the perfect match? Are there new teachers out there who are also amazing? Yes. Are there things that only new teachers can bring to the job that are a benefit? Definitely.

So, a couple of takeaways here. One, you cannot make a wrong decision. As a leader, you make decisions all day long. If you are going to spin in either indecision or questioning your decisions, you are never going to feel empowered and confident as a leader.

The decision was just a decision. Worrying about the decision you have made after you have made it does not make you a confident leader ever, ever, ever. It leaves you looking for evidence that you’ve made the wrong decision. Our focus goes where our energy flows.

If you think over and over that you made a wrong decision, you will subconsciously look for all of the ways that the decision was wrong. And another thing, when you question your decisions and you waver, you are never going to find peace with your decisions. And that’s because you don’t have your own back when it comes to decision-making.

You have to have your own back. You have to make a decision, trust that it’s the right decision, and commit to the decision. Do everything you can to make that decision a good decision. Decide it’s a good decision and then go all in.

Okay, you hired a new teacher. Great. Now, plan to provide them the support that they need to be successful. Focus on all the ways they are amazing and how they add value. Don’t look back at all the ways they’re not. That is going to help you not trust yourself in your decision-making process.

And number two, if you’ve given it all you have and they end up not being a match, you didn’t make a bad decision. And furthermore, it feels so much better to make a decision, to commit all the way. And if it comes to be that they are not a match for your school, you can rest assured knowing you did everything within your power to create success for them.

Everybody learned no matter what the outcome is, you learned how to be a great leader. They learned from you how to improve their teaching. And if you have to make a new decision, which means letting them go, that does not mean that the first decision was bad. There’s no right. There’s no wrong. There are just decisions.

The way to feel empowered is to make decisions and commit to them until you make a new decision. Seek evidence to prove the decision is effective. And if you need to make a new decision, get clear on what you’re making the new decision mean about you.

If you’re making it mean that the first one was wrong or that you can’t trust yourself or trust your decisions, it’s time to clean up your thinking. Got it?

Situation three, connecting with new staff members. So, as you’re hiring remotely, I’m sure, you’re interviewing remotely, hiring remotely, it’s all very different. It feels very awkward and strange. We just want to acknowledge that.

And it is. It’s awkward for them, it’s awkward for you, whether you’re interviewing or you are being interviewed, it’s a different time. We have to embrace and allow the feelings that come up with change and difference, all of that. And you know that.

But part of the hiring process is the onboarding, is the connecting with your new hires to ensure them, to welcome them, to reassure them. And I’m sure that distance connection feels like a bummer for many of you who enjoy that personal connection and like to be with people in the flesh.

And I’m here to say I’m right there with you. It bums me out not to be able to be with other human beings right now. We are in the business of people. We love kids. We love people, for the most part. And we want to be with them.

And the fact that you can’t be with them, you can either stew in the fact that you can’t, or you can come up with some really fun and clever ways to connect with people remotely. Or there might be some of you out there who feel actual relief that you don’t have to connect one-on-one, in person.

Maybe you feel like it’s a time-drain. Like, “I hired so many new teachers. How am I going to have time to feel connected to them and to make them welcome? I’m going to have to go around on an individual level.” Yes, you are. And here’s what I’m going to say very briefly about this.

We are in the business of people. I will say it over and over again. And people are going through a very challenging time right now. Every person has their own set of struggles and emotions that they’re faced with during this quarantine and during remote working and learning and trying to figure out all this online business.

The time that you spend connecting with new hires is especially important right now. They don’t have the luxury of connecting with their new teammates in person. They are going to feel extra new and extra outside-ish, as an outsider, right? It’s just amplified because they’re not able to make those connections in person. And they need to know that they can reach out to you and connect with you and ask you questions.

There are tons of fun ideas out there, guys, and I’m sure you’re much more creative than I am about fun ways to connect and welcome your new teammates. But what I will say is choose what works for you and be mindful of how that new teacher is feeling.

As one of my mentors always tells us, the extra mile is never crowded. Choosing to spend time personally connecting with people will be time well-invested. People will forget some of the pains of remote teaching as this passes, but they will never forget the leaders who spend time to make them feel welcomed and connected and included with the team. Be sure to schedule time for connection.

Finally, situation four, letting someone go. Yuck, nobody wants to have to do this. One of my clients is in a district that unfortunately had to lay people off for financial reasons. This feels extra tough, especially in my brain, because the decision to let them go may not have been in your hands, yet you find yourself the one responsible for having to talk to them and letting them know the news, or perhaps you had to let somebody go based on seniority versus performance. You know what I’m saying?

You hired maybe some dynamite brand-new people, but because of tenure and because they’re low in terms of seniority, those really dynamic people that you normally would have kept are being let go. And having to do that always crushed me. It just broke my heart.

And while letting anybody go is never an action that I personally enjoyed, and I’m sure you don’t, it definitely feels different to let someone go who is underperforming and that you’ve been working with and they’re choosing not to change their ways, versus having to let go of someone who is performing but, due to external circumstances, you’re required to let them go.

Adding that layer of not wanting to let them go but having to, on top of having to let people go over the phone or over technology in some way can be especially painful for you and for them. So, here are some things you can do to help yourself during a situation like this.

First of all, take some time to acknowledge how you’re feeling. Write down the thoughts that you’re having about the situation and list all of the emotions that are coming up. Thoughts like, “I don’t want to do this. This isn’t right. Why do I have to be the one to do this? This isn’t fair. I’m hurting their career. They’ve done nothing wrong. They don’t deserve this.”

Write down all of your thoughts. Notice the emotions that come up for you. They can feel very disturbing. And then allow yourself to feel.

I think what so many of us do is we try to not feel. We try to avoid feeling the feeling altogether, or we push it away, we try to resist it and pretend it’s not there and we try to jump out of negative emotion immediately versus allowing it to resonate in our bodies.

So, see if you can give yourself time to process those emotions. But be sure to do it before you schedule the conversation. You want to work through your thoughts and emotions so that you have time to be upset, but then you can also coach yourself so that you are able to hold space for their emotional reaction to the news. That’s really important.

Number three, see if you can find a way to make peace with the decision. This is a hard one, but I finally found a thought that helped me through times like this. And the thought was this; this is happening for them in some way that I can’t understand right now.

When I think that thought, it helps me realize that the entire universe is working for us and that even when we don’t understand or get to know what’s happening on the other side of our decision for that person, that we can have faith and we can trust and have some peace in knowing that this experience for them will ultimately be a benefit.

Just as we’ve had experience in our past that initially felt like a blow to our career but turned out to be a blessing in hindsight, we are going to have staff members who will come and go out of our lives and out of our schools and they are having the same experience.

Our school is not the perfect fit for everybody. And I know that’s hard to believe because you love your school, but truly, honestly, there are people who are there for a month, a day, a year, 20 years, all over the spectrum. And we have to realize that when people come and go, for whatever reason, that it was meant to be that way. And how do we know? Because it is that way. That’s the reality of what happened.

So, knowing that having to let somebody go from your district opens new doors and new experiences in other districts for them. You have not ruined anything for them. They are having this experience in their lives for a reason. And even if you don’t ever get to know how things turn out for them, you can know that ultimately it is happening for them.

So, hold space for them. Allow them to be upset. Offer to support them in any way you can. Agree to write a letter of recommendation or be a reference check for them. Point them to a job fair or give them contacts of people that you know are hiring. Assure them that they are going to find a match that’s right for them.

I hope this has been helpful. I feel like this was a downer way to end it, but I hope this has been helpful for you. If this podcast is helping you become an empowered leader, I ask you to please share the podcast with your colleagues and spread the word about Empowered Principalship. Let’s help every principal in our nation and on this globe step into their full empowerment.

Have an amazing week, you guys. And I’ll talk with you next week. Take good care. Bye-bye.

Hey, principals, listen up. I’ve created a professional learning program for you and your team to build your capacity and lead your staff through the empowerment process. I’ve designed personalized growth experience for you and your school. You’ll learn how to apply the leadership triad to empower your staff and students.

This is the moment where the perfect time and opportunity meet. Education will never be the same and I have the tools to help you navigate the change. To learn more, sign up for a free consultation at angelakellycoaching.com/programs. I’ll see you on the inside.

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.