Ep #144: The Impact of Coaching on Your Career with Chris Barkman

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 144.

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.

Angela: Happy Tuesday, my empowered leaders. Welcome to this week’s podcast. I have yet another fantastic show for you. I have another client who has so graciously offered to share his story of his journey of his first year of his school principalship.

He was a brand-new principal last year. I’m going to let him tell you his entire story, but his name is Chris Barkman. He signed on with me almost exactly a year ago. It was around this time – I think it was in September when he signed on and we’ve been working together all year and I’m so honored that he’s on the show, so welcome Chris.

Chris: Hey Angela, thanks for having me.

Angela: I’m so happy you’re here. This is going to be so much fun. So your story is so inspiring, and you have made such tremendous progress, so I can’t wait for the listeners to hear. So why don’t you just jump right in and tell them – tell the listeners about your school leadership story and what brought us together as coaching clients and describe the process from teacher to teacher leader into your first tenure as a school principal.

Chris: Sure. Well I guess I kind of fell into the whole leadership thing by accident. You get into education to work with kids, and I spent my first few years of teaching just trying to wrap my head around the whole survival of being a first-year teacher. And then after that, I was actually – one of my principals suggested that I go and take some leadership training with our division.

We have divisions here up in Canada, so I went and did that. And up until that time, I really didn’t think of myself going into the educational leadership. But ever since then, I kind of thought that might be something that I would like to do. So I did that for a year, and then I still stayed in the classroom for a couple years. And then one of the universities offered a Masters of Educational Administration, so I enrolled in that while I was teaching.

So juggling educator lifestyle and then the student lifestyle for a little bit. And then I actually went and I applied for principalship of my old elementary school and interviewed for that. Sweat buckets. And they offered it to me and I accepted, so I guess that’s where my journey kind of started and that’s where I am today.

Angela: That’s so great. And what’s interesting about your particular role is that you are the principal of your school, so you’re leading your school, but you’re also still teaching.

Chris: Yes, for sure. So my school, it’s a smaller school in Manitoba here. I am three quarter time administration and then a quarter time teaching. So this past year, I taught grade five-six, science and social studies, and then this coming year, like right now, I’m teaching grade six-seven math.

Angela: Wow. You know, it’s funny because many of my first-year school principals, they can’t imagine leading a school without the idea of even trying to teach a class. So it’s so fascinating to me that you’re doing both. And I understand your school is small, but being a principal is being a principal. So can you tell the listeners a little bit how do you manage leading the school and teaching a class? How do you navigate both of those job descriptions?

Chris: It’s a good question. I guess the biggest thing for me managing the administration part – I would say the admin part right now, because it is the three-quarter time, that takes up the bulk of my time. So I guess – and being new to it is that you kind of put that emphasis on it. But mind you, with the six-seven, I do have some experience before I got my current job in admin. I do have experience working with six-seven, so it’s not that big of a stretch. But I’m not going a very good job answering this question.

Angela: It sounds to me like what your brain is doing is it’s leaning on what it knows. So it already knows, it’s already an expert at being a teacher, so you’re not spinning in a lot of mind drama about how to teach and what’s the best approach and oh my gosh, what do I do with sixth and seventh graders?

My brain would be freaking out if I had to teach kids. But what’s happening for you is you don’t have to spend a lot of energy thinking about how to be an expert at the teaching part. So you can do that, you can plan it, you can be decisive, you can execute it, implement it, and do the work without spending tons of time and energy.

Where your time and energy is going is shifting into becoming a school leader and what that looks like at a level to which you’re not just leading your classroom and your students and those families. You’re having to lead all of your teachers, all of the students, and all of the families. So I know this past year, your work has really been shifting into expanding what you know about classroom management and how to execute that, into how you bring those skills and expand them into a leadership role.

Chris: For sure. And I guess how you said with the experience part, you go into the job or the classroom and I do have that experience and I was a first year teacher too and there were a lot of new things that were thrown my way. But like we’ve talked about before, you have to be courageous before you can develop that confidence. And that’s always stuck with me when I work together.

So previously, you just show up day in, day out, you are thrown curveballs in the classroom, but somehow you manage you deal with it. And then so yeah, now I do have that background and that confidence that I am able to pretty much make decisions and be decisive towards learning and showing up in the admin capacity and learning through the different experiences that are thrown my way on a pretty much minute-by-minute basis.

Angela: Exactly. Yes, you’re not alone. There’s a lot of new school leaders out there who are feeling the burn of that. So let’s talk about your decision to reach out and hire a coach and if I remember correctly, I think it was in September when we first started working together. And I know your school year starts a little bit later than we do here in the States for the most part. But tell the audience about your decision making process for choosing to hire a coach in terms of what problems were you really struggling with, what solutions were you looking for, and why you think coaching would be the solution.

Chris: Sure. Well, I think my main reason for getting a coach is just because this was entirely new to me and I didn’t have the same amount of confidence as I did in the classroom. So I knew in my heart and in my mind that I wanted this but I know that there was still a lot of learning and a lot of, I guess experience, and a lot of situations that would come up that would test me.

And I think having another person to just bounce those ideas off of and being able to discuss them and to debrief them and to go through it and kind of clear up some of my own personal biases and my own personal thoughts and get through the noise and get to the heart of what the issue really is.

I think that was the main thing that drew me to it. Actually, when I first decided, I just really wanted someone to just kind of listen and just say yeah, you’re on the right track, or no, you’re not. But then I realized that that’s the easy way out and then you kind of have to develop your own sense and your own style. And I think that that’s kind of where I realized that oh yeah, this coaching thing, this is more impactful, this is going to last because it really focused me as a person and as a leader.

Angela: Yeah. I’ve loved working with you so much because I remember in the beginning, your brain was kind of in this all or none mentality. It was going to one end of being do I be super strict, do I crack the whip and make everyone follow the rules, but I don’t want to hurt people or I don’t want to come across as too aggressive, so I’m going to be super soft.

Through the course of the year together, we kind of helped you see where you stand as a leader, what your values are, how to balance that approach and find the nuance of when to be more direct and when to be more compassionate or more understanding and give a little more leeway. So I think that’s a really strong skill that you have honed this past school year, so it’s been fun to watch.

So let’s tell them – let’s get down into the nitty gritty of it because I think for new school leaders, number one, nobody has a clue what this – that this type of service is even available. There’s not a lot of coaches out there who are offering this level of personalized support for principals.

And when they hear about it, they might be listening to this podcast but they can’t wrap their head around what does it feel like to have a coach, what’s the experience like, what am I getting out of this. So can you tell them what’s been great about having a coach and what’s been hard. You mentioned it a little bit just a few minutes ago, but really let the listeners know what it feels like, what’s the experience, and just what you believe that has been great for you, what’s been hard, and why you value it so much.

Chris: Sure. So I guess the biggest thing that I would say, the greatest part about it is on our weekly calls, everything that we would talk about was so personalized. It was so individualized. It was so geared to me and my job and the things that were thrown my way that it was just – you could process the situations that would arise in real time or in just about immediately after.

I know there was a couple times when you have a, let’s say, a parent or something come at you for a little bit, and then I emailed Angela, I’m like, hey, can we have a quick coaching call. And I know that you’ve been super supportive with that, and you’ve allowed me to kind of flex our schedule and you’ve been super available.

So having someone in that corner, and you just feel supported with that too. So that’s been super helpful. Then I know I mentioned in the previous part is that I originally was looking for someone to say yeah, you’re on the right track, no, you’re not on the right track. But that’s not necessarily what it was. A lot of our work together was mindset and working on the emotion and the thought process and going through those STEAR cycles.

And looking at different situations and kind of looking at them in different ways, and sometimes, you think you got a situation pegged, and I know sometimes Angela, you would kick my butt and I would be thinking about it. And I’d be like, Angela, I thought I was doing good here, but then I realized that oh yeah, I guess I never thought of the situation that way. I guess I totally didn’t handle that very well and I can see why that person feels the way they did because of what I did in this case.

So that was hard, but that was, I think, one of those things that was necessary because yeah, if you make a mistake once, you’re going to make that same mistake until you learn the lesson. So I think you kind of sped the process along a little bit of making me realize some of my…

Angela: Right. I’m laughing at this because obviously I didn’t literally drive up to Canada, but what I did do was I would challenge a thought or a question, or I would ask you to elaborate on the rationale behind it because I wanted you to be able to see why you were approaching certain situations in the way that you were. And we had to get to the root cause of that approach, which is always a belief system or a thought.

So we had to kind of get you round a little bit and I know through the course of the year, you were dealing with some of the same, similar situation over and over again, and then we would try one approach, and then we’d try another approach, and then we’d go back to the old approach. And we had to dig in like, why are we continuing to approach something in this way.

And I think the hardest part of coaching is slowing down enough to look and see how it really is our thoughts, our belief systems that are creating this result over and over. And that part, I think that initial awareness can feel like a sting. Like oh wow, I never knew that I was creating this result for myself over and over again, but now that I see it, you kind of come to terms with it, and then you’re able to process it and change the way you think, feel, and act.

Chris: Yeah, for sure. I know there was one instance that really hit me. I was with a parent who we had some disagreements with, and it was just in real time, he just kept peppering me with questions just to come at it in every different angle. And you must have saw the problem right away, but you kept at it. And I realized that for me to take input from everyone, I need to listen and that’s what I wasn’t doing.

But you were gentle enough and you were like – you made me see that. And I think I processed that. And I just in real time through one of our calls, I was talking, talking, and then all of a sudden it just hit me like a brick wall.

Angela: Yeah. And that’s one thing about coaching is that I’m not here to tell principals how to be a principal. I can give you direct support and I can offer suggestions, and sometimes I do put that hat on as a mentor. But the difference between mentoring and coaching is coaching’s letting you see the core of the problem and then letting you determine how you want to handle it, how you want to approach it. But it comes from a place of understanding why.

Chris: Yeah, for sure, understanding why, and then it all – what I’ve learned, it comes back down to the thoughts, and then from the thoughts create the action and then the action can create your results.

Angela: Yeah. So do you have any fun stories of successes you’ve had? What’s been one of the biggest shifts that you’ve had from the beginning of your first year to the end of your first year?

Chris: Well, I mean there have been lots of little successes. I guess the biggest thing for me was when you take on the principal role, you’re bound – problems are going to find their way to you and before, I think I used to – I wouldn’t say cringe, but I would just be like, I would be kind of avoidant, kind of hesitant, kind of whatever for someone to come and just say this and this needs to get done and blah, blah, blah, and then whatever happens.

But now I think I can have that parent come in and state their viewpoints, either assertively or aggressively and it doesn’t affect me near as much. If I could just rewind the tape and tell myself that, like you know what, it’s going to bother you a lot in September and October, come January, February, you’re going to know why these parents are acting the way they are and you will develop that sense of empathy for them and be able to see things through their way.

And the same thing with staff too. Whether we’re dealing with any person that works in the school, before you would kind of think, oh well, but now you can be more empathetic and you can see where they’re coming from, and you don’t have to necessarily be scared, I guess would be the biggest thing of it.

Angela: Yeah. I remember in the beginning, you were very worried about other people’s reactions, other people’s thoughts about you, other people’s emotional responses. And that is really common for a first-year principal. We’re so in the spotlight as a school leader. The community is looking at us, all the parents are looking at us, teachers are looking up to us, students are looking up to us, the district’s looking at us.

We are definitely in this glass bubble, and it feels very – it’s a big jump from that spotlight as a schoolteacher. So it’s easy to feel that fear and feel like you’re paralyzed in terms of taking action or being able to allow other people to have their own emotions.

But what I’ve loved watching you shift into is your willingness to just take on whatever comes your way in terms of communications or relationship building in all of that, but allowing people to own their own emotional response, to let them feel however they’re going to feel and you own your emotional response that doesn’t have to be a chain reaction. You have grown in your emotional resiliency so much this past year.

Chris: Yeah. Actually while you’re saying that, I know we worked on a couple things. One was when people would go above your head and go complain about you to the division office or whatever, and the first time it happens, I can still remember what the situation was and how I handled it and what I would do differently and whatever else.

I know that now, but at the time, oh my goodness, I thought my career was ending. But like I said, fast forward to I guess it was June this year, it happened again, I just kind of got blindsided by an angry parent and the message got all the way to the division office and I went and I looked at it and I was able to process it and realize that this parent was upset.

I could understand why they were upset, but it didn’t affect me that they communicated it with the division office nearly as much as it did in September because I know that the division office would hear my side of it. I know that I can talk to the parent about whatever the issue was and share my story. And then I can listen to them and hear them out and we can work something out together. And it doesn’t, like you say, paralyze me.

Angela: Yeah. I think that is such a gift as a school leader to be able to know in real time, like you said, that whatever you are experiencing right now, especially a first-year principal, teachers are going to come at you sideways, parents are going to come at you sideways, even district might come at you sideways.

And in the beginning, every one of those incidents feels like a small death. It feels like the worst thing that could ever happen to you in your career. But when you have a coach and you’re able to process those emotions in real time, you’re able to gain perspective and see that okay, this process, even though this was painful right now, it’s helping me learn how to do it again better the next time.

Chris: Yeah, for sure. And going through it, so in real time, having that support and having those conversations about the incident helps so much because you can kind of see it from a different side, you can process that same situation a little bit differently, and you can shift your thinking so that you can work through these situations a lot quicker than if you were to go at it on your own and just try and work through it.

Because it’s easy to say oh, it’s just that parent or oh, it’s just that whatever. But in the end, we can’t really control anyone else but ourselves and our thoughts. And I think that was one of the biggest, biggest eye-openers to me is that okay, yeah, this situation happened, but I can look at it this way. Does it help me out in my job, in my day to day life? Well no, well then I need to look at this a little bit differently and look at it as to how it can help me and can help me be a better principal and be a better person so that I can be there for the teachers and the kids.

Angela: Exactly. Because what you shifted in doing this year was spending your mental energy thinking about how to control other people or manage other people or kind of get them to change their behavior, versus managing your own thoughts, your own responses, your own approach.

I mean, if we could control everybody else, school leadership would be amazing. We wouldn’t have to have a coach at all. But unfortunately, that’s never the case, right? It’s 100% of the time not true, and we are in the business of people. So you have to learn that skill of going through a situation with the fellow humans who are also teachers and parents, and figuring out how am I going to show up? How do I want to be perceived as a leader? And how am I going to show up in that way?

Chris: Yeah, for sure. And when those instances come up, where you feel like you’ve been beaten down and oh my goodness, my career is ending, my behavior was okay, I guess it’s time to just hunker down in the office and do some paperwork. But no, my goal is that I want to be an open and supportive leader, and it’s pretty hard to be open and supportive of teachers and students when you’re in the office.

So I know that was one thing that you helped me realize with too is that these situations are going to always come up, and you can stay in your office, but how does that serve you and your vision of who you are as a principal. And the short answer is that it doesn’t serve me. So you got to do something that does serve your purpose and your vision.

Angela: Right, exactly. And that kind of brings me to my last question for you. When you think about the long-term benefits and results of coaching, how they’re going to impact you not just in your first year, but what do you see being the long-term impact of coaching and in terms of your career, you’re just starting your career as a school leader. How do you see this process and these tools helping you in the remainder of your career?

Chris: Being a principal is really a lot more dealing with people and like you said, the fellow humans doing their thing. And people are great but sometimes, there are situations that are really, really tricky. And I think going through this process, it has really helped me being able to manage my thoughts and then manage that emotional reaction to it, and then process these situations that come up in real time, versus coming home and then it taking up space in my brain and me just thinking over and over again about how this person should be different or they should do that, or I’m right and how can they not see that.

Versus, you know what, this is the thought I had, this is the situation, and this is how I can react to it, versus okay, this is how you can do it in real time, how you can debrief a situation so that it better serves you and your vision of who you want to be as a principal.

Angela: Yeah. You know, you just mentioned something about kind of your personal time. So many principals, the job never ends, but let’s say you actually pack up at 6pm and you go home for the day, but then your brain doesn’t turn off. That is what happened, I know for me, for many years.

I just could not figure out how to turn off the job in my mind. How has coaching helped you with that? And what has been the impact on your personal wellbeing, your personal life, your mental and physical and emotional personal wellbeing because you have tools to manage your thinking about the job?

Chris: I would definitely say that having this coaching session has been super helpful to my mental health in that those thoughts, those situations that come up throughout the regular school day, they don’t take up space when it’s time to go home. And then that allows me to be more present with my family at home, with my friends, when it’s time to recharge and rest and have my personal life.

I feel like I can have that personal life and I can be Chris and take my principal hat off for just a little bit. Physically, you can feel it. You don’t have that sense of worry or just that heavy weight on your shoulders. It’s been super, super helpful in that regard too.

Angela: I’m so glad to hear that because I know for me, these services weren’t really available in the beginning for me, so I had to figure this all out on my own. And to hear that the impact of coaching doesn’t just build your capacity to lead but it builds your capacity to live.

And the job can be all-consuming if we let it, and I think one of my biggest missions is to let principals know that yes, leadership matters, yes, your school matters, and all of it matters, and so do you matter. Your life matters, your relationship with your spouse, your partner matters, your kids matter, living – I know you’ve been spending the summer with your parents and helping taking care of them and doing fun things with your wife and your family.

And that is the whole package. We need principals to know that school isn’t everything, and sometimes we get caught up in that belief that we have to do it all, be it all, fix it all, solve it all, and there’s no time left for rest and play and fun, and time with our friends and family. So I’m so happy to hear that you’ve just spent the summer doing that. It’s been really uplifting for me.

And Chris is signing up for a second year, so we’re going to continue to work together. And he is going to exponentially grow as a principal and as a leader, and I think he mentioned earlier about the long-term benefits of this coaching for him, it’s going to expedite his capacity to lead, which in turn – the more that you believe in yourself as a school leader, the more confident you feel, the more clarity you feel, the greater capacity to which you can have influence and impact as a school leader.

So this work doesn’t just end when you don’t have a coach. It will always carry with you, and I think the impact and benefit of managing our thinking around what this job is and what it isn’t, it’s like a ripple effect. It impacts you in so many different areas of your life that I look forward to seeing you grow.

And I’m hoping that a year from now Chris, you and I can have another conversation so people can hear where the end of two-year principal Barkman is in his journey and what your aspirations are and where your thoughts are. Because helping new principals adopt the new thoughts that you have will be so key. So can you tell, just to wrap things up, can you tell the listeners what thoughts do you think about the job now that you didn’t have at the beginning of the first year?

Chris: Well, now I view the job with a lot more positivity. I went into it for working with kids and working with amazing teachers, and that still is a big part of it, of the reason. I did know that in my first year, that principals have to deal with this and that and everything that gets thrown your way that isn’t so much fun.

But now when you get thrown into it, it seems like if I would let the negative stuff take a lot of space and a lot of my time, I think I would have. If it wasn’t for going through this coaching thing, I think that’s where it would be. And I think mentally, physically, I’d be exhausted, and might be considering this principalship, it might not be for me.

But now I’m really realizing that you know what, every job has its challenges and those challenges are something that I can learn from, I can grow from, and ultimately, it’s going to make me a better principal. And whatever I want to take most of my time, I’m in charge of that and not anybody else.

So if I want to work with dedicated teachers and help students and be there for the students and staff at my school, that’s what I can put my time into, and not the other things. Sure, the other things will come up, but I can really focus my energy and my time on the things that I really feel that matter.

Angela: This was a golden nugget for any school leader listening out there. What Chris just said is that his thoughts create his results, and what he focuses on is what comes around. So he’s decided he’s going to think about his best teachers, working with the best people, having the best time, creating the best experience, and he’s going to focus his thoughts and his emotional energy around that versus thinking about all the negative, and he’s going to create an amazing career for himself.

Chris, you’re such a rock star. I’m so honored to work with you and so happy to have shared this story because you truly are the testament to the power of coaching, and I want to say that it’s one thing to hire a coach, it’s another thing to really take the feedback and then apply it at a deep level, which you’ve done week after week after week. And you’re just – you’re the reason I do this job and you are an ideal client for me. So thank you for sharing your story with the listeners, I really do appreciate your time.

Chris: Well thanks Angela.

Angela: I look forward to next year.

Chris: For sure.

Angela: Alright, talk to you soon. Take care. Have a good one.

Chris: Okay, thanks.

Angela: Okay, bye.

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