Ep #194: Your Top Leadership Assets

Hello my empowered leaders. Welcome to episode 194.

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 everybody. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast. I’m so happy you’re here. Hey if you’re new to the podcast and you’re loving it, can I ask you to do me a favor? Please write a five-star review. Because the more reviews that we get, the more people who find the podcast. We want all school leaders to feel loved and supported and to have the tools that they need in order to be the best version of themselves as leaders.

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All right. Welcome. Let’s dive in. First of all, I’m actually not diving in. I’m going to tell you about all I have been doing because I love sharing my life with you guys and I love sharing the authenticity of the ups and downs of my career and my life. Because I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking when you’re in the school leadership role—this is what I was in the school leadership role.

That if only I were out of the school leadership role, then I would have tons of time on my hands. I could do whatever I wanted. My life would be amazing. I would feel so great. I would have time and energy to focus on the things I want to do with my life and the results I want to create for myself.

Let me tell you this. I believed as a school leader I never had time to take care of myself and do fun things, and to explore other passions outside of education. When I left the job and started this business, I had nothing but time. What came to the service were my beliefs around time. The scarcity I had around my thoughts on time. No matter how much time I had, I felt like it wasn’t enough. No matter how I spent my day, I felt like I wasn’t doing enough.

So regardless of being a school leader or being a coach where I’m self-employed and have my own company versus being a school leader and being in charge of a school. They’re very similar. We’re actually going to talk a little bit about this today. I want you to know that your thoughts about time and how you spend it, your thoughts about money and resources in your school or personally and how you spend your time and money and resources. Those thoughts are what’s impacting your ability to maximize and be efficient with your time, and to maximize and be efficient and effective with your money and your resources.

I have learned that changing the circumstance, right. Changing my circumstance from being a school leader and not feeling like I had time to now being the CEO and feeling like I have not enough time shows me the reality. So our belief systems, which are just simply a series of thoughts that we think in combination together.

So a belief system we have around time. There’s not enough time. There’s too much to do. People are asking. I have to get stuff done. Those kinds of things. I want to do this, but I can’t, right. I want to go home at four, but I can’t. I want to work out, but I don’t have the time or I’m too exhausted or there’s not enough minutes in the day. All the things that we tell ourselves over and over again, we create a belief system that time is scarce. That the time needs to be spent working and taking care of other people around the clock. We end up creating more time scarcity for ourselves. Same is true with money.

So I share this with you to say the last few weeks of my life have felt very busy in my brain. I went on vacation. As you know, I went to Cabo San Lucas with my family to celebrate my son’s graduation from college. Then I was home for two weeks. I busted it and worked long hours to make sure that I was ready to go to my mastermind event for my business mastermind which was held in Cabo San Lucas. I just got back from that trip.

I was home for one day before I flew to Tahoe because a friend of mine had back surgery. I went to stay with her for the week and take care of her and help her around the house until she was able to get on her feet and be mobile and be independent. So in the midst of being in Tahoe helping her, my plan was to fly home Friday night. So today is Monday the 23^rd of August. I had intended to fly home Friday night so I could spend the weekend with my husband because I hadn’t seen him in over a week.

However, there are terrible and enormous fires happening in northern California. So the air quality out of the Tahoe Reno airport was quite significant. There’s an app called Purple Air or a website where you can look to determine the air quality. Typically, we like to be down in the green zone, which is under let’s say 100 down maybe into like 50 or less.

Well, the numbers in Tahoe were in the 500s, 600s, high 400s if you can imagine. It was no visibility. Like a quarter mile visibility. We couldn’t see the sun. It was like night. The sky was copper red. It was just phenomenal. It was actually very interesting to see this experience and be a part of it, but it also felt very scary and very eerie. You’re not supposed to breathe that air, right. There’s a lot of toxins and such in the air.

So anyway, we were staying inside. Which for her was fine. She was in bed the whole time. But for me I was kind of itchy and antsy wanting to be outdoors, especially in Tahoe where it’s so beautiful. So Friday came and went. My flight got cancelled because of the smoke. They could not see to land the plane that was supposed to come in so that we could take off. So the flight got cancelled Friday night. They rescheduled me for Saturday.

Saturday I was supposed to fly out at 1:45. We drove to Reno. Well, her husband and I drove to Reno. We got to the airport, and they said, “Sorry, the flight’s been delayed two hours.” Then it was three hours. Then it was four hours. So I asked to be rebooked to a Sunday flight.

I really wanted to be home on Sunday because unfortunately a teacher who worked at my school. We were colleagues and I was his principal for four years. He died tragically in a bike accident recently. His celebration of life was yesterday. I wanted to be there. I felt very compelled as his former principal and colleague and friend to be present and to speak on behalf of the school community and on behalf of the teachers and students. So I felt very compelled to be there.

So Sunday morning my flight was supposed to be scheduled at 9:15 a.m. I woke up at 6:00 with a notification on my phone saying the flight had been delayed for two and a half hours, no three hours. Yeah, two and a half hours leaving close to noon. I knew the game. I knew this was going to be delayed further and further and further because the smoke wasn’t going anywhere. The poor pilots did not have the visibility they needed to take off and land.

At that moment I decided I’m going to drive back to San Jose. So I let my friends know hey, I’m taking the car, going down south. I’ve got to be home for a funeral by 2:00. I love you all and I’m in the car. I had to reroute around the fire. I actually saw the fire burning in the mountains as I was driving down Highway 88. It was indescribable to see how much had burned and the smoke and the fire and just the firefighters working so tirelessly and around the clock to try and get some containment on this thing. I decided to be resourceful and to get myself home.

So my brain has been telling me that all of this busyness has impacted my ability to reach out for you, to be available on my Facebook page, and to be available on social media and to record these podcasts. And to create a webinar, which I’m in the process of finishing up and offering this coming Thursday. This will have aired after that webinar. Anyways, lots to do and less time.

So what I want to talk about today, and the reason I’m sharing this story with you, is that I’m going to teach you how to maximize your top assets as a school leader. I’ve talked about this before, but I want to deepen your understanding and really sell your mind on why these are your assets. What I mean by assets is they are the tools for creating results. They are the strategies and the tools that you implement in your leadership and in your life to create the results that you want.

So we’re going to talk about four assets that you can implement and evolve to create bigger and better results, and create transformation in your life and in your school at a faster rate. We want to expedite results. That’s our goal as a school leader. We want to have a goal. We want to like the reason behind that goal, understand our why. We want to have a clear vision. We want to have priorities. Then we want to get to work figuring out the solutions and the obstacles and overcoming those obstacles so that we can achieve those results we want.

Sometimes the results are student test scores. Sometimes the results look like helping teachers avoid burnout. Other times it’s helping you avoid burnout and getting some work life balance in. Different goals for everybody, but at the end of the day the process you use to achieve goals is the same. So I’m going to teach you these top assets and how you implement them to create the results that you want as a school leader. Okay. What are the top assets? You probably know most of them, but I’m going to explain them again.

Number one, top asset is time. Time is an asset that you cannot make more of. It’s not like money or resources, which is another top asset. Time is something that just is. You can’t create it or make more time, but you can be more in control of how you spend your time. Time is a resource like money. It’s an asset. It’s a tool you use to implement and apply towards a goal. You spend time creating results. You have to invest your time.

The more you believe that you have control over your time and that you’re teaching yourself how to focus on the things that you want to be doing and saying no to the things you don’t. The more you’re capable of doing that, the faster you are at achieving results with your time. So time is an important asset.

Number two, money. I put money and resources together. So what I mean by resources are tangible physical resources or things like curriculum and programming. These are things you spend money on to have. So you can have money in your account at school for professional development and for staff development and for curriculum and resources and SEL and counselling and after school programming or certain curriculum materials. All of those resources, money and those resources are an asset, or they are a tool that you implement to get results you want.

So if you want teachers coming to work relaxed and ready to go and organized and prepared, you might invest time and resources into their organizational skills, their self-management, their work life balance, their professional development and learning. You might spend time and money on those things in order to create a result that you want.

Money helps you solve problems. Resources help you solve problems. The key here is to sell yourself on the idea that you are not only in control of your time, but you’re fully in control of your money and resources as well. What I mean by that is that you have the ability to create more money for yourself professionally and personally. You have the ability to invite more resources for your staff and students into your school. We’ll talk more about that in a minute.

Your third top asset, well, I think this is your first. I put it three because I know you know time is valuable, money is valuable. The most valuable thing you will ever have as an asset, the very most valuable thing ever is your brain. Is your mind. Your thoughts and ideas are your most powerful tools. Learning how to coach yourself and manage your touch is how you gain control over your time and your energy and your money. Think about it.

The way that you spend time is based on the quality of your thinking and what you believe to be true, what you believe to be true about yourself and what you’re capable of, what you believe about other people’s time and how they spend their time and what they’re capable of.

Same is true with your money. The results you have with money, the amount of resources that you have, the amount of money you have available to you is based on what you think about it. So when you evolve your thinking, when you’re open to exploring your current thoughts and the thoughts you want to think about your money and your resources at school, the more expansive and open you become to receiving more, to having more, to being able to manage more.

Sometimes our brain tricks us into not wanting more resources or more money because we’re afraid we’ll spend it down or we won’t know how to use it, or we’ll spend it foolishly. We won’t spend it wisely. Or we’ll spend it and not get the results we intended. Sometimes those things happen, but we have to be willing to fail. We have to be willing to spend our time and spend our money and try things. Some things are going to work, some things aren’t. We’re going to keep going for it until we figure it out.

Believing that you know how to handle your time, you know how to manage yourself with your time, you know how to handle money. That you are in control of money and time. When you fully believe that you have full agency over those two assets, which by the way the way you have control over time and money is through your thoughts which is your brain. So when you can access and evolve your thinking and your mind, then you have the ability to negotiate with the other assets. And to implement and to utilize them in a way that expedites results.

Now I want to talk about a fourth asset that I’ve come to realize as I’ve been coaching with school leaders and talking with them about how to get results faster for their school, for their students, for their staff, for their families. That is this. The fourth top asset is other people. Human resources are a top asset. How is this true?

Think about this. When you surround yourself with amazing awesome people and you believe they are amazing and awesome, their time becomes an asset of yours, right. Their experiences, their resources, their brain, their mind, their thoughts, their money, their resources. It all becomes available to you.

So when you collaborate and mentor and coach and evolve your staff to be the best version of themselves, they, as humans, as fellow colleagues become your asset as a leader. Your teachers are one of your best assets. They’re the ones out there in the classrooms doing the work. You want to put time and resources and money and coaching and mentoring and professional development into them. Because it expands what you are capable of achieving as a leader.

So time, money, your brain, and other people. Those are your top assets. I want you to think about how you can implement these four assets to create the best school year possible for you. I’m going to use an example that I’ve been hearing people talk about lately.

So this year in particular, principals, all of you, have been working to hire new teachers. A lot of turnover this year. A lot of retirees. A lot of people who are saying, “I’m peacing out, right. I’m going to go do something else.” So the problem you’re facing is there is a high turnover rate, and there is a lack of what people are calling qualified teachers, competent teachers, excellent teachers, good teachers. So what you’re thinking as the leader is there aren’t enough qualified people out there. Nobody wants to teach anymore. All the good ones are already taken.

I want to ask you a question. How do you know that’s true? Why are you choosing to believe that? That’s not helping you attract ideal teachers. Can you be absolutely sure that it’s true that there’s nobody out there? There’s no amazing teachers? How would that even be possible? How is it possible that there are teachers out there who want to teach, who love to teach, who are amazing, and they’re coming your way?

What you believe you attract. If you think mediocre teachers are all that’s left, that is exactly what you’ll get. If you can get yourself to the place where you do believe that somewhere out there, and you don’t have to know where or how they’re coming to you. If you just believe that I know there’s great people out there who want to work with kids and who are a perfect fit for my school. They’ve got to be out there. You are going to start looking for those people. You’re going to start hiring in a way that attracts those people.

I want you to keep the faith. Keep the belief that those people are out there. There’s millions of teachers who love kids, who want to work with kids. Even during COVID. Even with all these crazy procedures we’ve got going on. Even with quarantining. Even with all of the messiness of it. They want to be there for the kids. Believe that.

Let’s flip the switch. Let’s go to the place where we’re just going to say it’s a fact. Maybe the good teachers are all used up or all taken or whatever your brain is telling you. Let’s just go to the place where we agree that there’s not an abundance of high caliber teachers. Let’s ask ourselves why is this the truth? Why is this the situation? What is happening? Let’s seek to understand from their perspective. From the human resource perspective, okay.

Now you probably know this in your heart. You know this at a deep level. If you think about why might there not be as many high caliber teachers? Why are they not out there? Well, the obvious answers. There’s burnout. They’re overworked. There’s high overload. There’s high expectations and low support. They feel underappreciated. Their efforts as a teacher outweigh the results and the return of that effort investment.

So think about a time where you have been working towards something, and you had the thought like this just isn’t worth it anymore. All of this effort and commitment and dedication and discipline, it’s not getting me where I really want. I don’t feel great about the work I’m doing. I don’t want to do this anymore. This isn’t worth it. It’s not worth my time, it’s not worth my money, it’s not worth my energy or my investment. It’s not worth my focus and attention. That is what teachers are feeling like. They’re not valued professionally in terms of the money that they make and the offers that they’re provided.

The opportunity curve for advancement is also really steep in education. So what I mean by that is teachers can understand and they can see themselves and visualize themselves in a teaching position. But to them, the next step is all the way up to school management, school leadership. For some people, they don’t feel like they want to make that big of a jump. Maybe they want to go into instructional coaching or a teacher leadership position, but that learning curve and that advancement curve is really steep.

So one thing that teachers notice is how much work principals do, how much time it takes, how much effort is involved. They also see that you have no mentor. You have no coach. You have no person in your corner. They don’t want that. So they’re thinking to themselves why bother? “Let me go do something else that feels easier where I make more money, I’m having more fun. I’m feeling more appreciated, and I’m making a difference.”

So in a nutshell, teaching doesn’t feel good to them. They don’t feel the way they want to feel. They don’t believe they’re getting the results they want. They don’t see how the amount of effort that they’re putting in to achieve the results they want are paying off for them. They just don’t see the connection. There isn’t an outcome that deeply motivates them. The progress is too slow or they’re not getting to the goal at all.

When you think about this, the decision to go into teaching and then commit to being the best and then remain a teacher when things get really hard, like a pandemic, is always based on what those teachers are thinking and feeling. Emotions always drive actions. It triggers the decisions you make and impacts the actions that you take. Teachers who left the field left because of how they are feeling. College students who choose not to go into education are doing so because they are afraid of how it will feel to be a teacher.

Let’s be real. There’s really not much out there that invites and sells young people to go into teaching. What they hear is all of the negative emotions and the negative experiences that they’re going to face if they go into teaching. They already know it’s a low pay job. They already know parents don’t particularly value their craft, their profession. They value them as daycare providers for the day. They want kids to go back to school so they can go back to work, but less often they’re interested in the quality of education. Then if they are, they’re constantly questioning the professionalism and the skillset of the teacher.

There’s really nothing in it for teachers unless they deeply, deeply want to teach. There’s community pressure, parent pressure. They’re not valued in their minds. Therefore, when they think about all of that, they don’t want to be a teacher. It’s understandable. We can understand. We have actually been there as leaders. We’ve been teachers. We understand why somebody might decide that.

So when we remember that perspective and we look through the teacher lens, it helps us understand why there might be less people out there. Let’s talk about how to create top assets even when there are less teachers available to hire, okay.

So now as a principal you get to decide. You can look for all the ways in which your new hires aren’t good enough and aren’t capable enough, or you can look at all the ways that they are a best fit. That the right people came to the right interview for the right school, and you’re the right leader for them. This goes back to up leveling your top assets by first up leveling your thoughts about your assets. Your thoughts about your staff, your human resources, your people, your thoughts about time, your thoughts about money.

When you think in your mind how you want to approach these teachers, how you want to spend the resources on them, how you want to spend your time, and how you want to spend your money supporting teachers from the belief that they are competent and innovative and hungry and eager to serve and support kids. When you decide that in your mind that you have the staff you need to have a successful year, your brain will look for all the ways in which they are already competent and already dedicated.

You want to focus on the skills they do have. What’s already available? What’s easy? What’s the low hanging fruit here? The more awesomeness you see in your new teachers, the better you’re going to feel about the year. When you’re feeling better about the year and you’re feeling inspired and you’re feeling excited about it, how do you show up for teachers? How do you utilize your assets? How do you spend your time with your teachers? How do you spend resources on them?

What kinds of conversations do you engage in with them? To what level do you trust that they have innovative ideas and solutions, and that they’re going to do the job they were hired to do? How do you delegate to others and build up teacher leaders in your building when you come from the belief that they’re all 100% capable and ready to go?

When you invest time and money on learning to build up the belief in yourself as a leader, in the quality of your staff, and in your school programming and curriculum—meaning your assets, right—you grow your ability to inspire and influence the outcomes for your teachers and your students. I don’t want you sitting around waiting for the right person or the best teachers to come knocking on your door.

You just decide today right now that the people you already have are the right teachers. You want to cultivate them into the teachers you know they are capable of becoming by tapping into what they already know how to do.  Their inherent brilliance. You just stop arguing with yourself all together and just stop focusing on what they don’t know how to do and focus on mentoring them.

Focus on building them up based on what they do know how to do, what they do well, what their natural talents and skills are, what their dreams and desires are. You want to tap into all of that. Don’t spend your time looking at what isn’t about your teachers, about your time, about your resources. Focus on what is.

It’s the same message you tell teachers to think of students. These are the students that arrive at our door. We’re not waiting for the ideal student to come walking in. We’re not going to ship off the kids who aren’t learning and get some kids in here who just know already what they’re doing. No. We’re gonna build up capacity. That’s the whole point of our jobs. We need to learn to do that as the adults on campus.

When you can believe in your teachers and you can mentor them and coach them and trust in them and let them go do them and let them teach, and let them fail and figure out problems and solutions on their own and have faith that they are capable of that. You will stop spending your time solving their problems, and you will spend your time and your resources and your brain for power thinking and empowered leadership and thought leadership. You will be busy solving the problems that are on your plate.

So when you invest in your top assets—your brain, your money, your time, your resources, and your people—you multiply your assets exponentially. When you surround yourself with other people, you are up leveling them and you. That ripple effect, the lifetime value of 10xing your assets by 10xing their assets, creates this culture of possibility. You want to believe in them that they’re already the best, and then invest in them as if they were.

How would you show up as a school leader if you had the best teachers with the best professional development and the best students with the most amount of time and the most amount of resources, how would you show up mentally, emotionally, physically, energetically? Think about how you’re implementing your top assets and look for ways to get an even higher return on those assets? Have an amazing, empowered week. I will talk with you guys next week. Take care. Bye.

If this podcast resonates with you, you have to sign up for the Empowered Principal coaching program. It’s my exclusive one to one coaching and mentorship program for school leaders who believe in possibility. This program is designed for principals who are hungry for the fastest transformation in the industry. If you want to create the best connections, impact, and legacy for yourself and your school, the Empowered Principal program was designed for you. Join me at angelakellycoaching.com/work-dash-with-me to learn more. I’d love to support you in becoming an empowered school leader.

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