The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Sick Day Guilt: A Permission Slip for Principals

Are you overcome with guilt whenever you need to take a sick day? And even then, do you try to brush it off, pretend it isn’t happening, and attempt to push through?

As school leaders, we’re conditioned to believe we must be present at all times, pushing through illness and exhaustion to keep our schools running. We carry the weight of our professional responsibilities alongside our personal ones, creating a backpack full of bricks that becomes increasingly heavy.

This week, I address a profound issue that came up during a recent EPC call with one of my clients and challenge you to examine your relationship with self-care and rest. She was dragging herself to work despite being sick, feeling guilty about the burden she was placing on her husband at home. This sparked an important conversation about how, particularly as women, we’re conditioned to be A+ at everything—partners, parents, friends, housekeepers, and school leaders—often at the expense of our own wellbeing.

 

Essentials for New School Leaders is my brand-new three-month program for principals in their first year of leadership! If you want to make your first impression your BEST impression, click here to register and find out more.

The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to create exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. Join us today to become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country by clicking here.

 

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • How to recognize when your body is genuinely asking for rest.
  • Why women leaders often feel compelled to push through illness rather than taking needed sick days.
  • How to give yourself permission to be human and prioritize your physical wellbeing.
  • The importance of treating yourself with the same compassion you would show to a child or loved one.
  • Why taking a sick day actually empowers your team rather than burdens them.
  • How to overcome the conditioning that makes you feel guilty for taking care of yourself.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Check out my four-day Aspiring School Leaders series for first-year site and district leaders:

Full Episode Transcript:

Hello Empowered Principals. Welcome to episode 382. 

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. 

Hello, my Empowered Principals. Happy Tuesday. So good to be here with you today. Just sending you all the love. And I’m sending you all of the healing if you have not been feeling well. I’m recording this at the end of February and a lot of people have not been feeling well. It’s been really going around. I don’t know if it’s the flu, the congestion, the cold, if it’s COVID, who knows what’s going on, but people are sick and I’m sorry if you’re not feeling well.

But I’m going to give you a quick little love slap, for lack of a better word. I’m going to shake you out of love. I just got off of the EPC call today and one of my clients in EPC said, “So sorry, I’m just not feeling very good today, but I’m here. I’m just dragging through the week. I just can’t shake this. It’s been like two weeks. Does anybody else have this?” And a couple people were like, “Yeah, I’ve been there before.” And she’s like, “I just keep coming into work and I feel guilty because when I get home, I’m so tired. And then my husband’s doing everything and I feel so bad.”

And I said to her, “Wait a minute. What’s going on here? Why are you not staying home?” And this ended up being a pretty profound conversation. It was very lighthearted on the surface, and I’ll make this lighthearted for you too, but it is something to contemplate, particularly for women. I know men leaders, I love you. 

I’m not saying you’re excluded from this, but women are conditioned to believe that they should be A+ partners, A+ wives, A+ friends, A+ siblings, A+ daughters, A+ parents, and A+ housekeepers, A+ cooks, A+ errand runner, A+ shopper, A+ soccer mom driver to the field, A+ school leader, by the way. All of the things, right?

I picture it like a backpack. And we put in the brick of our relationship. And we want that. Like feels good to have this responsibility and this maturity to be contributing to this relationship. And then we’ve got our parents that we want to take care of and connect with and our siblings, and then our friends. And then later on, we have kids, and then we’re teachers, and we have the students at our classroom and then our colleagues. 

And then maybe the PTA and then maybe our, you know, any organizations outside that we might participate in where we volunteer or support or maybe you’re in a running club or maybe you go to a gym or maybe you belong to a church. Whatever your external affiliations are where you’re doing those things too, and then those bricks go in.

And then you have children. And now it’s like, whoa, those bricks go in. And then on top of all of that, now you have the responsibility of leading an entire school. And then guess what? You’re carrying all the bricks, you’re doing your thing, you’re feeling good about yourself. And you might be doing B+ work, but you’re proud of yourself. You’re keeping it up, right? And then you have a human experience. And you get sick. 

Your body’s like, “Hello. Guess what? We’re human and we’re tired. And because you never stop, because you go all day and you go all night and you go all weekend, and you don’t take breaks, I need a break. And so I’m going to create a break and I’m going to not feel well. And you’re going to need a lot of rest. You’re going to be very tired and it’s going to be very hard to concentrate and you’re going to do your job at about 40% of what you normally do. And I want to see if you will listen to me. Will you take time out for me? Will you take care of me? Let’s see what happens.”

 All right, let’s see what happens. I’ll speak from my own experience. I was a single mom and I was a teacher, and then I was a principal. And getting sick, in my mind, just wasn’t an option. If I got sick, I took a bunch of vitamins and I tried to stave it off. And then it would hit. And you know the morning you wake up, you’re like, “Oh no.” Like, it’s real. I tried to brush it away, pretend it wasn’t happening, but you’re down.

And the last thing your body wants to do, if you could ask your body, “What are we doing today?” It’s like, “Sleeping. I am sleeping. I am staying in this bed. I am not getting out of my pajamas. Do not pass go. Call somebody for help. Have the partner, spouse take the kid to the daycare or to school. And I need silence for sleeping.” That’s what your body would say. But what do we say? “No, no, no. Sorry, it’s only Wednesday. You’re going to have to make it to Saturday. We can do it. It’s only three days, right?”

We get up and we drag ourselves and the body’s like, “What are you doing?” We go and we get through it and then we’re like, “Oh my gosh, we actually made it. I didn’t mean I didn’t feel that bad. Like, I wasn’t running a fever or anything. I basically just had a pounding headache all day and my throat was scratchy and I was, you know, had this runny nose and I could hardly breathe because my congestion was so bad. But you know what? I took a DayQuil. I made it.” Okay?

And then five days go by. Cold’s still there. But we’re doing it. We got through. The weekend was kind of rough. We laid around a little bit. We felt so guilty because then our husband had to, you know, pick the kids up and I just was so exhausted. I went into the bed. And then, you know, he had to make dinner and I felt really bad because he works too. And, you know, I just, I feel really bad. I can’t be just leaving this work for my colleagues to do. That would feel terrible. What would they think if I actually stayed home sick? Like I’m really not that sick. Like I’m not dying.

So do you see the story that goes down? Now, where is that coming from? Who taught us that? Where does this story that we should get up no matter what and do the thing? It comes from conditioning. It comes from pull yourself up by the bootstraps. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going. 

You know, the sign of an empowered woman is she’s out there doing her career and leading her household and, you know, getting up every day, raising those kids, bringing home the paycheck, being the best wife. She’s going over taking care of her parents, checking in on her siblings. And, oh, she’s also going to those PTA meetings? Like, what is happening right now?

So, if you break this down, what you’re saying to yourself is, your physical health doesn’t really matter. Your physical rest, the rest you’re craving, it’s not as important as other people’s. It’s not as important as your husband’s, your kids’, your your family, the school, your colleagues. Their wellbeing is more important than you. Now, you might agree with that because it’s so profoundly conditioned in our mind.

So I’m going to ask you a question. If your best friend were sick, if your spouse were sick, if they came home and they said, “Honey, I’m so miserable. I feel terrible. Would it be okay if I went and rested?” What are you going to say? Of course. Oh my goodness. Can I get you some water? Do you need juice? Do you want some chicken soup? Let me take care of it. I would just step in without a doubt. 

Notice the two different trains of thought. What are you thinking about you? What are you making it mean about them? When you’re sick, it’s a failure. Can’t do that. But when they’re sick, of course, they’re human. You nurture them, you take care of them.

If your kids came home, would you say to them, “Sorry, you’ve got chores. No time for sickness in this house. Get the dishes done. Go take the dog for a walk. Sorry, we’ve got chores to do. There’s a routine here. What are you thinking? We don’t have time for that. You can go to bed after everything’s done.” We would never do that to our children. But yet we do it to ourselves. And then we’re like, “But our colleagues, we’re going to feel so guilty if they, you know, if they have to carry my burden.”

How do you feel when your colleagues are out? Are you thinking they’re a burden? Or are you like, “Yeah, sure, of course. If you’re sick, stay home.” Or is your brain like, “I know, they’re just taking a mental health day. They’re dumping all this work on me.” 

If you’re thinking that, then of course you’re going to think that they think that about you. So check in with yourself. When people call in sick, do you believe that they’re really sick or do you believe they’re just making life miserable for the rest of you who are at work? Check that out. That might be the reason you refuse to let yourself call in sick. You’re like, “I’m not going to be that person.”

The other thing I asked my client was, “How sick do you have to be before it’s sick enough to call in? What constitutes a sick day?” She’s like, “Well, definitely if I have a fever or if I test positive for COVID. Like, we have to stay home then.” Okay. Basically, you have to be so down for the count, knocking on death’s door, about ready to go to the ER, or you physically just cannot move anymore. Is that the level to which we finally allow ourselves some rest?

So ask yourself this: What does it take to give myself permission to be human, to be sick, to get the rest that my body is asking me to give it? Where’s my permission slip? Who gives you that permission slip? Is it you? Is it your kids? Is it your boss? Is it your spouse? Only you know how you feel. And there is a discernment.

I get it. There are days where we wake up, we’re a little bit tired and we’re like, “Oh God, I would love to sleep in. This would feel so good. I wish it were Saturday.” Or maybe we’re a little tired or we have a little ache or pain or a little headache, but we know, we know how to discern when we’re sick and when we’re just a little tired. Or when we have a little sniffle, but we have the energy to face the day. And then we know when we’re sick. You know when you’re sick and you know when you’re not.

And look, I’m not judging if you want to stay home because you’re tired and that’s the only symptom you have, you have full permission to do that. You’re an adult, you are a human, and sometimes you need sleep. And the only way that you’re going to be at your best is when you balance sleep, play, and work. You know how to discern for yourself whether you are sick, whether you are just not wanting to go to work today, but you have the capacity to. And days where you’re like, “I’m so exhausted. I don’t really feel sick sick, but I can tell my body is asking for permission to rest.”

I invite you to give your body permission to rest. You can give yourself permission. You must give yourself permission. Who else will give it to you? So, my friends, the most empowered decision you can make is to check in with your body every single day. 

How am I feeling physically, mentally, emotionally? Is there an aspect of my life, physically, mentally, or emotionally that needs some TLC? And if it does, give yourself permission to have it, to take care of it, to nurture it, just as you would a loved one.

Treat yourself the way you would treat your children. Can you imagine how it would change the way you spoke to yourself? How you nurtured yourself, how you held space for yourself, how you cared for yourself? If you treated yourself the way you treat your own children? 

If you don’t have your own children, the way you would treat any child, you know, a niece, a nephew, the children at school. Think about you. There’s still a little child in there. You’ve just been on the planet a little bit longer. You still get sick. You still need care. You still need TLC. You still need rest days.

And if it’s so uncomfortable to do it, that is the homework assignment. The more resistance you feel to taking a day off, the more required the assignment is to take it off. Because what you will notice is that when you take it off, the world didn’t crumble, you didn’t fall apart, the school didn’t fall apart. You didn’t miss out on something so grand that you’re not going to find out about it. Everything’s going to be in its place. 

And do you know what else? It empowers other people. Because part of the reason we don’t want to miss out at being at school is because we’re the principal and we believe we’re the most important person there. But that’s not true. Everyone plays a part. Different contribution but equal value. So everyone’s contributing, everyone’s providing value. And you being sick for a day will not make the ship sink.

And you need to experience that to believe it. So if you are in extreme resistance to taking a day off, I highly, highly encourage you to do it. And watch your brain. It’s going to be so upset and be in such resistance, but your body’s going to be thrilled. It’s going to get all the sleep you need. And your emotions and mental state might be in a tizzy while you’re at home, but you’re going to go back, everything’s fine. Even if your secretary’s like, “Oh my gosh, while you were gone, this and this and this.” You can be like, “Yeah, I get it. I know.”

But you know what? You did it. And thank you. I really needed to rest up. I wasn’t feeling well and I appreciate it. Thank you for standing up for me, for helping out. I’m really, really glad you’re here. And then you can wink at yourself in the mirror knowing, I have permission to take the day off. And that’s a beautiful thing for not just me, but for my family and for my school.

So, here’s your assignment. The next time you need physical rest, mental rest, emotional rest, take the day and watch yourself. See what happens and how good it feels to know that you have the empowerment to take care of you. Treat yourself like you would a child. Nurture yourself, cuddle yourself up, love on yourself. And that is going to give you the energy to be the best version of you when you go back to school. 

Take good care. Be well. Be safe. Feel good. Enjoy your life. Enjoy your school. Have an amazing week. I love you all and I’ll talk with you next week. Take good care. Bye.

Hey you guys, calling all first-year site and district leaders. As you know, I hosted a free master course for those aspiring to land a job in school leadership. This was a four-day course that covers what you need to prepare yourself before, during, and after the interview process. So for those of you who are interested, you can find the YouTube links below in the show notes. The Aspiring School Leader series is completely free. 

Now, for those of you who landed that job, I have a brand-new program. Let’s make your first impression in school leadership your best impression. Let’s lead your school with confidence in year one and nail your first year as a school leader. You’ve got what it takes to make an impressive first impression, so come on in. 

I’ve got a brand-new program called Essentials for New School Leaders. It is three months of professional and personal development to give you the strategies, the mindset, and the skill set to lead your school to the next level of success.

There is a gap between the time you get hired and the time you start your contract. Let’s get ahead of the curve, three months in advance, you’ll be ready to go on day one of your brand-new contract. Join Essentials for New School Leaders. For more information, click the link in the show notes.

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. 

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | The Need to Know

Do you ever feel that pang of anxiety when you realize you’ve missed an important meeting or weren’t included in a crucial conversation? If you’re navigating this tension between wanting to know everything happening in your school and district versus recognizing what information you actually need to fulfill your leadership responsibilities, this episode is for you.

There’s a significant difference between wanting information from a place of insecurity versus seeking it from a place of mature leadership. So, how do you tell the difference? This awareness can transform how you approach information-sharing, meetings, and your overall leadership presence.

This week, I share insights from a recent coaching conversation with one of my long-term clients who had an epiphany after missing a few days of work due to illness. We explore the fascinating psychology behind our desire to “be in the know” and how this need often stems from deeper places than we realize. 

 

Essentials for New School Leaders is my brand-new three-month program for principals in their first year of leadership! If you want to make your first impression your BEST impression, click here to register and find out more.

The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to create exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. Join us today to become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country by clicking here.

 

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • How to identify when your “need to know” comes from insecurity versus mature leadership responsibility.
  • Why FOMO often connects to unhealed wounds from earlier life experiences.
  • How to use the STEAR cycle to examine your thoughts and emotions when feeling left out of important conversations.
  • Why scaling your leadership impact requires letting go of being in every conversation and knowing every detail.
  • How to determine what information is truly necessary for you to make effective decisions for your team.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Check out my four-day Aspiring School Leaders series for first-year site and district leaders:

Full Episode Transcript:

Hello Empowered Principals. Welcome to episode 381. 

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. 

Well, hello, my empowered principals. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast. Good to see you. Good to be here. I wish I could see you in person. I would love to give you a big hug and say hello. Thank you for being a principal. I love you all and I’m just so proud of all that you do. I know you’re out there working your tails off for kids, for staff members, for yourself, and it’s such an honor to be here with you each and every week. So, thank you for listening. I really do appreciate it.

It’s like having a big family where I haven’t met all of the people yet, and I can’t wait to meet you. I really do hope that you will consider joining EPC. It’s really the room where we are making visions come to life. I am so inspired by the people in the room. And you know what’s fun? We talk about the real deal. We talk about how it really feels. We talk about lifting each other up. We walk shoulder to shoulder. I have a client in there who’s always asking, “Can anybody else relate to this experience?” and everyone’s like, “Yes!” It’s so much fun because we talk about more than just school leadership. We talk about how it feels to be a partner, a wife, a mother, a parent, a friend, you know, dealing with loss in our personal lives and how do we grieve loved ones while also leading a school?

How do we be a really good parent while also leading 500 other elementary students, right? We talk about those kinds of things in addition to how we lead our schools, how do we empower ourselves and others? It’s the most magical hour of my life. I love, love, love EPC so much, and I would love to meet you, and of course, you are invited in to EPC. This is now what? I’m recording here towards the middle of April. You’re welcome to join in now. You’re welcome to join in this summer. We’re going to be doing a lot of planning and preparing and getting you ready, getting your identity all worked up, ready to go to be in the seat of the empowered principal when you go back to school in the fall, which will be here before you know it.

As I mentioned on last week’s podcast, how quickly three months goes. So, here we are in the second quarter of the year. In a flash, you will be back to school, starting a new year. And I invite you to come in to EPC now so that we can get your plans underway. We can get the summer of fun for you all planned out, ready to go so you can have a wonderful summer, get the rest you need, get all that play in so you are planned, prepared, and you’re playing, having fun. That’s what I hope for you this coming summer.

All right. Today’s episode is really coming off of the conversation I just had with one of my one-on-one clients. This client has been working with me since the very beginning. We’ve coached together for the last four or five years. She’s very, very savvy. She’s very empowered. She’s very attuned to her mind, to her heart, to her feelings, and to her brain when her brain’s trying to sabotage her. And this conversation was so rich, I wanted just to share with you a piece of it so that you could take this episode and contemplate what this conversation might mean for you and your experience in school leadership.

So, this principal has been in around five years now, and she’s not brand new. I’ve been with her since she’s been new. We are what I would call a very seasoned school leader. She knows her stuff, and she’s getting very comfortable in her skin. She’s stepping into the identity and really is able to manage her mind and her emotions in the school leadership position.

So, this client had to take off a couple of days because she was sick. And I have a whole separate podcast coming up about being sick and what that looks like as a school leader, because we don’t give ourselves permission to be sick. But I’m going to speak with you otherwise and hopefully inspire you into giving yourself some permission to be out of the building, to rest when you are ill, to give yourself permission to go to conferences and be away, and give yourself the breaks that you need. But that is for another podcast.

In this case, the problem, and it doesn’t mean you have to be out sick or you were away, it simply might be the situation where you missed out on something. You missed out on a meeting, you missed out on a conversation, you weren’t invited to a conversation or a meeting, or you had to be in two places at once, so you missed out on one thing while the other thing was happening. Perhaps you were out sick, perhaps you were away from the building, but you can be literally in your building and not be accessible or accessing all things that are happening on your campus.

Now, we got into this conversation about the desire that we have, especially as school leaders. We have this desire to be in the know. We want to know what’s going on. We want to know the details. We want to know the what, where, when, why, how, all of that. And we were exploring this concept. And I asked my client, I said, “What’s happening within you when you feel you’ve missed out?” So, an event happens and you weren’t there. What’s the thought process? What are the feelings, the emotions that come up? What are the insecurities? What do you do in response to that? Basically asking her, what is the STEAR cycle, S T E A R, for those of you who are new to this podcast? I have a tool called the STEAR cycle. It helps you look at your thoughts, your emotions, and then your reaction or response to those thoughts and emotions, like the urge to act, the approach that you want to take when you’re feeling a certain way or thinking a certain way. You can look at that in advance and say, “Oh, here’s what I’m thinking. Here’s how I’m feeling. This is the urge I have. When I want to react and I want to go into fight or flight, this is the urge I have. I want to react this way.” 

But because I have the STEAR cycle, I can push pause. And I can look at it for a minute and say, “Ooh, when I react this way, is this the outcome I’m intending? Is this what I want? Is this who I want to be? Is this how I want to show up? Is this how I want to react?” And is it going to give me the desired outcome I’m really looking for? Is this how I want to feel? And you can use the STEAR cycle as a tool to really help you navigate when feelings do come up or thoughts come up. You can use it to push pause and to look, and then to re-decide what might be the approach you decide to take out of responding versus reacting so that you can generate a more desired outcome, okay?

So I was asking my client, let’s put this in a STEAR cycle. So, if you are a principal and let’s say there’s a meeting at the district office and some of the principals got invited, but you didn’t. Notice what your brain is thinking. What are you making it mean? They got invited and I didn’t. There’s FOMO, right? There’s this fear of not having been included, not being significant enough, not mattering enough, not feeling important, feeling like you were left out, you were rejected, a fear of like you’re not in control, you’re not in the in-group. 

Maybe I wasn’t competent enough or maybe they didn’t think I could handle it. The brain goes off when it goes into FOMO, fear of missing out. It’s thinking something’s gone terribly wrong with me. I somehow did not get invited to the “party”. I want to be included and I’m not. There’s a lot of heavy feelings, negative emotions that come up when we believe that we were left out intentionally or we don’t belong or we aren’t significant or that other people don’t see our significance and that they don’t think we matter.

I just want to bring this up as awareness. If something is going on, whether it’s on your campus or it’s at the district level, and you weren’t a part of it, notice if your brain goes into FOMO. And what the FOMO means. What are you actually fearing if you miss out? Is it just being in the gossip and drama? My friends and I call it “cheese, man”. This like, “what’s the cheese?” Just being in the details. And why we love that being in the know of that stuff? Because we’re connecting, it feels good. Like when my girlfriends and I get together and we’re “spilling the tea,” you know, “sharing the cheese,” whatever phrase you and your friends use, like getting into the gossip of it all. There is a feeling of, it’s almost an addictive feeling. It’s dopamine. It’s love, connection, belonging, significance, importance. 

You really crave those feelings. And when we have them, they feel so amazing that we chase them. We want more. Now we want to be involved in other things that make us feel that good. So notice if you’re chasing the dopamine hit and if you’re feeling an addiction to having to be in the know.

So there is the fear of being out because of what we make it mean, and then there is the addiction of what it feels like when we’re in. So, what I have noticed is that when we’re looking at the need to be in the know, there’s two ways that this can go. And the way that I break it down into my mind is there is the immaturity in us. 

As my client said, she goes, “I can see my teenager brain is showing up here.” I love that so much. So you’ve got your “teenager brain,” which is like, it has a level of immaturity still, and it’s very much valuing its peers, their opinions, their thoughts, inclusivity, being included, being a part of the crowd, being popular, being in the know for the sake of significance, for the sake of belonging, for the sake of importance.

And with that comes in my coaching mind, what I see that as, it’s a very all-or-none thinking. It’s positional authority. You’re, you have a superiority, right? You, you know something that other people don’t know. You’re in and they’re out. There’s pride, there’s like this exclusivity that feels good when you’re in it, but feels bad when you’re not. Do you see it? It’s an all-or-none, in or out, yes or no, knowing or not knowing. It’s very binary in its concept. So, and there is just, there’s a level of immaturity in that way of thinking because we tend to think it’s all good or all bad, right? 

When you look at little kids, they’re either happy or they’re upset, right? They don’t, they don’t live in a land of just contentment, right? They tend to be very, I’m loving my life right now as a toddler, or I’m having a tantrum as a toddler, and I’m feeling rested as a toddler, or I’m tired as a toddler, right? Their lives seem much more binary. Perhaps it’s the complexity of the brain development and such.

But what I see is when we’re in school leadership, if we haven’t addressed that teenager experience where that immaturity comes into play as an adult, and we’re still feeling the need to be in the group and be in the know so that we can feel important and significant and powerful and knowledgeable and have, you know, status with our peers, status with the administrative team, and status with the teacher team, like teachers aren’t invited but admin are. Just notice if that’s happening. 

If it’s happening, nothing’s gone wrong because most of us haven’t even thought about this at this depth, which is why I’m bringing it up today. And most of us didn’t even realize back when we were teenagers to reconcile and to heal some of those past pains when we got rejected, when we were left out, when we didn’t feel like we belonged, we didn’t make the team. 

We saw girls gossiping and we thought it was about us, or maybe it was about you, and there’s some wounds that haven’t healed. They come along with you. Like your mind, your body doesn’t stop forgetting those things until they’re acknowledged and they’re validated and they’re processed, and then they can heal. Which is why I spend so much time talking with people about acknowledging your feelings, validating your feelings, and processing them so that they have space to heal.

This applies here. So, FOMO can be coming from a past wound. Notice that. You could probably recall right now as you’re listening to this, a time in your childhood or teen years where, or maybe even college, where this happened, where FOMO was a thing and it happened and the level of maturity you had at the time was very hurt, like the maximum you could handle this, the best that you could do to handle it was to try and get into the group or to feel very heartbroken and be very in rejection, very in sadness, very in grief about not being included. Notice that.

Then, that’s what I would call like the “less than empowered version of you”. And it’s decisions that are being made from a place of control or a place of insecurity or a place of FOMO. But it’s a zero-sum game. Like, “I have to be in and that means somebody has to be out. And for me to feel good, someone has to feel bad. And for me to be in the know means somebody has to be not in the know. For me to be included means somebody has to be excluded.” Do you see that? Okay.

Moving on to the empowered version of this. So there’s the need to know from a place of maturity, from a place of empowerment. And the need to know isn’t coming from, let’s say a more ego based, a more positional based, a more power based. It’s coming from the actual need to know. So in this case, my client had been out for a few days, and when she came back, she said, “I had the biggest aha moment.” 

And this really is a moment of transformation for each and every one of you. There will be a moment when you realize that “I don’t need every detail of every meeting, of every conversation. I simply need to know the outcomes that impact me, the knowledge to make decisions for myself and my team that are the most empowered and informed decision I can make at the time.” You don’t need to know the nitty-gritty details of every little thing and how it came down and who was there and what they said and who said what and what arguments were had. You just need to know, give me the lowdown, what are the important things I need to know? What are the outcomes? What are the decisions? How does it impact me? Take in that information, and then that’s when you can move forward and do what you need to do with the information you need, right?

So, even when you miss out on meetings, it doesn’t mean you miss out on the message, that you miss out on the outcome, that you miss out on what you actually needed to know. You can get briefed on that. This is how you actually realize, oh, this is how people scale. Can you imagine being a superintendent and thinking you need to be in every conversation and every meeting, at every site, at every district meeting, at every site meeting, and you need to know all of the drama, all of the little bits that you want to be involved in every little thing? 

This is how people burn out. This is how they get overwhelmed. You cannot scale your impact as a leader if you’re trying to be in the “ocean of detail”. There is a maturity. There is a giving up of being in those little details and talking about the conversations and the details of those conversations and all the things that people said and did and the drama and the “cheese, man” and the “gossiping” and whatever, “spilling all the tea”, right?

The maturity of being in the know is actually knowing what you need to know so that you can get your job done to scale, so that you can create impact to scale and influence positive influence to scale. It’s not about, “I know because I’m the one and I’m superior and you don’t get to know.” It’s, “I need to know because I’m leading people and I need to make these decisions, and I want to know so that I don’t hurt anybody by not having the right information or all of the information.” I can use my need to know because I want to make a positive influence, a positive impact. There is a maturity and a responsibility and an obligation that comes with being in the know, really being in the know.

Think about CEOs who run companies. They definitely need to be in the know, but not with everything, and there is a letting go of that. And yes, that does mean, you know, when you’re a teacher and you are in the know with your grade level or your department, you have to let go of some of that being in the know when you step into, let’s say, being an instructional coach. And then being an instructional coach, you’re in the know with maybe the teachers and the other instructional coaches. And then when you step into maybe an assistant principal, you have to let a part of being in some of that know, you have to let that go. 

And then there’s a maturity that comes into being the site leader, and then again, the district leader. With each evolution of your career, there is a maturity that you step into because there is a responsibility with knowing information and being invited into certain meetings.

There’s a reason not everybody goes to the HR meetings or the behavior, the discipline meetings. When you have to have maybe, you know, what do they call them? You know, you actually have to have this like type of conference where, I can’t think of the name right now, I’m sorry. Like a manifestation determination meeting. When you’re going into a behavior conversation where, does this child qualify to be, you know, disciplined in a way that’s Gen Ed or Special Ed? What is the determination here going into those meetings? 

And there is a level of knowledge that needs to be known in those meetings. And with that comes great responsibility. So, those meetings get limited. Not everybody gets to show up. Not everybody gets to show up to your HR meeting if you’re having a conversation with your superintendent and there’s some HR stuff going on, not everybody’s privy to that. Why? Because with that information, there’s security and there’s safety and there’s sensitivity involved in the information. And it comes with maturity and it comes with responsibility and an obligation to honor what’s being said at that meeting. And being involved doesn’t become about you and whether you’re good enough or whether you fit in or whether people want you there or not. 

It comes with, “Do I belong there because I understand what it means to belong and it means to go to that meeting?” because of the information I need and I’m using that information to make informed decisions for those that I lead versus feeling mad or upset or hurt or jealous or envious or insignificant because you didn’t get invited to a district meeting where there were other people there. And having the maturity to see the perspective of, perhaps I wasn’t invited not because of I have a personality flaw, rather the information being discussed most likely pertained to those individuals. And I don’t need to know all of that if it doesn’t actually pertain to me or my site or the people that I lead. It’s okay that people go and have meetings.

And if I need to get briefed on what happened while I’m away, I will. People will give you information. If you need it, you’ll hear it. If your superintendent wants you to know, you will know. And if you miss something that was important, it’ll filter to you. Trust that. 

Intermingling your personal needs, your like friendship needs or your desire to belong because, you know, in the eighth grade you got kicked out of the clique or people were mean to you and not healing that and then bringing that into your work environment, one, because you’re not aware of it. Two, because you are seeking to feel good, to feel belonging again, notice that. Run a STEAR cycle. Why am I feeling this way? What are the thoughts? What is my urge to react to this? Why am I wanting to be in the know? Do I need to be in the know? And then what would the empowered version of being in the know, the mature version, the responsible version? What would that look like? 

Really in-depth awareness, in-depth alignment. But I wanted to share this because I do think it impacts people on the daily. They feel really hurt. They feel really bad if they didn’t get invited to something or they missed out on something.

So just notice when your brain is reacting to the need to know from a place of immaturity and maybe some past situations and healing that needs to be done, or from a place of maturity where you need to be in the know because you need to be in the know because it’s the thing you need to do in order to lead your people. And it’s coming from a place not of all or nothing, I’m in, I’m out. It’s for us, for them, for the greater good. That’s the mature, empowered version of being in the need to know. All right, my friends, I hope this has been helpful. Have a wonderful week and I’ll talk to you next week. Take good care. Bye.

Hey you guys, calling all first-year site and district leaders. As you know, I hosted a free master course for those aspiring to land a job in school leadership. This was a four-day course that covers what you need to prepare yourself before, during, and after the interview process. So for those of you who are interested, you can find the YouTube links below in the show notes. The Aspiring School Leader series is completely free. 

Now, for those of you who landed that job, I have a brand-new program. Let’s make your first impression in school leadership your best impression. Let’s lead your school with confidence in year one and nail your first year as a school leader. You’ve got what it takes to make an impressive first impression, so come on in. 

I’ve got a brand-new program called Essentials for New School Leaders. It is three months of professional and personal development to give you the strategies, the mindset, and the skill set to lead your school to the next level of success.

There is a gap between the time you get hired and the time you start your contract. Let’s get ahead of the curve, three months in advance, you’ll be ready to go on day one of your brand-new contract. Join Essentials for New School Leaders. For more information, click the link in the show notes.

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. 

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Balance School Leadership and Life: The Empowered Principal® Approach with Jeff Linden

Have you ever felt completely overwhelmed as a school leader, wondering if you’re cut out for the job while trying to balance your personal life? 

That’s exactly where I found myself during my early years as a principal. Opening a brand new school as a first-year administrator while being a single parent pushed me to my limits, making me question if I could continue in educational leadership. After 15 years in the classroom, I felt called to leadership but hesitated about “going to the dark side” of administration.

In this episode, you hear a conversation I had with Jeff Linden, host of the Education Leadership with Principal JL, to dive into my journey from kindergarten teacher to principal to district leadership and eventually coach. We discuss an important perspective shift in your identity as a leader, a coaching tool that will help you manage your thoughts and emotions, and how I help principals navigate the complexities of school leadership while maintaining their humanity, finding joy, and creating meaningful impact without sacrificing their wellbeing.

 

Essentials for New School Leaders is my brand-new three-month program for principals in their first year of leadership! If you want to make your first impression your BEST impression, click here to register and find out more.

The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to create exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. Join us today to become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country by clicking here.

 

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • How to transition from seeing yourself as “just a school leader” to a human in a leadership role.
  • The profound shifts I experienced when I discovered coaching.
  • Why the emotional experience we have serves as our compass in difficult leadership situations.
  • How to use the STEAR cycle to create space between your thoughts and your identity as a leader.
  • Why acknowledging your pain and leaning into it actually expands your capacity for joy.
  • The importance of creating connections with other leaders to combat the isolation of principalship.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Check out my four-day Aspiring School Leaders series for first-year site and district leaders:

Full Episode Transcript:

Hello Empowered Principals. Welcome to episode 380. 

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. 

Jeff Linden: All right everybody, today we have a special guest. This special guest is somebody that is near and dear to my heart because they kind of helped me out as a principal throughout my journey. So I’d like to welcome to the show, Angela Kelly. Welcome Angela.

Angela Kelly: Hi there, Jeff.

Jeff Linden: Hey Angela, I wanted to kind of get things started here with just kind of talking about your journey in education. So, tell me about how you got into education. What is the reason that got you to become a teacher in the first place?

Angela Kelly: Wow, that goes back a few decades. So, you know, like any kid coming out of high school, the big question is, what are you going to do with your life? And for me, I actually need to start back into middle school. I was in middle school. I was attending a brand new middle school. My family had moved a lot. And there was this presentation in our theater, and it was called Upward Bound. 

And it was a program that was designed for students of families who had not – they’re the first generation of students to potentially go to college. So nobody in my family line prior to me had attended a four-year university. And you also had to meet certain requirements financially. So my family fit these financial goals. And by the end of eighth grade, I signed up for this program called Upward Bound. 

It was at Iowa State University. I was born and raised in Iowa. And it was the game changer for my life because I don’t know that I actually had sites on going to college. I didn’t really contemplate what my future would look like. It was that life was just happening and I was just going through the motions of being a kid and going to high school. And then this happened, and I started thinking about my future, actually thinking about what I wanted when I grew up, the kind of career I wanted to have. And I went through Upward Bound for five years. 

So from the summer of eighth grade clear through the summer of the year I graduated. So five summers, instead of being the kid who, you know, went to movies and hung out with her friends and went out on dates, I was going to college. I was going to school through this program. The first couple of years, they are prep courses to prepare you for the rigor of college. 

And then the last three years, you start taking actual classes with other college students while you’re in high school. And then you have an intense amount of preparation and support and tutoring to ensure because if you’re going to get anything lower than a C, they kind of pull you because they they realize you might not be ready. 

So, I was able by the time I graduated high school, I had a semester of college credit. And that was so invigorating and so motivating. I had this momentum going where like I started to identify as somebody who could actually go to college and get a degree. I have to highlight that because that program really did change my life and I credit the Upward Bound program too, creating a vision for my adult life and my future. So I have to give a shout out to Upward Bound.

And then when I got into college, I actually… my dad was like, well, you should go into finance. That just sounds very prestigious and you’re really good at math. And I took one semester. I hated it. I was falling asleep in the class. I remember in economy class, I slept through a quiz. It was just bad. It was bad news. 

And I was sitting down with some friends over the summer and they were asking how college went. And I said, well, it’s okay. But I wasn’t fired up. I was more fired up about the social scene and being, you know, away from family and being a little independent college student than I was actually my future and learning.

I had a very profound conversation about what did I want to do? What did I love to do? And in that conversation, it came up like, I love kids. I babysat from a very young age. I loved being around kids. They lit me up. And I loved school. So I think the combination of truly loving school as a student, I always played school, I played the teacher, and combined with my, you know, young adult love for children. And I would say too, I’m really wanted to improve the experience of school for students.

And not that I had a bad experience, but, you know, I grew up in the 70s and 80s, so there were things that we could do to improve the experience of students and the emotional experience that students had in addition to the style of learning that we did. So that really, those combinations of events in my life drew me into teaching. 

And the minute I shifted into from finance into education, it was like lock. I knew right then, I was locked, loaded, this was my life. I loved it, ready to go. And that was it. I never looked back. And I ended up getting my early childhood credential along with my elementary, you know, teaching credential.

Jeff Linden: All right, as a teacher, how long were you a teacher?

Angela Kelly: I taught two years in Minnesota. So I graduated from Iowa State, we moved up to Minnesota. I taught pre-K. It was a birth through grade age five, early childhood program. I was the teacher and the coordinator for two years there. My husband and I moved out to California in ’95. And I taught at the same school for about 15 years. 

So I taught primarily kindergarten, it’s my love language is kindergarten, and I also taught first grade. And then I became an instructional coach. I was a reading specialist. So I did, you know, different seats on the bus, but I was definitely elementary. Really profound love for early literacy and early childhood development and just the social emotional development of children.

And I really loved working with parents. That’s why I chose kindergarten because you can just, you get to bring them in and you get to cultivate them and their experience. And that was really important for me to set the stage for these families to have a positive experience with their school and to really love the school that they were sending their children to. 

So, I did that for 15 years. And in the meantime, I’m going to say like around 12, 13 years into teaching, I felt this desire for more, but let’s be honest on the podcast here. You know, when you’re a teacher and you’re like, it’s teachers, they have their mindset and perspective and then admin. 

And as a teacher, you’re looking at the admin like, I don’t know about that. I don’t know if I want to go to the dark side. I don’t know that I could handle it. You know, deep inside I was like, I don’t know if I can handle it, but on the surface it was like, I don’t want to be like one of them. I don’t want to have to work like that or, you know, I just you have thoughts and opinions about it because you’ve never experienced it. So you can only imagine, you know, what it would be like.

And we go both ways. We imagine that it’s going to be amazing or we’re going to have this big impact and what, you know, it’s going to be better than ever. It’s going to, oh, we’re going to get out of a classroom, we’re going to be able to walk the campus and we’re going to have all this freedom and power. 

And then you also think about, ooh, that looks really hard and they’re the ones who stay last and they’re the ones who eat last and they’re the ones who, you know, take the heat and I don’t know if I can handle that. Am I capable of leadership, actually leading a vision, a school, a community? And so that I was feeling it and it was just kind of, I was keeping it on the inside. Well, my superintendent at the time was offering this program.

So if any of you out there listening are teachers or site administrators or district administrators, which I’m sure there’s a bunch of you out there listening, this program was another, like I think about these little milestones in my story that at the time, I had no idea the impact they were really going to have, but I could feel like it was a calling to go into that. 

This second little milestone for me was this program, we called it ELA, like it was like basically it was a leadership development program and my superintendent had the brilliant idea of like cultivating leaders from within the district and not always trying to hire somebody outside who didn’t know our culture or understand, you know, our vision. And it was a two-year program. 

We’d go once or twice a week and it was pretty intense, actually. It was more than I thought it was going to be, but it was a profound group of people with of my own peers and we talked leadership and we talked straight leadership. We didn’t sugar coat it. We talked about how it actually felt to be a leader, the real challenges, the work-life balance issue, time management, how do you get planning in, just how do you keep it all together emotionally when teachers this and that? And it really gave me perspective and insight.

But the best thing it gave me was I went from thinking I’m not cut out, it’s not possible to like, I think I can actually do this. Did you have that moment, Jeff?

Jeff Linden: Yeah. So in my journey as becoming a principal, honestly, I was a teacher in the classroom for 11 years as a math teacher and coached football, wrestling, track, you know, did all those things. I love it. You know, I love the connections with the kids. It honestly wasn’t until I got into Omaha where I was actually, I moved went from Millard North High School as a teacher to Ralston. And the main reason I went to Ralston was because of Dr. Adler, who was the superintendent at Ralston.

My main question was, could I get into your leadership academy if I come over? Because at the current district I was in at Millard, I had to wait three years. And I did not want to wait three years. I kind of wanted the training because I felt like it would be good for me to be able to have some more background in becoming an educational leader. I had my credentials already. I had curriculum masters and I also have my educational administration masters. And so I was like, I need to have something more like leadership academy, maybe it’ll be make me more marketable.

And so I spent two years in the Ralston Leadership Academy with Dr. Adler, which was a great experience and that kind of propelled me into becoming a principal and having some experiences and some just insights on what that’s like. So kind of very similar pathways there. 

So tell me more about like, you know, you’re going from a teacher into becoming on the dark side now, right? Coming a principal, you kind of talked about that, you know, piece where you went into like a leadership academy and how did that propel you? What was the next step to making that transition from teacher to principalship?

Angela Kelly: I went through the program and it was two years. So, yeah, it was like an academy and we graduated out of that. And then shortly after that – so there’s this period of time and I was in California at the time. I lived out in California for 30 years. So my career really spans primarily in California. You know, you had to go through the motions of getting the credential. And because I already had a Master’s degree, I could go through kind of a, it was like a shorter term credentialing program offer because they were in need of administrators.

So they had this kind of like limited time bonus, if you act now, you can go through this program through the county or the state and add on your administrative credentials. So I did that. And then I, you know, you have to take the test and I remember driving down to Santa Cruz, California and taking this test and it was just old school like handwritten six hours straight of just writing and writing and I thought, oh gosh, I hope I passed this test.

And you’re just like a kid again, like waiting for your ACTs or your SAT scores to come back and it came back and I had a nearly perfect score and I was like, what? Oh my gosh. And I thought, you know, there was the celebration moment. I’m like, gosh, I’m ready for this. And then I thought, it’s one thing to write it down on a piece of paper. It’s another thing to live the experience and to be in it, right? And Jeff, you know that. That is definitely true. There is the theory of leadership and there’s the life of a leader and there’s the leadership, I think day-to-day, right?

Jeff Linden: Yep.

Angela Kelly: Yeah.

Jeff Linden: Yeah. And I know like for me, transitioning from teacher into becoming a principal, did I really know what I was getting myself into? Not really. I just knew that was my next step. And for me it was like, I was looking for that person to give me the opportunity. And I did a series of interviews because at my time, there was a lot more competitiveness becoming a principal in Nebraska at that time because, you know, everybody that was a teacher that wants to get into a principalship was trying to get into those or you’re competing against other candidates that might have some more experience.

So getting into it, you know, it was hard, but once I got that opportunity, that’s when I was trying to make the most of it. And so that’s part of like, for me, becoming a principal, I had the education, I had the academy, I had all this knowledge. Now I had to put it in practice. And that’s the part that gets tough because there’s not a lot of professional development out there for principals and for people that are just get stuck on an island because my first principal ship was out in Southern Valley.

It was, you know, out in the middle of South Central Nebraska. Our school was set in a cornfield basically. I mean, we had our conference principles, we had our – in Nebraska, we had educational service unit, which we go to to do some professional development, but there wasn’t a lot of ton of stuff out there. 

And then for me, about two years in, I started searching for professional development. And that’s kind of when I ran across your podcast, The Empowered Principal. So tell me something about, you know, going from that principal leadership, what was that like? But then transition into getting into becoming the empowered principal person you are. Like you basically help other principals manage not just the stresses of the job, but also their life.

And so kind of tell me about your principalship a little bit, but then kind of go into you becoming the empowered principal, which you actually wrote a book, The Empowered Principal by Angela Kelly. Yeah. Which kind of is the basis to what you do now. So kind of tell us about that journey.

Angela Kelly: Yes. So fast forward to my first principalship. I got tapped on the shoulder by the superintendent. And here’s what I want to say about this for the listeners out there. If you’re an aspiring leader or you’re even considering, you’re listening to this podcast with Jeff because you’re thinking about becoming a leader and he’s inspiring and you’re like, oh gosh, Jeff can do it. I want to do it. I want you to know this. 

Like it’s an identity conversation with yourself. Like feeling capable, being capable. So if you’re not in the position yet, I want you just to imagine what it would look like, what it would feel like, you know, what the experience would be and start to step into even in just your mind, just kind of role play what it might feel like to be a leader and get yourself into that identity of being a school leader. That’s going to help you transition. It’s going to feel easier to actually cross that threshold into being that. 

So in my situation, my experience was I got tapped on the shoulder. It’s your time. You’ve got to apply for this. I actually applied to be the AP of a middle school because I thought AP would be easier transition into leadership. Well, I didn’t get that position. I was, you know, really sad at the time, but my superintendent said, I have other plans for you. And so he hired me as a first-year principal to open a brand new school, a brand new campus. So…

Jeff Linden: Brand new principal and you got a brand new school? Let’s talk about adding on the stress. I had enough issues with just the construction and putting a new Hvac last summer and getting the building ready and I’m going in my seventh year and that was enough stress again to do that. I could not imagine being a first year principal opening a new building and tell me more about that.

Angela Kelly: Yes. Well, I’ll tell you those first two years. So I was opening a brand new site. So it was a brand new group of people, brand new community, brand new physical building. So I was dealing with construction and I love to tell the story. It was back to school night. It’s like a week into the brand new school year. It’s my first five days on the job with people on campus. 

Back to school night, parents are coming, children, campus is full of people. And the office calls and she said, Houston, we have a problem. She said the main water pipe broke and there is raw sewage running down the central campus. So I had to be like, okay, everybody to the side. But I mean, metaphorically, that’s how I felt. I was literally waiting through all of, you know, the newness and the craziness of school leadership. 

And these crazy moments were happening. And but, you know, all humor aside, it was the hardest two years of my life. I was a single mom at the time. My son had just transitioned into middle school. He was a sixth grader. And I was a single parent trying to operate a brand new school and, you know, I had to really set the foundations. I had to create the site council team and, you know, this all of this, all of the teams had to be developed, vision, all of that. And so that was not the empowered principal moment that I was having. That was like probably the most disempowered two years of my life.

And there were some moments I just felt like it was happening to me. Like the job is coming at me with a fire hose. I can’t keep up. I was staying so late at work, having other people pick up my son, other people take him to his events, going in super early, staying super late, working nights and weekends. And I really thought, how did I get myself into this? And I don’t know how to get myself out of it. And that’s what I really felt like, I had no power.

So, fortunately, the district assigned me a mentor. And by the way, I forgot to mention that not only was I a brand new principal at a brand new school, they only allowed me to work there three days a week and they had me working at the district two days a week to fill another position that was, yeah. So I was spread a little too thin. 

So all of that to say, if I’ve gone through that, I’m sure somebody else listening has been through that too. So we feel you, we hear you out there. And you can only do so much, right? Everything gets watered down. So you do the best you can. But I had a moment, the second year into my school leadership where I thought, I don’t know if I can do this. And that’s when I was searching online for help. 

And you’re right, Jeff. That was the first time I noticed there’s a huge gap in support at the admin level. It’s, hey, you got hired. We’re so happy you’re here. Here are the keys, go figure it out. But please don’t come back to the district asking for support because we’re too busy dealing with other things. 

And so you really are figuring it out on your own and it’s very isolating and it’s scary. There’s a lot on your plate, a lot of responsibility and you’re thinking about students, staff, community, you know, of course test scores come in and scare the, you know, the jeebies out of you. But at the end of the day, I was desperate to be successful. I wanted to want the job. I wanted to want it and I wanted to be good at it. And that’s when I literally Googled where to look for help. 

And, you know, you can go to a conference, you can read a book, you can talk to your peers. That was about what was available. And I love going to conferences. I love socializing, I love learning, but there is you go and you’re motivated and inspired and then you come back into the realities and it’s hard to integrate what you’ve learned for the long haul, like integrate it into your identity as a principal, your methods and your approach into leadership.

And so the next, how long was I a site leader? Two years at that school. Then they moved me back to my home school. Now, I am the boss of my peers of 15 years. So, I don’t know if you’ve experienced that. I think a lot of principals become the leader of their peers. There that is an interesting dynamic to have to navigate. 

And so again, there wasn’t internal support. I sought support outside, but what I found was life coaching. I didn’t know what life coaching was, but I knew I needed one because my life was a big mess. I was not feeling like I was doing anything well, being a parent, running my household, being a good principal, being an instructional leader.

So I found this person, Dr. Martha Beck, and I signed up for her program, not to become a life coach, but to learn what it meant to coach my own life. I wanted some empowerment back. I wanted some agency and I wanted a sense of control somewhere along the way. 

And from her, I learned just some techniques to just kind of regulate myself emotionally when I was overwhelmed or to stop and take time for myself to just literally make sure that I’m drinking water, make sure that I am, you know, eating lunch, making sure that I put time limits on the amount of work that I did.

So I started playing around with this idea of I’m a human in a school leadership role versus I’m a school leader and that’s my only identity because that job’s never done. We all know that. The same goes for students. If there are students listening to this, you might just think like the studying’s never done, the learning’s never done. And on one hand, you’re right, because we are lifelong learners, but on the other hand, there needs to be something more than studying, learning, test scores, achievement, and that there needs to be living. So there’s all the doing, but then there’s also the living.

And that’s where I got my first little breath of fresh air like, I’m going to be a human in this job, not just a robot trying to keep up with the demands and the wildness of school leadership. 

Jeff Linden: Yeah. So you’re talking about just, hey, yeah, I’m a school leader, but I’m also a person, right?

Angela Kelly: Yes.

Jeff Linden: So how does that mindset going into it? Yes, I’m a school leader, but yeah, I want you to see me as the person who I am. How did that help you build connections into your principalship and your leadership when you started discovering those things through your life coaching experience and your journey on that?

Angela Kelly: It was profound because what I did was I started paying attention to what I needed as a person. You have physical needs, right? You need sleep, you need food, you need movement and exercise, you need rest, you need to have pleasure and playtime in your life. You need this full experience. 

So the more I tuned into me, the more I started realizing that we are more connected than separate. That was the profound change where I started seeing teachers as just fellow humans, as fellow people on the planet. And I started thinking, we’re all here for the right reasons. We’re all here doing the best job we can, trying to figure this thing called education out, trying to figure out life. We’re all here.

And we all want to feel good. We all want to feel included, significant, important, valued, connected, appreciated, cherished. We all want to feel the same feelings. And so that, when I realized what we’re striving here, what we’re striving for in education is human development. We’re striving to, you know, support our young ones, our students with tools and skills to navigate the human experience, not just the learning, not just academics, but their body, physically changing and developing and growing and their, you know, their ability to interact with their peers and to build friendships that have meaning and fill their hearts with joy and fun and laughter and memories.

And same with teachers, like teachers go into this for the right reasons. And if you believe in that and you believe that your story is more similar to their story than separate, we aren’t admin and teachers, we’re humans, we’re educators. And that team, when I saw that we’re a team, we want the same things. We want kids to be happy and successful. We want them coming to school. 

We want to feel good about ourselves as teachers, whether we’re an admin, whether we’re the secretary or the nurse or the counselor or, you know, tech support or bus driving or maintenance, we all want to feel good about who we are and what we’re contributing. And that’s when I realized equal contribution but different, equal value. 

So our contributions, whether you’re a teacher, whether you’re maintenance crew, we all are contributing something valuable, it just looks different. So we’re more together than separate. And then I started teaching that with kids and they would come into the office and have their disagreements and have their conflicts. And I would be able to start talking with them about the similarities and how we want to feel the same way and what we really want is to feel good about ourselves and our connections with people.

And then from there it just it started rolling. I started getting how to be a leader, which was connection and similarity over separation and disconnect. That’s when in 2015, I was looking like, how do I get more of this? How do I become a stronger leader, a better leader? And you know, Jeff, again, there’s a little bit out there for school leaders. Like it was starting to percolate, like there’s organizations that provide incredible learning connections. I love it. 

And there was just this little piece for me personally that was missing. And that’s when I found The Life Coach School. I went and got certified in 2015. And I applied those concepts for two years as a principal. Then I got promoted to the district level. I was the RTI coordinator for the entire district. We were able to build a really robust academic RTI and behavioral RTI program at my site. And then I was supposed to go and help my fellow peers do the same at their schools. Well, one year at the district office is if you’ve ever moved from site to district leadership, ooh, that’s like a whole another level of perspective.

And I was like, okay, I can do this. But I did. I felt disconnected from kids. So I spent a lot of time at the sites. And what I learned is that principals were coming together in the district at the leadership team meetings. Everyone had a smile on their face. Everyone was saying everything was great and this is what they’re going to do and problem solvers. And then when I go back to their sites and we close the office door, the truth came out of how they really felt and the struggles they were facing and the pain they were in and the insufficiency that they felt.

And the disempowerment they felt, they felt a lack of ability to inspire and create influence and impact in their school as a leader. And it’s because that identity and leadership skills and all of that was missing from the conversation. It was be this task manager, like, and I’m sure you run a school because you went from a small school to a big school, right, Jeff?

Jeff Linden: Yeah, I went from a school with about 75 students to 1,000.

Angela Kelly: Yes.

Jeff Linden: So I made a pretty big jump. And kind of the great thing was is when I was getting ready to make that jump, that’s when I found your podcast, what you’re doing. I think we had like a free consult and we kind of worked through some things because I was getting frustrated because I was looking for at the time, how can I become a better leader, but also, I need help because something I’m doing is not working and what is it?

And I think that’s when we talked about, you know, a lot about your mindset. You took me through the STEAR cycle, we did some brain drains and we were really able to focus in on kind of what I needed to do to get into, you know, the right mindset for that, to show people my value, show people that, you know, envision myself into their school and how do I do that? And so we worked a lot on that. 

And of course, I was following you on Facebook and I listen to your podcast and so I was just kind of falling along because I needed something to kind of help me through the journey because you’re right, when you talk about, you know, go to these conferences, you network, you do these things. I even go to, you know, our regional state conferences, our regional meetings and things like that, but then you go back and then you’re on your own again.

So what can you get daily? And I think that’s kind of where you’re kind of fitting into that piece to where you can help principals on the daily with becoming a better leader, but also being the best version of themselves. So, honestly, this podcast was is a derivative from working with you because knowing that there was not a lot out there, my goal with this podcast is basically to connect people with other people, but also tell other people’s stories, but also try to help other principals in these situations or in these leadership roles to be the best they can be. 

And if I can help inspire and give them some nuggets of knowledge here and there, that would help them so they don’t have to go through some of the hard things you had to go through or other previous principals had to go through as well because I think you’re going to go through some dark times as an educational leader, but to have somebody kind of support you through that, it is an important piece.

And I find that’s kind of where what you’re doing now going from your district leader role. Now you’re the empowered principal guru, life coach, you kind of, you know, help people with that and you stay pretty busy doing that. So talk about that transition. You talked about, you know, I went to become a life coach. You were starting to implement practices. 

I think the one thing you really kind of talk about in your book is, you know, your mindset, your thoughtfulness or just how do you think, you know, your brain works and your STEAR cycle kind of… So kind of talk about the STEAR cycle. What is it? Why is it important to help you become an empowered principal?

Angela Kelly: Yes, of course. I first have to do a shout out for Jeff because Jeff and I worked together as one-on-one client and also he was a member of my group coaching program at The Empowered Principal Collaborative. But what I want to highlight about Jeff was how quickly our conversations went from just talking to him implementing.

And I don’t mean so much like he didn’t add more to his plate, he adjusted his approach. He didn’t add to his plate, he adjusted his approach by like broadening his perspective. And it’s funny to have some conversations recently and I listen to all that he’s done. I listen to the podcast. I follow him on social media, but your perspective and the way that you tell stories and the way you connect with people. 

And just the other day we were talking about, you know, how we support fellow adults to have conversations and conflict and to resolve those as adults. We have to be able to hold space for them. And I just think Jeff does an incredible job of implementing mindset plus skill set and that supportive approach and that really the belief that, hey, we’re all here to feel good, to do our best. We are on the same team. I see that in your work, Jeff. I see it in your posts, in your work, in the conversations that you and I have. And this podcast is really a manifestation of that work that you have done, right? I was there to initiate those conversations with you and to provide that awareness and get to get you feeling aligned to what you value and who you are.

But from there the momentum was all use. So Jeff is an incredible leader and I’m I couldn’t be happier that he started this podcast because he has so much wisdom to share with you guys. And what I love is this is just the beginning. So I have to say that because I respect him, I appreciate him and this work that he’s doing. He’s not just talking at you in this podcast. He’s living it and sharing his stories and experiences with you in real time. So I really honor and respect that. 

So back to the question was how I transitioned. So that one year at the district, I saw people suffering is really what happened. I saw my peers suffering and it pained me. It ate me and I thought, we really are the same. Like, I felt that way too. I thought I was alone and isolated. I thought it was just me. I thought I was the one who was insufficient or I didn’t have what it took or I wasn’t charismatic enough or smart enough or, you know, organized or disciplined enough. But I see that it’s the job. 

And so if it’s not the people that are the problem, and the job is the job, it’s just the reality. If we can’t go out and change what the job is, but it’s not us, then what? And that’s when I realized there needs to be a way for people to take their personal power back and to feel empowered in the job even on the hard days or even when the test scores don’t land where we’d like them to or even when we’re working with a kid who’s really struggling to regulate emotionally or working with an adult who is really struggling to regulate emotionally. 

And why don’t we just have a space where principals can talk about this? Talk about like, I’m barely emotionally regulated right now, let alone being able to help somebody else regulate emotionally. We expect kids to emotionally regulate, yet we sometimes don’t have the capacity to do that ourselves.

So just in my own observation of me and through The Life Coach School, I came up with my coach calls her work the Model. And I took that and ran with it and created the STEAR cycle. But it it’s just a tool, not just, it’s a powerful tool. It is a tool that helps you observe what’s your brain is offering you, your thoughts and just observe them kind of give a little distance between you and your thoughts to create that space so you can write them down onto paper or, you know, type them up. And you can – that’s what the brain drain is where you can just like, wow, like what is going on for myself right now?

And I’ve shifted a little bit like I wrote this book when I was a baby coach, a brand new coach. And, you know, it was like my pride and joy at the time. And I’m writing another book right now actually to…

Jeff Linden: Yeah?

Angela Kelly: Yes, breaking news. Okay, I will. But I’m just, you know, the combination of this work has really expanded my capacity to coach and to offer support for people. But in this book, I really focus on using the STEAR cycle as a tool where you look at your thoughts. But what I realized is that the emotional experience we’re having is truly the compass. 

So you still look at your thoughts, but what I would offer to you now is, what are you feeling? Being able to identify because sometimes you’re feeling all worked up and you don’t know really what’s going on inside. And you’re going to have a brain drain. Trust me, like if you’re upset or you’re frustrated or you’re overwhelmed, the brain is going to go, well, there’s this and let it drain all out. 

And eventually, you’re going to be like, okay, I got I said my peace and you’ll feel a little release of energy there. But that practice gives you some space in your mind to say, okay, I’ve acknowledged how I’m feeling. I’m overwhelmed or I’m upset. Here’s why. So what are you feeling number one? Why are you feeling it? That’s the brain drain. All the thoughts are going to pour out. And then you have some space there to be like, huh, okay, I’m acknowledging that I’m overwhelmed or I’m really upset right now. Valid, fair enough. Now what? And you can look at the thoughts.

You separate them from your mind because they kind of just one, they go on repeat, they loop over and over and it feels like there are 200 thoughts when actually there’s probably 20. They’re just on repeat and loop and then they get all jumbly and entangled in your mind and you kind of go down these rabbit holes, but putting it onto paper, it finite them. You start to see like there’s only so many. 

And then you can say, okay, here’s what I’m thinking. How is that feeling? Which one of these feel terrible? And which ones feel a little better? Let’s lean over there. And that’s what my next book is going to be about. It’s called Feel Good Goals. It’s about the goal here is to feel good. And we use this process to like lean back into what feels more aligned, what feels true, what feels good. 

What do we want to believe about ourselves, about others, about our school? So that’s the gist of The Empowered Principal is how can I take back, empower myself to feel better, to learn what’s working, what’s not, what do I want to shift and do differently? But also, this is another secret, is that if you’re having a thought that feels terrible, like, I’m not good enough or I really messed this up or, you know, I’m a failure, I’m insufficient in some way. We all have the not enough thoughts. When they feel terrible and you feel like you’re in so much pain, the little secret is that they’re not true.

That’s just your brain’s way of saying like, hey, you know what? I don’t want you to feel the pain of failing. So I’m going to just tell you in advance, don’t even try because I don’t want you to fall down and, you know, scrape your knee. I’m going to protect you and keep you safe. And the brain can’t differentiate between real pain and perceived pain. So it’s just it’s going to freeze you and say like, please don’t try this at home. This could result in pain, whether that’s physical pain, emotional pain, mental pain, psychological pain.

We’re so afraid of pain. But if we lean into it and we’re looking at the STEAR cycle and it’s like, ooh, I’m really feeling some pain here. Like, let’s say we failed. Let’s say we did. And we acknowledge it. It’s better to validate that, acknowledge it and lean into it and be like, you know what? And this is true. 

I think I taught you Jeff something called the land of and, where it’s like, this might be true, but also equally true is this other side where you can start to feel better. So even on those hard days, it’s like, yep, today was hard and… what’s equally true are these other things that are good. There’s the duality of our jobs. There’s really hard days. 

I just moved here to Nashville and in real time, I don’t know for those of you who know, there was a school shooting recently just this past week. And there is a principal out there and a family, multiple families who are in the biggest pain of their life. And to me, losing a student on my watch is one of the most unimaginable things. And that principal is in so much pain and we can feel compassion for that principal. And it is like probably our biggest nightmare and fear as a principal is losing a student on our watch when it’s our job to protect them and also knowing we do our best, but we aren’t in control of the world.

And so then it becomes, how do I navigate this heartbreak, this pain? And pain is pain, right? Whether you’ve lost a student or you’ve lost a staff member or whatever tragedy of any kind that’s happened at your school. And hey, if you haven’t had a tragedy, don’t feel bad that you haven’t had one. 

Whether it’s like an IP that didn’t go well or a parent that got upset and left your school or there’s different kinds of pain. We all experience it. So acknowledge your pain, lean into it and just know people like Jeff are out there. And Jeff spent through pain too. He’s been through really hard times and really hard conversations. He’s had to lead people. He’s had to coach people up. He’s had to coach people out. So you do both, but your willingness to expand your capacity to feel pain also lets you expand your capacity for joy. And that’s the duality of this job.

So that’s really what I do in a nutshell is I help people navigate this thing called educational leadership. I help you navigate the hard stuff emotionally, mentally, but I also help you visualize and learn and expand your potentiality and your possibility about what you can be, what you can experience. 

And hey guys, at the end of the day, we’re all here to support, to love, to have a good time and to create memories, to create success stories, to be proud of ourselves, our students and the work that our teachers and our team are doing. And that’s your legacy. That’s what you want to leave behind. 

But here we are today, Jeff, this will be a memory locked in time, an experience that you and I are creating. And then tomorrow this will just be a memory and it will be a beautiful memory. It’s one that we want to lock in and remember this forever. But all of us are doing this. We’re all out there at our schools.

You’re present in the day and that tomorrow, the next day, this day is a memory. So that brings me to just kind of, I know we’ve been talking so long here, but wrapping up this podcast episode, it’s really about intentionality, who we want to be, not perfection. We don’t even want perfection, that would be very robotic. We want to experience it all. We want to have the capacity to experience it all. And that’s something that I see Jeff modeling, not just as a school leader.

Jeff models it as a husband, as a friend, as a father. I see him on his Facebook, guys. So he can’t hide. I know. He’s doing the work here. But, you know, this is really my story is I’m just leaning into how can I help people experience this job in the most profound, empowered way so that you can enjoy your life. You can enjoy, you can have balance. You can work hard and go home and play hard. You can get the rest you need and put a lot of effort in. You can have both. And believing that it’s possible to have both is where we start.

Jeff Linden: Yes. And that’s really what I love about the work that you’re doing is how you’re helping principals not just manage the job, the task that at hand, but also how can they just be a someone that can enjoy just being, you know, a husband, a father, a good friend, you know, somebody that’s, you know, we are people outside of this job.

We’re not just, we just don’t go home and do nothing. We got interests, we got things we like to do. And so you being able to tap in, I think you’re the only person I know that has the experience being a teacher, a principal, a district admin, but then this life coaching adventure you’re on where now you’re helping people navigate that job, navigate how to find the joy out of it because like you said, it’s a tough job. 

There’s going to be, you know, great days and there’s going to be good days. I always say because I’m not I’m a non-traditional educator. I worked in a factory for three and a half years and I always tell people the worst day in education is better than the best day of my factory job. So I just enjoy what I do, but at the same time, I think it’s that mindset that we come in with, but also having someone like Angela Kelly here to help you navigate is something that, you know, I would encourage principals and educational leaders to tap into.

So Angela, tell us, you know, what you’re up to with The Empowered Principal? You know, how can people connect with you? You know, how can they reach out to you? I’ll probably, well, I’ll put some your email or some connections down in the show notes so people can easily find you in the podcast, but, you know, how can people connect and get in touch with you if they’re really thinking about, you know what? A lot of the things that I heard today resonates with me and I really want to learn how to have that work-life balance. How can they connect with you?

Angela Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. So I jumped into this job around, I think 2017. So I’ve been coaching for the last eight school years. And I started with one-on-one coaching. As Jeff knows, and then the demand expanded into, I do have some one-on-ones. I don’t coach, you know, a ton of one-on-ones anymore, but I do coach one-on-one with some principals.

But the majority of people are coming into The Empowered Principal Collaborative, which is a group coaching program. And what I love about that is the synergy. It’s the you don’t feel alone. Like one-on-one is where we have those confidential, private conversations. And I do offer one-on-one sessions to the members of EPC if there is something confidential in nature or sensitive in nature that we need to discuss offline. 

But what’s so great about the group is the collective wisdom, the collective desire to feel good, to improve, to expand their impact on their schools, to also to like not take it all on themselves, like to lighten that load, to not feel alone. I thought teaching was isolating because you’re in your classroom by yourself, but you have your colleagues, you have your grade level team or your department team.

And then you get into admin and for me, 550 students, you know, 27 teachers, you know, about 70 staff members at my site and one admin on campus. That felt isolating. And I was like, okay, there’s got to be a place to go mingle and have some conversations and have a little bit of fun and actually just lighten up about it, laugh about it. Like some of the stories, you cannot make these up and you’ve got to be able to have a place where people understand you and they can laugh and have a good time. So EPC, The Empowered Principal Collaborative is my group coaching program.

So if you are interested in learning more, number one, you can just listen to the podcast and kind of get to know me, The Empowered Principal® podcast. You can pick up the book, audio, it’s on Audible, it’s on, you know, you can buy the hard copy if you want. And then you can find me on my website, AngelaKellyCoaching.com. But The Empowered Principal is where I’m at. I hang out primarily on Facebook and Instagram, but you can also find me on LinkedIn.

Jeff Linden: All right, Angela, it was really great to have you on the show today. You know, it’s fun to listen to just your journey as an educational leader and how you became the empowered principal you are today. And I really appreciate the work you’re doing because it’s meaningful and it’s, you know, something that we as educational leaders need. You know, I hope today’s podcast helped someone out there today, get connected with you to help them become a better educational leader. So thank you for being on the show today.

Angela Kelly: It’s so wild to be a guest on a show. Like I have my own podcast and I spend my time being the interviewer. And so it was a blast to be here with you, Jeff. And I’m excited to actually share this interview with my audience as well for them to hear your story, but also, I don’t know that I’ve ever really shared my story to this depth. So it was really fun and just thank you for the privilege and the honor of being here today. I had a lot of fun. Take care.

Hey you guys, calling all first-year site and district leaders. As you know, I hosted a free master course for those aspiring to land a job in school leadership. This was a four-day course that covers what you need to prepare yourself before, during, and after the interview process. So for those of you who are interested, you can find the YouTube links below in the show notes. The Aspiring School Leader series is completely free. 

Now, for those of you who landed that job, I have a brand-new program. Let’s make your first impression in school leadership your best impression. Let’s lead your school with confidence in year one and nail your first year as a school leader. You’ve got what it takes to make an impressive first impression, so come on in. 

I’ve got a brand-new program called Essentials for New School Leaders. It is three months of professional and personal development to give you the strategies, the mindset, and the skill set to lead your school to the next level of success.

There is a gap between the time you get hired and the time you start your contract. Let’s get ahead of the curve, three months in advance, you’ll be ready to go on day one of your brand-new contract. Join Essentials for New School Leaders. For more information, click the link in the show notes.

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. 

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Raise the Bar

Can you believe we’re already a quarter of the way through 2025? Time flies by so quickly that it’s made me pause and reflect on how we’re spending our precious moments. As we enter April and the final season of this school year, it’s the perfect opportunity to examine our intentions and how we’re showing up in our lives.

Many of us feel stretched too thin—not feeling “good enough” in our various roles as educators, parents, partners, or friends. This overwhelming sensation often stems from trying to do too much without clear intention. When we operate on autopilot, moving robotically through our days, we miss the richness life has to offer.

This week, I invite you to raise the bar—not from a place of insufficiency, but from a desire for greater satisfaction and joy. This isn’t about demanding more productivity or discipline from yourself. It’s about elevating your expectations for fulfillment in your career, deepening your connections, and squeezing more pleasure out of everyday moments.

 

Essentials for New School Leaders is my brand-new three-month program for principals in their first year of leadership! If you want to make your first impression your BEST impression, click here to register and find out more.

The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to create exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. Join us today to become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country by clicking here.

 

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • The importance of creating intentional presence in your daily life.
  • Why raising your standards for joy and satisfaction transforms your leadership experience.
  • The powerful balance between rest, play, and work that maximizes your potential.
  • How to approach the final weeks of the school year with renewed energy and purpose.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Check out my four-day Aspiring School Leaders series for first-year site and district leaders:

Full Episode Transcript:

Hello Empowered Principals. Welcome to episode 379. 

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. 

Well hello, my Empowered Principals. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the Empowered Principal Podcast. Here we are. It’s the beginning of March. And did you realize we are 25% through 2025 already? Three months of the year has gone by. It’s amazing! One full season! 

It made me really stop and ponder how quickly time goes in a calendar year. Just a few months ago, we were celebrating the Mid-Year Reboot. We were celebrating New Year’s Eve. We were celebrating the beginning of 2025 and here we are now, April 1st, ready to go into the second season of the calendar year and the third season of the school year, which is spring. It’s the last season of this school year, and it really amazes me how quickly time passes and why it’s important to be intentional with who we are and how we spend our time and where our energy goes and planning. 

So for those of you who feel overwhelmed, if you feel that there’s too much to do and not enough time, if you’re rushing around and you’re feeling like you’re busy at home and you’re busy at work and you’re not being a good enough mom or a good enough dad or a good enough partner or a good enough friend or a good enough child to your parents or a good enough friend to your friends. If there’s something you’re doing that just feels like it’s not quite good enough? Probably because we are trying to spread ourselves too thin. 

And one of the ways that we can counter this is by slowing down just for a minute and getting very intentional with our lives. To see how quickly one, two, three months have gone in 2025, it made me personally want to deepen my presence in life. To live each day with much more intentionality and much more mindfulness. 

Not in a way that prevents me from getting things done. I don’t want to sit around and just meditate all day and be present like that, although that is a wonderful thing to do, but we want to be alive. We want to live. We want to be engaged, but we want to do so from intention, not out of automation or what I call like robotic living, where we are just living a life as a robot, getting up, doing the same thing over and over again, feeling okay, feeling like we did a good job, but also feeling this kind of flatline, unfulfilled, like automated response to life or reacting to life.

So I want to invite you in to this idea of raising the bar, raising the bar for our experience on the planet, raising the bar for our joy and our fulfillment and our satisfaction, our enjoyment of life, that being alive as a human on the planet, feeling all of the feels, going to the things, doing the fun things, taking time out to rest, taking time out for fun, really being present. What am I doing today and why? Waking up and deciding ahead of time, this is the experience that I want to have today.

I want to expand the experiences that I want. I want to appreciate the connections in my life and the relationships I have developed. I want to raise the bar for my experience as a school leader. We’re not raising the bar out of insufficiency. We’re not telling ourselves, we’re not meeting standards, we’re not good enough, we’re not doing enough, we’re not being enough, therefore I’m raising the bar so that I get disciplined and I get more, you know, on top of my game. It’s not about raising that bar.

It’s about raising the level of expectation and standard for the satisfaction we want out of our careers, for the connections we want to build, for the interactions we want to have. For the joy that we want to experience. For just the pure pleasure of being alive on the planet as a human. Really squeezing out all that life has to offer. Squeezing out the joy and the love and the pleasure and the laughter and the fun and all of the things.

I want to raise the bar for myself. I would love to raise the bar for education in terms of raising the bar for the experience that students have, raising the bar for the experience that teachers have, actually engaging people in a way that feels good, coming to school because it feels good, showing up as a teacher because it feels good.

Leading schools, leading education, pioneering the way for an experience of learning and developing humans in a way that can feel good. We can feel alive. It doesn’t mean we’re going to be happy all the time. Feeling good is about being in alignment with the truth of who we are. When we’re in grief, we’re in grief, when we are in pain, we are in pain. And when we are in joy and delight, we are experiencing joy and delight. It’s being in alignment with the experience that feels most true for us.

So as we’re going into this second season of 2025, so that would be April, May, June. I had to think about that for a second. April, May, and June. We’re going into spring, skidding into summer here, right? I want to invite you to have more fun. Insist it upon yourself. 

If you had to have more fun, if it was your assignment for the day, what would you do? If you had to make life more fun, if you had to squeeze out more pleasure in your day, if you had to rest more, if you had to laugh more, if you had to connect more, if that was your assignment, which, by the way, it is, it’s your life assignment, to enjoy your life, to experience as much as possible.

And I’m not saying you’re running around to the point of running yourself ragged, that’s not the experience we’re looking for. Exhaustion, overwhelm, burnout, that does not equal to an invigorating human experience. I’m talking about raising the bar on the balance of life, getting the rest we need, getting the play that we crave, and contributing to work in a way that feels good.

Think about this as you go into your spring season and into the last season of school. Insist upon yourself to look for ways to have more fun, to laugh more, to rest more, to play more, to infuse pleasure into your workday, to see the collaboration between rest and play and work, and to see how in collaboration when you’re balancing rest with play with work you get this beautiful combination we call life. And you contribute in a way that maximizes your potential. 

When you’re exhausted all the time, your contributing goes down. If you’re only playing, your contributing goes down. If you’re only working, your balance goes up and the experience you have becomes automatic and robotic and you’re not actually living. You’re just automated through the day, robotically moving about. 

So raise the bar for yourself. If there were no limits, if you could purely just design your life the way you wanted to, with no strings attached, what would you be capable of experiencing? What would the bar be? How much fun is possible? How much laughter is possible? How much delight is possible? How much contribution is possible? How much connection and collaboration is possible? How many solutions could we create in this lifetime? How much rest can we embrace to give ourselves the energy required for play and for work?

Using play, rest, and work in collaboration with one another is how you raise the bar. So going into spring season, it’s April. Many of you are just getting hired on as brand new principals. Be looking out for my new school leadership series coming out in April.

Number two, if you are a seasoned principal and you’re heading into testing season, the end of the year, all of the chaos and you’re exhausted and tired, I invite you to join EPC now. EPC for brand new leaders, it’s going to get you on track because you’re going to be thinking about tying up the old job and getting excited and wanting to jump into the new one. And for my seasoned empowered principals who might not be feeling super empowered this time of year, this is a time to reinvigorate.

Come on into EPC now, get your spring season planned. I’ll run you through the three month plan. We’ll get you up and running there. And you can actually enjoy the last eight weeks, 12 weeks of the year. It’s going to be amazing should you decide to raise the bar. Come on in, EPC, now’s the time. Happy Spring everybody! Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. We’ll talk to you next week. Take good care. Bye.

Hey you guys, calling all first-year site and district leaders. As you know, I hosted a free master course for those aspiring to land a job in school leadership. This was a four-day course that covers what you need to prepare yourself before, during, and after the interview process. So for those of you who are interested, you can find the YouTube links below in the show notes. The Aspiring School Leader series is completely free. 

Now, for those of you who landed that job, I have a brand-new program. Let’s make your first impression in school leadership your best impression. Let’s lead your school with confidence in year one and nail your first year as a school leader. You’ve got what it takes to make an impressive first impression, so come on in. 

I’ve got a brand-new program called Essentials for New School Leaders. It is three months of professional and personal development to give you the strategies, the mindset, and the skill set to lead your school to the next level of success.

There is a gap between the time you get hired and the time you start your contract. Let’s get ahead of the curve, three months in advance, you’ll be ready to go on day one of your brand-new contract. Join Essentials for New School Leaders. For more information, click the link in the show notes.

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. 

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