Ep #409: Is Your Boss Giving You Anxiety?

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 409.

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. I have an interesting topic that I would like to discuss with you because I’ve noticed a pattern of this topic in conversation throughout the years as a coach, working with clients from all across the country. People from Canada and Mexico. I’ve had people from Europe, and so really this is a global phenomenon, and that just means it’s a human phenomenon.

So, I want to talk about the anxiety or fears that we have around people in positions of authority. So, I call this superintendent anxiety, but it could be any supervisor, boss, manager, direct person above you, anybody who is a superior to you who you view as having positional authority over you professionally at work, okay?

So, many of my clients will feel nervous, anxious, uneasy, downright afraid of their boss, of the person who’s observing them or who’s overseeing them, who is their supervisor. A lot of times for site principals or district leaders, it’s the superintendent or the school board. They’re all set up differently, but the majority of you have a direct supervisor, okay?

So, throughout the years, I’ve talked with people, and I’m like, what is it that bosses do that can feel unsettling, that feels uneasy to you? So the list were things like, they micromanage. They’re all up in our business, they nitpick at little things. They’re kind of focused on the details. Every little thing, they want to tell us what to do and how to do it at our sites. So, you might have somebody who’s micromanaging or nitpicking at every little thing or wanting their hand in the decisions and actions that you take at a site level, or even if you’re at the district level, they might be all up in your department, that kind of a thing, okay?

Other concerns were criticism. This was a big one. I fear being criticized, and bosses can come in and be very critical or very judgmental about your decisions or your actions or your approach to something. And because they have positional authority, they can express their thoughts and opinions about your decisions and actions, and it may come across as harsh or critical or judgmental, okay?

Some people fear constructive feedback. So, there’s a difference, in my opinion, between constructive feedback versus opinionated feedback. So, to me, constructive feedback is when it’s in it for you. That person is sitting down with you to walk you through what’s working, what could be working better, and how we might approach that in a different way, but their intention is to support you, to help you, to make things easier for you. So when you’re sitting down with a teacher, this is a great example. You’re giving constructive feedback. You want to help them.

Here’s what I’m observing from the outside, things you might not be able to pick up or see because you’re in it, you’re the one teaching. These are things that I can see from the outside, but I want to help you. I want to make teaching easier for you or feel better for you or smoother for you, or I want you to be able to communicate with your students better or connect with them. It’s when you’re in it for them. That’s constructive feedback.

Versus, opinionated feedback is when people are giving you feedback based on what’s in it for them, what they want you to do so they feel good or it serves them in some way. So they might say, I have a little feedback for you. I don’t like it when you do XYZ this way because it makes me feel this or people don’t like it or I look bad to the school board, you know, that kind of a thing.

So, be able to discern for yourself what you feel is constructive feedback and differentiate. When is it that I’m getting feedback that’s in it for me? It still might feel uncomfortable, but it’s a different kind of feedback than somebody who’s giving you opinionated feedback that’s in it for them. Like, I need you to change so that I can feel better about myself or that my image can be protected or something, right?

So, be mindful. Now, it’s not to say that you might not be afraid of either kind of feedback. It might be hard for you to sit down and receive feedback, and I’m going to talk about that in a second. But just observe if feedback feels scary for you, if you’re like, I don’t like to get feedback. What kind of feedback are you getting? What kind of feedback are you most afraid of? Or are you just afraid of all of it and why? We’ll get into that in a minute, okay?

Another thing that bosses can do is lack communication. They lack communication, conversation, connection, maybe their timeliness of their communication or the details of their communication. They omit things, forget to tell you things, they’re not timely, or maybe they aren’t good at connecting with you or having some compassionate or understanding. And they are, again, while they’re maybe well-meaning, and we’re not trying to sit here and just bag on them or criticize them, we are here to notice these are things that humans do when they’re in a leadership position. When they’re overwhelmed or they’re not sure of how to be connected or be compassionate or be understanding or how to effectively communicate, it can come across as a disconnect between you and your boss, okay?

Another thing that bosses will do is they will leverage their personal and positional authority, right? They will leverage positional authority. Basically, they will leverage their title, they will leverage their status, they will leverage their power as leadership. They will misuse title, status, power, and leverage it as a form of leadership. And there’s a difference, right? Between leading people and then leveraging leadership, what they consider to be leadership, but it’s actually leveraging their positional authority over you. I tend to call it fear and intimidation tactics, right? Where they’re like, well, because I said so, because I’m the boss, because I have this status, because I’m the one, because I have the power, that’s why you need to do XYZ.

That’s what I’m talking about when people use their position and, in quotes, coach, mentor, guide you, or tell you what to do because they’re this, then you have to do this, or you have to be this, you have to decide this. You can’t say no, kind of thing, okay?

Another thing that people will do is they will move people. They don’t like where you’re at, they don’t like you, they don’t like what you’re doing, they move you, or they simply fire you. Or, at the very least, but still not great, they might just talk behind your back, talk to people about people and gossiping, just not being constructive with their conversations about you. You might fear that they’re talking about you to other people, okay?

So when I think about these behaviors, when I look at this list of things people have shared with me over time, I take it to the next level. I go a little bit deeper. I take off the layer, and I’m like, why are the humans doing this? Why are the human leaders behaving this way? Why might they be doing it? Of course, it’s speculation, but we’re trying to understand them so that we can work with it instead of resisting and fighting against it. So, why might they be doing this? Fear of not having control. Think about it. When your parents told you because I said so, they wanted control, right? If they were micromanaging you, they wanted control. If they were worried that there wasn’t going to be an outcome, I see teachers do this, I see principals do it, I see district leaders do it.

We see state leaders do it, we see government people do it. We see all kinds of leaders who are afraid of not being in control or not being perceived that they have control. They’re afraid they’re not going to get the outcome that they want. They will leverage tactics to try and get what they want based on that positional authority. So there’s a lot of fear about not being in control or not looking like you’re in control.

And the other side to this coin is that they genuinely believe it is their responsibility. It’s my responsibility to be in control. It’s my responsibility, it’s my job, it’s my obligation to oversee everything, to be in control. I’m the last buck, right? It stops here with me. I have to be in control. So people might not be doing it so they feel in control. They might be doing it because they believe they should be in control.

Other times, people just get focused on the minutia. If you’re a very detailed person, and maybe you were a detailed teacher and you were a detailed principal, and now you’re a superintendent, you might be in the weeds. You might be not letting go of the details and the minutia, and you are so focused on the how and all of the details that you, in a position of district-level leadership, superintendency, the price of admission to those positions are your ability to trust the people working for you and to release and to let go and to empower them to do the detail work while you’re doing the visionary work, while you are in contemplation and reflection and studying and expanding and really building upon the vision that you have and creating that vision and bringing it into practice and inspiring and empowering others to do that versus being in the weeds, right?

As the superintendent, you’re not out, the soda machine’s out of soda, and you’re not running to Costco to pick up, you know, cases of soda to fill the soda machine or whatever, right? Like, there’s people that can do that for you. But there are superintendents, district-level leaders, site principals who get so in the minutia because they’re so concerned about controlling the how the outcome happens versus focusing on the reason, the why behind the outcome. Why are we doing this in the first place? Why does it matter if the soda machine is out? Why does it matter that there’s soda in it, right? Is that the priority, right? The things that happen on campus, does it matter where the kids line up? You don’t like where they line up, but it works for the school. What’s the outcome? That kids are, there’s a system in place, kids know where to go, teachers know where kids are lining up and why. Buses lines are in order, dismissal is running fairly smoothly. Kids are getting safely on buses and getting home. The goal is safe dismissal, safe transportation, safely home into the arms of their families.

And sometimes we come and say, “Oh, this dismissal looks terrible. It’s chaotic.” But if it’s working for the school and they’re not having a problem with it, but we’re coming in as district leaders doing that, it can feel like we’re getting into that micromanaging and focusing on the minutia. So they might be doing that again because they’re more focused on the how it gets done versus the what needs to get done and why, okay?

A huge reason that we do what we do in leadership is because we have an image as a leader. We have an ego as a leader, we have a reputation as a leader. And as people who want to have a positive image, have a positive reputation, we want people to like us, we want people to believe in us, to trust us, to count on us, to value our leadership and our approach. Bosses can want to insist that you take action, make decisions, that you act in a way in accordance with their image, their ego, their reputation. They want you to align with decisions, actions, communications, behavior that aligns with what they value, what they like, their identity, their opinions, their approach, their way of doing business, okay?

It sounds like it’s very self-centered, but a lot of times it really isn’t because we all do it in a way. We all want to be liked, we all want to have a clean reputation, a clean image, meaning just that people respect us, appreciate us, value us. And so we can easily slip into making decisions based on how it might appear, what it might look like, what our reputation will become, okay?

And when people are in leadership positions and maybe they are very introverted or they’re not super people, which we have plenty of introverted people in education just because we’re in the business of human development and the business of people, doesn’t mean everybody is this super outgoing, want to talk to everybody kind of person. So sometimes, it can be that we want to keep people at arm’s length. So it can look like aloofness, it can look like distance, it can look like a disconnect.

And other times, when people are worried about thinking they should know everything when they don’t. So have you ever had a teacher or a parent or even a student ask you a question you didn’t know the answer and you felt silly and you felt kind of goofy and you felt awkward and clumsy and embarrassed that you didn’t know? And so then you kind of like acted like you knew? Or you like deflected and kind of acted like a little aggressively. I’ve seen people like go into fear and intimidation tactics when they don’t know what they’re saying and they puff up, and they’re just like trying to make it sound like they know. They don’t really know, or how dare you ask the question, or, you know, that’s not an important question. They belittled the question or they belittle the content or the conversation because they are embarrassed and don’t want people getting too close to them or they don’t want people to know they don’t know that they’re actually human and they don’t know everything.

So, again, getting very caught up in what it looks like versus what it actually is. But really what this comes down to is there are times as leaders when we don’t know. We’re supposed to be leading and we actually just, we don’t know what we’re doing. We don’t know for sure how to mentor this person, how to coach them, how to inspire them. We’re not sure how to prioritize that. There’s so many things to do, so we end up not mentoring, not coaching, not leading. It’s just easier to move people on and fire them or move them around than to actually do the work of mentoring and coaching and building somebody up. It’s easier to coach them out than to coach them up.

So, if you are a person who finds yourself afraid of your boss, what are you actually afraid of? I’m going to give you three questions to contemplate, okay? Number one, what are you afraid of? Are you afraid of you’re going to get in trouble? You’re going to do something wrong? Are you’re going to miss something, you’re going to forget something, you’re not going to do something? So, a fear of getting in trouble, doing something wrong or not doing something. Are you afraid to disappoint them? You don’t want to let them down. You want to be the A plus student, you want to get the gold star. You want to make sure, you know, like as a firstborn child that you’re doing everything right. You’re afraid to disappoint.

Is it feedback? Are you afraid of feedback? Are you afraid you’ll be harshly criticized or judged or really raked over the coals unfairly or treated unfairly somehow? Or are you afraid you might not be heard? That it’s just their way or the highway. There’s no room for voice or choice. You’re not going to be heard, you’re not going to be listened to, you’re not going to be acknowledged, you’re not going to be taken seriously?

Or are you afraid if something goes wrong, I’m going to lose my job, public scrutiny, it’s going to be in the paper, public embarrassment, public shame? This is where I say like our brains can really go to the worst-case scenario. Like, we’re going to be excommunicated off the planet. We’re going to have to move to Mars or move to the moon because we’re going to lose everything, and the end of the world will happen for us professionally, right? And it feels like that sometimes. I understand. I’m with you on that.

So question number one to contemplate, what are you afraid of? What are you actually afraid of? Get specific. Number two, what do you think will happen? If one of these things happened, let’s say you forgot something, missed something, or you disappointed them, or you got some feedback, or you weren’t allowed to speak up, or, you know, somebody said, “Maybe you’re not cut out to be a school leader. Maybe I’m going to move you.”

Let’s say the things happened. What do you think will happen as a result of your fear? So you’re afraid of something happening. What do you actually think will happen in response to that, in reaction to that? You think it’s going to be a write up? You’re going to get scolded? Are you going to have to feel emotions of inadequacy, insufficiency, incompetency, embarrassment, shame? Or do you fear that your frustration, if you’re ever being silenced, that it will turn into a deep resentment and you end up working in resentment in silence and stewing over it all the time and just being unhappy as an employee? Or are you afraid it’s going to build up to the point where you might blow up or lash out and say something that could cause an issue? Okay?

Sometimes we think that our boss is just, it’s the more work. Like, every time we go to a meeting with this person, more work. Or we need to completely change, going in a different direction. I need to change myself. We need to do more work, a lot of effort here. People are going to be unhappy. I need to people please, I need to go against my values or my vision. I have to get out of alignment in order to just do this job, right? That is a fear, fear of misalignment is a big fear for people.

And then if you go down the worst-case scenario train, oftentimes we fear like if we get fired, which feels like the worst thing that could ever happen, we’ll never land a job. We’ll never get another job. Our career is ruined, our life is ruined, our finances are ruined. So we can go down this really dark hole of life is over if something goes wrong.

So question number two is, what do you think will happen? You have to answer these specifically for you. So, what are you afraid of? What do you think will happen? And then the third question is, why might I be feeling this way? Why do I think I’m so afraid? Why am I afraid of my boss? Why am I afraid of somebody in authority? What’s coming up for me? Most likely, there’s something from your past triggering you, whether you’re experience as a kid, you had a fear of authority, you feared your parents, you feared your older siblings. Perhaps it was a coach or a teacher. Maybe you had somebody in college that was really harsh on you, but there’s a reason why that you were feeling this way. It doesn’t just come out of nowhere.

So allowing yourself to explore the truth of what’s coming up, what’s being triggered and why you’re feeling this way. Oftentimes, we’ll find like, “Oh, this person reminds me of somebody in my life who, XYZ,” or “This happened to me as a kid, or this or that.” Past experiences are coming into the current moment, and that’s where we feel disempowered. It’s where we feel almost like we are, well, literally our power’s been taken away. We are not in positions of authority, internal authority. We lose that authority. We feel like a kid where we have limits. We have limitations to what we can say, what we can do, our opinions, our ideas, who we can be based on the people in authority, the people on the pedestals, okay? We put people in positional authority positions on a pedestal.

So contemplate these three questions for yourself because it’s going to take you deeper into the emotions behind and the understanding of why you feel your nervous system feels triggered and your emotional energy is so triggered when you are interacting with your boss, your superintendent, and why you have so much anxiety around either communicating with them, being in the same room with them, having a conversation with them, or receiving some kind of feedback from them. So contemplate those three questions and see what comes up for yourself.

And if you would like to go deeper, you’ve got a couple of options. Number one, you can post in the public Facebook group, the Empowered Principal Facebook group. It’s a public group, free, open to everybody. Come on in and ask your questions in there. Number two, you can join EPC, which is the Empowered Principal Collaborative. It’s a group coaching program for site and district leaders. You’re welcome to join us in there where you can ask questions, you can get support, love, compassion. It feels like a big hug when you’re in there. We talk about really deep things. We take leadership to the next level, but we also clean up some of these things that are obstacles in our way.

And number three, if you really want to dive deep and you want a more personalized, private experience, you want to have these conversations, maybe something’s triggered you that’s very traumatic, and you want to talk in a one-on-one setting. I do offer a limited number of one-on-one coaching positions in my coaching program. So I do have private coaching, I have group coaching, and then we have the free group where you can go in and ask your questions in the Facebook group, and I will do my best to answer them, to respond to them, and to support you, okay?

All right. With that said, I know this topic actually takes you really deep into who you are as a leader, who you want to become as a leader, and what’s preventing you from expanding your empowerment, to not feel afraid, to be in collaboration and connection with your boss, to feel a level of equality as you’re speaking with your boss and collaborating and having conversations around school leadership as a team. And the ideal is that we communicate and connect with one another and we see the power in each of us and the contribution that each of us gives, not from a place of fear and intimidation or anxiety or worry or self-doubt, but from a place of empowerment and confidence and certainty and assuredness that we have something to offer, that we have something of value to give, and our opinion matters, and our voice matters, and our leadership matters.

So, contemplate these three questions. You can reach out in the Facebook group, you can join EPC, or you can connect with me for one-on-one coaching, and I would love to support you. Have a beautiful week. I love you all. Take good care of yourselves, and I will see you next week. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit angelakellycoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.