Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 435. 

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, my empowered district leaders, and my empowered aspiring leaders. This one is for you, aspiring leaders. And district leaders and site leaders, listen up too. This is the time of year where we are cultivating our aspiring leaders into leadership positions. We want to encourage them, inspire them, support them. And one of the ways that you can do this is to have them listen to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast.

This episode is a recording, a segment of a recording of a training that I did for aspiring school leaders. Aspiring school leaders, if you want to land a position in school leadership, I have a program specifically designed to help you build up the identity of a school leader, the skillset of interviewing, connecting authentically, and landing a job in school leadership. This is the time of year to become a school principal, or if you’re a school principal and you want to land a job in district leadership, the same concepts apply. So this episode is an excerpt from the Aspiring School Leaders Workshop 2026. Enjoy.

There’s no perfect teacher out there. There’s no perfect leader out there. But we’re moving through this journey together here in the Empowered Principal world. So ground yourself in this desire for growth because it’s going to tether you in moments of stress, confusion, uncertainty, really painful moments. It’ll tether you. This work is hard. It’s hard mentally, but it’s hard emotionally because you’re in the business of people. 

We’re about the humanity here. So you become a leader first for you, then for them, then for the greater good. So I always say, for us, for them, for the greater good. It’s a spinoff of what my coach used to say, for me, for you, for us. But for us as leaders, we have to become a leader, one who leads herself, himself, theirself. We lead ourselves in order to lead them, our staff and students, for the greater good of our families, communities, and all of humanity. 

So this work, the desire to get into this job has to feel good. You have to want it, right? It’s like Rocky. You have to want to get into a ring and get beat up, right? You have to have a desire, a hunger, bringing your talent, your strengths, your brilliance, but also knowing that with you comes those moments of weakness, those areas you don’t feel as strong in, those Achilles heels, right? All of you comes into the ring. But if it’s a calling, if it’s compelling, that tethers you, it grounds you.

And look, anybody can do anything, right? I could go train to be a boxer at the age of 55. I could go do that, but I don’t want to do that. So I’m not compelled to do it. So it would not be fun for me. It would not be a goal. I wouldn’t sustain that goal. I wouldn’t pursue it. And even if I pursued it for a hot minute, it wouldn’t last because I don’t have the desire. It has to be fulfilling. It has to be something you want to do.

So there’s something beyond the skill of being a leader. So many people come into my program and they’re like, “I want to know how to do this job. How do I do this job? Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

With all of the love and respect and grace, I offer you this. When you become a leader, and you’ve been a leader before, so we’re going to tap into the parts of you that have already been a leader. You’ve led yourself through college, you’ve led yourself to learn your classroom. You have been a leader in your classroom for yourself and your students and for families. 

But when you say, “Just tell me how to be a leader,” that’s not what leadership is. The energetics of leadership matter. And what are the energetics of leadership? I’m going to talk about this a lot. It’s not something you hear very often, so I want to be direct in what this means, what I’m referring to when I say this.

The energetics of leadership, it’s the energy that is fueling your decisions and your actions. It’s emotional energy. It’s like when you drive up to a gas station for your car and you have choices of fuel. It’s the fuel that you put in the car. It’s how you feel about yourself, the thoughts you think about yourself, your identity, what you believe you are and are not, how you feel about your ability to lead, to be a leader.

Now, if you’re aspiring, you’re feeling like, “I have the capacity to lead.” That’s great. You’re feeling good about yourself. And then you’ll get into the position and part of your leadership energy is going to be the thoughts and feelings you have about those that you’re leading. You’re going to have opinions about certain staff members. You’re going to have thoughts and feelings about certain families, about certain policies that the district has, certain procedures, certain things they want you to do, initiatives. You’re going to have feelings about those, fuel going in. 

You’re going to have thoughts about your influence and impact, your capacity to create influence and impact. You’re going to have thoughts and feelings about the vision you have for your school. Do I have a vision? Am I leading the vision? Am I somewhere in the middle? Am I in the back cleaning up all the messes that people leave behind? Where am I in this vision? Am I leading it? Ooh, that feels kind of scary, doesn’t it, to think that? I’m leading the pack. I’m leading the circus.

And how do you feel about your capacity to handle anything that comes your way in school leadership? This is the energetics. This is what matters. This is the difference between two leaders who got trained at the same school with the same teachers in the same way, got the same credential, have two very different experiences. It’s just little differences, what they think, what they feel, how they perceive things, their perception, their, you know, ability to look through different lenses, like you know, look through all the facets, look through all the angles, consider different ways of thinking and being.

Energetics is just running the show. And I just, the easiest way I can explain it is that if you were a car and you pull up to the gas station, there’s different octane levels, there’s ethanol, there’s diesel. Which gasoline is the most ideal for you? 

Everybody thinks they want premium, but there are some cars that have to run on diesel. And you put premium in them, they shut down. Or if you use ethanol in a car that’s not equipped to handle ethanol, it doesn’t work. It shuts it down. It’s not that one’s better than the other, it’s which is the right energetics for you, which is the right fuel, the right thoughts, the right feelings, the right mindset for you.

So we all have a vision of what school leadership will look and feel like. And there’s the expectations that we have, what we think it’s going to be like in anticipation, and then the reality of what it actually is. And I know for me, there was a gap in what I thought it would look and feel like and what it actually was.

So people tend to go in one of two ways. They kind of go to all-or-none thinking. So on my end, it was like, it’s going to be great. I’m going to have so much more flexibility. I’m going to have so much more influence and say in what goes on. And I’m going to fix all these things that aren’t working for teachers. I’m going to fix it all. I had just this very sunshiny energy.

It’s like thinking about vacation. When you’re thinking about going on vacation, you’re just thinking about all the happy stuff and how you’re going to feel and how good it’s going to be. You’re not thinking about the potential of a flight delay or losing your luggage or the hotel room’s not ready or you’re taking your kids to Disneyland and they’re going to have a major meltdown right when they’re meeting Mickey Mouse and the pictures got ruined. You don’t think about that stuff. You think about the happy stuff. That’s one side. 

Other people tend to think about all that could go wrong because they want to be prepared. What if the plane gets delayed? What are we going to do? What’s going to happen if the hotel sucks when we get there? What’s going to happen if we can’t get an Uber if they don’t have Uber services? What’s going to happen if the kids melt down?

So you can see on one end, it’s like ignorance is bliss. It’s so happy and you’re expecting good things. And a lot of times good things happen when you expect them to happen because you’re in alignment with the good things happening. That’s where I tend to lean. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be prepared so that your trip does go as smoothly as possible.

However, this, when you’re all daisies and roses, you can get severely blindsided when you step into school leadership, which is what happened to me. I was smacked in the face at the reality, and it was harsh. And it made me go into a identity spiral. I call these identity quakes. We’re going to talk about this in a minute, but like I spun out of control. “What have I done? This is terrible. I’m not good at this. I’m not cut out for this. I can’t do this job.” Like this is just, “I got to go back to the kindergarten classroom.”

But then I felt all this shame and embarrassment and guilt because I felt I was failing. I felt like something had really gone wrong. My nervous system completely short-wired, dysregulated, and I had a hard, hard time my first two years. And because of that and because I didn’t know how to get into the energetics of leadership, I got a coach is what ended up happening, but I was really spinning. 

I did not serve my first school to the best of my capacity because I was so caught up in how I felt and the disillusionment. That’s why I’m bringing it up. I want to bring you into the land of and. So it’s not all sunshine and daisies, but it’s not all doom and gloom.

Over here, you have the person who doesn’t ever really go into school leadership because they want to, but they got to know this and that and what if this happens? And I don’t know how I’m going to handle that. So I got to prepare. And they overanalyze and they overthink and they just, they already got to talk themselves out of it and they’re never quite ready. Maybe next year, maybe one more year. Maybe I’ll just go and they ease in.

But in the land of and, where you understand that it’s a 50/50 experience no matter what, then you think, “Okay, these hard things are going to happen, but I’ve got the capacity to handle them when they come. I don’t need to know everything now.” These people be like, “I trust that this is going to be an amazing experience, and I know there will also be hard times and I can handle it when they come up, right?”

Sometimes we romanticize leadership. I’m going to have so much more time and flexibility and power and I can come and go. I thought all the things, right? I thought it was going to be, you know, when you view the principal, just like she gets to be out of the classroom. Like I felt like, “I want to go to the bathroom midday. Like I don’t want to have to wait till lunch.” Must be so nice to just sit in meetings. It must be so nice. 

And then I got into it, right? Other people are like, “I would never do that. It is the worst job in the world. Can’t handle it.” This person’s not going to make it and this person’s not going to make it unless they go into the land of and.

And here’s what I want to tell you. I don’t want to break your heart, but I do want to set you up for success. Being a principal, or if you’re aspiring to be a district leader, being in a leadership position of any capacity, it’s not better than not being in it. It’s just different. 

So as a teacher, you have great days, exceptional days. This is like, this is why I went into teaching. Best day ever. And you have the hardest, most heartbreaking, heart-wrenching, horrible, no good, very bad days where you’re like, “Why? I’m leaving education. This is horrible. Nothing works. The kids are terrible, whatever. And we’re never going to do it again. We’re going to go sell lattes at a local coffee shop or we’re going to run to the beach and make Mai Tais,” right? We want to get away. Exceptional, exceptionally hard, teaching.

School leadership, you have exceptional days. You’re like, “Oh, that is exactly how I thought it would feel. It’s amazing.” And you’re going to have heart-wrenching, heartbreaking, no good, very bad days. And you’re going to wonder why you ever stepped into school leadership. It’s 50/50, folks, whether you’re a teacher, a site leader, a district leader, whether you’re a homemaker, whether you’re in corporate. 

But if you can align to, that’s why I said, when you can align to the calling, the mission, it doesn’t, the hard days, you accept them as part of the mission, as part of the calling. This is the work I want to do even on the hard days. 

It’s like parenting. Even on the hardest of days when you’re like, motherhood, fatherhood, parenthood, I don’t know about this, but you would never, right? We love our babies still, even on the heartbreaking days, the days they graduate and leave us, the day they, you know, get their first tooth and you’re like, “Oh, I like that toothless grin,” right? We romanticize our lives or we catastrophize them. Empowerment brings you back to the land of and, okay?

So why should we even dip our toe in leadership? Why are we going here? It’s because as humans, we are wired for growth. We are wired for evolution. This is why we’re in the business of education. We loved it. We loved learning and growing. Most educators liked school. Even though school could be greatly improved, we loved school as kids. We loved playing teacher. You probably played school outside of school, right?

Okay. Why we do this? Humans are wired for growth, for evolution, not stagnancy. They don’t want to just sit around and do the same thing, Groundhog’s Day for 50 years. You want to get out. You want to learn how to surf or you want to go mountain biking or you want to learn how to crochet or you want to learn how to create beautiful meals or you want to learn how to communicate better or you want to learn how to play guitar or you, whatever. 

There’s a bazillion endless things you can learn and grow, personally, professionally, doesn’t matter. We’re not wired for stagnancy. We’re wired to be alive, to be engaged, to enjoy this opportunity of life that we have.

And if you think about being new, I love this part. All of us were new at some point. Everything we’ve ever experienced was new at some point. Learning how to drink from a glass without spilling used to be really hard. Have you seen a toddler or a very elderly person struggle with this? Everything was new at some point. 

And when we were little, I have, one of my closest friends has babies. She’s got a four-year-old and a nine-month-old. He’ll be turning four. But I love watching them because I’m not the mother, so I have a degree of separation. I can observe them in just pure joy and just observe them being little humans without all of the world’s worries on their shoulders.

Everything is new at some point. They love it. They explore it. They embrace new things. Everything for them, they’re excited, they giggle, they’re happy, they’re interesting. Oh, it’s just divine joy to see children learning, which is why we’re in the field, whether you are teaching littles or you’re teaching way up to the big kids, the big adults, right? You could be teaching at a university level. But those freshmen, it’s new. 

And when we’re little, we love being new. We love the excitement. And then as we grow older and we get more self-conscious, and then we have social pressures and opinions that, you know, come in and encroach on our learning and our being new. We didn’t, used to not care what it looked like and as we get older, we start to care. We start to not want to be new. I don’t want to go. I’m taking dance classes right now, and I feel myself, like we go and we practice at my friend’s house on Monday nights, but then we go to the class on Wednesday nights.

And I feel so much pressure because these people are good dancers. I got into an intermediate class and I had no business. But I’m doing it so I could go with my friends. So she teaches me all the things, the steps, and then I go and I fuddle around. I feel the discomfort of being new.

But what I decided to do was apply my own thought process and my own concepts to that class. So I go in and I’m like, “Yep, I’m brand new. Yep, I’m just learning. Yes, I am a brand new intermediate. So I am an intermediate, but I’m new at being intermediate. I’m not an advanced intermediate. I’m not an intermediate intermediate. I am a new intermediate.” 

But I’m going to just come in with puppy dog energy and have fun and smile and laugh and thank people. I only had one out of like, I don’t know, 12 or 14 partners because you change partnerships. Only one that was kind of grumpy. “Remember to count. Remember.” “Okay, thank you for the feedback.” One, two, three, four, five. Trying to remember to count while I’m also remembering to move my body in the right way and follow the leader’s cues.

So when we’re little and there’s no pressures, we’re just compelled. We’re just exploring. So what we want to do as leaders is we want to remember as adults to embrace being new, embrace new things with the enthusiasm of a child, but also with the patience of a mature adult. Sometimes we will avoid putting ourselves in situations, and the older we get, the less, you know, flexible we are with that, the less amenable we are to learning new things. We’re like, “I just do it my way.” We don’t want to look clumsy, we don’t want to look awkward.

This is something I am really embracing this year, just putting myself in situations that are new, that are different, going to different places, trying different things, going to actual classes where I am clumsy, I am awkward, I am new, nobody knows me, I don’t know them, and I feel those emotions inside my body. I worry about what others will think. This is going to happen to you. 

You’re going to get hired either into your own school district or another one and you’re not going to know what the heck you’re doing. And you’re going to think about what are others thinking about me. “I’m embarrassed. I feel silly. I don’t know.” You know, “I feel awkward. I don’t like this feeling in my body. It’s so crunchy. Ugh.” But if you come in knowing you’re new, embracing being new, letting that new energy be infectious, take it in stride. Just have fun with it.

As adults, when we get in, especially a leadership role, there’s something that’s like, “Oh, well, now that I’m a leader, I’m expected to just walk in and know.” And here’s what’s crazy. I basically got hired, here are your keys, a brand new principal at a brand new school, brand new construction, wasn’t even finished on day one. We had plumbing issues, the kitchen wasn’t done, we had to do sack lunches for the kids. I’m telling you, hot mess express. I was a brand new principal. I had no idea what I was doing. 

Thank goodness for a very skilled and seasoned secretary who basically ran the show and told me what to do and where to focus on, right, and what to prioritize. And then I stepped into like after that first year, I really started to embrace like, okay, my identity as the leader and I would work with her, but we became like co-leaders. And then I moved to another school. 

But as adults, it is very uncomfortable to be new because they’re like, “Here are the keys, you’re now the leader, know everything, do everything, be everything. Have a great day.” So you’re like, “Wait a minute, I’m supposed to know this?” And then the minute you don’t know something or the minute you misspeak or misstep or misunderstand or miscommunicate, “I’m flawed. I’ve done something wrong. I’m not cut out. I’m not the right fit. This isn’t the right school for me.” Your brain just goes off. It starts to tell you all these things. “Go back to teaching.”

I just want you to know you’re going to feel discomfort when you get into school leadership. Nothing’s gone wrong. You’re right on track. This part’s uncomfortable. Just tell yourself that. “Today, I’m feeling really new, feeling really clumsy, feeling a little awkward, pretty vulnerable. It’s a tough feeling, but I’m here for it. I’ve got this. It was hard to be a new teacher, and now it’s hard to be a new principal. And today I’m having a hard day.”

Being new at anything is hard. It’s clumsy. Just know that you’re not going to know. This discomfort that you feel, I call it just kind of crunchy inside where you’re like, “Ugh, cringy.” That’s the emotion that accompanies growth, evolution, and success, right?

So when you get into school leadership, you’re going to feel doubt. There will be the emotion, the fuel that goes into your body one day when you go to the gas station of life is doubt. You’re like, “Okay, I got this job. Now what? I don’t know.” You feel excited and you’re like, “Somebody tell me what to do,” but they’re going to expect you to lead. 

So you’re in this little quandary here, like, “What do I do?” Well, you’re going to have to take action in doubt. You’re going to have to allow yourself to feel like, “I’m not sure what I’m doing. I’m not sure if this is the right decision. And I feel doubtful, and I’ve got to make this decision. I’ve got to take this action.” Let yourself feel doubtful. 

And some days, yes, you’re going to go home, there will be water leaking out of your eyes many days on your drive home or when you get home. Just know tears will come. It’s okay. Cry it out. The tears won’t hurt you. That actually releases emotion. It’s a very good thing. When you are really in doubt and you’re in an overwhelm cycle, just acknowledge it. Be kind to yourself. But don’t think something’s gone wrong. There’s a difference.

I’m feeling this way today and it’s a normal part of the process versus I’m feeling this way today and something’s gone wrong and I need to fix this now. That’s accepting and allowing the emotion, the fuel that went in the tank for the day versus trying to like spit it out and avoid the emotion or stopping the car altogether, halting. But here’s the thing. You can always let the fuel run through, feel the doubt, feel all the feels, and then refuel. Okay, now what? Go back and get the right gas.

Overwhelm is going to happen. It’s okay. Literally, in school leadership, there is too much to do and not enough time. It’s a mathematical certainty. Just like the Titanic sinking, as the guy said, it is a certainty. It’s a mathematical certainty that there is too much to do and not enough time. So we don’t have to argue with ourselves or try to convince other people that there is too much to do as a school leader or a district leader and there’s not enough time. We know that because people want us to solve the world’s problems as educators, right? So we know this without a doubt.

But the sooner you realize that the demands are always going to outweigh what you can physically accomplish, then you just start to accept, “I’m going to need to plan this out. I’m going to need to prioritize. Sometimes I’m going to have to triage. Sometimes there’s going to be wipeout days. But I’m also going to learn to constrain myself. I’m not going to try and solve all the problems. I’m not going to buy into whack-a-mole, putting out fires, and I’m going to allow myself to accurately delegate.” 

Which is an entire skill that I teach, how to delegate, how to onboard, how to teach someone before you… all of the onboarding stuff, all of the delegation stuff. Like those are critical parts of, those are the skill sets, but it’s also part of mindset when it comes to being a highly, highly effective school leader. 

So these are things that most principals don’t want to do. They don’t want to make decisions when they’re feeling doubt. They want to wait until they feel certainty. That delays, it stagnates. They don’t want to delegate because they want to make sure they do it themselves and get it done right the first time, right? 

They don’t want to have to prioritize because everything feels like a priority, especially in your first year. It’s just fire hose coming at you. What do I do? You have to learn the skill of slowing down. But in order to learn the skill of slowing down, you have to have the mindset that it’s okay to slow down.

So this is why I talk about mindset over skill set because you can’t create the skill set, the practice, the things that you do without the mindset of who you have to be. 

That it’s okay to slow down, that it’s safe to slow down, that it will be better for you and your school if you take the time to slow down to plan, to prepare, to think, to constrain, to prioritize, to learn, to come to, you know, one of my other programs, like to be in a program, to be at the table like this where you slow down for an hour a week and you have these conversations around mindset to get you in the place to then create the skill set. They go hand in hand.

So your mind will want to indulge in overwhelm. “I’m so overwhelmed.” Brand new leaders, it’s a thing. Overwhelm’s actually a thing. You’re going to want to indulge in that. You’re going to want to swim around and you’re going to feel sorry for yourself because there’s so much to do. Mathematical certainty, there’s too much to do and not enough time. 

Now what? What do we want to do? We want to respond with prioritization, constraint, and slowing down. But what we do is we react. We tend to like, go work, overwork, overschedule, overexert, over plan. We just crunch too much in and then we’re frustrated that we planned all these things and nothing got done.

So just be careful if overwhelm starts to become the excuse that you don’t have the time because that will become an identity. “I’m the school principal who never has enough time. There’s too much to do, not enough time. I don’t have the time. I don’t manage my time. I don’t prioritize my time because I don’t have time to do all of that. I don’t have time. There’s not enough time.” 

Your relationship with time will erode your capacity to lead. You have to build a healthy relationship with time. That is an entire mastery course that I teach. And in EPC, which is the Empowered Principal Collaborative, we talk about time all of the time because your relationship with time really really matters.

A leader who identifies themself as busy. “I’m so busy. It’s been a busy week. I’m really busy. There’s a lot on my plate.” This story, this identity of a leader who’s always busy, you will forever feel busy and overwhelmed. If that’s the story you choose, if that’s the title of your book, the title of your career, the identity that you embody, you’ll forever be busy. 

And here’s where people get a little bit gray on this. Busy does not mean productive. I can remember trying to look busy so that people thought I was being a productive principal. So silly. I wanted to be very busy. And I thought, gosh, if I had any downtime, I must be doing something wrong, right?

So, here’s my invitation. The solution to overwhelm is this. When you start to feel it, you’ll know. You’ll feel it in your body. Tune in and say to yourself like, “I’m not too busy to slow down.” Because if you start saying, “Oh my God, I’m so busy. I’m really slammed. I’m overwhelmed,” it’s the fuel you’re putting in the tank. You want to put a different octane in. 

Take a breath, slow down, break your tasks down. What’s the one thing you want to get done today? If you could walk out of the door with one thing being done today, what is it? That’s where planning mastery, time mastery, balance mastery programs, all of these programs in EPC, which is the Empowered Principal Collaborative, I’ve created them because it’s the mix of the mindset plus the skill set, who to be and how to apply. Okay?

So for people who feel overloaded, even for the most enthusiastic of extroverts, you’re going to experience people overload because you’re in the business of people all day long. So you’ve got kids coming at you, teachers, staff members, parents, community members, school board, district level, county, state, whatever, office staff, your, you know, psychology, counseling staff, nursing staff, custodial staff, cafeteria staff members, transportation, technology. 

You’re going to have days where you’re like, “No more people, please. No, thank you.” You’ll be tired of dealing with people. I’m pretty extroverted. I like people, but I have a limit. I’m just like, “Don’t want to deal with people today,” right?

It’s energy, right? They’re filling their tanks and they’re coming at you and some of them are like, “Ah.” Other people are calm, some people are very insistent, some people are aggressive. There’s a lot of energy that you’re holding space for. 

So there’s going to be their energy, their requests, their personalities, their quirks, their demands, right, what they want, their opinions. They all want your time and attention. It gets annoying. You get overloaded. Again, nothing’s gone wrong. You’re a human. And some days you have more capacity for it than others. You’re just going to be in tune with that capacity. So when you start to feel annoyed, irritated, impatient, again, slowing down, give yourself permission to take a break.

I cannot emphasize enough the power of stopping and taking a few deep breaths to reregulate yourself because your brain will go on autopilot, your body goes on autopilot, and then your identity becomes reacting versus responding. You want to give yourself some permission to close that office door if you have one and get some alone time. Just a few minutes can make a big difference to gather yourself. Or if somebody’s really set you off, you might need to be angry for a few minutes or to cry for a few minutes and then reply.

The slowing down, the permission, the identity of like, “I’m a human too. I’m a principal and I’m a human. I’m a district leader and I’m a human, and I have human emotions,” expands your capacity, expands your perspective. Just separate yourself from them. And this is where I talk about relationship and communication mastery in EPC.

Okay, this one is for the brand new leaders. And sometimes we have imposter syndrome even as veterans because there’s always something we don’t know. We’re like, wait a minute. I’ve been doing this job. I tell this story all the time, but Dr. Crates was one of my favorite principals. She had been doing site leadership. This was her 19th year. I think I was in like my third or fourth year. 

And I said to her, “Dr. Crates, when does this ever get easier?” And she looks at me, this tall, thin woman, she had presence, she had power. She was an empowered principal, like the poster child of empowerment. She just put her hands on her hips, she said, “Honey, it never gets easier. What are you talking about?”

When she said that, she kind of laughed and she said, “That’s what I love about it. I love it. I love it’s always different. I love this and I love that.” And I literally felt the burning of tears coming like “What is she saying to me right now? This never gets easier? Oh my gosh, I don’t think I can do this.” And I had a moment of complete imposter syndrome, complete inefficiency. I felt so inefficient. I was watching her just be a powerhouse. I felt completely incompetent, compare and despairing. Yes, I know. 

But in the moment, like I just wanted to be like her. She made it look so easy. She made it look like flow. She made it look fun. She looked like she was enjoying herself. And I was like, “I want that,” because I was spinning out in my head. “I’m not good enough. Nobody likes me. What are people thinking? I can’t do this. I don’t know that. I thought I was going to have power. I don’t have power. This is worse. This is worse…” I just, you know, so in my head about me.

But the more that you become aware of who you are and how you’re feeling, your identity, if you get stuck and spinning on that, you’re going to get stuck in an overwhelm cycle that’s like a merry-go-round and it’s going to make you sick to your stomach. 

The bouts of insufficiency and incompetency will paralyze you from leading because the power thought will be like, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not sure how to handle this. I don’t know what to do. I’m not enough.” It’s an insufficient feeling. No matter what you’re doing, it’s like, “I’m not being enough. I’m not trying hard enough. I don’t know enough.”

What is the solution to insufficiency? For me, and for the clients that I serve, you can’t do it all. Too much to do and not enough time. It’s a mathematical certainty. You can’t do everything, but you can do anything, any one thing. Focus on one thing at a time. 

When you get one thing done, you feel accomplished. It gives you a notch in your belt in terms of sufficiency, of competency. “Maybe I didn’t get these other eight things done, but I got this done.” Every time you do the one thing, you expand your capacity. One, you’re expanding your capacity no matter what, but you will feel more accomplished, your identity will evolve. This is what leadership mastery is. This is the leadership energetics I’m talking about. It’s the balance of doing and being.

So right now, as we’re sitting here together in this webinar, you have a current self-identity. You have a self-concept about who you are. I want you to think for a minute about your character traits. You believe certain things that you are, you believe certain things you’re not. “I am this, I am not that. I can do this, I can’t do that. These are my strengths, these are my weaknesses. This is what I’m capable of. This is what I can and cannot do. This is what I can and cannot handle. This is what I can and cannot learn.” You have a certain identity right now.

And it’s funny, we’ll introduce ourselves based on who we believe we are. Like when we meet somebody for the first time, we’re going to say, “Oh, I’m a brand new principal. Oh, hi, nice to meet you. Tell me what to do.” Or we come in, “Hi, I’m the principal of Sunnyside Elementary School. Pleasure to meet you.” Confident, calm, assured, empowered. You can do that in your first year or you can do that in your 10th year. “Hi, I’m the new principal at Sunnyside Elementary School. What a pleasure to meet you.” 

You might identify as being too young for the job or maybe too veteran. “Nobody likes me,” or “Nobody knows me.” Experienced. “Hi,” you know, “I’ve been doing this job for 10 years.” Or, “Ugh, I have no idea what’s going on here. I’m brand new.” We talk about this. Our identity comes through in our interactions with other humans, right? We tell people, “I’m good at this, not good at that. I know how to do this, not that.” Your identity has a direct impact on your capacity to lead. Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.

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.

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 433. 

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’m going to discuss with you today. It’s not a topic I have felt comfortable talking about for a while because it’s so personal to me. I’ve been doing this personal work and been on this personal journey. 

And in my work with my coach, my coaches, I should say, and through the work that I do as a coach, I’ve really uncovered some understanding about the fears that I had in school leadership when I was in school leadership, the fears that I have as a coach, the fears that I have as a human, as a female on the planet, and the way that I was conditioned to understand myself in the world, the way that I was taught and expected to behave or to respond or to act, behave, think, all of that at a deeper subconscious level.

And I want to talk about it today, number one, because it’s really prevalent in aspiring school leaders and brand-new school leaders. This is the time of year when people are transitioning into becoming a school leader and stepping out of a teacher leadership role into an administrative leadership role. And with that can come what I call child energy, little kid energy, an immaturity that is tapped within us when we are venturing into the unknowns, a new adventure, a new chapter, a new position, particularly when we step into a leadership position.

So what I mean by child energy is this naivety, this uncertainty. I’m not sure. I’m kind of shy. I’m stepping back. I’m asking other people, what should I do? What should I think? What should I believe? What should I value? What should my philosophy be? I’m looking outside of myself as a little kid, you know, as somebody who’s new, to guide me.

Now, there is nothing wrong with having a coach, having a mentor, having guidance, looking to those you admire for aspiration and inspiration and leadership, knowledge, wisdom. Of course, we can’t know all of it ourselves. That’s not the goal. We want to learn from others. The energy I’m speaking of, it’s more of an approach fueled by fear. 

So it’s when you feel kind of afraid to be a leader. You’re timid, you feel a little helpless, you lean on other people to kind of, you know, the buck stops with them. So you might feel more comfortable in an AP position because you’re like, well, the lead principal, the buck really stops with them. So you might feel insecure with your opinions, your decisions, your actions, your initiatives that you want to take, or perhaps you are very easily intimidated by other people’s confidence.

So when you are new, you walk into a room and there is a ton of highly successful leaders, very confident leaders, leaders who seemingly know what they’re talking about, what they’re saying, what they’re doing. They have a vision, they have a mission, they’re very fueled, they’re passionate, they are knowledgeable, they seem very wise, they’ve been around the block before, they have experience under their belt, and that can feel very intimidating. Now, you can be a leader who’s been doing this job for three, five, 10 years and still feel this. 

So it tends to happen when you’re new at something. That’s pretty normal. And I talk about how to embrace being new in other podcast episodes. So when you’re new, right, we sometimes we hold back. We test the waters. We check on other people. We’re picking up cues, right? How are they thinking? How are they feeling? What how are they responding? You’re looking at their behaviors, their facial expressions, their body expressions, that those nonverbal cues to kind of see what the response is going to be. And you’re getting to know people before you lead, right?

We often tell first-year leaders, build relationships. And that first year, you’ll get grace where you’re not maybe taking a ton of forward action or you know laying out a vision or pushing people forward. You might just be getting to know people. That’s very common in your first year where you are building relationships. 

However, building relationships, that term can be used sometimes as a shield or excuse to not have to be vulnerable, to not have to express yourself, to not be clear with yourself on who you are and what you believe in and what you want to do and how you want to approach your leadership position and really stepping into the identity as a leader.

So I’ve noticed this with new leaders, I myself included. You know, it’s easy to want to kind of tread water and watch what everybody else is doing and you’re kind of picking up context clues. But you can tread so long that you’re not stepping out and taking action, right? 

There’s a difference between watching what’s going on and then trying a little something and then watching a little bit more and then trying a little something. That’s different than just watching and observing and kind of waiting to react to other people around you versus taking leadership and responding internally with your own thoughts, opinions, and ideas.

And I understand when you’re new, you’re like, how do I know? I don’t know what I don’t know. That’s absolutely correct. The way that you learn, trial and error. Yes, you observe people. Yes, you get out there and you just meet with them. You build relationships with them. You get to understand them and know them. 

And also, you’re also taking action. You’re also expressing yourself. You’re learning about your school and then you’re processing that and you’re saying, what are my thoughts and feelings around this? What am I adding to this? What do I believe to be true? What do I think is the next best thing for my staff or my school?

So it can happen when you’re new, but I’ve also noticed that it can happen after you’ve been in an identity of empowerment. So perhaps you felt very confident and strong as a teacher or as an instructional coach. And then you get into a leadership position and you bring that empowerment with you, and then something happens. So sometimes you have felt, you have been in a stage of confidence or empowerment and you feel like you’re in grown-up energy, adult, mature, you feel knowledgeable, you feel secure in your own skin and assured with yourself.

And then a situation kind of shakes you. I call this an identity quake, where something happens and maybe you didn’t handle it as well as you would have liked or you didn’t know what to do, or it really set you back. It kind of put you in check or it hurt you, it really criticized you. Maybe you got admonished. And we can revert back to more of that like childlike energy when we feel like we have been attacked or we’ve been admonished or punished or scolded.

So I’ve observed this in myself and in others that if it’s not brand-new energy where you’re actually just, you are new and you’re learning and trying to figure things out, sometimes we get into this like big people energy where it’s kind of bossy. You know? I think of like I’m the oldest sister of two, my sister and I, and I’m the oldest. 

So like big sister energy, kind of bossy energy, like my way or the highway, one perspective. It’s this kind of boss vibes energy, bro energy. Some people call it masculine energy. I think of like the Devil Wears Prada energy where, you know, the boss is just like very assertive and aggressive and, you know, people are afraid of her and she’s clicking around and making everybody fear her through intimidation, right? Granted, it’s a movie, but that’s kind of the image that comes to mind for me.

Sometimes it lacks compassion or perspective or awareness on who they are and how they’re being, or they’re using it to kind of toss their energy, their vibe, and authority around so that people don’t question them. People don’t give them feedback. People don’t critique you or they don’t offer another way. 

So sometimes we use this like bossy vibe energy as a layer of protection. We’re actually so soft on the inside that we don’t want people to give us feedback or critique us or offer something, a different perspective or a different approach to something. We don’t want to hear what other people have to say or how they feel. We just protect ourselves. And in doing so, we’re unaware of, you know, our lack of empathy or compassion or how other people might feel, you know, if they’re feeling dismissed or they’re feeling that, you know, we are being rude to them in some way.

We can use empowerment as a form of protection. And we can also use this childlike, innocent kind of naivety as a form of protection. So just first of all, just notice if you’re doing one or the other. So sometimes when you are naive, you might get kind of a smackdown where people are like, step up and lead. 

And you’re so afraid to do that because you feel you don’t know, you feel like an imposter, you’re afraid, you’re new, and really the solution to that is kind of dipping your toe in, making the best decision you can, grounding yourself, getting in alignment and moving forward, being vulnerable, knowing that you won’t do it perfectly. There’s overcoming that fear.

And then there’s the other side of this where people who have been very bold and strong and protected and they’re in their, you know, Devil Wears Prada energy, something happens or someone comes along and awakens you in a very abrupt way where they give you the smackdown and it stings so much. It puts you into doubt. It makes you doubt yourself, question yourself. 

And you’re like, whoa, I used to feel so confident and now I’m, I feel like I’m walking on eggshells. I’m walking around and I’m not sure if, who to be or if I can be strong again or I’m afraid of empowerment because this negative experience happened. And again, that’s another identity quake, right?

So an identity quake is just something that comes in and shatters your reality. It literally changes your identity. And oftentimes, at the time it happens, you’ll say, I did not see that coming. You might in hindsight see the signs that it was coming or the signals, but at the time it happens, it feels like you got blindsided. 

Like an example might be that you got laid off. You had no idea it was coming and you got laid off and you weren’t expecting it. Maybe you were reassigned or you were demoted. You went from being a teacher leader to not being in a leadership position or you were an AP and put back in the classroom or you were a lead principal and they asked you to go to an AP position. And that can be demoralizing. It can be kind of an emotional smackdown where you feel afraid to speak up, afraid of your own empowerment.

And we can find ourselves kind of swimming back in childlike energy. Like, well, I tried this and it didn’t work. So now I’m going to go over here. And now we’re in the land of all or none where we’re either in our empowerment and we’re being kind of protective in one sense, or we’re being in this childlike energy and we’re being in this, you know, protectiveness where it’s not me, not my fault, you know, I don’t know what I’m doing. I need other people to help me. Kind of a helplessness.

So my goal in supporting school leaders is to find the land of and, is to bring you back to the middle ground, which is authentic empowerment. And sometimes you have to explore the boundaries. You have to be in that little child energy, and then you need to be in big boss energy to kind of feel the boundaries of that, to land in the middle that feels appropriate for you. 

So fears of identifying as an empowered leader or fears of stepping back into your empowerment or being in a mindset and an identity of empowerment is something that many principals experience. 

So if you are experiencing this where you’re new or you’re going to be new and you’re anticipating this fear, or you’ve had a little smackdown at some point and you feel wounded and maybe you have, you know, your heart is gaping open and you’re heartbroken or you’re very embarrassed or ashamed or you’re unsure of yourself and you’re doubting yourself and you’re recalculating and rebuilding back up to your identity, this is normal. It’s a part of our experience. It’s how we test those boundaries.

But when it’s left unattended, if you’re either in this childlike energy or you’re in this big boss energy, you will find that you will go through the motions of leadership and you will be acting as a school leader, but you’re not generating the outcomes you want or not having the impact that you desire. And that’s where the feelings of imposter syndrome or I’m not good enough, I feel insufficient, come up because you’re doing the work, but it’s not creating the outcomes.

And I’ve been in this. I’ve been in this as a teacher where you’re kind of spinning trying to figure out who you are and how to get results. Then I was spinning around as a principal, and then I was spinning as a district leader when I was the coordinator for the RTI programs across the district. 

And I’ve had moments and chapters of that in my business, spinning as a coach, trying to figure out how to serve more people or how to communicate, how to coach better, how to communicate better, how to explain these concepts of what I believe will really create positive impact for school leaders and students and staff and communities, which is this internal work that we’re doing here, called empowerment.

So when you are in a cycle of imposter syndrome, and if that tends to surface on a regular basis, you might find that your strategy becomes waiting for others to tell you what to do, waiting for people to validate your opinions, waiting for people to make the decisions or to support your decisions before you move forward. Before you take any action, you make sure you’re like over-ensuring that you’re doing the right thing. That’s childlike energy. 

It’s like waiting for mom and dad’s approval, waiting for teacher’s approval, waiting for your, you know, athletic coach’s approval versus getting out there and just playing the game and then be willing to get the feedback and be willing to make mistakes, but you’re going for it, you know, 100 miles an hour, 100%, right? It can stagnate you and your school from evolving yourself, evolving others, your staff, those you’re leading, your students, your community.

So as uncomfortable as this is, addressing this childlike energy within you, acknowledging when you’re in it, validating the fears and the other emotions that are fueling it and owning, really owning that you do have access and the ability to step back into your own power is required of you as a leader, to feel better and feel more aligned.

Exercising empowerment, it is not simple because the little kid energy within us is triggered all the time. We want to retract. We want somebody else to be the leader. We want them to tell us what to do. We don’t want to take ownership. We don’t want to be out on the front lines, you know, taking the bullet, so to speak. We’re gonna want to be behind the shield. 

But part of leadership requires us to own the leadership part and to step into our maturity and to step into the truth that we have the power within us to lead with maturity and to own our emotions and to own our decisions and actions and to have the bandwidth to when we get it right, we celebrate. When we get it wrong, we apologize and repair, but we keep going. We don’t let it stop us.

It’s hard work. It’s scary work, but it is so freeing. It is highly rewarding. I do this work consistently myself. I work with multiple coaches and I also support school leaders as a coach through this process. We discuss this work in EPC. Clients of mine will schedule one-on-ones, you know, private sessions for deeper emotional processing. I believe it’s the most empowering way to be a highly effective leader.

And I’m talking not just school leadership, but the leader of your life. Being you, doing what you want to do, living your life the way you want to live, allowing other people to have their opinions about you and have their opinions about how you should run your school and have their thoughts and ideas. And not that they can’t have them, but that you can still be in your empowerment. 

You don’t have to be dismissed or to demote yourself or your own ideas or your own approach to life or leadership because other people have different opinions. If someone’s in a funk, it doesn’t have to mean now you’re in a funk. If they have a negative opinion of your decisions and actions, we don’t throw them out. We can listen to them, but we can self-discern.

That’s true empowerment. Is being able to see that somebody else’s tantrums, somebody else’s emotions are theirs to own. We don’t need to own them. We don’t need to fix them. We don’t even need to change them. We can acknowledge them and allow them to have their feelings while we get busy and regulate our own emotions. 

So when we feel triggered, when we feel like a little kid and somebody’s scolded us and we’re sad, we can be sad, and then we can be mature and say, okay, why am I sad? What can I learn from this? What do I believe is true here? And you’re right back into your empowerment. Easier said than done, I know, but it is the path to empowerment. 

And that’s the whole goal. That’s my mission, is to empower principals, to empower site and district leaders, state leaders, to empower teachers so that they can empower children. That is the purpose of education. In my book, I believe that we are here to authentically empower people to have their own identities, their own feelings, allow people to come up with their own thoughts, their own ideas. 

We call it critical thinking. We want to empower that. We don’t want people to think in conformity or to be isolated if they think differently than us. It’s to bring us together, to collaborate, and to allow differences of opinion, to be mature, to respect ourselves as much as we respect others, to not wait for others to tell us what to do for the rest of our lives.

So if you feel called to really working on your empowerment and learning the skills, the exercises, the practices to get yourself back into a state of empowerment when you have slipped into this childlike energy, I really invite you to join EPC. You can join now. You can join this summer. For those of you who book for next year, you get access to the rest of this year. You get to come in the back door and see what the end of the season looks like. 

Then we jump into summer of fun, and then we’re off to the races. I’m going to have, you know, programming in the summer, trainings to help you prepare and get ready for the fall. It’s a wonderful time to join EPC. I love you all. I care about you and I invite you into your mature empowerment. 

And that little kid energy, I promise you, it comes out all the time. It comes out in me. It comes out in others. You want to know how to recognize it and you want to know what to do with it, to create awareness around it, to feel it, to acknowledge it, to validate it, to get back into alignment, and then to have the courage to step back into your mature empowerment. Have a beautiful day. I love you all. Take care. Bye-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.