Ep #205: Leading Through an Emotional Tsunami

Hello Empowered Principals, welcome to episode 205.

Welcome to The Empowered Principal Podcast, a not-so-typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control over your career and how to get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy. By refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host certified life coach, Angela Kelly Robeck.

Hello, my empowered leaders; happy Tuesday. Welcome to the end of November. I hope you are well. I hope you enjoyed Thanksgiving and you had a lovely break from school. Today we’re going to talk about what’s not fun about school. Are you ready?

Let’s talk about the emotional tsunami that we are experiencing in schools. Last week we talked about building up your emotional resiliency so that you can lead other people. Today, we will talk about what that looks like in terms of helping your students deal with that emotional tsunami within themselves, how they are feeling. How are they showing up?

The emotional fatigue that they are experiencing. And later on in January, I’m going to talk about the trends that I am seeing across the country, across the nation in terms of how students are showing up. How principals are feeling and how they have to lead, how all of this have impacted education, and what we need to do to start regrouping ourselves.

But for now, I just want to say straight away that this job is not getting easier. We’d hoped that we’d go back to school in person this year and that everybody would be so happy to be back. That they would come to school and behave themselves and be lovely and interact well. We thought everybody’s behavior was going to be amazing because we were so excited to see them.

We also hoped that we would no longer have to wear masks, and we wanted to be able to gather in enclosed spaces, have assemblies and events, and eat lunch together. And none of that is the case. It’s not easier and what I see happening with my clients, my principals out there, feel discouraged because it isn’t getting easier. They hoped it would be getting easier. They thought it would be easier, and now that it’s not, they’re discouraged, and the hope is draining out of them.

So, what’s happening is that people feel like it’s up to the principal to turn the tides, right? We’ve got this emotional tsunami of students and staff members and the community. And we feel like that burden is all on our shoulders to change those tides and keep everybody happy and build up their resiliency. In one sense, it is a culture of resiliency, as we talked about last week, begins with our own resilience work.

It requires us to feel emotions we don’t want to feel and practice taking uncomfortable actions. Things like working less when we feel that urge to work more, letting go of control, not trying to get in there and manipulate and control every little thing, but trusting others, trusting the process, trying new things. Letting ourselves have fun. We are allowing things to be easier, not complicating things in our minds.

So, when we study our own resiliency, first of all, we learn how challenging it can be. It’s one thing to tell somebody else, hey, you know, like, you can do this, be resilient. But when we have our own moments where we feel fatigued, emotionally, physically, psychologically, it’s challenging to just buck up and be resilient in an authentic way. We can always fake it until we make it. But we know that isn’t the long-term solution.

So, studying our own resiliency helps us to understand ourselves. When we do this work, we learn the how, how to build that resiliency. What’s required of us, how hard it is, the process, we have to learn day by day and navigate and try things, and notice where are we highly resilient and where are we less resilient? Where are we compassionate with our teachers and our students? And where is our compassion lower? Or when we feel impatient or just want people to go do the thing without us having to fix it all, right? That feeling.

Number three, when we work on our own resiliency, we learn why other people struggle emotionally. It’s not easy to feel feelings. They’re really scary and overwhelming to some of us. To all of us in some level, right? And we think that if we let ourselves experience intense emotional things like pain and struggle, and grief, and anger, we don’t think we’ll be able to handle it, first of all. Or we’re afraid that if we allow it to kind of flow through our body and we let the emotion be present that we won’t stay in control of our reaction to it.

That if we get so angry that we’re going to hurt ourselves, or somebody else. Or we worry that the feeling will never go away. That we will always feel this discourage. We are always going to feel this frustrated. It’s never going to get better. The brain loves to go to this all or none best-case, worst-case scenario. And it doesn’t like to sit in the land of both.

So, for those of you who are in the Facebook group and you’re doing the 50/50 balance challenge, it requires us to train our brains to see both sides, see the truth, and see the falsehoods right that our brain tells us. Our brain lies to us so often, you guys. I want you to keep that in mind. There is truth in the work that we’re doing and the resiliency and challenges, yes. But, there are also lies that our brain is telling us that make us believe it’s a worst-case scenario or never going to get better. Or that we don’t know-how. Or that teachers don’t know-how, and we have to go in and fix it for them. When we do get into the habit of asking ourselves how we feel and why we are feeling that way and then exploring those thoughts, generating the feelings, we teach ourselves that we’re capable of handling the emotions. And that we’re capable of handling other people’s emotions, our feelings about their feelings, right?

Even the ones that feel really terrible. I know I have been helping a loved one of mine go through an intense emotional process, and when you’re in it with them and able to hold space for them, it’s not that you don’t feel how they’re feeling or that you’re not feeling intense with them. But, it’s a matter of them feeling it, letting it kind of suck, and knowing that they are going to be okay and you’re going to be okay. Even though your heart is racing, or your stomach has butterflies, or you feel the nervousness that comes with experiencing a witness to someone’s strong emotional reaction that you’re capable of handling other people’s reactions as well as your own emotions.

So, when you practice this, you will gain a skill set that expands your capacity to lead. So, today we are going to talk about leading others through this emotional tsunami that we are all experiencing in education. Let’s start with our teacher resilience. So, last week I talked about a culture of resilience and brought it back to starting with us. Now, I want to show you how you take those skillsets that you’ve learned and then apply them to the emotional resilience of your team.

So, you may have heard this before, but if you’re new to the podcast, first of all, welcome. So happy you’re here. I want to talk to you briefly about the emotional triads. So, this is a concept I came up with at the beginning of the pandemic when I was experiencing clients who were having intense emotional personal reactions, and then they’d shift gears. They’d start talking about their teachers and the families, and all of a sudden, I could see where principals were processing their own emotions. Then they were having thoughts and feelings about other people’s processing of emotion. So, it’s like a Ven Diagram where you have your set of emotions, and other people have theirs.

Then, each of you has a reaction to the other person’s emotional reaction, okay? So, that’s the emotional triad. And what I want to highlight about that triad is your emotions, how you feel about yourself, work, education, teachers, students, and the world that is separate from anybody else. Your thoughts and feelings are completely your own, which is wonderful because you have full agency over them.

Nobody can tell you what to think or how to feel, or how to respond to those emotions. You have full control over that. Meanwhile, other people have their own set of thoughts and feelings, and emotions. And they have full control over that. As school leaders, it’s not our responsibility, obligation, or even within our control to manage and navigate and try to manipulate how other people think about it.

I know we want to do that, trust me. If I could write a book that told people how to control other people, I’d be a millionaire. So, but, what I want you to know is, here is the truth. You have agency over yourself; other people have full agency over them. And as a leader, what you really want to pay attention to is that sweet spot where you are noticing your reactions to their emotional reaction. Then you’re getting curious as to why they are acting the way they are. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? Why are they acting this way?

You want to get into their brain because it helps you lead them. So, for example, if teachers are feeling worn down, they’re tired, they feel like they have too much to do and not enough time. There’s one more thing on the plate I can’t get to all of this. This is so much more work than last year. I’ve never seen anything like this in education. I’ve never seen the kids act out. I’ve never seen, you know, experienced a year where I couldn’t keep on top of things, whatever they’re thinking right.

Often times teachers will get tired, and they will commiserate. They will whine and complain. Either to their peers or to you. And they will come to you with this kind of please just fix this for me mentality, which my coach calls emotional childhood. Where it’s like, just fix it for me. Just solve my problems. Just tell me what to do. It’s kind of like that toddler; mommy just fix it for me. I don’t want to have to figure it out on my own, kind of a thing, right?

So, when we are tired, we’re more likely humans are more likely to just ask somebody to fix it for us. Just tell me what to do. Tell me how to solve it. Fix it for me. Here’s my problem, what’s the solution? So, they’re going to do things like. They’re not going to read the bulletin. Because they are thinking they don’t have time to read it. Or they’re not getting something turned into you on time. Because they got overwhelmed and didn’t have a schedule down, and they forgot. Or you know it got mixed up in the piles, who knows?

So, you, as the leader depending on your own level of emotional resiliency in that moment. You’re going to have thoughts about that action that the teacher took. Right? If they’re complaining to you or they forgot to read the bulletin, or they didn’t get something turned in. If you’re in a space where you are fully fulfilled, and you’re rested, and you’re feeling resilient. You are going to have much more positive thoughts, much more neutral thoughts than you might when your emotional resiliency is low.

So, when you’re tired, and you’re depleted, you’re going to be like, oh man, just why can’t you just do your job? I need you to do what I need you to do. I’ve got my stuff figured out; why can’t you get your stuff figured out? You’re going to come in with that more than you would if you were feeling like, okay, I know they’re exhausted. I know they’re tired, and I can see why they might have overlooked this or forgot to read this, and I understand why they’re complaining. Does that mean you’re going to say yes to all the complaints and yes to all the fix-its? No, but you can understand it.

Which helps you feel compassion for them, right? So, you want to be clear of your emotional levels at that point and understand while teachers are tired and they’re working harder than ever. You can feel compassion for them, you also as a school leader, you are working harder than ever, and you are also tired and want teachers to take ownership for themselves. And what you’re doing out there with your staff is you’re trying to balance this accountability and compassion.

So, on the one hand, you want to support them as much as possible and give them all the love. But, on the other hand, you don’t want to be spending all of your time-solving everybody else’s problems or changing things around so that teachers will feel better, right? We think that if we do something differently, teachers will feel better. We have to let them own their feelings and understand what triggers our emotions. It’s not other people changing things to make us feel better. Fixing our problems, it’s our thoughts about it right.

So, navigating this balance can be tricky. Why it’s so important to implement these strategies to figure out our own resilience to take time away when we need to and keep in mind some perspective on the year. So, I like to tell my clients that you’ve got to work with the staff you got this year. I know it’s what, November, you still have what, six months left. And people are like, oh, this person wasn’t a good hire. Oh, you know, I thought she was going to be amazing, and she’s not. Or they’re just not going to be a fit for my school.

Your brain is already making decisions and judgments about the capacity, quality, and the ability of your people. I like to ask that we work with the staff we have. It’s kind of like our students. You know that whole saying that parents didn’t leave their good kids at home and send the naughty ones. They sent us the ones we have. The same is true with the universe. The universe sent you this group of teachers. Whether you hired them or somebody else hired them, they’re the ones you’ve got.

So, it will behoove you to give this group of teachers you have your all. You want to coach up every time with full capacity before you decide to coach out. You can spend your time thinking that Mr. Jones wasn’t a good hire, or you can put that energy into ensuring that Mr. Jones was a good hire. And finding the way to support his success, encourage him, inspire him, and challenge him in ways that embrace his creativity and capacity, and abilities.

I want to add to the mix in this whole tsunami that on top of all the behaviors from the adults you’re facing staff, community, district, whatever it might be, you also have the added layer of student behaviors. I know this has been a top concern for people. Students are younger humans, and they’re also emotionally drained. And they feel the pressures of the pandemic, school, social interactions, or lack thereof over the last couple of years. But they are trying to solve these problems with younger minds, and they’re at full capacity, these little brains. Right?

So, students are under the same pressures we are. I am going to talk more about this in January. But if you think about it, that pressure that starts at the top pushes down from the feds to the states, the states to the counties, or districts, from the districts down to the sites, from the site leader, you as the principal down to your staff, and the staff pressures down to the kids. And you know who gets crushed, right? The kids and the kids have nowhere to go with this pressure other than to act out or misbehave.

So, keep that in mind. That students are in the same pandemic. They’re in the same school experiences. They’ve had the same social situations. But they don’t have the skillset of an adult and the experience of adults to figure out how to manage their behavior and regulate themselves at all times. You know adults aren’t regulating themselves. So we can’t expect kids, and checking our expectations to ensure that we’re appropriate for our staff and our students is important.

So, what are the solutions to all of this? I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I’ve been coaching on this instantly. So, if you sign up for the Empowered Principal Coaching Program, this is the kind of stuff I’m going to help you with every single week. And I’m going to outline the simple solution and the process for you to hear today, and when you sign up for coaching, we dig into this work at a deeper level. So, the solution to this emotional tsunami is to simply look for the truth of both perspectives.

So, here’s what’s happening, your teachers have a perspective. They’re coming to you with problems they’re facing, and they’re thinking they don’t have the solutions or that there isn’t a solution. And, same with students. And, instead of us either going in and fixing it or being frustrated and kind of sending them back off to kind of figure it out themselves. Or, by resisting it and getting defensive about it and saying that’s not a problem, we want to lean into the truth that both perspectives are valid and true in some way, shape, or form. You want to look for the truth of those teacher concerns.

When teachers tell you, I’ve never seen student behavior like this in my life. I’m normally well managed. Or I normally feel like I have my classroom under control, but it’s taking me a lot longer to teach. You can see the truth in that. It’s like, yeah, absolutely, I get that. I can imagine that it’s a slower pace because we’re coming off of a pandemic. And we feel pressured to go faster when in fact, we’re actually going slower in our minds.

Because we think that we need to be at a certain point at the end of the year vs. meeting the kids where they’re at and going from there and truly implementing social and emotional well-being and learning and fitness, right? So, the simple solution to this emotional wave that we are experiencing with our students and staff is to just lean into the truth—the truth of both sides. Your perspective and there’s. This works with parents, students, teachers, anybody that you are working with.

So, the process for this is a tool that I call how listening. Honest, open, and willing listening. This is where it can feel slightly uncomfortable for you. Because as leaders, we kind of enjoy the fact that we have positional authority. We know what we’re doing. We have been great teachers. We’ve figured out systems. We’ve achieved and accomplished and gone through challenges, and we made it out on top. So, the brain really loves to sit in that space, where we are right, we know what we’re doing, we have the solutions.

How, listening is going to require you to be vulnerable, reflective, to be receiving without fixing, and to practice holding space for other people to share their experience, their truth, their perspective. We have to hold space for their emotions on top of that. So, the process is you listen with the how method, and you sit with the truth as the brain is taking it in.

So, for example, a teacher will come to you and complain about student behavior. That seems to be the trend with all of my clients. Teachers are complaining about student behavior. I can’t get to teaching because these kids are out of control. They’re not following protocols. They’re just talking when they want. They’re not paying attention, whatever, right. So, here’s what happens in our brain’s right, we’re listening, and we’re like, okay, I hear you, but have you tried this? Have you tried that? Did you consider this? Or, you’re thinking this person’s never had classroom management.

Your brain is going to go into this story, right. There’s your reaction to their story, right? What we have to do as leaders is drop our story. Drop our thoughts for just a moment. You just put them aside. You don’t have to drop them forever. You put them aside, and you just listen to their thoughts. And you’re going to feel a sense of defensiveness come up. You’re going to want to jump in and fix it. You’re going to feel an urge to defend or to justify or to tell them they’re wrong. Or tell them they need to figure it out on their own. You’re going to have these urges.

Instead of reacting to them, this is the pause. We sit with that truth. And allow the brain time to actually process it. We want to see the truth. How is it true that this teacher has tried everything and is coming to you with a valid concern? How is it true teachers are experiencing a different set of behaviors and emotional reactions from students than ever before? And once we can lean into that, we’re not agreeing with them. We’re not promising to solve it for them. We’re just noticing how it is true.

Because, once we do that, we see the truth in our perspective, and we see the truth in your teacher’s perspective. Or you can do this with a student or a parent. So, what if it’s true, what that teacher is saying or that parent is saying. Can you find a space where what they are telling you is their honest truth, their perspective? And once you get there, what happens is your body starts to relax, and you can imagine being in the shoes. You can feel how they might be feeling, notice what they might be thinking, you’re seeing how it is true for them in this moment, without judgment.

And this is the moment where solutions will rise to the surface. Because we are open, we’re being how. We’re being honest, open, and willing, and that is what holding space is. That is what being open is. When we’re seeing their truth and our truth, not in conflict with one another but in parallel. And once you feel yourself leaning into the truth of it all, at least for me, my physical experience is that my body starts to relax. It goes into this space of like, oh, yeah, that is true and what I see is true. This is where my brain lets go of trying to control, let’s go of trying to be right, and it gets into this space of problem-solving—looking for interesting, intriguing, innovative solutions, where you are able to think outside the box.

The beautiful result of all of this is that teachers feel heard and seen by you. They feel like you have not necessarily validated them in terms of them being right, but you validated them in the sense of being heard and seen in a way that isn’t telling them they’re wrong and telling them that you are right. It’s showing them how it’s all true. Because it is true that students are reacting emotionally more intensely than ever before, and it is also true that we have work to do to figure out what we are going to do in response to that.

And how we have to change our ways in order to help students change their ways. So, what is happening is that we’re calming down everybody in the room. We’re calming down everybody’s flight or fight response. So, when you calm yours down, and you’re able to see the truth in both, you feel relaxed, and then you can allow other people and invite them in to do the same. And you want to set the stage that both are true. Everyone is right in this scenario. Now, what, and that’s when you get into the problem-solving.

So leading through an emotional tsunami requires your personal work and resilience. It requires you to practice seeing other people’s reactions without judgment and holding space for them. And finally, it requires you to trust the process, let go, and open yourself up honestly, openly, and willingly. To see that yes, teachers do have work to do, and so do we, and so do students. And on the flip side, students are right, teachers are right, and you’re right. That just feels like such a better way to lead your school.

So, if you have questions or you want support with this, I want you to reach out and become an Empowered Principal Coaching Client of mine. You are going to love it. You will feel relief immediately. You guys have listened to the podcasts with the masterminds. I want all of you to know you have support available. You have access to this program at any time, and the sooner you start this process. The more empowered you will feel. The bigger your transformations and the faster you can help others do the same.

And really, the goal of all of this is to help our kiddos and help our teachers experience the institution of education, their careers as students, and as teachers. We want them to have the most empowering, most uplifting experience possible. We’re going to show them how to do that through the empowered principal process. Have an amazing week, and I will talk to you all next week. Bye.

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

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