Ep #282: Getting Yourself to Plan in Advance

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 282. 

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

Well, hello my empowered leaders. Happy Tuesday. How are you? I’m amazing. It’s May. It is finally warming up over here on the West Coast. I know some of y’all are having some cold weather. But we are having gorgeous weather as I’m recording this, which is in the middle of April. Actually the end of April already, my goodness. 

But I’m thrilled that summer is finally here. I hope you are having an amazing week. If you’re new to the podcast, welcome. I can’t believe the number of people who are pouring into the Empowered Principal® community and the Empowered Principal® just lifestyle. I love it.

Y’all are signing up for consults. Y’all are diving in, coming into the community Facebook group. My clients, the people that are coming in, they’re incredible. I am so honored to be their coach, and honored to be here on the podcast with you. I could not love my job in my life more. Everything is so good right now. 

So we’re going to talk about getting yourself to plan in advance because this is something that I go back and forth on. I’m actually a very good planner. I like to have a plan. I like to be planned in advance. I like to have my calendar mapped out. I love to have my travel and all of that booked early in advance. But sometimes life creeps up. All of a sudden, I feel like I’m kind of reacting and having to get things done in the moment. It feels very messy and scattered for me. 

So I just want you to know, I’m there with you. There are times when I’m planned and organized, and it feels really aligned and clear and clean. I feel like I’m ahead. Then there’s other times where things unexpectedly pop up. I hadn’t really planned on that. I feel a little bit behind. 

So I want to talk about that today. I had a great conversation with one of my clients about getting herself to plan in advance. So I wanted to share with you the context of that conversation. One, just so you can get a feel for what coaching feels like on a regular basis and the kinds of things you can get support on in a coaching session. But also, just to give you the answer. To let you know, here’s how you get yourself to plan in advance. 

So my client was just sharing with me. She’s got a plan this next thing, and planning doesn’t feel good. One of the things that I teach here in the Empowered Principal® program is the three year plan and the three month plan. We break down your life and leadership legacy plan, which is a three year plan. We break that down into years, school years. Then we break that down into seasons. I call those three month plans or 90 Day plans. 

When you do the plan, the first time you do the plan, you have to get yourself on board to sit down and do the tedious work of planning. But then you feel that rush of like I’m planned. It feels so good. I’m aligned. I’m ahead of schedule. I know what I’m doing. People love that. But every time when it’s time to sit down and do the planning, the brain wants to argue and say oh, I don’t want to do this. So tedious. There’s so much to do and not enough time. 

So my client was in this. She had done a 90 day plan, a three month plan, and then she was resistant to doing another one. So here’s what we talked about. She said, “I thought that planning would feel good.” Like when she puts planning on her calendar, it feels really good to say oh, on Friday from nine to 11, I have a two hour window. I’m going to knock out my three month plan. That feels good to have it on the calendar. But when Friday morning at nine o’clock rolls around, the planning doesn’t feel as good. 

I asked her. I said what is your brain saying? She said ugh. It just says ugh. It feels heavy. I get really stiff inside my body. So I said okay, let’s just acknowledge that. The brain is kind of in a little tantrum. It doesn’t want to sit down and do the planning. It’s like when you’re in, I don’t know, English class and you have to write the essay. 

The hardest part of writing an essay is sitting down and initiating momentum. It’s dreadful to think that you have something you have to complete when you haven’t started it yet because there’s no momentum. What has to happen is you have to cross that start line and get yourself to sit down just long enough to do something that creates momentum. 

So one of the first things you can do when you’re feeling dread about planning, you probably have planning on your calendar. Then you’re thinking how awful it feels to actually plan because it’s boring, and it’s tedious. It’s time consuming, and you feel really overwhelmed. You get confused, and you’re not sure how you should get it done. Right? The brain just blurts out all of these reasons why it’s too awful, and you shouldn’t do it. That planning is a terrible idea. Okay.

So when that happens, the first thing you can do is just what is the first step? How can I break this down? What’s the one thing I need to plan? Now, when you’re thinking about that plan, and you’re thinking about what’s the one thing I need to do, what you’ll notice is the brain kind of says oh, okay. The one next thing, I can handle that. I don’t have to look at all of the things. I have to look at the one next thing.

So for my client, in this instance, she said, I’ve got April and May. It’s set. I’m worried about June. June, there’s a million things. It needs to have its own 90 day plan because there’s 90 days worth of work in a one month period. So I said okay, we can make June a separate plan. That’s fine. You’ve got April and May ready. Let’s do June. Let’s just do June. We’re not going to do June, July, August. We’re just going to do June. What’s the first step? 

The reason I say what’s the first step is it calms the brain down. It gets the brain out of fight or flight, and it calms it down and it gets it into like okay, what can I do here? What is possible? What is achievable? So that I don’t feel overwhelmed. 

We’re trying to step out of the overwhelm cycle for a second, just long enough to take a breath and jump back into a success cycle. What can I do? Okay. So the first thing we did was we coached on what is her opinion of June. She actually loved it. I thought she was gonna say I hate it. It’s so busy. There’s so much to do. It’s exhausting. I’m depleted by the end of the month.

But she said, I actually do love it because it wraps up the school year. She can finish up all the things. She doesn’t have the pressure of students being on campus, staff being on campus. Summer school’s there at her campus, but they don’t really need her. It’s just a part of what’s going on on the buzz of her campus. But what really was coming up for her was that she actually does have the time to sit down and plan, but her brain was in resistance to the planning. 

Okay, does this happen to you? If it does, welcome to the club. Everybody’s brain is doing it. Okay, so what do we need to do? We need to say okay, I understand you don’t want to do this, but we’re going to do the one next step. 

So I asked her the question: what does she need to have planned out by June, and what would be awesome? If there’s one thing that would be planned for and executed or completed by the end of June, what would it be? She said really, it’s just having the school year mapped out. I want to sit down in the month of June and map out July through June of next year, in an outline form. Not every single detail, but she did want to have an idea of the school year. 

I asked her why. She said how amazing would that feel to feel like your year has been planned out? Another big issue that came up for her. I thought this was brilliant. I could probably do an entirely separate podcast on this. But I asked her what causes you the most stress when it’s not planned? Because I wanted to get to that one essential element. 

What she said was her staff meeting content. She said all year long she was putting off procrastinating planning her staff meeting. So a staff meeting time would come up in the calendar, and she just felt that dread of it not being done and not knowing what to say or do. Feeling like it was going to be a waste of time because she hadn’t planned it. There’s so much content. What should she prioritize? 

You know all of that buzz that goes on in your head or on staff meetings. We want them to be productive for you, productive for your staff. We want them walking away knowing more than they did when they left, or having a plan where they didn’t by the time they leave that meeting. 

So we talked about that. Let’s map out your staff meetings, activities, topics. I’ll tell you more about how that ended in a minute because it’s so valuable, and I hope that all of you do this. But we stayed on the coaching track.

So some of the things I want to share with you directly about coaching is that sometimes a coaching call is about walking away with an action plan, having done it on the call. Sometimes I’m gonna say to you let’s just do it. Let’s just do it right here, right now. Then it’s done. Band-aid’s ripped off. I’ll help you with it. We’ll coach on it, and we’ll move past it. 

Other times, I keep you in the lane of coaching. So we don’t actually do the work on the 30 minute call. What we do is I coach your brain on it so that your brain can get on board so that you can then go and do the work you need to do after the call. Okay. 

So with this client, I was keeping her in the coaching lane. I said what does planning create for you? Why is it valuable? I want to sell her brain on the value of sitting down and doing the tedious work of coaching. I want her to see the benefit of the planning. So what does the planning create for you? What is the benefit? What is the outcome you’re looking for? Why is it better to plan than not to plan? 

She said well, it gives me direction. It really aligns us with who we are as a school and where we’re headed. It aligns to our school vision. It helps me to be more consistent with my school vision and our plan. I said that is amazing. Write that down. 

Then how does it feel when you have that alignment, when it helps you be more consistent, when it helps you define who you are, and communicate that message consistently. Giving your school direction, aligning yourself to that school vision and knowing you’re on track, how does that feel? She said, confident. I said what’s the thought driving the confident? She said I can do it. I have clarity. I can do this. I know who I am, what I’m doing, how I’m leading where I’m taking my school and my staff. This is everything. 

What happens when you explore a concept like planning out your school year or making yourself sit down and plan in advance is that your self-concept evolves as a leader. How you see yourself as a leader actually expands. You’re like oh, I’m the leader who sits down and plans out three months in advance, no questions asked. There’s no struggle or drama in my head. I just do it because it feels so good, and it makes me a better leader. I just love it. This is just who I am. Right. 

So you sell yourself on how planning is just as important, if not more important, than not planning, the benefits of that plan, and bonus, this is always one thing I like to tell my clients. How is planning, the activity of planning, just as fun as actually implementing the plan?

Because what we really want to do as school leaders is take action. We want to be implementing the plan, doing the things, being in motion. What we don’t want to do is be sitting there and having to hash out priorities, values, the goals, the details. What are the mini tasks that all have to be done in order for this goal to be inevitable, to be achievable? 

That’s asking our brain to get to work, to think outside the box, to push boundaries in our brain, to expand what we think is possible, to explore alternative ideas, thoughts, solutions, resources. We have to be more resourceful, and the brain’s like oh, but I just like the status quo. I just want things to be easy and doable and comfortable. I don’t want change. I don’t like change. I don’t want to have to work. 

The brain’s job is number one to protect you. It wants to keep you safe. It wants things to be as easy as possible. It hates change. It just doesn’t like any of that. So it’s going to resist you when you want to sit down and have to plan out the future. It’s going to tell you things like that’s too far in advance. How are we ever going to know? We can’t possibly map out a whole year. Too many things unexpected. The district’s going to change direction anyway, so why bother? 

If this is you, you need to be in this program. I teach you how to maintain your school vision and maintain control of your calendar no matter what. Okay, there’s a very specific process that I use to teach you. So if you are a principal who wants to have the entire year mapped out and then broken down into four 90 Day plans so that you can execute your plan with precision and make those goals inevitable, the Empowered Principal® program is for you. 

Come on into the Facebook group. Sign up for a consult. Sign up for coaching. Invest in yourself so that you can invest in your future so that you can become a more valuable principal. The more valuable you are, the more money you can make. Did you know that? 

I create more valuable principals so that you can go out into the world and forever make more money because you’re in higher demand because you have more value to offer. You create results faster. You problem solve more quickly. You make decisions with more clarity and consistency. You communicate more effectively. You just become more valuable. That is the brilliance of this program. 

So, come on in. Let’s go. We’re going to plan out your year. We’re going to plan out your three month plan. You’re going to be staffed, ready to go, have fun over the summer. Oh, and by the way, the Facebook group, one of the things I do is I do a Summer of Fun challenge. 

Be in that group because I get all these fun gifts. We post all of the fun we’re having. I give a fun challenge of the week to help you commit to having fun, letting yourself enjoy your summer, and to show you that it’s possible to be a school leader and enjoy the journey all the way through. Not just in the summer, but all year long. 

So join us in the Facebook group. Sign up for coaching. Now is the time so you can get that three month plan in now Before school starts and you feel behind in the fall. This is the perfect time to sign up. When you sign up and you say yes to coaching before the end of May, you get one free month of coaching. Absolutely free as a bonus just because I want you ahead of the game. 

I want your plan in place so that you can relax and enjoy the summer knowing you have a plan. You know exactly what you’re doing and what direction you’re taking your career and your school. All right. Have an amazing week. I’ll talk to you guys real soon. Take good care. 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.