Ep #76: Reflection Creates Influence

Hello, Empowered Principals, welcome to episode 76.

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 school leaders. Today, we are going to take a moment to celebrate you. And I’m talking some celebration up in here. For many of you, school is out for the year, or at the very least, it’s one of the last days or weeks with students. I know many of you are already out. The rest of you are right there at the end.

And I just want to say, you did this. What a glorious time of year. The kids are with their families on summer break. Teachers are closing up their classrooms for the year. Cleaning crews are coming through the campuses. You know they are. And you are finally going to be able to spend some uninterrupted, or should I say, less interrupted time, finalizing the school year, this past year, and preparing for next year.

June is such an awesome month because it’s the perfect time to slow down and it’s time to reflect and plan and that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today. Last week, we covered what influence is and how to lead with influence and all of the ways you can do that. and this week, we’re going to talk about what kind of influence you want to have so that you can reflect on last year in terms of what worked and what you would like to do differently, and then plan your upcoming year knowing the kind of influence and impact that you want to have on your school and having a plan for how you’re going to approach your school year in creating that influence.

So, let’s think back here a little bit. You went into school leadership with a very conscious, perhaps a subconscious but typically a conscious thought that you wanted to have an influence on your school. Before you became a principal, my guess is that you had some kind of thoughts about how you wanted to improve or change or impact a campus at large, not just a classroom.

Many teachers that I talk with share that they want to change the schedule or they want to change some school-wide routines or they want to increase their copy numbers. They have all these ideas of how they want to run the school and they have thoughts about what would be wonderful to change, impact, improve, whatever. And they want to have a more direct impact on them.

So once you were going from being a teacher into the school principalship, you get into the position, and then you start to see all of the things that you have to take into account and how your decisions impact the school or district at large. And having that influence becomes a little more nebulous and a little more convoluted because you don’t know what you don’t know until you’re in the position.  So that influence that you want to have when you’re in the teaching position, you can’t possibly know how you’re going to do it until you get in. And then once you get in, you’re like, this isn’t everything I thought, or there is so much more to consider.

And so it’s really important to reflect with intention because that is how you build your influence. So, why does reflection matter? It’s a big buzzword in education. We’re always talking about reflecting and having our students reflect and our teachers reflect. But I want to ask you to start with reflection.

And the word reflection just means to cast back – well, what it technically means is you cast back a lighter image and you have careful consideration. So you’re reflecting, you’re looking back either through a mirror or an image, but you’re also reflecting in thought.

Reflection is all about looking back to the past results that we’ve created and carefully considering how we created them. And you guys know this – we know that our thoughts create our results. So we have to look back at what were we thinking during the school year that created the results we achieved.

And if you take of the RE, the prefix “re” and you just have the word “flexion” – so re means to look backwards and to reflect. And the word flexion just means the state of bending. And I love this word. We don’t really sue it very commonly in our language or conversation, but flexion is the state of bending. So when we reflect, we are reviewing our past so that we can bend our thoughts for the future. Isn’t that cool?

So reflection is actually only one part of the process. We need to reflect and look back at how we created our results and what we were thinking and how we were feeling through the process of achieving what we achieved last year. But then we need to forward-flect, or project, new thoughts in order to create different results.

It’s helpful to take note of where you are so that you can decide how you want to be of influence as a leader and why you want to be of that influence as a leader and then determine how you’re going to measure your level of influence. It’s hard to know whether you’re influential or not if you’re not measuring what it is that you’re being of influence, how you’re being of influence, and what impact you’re having.

Remember last week when we identified and defined influence as the ability to inspire people into action? Being a leader who people want to follow is how you become an influencer. You must know the current state of your team and the community so that you can create a plan for the upcoming year. And that current state, that reflection, starts with you taking time to look back and identify the thoughts, feelings, and actions that you were taking that created that level of impact and influence on your team and on your campus.

I want to shout-out to one of my former clients. Her name is Lisa and she and I still keep in touch from time to time, via text mostly. But she continues to amaze me with her willingness to constantly reflect on her practice and reach out when she has questions.

One of our last conversations included a question regarding whether or not she should ask her staff for feedback at the end of the year. And I so commend her for this courage to ask for honest feedback and to reflect on what worked well, what could be improved, and what additional support her staff would like to see, and what additional support she needs in order to create new results for herself for next year.

It takes a lot of courage to ask directly for constructive criticism as the leader. Many people use their positional power and their title to hide behind and they don’t open themselves up for feedback from their team. And I think this is a huge mistake. It sends the message that we’re not willing to do what we ask of others.

This results in the opposite of creating influence. Asking our staff to be open to feedback and change without the willingness to do it ourselves will block our ability to influence and impact. Think about a leader you have had when you were teaching. Were they open to feedback? Did they honestly reflect and share their reflections back with you, which is what I did with my team. I took their feedback, I deeply processed it and then I shared with them my thoughts on their feedback and my reflections about that. Really powerful stuff.

So, do your leaders in your life or in your position, do they do this with you or is it just a one-way street? The kind of leader that you wish to have is the exact leader that you must strive to be. We know this in theory, yet we find it to be a challenge because being the leader we want to have as our own requires exposing our imperfections and we can only share and discuss our imperfections with our staff if we are willing to get to know them and understand them on a personal level.

We need to know what our imperfections are and we need to understand them and understand how they were created so that we can share that back with our team, deeply reflect with ourselves and them and then have a plan to move forward. It’s not about erasing our imperfections or eliminating them. We’ll never be able to do that. It’s about just talking about them, exposing them, because that process is how you improve them.

So, why scheduling reflection in your workday is helpful – we want to talk about this, guys, it’s really important. A school leader’s influence is only as impactful as the leader’s willingness to be open to self-reflection.

It’s how our teachers improve their teaching practices and it’s how we improve our own leadership practices. You cannot expect others to reflect and adjust if you aren’t willing to do it yourself.

You guys, I know it’s scary, but diving right in and leaning into their feedback or leaning into your own thoughts on reflection is super powerful for them and it opens up the door to allow them to expose their imperfections to you. So this is the way I look at it. You are going to get feedback one way or another.

You’re either going to get it from yourself or if you’re hiding and you’re blind to it and you don’t want to open it and look at it, then you’re going to get the feedback from others, one way or another. So in the end, it’s much easier and faster to be honest with yourself and provide yourself time for self-reflection and self-feedback.

If you are willing to regularly practice self-reflection as a means to having more influence and more impact, then you will proactively have created your own improvement plan. And this way – this is what I love. This way, when your superintendent gives you feedback, you can look at him or her in the eye and say yes, I have reflected on this aspect of my leadership and my plan to address is this way, x, y, z.

So self-reflection helps reduce that shock and embarrassment or shame, whatever bad feeling that you feel when you receive feedback that you weren’t expecting. If you’re willing to observe and name your strengths and your areas of growth, then you won’t have to be so surprised if and when you receive feedback from somebody else on them.

Now look, we all have blind spots. And those are just areas of our life that we just can’t see. We don’t know what we don’t know, right? And so sometimes you will get hit with unexpected feedback and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that you’re self-reflecting incorrectly or you’re doing it wrong. It just means that you’re human.

And I’m going to say a shameless plug as to why people benefit from hiring a coach. Your coach, who is your biggest fan and cheerleader and who you hire to have in your corner and on your side to help you find these blind spots and uncover them so that you can work through them without having to wait to hear it from your boss or somebody else out in the world.

You will get the feedback one way or another, but having a coach who does it from a loving space and coaches you through the emotions of having to see your weaknesses and having to practice and reflect and refine and improve your processes and your approach to overcome those weaknesses, having somebody on your side to do that is priceless.

Okay, enough of the endless plug. How to reflect. I’m just going to give you some general steps on how to reflect and this is a process I use with my private clients all of the time. It’s the perfect time to do this, guys, because it’s the end of the year. You’ve got summer, you’ve got time to relax and really enjoy this process and get yourself really jazzed up for the upcoming year.

So step one is to reflect. You’re going to think back to this past year and reflect on basically two things. It’s not hard to do. One, you’re going to write down everything big and small that went well. You’re going to ask yourself why did these things go well, what was I thinking about this situation, and what was good about these things? Why did it feel good? Why was it a success? How are you measuring that that situation or that accomplishment was successful?

So go through the process with all of the great things that happened this year. All of the good, all of the accomplishments, the goals, things that you didn’t thought would happen that did, things that went well, all of it. Then you’re going to do the same process. Everything big and small with the things that didn’t go as well.

And ask yourself again, why didn’t they go well? What was I thinking and feeling? How did I approach this problem? What didn’t work? What about these situations were a problem? What happened in these scenarios? And just be honest with yourself. What do you think happened and why?

Answer those questions and if you feel bad through this process, it’s okay. That’s normal. You can feel bad and still reflect and be like okay, I’m learning, this is just learning. Nothing has gone wrong. I’m just learning about what I want to do better in order to have more influence.

So you want to identify what strengths you had based on the past year that you want to tap into, and then you want to also look at what you would like to do differently based on what didn’t go well and how you would like to adjust. Once you have done all of that, another time or day or journaling session, you want to take step two, and that is to create the vision.

You want to create an ideal work year, month, week, day. You want to dream of how good it can possibly be like, out of this world, outstanding. So how do you want your year as a school leader to look like? How do you want it to feel like? What would be an amazing year for you?

And I want you to spend some time exploring what you want to create for your new school year. What would life be like? What would the impact of achieving your goals be? What goals do you have? Fully imagine having knocked it out of the park this year. Everyone’s cheering you on. I want you to get a very clear vision of what that year would look like.

What would you be doing, saying, wearing? What would you be spending your time on? Who would you be involved with? What would you be working on? What successes would you have? How would you be celebrating them? Put it all down. That is so fun to do.

And then step three, you want to tap into your future feelings. So if you’re successful, how will I feel? If you go after it and you don’t accomplish the goals, how are you going to feel? What about this question? I just thought of a new one. What if you go for it and you achieve it? How are you going to feel?

What if you don’t even try to go for it and you just keep doing the same things over and over because you don’t want to take massive action towards a new goal or you don’t want to have to try something new and fail? How will it feel to not have tried? Awful. Don’t do it.

So, other questions to ask yourself. What’s outside of my comfort zone that I need to get good at, that I need to learn, that I want to try even though it’s uncomfortable? And then what would the perfect outcome for 2019 school year be? And if you knew that it was going to happen no matter what, what would you do?

If the results that you wanted for next year were in the bag, as good as done, how would you show up? What kind of school leader would you be? Who would you be to your staff, to your parents, to your district admin, to your support staff, to the kids? What kind of school leader would you be?

And when if you were already in that person’s body, if you were the person who were already doing that, what would you be thinking and feeling? And I want you to ask yourself this because the way that you get to change is by thinking in a way that a person who has what you already have is already thinking.

So, what would you be thinking and feeling if you had already achieved your goals and do those thoughts and feelings match? And what I mean by that is do the thoughts that you think you’ll be thinking match the emotions? Because the key here is this; your real goal here is to achieve a feeling. An emotion. So you have to make sure the thoughts you think that you’ll be thinking when you’re feeling that emotion match.

So if that list of thoughts that you are thinking matches the feelings, then you’re onto something. If not, just adjust slightly. And I want you to choose one thought and emotion combo that you’ve created and write a journal entry as if it were already true today in your life because this is what creates the evidence in your life that right now, that thought can be true today.

Do this every day because the more you focus on the possibility of whatever you want, whatever influence you want in your life and at school, the more probable it actually becomes. And one last little caveat here. Don’t let your brain fool you. You need to focus on what you want to have ahead of time because the way that we create new endings is by thinking future forward.

It’s by reflecting on who we would be in that moment and what you focus on is what you create. So play with this and see how much reflection and projection can help you improve your experience and your influence as a school leader. Have a great week everybody. I’ll talk to you soon.

Hey, quick question, what do you want to be saying and doing and thinking and feeling one year from now? Have you thought about that? Or is your career simply on rinse and repeat? Do you plan out your school year, your career goals, your personal goals, and your fun goals? Or are you the person who looks back and thinks, “Wow, I have been doing the same thing over and over and over for the last five to 10 years, what happened? Where did the time go?”

If so, June is the absolute perfect time to reflect on last year and set new intentions in place for the next school year. If there’s any area within your job or your life where you would love to change or make improvements, now is the time to set those changes into motion while you have the luxury of time to plan and process and play.

If you’re curious what life coaching for school leaders looks like, let’s jump on a call together and talk about your biggest dreams and goals for yourself. You want to start today so that a year from now, you’re not saying to yourself, “I wish I had started a year ago.”

There’s no one else out there who offers this type of support for school leaders that I offer you. Sign up for a call before summer is over and you’re bogged down with the demands of the school year once again. It will be the best way to have spent your summer. It’s all about saying yes to you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit www.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.