Ep #383: Brand New Leaders: What You Need to Know

Hello Empowered Principals. Welcome to episode 383. 

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. So happy to be here with you. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to this week’s podcast. I’m going to dive right into today’s topic. I am specifically going to speak to first-year school leaders.

Now, I’m going to say this right now so you don’t turn the podcast off. If you are a veteran principal or you are a principal or a district leader who have principals who are coming in new, listen to this, see if it resonates with you, and if so, please share it with them. We do not want our brand new leaders to suffer unnecessarily. The job is very hard. It is hard to be new at anything.

And we want to give all the love, all the support, but give them the mindset, the skill set, the knowledge, the information and the mental and emotional tools and strategies and regulation systems that they need to be successful. So whether you are a brand new person, you just got hired, you’re a brand new principal and this is your first year going into the summer and the fall. I record these in the spring because this is when you get hired. 

This is when all of your energy is very high, very enthusiastic. You’re looking forward to the position. You’re still trying to wrap up your teaching position or your coaching position, whatever position you’re in now, but you’re anticipating all of the glory of stepping into the role of administrator.

And I want to talk real talk with you about this position, about what to expect, about what you want to know walking in. And these aren’t just little tips like these are the first ninety days and this is what you should do in the first ninety days. These are more mindset strategies and being emotionally and mentally prepared for what you are about to embark on.

So, district leaders out there, if you have new principals coming in, invite them to listen to the podcast. Invite them to consider joining EPC. You want them to be successful off the bat. We don’t want brand new principals out here struggling and suffering and then getting into doubt and disbelief in themselves to think they’re not cut out for school leadership or they don’t have what it takes because they don’t have any level of knowledge and support. 

And being new is really hard. Think about this. First year teaching, really hard. The first time you ever tried to drive a car, really hard. So many buttons and signals. The first time you drove by yourself. The first time you did anything. First time you auditioned for something, the first time you interviewed was really scary.

First times are scary. They’re hard. We don’t know what to expect. We have the knowledge as veteran principals. So let’s get this podcast into the hands of all the new school leaders out there who are just getting hired. They’re so excited, they’re enthusiastic. And let’s support them and help them step into the identity of a leader.

If you are still aspiring to be a leader, if you are applying to be a leader and you have not yet been hired and perhaps you’re a little discouraged or a little disappointed, I want to offer the Aspiring School Leadership Series. I recorded it back in March. I run this program every year to support people who want to transition from teaching into administration to get your mindset and your skill set and your leadership identity and your expectations and all of your values in alignment so that you are prepared for the interview preparation and the interview process. 

And I teach some skills and I teach some preparations that might be a little different than what you have heard to do in the past when it comes to preparing for interviews and navigating the interview process. So if you’re interested in that, please reach out, let me know. I’ll get your hands on that, okay?

So, my sweet brand new school principals, my empowered brand new principals out there. Let me start by sharing this with you. When you accepted the school leadership job offer, when you got the yes and you said yes, it was a match. It was a want match. They wanted you, you wanted them. It’s a match. You said yes, you signed on the dotted line and you got the job.

When you accepted that role as a school leader for the first time, you have also accepted the invitation to a personal development journey. And let me expand on this. Leadership, being a leader, stepping into a leadership identity and a leadership role. That role requires you to develop yourself. It invites you to the expansion and the evolution of you personally.

Professional development at its core actually is personal development. Because you can go and you can learn information and knowledge and skills and concepts and platforms and ideas to build you up professionally, but what really happens is you expand your capacity as a leader or you expand your capacity as a teacher. And that happens only when you expand yourself personally. When you are open to learning, when you are willing to get it wrong until you get it right. When you’re willing to implement something and have it be messy and a little awkward and a little clumsy and a little bumpy and a little crunchy.

That requires personal development. It requires you to develop yourself and maturely approach your professionalism. It requires maturity and personal growth to be vulnerable and to allow people to give you feedback and to observe you and to try new things you haven’t tried before in front of somebody. That’s very vulnerable, but that is a personal development skill.

There are teachers who get their skill set and then they close down. They don’t want anybody in their rooms, they don’t want any feedback. They’re offended by it or they’re hurt by it or they’re afraid of it. That’s not personal growth. That’s not professional growth.

Gaining the skills that you need as a leader, it requires personal development. The internal work, the emotional regulation, the mental mindset, the mental regulation to build up your leadership identity and your leadership capacity.

Now think about this in terms of being a teacher. As a teacher, when you were first starting out, you didn’t have the identity of being a strong, capable, confident teacher. You went in with all of your hopes and dreams and you were very excited and you had all of your theory, and then the children walked in and it became very difficult.

You’re like, wait a minute. I was told that this song was going to get everybody in line and I was told that this little chant was going to get everybody to clean up and I really thought that reality meets expectation. And in the middle where those two collide is overwhelm, confusion, disappointment, discouragement, disbelief, a little bit of shock. There is a collision that happens.

We’re going to talk about that more in a minute. But your identity as a teacher, I’m a teacher who? I’m the teacher that, who are you as a teacher? It developed. Your identity developed over time. Your capacity to teach over time. And as that expanded and as you got more comfortable internally, your external actions, your external approach, your external results then caught up.

The internal always goes first. It always starts. So as a leader, there is a lot of internal work that you will be invited into, okay? So just know this. I want you to know this in advance. It’s going to feel highly uncomfortable. I want you right now before you step in to the role, thinking about your leadership identity. Who are you as a leader? How do you define yourself? I’m a brand new leader. That’s my identity. It’s my first year.

That’s okay. Everybody knows it’s your first year. You just got hired. They’ve seen your resume. They put the math together. They know you’re brand new. You don’t have to pretend. You don’t have to fake it till you make it because everybody knows that you’re new. So embrace being new. View yourself as new, allow that. What do you believe about yourself? You can be new and capable. You can be new and confident. You can be new and courageous. You can be new and open.

You can be both, the land of and. What do you believe about education? This is going to require you, this position, you’re up-leveling yourself. This is a transformation in progress right now. You have to really think about what are my belief systems? What do I value? What is my philosophy? What is my approach? Who do I want to be? When I envision myself in this school leadership position, what do I envision? What do I agree with? What do I disagree with?

This all will come up in your work and identity. Identity work, leadership identity is one of the components of The Empowered Principal Collaborative, EPC. You hear me talk about it every single week and it’s because I want all of you to have the support to be willing to be open and transparent and vulnerable and expand your identity, expand your capacity, evolve yourself personally so that you can evolve yourself professionally and increase your influence and your impact and your legacy.

We talk about all of these things in EPC. So contemplating this spring into the summer, what is my capacity to lead? What is my mental capacity? What is my emotional capacity? Your emotional capacity is going to be stretched to the limit. It happened when you were a teacher and now it’s exponentially going to happen as a school leader.

And I’m not saying this to scare you off. I’m saying this to invite you into reflection, to invite you into exploration and curiosity about where you’re at right now and to be prepared for it. So that when it happens and you get stretched to your limit, can I handle this mentally, emotionally, physically? Can I handle this leadership position? Am I capable? Your brain is going to question it all because you will get stretched to the limit. Your mental capacity to manage your mind, your emotion and actions are going to be tested and conditioned over and over.

Be prepared. Leadership to me is a form of mental and emotional boot camp. That’s what I tell my leaders. I said, you have been invited and you have accepted the mission of mental and emotional boot camp. Welcome to school leadership. It is an invitation to grow stronger, to be the hero in your professional career journey, to strengthen your trust within yourself and within others, to develop this deep sense of identity and certainty and assurance from within because the storms will come. 

Are you tethered? Are you grounded? Are you centered with who you are? Do you feel good about you so that you can weather the storm when other people have different opinions about who you should be and what you should say and what you should do and where you should focus and how you should spend your time and energy and the things you should prioritize and the hours that you should work and the availability that you should have? It’s all coming.

You need to know this. You need to know that you are going to be overwhelmed. And I know you think about it now, but the reality of being in the overwhelm versus thinking about being in overwhelm, two different things. You’re going to have weeks upon weeks where you feel completely exhausted. You’re going to doubt yourself and your decision to become a leader. You’re going to cry. Let it happen. Let yourself cry. Go home or close your office door. If the tears are coming and let them out. It’s a release of emotional energy. It is a requirement of leadership.

And I’m talking to the males out there too. Boys, men, gentlemen, no matter how you identify, tears are an emotional release. They are an energetic release. They are safe. They’re not going to hurt you and in fact, they make you stronger. Because when you’re not afraid to cry, when you’re not afraid to express emotion. Now, I’m not saying have a meltdown in front of everybody. That’s not emotional maturity. That’s not emotional leadership.

Emotional regulation is finding the space and the time, but giving yourself the grace of being human and feeling those tears and feeling the burn. You’re going to want to quit. It’s going to happen. You’re going to feel the need to quit. The teachers feel it, you’re going to feel it. Everyone feels it at some moment in their career. I’m done with this. I can’t take this anymore. I’m over it. I’m going to go sip Mai Tais in Hawaii and run a surf shop. We all think somewhere out there is better than this place right now when it’s really bad. You’re going to want to quit, but you won’t. And maybe you will and that’s okay too.

You’re going to have the most painful moments. I want you to know this so that when it happens, you’re not shocked and surprised or you don’t think something’s gone wrong with you. You are going to want to justify yourself, argue with people, defend yourself, explain yourself to ad nauseum because people are going to be wrong about you. You will want people to like you and they won’t. You will be asked to do things by your district that feel out of alignment for you. You are going to be questioned and criticized and judged and talked about and hated. Welcome to the club. But you can handle it. You’re here. This is why I created EPC because it feels like death when you go into school leadership, but it is not. You can handle it. You can handle the emotions.

Because here’s what is equally true. While all the hard things are going to happen and invite you into emotional regulation mastery, mental capacity mastery, decision-making mastery, leadership mastery, time, balance, planning mastery, it’s going to invite you to master yourself as a leader, to master your skill set, to master your mindset, to master your emotions. 

Here’s what’s equally true. You will also figure it out. You will learn how to listen to your body and you will know the difference between I’m avoiding something so I feel tired versus I need rest and recovery. You’re going to get intimate with your body’s needs if you tune in. You’ll know when it’s time for play, time for rest, time for work. You will learn to listen to the cues within your body when you tune in and you go inward. Am I just avoiding something so I want to, you know, take a nap? Or am I actually really tired and the best thing I could do right now is take a nap? There’s a difference.

You will develop a deeper relationship with yourself. You will be invited to actually trust yourself, love yourself, forgive yourself, be kind to yourself, be gentle with yourself, be patient with yourself. Because the alternative is torture. You will torture yourself. 

You will be cruel and unkind and your words will be harsh, the criticism will be harsh, the judgment, the insufficiency you feel, the incapacity, you’ll point it all out to yourself. It’s all about what you didn’t get done versus what you did and what you didn’t accomplish versus what you did. You will focus on all the what didn’t happens and all the coulda, shoulda, wouldas. So this work invites you into a deeper, more loving, kind relationship with yourself.

You will gain perspective, knowledge, wisdom, and strength. You can’t look back. You’ve been called, you’re in. Now, the journey begins. Let it open you up. Be open to broadening your perspective, broadening your knowledge, broadening your wisdom, broadening your strength. Let yourself be conditioned. You’re going to understand as you navigate school leadership that emotions are the hardest part of the job. 

It feels like it’s the adults on campus and we joke about it in EPC. It’s not the kids, it’s the adults. But the only reason the adults feel any different than the children is because we have different thoughts about adults and what they should be able to do. When truly no one’s teaching this. We don’t have rites of passage from infancy to toddlerhood and toddlerhood to elementary and elementary into middle school. We don’t teach children and young adults and then adults how to transition and the skill set, the internal skill set that they will need to navigate.

So it isn’t the people as much as it is how we feel about dealing with the people, the emotions that come up and can we handle and can we navigate and can we allow the intensity of emotional experience that we’re about to embark on? I promise you your body was designed and wired to handle it. It will feel uncomfortable. It will feel restless. It will feel like you cannot take it. It’s going to feel like you want Novocain. You just want to numb it out. But you will be able to navigate these emotions. 

What you will learn is that you can handle any emotion that comes your way, which means you can handle any situation that comes your way. The only reason we’re ever afraid of a situation is because of what we think it will make us feel and there are feelings we don’t want to feel. We don’t want to be embarrassed. We don’t want to be humiliated. We don’t want to be criticized. We don’t want to be wrong. We don’t want to mess things up and have to be feel remorse or guilt. We don’t want to feel incompetent or insufficient. We don’t want to feel angry, frustrated. We try to avoid so many emotions. But when you’re not afraid of the emotion anymore, you’ll know that you can handle it. Like, uh oh, here comes embarrassment again. I know what it feels like. Uh oh, I’m really disappointed. I can allow this. I’ve been disappointed before. I can handle it.

You are going to want to quit, but you won’t. There will be something inside of you when you do this work that will compel you. It’s just like when you start going to the gym and in the beginning it’s really hard and then all of a sudden you kind of like going because you feel stronger and you feel healthier and you know people and you’re saying hello and it feels like it’s becoming a part of your identity and you’re not afraid of the weights. 

You’re not afraid of going up and wait and even if you can’t lift it, you don’t make it mean that the world is coming to an end or there’s something wrong with your muscles or with you. You’re just learning to grow. You’re strengthening, conditioning yourself. And you will be so freaking proud of yourself for going through this work. The emotional boot camp, the mental boot camp, the physical boot camp. You will expand your capacity.

Do you know that your capacity is limitless? We think like, oh I can’t take anymore, I can’t do anymore. There’s no more I can fit in. There’s only so much time, there’s only so much energy. What if your energy was limitless? What if your capacity could continue to expand? What if you could get more done in less time because you weren’t spinning out in trying to avoid the emotion, trying to circumvent the emotion, or sitting in the emotion and getting stuck in it and indulging in it for days or weeks on end. You’re going to learn how to reconcile and heal those moments of pain and grief and frustration and embarrassment, all of the yucky feels. You will learn how to learn from them, how to reconcile them.

Now, some of the steps you’re going to be told to do, this is what I was told. This is where this is coming from. I was told this, learn all you can about the staff, get to know them, know the school mission, know the school vision, know the school philosophy, get to know the students, get to know the families. Absolutely. Review all the test scores, know the data of the school. Absolutely. Come up with a ninety day plan for your first ninety days. That’s a beautiful idea. 

Share your vision and plan with the community. That tends to happen. You definitely do these things. Build relationships, of course, and fix the problems on that campus because the reason you got hired was everyone’s going to come at you. This is a problem. This is a problem. This is a problem. This is a problem. This is a problem. This is a problem. This is a problem. And we would like you as the brand new leader to fix it all. Thank you very much. Welcome. Have a nice day.

These are all the things that you can and you will want to do. I’m one hundred percent on board. And I’m going to share with you some things that you may want to consider that might not come up in your what should I do first conversations. 

Number one, expectations versus reality. I mentioned this earlier, there’s going to be a gap in what you expect the school leadership experience to be and the reality of what it is. Just know this in advance so that when your brain gets confused and life feels totally out of alignment and out of control from what you thought the experience was going to be, you can remind yourself that this would happen. There is going to be a collision of your expectations and what you think it’s going to look and feel like versus the reality of what it looks and feels like.

So know that it’s normal. It’s supposed to happen. And all that’s happening is that being a school leader doesn’t feel good all the time. And we say we know this. When we get hired, and for those of you veterans listening, we said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know. It’s kind of like when you’re expecting a child for the first time in a family and the parents are like, yeah, yeah, we know. We’re going to be tired. It’s going to be hard. We know. We get it. We get it. We’re reading up on it. And then the baby comes and mom and dad are like, holy moly guacamole. What is happening to my life right now? 

That’s what school leadership feels like. We think we know it’s not going to feel good and we think we can envision how we’re going to handle it. But when it actually goes into real time, reality time and it doesn’t feel good and our bodies and minds go into dysregulation and we feel terrible and we’re freaking out, we think something’s gone very wrong, that we’ve done something wrong or we’re not cut out or we’re not the right fit. 

This isn’t the right school for me. I need to go back to teaching. Your brain is going to tell you something’s gone wrong. You know, danger, danger. Go backwards, retreat. Put up the white flag. Go back to what’s comfortable and familiar. Go back to teaching. I should have stayed. I shouldn’t have done this.

No, that’s normal. It’s going to happen. Just when it does happen, just know nothing’s gone wrong. You are right on track. And just tell yourself when it happens. Ooh, this is the part that is really uncomfortable. It’s just like my first years of teaching. It was really hard to be a new teacher and it’s really hard to be a new principal. But I knew it was going to be hard. I didn’t know how to anticipate it, but here it is. Being new at anything is hard. Being new and not knowing how to do the job is how you figure out how. That’s how you become the person who knows. You only know how to be a school leader by doing it and learning and expanding your capacity. 

So the solution to all of this is allow yourself to acknowledge and validate how you’re feeling. Do not dismiss the doubt, the fear, the pain, the disillusion, the shock, the overwhelm, the fatigue, all of those feelings that you feel as a brand new principal, validate them. It doesn’t mean you get to go home and sleep in the middle of the day if you’re super exhausted, but it does mean you can say like, I’m really feeling tired. I’m really feeling tired. I am going to insist and schedule in some extra sleep on this weekend. Or I’m going to go home early one night this week and go to bed at 8:00 and really get a good night’s sleep. 

Let yourself have time and space to process your emotions. Let yourself cry it out. Do not think that a leader who is strong or a leader who is good is somebody who doesn’t feel emotions. It’s the opposite. They are very skilled and very competent at regulating their emotion. And part of emotional regulation is emotional release, whether that’s taking a walk, taking a break, getting a good cry in, getting a good night’s sleep and resting your brain so it can be fresh. And of course, the emotional regulation mastery component, the pillar in EPC, that will definitely help you.

This really is the time to join, you guys. To get these tools in advance so that going into the job, you’ve already got them. Number two, overwhelm is going to happen. It’s inevitable. Don’t think that you’ve got this and you were a teacher and you weren’t overwhelmed, so you’re not going to be overwhelmed in leadership because it will come and slap you upside the face and you will be shocked. There literally is in a school leadership position too much to do. So please, make peace with that right off the back. 

The sooner you realize the demands will always outweigh what you can get done. There will always be something, there will always be a problem to solve, there will always be a demand for you to fulfill. Accept that. Make peace with it. Now what? Now that it’s too much, what do I do? When we accept the reality that there’s too much to do and too many possibilities of options for you to work, then you will accept that you need to plan and prioritize and constrain and delegate. 

And these things are things that most principals do not want to do, especially in the first year. You’re going to tell yourself, these are the tasks where your brain says, we don’t have time for that. We can’t do that. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know where to start. It doesn’t matter anyway because my schedule gets off track. Your brain will not want to plan. It will definitely not want to prioritize because everything feels so compelling and it feels like a priority. You will not want to constrain. You’re going to want to do everything all at once. 

It’s like taking a kid to the amusement park and they want to ride all the rides as the first ride, right? They go to the amusement park and they want all the things right away versus pacing them. You can learn to pace yourself. You can learn how to delegate, okay? Your brain will also want to indulge in the confusion and in the overwhelm. And if you’re not careful, listen up here, it will use the confusion and overwhelm as an excuse to stay frozen, to stay in indecision, to stay in inaction. Be careful of this. 

I’ve seen it time and time again. I’m so confused, there’s so much to do. I don’t know where to start. And you just kind of go and you fluff the day away because you’re so confused, you’re in overwhelm. And what happens is you’re just generating more work because you didn’t get clear and say, what do I need to do today? Be careful of this excuse that you don’t have time to plan because it turns into an identity as a leader. You become the leader who doesn’t have the time, who doesn’t manage her time, who doesn’t prioritize her time, who doesn’t plan and create balance in her life. 

You become the leader who’s running around, busy all the time, exhausted all the time, depleted all of the time, and that will be your leadership identity. Be careful of that. Busy does not mean productive. So being very busy does not mean you’re a productive principal. Being planned means you’re productive. Being intentional means you’re productive.

So, what are the solutions to this? Avoid saying you’re so busy. I like to ask my clients to eliminate the word busy. I’m so slammed. I’m so overwhelmed. I’m slammed today. I’m back to back meetings all day long. I’m so, so busy. Sometimes we want to look busy to other people so they don’t bother us. 

But when you tell yourself you’re busy, you’re busy, you’re busy, it depletes you. It doesn’t feel good. You want to feel good. An empowered principal says, I’ve got this. I’m scheduled. I know what I’m doing. I’m very intentional with my time. And my schedule is back to back today because I was intentional with it. Break down your tasks. Start day by day, just like when you were teaching. 

You don’t have to know a week or a month or a season, three months in advance, just start with day by day. What’s the one thing you want to accomplish today? And then insist upon yourself that you do it. Develop the trust within yourself, develop that discipline to say this was the task I’m going to get done today, even if a behavior issue comes up, even if a meeting pops up, I will get this done. 

And then, of course, my programs in EPC again, there’s time mastery, planning mastery, balance mastery. All of those pillars in EPC have tools, have workbooks, have strategies to help you streamline your relationship with time, your planning and the way that you plan and your relationship with planning and how to actually create balance in your life. 

Because there’s three things you’re ever doing. You are playing, working, or resting. And I like to put play in the mix with work to make it fun and have your rest also include a little play and a little work all together, the land of and. So give yourself permission to drop the words busy, slammed, overwhelmed and say, I’ve got this. I know what I’m doing.

Number three, people overload. Even for the most enthusiastic of extroverts, you are going to experience people overload. I am a very extroverted person and I found myself not wanting to look at another human face for a period of time. You’re going to get tired of dealing with people, dealing with their energy, their requests, their personalities, their quirks, their demands, their opinions, blah, blah, blah, their need for your time and attention. You will get annoyed. Nothing’s gone wrong. 

You still are a good person. You still love people. It’s just that you need some space. And you practice expanding your capacity for other people’s energy and you will learn how to separate your energy from their energy and not take on all of their emotions and all of their energy. So give yourself permission, take a break when you need it. Give yourself permission to close that office door and get a little alone time or some work done. 

And guess what? EPC also has relationship mastery, communication mastery, and I’m working on a new program called capacity, having limitless capacity as school leaders. You already do so much, but what if you were doing the same amount, but it felt like less effort? It didn’t feel so taxing. You had more energy at the end of the day. Same amount done, less taxing, more capacity. Expanding our capacity. 

What is possible? What is your potential hitting that potential? Do you have to feel tired if you are going to the gym in the mornings? You have kids at home, you are in EPC, maybe you’re getting your Master’s degree or maybe you’re writing for a publication and you’re leading a school? Is all of that possible? Yes, when you can expand your capacity.

There are people out there who are on five, 10, 15 boards. They are running circles around people who are like, I’m a school leader and that’s all I can do. And in the beginning, first year leaders, that is all you can do because you’re learning. Give yourself permission. We’re going to expand your capacity as a first year leader to just handle all that’s coming your way as a school leader. 

And for the veterans out there, we expand your capacity to be able to get more done personally and professionally in the same amount of time with less effort. And it really comes down to your mindset, which sounds crazy. But when you believe that it’s not taking a lot of effort and energy, when you believe you can get something done in a short amount of time and just handle it versus going into, you know, mental drama about it, you get so much more done. You can live two lifetimes in this one life when you expand your capacity. 

So, the fourth thing, the last thing I’m going to share with you is the weight of insufficiency and incompetency. I cannot tell you how this plagues every school leader that I’ve ever interacted with. The more aware you become about all that you could be doing as a leader, the more your awareness grows and your perspective expands, the more likely it is that at some point you’re going to experience bouts of insufficiency, incompetency, you’re not going to feel that you have influence or impact. You feel like your legacy is going to be a big flop. I don’t know how to do. I don’t know how to handle this. Am I doing enough? Am I being enough? Am I trying hard enough? Am I doing the right thing? 

We’re so worried about what’s right, what’s enough, if I can handle it. We spin out in this. And it will weigh you down. It will lower your capacity to get things done. It will lower your trust in yourself, your confidence in yourself. And here’s the solution to that. You can’t do everything, but you can do anything. Focus on one thing at a time. That’s all you can really ever do. Today, what’s the focus? It doesn’t mean you’re not going to do multiple things, but what’s today’s focus? What’s the intention of today?

And there is a lot of work on this in EPC. Leadership identity and capacity work, leadership mastery, leadership energetics, the balance of doing and being. There is an energy where we’re in the go mode. That’s the masculine energy and then the feminine energy which is trusting and allowing and having some faith and really receiving and not feeling like you need to be in control and manipulate and coerce and force results. 

That you can put things into place and then you can feel empowered, trusting yourself, trusting the process, trusting the timeline, trusting other people and being more hands off because you see other people in their full empowerment because you see yourself in your full empowerment. This is where capacity expands. 

So much work to be done. If someone had been there for me in this, I just imagine what the experience might have been. But I’m so grateful that my experience was hard and it was miserable and I suffered a lot because it invited me to create the Empowered Principal program, to have this company, to offer these services and continually expand my personal development so that as I learn, I’m sharing it with you in real time. 

Everything I go through in my life, professionally and personally, I study it and I try to understand it so that I can articulate it to you in a way that makes sense, in a way that feels good, in a way that empowers you, that enlightens you, that gives you that perspective and that knowledge and that wisdom and that awareness to create alignment for yourself, to create momentum so that when you hit a roadblock, when you hit an obstacle, you can go through the process, awareness, alignment, momentum, obstacle, awareness, alignment, momentum, obstacle. That’s the ride. That’s the journey. That’s the road trip of school leadership. You can design it however you want.

This is the time to sign up for EPC. Jump in in the spring so that you can prepare yourself. You can plan, you can get these tools, you can practice them from this is the end of April. You’ve got May, June, July, and then people come back in August. That’ll give you a full season, a full three months to plan and prepare, get your visions in place, get your leadership plans in place and get yourself prepared internally for the work that you are going to embark on this coming year. Have a beautiful week. 

Congratulations, new principals out there. If you’re still aspiring, please reach out for the Aspiring School Leadership series to get you prepared and get you to land that job. Jump on into EPC when you land that job. We’re here for you. And if you are a veteran, please share this with all of your new people. They need to know the truth so that they can be prepared internally and externally for the leadership journey in the most empowered way. Have a beautiful week. I love you all. Take good care. Bye.

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Hey you guys, calling all first-year site and district leaders. As you know, I hosted a free master course for those aspiring to land a job in school leadership. This was a four-day course that covers what you need to prepare yourself before, during, and after the interview process. So for those of you who are interested, you can find the YouTube links below in the show notes. The Aspiring School Leader series is completely free. 

Now, for those of you who landed that job, I have a brand-new program. Let’s make your first impression in school leadership your best impression. Let’s lead your school with confidence in year one and nail your first year as a school leader. You’ve got what it takes to make an impressive first impression, so come on in. 

I’ve got a brand-new program called Essentials for New School Leaders. It is three months of professional and personal development to give you the strategies, the mindset, and the skill set to lead your school to the next level of success.

There is a gap between the time you get hired and the time you start your contract. Let’s get ahead of the curve, three months in advance, you’ll be ready to go on day one of your brand-new contract. Join Essentials for New School Leaders. For more information, click the link in the show notes.

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.