Ep #406: When Your Staff Feel Unappreciated

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 406.

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

Well, hello, my empowered principals. Happy Tuesday. Happy October. It’s fall, y’all. I am in the spirit of autumn. I am in the fall season. I am coaching on the Fall Dip. And hey, for those of you who are interested in participating for the Fall Dip, you still have time. Today, this afternoon, if you’re listening to this live, it is happening today at 4:00 p.m. Central, tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. Central. So when you register, you’ll get access to all three of the sessions. You’ll have lifetime access, and you’ll have access to the replay, so you don’t have to worry about missing out on session one from yesterday.

Furthermore, when you enter for the Fall Dip, you can apply your Fall Dip registration fee. It’s $111 for the entire program. You can apply that $111 to EPC. So if you love what you hear and you want more and you want to dive into EPC for this school year, you can join and you can use that credit of $111 to join EPC. And we’ll take that off the full price of the EPC program for the 25/26 school year. How about that for fall, y’all?

I’m so excited. EPC is so great this year. We are diving in deep. We’re looking at education through different lenses. We’re not just showing up another year, same old stuff. We are here to approach it differently, to feel different, to do differently, to be a different kind of leader, to be a more empowered leader, to empower our staff and our students to be problem solvers, critical thinkers, to be managers of their emotions. Can you imagine a school where everybody has the skill set and the tools available to them to navigate their own emotional experience so they’re not dumping their emotions onto your plate? Wow. I would for one love to run a school like that. That is how I run my business, and it is magic. It feels amazing.

So, welcome to today’s podcast. I want to take a moment to wish you a very happy National Principals’ Month. I know when I was a school leader, October was full of activity, full of teacher observations, full of routines, procedures, getting everything into place, finishing up my site plan that I barely took a moment to stop and recognize how awesome I was being, how big I was showing up, how much work I was doing, how much service I was contributing to my students, my staff, my campus, the community, the families, and in honor of my district. I was serving on behalf of my district, but on behalf of myself and my community.

So take a moment and give yourself a pat on the back and acknowledge and celebrate and appreciate all the work and the effort and the service that you are contributing to your community, your staff, your students, your campus. Happy National Principals’ Day.

Now, we’re going to dive in. In the spirit of appreciation, in the spirit of acknowledgment, we’re going to dive into a topic that has been coming up in multiple conversations in my coaching business, and I wanted to address it here on the podcast. Of course, the podcast is always free. You have access to it. I really invite you to like it, to comment, to give it a five-star rating, to share it with your colleagues. And I know that I cannot coach as deeply on the podcast. So we share insights, we get to the surface, we scratch the surface, but in EPC and in my one-on-one coaching, we take this work from content and conversation down to identity, down to action items, down to becoming the person who can handle whatever comes your way, becoming the empowered version of yourself.

That requires internal change and external change. It requires us to become somebody different than we currently are now, to evolve who we are, to expand our perspective, to look through different lenses, to have the courage and the openness to question what we believe, what we value, and to stand firm on the things that we value, and to believe that we can be bigger, we can have more influence, we can have more impact, and we can create a legacy that’s beyond what we currently believe is possible.

So, back to our staff not feeling appreciated. I know I can relate to this personally as a leader, and my clients speak to this often about themselves, but I want to navigate your perspective through the lens of when staff does not feel appreciated. There are teachers who don’t feel appreciated by maybe the parent community. And then there are para-professionals, there are support staff. In California, we called it classified staff, certificated staff. There’s different ways to label different types of employees, even though we all provide an equal level of value in our contribution. The contribution looks different, but it has great value. Custodians, great value, contributions different than teaching. Our lunch providers that provide cafeteria services for breakfast, for snacks, for lunches, for the bagged lunch program, for field trips, hot lunch program, giving children nourishment throughout the day. Some families this is their only consistent meal. And without those services, our system would not function.

Our school is one big large jigsaw puzzle, and with one piece missing, the program is incomplete. The services we offer to families, to students are incomplete, whether that’s a custodian, a bus driver, a nurse practitioner, mental health supports, emotional health supports, everything from our technology experts to our probably yard duty supervisors, the office staff, support staff, your dean of students. Everybody has an incredible contribution to offer.

So, there are moments when we’re all giving, we’re all contributing to the max. We are being in service. We are working hard, putting forth time and effort into the energy of education and being that puzzle piece that completes the puzzle. And there are times where we’re wondering to ourselves, is this of value? We start to look outside of ourselves. We look externally for validation or appreciation or gratefulness or thankfulness. And we get caught up in, wow, I’m doing all this work and nobody seems to notice, or people don’t appreciate it, or they just want more. They keep asking for more. So this was a conversation I had with a one-on-one client of mine a few weeks ago, and I want to address it here.

So there were two components to this conversation. One was that this particular school leader works at a school that serves a community of abundance. This community has access to money, resources, homes. They live in abundance when it comes to financial and material resources. And there are sometimes when people can take those things for granted and come into your school and ask, demand, request a certain amount of services, a certain amount of attention. They want a request fulfilled in a way that makes them happy or fills their – what they believe is a need that they have.

And you can have conflicting demands, multiple demands, changing demands, and it can feel relentless. It can feel like people are not appreciating you when you are leading them, when you are teaching them, whether this is for teachers or you as a leader, that you can be pushed, your boundaries can be tested when you are the leader of a school and your teachers can feel very strained when you have a parent, let’s say, who’s coming in and asking for a lot of demands, who’s putting demands upon you, who’s requesting, who’s really pushing hard for their voice to be heard, for their desires to be fulfilled by you, by the teacher. Okay?

So, there was this feeling from the staff that parents were feeling that teachers were indebted to them, that because the families donate time, money, resources, that they in return should have their requests fulfilled. Have you had this experience? There are people in your community who might donate their time to the PTA or they might donate financial contributions, or they might provide resources. Maybe they buy materials for the classroom or for the school or maybe they sit on a board where they’re fundraising for a new playground or updated technology or something for the classrooms or something for your campus. And because they’re doing that, in return, they want this quid pro quo, tit for tat. I did this, so now you owe me that. And there are people out here who think this. So this isn’t just thinking that it’s happening, it might actually be happening.

So we want to first check with ourselves to see, am I interpreting their behavior as a tit for tat, as an indebt to them, a quid pro quo kind of situation? Are they saying words? Are there, are they exhibiting behaviors that would qualify as being indebted to them, or am I interpreting something they’ve said or something they did as pressure to perform, as pressure to say yes to them? Am I as a teacher feeling underappreciated, not because I’m not appreciated, but because it’s not being exhibited in the way that I defined appreciation? Okay?

So I was talking with my client about this, and the reframe that I offered her when it came to the parents was that when somebody comes and requests and demands that their request be fulfilled, this person, if you just step outside for a minute of the box and look what’s happening, like why would a person come and make such demands? Why would they start to use maybe aggressive tone or aggressive language or aggressive body language to attempt to get what they want? And when I think about somebody who’s behaving in this way, the reframe for me is that this person has reached their capacity of what they personally believe that they can do themselves to manage or solve or handle something on their own, right?

So, when somebody is pressuring a teacher, do this for me, do that for my child, do it this way, I want that, less homework, more homework, not enough homework, just the right amount of homework, teach it this way, don’t teach it that way, use this book, don’t use that book. When we start to get into a controlling type of energy, it’s typically because they believe that they, they’re maxed out on what they can manage or solve. They’ve used their resources that they can control, the amount that they donate, the time that they volunteered to leverage support for the solutions that they are seeking to create, but they don’t know how to create the solution for themselves or that they don’t feel comfortable or don’t know how to take ownership of the outcome that they’ve created for themselves. Okay?

So keep in mind that when a parent is coming and putting on the pressure and as a CEO of a company, I know how you should run this school or, you know, as a manager, director in corporate, this is how you should run a classroom or because I serve on all these boards, my kids should get X amount of treatment. Okay? Keep in mind that they feel in control when they’re the CEO of their company or when they’re a director in corporate. They feel like they have positional authority, positional control, that they can control outcomes based on their position, their status, their title, their amount of power. And when they come into the school, they can throw money at it, they can throw time at it, volunteer hours. However, they aren’t in the leadership position, in the classroom as teachers or in the school as the school leader, and they feel a little loss of control and they’re not sure how to navigate the system when they aren’t the ones in charge.

So we can feel a sense of understanding like, oh, they’re feeling a little bit out of control, they’re feeling a little nervous. They want to feel reassured. People want to feel control when they want to feel reassurance, when they want to feel safe, right? So at the bottom line, they go into this fight or flight behavior because they are not feeling safe or feeling uncertain about what’s coming, about the outcome. They don’t feel reassured that their child is safe or happy or okay, that they’re going to be fine, that they can handle the classroom they’re in or the amount of homework or the lessons, whatever it is. Okay?

So, keep in mind that they are testing your conviction to your values and your standards. So, my coach says this to me and I say this to my clients, leaders are bridges and bridges are tested. We are being tested by the parents. Now, how do we have a conversation with our teachers when they feel underappreciated by their parents? Well, the bottom line for you and I to know is when somebody’s looking for external validation, they’ve slipped out of their identity of empowerment. They have left the field of empowerment and gone into the field of disempowerment where I don’t know my own value, I don’t know my own worth, I don’t know that I’m doing a good job. I need parents to appreciate me. I need them to be thankful that I’m putting in these hours. I need them to be grateful for all that I’m doing for their students. I need them to XYZ, externally, I need somebody else to behave in a certain way so that I can feel certain for myself, good about myself, trust that I’m doing the right thing, versus going back inward and saying, here’s what I know to be true. This is the kind of teacher I am. This is who I am. This is my identity. This is how I teach. I’m open to feedback. I’m open to expanding and growing. And this is what I believe to be true in this moment. This is my capacity. And I’m open to expanding my capacity.

Coming back to self and reminding ourselves who we are, who we’re becoming. Nobody is a perfect teacher. Nobody is the right teacher, in quotes. We’re just humans on the planet doing the very best we can. We’re serving in a way that feels good for us. And when it doesn’t feel good for teachers, it is because they have slipped out of their empowerment. They have slipped out of their personal power, their personal identity to identify as a teacher who knows what she’s doing and why she’s doing it and is loving what she does and is doing the work because she wants to do the work, not because she’s people pleasing parents or not because she’s employee or not because she has to, or not because if she doesn’t, she’ll get in trouble. She’s coming in every day and teaching because it’s what she chose to do. It’s her profession. She loves it. She loves her students. She cares about being a good teacher. She cares about herself, and she cares about the quality of education for her students. That’s why she’s working hard. That’s why she’s doing these things.

When parents give us attention, appreciation, love, gratitude, that is the cherry on top. I want external validation, external acknowledgement, external kudos, all of that to be your cherry on top. Let it be the whipped cream, let it be the cherry, let it be the sprinkles. But underneath that big old ice cream sundae is the foundation, that’s you. The best part of the sundae isn’t just the sprinkles and the cherry and the whipped cream. The foundation it’s built upon is the beautiful ice cream of your flavor, of your choice. You can be vanilla, you can be chocolate, you can be mint chip, you can be praline. It doesn’t matter what flavor you are. The foundation of you is you. You’re unique, you have your own flavor, but that is what matters. A bowl of cherries, whipped cream, and sprinkles does not fulfill you for very long. We want the sundae because of the ice cream flavors we chose. Are you following me here?

So, when teachers are dismayed, it is because they have slipped out of empowerment. And you can invite them back into empowerment, invite them back into internal validation. Of course, as humans, we’re wired for connection. We are wired to belong. We want external validation. It’s a lovely thing to have, but we can’t rely on it and we know that it’s fleeting. Somebody gives us a compliment today, it feels good today, but tomorrow we don’t get one and now we don’t feel good. We’re relying on external intermittent validation. That’s not going to carry us very far. Versus waking up every day and personally aligning to who you are, who you’re becoming as an educator, loving it, going in, doing the work, and when it’s hard, take a little break, get some rest, recover, and come back at it because we chose this, because we love this, because we are feeling validated in who we are and what we’re doing. Okay?

Second component of this conversation is there are support staff members and there are teachers and many schools have a divide. And that tends to be created because there are people who believe there should be a hierarchy that teachers are more important or more valuable than support staff. I highly disagree with this. I think, again, I’ve mentioned this with the jigsaw puzzle, we are all contributing equal value, but the contribution looks different.

So having these conversations with your staff around what would happen if we took all of our para-professionals away, our support staff, our custodians, our lunch duty, our cafeteria support, our bus drivers, our crosswalk volunteers, take away the secretaries in the office, take away technology support, take away maintenance, take away accounting, take away dean of students, take away our counselors. When you take away any one person, now does it feel less important? No. We want to create a culture, an energy, a vibration. I call it the playing field of equal value, different contribution and making that a part of your climate and your culture at your school and highly celebrating every person on campus.

So, when people feel that they’re not being appreciated, asking them first of all, why are they feeling that way? What’s come up? Was there a specific incident? Were there words said? Were there behaviors? And are there any ways in which they feel appreciated? How do they appreciate themselves? Do they appreciate themselves? Do they appreciate others? Getting them back into the playing field of appreciation, the frequency, and putting on the lens, like putting on a pair of glasses where you see appreciation, you feel appreciation for others and you receive appreciation, looking for the capacity to receive appreciation in big ways and small.

And sometimes appreciation looks differently than how we give appreciation or how we like to receive it, but being open to all the ways in which we receive appreciation brings us back to appreciation. So, I want you to know you are valued, you are loved, you are appreciated. Spread love, spread appreciation, look through the lens of appreciation this month in the National Principals’ Appreciation Month. I value you. Come on into the Fall Dip and we’ll see you in EPC. Love you lots. Take care. Talk soon. 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.