Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 343. 

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, hello, hello, my lovely empowered principals. How are you today? Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, you guys, if you’re new to the podcast, come say hi. Join the Facebook group and say hi, or drop me an email and say hello. You’re new to the podcast. Follow me on social media. Come on Instagram, Angela Kelly Coaching. You can find me on Facebook personally and professionally. Come on over and mingle. I want to get to know you. 

You could also leave a review. That helps me. I look through the reviews. If you leave a review for the podcast, I try to shout you out personally here on the podcast. So, I love meeting new people. I love meeting new leaders or aspiring leaders. You all inspire me so, so very much. 

Here we are in July. We’re ramping back up as school leaders, and we’re thinking about next year. We’re preparing. We’re planning. We are getting master calendars scheduled away, making sure everybody’s hired and in the right spot, making sure the schools are cleaned and ready for teachers to come back into those classrooms. You are thinking three months ahead of your teachers, and July, in your mind, you’re already back to school. 

So, I want to talk about you, not your school, not your vision, not your teachers, not your students, not your district admins. I want to talk about you going from being a new leader to a good leader to a great leader to an exceptional principal. 

First of all, I’m going to invite you very quickly into the Summer of Fun Challenge because we still have a couple weeks left. It’s so easy. If you’re on Facebook, all you have to do is search for The Empowered Principal®  Facebook group. You come into the group. If you are a school leader or you’re an aspiring school leader, you’re welcome to join the group. I do a little bit of an intake form because I don’t want robots coming in and ruining our space or spammers and all of that or people soliciting you. I don’t want that. This is a safe, clean space.

So, if you are an actual school leader, you’re an aspiring school leader, answer the three questions, come on into the group, and all you have to do is share photos, pics, posts of your summer fun that you’re having. Just share it in the group, and you can also cheerlead other people on. Every time you either post or comment on somebody else’s, your name is entered multiple times into a weekly drawing. For every single post and every single comment, you get one entry into the drawing for the week. 

It is the easiest way to manifest some significant cash into your life and also to check out what’s going on in the world of the Empowered Principal® programs and EPC. Because there is a $50 gift card from Amazon, which I love me some Amazon. It saves me so much time.

More importantly, the real power, the real money that you’re winning is 90% off of the EPC program for one full year of coaching. It’s normally $1,997. The winner, the weekly winner of SOF, will receive 90% off. So you are getting a full year of coaching for only $197. I think that is insane. It’s just enough to have some skin in the game, but you are going to gain so much. It’s insane. This is an epic program. 

I’m going to talk more about it in a minute, but what I want you to know is that you’re basically going to win $1,850 because you’re getting the $50 Amazon card, but you’re basically saving $1,800 in the Empowered Principal® program. You can’t lose. 

You can come in for a year, check out EPC. If it’s amazing, you can stay. If it’s not your cup of tea, I understand. I’m not everybody’s cup of tea. But for those of you who are interested, this is the perfect way to sign up and be eligible to receive 90% off your entrance fee. 

So I want to let you know that I’ve done one round of EPC and after that round, I’ve really reflected and enhanced the experience for everybody in the program. Because I want you to come into this program trusting and believing that you’re going to receive the support that you need. We’re going to celebrate your wins.

We’re going to track your progress in a way that inspires you, not in a negative way. It’s for fun. We’re doing all of this to celebrate and win and be like oh my gosh, I hadn’t realized how much I’ve grown in this area. So I’ve created some really simple ways to track and celebrate your progress. 

But what I’m going to be doing more in EPC than I did last year was teach. I’m going to teach you, mentor you, teach you the skills that you need to be an empowered principal so you know and you learn how to create the exact results that you want for yourself and your school. Okay? 

All right, let’s dive in. I want you to think about the experience that you have had in the past as you transitioned from teaching to administration, or the experience that you anticipate having as you transition from teaching to administration. I will share my experience with you and then I want you to feel free to share yours in the Facebook group, or you can share with me on social media because the stories of transitioning into leadership, they’re astounding to me, but they’re very consistent and there’s a lot of similarity and there’s a pattern, some commonalities in which we all experience. Okay? 

I was tapped on the shoulder as a kindergarten teacher. You should be a teacher leader. You’ve got great energy, great charisma. Parents love you. You get amazing results with your kids. Your classroom management’s on point. You’re doing all of the initiatives in the classroom. You’re a shining example. 

I didn’t want to go into school leadership, but my superintendent at the time was very charming. He was very charismatic himself, and I really, really followed him. I believed in him as a leader. I trusted him, he was, had his eye on the ball. He knew what he wanted, and he knew how to sell people on themselves. So I really believed in myself because he believed in me, and he sold me on me. 

So I went ahead, and I already had my master’s in education. I went ahead and got my credential in administration, but I really didn’t want to go into administration. So I was holding on to it for a while. I became an instructional, well, first I was a reading specialist. After I was in kindergarten, became an instructional coach. I did that for a year, and that was the year that I started to transition my thinking. I started to visualize myself as a potential leader. 

I was working with one of my best friends, and she was the principal at the time. I was the instructional coach, and that was the closest I’d ever been to a leadership position. So I was watching her do the job. I was listening to her process how she was doing the job, listening to all the highs, the lows, the wins, the losses, the good, bad, and ugly. But there was a moment, I can remember it, where I was standing. I can remember what I was wearing.

I remember thinking to myself I might be able to do this. She kept saying, “Oh, for sure. If I can do it, you can do it.” Everybody tells you that, but you’re like that doesn’t sound as reassuring as you might think it sounds. If I can do it, anybody can do it. It’s like yeah, but you already did it, and I haven’t done it. So there’s still this gap between where I’m at and where I would like to go. There doesn’t appear to be a bridge between here and there. I feel like if I take the first next step, I’m going to fall all the way down into the canyon and never return.

So I watched her, I listened, I really started tuning in. But what I did was I kept envisioning myself as a leader. I kept believing that it was possible for me to learn how to be a leader, for me to grow into being a leader, for me to handle it emotionally, mentally, just intellectually, skill based wise. I went from zero belief in myself to like 10% belief to maybe 25% belief. 

Then I got to a point where I was right around the 50% mark. I was like I’m pretty sure I could do this. I might fail. But what I do know is that I’m strong, I’m bold, I will figure it out. I’m confident in that I will figure it out. I’m not confident in my leadership skills, but I’m confident that I will do my best to figure it out. 

When I thought that thought, that was when I tipped over into being ready to apply, which is exactly what happened. So the spring came, positions started opening, I was asked to apply. I was so scared. Gosh, applying for leadership positions in front of people I’ve worked with for 15 years, it felt scarier than talking to strangers for some reason.

Because it felt like I couldn’t fake it until I made it. I couldn’t enhance. I couldn’t say something that wasn’t true. Not that I would ever do that. But you know how when you’re in an interview, like you’re trying to put forward your best foot, and you want to make yourself sound as enticing as possible? But these are people who knew me super well. So there was no fudging it. 

I was so nervous. I applied for an AP position at a middle school because I thought it would be easier to start out as an AP than to take on a full school by myself. I didn’t get that position. My people had to call me and give me the news that I, they thanked me for the interview, but I didn’t make it to the second round. I was devastated. I cried on the couch after school when I found out. 

I mean, it was a few days later, but I remember thinking like why did they put me through this? That was just so unnecessary. But after the tears, I was like okay, what did I learn in that interview? What worked? What didn’t? What would I say or do differently next time? 

My friend who was the principal when I was her instructional coach and I was applying said, “Just tell them what you know. Speak from your heart. You’re an educator at heart. You know what you’re doing. You’ve got this. But speak to you. Be you in that interview. Don’t try to tell them what you think they want to hear. Tell them who you are and what you know and how you’re going to bring you to the table.”

I applied for an elementary position at a brand new school. They were opening a brand new school at a brand new site with all the construction happening, and I got hired for that position. The superintendent who had encouraged me to come to the surface had an amazing leadership development program within our district, which is one of the reasons I got tapped on the shoulder for because I had participated in that two-year leadership development training program. 

Which I think was like beyond his years of wisdom and vision at the time. I didn’t know of any other school who was offering like a leadership development to develop leaders from within the district to retain the district and to have leaders who taught in the district who had already some clout and some understanding and some relationship and connections and just a deep understanding of the community, of the district, and the operations of our particular district. So it was very avant-garde to me at the time.

I went through that program. I ended up landing this position, but then that superintendent left and another superintendent stepped in. I was very scared because I didn’t have my person. This new person was coming up. I knew this person. He was an internal hire, but his style was very different. What ended up happening was we are so happy you’re here, Angela. We’re so grateful you’re taking on this brand new school as a brand new principal. Like, way to go. That’s very brave of you. Here are your keys. Here’s your office. Bye. Have a nice life. Go figure out life. 

So as you can imagine, I tried to fake it. I tried to pretend I was a leader. I tried to talk like a leader and walk like a leader and dress like a leader. That definitely did help. It boosted my confidence to a point. 

But the truth was, I didn’t have the skills to be a leader, especially to open a brand new school, to create community, to create a collaborative environment, to create a culture from nothing to something, to develop the school site council and to develop the ELAC program and to develop all of it. The PLC foundation, all of it was brand new. Not to mention, I was also doing construction management. For those of you who’ve ever had construction on your campus, you can relate to this. 

I was in over my head. I was assigned a mentor that was required to take me through these modules that I had to go through, but that program wasn’t exactly what I needed. Fortunately, my coach at the time, my mentor, she had the skill set to actually coach me and guide me. Otherwise, I’m pretty confident I would have resigned from the position and gone back to teaching or instructional coaching within the first two years of the job. I’m almost positive of that because it was so hard. But I had her. She kept me going. 

All of this to say, I figured it out the hard way, learning by doing. I felt like somebody had thrown me into a dryer, and I was just bouncing around trying to figure out life. It was learning by fire hose. You can learn that way, by the way. You can do that. It’s very painful, but you can do it, which is what I did. 

So here’s the thing I’ve noticed about school leadership. I have yet to meet a leader in my professional world or now as a coach. I coach people all across the country. I have yet to meet a leader who can refute that there is a leadership development program in the sense that when they hire you, they say, “Hi, welcome to the team. We are so happy to have hired you. You’re such a great match for us. I can’t wait to get to know you better and to work with you. Here’s your campus, here’s your office, and here are your keys.” Now that’s where most of the onboarding stops. 

But imagine, imagine a world where they say, “And we’re going to fully onboard and train you. We’re going to teach you and provide you with all the skills you need to navigate this job. We’re going to teach you how to people manage, how to time manage, how to maintain a balanced lifestyle, how to effectively plan and map out your calendar for the short and long term, how to handle parents, how to navigate students, how to emotionally manage other people and yourself so that you can stay grounded as you work through difficult situations.

“We’re going to teach you how to student manage, manage behaviors, manage IEPs, facilitate staff meetings, develop effective professional development meetings. We’re going to teach you all of this. We’re going to teach you how to be an instructional leader while also balancing the work of being an operations manager of your school.”

Because that’s what the job description is. Please do everything all at once. Be an expert at it all. That’s the job description. Can you imagine if this type of training was included in your new position? 

I wish I could do a raise of hands. How many of the listeners of this podcast have had that experience where you’ve been fully onboarded, fully supported, fully trained, fully mentored, fully coached, and you were given permission and grace and space to be new and awkward and clumsy and not know what you’re doing, to not know the answers, to gradually work up into the position, to get it right, to learn deeply. 

I don’t know, if we did a show of hands, how many people have had that experience, that kind of mentorship. Where someone says hey, here is the real truth about this job. The real truth is this. There’s always going to be too much to do and not enough time. There are always going to be conflicting priorities and demands coming at you from all directions. 

You’re going to be pulled in many directions. You’re going to feel overwhelmed almost all of the time. There’s always going to be pressure to do more, to do it better. But you know what? That’s okay. We’re going to support you in handling that. 

It feels like a dream come true. It feels like the Disneyland of school leadership, which is what I’m trying to create over here. No one offered that to me. They said, thank you so much. We needed you to fill this position. You have fulfilled a need of ours. Here are your keys. Go enjoy your life with a smile on your face. Be the face of the district. Please don’t ask us any questions because we’re too busy figuring life out for ourselves. Go do you. You need to know how to do this. Bye.

It’s like oh, okay. Wow. Let me evolve my self-concept in about two days. That is why I created EPC, the Empowered Principal® Collaborative. I needed to fill a gap. There was a void. Look, teachers, they have all kinds of resources, instructional coaches. They have grade level support. They have PLCs. They get mentors, buddy teachers, right? But we, we get the job, and then we’re expected to do the job.

You might get sent to a conference. Oh, hey, go learn how to improve school culture, or hey, go improve your practice in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Go to a weekend workshop and come back and then have that fixed. How are you supposed to do that? How do you integrate a conference into who you are, into your identity, into your practice as a school leader? 

I want you to think about the business of education. The business of education is to continue to learn and to develop and to grow. When you’re a brand new leader, there is an entirely new skill set that you’re going to have to learn. You’re going to have to decide which skill you’re going to focus on because there’s too many. You have to break it down into chunks. 

You learn a particular skill this year or this quarter or this semester. Build up your muscles one skill at a time. There’s just too many to learn at once. It’s going to require you to constrain and focus your priorities to certain skills.

You’ll also be learning by doing. There’s no way not to do that. So you’re still going to drink it from the fire hose. You’re still going to have things you don’t know. You’re not going to be able to just not handle things you don’t know how to do. 

You will grow multiple facets of your leadership repertoire, but you want to grow as quickly as possible the skill sets that require you to build the foundation of leadership that you want. Focus and constraint is the fastest way to do that. It’s how you keep your overwhelm in check. When you try to learn all of the skill sets at once, you’re only going to expand your overwhelm. 

Hey, I also want to say this. If you’re a new leader, you’re not going to feel confident if you’re in a new position. Even if you’re a leader who’s been in a different position, maybe you went from AP to principal, or you went from principal to district level admin, you’re not going to feel confident. You can’t. You can’t have the identity of a skilled school leader when you’ve never done the job before. 

You’re going to feel a certain amount of uncertainty and awkwardness and just unsure about yourself because most people aren’t getting trained. You’re going to have to learn by doing in order to figure it out. That’s normal. The goal isn’t to avoid looking or feeling new. There is no faking it until you make it when you have no idea what you’re doing.

The goal is in your finesse. It’s how you handle being new. It’s how you handle the feelings of uncertainty and unknowing and doubt when people question you or expect you to know, and they ask you and they put you on the hot seat and you don’t know. It’s not that you don’t know or the goal isn’t to know. The goal is what do I do, how do I handle, who do I be, how do I show up when I don’t know, when I am new. 

So whatever stage you are in the educational leadership experience, I want you to know it’s okay to feel like you don’t know what’s going on. If you’re aspiring, you’re not going to know how to get that job. If you’re brand new, you’re not going to know how to be good. If you’re feeling good about yourself in some areas, you’re not going to know how to make yourself great.

If you’re feeling great and you want to up-level and you want to expand and evolve yourself to exceptional, that’s going to require a stretch. There are gaps in learning. There are gaps in who you are now and where you want to be and who you want to become. That is a continuum of school leadership development that never ends. 

You want to feel good about yourself as a leader. You want to make a bigger and more profound impact as a leader. To expand your identity as an empowered principal, an empowered leader, an exceptional leader, it requires you to expand your skill set as a leader. We need leadership development. It’s a requirement for us to grow.

This is why so many people drop out of the position because they don’t have the leadership development that they yearn for, that they crave, that they want. The best of the best leaders will leave if there’s no leadership development because they’re in the position to grow, to evolve, to expand themselves, to learn. We don’t just drop learning at the door when we step into leadership. But for some reason, that’s how the current system is set up. 

As I said before, teachers have systems built into place. They have mentors and buddy teachers and grade-level collaborations and PLCs and instructional coaches to help them with whatever questions they have and guide them in their professional development journey. You create professional development experiences for your teachers.

But how many districts do you believe are offering PD days that focus specifically on leadership development in addition to teacher development? There might be some, but it is not a mainstream practice. I want to make, it is my mission to make leadership development a mainstream practice in every school community. 

If you want to become a school leader, EPC is where you learn the skills and surround yourself in the energy of fellow empowered school leaders. So if you’re new to school leadership and you don’t know where to start, EPC is where you learn to prioritize and focus your attention and your energy. 

If you feel like you’re a pretty good principal, maybe you’ve been doing this a couple of years, you’ve got some tools under your belt, but you’re working yourself to the bone to try and get it all done. I know many of you are doing this. The EPC is going to teach you how to be accomplished and balanced, to get the same amount done in less time, to add fun to your calendar, to not overwork, overexert, overschedule. 

If you’re feeling good about yourself as a principal but you want to up-level, EPC is going to teach you how to step into that next version of yourself and to evolve your self-concept. Even if you’re feeling exceptional and you want to make an even bigger impact, EPC is going to show you how to expand your legacy as a principal in your current position or how to expand and evolve into a higher level position where you create even more impact.

This program covers it all. The Empowered Principal® Collaborative is a comprehensive container. I have studied this for the last eight years. I cover everything, and I also offer individualized coaching and support. I’ve created the very container that I dreamt of having for myself. This is it. 

By you participating, by you being in this community, you contribute and you expand and enhance the leadership development of this program. You enhance the quality of leadership development by participating and adding the wisdom, the knowledge, the skills, the insights that you’ve learned. 

I’m not the guru here. I am the person who’s developed the container to hold these beautiful and deep and rich conversations about evolving our identity as school leaders, empowering ourselves, empowering our staff and students, enhancing the school leadership experience so we can enhance the teaching experience so we can enhance the student experience and the family experience. 

We want to turn the narrative around. Right now, education has a very negative narrative. Teachers are unhappy, students are unhappy, parents are unhappy, communities are unhappy, school leaders are unhappy. We want to enhance the experience. We want to look at the journey of a student, of a teacher, of a support staff, of a principal, of a parent, and ask ourselves, how do we enhance this experience to make it the best experience possible? 

So this year, for EPC, one of the things I’ve added to make it more accessible and easier for every principal who wants to participate is I’ve set up a monthly payment plan option to make it even more accessible for all levels of leadership. So you could either pay in full and just be done and have it for the full year. If that’s not an option for you, you can break the $1,997 into 10 monthly payments of $199.70. There’s no additional fee if you decide to break it up into monthly payments. Not a problem. It’s never been easier to join. 

This is your year. Come on in. You can be the mentor and the mentee because this is a mastermind experience where we all share. I teach, but I also coach. You also coach. You also teach. This is a mastermind experience. Come on into EPC. There’s never been a better time. It’s upleveled. It’s more magical than ever before. With you being here, not even the sky is the limit. So come on into EPC. I can’t wait to meet you. Love you all. You’re amazing. Go have an empowered week, and I’ll talk to you next week. Take great 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. 

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 341. 

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 and welcome to July. So you were probably off last week. I hope you were out having fun, celebrating Independence Day. Maybe you were traveling or maybe you were working. I hope you were out having fun. That’s the name of the game. Have a little bit of fun, get some rest, rejuvenation, relaxation in over your summer. 

I hope you are playing in the Summer of Fun Challenge with us in the Facebook group. People are winning prizes. They’re winning spots in the EPC program for 90% off of the regular price. The regular price is $1,997. You can pay in full, or you can do 10 monthly installments of $199.70, and you can get 12 full months of coaching. So come on in. We’re having a blast and I hope you are enjoying your summer. 

Now, this topic is going to help you plan your professional development days that are coming up, whether they’re in the end of July or into August or maybe even September. But I want you thinking about this now. 

I actually coached a client on this topic back in May. She was doing an end of the year professional development training. It was basically like a training that the district had created, and she was given an agenda. She was given a PowerPoint, and she was told here are the things you have to talk about. This is what you have to teach. 

So it made me think of all of you. When you get an agenda for professional development handed down from the district, you may or may not feel exactly aligned with that agenda or with the content or with the time. Like in this case, she was told 90 minutes on this, 45 minutes for that, an hour for this and whatever. So she felt a little off with that, and we had to coach on it. 

So I want to talk about this because as you’re coming back to school for the new year and you’re planning, you’re planning your professional development. Many of you are going to be expected to facilitate professional development days for your teachers. You want them to be effective. You want them to be efficient, and you want them to have a desired outcome. 

You want them to be productive, to create a result, to create an outcome, whether that’s a plan, whether that’s actual work that gets hammered out during that day, whether it’s information and content that teachers need to know. You want to be able to facilitate and administer a professional development that you believe in, that aligns for you. It can feel like you’re being told what to do and how to do it. That can feel a little bit stressful. 

So with this time of season right here, you are doing a lot of planning. You’re planning out your vision for the school year, your site plan for the year, the goals you want to have, the topics you’re going to focus on. So I think this is a really good time to have this conversation. 

Now, when it comes to professional development, you need to keep in mind, at the end of the day, you’re investing time and energy. You are also being given the currency of your teacher’s undivided attention, right? This is a gift. You’re getting their time, their attention, their energy. We want to leverage professional development days as opportunities to inspire people into progressive action. We want to empower them, to motivate them, to inspire them, to ignite them in a way that provides long-lasting outcomes for that investment of time and energy and attention.

If you have professional development agendas being handed down to you, you can find a way, I call it the land of and, where you can find a way to take that agenda and make it your own. So the first thing you’re going to want to ask yourself is okay, what are my thoughts and opinions around this agenda item? 

This is typically what happens. We are told the agenda, we’re given the agenda, we’re given the PowerPoint, and we’re like ugh. This is so dry. This is so boring, or this isn’t what I want to talk about, or I don’t like the way they did this or said this, or I don’t think it’s going to take me that long. Or wait, this is going to take me a lot longer than that. We have our own reaction to the professional development content and materials that we’ve been given. 

Check in with yourself on that. Don’t just be disgruntled and then go into your PD day. Because if you’re not happy with the PD, it is not going to land with your teachers. It’s going to fall flat. You’re not going to be happy. They’re not going to enjoy it. It will not be productive. You will have wasted an opportunity. They’re giving you their time and attention and energy. You want it to be productive for you, for them, for the greater good. Okay? 

So when you think about the district giving you this content, sit with yourself for a minute and ask yourself what is the intention behind this PD? What does the district want as an outcome for this professional development day? What’s the intended outcome here from their perspective? Then ask yourself from your perspective, what’s the outcome for the teachers? Ultimately, what is the outcome for students? So think about the outcome of the professional development day from the lens of the district and yourself and your teachers and students. Okay? 

What comes up for you when you’re thinking about the professional development. When you’re looking at it from all these lenses, you’re going to start to see there are commonalities. We do actually want the same thing. Believe it or not, we are all on the same team. Teachers want to have a great year. They want their students to have a great year. They want there to be progress. They want to feel good about themselves as teachers. 

You want them to feel good as teachers because when they feel good about themselves, they teach better. When they teach better, students learn better. When kids feel good about themselves as students, they learn. When teachers feel good about themselves as teachers, they teach. When you feel good about yourself as a leader, you’re a better leader.

It matters how people feel about themselves, about the work they do, and about the people they’re working with. That’s the belief triad. You have to believe in yourself, believe in others, and believe in the work, in the process. Okay? 

So the intention behind the outcomes matter. You want to understand what is the intended outcome here? What am I trying to do? What am I trying to communicate? What should people know or understand or be able to do? What work, what productivity or actual tangible outcomes are we creating here? Or is it more of a mindset, or is it more information sharing? Is it an understanding that we’re trying to communicate? What is the goal? Okay? 

Think about what’s coming up for you and how you would deliver this content. What is a way that you can use this agenda but deliver it in a way that feels most aligned for you, most productive for you, and kind of curate it to the needs of your site, of your staff. You know your staff. You know what they need. You know what they don’t need. You know how to communicate with them. You know what lands for them and what doesn’t. You know the style that they prefer.

You can, and you actually have so much more agency to create the professional development experience because that’s what this is. You’re providing an experience for your teachers with an intended outcome, and you do have more agency than you realize. You can decide here’s the energy I want in this room. 

Here’s the style I want to facilitate this meeting in. I want teachers engaged and active and working and co-facilitating and discussing and time for thinking, time for planning, time for dreaming, time for imagining how good things can be this year. Talking about what is working just as often as we’re complaining about what’s not. Taking one problem and digging in deep versus trying to cover 10 miles wide worth of problems that we’re not going to be able to get to all of them. 

But this has to be customized and individualized for you so that the PD makes a difference, has an impact, and you want to take into consideration your teachers. 

So I have seen this on, I think I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but it’s relevant to this topic. I see so many people on Facebook saying, “Hey, I have to fill a PD day. What should I do? What do you guys do? Who do you hire? What book should we read?”

I want to offer this. There is a difference between asking other people who don’t know your school and don’t know your staff and don’t know what the needs are and don’t know where you need to grow or what discussions need to be had where we need to expand ourselves, where we need to push ourselves, where we excel. Nobody out on the internet knows your school and your needs better than you. 

I invite you before you go out and ask 2,000 people’s opinion or 10,000 people’s opinion or bazillion people’s opinion about what your staff should do. I would invite you to ask yourself, what do I believe my staff needs? What do I believe I need? What do I believe my school needs? What’s the one next thing that we need?

I’ve also noticed this. When I was a principal, it was here, read this book. Here’s a great article. Here’s a resource. Okay, thanks. I would read it, and I would be inspired for five minutes, 10 minutes a day. Or I’d read the book, and it would land for me. But I didn’t oftentimes take that book and truly integrate it into my identity as a leader.

The same is true for professional development. It’s like here’s some information. Here’s a one-day course. They hear it. They feel inspired. They’re excited. They get some work done, or there’s great conversation, or maybe we problem solve a little bit. But there isn’t an integration unless the integration into the identity of the teachers is intentional, is a part of the process. 

So any kind of professional development you have, whether it’s a book or a resource or a program or a curriculum, there’s a new math curriculum, and we’re going to cover that. The reason those PDs tend to fall flat is because one, it’s just a one-way street where you’re like, here we’re walking through the book and here’s that, and there’s some questions. But until teachers get into the curriculum, they can’t integrate their expertise as a teacher of that curriculum until they’ve done it, until they get their hands into it. 

If you have initiatives that are rolling out from top down, which tends to happen. The district says this is what we’re going to do. This is what we’re going to focus on. You’ve got to go tell your people all the things. This is how we’re going to do teacher observations. This is how we’re going to do data assessments or data conversations or PLCs. You’re held accountable to rolling that out. You want to ensure that you’re not just talking at them as a one-way street. 

How can we make this integrative? How do they integrate the understanding of the purpose of teacher observations or the purpose of the PLCs or what’s in it for them when it comes to PLCs? How do we integrate PLCs into a teacher’s identity? I am a teacher who understands, who understands PLCs, understands the process, understands the value of them, the significance of them.

I get value from them. I contribute, and I receive. I find PLCs valuable. It’s an integral part of my identity as a teacher. That is different than giving them a handout on what PLCs are or read this book about PLCs or here’s an article on PLCs and here’s why they’re important. 

Do you see the difference? So as you’re planning this summer, and I know why we don’t do this. We don’t do this because it requires our brain to grind a little bit. We have to go dig deep. We have to think deeper. When we’re thinking about intention, the intention means the benefit, the short-term benefits, the long-term benefits. But what we’re trying to do is change the identity of our staff. We’re trying to evolve their identity, to expand them, to inspire them, to transform them, to enhance their identity as a teacher.

So they feel more capable, more confident, more certain, more assured, more skilled in themselves. They trust themselves. They believe in themselves. They can identify as a teacher who knows what they’re doing, who knows what to do when they get stuck, who knows where to go to get help when they get stuck, who feels confident in handling anything that comes their way and knows where to go when they don’t know how to handle what comes their way. That’s what we want. 

So as you’re planning PD, number one, I’m going to be hosting some planning sessions in August. You want to join EPC to be able to be a part of those bonus planning sessions. I’m going to be holding them in August because I want you to be able to either plan professional development that is productive and successful with intention, or you can map out your vision for the year and your top priorities. We’re going to be doing both of those kinds of workshops.

So come on into EPC so that you can learn how to plan effective PD. You can map out your staff meetings. You can map out your vision for the year. You can map out your top priorities and get in alignment with where your district is. 

I teach a process on how to align to your district’s initiatives so they feel good for you and how to present them to your teachers and help your teachers get in alignment so that we can see all on the same team. We actually do want the same things. We want to feel good about ourselves. We want to feel good about our students and the work that they’re doing. We want to feel good about the process and the approach that we’re taking with our school. Okay? 

So if this resonates with you, if it feels like something you want to participate in, please join EPC. The link to join is in the notes. You can either pay in full. I’ll put a link for pay in full. Or if you prefer, you can do the monthly payment plan. They work out to the exact same dollar amount. So there’s no penalty for paying monthly. You pay in 10 months, $199.70, and get you the $1,997 for the 12 months of coaching. 

So come on in. We’re getting started in August. I can’t wait to see you there. Have a wonderful week. Have fun planning, have fun celebrating, enjoy your summer, and come on into the Summer of Fun Challenge. We’ll see you guys 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. 

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 339.

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.

Angela: Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome to this episode. I have a very special guest with me here today. You’re going to love them. We’ve already had a coffee chat. I don’t know, it’s probably been over a month now, but we just hit it off. I felt like I have two new friends in the field of education, and I really love the work they’re doing. So, Shelly and Ryan are here today. The book that you wrote, Shelly, was called what again? Ensuring Teachers Matter?

Shelly: Yes.

Angela: Yes.

Shelly: Ensuring Teachers Matter: Where to Focus First So Students Matter Most.

Angela: Yes. So, I want everybody to get on Amazon and buy this book. It’s amazing. I was gifted a copy, so I feel very special, but the book is phenomenal. It really aligns with what I teach in school leadership, but I wanted Ryan and Shelly on the podcast to speak this language in their way and talk about their work they’re doing with schools and with school leaders.

I really want to highlight this book because it is uplifting. It brings hope and inspiration to school leadership. School leadership does not have to be this big drag. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming and exhausting and burnout. It can be fun and lighthearted and joyful. So, let’s talk about that, Shelly. I know you just presented. You’ve been out presenting, I think, all school year. I know our schedules have been like we’ve been two ships crossing in the night. So, tell us all about the work you’re doing. Talk about the book. Let’s just dive in and have this amazing discussion.

Shelly: Thank you so much for having me and Dr. Donlan on the show. I really want to spread this information far and wide because I really do feel like it can really make a difference in education. I don’t say that lightly either. We’ve been struggling as a profession in a lot of different areas as far as the importance of the teaching as a profession, people feeling like they can have a sustainable career in teaching, and then all of the leadership things that go along with it.

So, for me, this book is really from the heart, but it’s also really backed in research, which is incredibly important for me as well. So, Ensuring Teachers Matter is a book about a concept called mattering. Really, Dr. Donlan was actually the one who first introduced this term mattering to me.

I had never really heard. I heard about yeah, you have to matter, but the actual word mattering. As I discovered, this concept has been around for about 50 years. It’s been studied in a lot of different contexts, but never in the K-12 world.

Mattering is about a person feeling value and feeling like they add value. So when you have both of those things together, someone feels like they matter. So, in my research, I wanted to find out what had to be in place in order for a teacher to feel like they matter to other adults in the building. So, Ryan, do you have anything you’d like to add to that beginning part?

Ryan: Oh, I absolutely do, Dr. Wilfong. Shelly, thank you so much for bringing me alongside, and Angela for having me in this podcast. It’s truly a pleasure and an honor. Particularly so because, Shelly, your research has made relevant and has ratified what I have been shouting from the rooftops for 25 to 30 years in that it has to be about the adults first in education if we’re going to be about the kids most.

So, thank you, Shelly, for putting that in your book title because it has to. To me, it’s like as obvious as oxygen mask dropping on an airplane. Every plane ride I’ve taken, no matter at what age, I have heard the steward or stewardess or the guide up there in the front of the airplane say, is you in the event of cabin depressurization and a mask drops from the ceiling, please affix the mask to yourself first before putting it on the person whom you’re providing caregiving to. Always.

But in schools, we haven’t been doing this. Dr. Wilfong, Shelly, when you came to me and we had your dissertation conceived on a whiteboard in front of us in the Bayh College of Education, Indiana State University, your passion and purpose was coming together to help our profession. You were concerned about attrition, and you were concerned about keeping great teachers, helping out great kids.

That’s when we started talking about mattering. Because there was little, if any, research in education, the conversation adults need to be having with themselves. Every once in a while, it has to be about the adults in the room. Shelly, not only did you show that during your dissertation with thousands of teachers through exploratory factor analysis, but you found me on sabbatical and talked me into a follow-up study with thousands and thousands more teachers.

Confirmatory, I mean, the science is what it is.  It’s mind-blowing that it’s been hiding in plain sight until Dr. Shelly Wilfong came along. Now we have, with the support of an incredible publisher, Solution Tree, and your kind wisdom and guidance in getting us on here, Angela, and bringing out the story to your audience.

We’ve got something that’s going to turn education upside down because finally the adults can go home with as much energy as they entered into the day because it’s all about having a posse at work that takes care of one another. It really is about the kids most if we allow the adults to be their best selves from the gate.

Angela: Yeah. Yes. This book and your research, Shelly, aligns with my work in the world, the company that I decided. The reason that I created this business was because I saw the gap. I was a school principal. When I was a teacher, I had a mentor. I had a buddy teacher. I had a master teacher. Then later on came instructional coaching. So I had some level of support, and I had my grade level.

When I went into school leadership, it was like here’s the key to your office. Yay, you got the job. Now go run a school. I was like oh, okay. First things first. You don’t know what to prioritize. Your time management gets out of whack. Then because you’re so depleted, you’re not thinking about how your teachers are feeling because you’re trying to keep your head above water, right? You’re trying to look for the oxygen mask to put on before you can assist others, right? When you’re scrambling like that, it’s hard to think about what your teachers are going through.

So I feel like I’m here putting the mask on them so that they can go and assist put the mask on others, right? So this work aligned so beautifully. I was reviewing the book today before I got back on because I love the titles of the chapters. They just invite you in.

One of the first chapters is celebrate team, not just the score. I love that so much because it talks about building community. I think about principals are very isolated. You’re usually alone, especially I was an elementary principal. You’re a party of one. Maybe you have an AP, maybe. Then you have to like have a good relationship with that AP to not feel like you’re isolated.

So community, if you don’t have that foundational community, like if you’re not getting along with your grade level or your department in the upper grades, that loneliness and that isolation can really take a teacher down or really take an admin down. Can you speak more to that? How you help teachers and administrators build community from authenticity?

Shelly: Yeah. So community is one of my favorites of the eight elements because so often we look at community either as community. Oh, we want to all be friends and just be very congenial to one another. Or we look at community as in a professional learning community where we’re very collegial with one another. The reality is we have to have that balance between the two. I always worry when I hear a new teacher or a principal coming in for the first time says well, I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to do my job, do what I’m supposed to do, and then leave.

We spend way too much time and energy in our buildings that we have to have some connections with one another. It doesn’t mean that we have to go out and go to the movies together or go to Christmas parties together or shopping together. We have our other friend set, but we have to have workplace friendship.

We have to be able to balance that collegial part of a professional learning community with the congenial part of friendship and have work friends. If we don’t, then it is incredibly difficult for us to enjoy our job. We have to enjoy who we work with. One of my great principals that I had while I was a teacher was talking to me about going into administration. He said, “Shelly, being a building principal is the loneliest job you’ll ever have.”

Angela: It’s so true.

Shelly: He said, “You have got to build your network. You have to build your community. You can’t just sit back and not have people around you to support you that knows what you’re going through.” You can have your support with your friends and everything, but if they’re not principals or if they’re not in, if you’re a classroom teacher and they’re not teachers, they don’t know what you’re going through.

So you have to have those work friends that you can commiserate with and brainstorm with and all of those things if you’re going to have a long career that you’re going to be satisfied with.

Angela: And that feels fulfilling. You’re doing this job for a purpose. There’s a why behind you getting up every single morning and going in and doing this job for 8, 10, 12 hours a day. Yes. I remember being a principal at a building by myself going home, and you can tell the stories. You can’t make up what happens in a school. So I always won the best story at dinnertime, right? But that’s where it stops. My husband didn’t understand, and my son could laugh about the stories. But at the end of the day, the struggles, the fatigue, the frustration, the conflicting priorities, the pressure to perform that kind of stuff, they couldn’t relate nor should they have been able to.

Which is why I started my company, the Empowered Principal® Collaborative because people need a place to go. If you don’t feel safe, and I think this is what happens with school leaders is that when you are a principal, you want to be connected with your peers, your fellow principals, but everybody’s busy principaling, right? Like, so you might do a quick phone call, but it’s rare to actually get together unless it’s like this very contrived PLC type of a thing.

But you’re so busy running your school, living your life that you don’t really get those connections. sometimes it doesn’t feel safe. Like there are times at work, and I think this is why people are like I’m just going to put my head to the grindstone, do my job, and get the heck out of here. But that isn’t fulfillment, right? It doesn’t make life fun at work. It’s like it’s something to check the box and do, put your hours in and get done, but it doesn’t fill the soul, right?

Shelly: Yes. Yeah. Mattering is about feeling valued. Like if I’m gone, someone’s going to miss me. Not because oh now I don’t, as a principal, I don’t have anybody to send this unruly kid to, or oh, I have to cover this teacher’s class because they’re gone and we don’t have a sub. It’s not missing them because of that. It’s missing them because they miss the person. Like gosh, I wonder why she’s not here today.

Angela: Yes.

Shelly: I hope she’s doing okay. Knowing that people miss you, and they see when you’re gone, and there’s a void when you’re gone. Oftentimes in education, we just we go about our day and oh yeah, such and such is gone or such, but we have to really feel like we matter to one another.

Angela: Yes. You want to care when your teachers are out. You want to care about why they’re out, understanding like are they ill? Or do they have a sick parent, a sick child? Not that you need to know all the details, but that you care that person’s going through something, or your teammate is going through something, or simply like it’s just a bummer when your bestie at work is out and you can’t go and talk all the talk to, right? You just like you miss them.

I know as a principal, I found this balance of, it took me a while to figure it out because first I was told like do not mingle with your staff, right? Like you were an administrator. I was like it just didn’t land with me. It didn’t feel right. So I started like okay, I’m going to mingle with all of them. It felt like an all or none. Like I had to do all or none. But what ended up happening was just we actually just got to know each other and care about one another. I started having barbecues at my house to celebrate staff. We had holiday parties and whatnot.

That made my job desirable to me. It made it more fun. I cared about people. I knew about their lives. Not the details. No, I didn’t go to the teacher’s happy hours. But I would have them over so that everybody felt welcomed. It was just it made my job. It just added a layer of delight and joy that I don’t think I would have experienced had I not been courageous enough to be authentic and vulnerable with them and have them do the same with me.

Take the time to go and check in on them. What’s going on? How’s it going? Anything I can do to support you? How is your day? Just simple little check-ins that really, I think for teachers, they felt like they had a principal who cared.

Ryan: Angela, you were doing something there that empowering principals do better than anyone else is you were investing self-fully in your own energy, in your own self. You were filling your tank so that you had the capability to fill others.

While Shelly’s research, it’s research on teachers, but it’s something that we all can learn from because we don’t have to stop teaching because principaling begins, right? I mean, we are forever teachers. I’ve now been a teacher for 40 something years, right? Because I didn’t stop teaching when assistant principaling or superintending or professoring, right?

Angela: Yeah.

Ryan: So what is just amazing about Shelly’s discovery is that okay, so we’re investing in ourselves as empowered principals. We’re doing so by allowing teachers and encouraging teachers and leveraging teachers investing in other teachers the same way self-fully and almost selflessly at the same time.

But when we see things like Shelly’s eight foundational elements, we know as principals that okay, we got a dog in this hunt. We’ve got to do something here to facilitate these eight foundational elements of mattering so that we take care of our people. But then on our drive home, we could go wait a second, I’ll bet because I haven’t stopped teaching either then I need to intentionally find ways to get these eight foundational elements of mattering at work for me too.

You did it through the barbecues, through hanging out with everybody. I mean, those connections just began for you like they do with your listening audience because of this stuff. So Shelly, could potentially one of your future research endeavors be doing this with principals?

Shelly: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Ryan: Before the end of this podcast that we can just run with today.

Shelly: Yeah, I think is the next step in this is to take a look at how building leaders fit in with mattering. I think there is a balance that a building leader has to have with their staff because they are supervising their staff. They are, there is a power differential there. So how do you balance being that friendship and that congenial aspect of it and still have like this is the decision we’re making.

So I think that some people do this immaculately and others really struggle with it. So, like you said, they just put their head to the ground. They just do their job, and it really isolates them even further from the staff.

Angela: Yeah.

Shelly: So yeah. I mean, there’s definitely an element of teacher, or excuse me, of principals that are missing this element of mattering as well for certain.

Angela: Yeah, I know this book is about teachers, but I couldn’t help as I was reading through it like people are people. So regardless of your seat on the bus, like you want to matter. You want to feel like you matter, and you want to feel like your contributions matter, your existence matters, your energy matters. I had a question pop up as you were speaking.

First of all, I really hope you do that research on principals. I cannot wait. You’re coming back on. That book, I’m going to like give out as free gifts. But they can read this book. This is what I want to say to all of you listeners right now. Here’s what I want you to hear from me. I’m not saying go and read this book and then now you have eight more foundations to consider and check more to do and more to do and more to do.

I want you to read it and think about yourself, how you feel in the community, authenticity, flow, purpose, assimilation, compensation, stability, job crafting, and then putting it all together in the last chapter. Those components, I want you to think about where you fit in on a scale of one to 10, where you’re feeling maybe like some of this is an eight or a nine and other maybe it’s a two or a three. Check in with yourself first and then think about where your teachers might be.

So my question to you, Shelly, is as you’re going into districts and you’re teaching this from the perspective of the teacher, what would you say is the percentage of where am I taking ownership for my part in these versus I’m expecting my district admin or my district staff or my site principal or other people around me to connect with me and help me feel the certain way. Do you know what I’m saying?

Shelly: Yes, absolutely. The answer to that is it depends on which element you’re talking about. So some of them are very, very personal. They can only be done by that individual. Like, for example, assimilation is this idea that you take something, a task or something that you have to do, a duty that you don’t really like, and you have to change your mindset that okay, the purpose for me doing this thing I don’t like is going to ultimately help the school goal or my goal to get here. So that’s really something that is internal.

Now, principals can help teachers by helping the teachers connect the dots. I know you don’t like this job, this task, this duty, this responsibility, but here’s why it is so important for us in our school building to do this particular thing. Here’s how it connects to our mission. This is how it connects to helping students. Sometimes we have to be very explicit with teachers and explicit with ourselves and making sure that what we are doing is purposeful and student-centered.

Sometimes it could be that, well, we’ve done this thing, this duty, we’ve always done it, and we have a hard time connecting it to the purpose and the mission, and it maybe isn’t student-centered. So then the question becomes why are we doing it? So there is some of that.

Then there are other pieces that school administrators can have a huge amount of help with, help teachers with. Like, for example, job crafting, where they’re able to take a task, modify it, change it to fit their needs. For example, agendas. Some principals love having the same agenda format for all of the teacher groups, for PLC teams, or grade level teams. They want that for consistency to make sure that everything’s checked off.

But the reality is some teacher groups may like to do an agenda a little differently. So instead of saying okay, everybody has to do the agenda in this particular format, instead say these are the things that I need you to make sure that you tell me about. You need to make sure that these are on your agenda.

Now, how you keep your agenda and the format you put it in, as long as I can understand where all the required pieces are that I want, do it the way you want to do it. I’m not going to pigeonhole you into one particular format. So those are the types of things where sometimes the principal has a heavy lift, but oftentimes it’s a real balance between the two.

Angela: Yeah, I agree with you. I see it as you want to take ownership, definitely of your part. Like your feelings are yours. So you have to take ownership of how you’re feeling emotionally and then how you’re responding to those emotions, right? How you’re reacting to them. But it’s also valuable to consider how we communicate with one another, our needs, our boundaries, our standards, our expectations so that we can feel connected with somebody and so that we can mutually meet each other’s expectations in a way that supports one another.

But again, I’m thinking about, it’s funny when you were talking about the yard duty. We talk about this a lot in EPC. Duties, nobody wants to go do extra duty. Nobody really loves them. But you’ve got, I always say, you’ve got to sell yourself, your brain. You’ve got to sell your brain on why it’s easier. I always say like how is this making life better, easier, or faster for you in the long run?

When your colleague goes out and does recess duty in the morning and you do recess duty in the afternoon, one, students are getting supervised. We know that’s the why, but we need to know what’s in it for us. At the end of the day, to get our brain on board and our brain’s like a little toddler. Like what’s in it for me?

Okay, what is in it for you? Well, if colleagues going to take over in the morning, you’re going to take over for them in the afternoon. Luckily, you’re not doing all the duties because you’re doing teamwork and tag team here. So you get a prep, they get a prep, that kind of a thing. Getting them on board.

But it’s true. Like there’s just things you got to do in the job that nobody wants to do, but we’ve got to get on board. But this idea of like where is my ownership here? Then I’m thinking about that poor teacher whose head is down to the grindstone doing the work, kind of self-isolating. Because as a principal, my very first thought that comes up is what’s coming up for them that doesn’t feel safe. Because if you’re not connecting, there’s a reason behind that behavior, right?

So what would you say, either Ryan or Shelly, what would you say to somebody who’s concerned about a colleague, but the colleague has created a barrier around themselves? What are some ways that we might be able to communicate with them and approach them in a way that invites them into like creating a safe environment to connect and speak? Even if it’s, you don’t have to be best friends and go to the movies, like you said, but how can we develop that connection with people who are struggling?

Ryan: Well, I think Angela, you ask an apt question there because while we are sometimes considering ourselves armchair philosophers as principals, it gets a little bit dicier when we consider ourselves armchair psychologists, right? Because we don’t have the clinical wherewithal to be able to do it safely and carefully in situations where there are unknowns. But there are things that we can do in leadership, and Shelly’s book can help.

Like for instance, you hung out with all your teachers, okay? All the teachers had some sort of a positive relationship with you. We have a good friend. In fact, he was our guru in factor analysis, Dr. Steve Gruenert, who teaches how to build a school improvement team by way of network analysis.

What Dr. Gruenert will share is that okay, you have folks on staff, some who are more isolated, some who are more deeply connected, but you have some with many loose ties to other people who are both respected and connected. Those more informal relationships, those ties, those folks who if this person were to walk into a teacher’s lounge, the conversation wouldn’t stop. It would keep going. Well, those opportunities are there for connections and for even interventions because people have trust.

So quite possibly a principal’s, one of the better approaches might be to know their staff and faculty to know who’s respected and connected and to know who might be able to innocuously connect with that person who’s sheltering in place, so to speak.

Angela: Yeah.

Ryan: To get the real story about what’s going on so that you know is this a matter of are they worried about job stability? Are they worried about an impending layoff, downsizing? Are they struggling working two to three jobs with compensation so that they’re just buried when they’re here? Do they not feel that they can job craft like Shelly discovered is really necessary? Are they in trouble because the principal hasn’t connected the dots or offered them that with assimilation?

So it’s almost like get the connection, do the indirect thing, find out what’s probably going on here, and then tap into one of Shelly’s eight to see if that’s going to make a difference. Because the small investment in your eight, Shelly, it’s not going to do any harm. But in a sense, a leader, an empowered leader can then stay in their lane and leverage your great book to help that person. I don’t know, Shelly, what do you think?

Shelly: Yeah, I agree. I think that it’s really important to have someone make those connections, whether that be the principal or another teacher. First of all, as far as mattering is concerned, it’s not something that is highly understood or talked about in the school setting. So even talking about these different things, as Ryan says, these eight elements, it’s really important to figure out where a person is really struggling.

One of the elements is purpose, finding your purpose. Some people, and as principals, we have to understand that some people get into education thinking that teaching is something that it’s not. They get into this job and they realize this isn’t what I thought teaching was going to be. So it may not be their purpose. So one of the eight elements is that purpose.

So you may have someone, as Ryan says, sheltering in place, but because they went to school all of these years, they did their student teaching, now they have a job. They see everybody else doing their job. It’s like oh, gosh now I’m stuck. So sometimes it’s you’re just not in the right place. It could be as easy as changing a grade level, changing from elementary to secondary. Sometimes I’ve seen some of those changes.

Sometimes it’s, you know what? Teaching wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. Or maybe they taught for 20 years, and their purpose in life has changed. So now it’s, again, like I don’t have that purpose that I had 20 years ago. So having those kinds of conversations and awareness of that is really important as well.

Angela: I love that you guys shared this because one of the things that I teach my principals to do is to connect with your teachers from the beginning. I feel like at the core of this, all of it comes down to how we feel. Like how the principal feels, how teachers feel impacts how kids feel, the experience they end up having at school, right? It really comes down to emotion.

So what we have to be courageous leaders in doing is asking people about how they feel. So in the beginning of the year, however you’re connecting. Like some of my teachers, like my fifth grade team, I always went out on the playground because that was, for some reason, that is how they would share.

Like I had one teacher, and he didn’t talk to me at all. Then I just kept going out during fifth grade recess, hanging out, just hanging with the kids. Eventually he came up and put his arm around me one day, and he said I’m really glad you’re here. I was like I’m in.

But then from that point, I was able to tap into his genius. We ended up departmentalizing fourth and fifth grade because of him. Like we just like we exploded our fourth and fifth grade up in a really good way because I was willing to go to him and be in his element then he started talking, right? So we started kind of chatting at fifth grade recess.

But in the beginning, like however you can make those connections, whether it’s indirectly or directly, eventually directly. But when you’re sitting down to have pre-observation meetings or your goal setting, all that stuff you got to do, ask people how they’re feeling about their job. Like how do you feel about teaching fifth grade? How do you feel about whatever?

Like maybe they have a student with an IEP, and they’re trying to figure out how to implement that. How are you feeling? Don’t be afraid to ask the question about emotions because that’s the drive. It’s the fuel that drive all of our actions. It impacts our decisions, our actions, how we engage with one another, how we engage with students. We, as the leaders, need to ask people how they’re feeling.

The most loving thing you can do, I think, as a principal is ask somebody how they feel about their job. What about it’s working for them? What about it’s not working? If they could wave a magic wand, what would be better? What would make it easier, better, faster? What would delight them?

And sometimes what might come up is I think I need to try another seat on the bus, or I need to get on another bus. Or like I need to retire. I need to get off the bus. Or I need to do something else, something. But if we don’t ask, how do we expect them to know? How can we lead? How can we guide when we don’t know how people are feeling? We have to ask the question.

Ryan: Angela, that is powerful. I mean, I live life navigating mixed metaphors, right? Sometimes they make sense, and sometimes they don’t. But you’re helping me with my next one here because I’m thinking of a piggy bank. You talked about those pre-evaluation conference sessions and things like that. All this feeling stuff, this emotional stuff.

Well, it’s almost like you have a piggy bank, and every penny drop is an emotional investment. Then when you pull the stopper and you get some coin out of there, that’s almost like an intellectual or an occupational withdrawal. So in order to ask anybody for an intellectual or occupational withdrawal, you have to make a hundred emotional investments to even build the reservoir so they have the capability to do that. That just popped into my head. So thank you for my next metaphor.

Angela: There you go. I love it. Yeah, I’m always like for some reason, I’m always on a bus. I’m on a train or a bus.

Ryan: A bus and a train.

Angela: Because I just remember thinking, like you can, it doesn’t matter what seat you’re on. We’re all in the same bus, right? Sometimes we’re changing seats, but the driver needs you in your seat on the bus to get to drive. That driver is just as important, if not the most important person driving, as everybody else on the bus. I’ll tell you the principal does not drive the bus. Secretaries, custodians, and bus drivers run our schools, okay, everybody?

Ryan: There you go.

Angela: Shout out to them. We love them. Our paras, our support staff, our office staff, they’re really running the dailies of this organization. We want to love on them. But we want to remember are teachers are working their tails off in their own individual way and finding a way to acknowledge the strength, no matter what. My fifth grade teacher, he was really brilliant at accelerating kids.

So when we got this idea of departmentalizing some of our instruction, he was taking these kids. Their math, there were kids in the fifth grade doing 10th, 11th, 12th grade level math. I was blown away that the team was able to do that. Then we also had kids struggling. So we had kids coming up to grade level, kids on grade level, kids above grade level. Because I was willing to seek out and ask those questions, plant those seeds, and tell him, I think you’re brilliant.

Then it came up that some former leaders hadn’t felt that way or hadn’t tried or had maybe like had a different opinion about this person’s work. I thought to myself, if you’re here on this campus, you have something to offer. There’s something brilliant that you know how to do. If I don’t see it, I’m going to find it. But I had to look for it in some of those people.

Shelly: I think what you’re really talking about is psychological safety. You know, teachers have to feel psychologically safe and to be able to say something to a leader, say something like hey, how about if we would do this or that? Like are they going to get reprimanded, or are they going to be looked down on? So I think all of this is really talking about making sure that you have an environment where you have that psychological safety for your teachers so they can express that information and express their ideas.

Angela: Yes. I’m wondering, how do you teach that? You called it job crafting. I love this because I teach principals to do that in their own jobs, but I hadn’t thought about bringing it up to open the door for teachers to come to them with the same concept. So I love this. So how do you teach teachers to get creative and to approach their administrators?

Shelly: Yeah. So that’s the difficult part because every teacher has a different context that they’re coming from. If I’m in a room with 20 different teachers and they come from 20 different buildings, they have 20 different principals. Not all of those environments are psychologically safe.

So, to me, the whole idea of mattering, when we wrote this book, we were trying to decide do we write this for principals? Do we write this for teachers? What lens are we focusing on? Or even district leaders for that matter. Who needs to know about this? The reality is everybody does because you have to understand the importance of job crafting.

That if I go to my principal, I’m a teacher. I go to my principal. I’m not trying to be annoying. I’m not trying to be a pain in the butt. I’m trying to do my job as effectively and efficiently as possible and still get the same outcome. So there’s a purpose for it other than I just want to complain about something.

So the more people can understand these concepts, they can understand like okay, I have this idea for job crafting the way we do our agendas. Now that’s not saying hey, I think the way we do our agendas is a waste of time and it’s not helpful for us at all.

Angela: Right.

Shelly: You know you go and say if we can job craft this a little bit, I think we can make it more valuable for our team and to make it faster and more efficient and stay just as effective as before. So can you let us try it?

Angela: Yeah.

Shelly: So administrators have to be open to that, and they need to tell their teachers. If you’re a building principal and you say yeah, I don’t care. Teachers need to know that you don’t care about trying something different. Now I said, just ask me first. Ask me because I can’t come up with all of the different ways of doing something. I do something the way I think it makes sense to me, which to other people can be tremendously different.

I have a secondary background. So I have that kind of mindset. So sometimes when I come up with something for elementary teachers, kindergarten, first grade teachers, I think it’s a great idea. Then when I tell them about it, it’s like what on earth are you doing?

Angela: That’s funny.

Shelly: Then we talk. It took them a while to understand like no, that’s not really going to be the best thing for us. How about if we do this? We get to the same place just we take a little bit different path, and it works for them. So that’s what I tell people.

Ryan: Can I extend on that a little bit?

Angela: Yes, please.

Ryan: Shelly and I just love our publisher because one of the many gifts that they give us is an opportunity to be relevant. So I still remember hearing for the first time for every why and what, we want three hows because that’s what Solution Tree is. They want to give people tools, give folks tools.

Well, Shelly’s eight elements here each have at least one or two tools that you can find in the book that says okay, if you’re going to try to leverage this. An idea, and Shelly I’ve had discussions since the book. So let me just give you one that we’ve been percolating on with job crafting.

So I talked to you about those folks who are respected and connected in those sorts of things. Well, we don’t know if there’s psychological safety in every school. In fact, we figure that there’s probably not psychological safety in every school, right?

Angela: Right.

Ryan: There is probably something that I’m going to mention next that is in just about every school. That is a teacher leader who is respected and connected, not only with the teaching ranks, but also with the administration in place.

Angela: Yep.

Ryan: No matter how dysfunctional everybody is there’s probably somebody who can walk into both rooms and the conversation will keep going. Probably one archetype across the nation, no matter the context. So that person is the job crafting gatekeeper. That’s your interpreter between teachers who are hesitant on going to the principal and the principal who is really uncomfortable about how much autonomy teachers get.

Shelly, I don’t know how you feel about autonomy. Actually, I do. Maybe you can mention that next. But how about a job crafting interpreter who can put a foot in both worlds and negotiate how much latitude is comfortable on both sides? Could help with the job crafting issue. Wouldn’t you think, Shelly?

Shelly: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, Ryan’s always teasing me about the word autonomy because I hate the word autonomy. Autonomy, to me, means like it’s a free for all, right? Everybody can do whatever they want. So I always like to talk about guardrails. Like you’re going down a road, and you have guardrails.

So I like that image of looking at you’re going down a highway. There are multiple lanes. It doesn’t matter which lane you’re in as long as you stay within those guardrails of, and when we talk about instruction, it’s the guardrails of best practice instruction. So I want you to stay within those guardrails.

How you do the instruction is up to you because the way you teach is going to be different from another person. The way they teach is going to be different from another person that teaches. But you’re all staying in the same direction. You’re going the same route. You’re just, you might be in different lanes within that guardrail.

So that’s the way I always like to look at it because autonomy doesn’t mean I’m going, I was a former social studies teacher. So way back when I first started teaching, we would show the entire series of Gettysburg, Ken Burns Gettysburg during Civil War. So, oh we have a week of showing videos. That’s what we’re going to do. That’s not really best practice instruction, right? So creating those guardrails.

When we talk about job crafting, it’s this is the purpose behind why we do what we’re doing. Those agendas, for example. Here are the guardrails. Here’s what I need in those agendas. How you do that is completely up to you, but you’ve got to stay within the guardrail. Then have at it. Some teachers struggle with that. They really do because they well, how do you want me to do it? I don’t care.

Angela: Just tell me what to do, they’ll say. Just tell me what you want. Just tell me what to do.

Shelly: Just like the high school students. They say just no, no. I want you to do it with how you want to do it. So that, it seems like a very simple concept, but it can be very difficult to actually pull off.

Angela: It is difficult. So principals listening, here’s how I help school leaders do this. Focus more on the outcome. Here is the outcome. This is the result that I want. So like I’m thinking about those agendas. As a principal, I just need your questions.

Like if there’s a to do for me, put that in a box or on the top, make it highlight. So that’s what I need. The only outcome I need for your PLC is like yes, cover these things. But like I need to know what you need for me, or I can’t do my job for you. So focus on the outcome, not the how, not the approach.

You’re not controlling the how. You’re setting the standard for the outcome or the result that you desire to create. That is how I ask principals to set, instead of setting goals. These are the results we’re creating. These are the outcomes that we need, want, desire. Then you get to like yeah, here’s your lane. Dance around however you wish. But we’re going in this direction, right? Yeah.

Ryan: That’s beautiful.

Shelly: I didn’t realize we were going to talk about agendas so much. But the other, I think, really important piece to that is that principals need to explain to teachers why is having an agenda so important? Why is having these elements in the agenda important versus just getting together for your morning meeting to talk?

So knowing the purpose behind the reason why we have agendas and how that can help you as a group perform better and more efficiently is incredibly important. Just like establishing norms. Okay, you have to establish norms. You don’t just say hey, you guys need to establish norm. What is the rules of your group? You talk about why that’s important and what happens if you don’t have them. So you have to continually revisit that.

Then to your point about focusing on the outcome. It’s like some principals, they might be a little nervous giving up some of that control. Well, well, well, what if it’s not as effective? All right well, then it’s the outcome. Is this group, is this grade level team being as effective as what they could be? Is it because they have unorganized meetings? So maybe you need to talk to that group about shoring up the agenda a little bit more or shoring up something. But if the grade level over here is doing a fantastic job with the way they’re doing it, let them do it.

So if you focus on the outcome and the outcome isn’t what you want, then you can take a step back and say hey, guys, this isn’t quite where we need to be. How about if we do this or this? Just keep adding things back into that so that they get to where they need to be.

Angela: Yeah. I mean, it’s personalized leadership at that point where you’re not just sending out a blanket email. Everybody get this to me by this time, or you’re like scolding one person, but it goes out a blast to the entire staff. That is where, again, we have to tap into our courage as leaders. It’s our responsibility to customize and personalize our leadership. It’s just like teaching. It’s like your staff is your classroom. Some people are on IEPs. Some people they have their what is it called? The growth plan or whatever. Other people are they can do their own thing.

You have to personalize your leadership just like you would personalize instruction in a classroom. But everybody needs to know the why. Everybody needs to understand. Some people are big picture people. Some people need the details. You can give it to them. Like I’m a big picture person. If I just know like what’s the end here? I go. I don’t need the details. I will weed those out. So you can give them to me. I will take what I need and run with it. Other people need the details. Just give it to them. Who cares?

But at the end of the day, it sounds like what you’re saying is let’s have conversations with the people who need we need to be having the conversation with, right. Again, that’s just about getting focused and understanding what is the outcome? What’s the theory as to why the desired outcome’s not being met.

Because it might not have anything to do with the agenda or the notes that come in. There might be a conflict between two people, or maybe something’s going on in that grade level. We don’t know. We’re testing a theory. But let’s go in and talk with them about it. What’s working? What’s not? Why? They’ll tell you if there’s psychological safety, as you said, right?

Okay, I feel like I could pick your brain for the next five hours, but I have keeping in my lanes here. I got to reign this in. So I want to ask each of you like if there’s one thing you could share with school leaders out there, I know this is going to drop in the summer. So this is a juicy time for them because they have some space and some energy in their brain to start planning for the upcoming school year.

What would you like to share with these? There’s a lot of aspiring leaders, new principals, veteran principals out there and district leaders listening to this podcast. So what is it that you’d like to share with them as they’re entering into a new school year?

Shelly: For me, it’s making sure that people are aware and understand the concept of mattering and what that means. I think that it is long overdue in our profession to take a look at this. Research shows that people with a stronger sense of mattering have less symptoms of depression. They show less signs of stress or they handle stress better. They have higher career longevity and higher career satisfaction. These are all things that we struggle with right now in education.

While we can look at school culture, we can look at collective efficacy, we can look at organizational health, these are big mountains for a leadership to climb. Changing a culture takes years. Growing teachers’ collective efficacy takes a lot of time and a lot of heavy lifting. In mattering, there are little things that you can do to help open the door to those much bigger topics.

Angela: Yes. I think that the little things that you do actually expedite the big picture progress. You actually get there faster when you’re focusing on the what you can do, the easy to do, the everyday little things that matter. Again, I think as a leader, you have to tune in with you. Where am I? Do I feel like I matter? Am I feeling like I’m making an impact, a difference?

Because people who hire me as their coach often come and say I got into leadership thinking I was going to create a bigger impact, I feel less empowered, less impactful than I ever did in a classroom. That’s because they made this big leap, and that ripple effect takes a little bit longer, right? So we have to grow into our new self-identity, right, and to the impact we’re looking to make.

But the little impacts, you get to feel those today, right now. You go out on your campus, and you apply these eight foundations, you can feel that today, right now. Then you’re going to plant that seed so somebody else, a teacher, a support staff, a substitute teacher, don’t forget your subs, your office staff, all of them, everybody. You can plant these little seeds, and then they get to feel it today. That’s what starts to generate mattering, feeling good today.

You don’t have to wait till tomorrow or next year. You can do it now. That’s what I love about this book and the strategies that you’re teaching. They’re very tangible. They’re just, it’s a way of being. You can do that with any level of experience at any school, at any time. Love it.

Ryan: I’ve got a couple of things here real quick.

Angela: Let’s go, Ryan.

Ryan: Dr. Wilfong, you had mentioned things like collective efficacy and school culture and change and things like that. But that was your follow-up research. Through thousands and thousands of teachers, you found eye-popping relationships with those things. So mattering really is the doorway to the big stuff that meta-analyses are showing makes an impact on student learning. That’s number one.

But the three I’d like to wrap up with is they’re pretty straightforward. I mean, number one, through people, all things are accomplished in schools. That’s number one, period, paragraph. Number two, as we remember from network TV or television years and years ago, we all want to be where everybody knows our name. That has to do with mattering too.

Number three, as I travel the nation working with leaders and groups and educators and boards of ed and superintendents and building principals, we have a gift in education, in the profession of education. That is the gift that every year at certain intervals, we have an opportunity to start undefeated.

Principals across the nation, empowered principals, can start undefeated for the next school year by getting in touch with mattering, looking at it scientifically. Shelly, by accessing your website, that’s matteringk12.com, isn’t it? Something real close to that.

Shelly: Yeah.

Angela: We’ll put it in the show notes for people. We’ll make sure we drop all the links in the show notes.

Ryan: That’s beautiful. So, again, Angela, Shelly, thanks so much for having me on board. Again, to our publisher Solution Tree and more importantly, or as importantly, the entire Empowered Principal® audience because these are some great folks making huge differences on kids. We can continue doing that by putting the teachers first so that we can be about the students most.

Angela: Absolutely. It has been such a pleasure to meet you both and to get to know you and your work. I adore you. I can’t wait to learn more, hear more. I hope to someday write for Solution Tree and meet you guys in person. Yeah, catch up and have a coffee.

Shelly: Yeah.

Ryan: Sounds great.

Angela: Yes. But thank you for your time. I know this is a big chunk of time. I appreciate it. The audience will really be profoundly changed by this. We’ll put in the links to the book and any other resources you want me to share with the audience. We’ll drop those in the show notes for y’all, okay? I hope you’ve enjoyed this show, you guys. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful week. We’ll talk to you guys all next week. Take good care. Bye.

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