Ep #116: Your Thoughts Vs. You

Your Thoughts Vs. You

Thoughts can be a pretty confusing concept when we aren’t equipped to understand them. We have so many thoughts in a day, and when our job relies on our ability to identify problems and think of solutions, misunderstandings about our thoughts can land us and our school in serious trouble.

Today, I’m diving into a thought work practice that will help you be more specific in determining how you approach situations at work. When you’re really stuck on something, with a decision spinning in your head over and over, this tool will have you feeling better and neutralize your thoughts when it feels like you’re in it too deep.

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Ep #115: Your First Year as a Principal with Jena Damiani

Your First Year as a Principal with Jena DamianiThe first year of being a school leader is undoubtedly a really tough time. You’ve gone from being a respected teacher with bags of experience, and overnight you’re a brand-new principal with a whole new set of expectations on your shoulders. It’s a real challenge and you can feel like nobody understands what you’re going through. Well, my guest this week knows exactly what you’re going through because she’s there as well.

This week on the podcast I have my first interview with one of my very own clients. Jena found me when she started her first year as a principal, and I’ve been with her every step of the way, helping her think through everything the job has thrown at her so she can be an effective leader for her staff and students.

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Ep #114: Why Education Is Ready for Life Coaching

Why Education Is Ready for Life Coaching

I attended the AASA Conference this past week and, even though I had a different episode planned for this week, I really wanted to share my thoughts with you all about coaching and mentorship for school leaders. As you know, this is a subject close to my heart and my experience at this conference was a real eye-opener.

As school leaders, you have an incredible amount of influence over not just your teachers, but the students as well. Even the best leaders have bad days, so I believe it’s about time that support was offered to all principals when it comes to how they’re managing their minds.

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Ep #113: Trauma-Informed Leadership

Trauma-informed leadership is something of a hot topic at the moment. And rightly so. Paying attention to the wellbeing of the children and staff in our schools is the single most empowering thing we can do for them. I’m actually incredibly happy that this conversation has started to appear in our industry.

When something big is happening in your life, you know how difficult it can be to focus on your work. Kids are going through exactly the same thing, and we can’t expect them to learn effectively while they’re going through these consuming distractions. This is a huge difference you can make as a school leader, and this starts with us acknowledging our own trauma.

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Ep #112: Thinking Vs. Doing

As school leaders, we are very effective when it comes to doing. We schedule ourselves to be busy and we’re go, go, go pretty much all day. And that makes sense. I loved the feeling of accomplishment I got from a productive day where I got plenty done. However, that kind of behavior isn’t sustainable long-term.

With our default being taking action as prolifically as possible, it really takes its toll when we get interrupted or things don’t go according to plan, and we feel we’ve had a bad day because we didn’t accomplish everything that we’d planned to. But that, my friends, is just a thought, and it isn’t serving us.

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Ep #111: The Illusion of Control

We are at the effect of so many illusions in our work as school leaders. Whether it’s time, money, perfectionism, we waste so much brainpower on these illusions. One thing I see most in my clients is that they want to have control over everything. However, the only thing we have control over is ourselves and full control simply isn’t an option.

Because we are in charge of a school, it’s understandable that we would think that this positional authority would lead to and require total control. We think of our boss as having control over us in our job, so why shouldn’t we have control over our teachers, parents, students? However, if you dig deeper, you’ll see that people cannot make you act against your will. And the same is true of the people you lead in your school.

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Ep #110: Leading in Alignment with Your Values

As school leaders, our values are incredibly important. I’m sure that your values are a big part of what got you to a leadership position in the first place. But the really important question to ask yourself now that you are a leader is: Is your leadership in alignment with your values?

Being in full alignment with yourself, your thoughts about your values and your belief systems is the only way to create results that are in alignment with your values. And even if you don’t see those results right way, you’ll be so much more grounded as a leader, and it makes every aspect of the job easier. Read more

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Ep #109: Empowered Decisions

When I was a principal, I would get home from school and my husband would ask me a simple question, like where would I like to go for dinner. And at the end of a long day, I remember that the idea of making another decision sounded painful. And I know that I’m not alone in this experience.

As school leaders, we make decisions all day long and it can be extremely taxing to our brains. Not all of them are big decisions, but they all take a little (or a lot) out of us. Have you really considered how you make decisions and what goes into reaching them? I want to bring some awareness to our decision-making process this week because the way we make decisions impacts everything in our lives.

 

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Ep #108: Become a Better Leader Through Accountability

Back when I was working as a principal, the word accountability used to make me a little bit nervous, and I know I’m not alone. In those days, fear was the main motivator used by my superiors for hitting our targets. However, today, I want to talk about accountability that comes from a place of love.

We know that holding ourselves to account can be difficult. Sometimes we say to ourselves that we’re going to hit the gym after work, but then, when the time comes, the motivation to go just isn’t there. And when it comes to holding others accountable, things get a whole lot trickier.

 

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Ep #107: Starting 2020 with Renewed Belief

We are now into the second half of the school year, and I hope you’re all rejuvenated after the winter break. This is the perfect time to talk about how to take a good look at our beliefs and begin the process of renewing our faith in them.

The best part of a brand-new year is the anticipation of what is possible in our future. We love a new year so much is because we spend time before January planning and dreaming of the impact we can make on our own lives and our school, and we have a clean slate with which to do it.

 

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