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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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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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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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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I’ve been looking back on 2019 – the actions I’ve taken, the emotional states I’ve been in, the thoughts I’ve been thinking – and while I’ve had some huge successes, I’ve found it hard to ignore the flops and failures.

“Failing is not an option.” We are inevitably going to fail at some point or another, but as humans, we still inherently believe that failure is bad and that we should avoid it at all costs. So, it’s time to see failure for what it is and begin to embrace it so we can get back on track afterward.

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