Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 404. 

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.

Angela Kelly: Well, hello, my empowered principals. Happy Tuesday, and welcome to the podcast. I have a very special guest for you today. This is Steven Langer, and he is the CEO of Well by Design. He and I connected online. We had a meet and greet, instant connection, and so much to offer you guys. I think this is the perfect time of year to be sharing Steven’s story and all that he offers and contributes to the field of education. And he has a TED Talk, right? So you’ll want to look that up. We’ll put that link in the show notes for you guys.

But Steven has so much to offer school leadership. We really connected talking about school leadership. He is a former school leader, which, of course, I screen because I want people to be very relevant on the podcast. And I am really looking forward to this conversation. So, Steven, welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast.

Steven Langer: Thank you so much, Angela. I’m really excited to be able to be a part of this. I really enjoyed connecting with you originally and looking forward to a great conversation.

Angela Kelly: Yeah, great. So I always just start off. I’m going to let you introduce yourself a little bit more. Tell the listeners who you are, your background, and how you created Well by Design.

Steven Langer: For sure. So I am a former principal, but as we always say, once an educator, lifelong educator. So that is a passion of mine. I stay very connected to the education system, though I’m up in Canada, so my education system may slightly be different than some of your listeners. And so after working as a principal, I moved into some systems work and worked on curriculum development for the K to 12 education here in Edmonton, Alberta, for the province of Alberta. Beyond that, I worked to support the entire province in the governance and assembly aspect of things working with government and did a fair bit in terms of policy development working with educators.

After that, I felt like I had done everything I could for the education system and it was the time to move. And so it was an opportunity for me to make a shift and start my own company focused on organizational wellness. We see so many educators and so many people that are pushing themselves to the absolute brink and to the limit. And burnout is a major issue, and I think that I’ve found ways that actually work to help people build a sustainable and optimal workplace culture. So that was my shift. Now I do speaking at conferences for educators as well as in the private sector. I also do work directly with schools and with organizations on helping to build those healthy workplace cultures.

Angela Kelly: Yes. So listeners, I want to highlight something. You’re hearing this at the end of September. You have been putting in 200% to kick off the school year, to onboard students, families, teachers, staff members. You’re pushing the boulder up the mountain in the fall phase of the school year. And now we’re getting into to October, and this is where the fall dip occurs. The burnout will feel real, and you’ll be thinking to yourself, oh my gosh, it’s only October. How am I going to sustain myself?

And that’s what this conversation is for. So really tune in, listen to this, replay it if you have to, if you’re listening to it in the car and you want to take notes because we want to give you tools to help you now at the beginning of the year. When you’re feeling the fatigue of the launch of the school year, but there’s so far to go and you want to gain clarity on your goals, you want to stay focused, you want to keep the priority the priority. And there is a level of fatigue, a level of overwhelm, and I would say like all of those pressing priorities where everything feels urgent, everything feels important, everything feels like it needs to be done yesterday. So Steven’s going to offer you some insights to that.

So I love that you’ve been an educator. I love that you talk about educational policy because a lot of times in education, we wait for the policy to trickle down to change our culture and change our environment versus looking at what we can do within our system in this seat on the bus. Yes, policy is important, and we need to meet policy where it’s at, but feel empowered while we’re in the seat of education, whether you’re a school leader, a district leader, an aspiring leader, or a teacher out there. What are some things that you could recommend, Steven, where yes, there are policies and procedures that we put into place, but how do we impact culture on the daily in the little things that we do in the personal power that we have as school leaders?

Steven Langer: Yeah, I think the first thing is to exhale. As you said, you’re at that point, right? At the end of September, everyone’s pushing, everyone’s been going uphill, and I know that. You got all the parents that are looking to get their kids in the right space. You got teachers trying to make sure that they’ve got everything going for the year. You’ve got your classroom assignments all ready to go. And so now is a chance to exhale because honestly, the work will never stop as an educator. There is always more. And so it’s important to take that moment to exhale.

Here in Canada, we’ve got Thanksgiving in October. And so that’s our like first marker. That’s the first long weekend where it’s like we made it. And so you’re now into it, you’re into the school year, take that moment for yourself. I think because we can push ourselves so often, it is even more important to rest. And what I mean by rest is actually not just like lay down and watch Netflix and scroll your social media, right? I think that it’s really important that we actually do things that help to renew us and help to bring us that energy.

So it may be getting out and going for the run, it may be spending time with your friends. The idea being that you do the things that you love so that it can sustain you because if we just push through, there’s research to show that when you’re just pushing through, you’re pushing through it at sometimes only 30%. And so while you think you’re working hard and going all, you know, full steam for your for your school, right, for your students, it may just be that you’re actually running on empty. And sometimes if you take that step back to rest, you come at it with a new light and a new approach because if you’re not good for yourself, you’re going you’re no good for anyone.

Angela Kelly: Yes. Yes. And your TED Talk is on kind of throwing the concept of work life balance out the window and redefining it. Can you describe that a little bit more because I think people feel like it should be this 50/50 split, whether that’s time or effort or the amount of energy exerted in your personal life and your professional life. And you’re kind of mixing that up a little bit. So I love this idea, this conversation. So tell us a little bit more, your insights on work life balance and redefining that for the school leader.

Steven Langer: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a big push for me because honestly, life is too complex to have your work and your life fit together on a scale and to be able to balance it at 50/50 with so much that we have going on. And I think when we do that, we also forget about our health, which is the third component within that. And so often we put so much on our work and so much on our home that we forget about our health, and then we crash and burn. And it’s like it’s so indicative of teachers and educators because every major break is crash time as opposed to enjoy your holiday time, right?

And so for me, work life balance, in my mind, is something that we’re pushing for that doesn’t exist. I think the mentality needs to shift towards work life coherence. And what I mean by that is coherence by definition means that it fits together and it makes sense. And so rather than it being 50/50, there are going to be seasons where we’re investing more, and there are going to be seasons where we’re able to use more time for ourselves to renew and recharge. And that can be depending on the stage within the school year, that can also be depending on the stage that you have in your life, whether you have family commitments or health commitments, caring for loved ones at home, whatever it may be.

But the reality is that we need to allow ourselves that monkey off our back where when it’s not 50/50, we start to feel guilty. We start to feel stressed, we start to feel frustrated. And instead, as we shift towards work life coherence, it allows us to do it with intention rather than just by default. And that’s the biggest piece to it is that when we move with intention, we’re deciding how we’re going to allow the flow within our work and our home to make sense for the stage that we’re at as opposed to just constantly feeling like there’s always more.

Angela Kelly: Yes. Ooh, I love this. I love this. I was just teaching a mastery, a planning mastery course, and one of the things that I talk about is there are seasons in the school year. I teach a three month plan, so we plan the fall season, winter season, spring season, summer season. And in fall, there needs to be an acceptance that I am going to invest more than 50% of my time in the beginning. But, and I should say, and if we believe that we should be investing 200% in July and August and September and October and November and December, and then again in January, then that is where you start to feel like overwhelmed, you feel fatigue, you feel burnout.

But it’s also discouraging because it there’s no space for anything else, your personal life, right? And so there is that intention that you mentioned where you’re going to intentionally overwork in probably August and September. Now we’re getting into October, 2 months of hard work being intentional in October. And it’s beautiful for Canadians that they’ve got that built-in break for Thanksgiving in October. I we had some friends. I had a colleague of mine, her name was Sharon, and she was from Canada, so she would take off days to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving. And then here in the states, it is in November.

So people here in the states are holding their breath from August all the way until the end of November. So October feels like, oh my gosh, I’m running a marathon that’s never going to end. And I invite you to like give yourself permission to with guilt free, no shame, no guilt, take some time for yourself and build back in October, the month of some rest and some recovery and some fun, knowing that you’ve put in two full months of really hard work.

I think this is what you’re saying, Steven, where it’s like, it isn’t 50/50 every week of the month or every month of the year. It’s there’s this ebb and flow to life, there’s this cohesion where there’s a dance of more and less and more and less, but the collective, like in the long, like the long game of this all, there is a cohesion that you feel complete, you feel fulfilled, right?

Steven Langer: You’re bang on right. The only thing I’m going to add to that is that you said we can start to take rest because it’s in October. I think that in order for us to be sustained, we need to do that in August and September too. If we’re going only work in August and September, we’re not going to be at our best. And so as leaders, your goal is to be empowering. Your goal is to be innovative and to have insight into things.

In order to do that, you need to be able to pull back and you need to be able to think about things, reflect on things, remove yourself from the situation. And so, especially at the beginning of a school year, when something doesn’t quite fit right and you’re trying to find the solution that’s going to work best for your educators, for your students, for your family, your community, you’ve got to be able to remove yourself and be able to see that. And sometimes you get that in those moments when you’re not head down into your work.

And so, yes, commit yourself fully because that start of a school year is always going to be a sprint. But at the same time, I think it’s important that we make sure we take time for ourselves. And it’s not, you know, it can be simple moments where, you know what, lunch is going to be outside every day. You’re going to go outside and you’re going to get your fresh air and your sunshine just to get a moment away from it all. You know, whatever it is, you know, making sure that dinner at the table every night so that you could connect with those you care about. That’s simple things that provide you that moment of rest so that you can recalibrate.

Angela Kelly: Yes. No, absolutely agree. And I believe the key to this is knowing the beginning of the year, it might be a 70/30, you know, balance, right? That might be what balance looks like for the first couple of months. But there’s still 30%. So we’re not saying 100 don’t eat, don’t sleep, you know, no self-care. But being okay with making peace with there will be a bigger push and this actually leads me to my next question. There will be this push, but if you always have your foot on the gas and you’re always expecting yourself to give 100% here and get the rest and get the play, that’s when it feels like there’s too much to do and not enough time and overwhelm sets in and then frustration will set in and it will be this loop you feel like you have a hard time getting out of because I hear, I can hear listeners right now saying, yes, Steve, we hear you, we agree with you and it doesn’t feel like I can take the time. I don’t have the time. Like I don’t know how to fit that in.

So do you have – I actually have two questions. My first question that came to mind was, what are some signals, like internal or external signals to a person that can help them create awareness like, oh, I’m leaning down the path of burnout, but I’m getting some early signals, indicators that I’m on this path to like overworking or I’m on the path to not giving myself that, you know, that opportunity to breathe and exhale and think. So what are some signals there?

And then two, when the brain is offering to all of us like, but there is so much to do, it does have to get done. I don’t literally see mathematically how I can take time to fit in an outdoor lunch or a walk or a, you know, a me time, right? As people would say, like, if I do that, one, that’s going to be perceived that I’m not doing my job, or two, I’m not getting done the things I need to get done. So if someone’s in resistance to they can see it intellectually, but they’re in resistance to like what that reality might look like, what might you say to them?

Steven Langer: Those are like very deep questions that are so that are so at the heart of what we’re doing. I love it because it’s at the heart of every, like I can picture myself in my school. I used to walk around with a clipboard sometimes just to appear like I was doing something because my mind was just on overwhelm. I was like, I got nothing. So I’m just going to walk around, chat with some kids, and make it look like I’m doing something because otherwise my mind’s going to melt. And I bet that there are a lot of educators that are in that space, principals, leaders that are in that space.

So the first thing, those signals that you’re talking about, I’ll give you two. The first one is this brain fog that you end up getting, right, where it’s all of a sudden like, what was I doing again? Hang on a minute. And you know, you start to disconnect and you start to not be as sharp as you regularly are. And it follows up with the idea of decision fatigue where you’re feeling like I can’t make any more decisions. No more, right? Because this idea that you’re constantly getting asked things and then next thing you know, even the smallest decision seems massive and you know, when you’re like, I can’t even respond to another email.

When you get into that phase and you start to feel that brain fog, you’re well down the path towards burnout already. And it’s really time to recalibrate. Listen, we’re all we all have a bandwidth. And so if we’re like, well, I’ll just push through again, yeah, okay, and the myth around this with burnout is that at first, it can almost seem positive. We can almost have a spike in our performance because the adrenaline, the cortisols are kicking in and we’re in game mode and we’re like, yeah, I can push through. I even get more done when I push through.

Fair. I’ve been there. And you’re like, I’m crushing it. And there’s no problem. But the reality is that’s you’re in game mode, right? And that’s fight, flight, freeze mode. You can only do that for so long before all of a sudden that brain fog kicks in, decision fatigue kicks in, and then it’s a quick drop. And so those are the two things around signals. If you start to notice that, it’s really time to build in rest.

And the best ways to build in rest is outdoors. And so getting to your when you do have so much on the go and people are you thinking, well, what if people think I’m not doing anything? They’re working hard and I’m doing nothing. That’s where transparency comes in. And so at the beginning of the year with my staff, when I was in schools, I would meet with them and say, look, you can have my job tomorrow if you want it. The reality is that yeah, sometimes it looks like I’m not doing a lot because I’m walking around the school outside or I’m taking a moment. That’s probably when I’m thinking about the biggest decision I have to make that day, and I need clarity. I can’t be in the noise.

And so just trust that we’re all doing our job. I’m trusting that you’re doing your job. And if I’m taking a moment, it’s because I need it, right? It’s because I need to let my brain come down from what I was previously doing or gear into what I am doing. And so when you’re transparent about that, you don’t have to apologize for it anymore. You know, the idea that it’s like, well, I can outwork you because I’m the leader and I have to always be on. That’s false, right? We’re all human and we’re all are giving our best. Let’s just trust that and let’s assume the best in each other, right?

So to the things that when I got into that tough mode where there was nothing left, the first was to do a to-done list because it’s so easy to look at that to-do list and get so overwhelmed. There’s always more. But when you actually have a list that is on the side where it’s like, this is what I’ve done, check, check, check, that’s the dopamine hit that you need to be able to be like, oh, I’m actually making really good progress today, even though it doesn’t seem like it because my list is longer than when I started. But you’re like, it actually allows you to see progress and it allows you to see the way towards the end. So taking a look at the to-done list and allowing yourself to see, okay, I’m making headway. We’re going forward.

The other piece is to triage that workload, just like in first responders. When you’re so busy, it seems like everybody’s situation is urgent and I got to deal with it right now, especially when an educator comes in and says, I have a big problem. Well, yeah, guess what? It might be a big problem to you, but right now you’re going to have to deal with that because I have other problems. And so I’ll get to it, but you know, so when you’re triaging, it’s basically saying, okay, these are the red, the yellow, and the green problems. The red problems, these are the red decisions that you need to make in a day that are like, this is big. You know, this is I have to decide this today or else this is going to go sideways. Yellow are, you know, more urgent, but they can wait. And green are these are things that, yeah, they have to happen, but they’re not more important than my red. And so if someone comes into you with what they think is a red and it’s a green on your scale, you need to tell them that. Yes. And so, you know, hey, I’m happy to have this conversation with you. We’re going to have it at the end of the day.

So those are two strategies. The other piece, and this really gets to the core of leadership is you’re one human being. You can only do so much. And the best way to build capacity within your school is to build capacity within your team. Let go of decisions that you don’t have to make and trust your team to make the right decisions.

Angela Kelly: Yeah, this is brilliant. And what’s so refreshing about this approach is the transparency piece. It’s not about what it looks like, what leadership looks like. We’re no longer trying to portray leadership or like role play being a leader. And I know sometimes in the beginning, your first year, sometimes you feel like you have to fake it until you make it, as I was told, or like just you have to just kind of pretend you’re being the principal until you figure out what you’re doing. And then you realize you’re really never know what you’re doing. You’re just doing the best you can with what you know and your experiences and all of that.

But the transparency is the freshness because when you were saying, if I’m out on campus and someone’s, what are you doing? Or what’s coming up or whatever and they ask you kind of or call you out, to say the truth. Like I’m having a moment, I’m taking a minute for myself. Number one, you’re modeling what it means to be a human in education. We all need a minute. We all need a moment. Number two, you’re not trying to create a facade of leadership. You’re modeling what it actually looks like, what it is to be a leader. And what it is to be a leader is you have moments of fatigue and overwhelm, and grounding yourself by getting out into the sunshine or taking a walk or being if you have an indoor campus, whatever that looks like for you, being honest and transparent about that, I think is the culture shift that is what allows us to be humans as the adults on campus.

I love the transparency piece because I think it models, it reflects what it actually the job actually is and what it means to be a human in education and it gives the adults on campus permission to also take a breath, take a minute, go grab lunch off campus if they have a break or they’re allowed to do that. Whatever that looks like for them, whatever feels good and grounding for them, giving ourselves permission as adults, not judging it, expecting the best, like that positive presumption that you’re doing your job, I’m doing mine. I’m taking care of my needs right now on this little walk I’m having with my clipboard, right? I’m taking care of me because I trust that you’re taking care of you, right? That’s just it’s a different energy, it’s a different vibe. It’s more truthful of the experience of educators.

Steven Langer: Yeah. Yeah, and I think you hit on something really big around the idea of like the impression of leadership and the role of a leader. And you know, as I mentioned, there’s only one of you. And so the most impactful thing that you can do as a leader in your building is empower others to lead. And so because that’s where you see that magnification of the things that you can do. The capacity grows so much further when you don’t feel like it has to go through yourself.

And that’s not like you don’t have to feel like you’re making yourself redundant in that. It takes courage as a leader, and people will see you as a stronger leader when you let go of power. And I actually say like, no, I trust you. Let’s do this. But you need to build your team towards that so that they understand that they have capacity to make decisions, that you trust them and they’re empowered. You know, this is the empowered principle. The whole idea is that the empowered principle empowers their team to lead so that they can lead effectively.

Now, can I go down the rabbit hole of a of a fun story? Because you know, I think we’ve chatted about this one anyway. And so, you know, because, yeah, great, Steve, sounds good, but I’ve got a team that. And so, hey, I was a principal, and I walked into the new school that I was at, and on the first day of that school year, the principal and I were both vice principal, we’re both brand new. We go outside at recess on the first day, and there are kids kicking soccer balls up onto the roof so that the caretaker has to get them down. There were kids that were linking arm in arm across the highway to block traffic so that the traffic couldn’t get by because they thought it was funny.

So this was what we witnessed on our first day. Now, to be fair, you know, we looked at each other like, what did we get into? But at the same time, we were, you know, the previous administration had done an incredible job working with the staff in terms of policy and process. The lesson plans were tight, they knew exactly what the rules were, they had policies and strategic plans ready to go. So this was a staff that was almost like, you know, the potential energy, they were like shot back in a in a slingshot, ready to be released. The problem is that the they hadn’t gotten that far yet to be released. And so there were a lot of discipline issues in the school. There were over 300 suspension days in the first year that I was there. Like it was a lot to try and shift like it was a lot. But the staff were so good, and you could tell that the kids were just misaligned. You know, they didn’t have value within the school. They didn’t believe that they were cared for within the school. And so it took this, not because of the teachers, it was just this culture shift.

And so we really embarked on this idea of empowering your staff. And so one of the first things that we did is we needed to change our mindset and change our view within the community. It was a small community, so the school was really the culture hub, and they were seen as a problem. So we needed to shift that. We also needed to give kids ownership of the school because it’s their school, right? And so that’s where they go to learn. And then the last thing was to shift it for the teachers to make sure that they knew that they had capacity to be leaders.

And so we’ve embarked on this process where in the community, every home room classroom had a service project that they had to do for the community. And so it was to help build culture, build community within the broader town. So it might be shoveling walkways because up in Canada it snows a lot, so maybe we’re doing that for the for the seniors in our community. We did have a seniors complex, so we had a bunch of kids go and play with like games and build relationships with the seniors. We had some that were doing some painting and community projects. We hosted evening events within our school for community members. Everybody had a role so that they could help shift the narrative around the culture within the community.

Then the students each had a role within the school where they were a leader. For some, it was like a one day thing. And for others, you know, for our kids who are more prone to vandalize furniture and stuff, they became the ones that were building the furniture because then they protected it. You know, problem solved, right? But everybody had a role. So we built an indoor learning garden, totally shifted a common area so that people could gather and have like multiple seating areas and like, let’s gather together, let’s learn together, let’s turn it into a community. 

And so some kids were responsible for the learning garden, some were responsible for the tech. It didn’t matter what they did, but they had a role so they belonged. And that was key because as soon as students feel like they belong, they have a place to go and they’re needed. Now I got to get up and go to school.

And then from there, the educators, we started shifting the programming to offer more flexible programming for our options that were more catered to what the staff were enjoying. We started to give them opportunities to lead in different capacities as well. And what we saw was that as people felt like they were valued and they belonged, the culture shifted, the mindset shifted, and behavior problems went away. And in the 3rd year that we were there as an administrative team, we had only 10 suspension days, not 300, and all of the indicators of achievement had shifted from struggling to thriving.

We actually had educators and administrators from across the province coming to look at some of the great programming that our staff were doing, right? And it wasn’t just me walking them around. It was like, come and see what our staff are doing. And the biggest indicator of that was about 5 years later, I’m speaking at an education conference, and there were more than 10 of the staff that I had worked with in that school who were at this leadership conference because they had branched themselves to be leaders, whether it be district leaders or principals or other roles of leadership. And that to me was like, okay, as a leader, are you building other leaders? So it was it was really cool. It was a really cool experience to see that major shift.

And so back to your original question of like, where does policy meet day to day? Sometimes policy changes when the day to day reflects the need for it. And so as we showed that you can shift an entire culture by building capacity and by building belonging and value and being creative in your programming, all of a sudden now other schools are like, let’s get this learning commons going. Let’s get this other programming going. And it started to shift the policies within your division as well.

Angela Kelly: Yes. Oh, that is a magical story and let me just say this because we talk truth and transparency here, this feels like a huge jump. If your school is struggling and you’ve got kids kicking balls on the roof and blocking traffic, if you’re at that point and then you’re hearing all of these statistics where the attendance came up and the behavior referrals went down and the test scores went up and it sounds like it’s too good to be true, it’s number one, it’s possible. This is a true story. And number two, it’s not that it happened overnight.

And I think as leaders, here’s what can change overnight is our perception of what leadership is, what it looks like, what it sounds like, what it feels like, its intention, its purpose. Leadership isn’t ego driven. It’s not me fixing problems. It’s not me having to know the knowledge and the wisdom and then imparting it on people and then marching people down the street and do as I say and do as I do and that’s not leadership. Leadership’s actually the opposite of that where when you’re leading people, they are choosing to follow. They are inspired, they’re listening, and we create that climate when our mindset shifts from it is my job to be the leader and look like a leader and be perceived as a leader versus let me show people what leadership looks like internal leadership from an internal space.

And that’s what you did was you said, hey, kids, you have value. This is your home, your school, your campus, your environment. This is you have ownership in this, what it looks like, what it feels like. Teachers, you too. And this isn’t a me building, this isn’t for me to just, you know, be the king or be the empress right here. It’s about we are in this together as a team for us, for them, for the greater good, as I always say. And when we shift from what do I look like as a leader to what is my intention as a leader? It’s an energy thing. It’s almost not a skill thing. It’s not so much what you’re doing, it’s who you’re being when you’re doing it and the energy that’s fueling the actions and decisions that you take. Would you agree with that?

Steven Langer: Yeah. Yeah, and I really think that if you’re trying as the leader to be the gatekeeper or to make all the decisions or to try and say like, no, as the principal or the leader, it’s got to go through me. You’re going to be limited in your capacity. And so the two major shifts that allowed us, and I say us because my assistant principal in that school was a dynamite. He was one of my mentors. He was an incredible human and he had some incredible ideas.

So the first thing is to shift your mindset because you’re right, everyone just needs to belong, feel valued, and feel like they have a role so that they actually want to commit and be aligned to that. And then the other piece is you really move forward when you allow others to make the decisions and you allow others to own certain pieces because instead of feeling like, okay, I don’t have time for that. I’ve got to go to this meeting or I’ve got to go do that. Great. They’ll go do that. They’re going to do something incredible and they’re going to tell you about it later because they know the values, they know what we’re doing. We’re aligned in what we’re trying to achieve, so you don’t have to worry that they’re going to do something off base because they’re going to do something that’s totally aligned with where you’re going and it’s probably more creative than you would have thought of anyway. You just have to allow them and empower them to do it.

Angela Kelly: Right. Right. And you have to be good with that. We all rise when we’re not afraid to let other people shine, to let somebody be better at it than us, more creative or more whatever, let their skill set rise to the top. You actually shine when your staff and your students are allowed to shine. It’s not that our light needs to be brighter than theirs, it’s that we’re shoulder to shoulder. I call it, you know, equal value but different. So it we are all of our contributions have equal value even though they look different. So custodian to the, you know, customer service in your front office, to the dean, to the maintenance people, to the bus drivers, to the teacher, to the support staff, parents.

Equal contribution in terms of value, but it looks different. And when we say, I feel like so many times everyone’s like, well, change your mindset. That’s all you got to do. And it’s like, here’s what I think Steve and I mean when we say change your mindset, expand your perspective. So you don’t have to drop what you believe is true. You simply need to ask yourself, what else is true? In addition, what else is true and expand your perspective like what else might be true? How else might I be able to trust my staff? How else might somebody else be able to take this on?

I always say, I always challenge my clients and I say like, if, you know, there’ll be a task on their calendar, we look through their calendar and I will say like, could somebody else do that? Like if somebody else can do it, then you shouldn’t be doing it. But there is a bridge that’s required when you delegate. You can’t just abdicate it. That’s different than delegating. It’s teaching and onboarding and training somebody to do it, but then releasing the reins and allowing them to do it in their own way. Let them shine, let them do it their way. And hey, this is where our work comes in. I wouldn’t have done it that way or I wanted it to look like this or we get our fingers into the how. It’s not the how, it’s done. Done is better than perfect. B+ work is okay. And sometimes what you think is going to be B+ work actually becomes gold star A+.

Steven Langer: Yeah, because it’s only your perspective when you’re thinking about this is how I would have done it. It’s like, yeah, but you know what, four other people would have rather see it this way. So, you know, maybe they actually had it right and you just let it go. You hit on a few key positions that I love talking about. So, you know, your custodian, like the role that they have within a building, I had such a great relationship with my custodian because they’re almost like the silent accepted person within the building where they’re always around, but they’re never around. And so the students say things that they probably wouldn’t have said if they knew someone was in with in earshot. And all of a sudden the custodian comes over and says, hey, this kid’s having a tough day. Now we can go deal with it or like, hey, by the way, there’s an issue happening over here. You should probably deal with.

And you’re like it’s just silent ears without even trying. But like when you think about the role that they play in terms of creating a welcoming space, you know, the first opinion that a parent has when they walk into your building is like if it’s clean and it’s ready to go and it’s shining, yeah, they’re feeling like you got things under control. If it’s a mess, then they think the whole thing’s a mess, right? And same with your bus drivers. First person that the kids sees, last person that the kids sees. And they have the ability to like start the day off right with that kid. Good morning. How are you? Good to see you. And now someone cares about you during your day. And at the end of the day, I’ll see you tomorrow. I always ask my bus drivers to say, I’ll see you tomorrow, because that like from a stance of kids that are dealing with mental health issues, that’s a really big piece because if a kid commits to seeing you tomorrow, they’re going to be there, which is good.

And the last one is my front office staff. They saved me so many times. You got a parent coming in hot, there’s an issue and they see it, they instantly cut them off and they’re like, “Hey, how are you? Great to see you. How’s your family? How’s this? It was a small town, they all knew them. And then, you know, let me get you a water. Okay, Mr. Langer, Steve’s just working with a student, he’ll come and get you right away.” I’m hiding under my desk. I don’t want to talk to that parent until they’ve cooled down a little bit. And so it’s like those kind of things where you just let go and allow someone else to take the lead allows you to do so much more within your building.

Angela Kelly: Yes. I love that story. That is so true. So hey, who really runs a school? Your custodians and your secretary, your support staff in the office. Like they’re really running the show. And I have a little story to share myself. So a couple of things, like Miguel was our primary custodian, he was our day custodian, and I would encourage him to play with the kids, to love on the kids, to like especially with lunch, like just to be lighthearted with them. He was kind of keeping to himself. And his primary language was Spanish. I said, no, talk to the kids in Spanish, speak to them in Spanish, allow there to be normal conversation, you know, and just natural and organic conversations.

And he was so loved, and they would, yes, they would share things with him or, you know, he was in earshot. It felt like he was everywhere on that campus all at the same time, and then nobody could find him at the same time. So it was funny. And then the bus drivers, I used to on hot days run out bottles of water or sodas or whatever. I knew their preferences over time, so I would like run out and, you know, thanks so much for what you’re doing. It’s, you know, the kids are coming in hot after a really warm day or something just to like or give them a cup of coffee in the morning, but really to let them know like, hey, you’re on this bus alone with 80 students.

You know, and I see you, I acknowledge you, and I thank you because I do not prefer to be driving this bus and doing your job, but I am so grateful you’re doing it, and I just thank you for that. We really want to celebrate all of the support staff. And just a shout out to all of you because this is another thing. Leaders aren’t leaders on their own. We’re not standing on a pedestal in isolation. We are founded upon the network of our community, and we are here to serve our community. We are here to serve those we lead, and we’re here to empower them and to support them and to celebrate and acknowledge them. And if you can do some of those things, which they feel like the little things that you don’t get to, but if they become the priority, you will find your job being so much easier.

Steven Langer: That’s the role of being a leader. You watch people thrive. It’s amazing.

Angela Kelly: Yeah, it’s really fun. Oh, this is inspiring. I hope this has been inspiring for you listeners. But Steve, I just I love to tap your brain, and we could talk for hours, but if I could just open it up, is there any last words of wisdom, tips, thoughts that you have as people are entering into, I know this is – we’re coming into the end of this first kind of season in school leadership. So this is dropping around the end of September, early October. What insights do you have for this point of the year?

Steven Langer: Yeah, I would say don’t wait till you’re thirsty to dig your well. And so the idea being that hey, it’s a push and it’s a long year and we want to do this for more than one year too. We don’t just want to do it for one year. We need to be well in order to do our jobs well. And if the leaders aren’t well, it resonates down to the rest. And so this idea of don’t wait till you’re thirsty to dig your well, don’t wait till you’re burnt out, stressed, tired, and exhausted to start taking care of yourself because climbing out of that well is a whole lot harder than caring for yourself along the way. And people want to see you caring for yourself because then it gives them the inherent permission to do the same. So don’t feel guilty about that. Take it and do it and lead the right way.

Angela Kelly: Yeah. Lead by example in that way. When teachers have permission to leave early, you know, or take that break or, you know, get the sleep that they need. That’s why I was asking you about kind of tips and strategies. I love the, you know, the brain fog thing because oftentimes we just think, oh, we’re just tired. But you can go home and get sleep and still come in with brain fog when you’re focused on the to-do list and not the get-done list or the to-done list like you said, but you can be physically rested but still feel burnt out, fatigued, brain fog.

So that’s an indicator that there’s another kind of fatigue happening, which might be like heart, soul, you know, your fun bucket might be empty or your what makes your heart sing might be empty and you might need to go and fill that a little bit or just again, grounding your feet, getting outside, breathing fresh air, sun on your skin, the smile of a child, you know, just the wink at a teacher like we’re in this together. Those little things can fill that back up very quickly.

Steven Langer: Yeah. Yeah, you know, you can be so easy to get caught up in the work part of things that like I got to be doing all this and this and this and this and this. But you can renew yourself by walking around your school, chatting with a student, you know, hearing about their weekend or just, you know, catching up with a kid, you know, take the time as an administrator to do that. It builds trust down the road and walk into a classroom and just celebrate your teachers. Don’t walk into, you know, with a clipboard ready to go and evaluate them. Sometimes just walk in and just enjoy what they’re doing because they’re doing great work.

Angela Kelly: Yes. Just smiling at them. Like go into a classroom and the teacher would you could see them like their body tense up and freeze and like they would start running around and like being crazy. And I would just put my hand on their shoulder or I would wink at them or I would smile at them or a thumbs up like it’s good, you’re okay. 

Steven Langer: We got this. Just here enjoying the day with you. I trust you. 

Angela Kelly: Yes. And then like I would like then divert my attention, not focus on the teacher, not looking at them, but talking to kids. And then the teacher can like, let that little adrenaline spike go, relax a bit and then go back into like doing what she or he does best. So, oh, this conversation is everything. I thank you for your time. Steven and I had little glitches here and there. Yeah, and this was ideal timing. I can feel it. This is going to be so powerful for our listeners out there. And if they want more information, Steve, about who you are, what you do, what you offer, can you just briefly tell us and then we’ll put all of that contact information in the show notes.

Steven Langer: Love it, for sure. Yeah, please reach out on LinkedIn at Steven Langer, as well, my website is WellByDesign.ca, not .com, so that’s a good one. And check out my TEDx. It’s just under my name at Steven Langer as well. But I love speaking at conferences, I love working with school teams, I love connecting in that way, and honestly, just reach out. I have no problem if you want to reach out and take your question or if you want some guidance on something. So please, education is my passion, so I always have time for that.

Angela Kelly: Great. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for being here today. It’s been such an honor to get to know you and a pleasure. I look forward to collaborating in the future. I think we might be able to do some things with schools together.

Steven Langer: Oh, I love that. Yeah, it’s been a great conversation. Nice way to start the day for sure.

Angela Kelly: Yeah, awesome. Great. Thank you so much listeners. Have an amazing week, and we’ll catch you next week. See you then. 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 402. 

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

Well, hello, Empowered Principals. Welcome to this very special episode of the Empowered Principal Podcast. I want to welcome three of my dearest clients, my dearest friends, my compadres in our very first live event. I hosted EP Alive 2025, which was my very first in-person event, and these three ladies were bold enough, brave enough, wild enough to come along for the ride. So I have with me Erin Bolby, Kay Reidy.

Kay: Reidy.

Angela Kelly: Reidy. And Sherry Reed. So these three ladies, we just got back from the event, and I wanted to capture this conversation for all of you listeners out there to hear because the energy at this event, it was for me, it was more magical. It was even better than I could have envisioned. And I’m going to be hosting, well, by the time this drops, I’ve already hosted it, but you can catch the replay of it. I’m hosting a planning mastery class and I talked about planning something versus engaging in it, and there’s no amount of imagining an experience like imagining a vacation or imagining an event like this or imagining the school year that can compare to the actual emotional experience of the tangible event. Would you guys say that’s true? There was imagining before and then there’s actually being in the energy of it.

And really, that’s what we’re here to talk about today. I am still glowing from this experience, and I can’t wait to hear your guys’ insights and your before, during, and after experience of the live event and how it felt for you, your takeaways, and what happened. So, I want us just to go back kind of to the beginning, and I want you to think back to when I first decided I was going to do this live event. I was actually in Nashville at the time. My intent was to host this event in Nashville, which is a hub. It is a draw, just the city itself is a draw. It’s an amazing city. It has so much to offer. It felt like the perfect place to have my first event. My son lives there and I was living there at the time, and I was all set to have it in Nashville. So, do you guys recall when it was announced that it was going to be in Nashville?

Erin: Yep, I think I remember hearing the first and I was like, “Whoo! Get to go there with my favorite people.

Angela Kelly: Yes. And what’s so crazy about that is it wasn’t about going to Nashville. It wasn’t about getting cowboy hats and cowboy boots and going down to Broadway and running around on the strip. It was about us gathering, and that is where I happened to be, and that is where I wanted us to gather. And then as life would have it, my life has taken many twists and turns. I’m on the roller coaster, I’m riding all the rides at the amusement park the last few years, and there was a plot twist in my life, and I ended up in Iowa for multiple reasons actually, but when I landed here, there was a moment where I thought to myself, “I don’t think I have the space, the emotional space, the emotional capacity, the mental space, the mental capacity to handle an in-person event.”

And if I’m really transparent, I was like, “Who is going to want to travel to Iowa?” Who is going to drive to Iowa or who’s going to fly to Iowa? And that’s so funny because that is my own thoughts and feelings about the state in which I grew up. The bugs, the humidity, the snakes, you guys know the inside stories to all of this. But I was like, “I don’t know if I can sell people on coming here for this experience.” And I will be honest, it took me, I had to get on board. And this is true for school leaders. We have to be on board ourselves as leaders in order to get buy-in, which is selling an idea, right? It’s getting people to buy into an idea. And I thought to myself, wait a minute, it’s not about the place. It’s about the space, the environment we’re creating.

Sherry: And Angela, that’s what I was going to say. It wasn’t going to matter if EP Alive was in Nashville or Iowa or wherever the location was going to be. I was very committed to being able to attend and have the experience and learn from everyone on this call and everyone who participates with us in EPC because the energy of collaboration and that aliveness that we experience and how it impacts our everyday life and our decisions and our outcomes is phenomenal. So, once I heard there was the opportunity for an alive, an EPC alive, I knew the location did not matter.

Angela Kelly: Oh, that’s so sweet of you to say. I’m glad you felt that way. I had to get on board with that for a minute. And it was when I went up to my friend’s house at the lake and I thought, what better place than to have it here? And everything in that moment aligned for me. I grew up going to the lakes. I have had some of my most crazy life moments. I think I was sharing with you guys at the event where that was the place where I announced my pregnancy, my pregnancy with Alex, to my family. We were on a family vacation, and we were up there visiting my parents. I think I lived in Minneapolis at the time, and we announced our pregnancy with Alex up at the lakes, and we’ve had multiple family vacations up there from childhood to adulthood. One of the last places my mom was able to visit, before her, you know, her physical condition didn’t allow her to travel. So, special memories up there.

And I realized something that there was already the energy for this container to take place, this event to happen. So, I loved being up there, but I’m going to turn it over to you guys. I, from the moment we walked in together, the moment we realized it was just the going to be the four of us. And I will say some people did drop off, and the reason was, well, it was the location or it was the expense of coming and flying here. And that’s okay. What was meant to be was meant to be, and I feel like the container that we had ended up making it even more powerful than perhaps a larger group setting. And we’ve kind of had these inside jokes about, well, this is the OG group, this is the, we’ll look back at a time where EP Alive is a bigger crowd, and we will have always been able to cherish this moment and this experience. So I’m just going to turn it over to you ladies and let you guys share your insights, your experience of the event, how it felt for you. So Erin, just to make it easier, right? I can just call on people. So Erin, can you share your thoughts?

Erin: I think that one of the powerful things about our EP live event is that it created a space for us to be removed from our day-to-day life. And I think that removal helped create awareness, at least for me, to be able to look into our lives from the outside and see am I actually alive? Am I actually living a life that I love? And or am I just going through the motions? The day-to-day, waking up, doing the things, doing all the more things, going home, doing more things. So it gave it a moment to pull away from that, look into my life and say, you know what, I actually want to live my life alive. 

And I did some reflection on like what makes me feel alive and it’s tuning into my senses a lot. Being able to listen to music and feel it in my body, being able to move in my body, being able to taste beautiful things and smell smells I’ve never smelled before, sitting on the lake, oh, that felt refreshing, and being able to laugh with other people and to feel safe with people. And so I love that container that the EP live gave us a space to look into my life and see it from the outside. 

So that’s one of my big takeaways of, there’s more. I got a long list, but that’s my main value I think in it in attending an event is that it pulls you away and into a space where you get to connect with people and thankful, I know these people already because we’ve been in the Empowered Principal Collaborative all year. So I know their stories, I know the hardships they’ve faced this school year, and we were able to connect right away and feel safe with one another in order to get dig deep and share and ask ourselves and get curious. What’s the purpose? Have I lost the purpose in just living the day-to-day or what’s really there for me?

Angela Kelly: I love that because you know what was so great was we in the context of EPC, we get kind of down to business with the work, right? The school work, the school leadership work, and overcoming obstacles and feeling all the feels of that work. This was seeing each other as humans, as ladies, as people with lives and families and ambitions and other interests. How cool was it that Erin is a certified yoga instructor and we got to do yoga every morning? Come on. That was crazy. 

It just brought us all to another element, and it allowed all of us, at least for me, to it’s not that I didn’t see people as humans. Of course, we did. We’ve been connecting all year, but to be energetically in that same space, I just I felt so close to each and every one of you. And I too felt this awayness. My it felt like my coaching hat was off and I got to be human with you. And I wasn’t marketing and selling and being the empowered principal, I was being me with you. And coaching conversations, they were so organic and so natural, and yes, we had topics that we had planned and I had planned and structured this event with a lot of flow for it to be organic, and I’m thrilled that you feel that way, Erin. I felt that too. I really did feel that way as well. So what are you guys’s thoughts, Sherry and Kay? I shouldn’t put you guys together. I clump you together because you work together. Okay, Kay, let’s go. I’m just going in order on my screen.

Kay: I would echo a lot of what both of you have said already. Just that the idea of yes, we’ve been working together for the past year as part of the collaborative, which shout out, major win in The Empowered Collaborative. I’m having trouble with my words today.

Angela Kelly: It’s all good.

Kay: Just what an amazing experience that was for the school year. But then to be able to come together in just a beautiful setting where maybe not all of the noise, the awayness that you talked about away from what’s happening here in the office, but also what’s happening at home. We got to step away. And yes, Sherry and I worked together, but it’s nice to get out of this space and our hometown and be able to experience something that now is hers and mine, which is separate from the rest of our admin team. 

The topics, I think the close knit group that we had really allowed for us to go deep and get really intimate into where each of us are as leaders and what might be barriers for us to be alive in that. And like Erin, I have come home and I’ve done a lot of reflecting and my little journal from the Alive event has I’ve named it my EP journal for this year. It’s getting a lot of writing time right now. So all things EPC are going to go in the journal. Other things that I would add just, I think the alive event and being in person is going to add another dimension to next year’s EPC because now we have a deeper connection than we had earlier. And I’m going to pause my brain because my words are like spinning right now.

Angela Kelly: I really want to add that EPC, the container, when I was starting as a coach, I only did one-on-one. I was just building up my connections with people. My desire to be a coach was less about the work as a school leader and more about feeling connected because I felt so isolated as a principal. And when I first started this, the way to connect with people was through the one-on-one coaching experience, which I still offer that to an extent, but there was a chapter where I was coaching one-on-one 24/7, it felt like. I had to be able to scale somehow, and I thought, what would hold the container of one-on-one in a group setting, and how can I transfer and actually make a group setting just as valuable, if not more? 

And then I started thinking about the reason I became a coach is to connect. I felt isolated. I saw my colleagues, my friends, my peers behind closed doors sobbing. Having on the face while they’re out in front of their school and their community and their students, but the feelings and the emotional experience and the pressure and the hardship and the burdens that they were carrying, when I saw that, there was something inside of me that burst open because I saw them for the real person, the real experience they were having, and I realized we’re all sitting in our offices suffering in this in silence, in these silos, and there isn’t a space to my knowledge that brought people together in this way to have these kinds of conversations about feelings, about life, about our thoughts, about what blocks us and prevents us from breaking through and expectations that we are putting upon ourselves or that other people have placed upon us that aren’t serving us or our staff or our students or anything about education, right? 

It’s just kind of like old stories and old, I don’t know what they’re called, just old ways of approaching education. It just isn’t serving us anymore. So thank you for sharing that, Kay. There is something that we can no longer disconnect. There is a connection that was built and what I feel EPC is evolving into is an alliance where you can come to this safe space with people of like minds who are calibrated to the energy of being willing to be open and vulnerable and to drop some of these stories and some of these old belief systems that when we dissolve them and examine them are really no longer valid. I think EPC is going to get deeper next year. The conversations are going to be richer and we are going to feel more alive and feel more supported and feel more loved and connected than ever before. So this is a feeling podcast if you can’t tell guys, we are feeling it here. Feeling it. Sherry, can you share what your takeaways were?

Sherry: Absolutely. And so Angela, you touching on it, we’re all this universal human experience, right? All of us are coming together this universal human experience, but what EP Alive and what EPC provides us with is the opportunity to experience obviously the universal human experience, but with that lens of what does this look like and mean as a building leader, as a school leader. How do we take our experiences and be able to in this EP alive, basically container as we’ve said, we can put that lens of tell me more and we can focus that on ourselves as individuals, right? Tell me more, this is a value that you have. Tell me more of how this value was developed in you and why it’s so important to you and how does that reflect and come across then in your leadership style and how do you communicate that with your staff and is that helping you or is that causing a hindrance? 

But being able to unpack and discuss, the tell me more as it applies to me as an individual so that I can come out knowing that we’re living the universal human experience, but I can come out stronger and more ready to lead my school and be everything that I want to be as a leader and as a human for my students and staff. And so just that opportunity of being able to take that time out to be able to go to EP Alive and focus that lens of tell me more on myself individually to grow my capacity and build my skills as a leader and as a human, right?

Angela Kelly: That’s so good because we talked a lot about tell me more in the context of a tool as a leader, but I love that you turned it with yourself to say, when a feeling comes up for you, hey Angela, what’s coming up for you? Tell me more about that. Where is this coming from? And as we all know, the intimacy of the in-live event allowed us the space to identify that things that are weighing on us professionally, they’re coming from a personal place. 

All four of us shed tears that weekend, but they were tears of release, tears of joy, tears of almost like enlightenment, like an aha moment where this personal thing was what was impacting decisions and actions that we were taking or not taking or kind of sidestepping around as leaders. And when we just the awareness of that, it was so beautiful to see that, and it’s something we don’t talk about emotions are coming up for me that we don’t talk about in school leadership because people are afraid to cry, they’re afraid to express emotion because we’ve labeled it as weak or we’ve labeled it as soft or we’ve labeled it as kind of fluffy, but it’s the most powerful thing we can do.

And what I think we have done, ladies, is we have redefined what professional development looks like, what going to a conference, a retreat looks like. We worked hard, not going to lie, but we also played hard, and we redefined, we recalibrated the entire experience of a school leadership retreat. What school leaders should be doing on their summers and what it should look like and buns in seat for sitting at a conference with your little notepad. That’s not how we did life in EP Alive. That’s not how we learned. And we’re learning as lifelong learners that we don’t have to learning doesn’t have to look one way for the adults in the room. So as you’re going into professional development, as you’re planning your professional development, or you’re thinking about professional development for yourself, it doesn’t have to be boring. It doesn’t have to be buns in seat. It doesn’t have to be 8 hours of grind and then your brain hurts so much that you’ve got to go lay down in your hotel room. That’s not what it has to be, right?

Sherry: There’s an opportunity there, right? And we talked a lot about this, shining the light on our strengths, shining the lights on our insecurities, shining the light on shame or things that we are concerned about and that once we shine the light on it and we can reflect on it and then we can learn and grow from it. And then that light helps us lead the way because again, we are all, I mean, we’re all working together in this and experiencing the human experience and wanting to be the best human we can be.

Angela Kelly: Yes. I guess we dove into the depths of it, the deep learning stuff, which we did. But we had so much fun. So much fun. And even the hard work, I would say, felt light and it felt inviting and it just felt open. It felt like we were four old friends on an annual girls weekend trip together, sitting by the fire pit outside in the evening, taking in the lake views in the morning with our coffees, sitting around the table, laughing till we cried, just all of it. Just it was so much fun. And let’s talk about the fun that we had, especially because I’m a big proponent of fun. I love the Summer of Fun Challenge. I would like for us to have every season of fun for every season to be fun. And we’re going to bring fun into the school year, but let’s talk about the fun that we had. For you guys, I know the fun that I had waith all of it, but what was the fun that you had over the weekend? I guess it was during the week, but I’m calling it the weekend.

Kay: One of the things that I really, really enjoyed was our experience listening to the Big Band music at the Roof Garden. Many years ago before my grandma had passed, she would always play big band music in her kitchen. So that kind of brought me a heartfelt memory. But then it also reminded me that once upon a time, I said I was going to learn to swing dance. Since I have come back, I’ve been trying to find different places in my poor little Midwest town. It’s real slim pickings. But I did find that if I watch the UNI dance page, they offer some things. So it was a fun memory and it has sparked the there is more to life than just coming to work and doing the every day kind of like what you had talked about, Erin. 

Angela Kelly: yeah. Okay, I’m going to ask you guys something. Everybody unmute and stay unmuted unless you’ve got construction going on or something. And here’s why, which is probably all of us. But I want people to feel the energy of the four of us together in conversation. This isn’t EPC. We don’t have to mute. So I want you guys to just talk like we talk. Pretend we’re sitting around the fireplace talking because even though we well, the fireplace we couldn’t get to work. But the fire pit we did.

Erin: The outside one we did.

Angela Kelly: The outside one we did. But yeah, I want them to feel this energy because – and for the listeners out there, you guys, yes, of course in EPC, there’s more of us and so we mute because people are coming in walking in and out of the office, so we tend to mute ourselves unless we’re actually speaking. But today, I want you to pull up a chair, grab your coffee or your glass of champagne and listen to this because we are having a conversation about making school leadership actually fun and making learning fun and feeling connected in this work that we’re doing together. We are across the globe. Erin is from Arizona. Now, the three of us right now are technically all in Iowa. I’m from Iowa. That is my home state. I’m back caring for grandmother and my dad and helping my sister out and I’m rebuilding my life, but I’m from California. My heart, my soul, my life is still out there with a bunch of friends and family out there. So we are from around the globe connecting and this is the goal. We want to connect. 

School leaders out there, I cannot tell you I know the pain of this isolation. I know the pain of even when you go to a conference, when you’re so excited, but you go alone and there’s 3,000 other people there. You might say hi to people and sit at a table, but you kind of dine alone, you go alone, you’re in your room alone. It can be a very lonely experience and you get these ideas and you’re excited, but you bring them back alone and then trying to implement them alone feels like you’re pushing a boulder up a mountain because you’ve been sold on this idea or experience or new approach to something, but because you’re alone, the momentum required for you to get in there and sell that can that can feel isolating in and of itself. So, yes, we had fun. 

The big, okay, what I love about you loving the big band is that I never would have thought to go to big band, but when I started going back to the lake in the last two years hanging out with my friend Eric, he, obviously a musician, he loves it. And so he started taking me to Big Band and then he started taking swing lessons, which reminded my little body that way back in college, I took swing lessons and I actually know how to dance. So while he’s been learning, I’ve been re-engaging in swing. Now maybe we’ll have to have a swing session here at EPC. But this is EPC is more than just school leadership. It’s about life. It’s about leading our life and taking ownership of living a life that we love. And that’s what we did. We lived a lot. So you loved Big Band, Sherry, what did you like?

Sherry: I loved the delicious food, the laughter, the walks, the momentum of and the energy of the space, right? I mean with us four and then what I just kept thinking about is, I know how much I enjoy being around people and being with people, but how much fun it is to meet new people, right? And make new connections. And I mean, I’m talking about the people that we got to know really well or just the people that we met when we were out and about, just that interaction and all of the energy. That’s what I really enjoyed. But I mean truly, delicious food.

Angela Kelly: So, good. Well, what’s really cool about Sherry is that, okay, so we did, we ate, we went to all the restaurants. We went to the formal downstairs restaurant, which, okay, let’s give a shout out. Was it Maverick? Oh my gosh.

Sherry: He was so sweet. So sweet.

Angela Kelly: He looked like he was 12, but he said he was a college student working for the summer. Was he the most attentive? He was, oh my gosh. He just, before you knew it, you had food on the table and drinks in your hand. He was great. So we had that experience. And then we, I’m trying to remember all the places we went. I know we went to the tiki bar and had lunch. That was fun the day we went to…

Sherry: It felt like you were in any place in the world. Like you just you could have been, I mean, anywhere in the world. I mean, obviously tropical and it was beautiful and delicious and…

Angela Kelly: So good. We had Maxwell’s. So I have to give a shout out to Lake Okoboji. It had great restaurants, the weather, okay, the weather served. It was beautiful and perfect. The food was outstanding. We didn’t even get to try all of the places, but we did get to experience the donuts. So, and next time, if there’s a next time at Okoboji, we’ll go to the other donut shop because now I have to do a comparison to see what the difference is. Erin, what did you love?

Erin: Oh, I we went sailing. I just love that. That was oh, such a great experience just being on the water and it really makes me feel alive. It’s like, water, what’s happening? But like I said, my senses are really important. So like that smell and the breeze in your hair and we were laughing and he was having fun. I love that. That was great.

Angela Kelly: Good. So I surprised them with a sailing adventure. My friend Eric has a sailboat and he kept saying, “Bring the ladies over and let’s go for a sail.” But sailing requires ideal weather conditions, particularly on the lake because his boat is in a hoist. It’s not you can’t just kind of tie it up. So I knew the conditions had to be just right. So that was another reason why we let the week flow for us, and then when he texted and said, “It’s today’s the perfect day, be here at one,” I just told everybody, “Okay, there’s a surprise coming. We’re going on an adventure. We’re going to be alive. 

And we had, you know, as part of the fun, you guys got these little gift baskets with the what did we get? The little beach bags and the beach towels and sunscreen and, yeah. And Erin brought yoga mats for everybody. So we took our little bags and we went on a little adventure when we ended up going sailing and yay for Kay for being brave and getting on the water. She did amazing. Eric checked back in and he was like, “How did Kay do? Was she okay? I didn’t want to put I didn’t want to put the big sail up because I didn’t I was afraid.” I said, “She was fine. She was fine.”

Kay: Just for all the listeners, the inside story is there, I’m really afraid of deep water. So, but the sailing was beautiful and did a phenomenal job taking care of us.

Angela Kelly: Yes, he kept us calm. He kept everything calm. We didn’t tip the boat. It was a it was a beautiful day. 

Sherry: And then, I mean, the last day Eric came then to the rescue to help me when I went out to the parking lot and tried to start the vehicle, which did not start.

Angela Kelly: Oh gosh.

Sherry: So Eric came and he also helped me, you know, try to get my vehicle jumped and get things going in the right direction so that, you know, we could head home. Yes. So once we got it started, we even then took a detour and we took Erin to the airport. And so it all went excellent.

Angela Kelly: Oh my god. We all made it home safely. Okay, if you’re listening, if you’re ever going to host a live event, one, have a best friend in your back pocket that lives in the area who doesn’t who has a separate skill set than your own. Like this guy sailed. He was he was so charming. He takes us to the big band. He invites us into his home. He like, and then we had such the perfect week that we wake up the last morning and now, like a thunderstorm had come through the last night and the and the morning was a little misty and gray as we were packing up and leaving. It was just kind of like this beautiful like bow on the end of this week. And then we’re like, nothing had gone wrong. And then Sherry’s car battery decided to go to permanent sleep. Yes, permanent sleep. Or something, wasn’t it? Deep rest mode.

Sherry: Deep rest mode is where it was.And we’re all – we were reading and researching how to get this vehicle out of deep rest mode. Turns out that new battery is how you get the vehicle out of deep.

Angela Kelly: A new battery. And I felt horrible because my grandmother was moving from her home into a retirement community that morning and so I needed to be on the road ASAP. I had a long day that late. So I was I was up there and I would not have left. If I did not have a commitment of that magnitude, I wouldn’t have left. I would have stayed with you guys. But Sherry said something to me that I was like, this is the embodiment of empowerment. She’s like, “We’ve got this. You don’t need to stand here and look at us and watch us read the manual. We can figure this out.” Standing in the rain and figured this out. So I threw all the things in the car and I took off and I was looking back like, “Oh, my babies.” You know, I feel like I’m leaving everybody behind, right? But Eric was there to the end and I asked him, okay, this is crazy because I asked him, how did Erin, my big fear was how did Erin get back to Sioux Falls? And he goes, “Oh, I think she had to just get take an Uber or lift or something.” And I was like, “Oh, bummer. That’s too bad that they couldn’t get the car fixed in time.” So I’m delighted. We made it anyway. We got to ride. You guys got to have your chat.

Erin: Yeah, that was great. It was.

Angela Kelly: You probably didn’t make it in time for lunch, but

Erin: No. 

Angela Kelly: What time did you get on the road?

Sherry: Oh, was it – I’m trying to think. It was probably 11:00 before it going. It might have been later than that because I don’t think we had Erin to the airport was it maybe 2:00 or 2:30? I mean, she had plenty of time but it was it wasn’t done too early and it was funny because I you know, I also contacted my husband to let him know, “Hey, the vehicle’s not starting.” And so he has the app and he knows then that we got the battery replaced and everything, but then he calls me because he’s like, “Are you headed home?” And I’m like, “Well, eventually.” And he goes, “Well, it shows that the vehicle’s in South Dakota. Are you with it?” I’m like, “Yes. We are all still with the vehicle, but we went the opposite direction for a little while and then we got turned back around to head home. But he’s like, “Did you did you sell the – did you fix the battery or do we no longer have that vehicle?” 

Angela Kelly: Oh, that’s funny. Well, luckily for you guys, you intentionally went to South Dakota before you came back to Iowa. It’s funny because you go through three states. You drive through Iowa and because we’re right on the border, and then you go through Minnesota and you go through into South Dakota. So I was telling Erin, “Wow, welcome from Arizona. Welcome to the Midwest. You get to see three states in a 90 minute drive.” And you know, you can put that in your little adventure book. But I’m thrilled that you guys got to take her there. And I’m glad that your car made it home.

Sherry: Just a new battery. That’s all it needed. So thank you to everyone who helped with that. That was a group effort right there.

Angela Kelly: Yes, it was. It was. Well, shout out to my buddy Eric. He was he was amazing. He made the, I mean, he really made the weekend extra special. So that was great. But we literally, I mean, we I mean, I’m trying to think about how the flow went. We kind of worked in the mornings and then we were out for the afternoons. And then one morning, we spent kind of just chatting it up and then taking a midday break and then going back. And then we went to the pool one day. That was so fun too. Yeah, that was really fun too.

Sherry: Yeah, that was really fun too.

Angela Kelly: I haven’t been to like a pool resort in a very long time where I actually get in the water. I’m the gal who sits in the shade and watches everybody else splash about. But the water was like perfect temperature and they had that little adult section so we could, you know, hang out, have a beverage and not be around the children because children are coming. We’ll have plenty of time with the children. I can’t remember who said it, but somebody said, “It’s so fun to be around kids that we’re not responsible for managing,” right? Like other people are keeping them alive. We don’t have to. 

Kay: What is that Taylor Swift thing you know, she says, “I’m off.” Well, we were principal off.

Angela Kelly: Yes, we were principal off for sure. We were, yes. EP Alive was all about turning down the volume of, what would it be called? Like just oversight. And just tuning into us having fun. We had so much fun. I actually can’t wait to have another one. I thought it was it was so fulfilling in a way that I didn’t really anticipate, right? You know, I show up and you guys show up with your clients, my clients, I call your clients, your teachers, your staff, your community, your kids, but we hold space for them and we come in expecting to hold space for them, but what we can open ourselves up to is what we receive also. And I’ve learned this in so many layers just in the last few months. Giving and receiving are separate. 

So we – it’s not a tit for tat. We don’t come in and give and give and give of ourselves and then because we gave, we receive. We can give because we choose to give, because it feels good for us, it feels in service, it feels in alignment for us, but we can also receive as school leaders because we’re worth it, because we’re worthy, because we deserve it, because it’s the natural way of the world, and the way of the human experience. And for me to just be as open, there was like flow between coach, client, it just became four women having conversations, coaching one another, and holding space and listening to the stories and feeling with one another and talking them through and then adding input. It wasn’t a coach holding a class for three people. It was four empowered principals holding conversations about life and leadership. 

And it was like such a beautiful experience, and I’m just so honored to have had it and I’m so proud of myself for when the doubt crept in, when I felt like, “Oh, this last move,” you know, moving from Nashville to here in a week’s time, more on that another time, but having to make big decisions about my personal life and make the move and keep holding space for clients, and to decide with 100% certainty and it was almost like it was a calling beyond me that said, hold this event, and be in alignment with it because – not because of any other reason than it feels good and you need it as much as they need it, and the group collective, the four of us, needed that time and that space together. I’ve attended as a client coaching events, coaching retreats, but this to me felt more, it’s almost hard to put it into words. It felt, magical is the word that comes up, but it was almost spiritual, if I can say it that way, or it felt so alive. I guess that’s the word, right? We felt so alive in all of it. Down to our beds at night, the sheets, everything. I didn’t want to get out of bed because it was so awesome and but I wanted to get up and I was so excited. And there wasn’t a moment of my life in those three days together that I didn’t cherish.

Kay: The energy even, you know, I think I commented on last Friday’s notice in our Facebook group. I was still buzzing from early part of the week by the end of the week. And just that constant, oh, yeah, remember how this sparked this part and yes. I have a little stack. I have not done it yet because the weather has not really cooperated. One of the things that we had talked about was really, really weighing on me and it’s three years old. I have all the documentation that I need and I’m going to light it up. And goodbye and that is it no longer serves me. And because of this experience, I was able to process it in ways that I haven’t since the event happened. So I am incredibly grateful for that because it makes me lighter.

Angela Kelly: Yes. Oh, that warms my heart so much.

Kay: So when you get a picture later of flames, check the box.

Angela Kelly: I love that. This is one thing I failed to do, which was capture this event in picture form. I am a person that is so present that I often am not thinking of capturing it. And I looked back and I have like a few little snaps and most of them are from Erin. And so I was like, and then I took snaps, oh, I need to share those with you, Erin. I took, I remembered in the middle of yoga, “Oh, get some pictures for her for her yoga business.” But most of it was just like we were so present. 

And I talked to my coach about it, my business coach afterwards and she was telling me how she’s able to like be in presence and take the photos at the same time. So I was like, “Oh, I will expand my capacity to do that because I literally have to practice generate awareness to capture that moment.” But she said, when you realize the value of having the photos and the memory, it not just the memory, but the emotional experience you have when you view the photos, the connection comes right back, right? So the connection of those moments, those laughter, those breakthroughs, that experience, the photos are what allow you to relive this and to bring home the energy because now we can literally imagine those moments and that time together and bring that buzzing back into our bodies and bring it back to school, you know?

Sherry: Yeah, that’s absolutely true and I wanted to say, Angela, you know, K and I talked on the way home exactly what you were talking about, you know, the experience of this, like we can take a moment and we can reflect and we can go right back to that energy and that emotion and how that feels us moving forward. And but also we talked about, I mean, we talked about a lot of things, but another we talked about how, you know, the hardships that we experience, I mean in life or in leadership or wherever it is, like knowing the gifts that provides us to prepare us for the future and to give us strength for that. And we talked a lot, but having to be aware and open to the gifts that can provide.

Angela Kelly: Yes. That is so beautiful because this job, this career that we have selected, I feel like we all we get to choose a board game of life and we the game that we chose was school leadership and we’re in the game of life as school leaders and it requires us to be constantly open, constantly vulnerable, constantly transparent, constantly evolving ourselves. And you can, you can shut down and play small. You can definitely do that. And what you’ll find, and I know this because I did this personally until I started putting cracks into those old belief systems, was when you play small, you stay small and your school is a reflection of your energy and your and your openness. 

So if you feel stagnation in your school, look for the – where are you stagnating within yourself, right? When your life starts to feel a little stagnant, where is the stagnation here? Where did you forget to be alive? Where did you forget to put fun into the calendar? Where did you forget that it’s okay to have a play day. It’s okay to laugh at school. It’s okay to not make everything so heavy and so urgent that we can breathe a little. We can give space to just be human in this game of school leadership. It’s not to say that we’re dismissing or making light of there’s real problems and real challenges and we’re dealing with human development. We’re dealing with people who are struggling and in crisis and trauma, but we cannot be in that energetic space all of the time. It doesn’t serve us, it doesn’t serve them. It doesn’t serve the school, it doesn’t serve the community. 

So we invite back into our leadership, in our professional development, the joy of learning, the joy of learning, making it fun, having it be a balance of work and play and we’re integrating. I promise you, as you’re sailing, you’re integrating what you’ve learned. As we’re listening to the Big band, you’re integrating what you learn. As we’re sitting around the fireplace or we’re, you know, going into the pool and all of that was just as much learning as it was play because play is learning, learning is play. And if we can remember this for kids, recess is not a break from learning. Art class is not a break from academics. It’s an integration time. When we go to sleep at night, our brain is processing. It’s thinking. It’s integrating what we’ve done for the day. When we physically move our bodies, we’re integrating mind, heart, soul, spirit, all of it is integrating. 

So I invite us as leaders as we’re going into this new school year to bring play back into collaborations, into PLCs, into our, you know, staff meetings, into our professional development to remind ourselves adults and children alike. We are humans in just different size bodies having had different, you know, chapters around the sun, but we still learn through play. We still learn by being alive, by being engaged. We don’t learn by sitting buns in seat for 6 or 8 hours a day. And we’re asking kids to stay focused and stay emotionally regulated and stay, you know, physically confined when our bodies don’t want to do that. It’s kind of insane what we’re asking little ones to do. 

That’s why I put us in the space of adult play, of aliveness, to remind ourselves as leaders, imagine the requests we’re making for five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10-year-olds, or even 15, 16, 17, 18-year-olds, to sit and focus all day and produce the amount of work and the amount of thought required and the amount of emotional regulation that school demands of young children when the adults have a hard time with it, right? It’s such an eye opener to go to an event and to be the learner and to be the client and to be the person who’s having to be vulnerable because you’re learning something new or you’re having to like contemplate something that feels very scary or it feels hard to believe it’s true or your brain is resisting the truth of it. All of that is what we ask of students. 

So putting ourselves in a space that’s one, safe, two, it’s fun. It’s in the environment. I picked a really cool condo. I did, I picked the best one I could pick because when you’re in an environment that feels good, this is why I invite people to like create fun spaces in there, you know, your office. Make it a place you love because it feels good. And when that feels good and you feel good, you show up in a different energy. Leadership is energetics. It’s not what we’re doing, it’s who we’re being when we’re doing it. And we got to play and laugh and live and love and hold space for one another. 

It was a sacral experience to it’s just a very sacred experience to be in person together and I’m really grateful and proud of each and every one of you because wow, some of the things you guys broke through, I thought about it all the way home on my drive, each and every one of you shared vulnerably, honestly, and genuinely wanting to see the light, see just the cracks, the hairline cracks that help you break through so you can start to release and just to see the truth of those beliefs and how they’re holding you back and loving them and releasing them. It was it was really beautiful. 

And for me, being witness to that allowed me to also share the truth of my life, the truth of my experiences, and the vulnerability that, you know, I’m going through it and I am a product of what I teach. I don’t preach it. I only teach what I have personally experienced, witnessed, and practiced in my own life. So thank you for allowing me that space to be vulnerable too as a coach. It was great.

Sherry: And Angela, just thank you. I mean, even our conversation today, I mean, it just lifts us up and gives us that time and that space to, yeah, to be ready to go.

Angela Kelly: Yeah. So, is there anything else anybody wants to share before we wrap up? I just want to make sure everyone’s been able to share all the things because it truly was a wonderful, wonderful experience. 

Kay: But I think what’s really amazing is too, when, yesterday I had a really big emotional experience. I’m like, “Oh, I have an emotional experience today. I’m human.” But I was able to totally take a pause and almost remove myself from that emotional experience be and I’m asked tell me more, why is it so emotional for me? And maybe it’s okay for me just to let it go. Thank it and ask the question, what bad will really happen? If I try this thing, what’s the worst that could happen? Really? It’ll be fine. So I think it just every experience like that allows you to level up and continue to seep in and understanding ourselves because the more we understand ourselves more, I think we can lead better.

Angela Kelly: Oh. That’s such a great message because anytime a big emotion is coming up for you, personally or professionally, if something has triggered an emotional intensity, that is the invitation. The emotions are the compass, they’re the conversation, they’re the flag to get your attention to say, “Hey, let me ask myself, tell me more. What’s coming up for me? What’s coming up for me that this is triggering me, that this is bothering me? Let me just explore that a little bit.” 

Sometimes all you need is to be able to say it out loud or write it down and like physically get it out of your body from your mind down onto paper or your mind just, I like to sometimes just record myself ranting and then I just delete it. It’s like, got that out.. Or sometimes, most of the time, something else will be uncovered. Oh, that’s why this is bothered. that teacher’s comment. That’s why. Oh, because there’s a little grain of truth in there. Can I see can I lean into that truth? Yeah, I did snap at her or yes, I did forget to do this or, oh yeah, she’s, you know, is there a grain of truth? 

Something my master coach taught me when I became certified to The Life Coach School, she said, there’s always a grain of truth and so say yes to it all. So when someone says, you’re this, yes. You’re a good person. Yes. You’re a bad person. Yes. You’re such a bitch. Yes. You’re such a nice person. Yes. We’re all of it. It’s all of it’s true. And then the best part, so when a teacher would say something about me and I would look for the truth in it and yes, that is true. I have forgotten things. I have misspoken. I did oversee, you know, I missed something. Yes, it’s true. Then when I say yes to it, my need to defend or deflect or to blame or to abdicate responsibility or to jade in any way, to try and justify myself, argue it, defend explain it any of that, it just goes away. 

It’s like it frees me from the need to jade, the need to get in there and try to clean it up or hide it or protect it or something. Yes, I’m sure there is an oversight here. Boom. And that emotional intensity when you ask it, tell me more, and listen, it’ll tell you what why. You might not like it, but what’s harder is avoiding it and resisting it and trying to dance around it and not listen to it is harder because it’ll keep knocking. It’ll keep showing up at your door until you, “Okay, let me let you in. Let’s have a cup of coffee. Tell me everything.” And that’s when that’s when you acknowledge it, you process it, and then you can release it. So, what a beautiful way to end. 

So, for those of you who are listening to this, number one, why aren’t you in EPC? Get over here. Let’s go. Number two, EPC’s going to be, I just think, I know, I don’t think. I feel it. It’s going to be deeper. It’s going to be more transformative and more connected than ever, and more fun because we’re going to laugh at ourselves more. We’re going to we’re going to share the embarrassments. We’re going to talk about the shame. We’re going to just put it out there on the table, shine the light under the bed, and the minute that we do that, we can laugh at ourselves for the craziness of this job, for the wild rides that we’re on. You know, as I say to the girls, we’re at the amusement park and we’re choosing to ride all the rides, even the ones that have deep water, right, Kay? We’re going for it. 

So, for EPC, we’re going on a journey. It’s going to be amazing and I look forward to the next EP alive. We don’t know where or when it will be, but stay tuned. We’ll keep you posted. But thank you ladies for the most amazing magical first experience of a live event. I learned so much of what to do and what not to do and how much help I really need and all hands on deck. Thank you Erin for all of your extra help. It was so fun. And I just want to shout out too like one of my favorite parts beyond all that we’ve already shared was just my drive to South Dakota to go pick up Erin and our little chats we had on the way back and over lunch and that little extra time together, we really got to talk about deep things and making schools like Disneyland and, you know, figuring out what life might look like if we were in the land of Walt Disney’s brain. So that was really fun. So I just wanted to share that as well. Have an amazing school year. Congratulations to all of those who have started the year. If you’re not in EPC, I’m going to open the doors. after you’ve heard this, if you want to come in, come on in, we’ll let you in, and it’s going to be an amazing year. So thank you ladies.

Kay: Don’t take Angela’s word for it. EPC is epic. We’d love to join us.

Angela Kelly: Yes. So fun. It’s so fun and we might let you come to EP Live. We’re a little partial to our foursome, but we will definitely, if you’re cool, no. We’ll open the doors and allow you in. So come to EPC, it’s going to be amazing. Love you guys. Take good care. Love you all. 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 400. 

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.

Hello, my empowered principals. Welcome to the podcast. Happy Tuesday and welcome to episode 400. 400 episodes. What an accomplishment and celebration. That is literally over 7.5 years of weekly episodes of The Empowered Principal® Podcast.

What this podcast has taught me is that you truly cannot fail if you simply don’t give up. Keep going. Keep recording. Keep learning. Keep growing. Keep coaching. Keep diving in. Keep expanding yourself. Keep celebrating. Keep in gratitude. Just keep on. Just keep on.

And I want to invite each and every one of you to take this on as well. Keep going. Keep showing up. Keep planning. Keep failing. Keep trying. Keep playing. Keep resting. Keep taking action. Keep on, my friends, keep on. You’re on the right path. You are doing amazing things. You are being enough. Just keep on.

So cheers to 400 episodes. I want to take a moment to shout out to all of my clients, my past clients, my current clients, and hey, my future clients out there. And to all of those who have ever been a guest on the podcast, thank you so much for your brilliance and your wisdom and the opportunity to get to know you and speak with you and have you on the show. Thank you to all who’ve had me on their podcast. I really enjoy and appreciate expanding this work out into the world.

To my amazing team at Digital Freedom Productions, they are incredible. Pavel, Angela, Devon, Megan, and the rest of the team at DFP, I want to thank you from the very bottom of my heart. You’ve allowed me to produce this podcast during the highs and the lows of my business, and I am eternally grateful for the honor of working with you. Genuinely, truly, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

And so as it is, this podcast, the 400th episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast, I am taking a risk. I am taking a bold move. I am sharing something very raw, very vulnerable. And we’re going to dive in to relentless responsibility. Last week I mentioned this on the podcast and this week we’re going to dive deeper into it.

So I’m going to share with you a very personal story that feels very scary and vulnerable to share in such a public space, but it is an authentic demonstration of what relentless responsibility looks and feels like.

So for those of you who don’t know, I am very recently divorced. And while many of the details of this last three years of my life are very sensitive in nature, what I feel I can share is that the moment of separation for me came out of the blue.

In that moment, I was unaware and it caught me by surprise. I was in complete shock and devastation. And in that moment, I was left with nothing to comfort me. There was no escaping the shock, the pain, the emotional experience of the decisions and actions that somebody else in my life took, somebody I love, somebody I trusted, somebody I believed in, somebody I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, somebody that I felt so safe, so comfortable with.

And I had to face the reality of what had unfolded in my life, in my home, in my family, in my marriage. My brain wanted so badly to blame. My heart wanted to push away the pain. I wanted to be a victim of the circumstances. I wanted to blame. I wanted to abdicate. I wanted to accuse other people of their wrongdoings, of their faults, of their humanness. I was in so much pain.

But I also knew because I’m a coach, that I had the strength to feel and process any emotions that come up for me, just as I talk about on this podcast. I had the tools, I had the skills, and I had the capacity to acknowledge and process emotions head on. I knew the difference between clean pain and dirty pain, and that while I was experiencing clean pain, I was also furthering my suffering with thoughts, by perseverating on situations, by looking backwards, by re-imagining, by thinking back, trying to figure out what happened and when it happened and why, and getting caught up in the details and in the behaviors and the actions, and why didn’t I see this and how come this and how come that? It was relentless. My desire for blame and abdication and victimness, that urge was so strong.

But because I was intellectually aware that it was possible to navigate through this, because I’ve seen people navigate through grief in many forms, I knew that I could work through this. The hardest part of this work over the last few years of my life was that I knew through Byron Katie that there is truth in everything.

Was I right? Yes. Was I wrong? Yes. Was I good? Yes. Was I bad? Yes. Did I do good things? Yes. Did I do bad things? Yes. It’s all yes. There is truth in everything. Was I a great partner? Yes. Was I a terrible partner? Yes.

My perspective and his perspective were both true. So instead of leaning into the story of blame and victimhood, I decided that through this pain, through this experience, I was going to take relentless responsibility for myself, for my emotions, for my emotional experience, for my actions, for my words, for my behavior in past, present, and future.

I was going to take responsibility for the outcome of this marriage, its impact on my family, my son, myself, my in-laws, my own family, the friend group we had, the life we had, everything. The financial situation that ended up occurring, it just was a moment of pure truth to lean into taking responsibility for all of the things that impacted my life, my business, and the outcomes that came from this very unfortunate situation.

I’ll tell you this, you guys, I’m not even clearly on the other side of it. I’m towards the other side of it. I’m more than halfway through, but I am so freaking proud of myself for choosing the path of empowerment and alignment to sit here with you today, to coach my clients, to record this podcast in integrity, in alignment with what I teach and what I practice in my life, and to be put to the ultimate test. To have to stand in that empowerment and stand in the truth of what I teach and how I practice coaching and practice living my life and using these tools and strategies, I had to be relentless in my practice, in my belief in myself, in my trust.

I had to choose to be relentless in my response to this situation, to look and listen for all the perspectives, to acknowledge and own my part, even though it hurt like hell. I had to take a moment to separate my actions from his actions, my words from his interpretation of my words, his actions from my interpretation of his actions. I had to take ownership of all of that, of the past situation, the current situation, and a decision to take ownership of my future situation.

And this did not come with ease. It did not come with grace. I have experienced the most alignment of my life and I still have days of victimness and blame and abdication and anger.

Now, some of you may be saying, some of you who are listening might be thinking, wow, especially of those of you who may know more details of my situation than I feel that I’m allowed to share or comfortable with sharing. People might hear this story in its detailed form and think, “But you were the victim. It wasn’t you. He chose this. He did those things. He did his part. It wasn’t you. You are the victim in this. How are you to take responsibility for something that someone else did, especially relentless responsibility?”

And here’s the answer. You can’t. You can’t take responsibility for his thoughts, his feelings, his behaviors, his decisions, his actions. I couldn’t do that. I wanted to do that. If I had a magic wand and I could have controlled his thoughts and feelings and behaviors and actions, oh boy, would I have.

I can only take responsibility for my part, my thoughts, my feelings, my actions, my behaviors, my decisions. And doing that is so hard. It’s emotionally so painful. We want to self-protect. We want to justify ourselves. We want to be the good guy. We want to be the victim because it abdicates us from the responsibility of relentless responsibility. We get to avoid ownership and the feelings that come with responsibility and ownership. It’s tough. Emotional maturity, maturity at all levels is tough. Taking responsibility and ownership and stepping into maturity, not easy.

Our brain says, “Why do I always have to be the most responsible one? Why do I have to take responsibility? Why not them? Why do the teachers get to blame and complain and I have to be the one who’s always the most responsible person in the room? Why me?” You hear the voice. It’s the little kid in us. “Why me? Why do I have to take the blame? Why do I have to take ownership? Why do I have to take responsibility? I want to be the victim. I want to get the love. I want to get the TLC. I want to get the coddling.”

I’m going to talk more about this next week on the podcast, the difference between responsibility and ownership. I do see a difference between the two, but I will say that when you are experiencing an outcome in your life that you do not want, you do not anticipate, or you didn’t wish for. So maybe you got fired, or maybe you got a sanction on your credentials or your administrative license. Maybe somebody blasted you on social media or in the local newspaper in the commentary section, or maybe something has happened in your personal life, or maybe the test scores tanked.

And you’re like, “Well, I didn’t take the test. The kids took the test. I didn’t teach. The teachers taught.” It’s very, very easy when a situation occurs that is external to believe that our experience of the situation can be blamed on somebody else or something else. It was the curriculum, it was the pacing guides, it was the district office, it was the test, it was the kids, it was the families, it was the weather. Everything else happened. We just had the worst technology those days.

It’s very easy to believe that all of those external things are true. And here’s the truth. Both are true. We have ownership and other people have ownership. There are things outside of our ownership and things within. It is so hard not to get sucked into victimhood, especially when the aftermath of the initial situation continues to present aftershock after aftershock, and there’s so much more cleanup that needs to happen. It’s like when a natural disaster occurs, there’s the moment of crisis where there’s a flood or there’s a fire or there’s a tornado or there’s an earthquake, something catastrophic is happening in real time. And we’re watching it in real time, and we feel so helpless. And the people get out or the people don’t get out. It’s just horrible. 

And there’s the initial incident, and then there’s the aftershocks, there’s the aftermath, and you learn more and you learn more after the fact, and it goes deeper into, “Whoa, I had no idea this,” or “I had no idea this was coming that,” or, “We should have been informed this,” or, “I should have known this,” or, “I should have been more aware.”

And then all of the mind drama pops up after the fact. And what I have observed in myself, that blaming and feeling victim to a situation is a phase of growth and of healing and of expansion. It’s not that we want to eradicate it. It’s just a phase of it. And the key is how quickly do we lean into that phase and to feel it and to experience it and to move on from it.

Just as grief has been explained in stages, expansion, your evolution goes through stages. When an identity quake occurs and something rattles you to your bones, and what you thought life was going to be, or you thought your career was going to be, or you thought the experiences that you were going to have been rattled, you go through shock, denial, anger, blame, frustration, depression, oh my gosh, sadness, all of the feels before you get to any form of acceptance.

And just as with a loss from death, when you go through a divorce or you go through something so painful, it is socially acceptable for you to feel all the feels and to take time and space for healing. Now, people have kind of a limit on what they tolerate. It’s like, “Gosh, your mom died three months ago, aren’t you over it?” or, “Man, that divorce was like, wasn’t that a while ago? I mean, I know you had a long separation before you actually got the divorce finalized, but gee, aren’t you moving on?” Like, people will say that because they can’t handle it. They can’t tolerate your process, your feelings.

So it is acceptable to have a period of grief and loss and healing. And this understanding from other people, that understanding, that compassion, that coddling, that loving, that acceptance of where we are can provide us so much relief. And it is so needed, particularly in the clean pain when it initially happens. But it can also become a crutch if we begin to rely on it, and we begin to want it and crave it. And that’s how we get attention and affection and love.

I found myself stronger in the beginning when the initial quake happened because I had to show up for myself and my clients and my family. I had to just go through the motions of survival during the moments of what I felt was thrust upon me. And I was in that survival mode for around two years, just trying to keep up, just trying to show up, putting a happy smile on in the surface, right, in the public, and then feeling all the feels behind the scenes.

And as more and more information was revealed to me, I saw the depth of the impact on every aspect of my life and how far back this situation was brewing. I never saw it coming. That was on me, not him. I felt so defeated, so betrayed, so lost, so, so very sad.

And as I leaned into that and people were like, “Oh, you need time and you space and you poor thing,” hopelessness started to creep in. I started to wonder, how was I ever going to recover? How would I ever rebuild? How was I ever going to heal? How was I ever going to bounce back from the damage that was created in my life, the pain that I felt? How would I ever trust again?

I went down these rabbit holes of the worst-case scenarios, starting to believe I was never going to recover. I was never going to rebuild. I was never going to come back from this. That this moment of my life, the lowest moment, was it. That’s all the possibility. That’s all of my potential tapped out.

And then I realized through my coach, I am a coach. I am a life coach, and I have a life coach. I have a business coach. I have a life coach. I have all the coaches. I believe in the power of coaching and in personal empowerment. I knew there had to be a way to recover from this. I’ve witnessed it in other people, other things that feel more devastating than what I’ve been through. The loss of a child, the tragic moments that have happened in recent times in people’s families being torn apart in your children being swept away in monumental floods. There’s tragedy out there, and we do this. We kind of compare tragedies. “Oh, mine wasn’t as bad as theirs, so I shouldn’t feel bad,” or, “Oh, mine was way worse. Look at me. Look how bad I have it,” or, “Look how bad they have it.” We get caught up in the pain and the stories and the drama around tragedy. We’re drawn to it like a moth to a flame. But if we’re not careful, we get sucked in, and boom, we get burned. We’re in it.

I was also very aware that for every day I sat in disbelief and discontent and depression and sadness and blame and abdicating was a day that I was giving away to the possibility and the ability to rebuild myself, to rebuild my belief in me, to build up my trust again, to strengthen myself, to empower myself again.

Setbacks are not what prevent us from succeeding. They are the opportunity to build strength to succeed. What prevents us from succeeding at any level, at school, at home, in life, is our ability to experience a setback and to recover from it, to lean into the emotional experience of a setback and to feel all of it, and to take relentless responsibility of the situation, of our actions, of our emotions, of our thoughts, of where we are spinning as soon as we possibly can to take responsibility back.

There is a moment of grief, a moment of shock. You will go through the process of shock and surprise and pain and anger and for all of those frustration feelings, the helplessness, the depression, the sadness, the grieving, all of it. But how quickly can we experience that and bounce back and return and take ownership once again? People who are wildly successful, they don’t feel any less. They don’t avoid pain or feel any less pain. They’re just not afraid to feel more, to lean more into the experience, to learn more from it, to allow their emotional muscles to grow. They go to the gym, they feel the burn, and they get back at it. They don’t stop going to the emotional boot camp class. They might rest for a day or a two or a week, and they go back again and again for the rest of their lives.

It is a lifestyle to be emotionally mature, to take relentless responsibility. It is a lifestyle choice. Some choose it, some don’t.

Everyone goes through very difficult challenges, the things that bring you to your knees and make you question your capacity to recover and rebuild your life. There are things that are going to make you doubt yourself and others that test your faith and your patience, my friends. Things that will test your ability to trust yourself, to trust others again, and to keep going.

The way to align back to your empowerment when you’ve taken a hit, when you’ve had a setback is to take relentless responsibility for your experience of it, to take responsibility for recovering and rebuilding, to take responsibility for loving yourself through the hard stuff, to be gentle and to hold yourself responsible, to take responsibility for your part in having created it and in your part of rebuilding from it.

I promise you guys, this is one of the toughest things that we do as humans. But it is the true path to empowerment. It’s the most empowering thing I’ve been through. And I can say at this point, at this stage of the game here, I am grateful it happened. I can’t believe it happened sometimes, but I’m grateful for it. I have never been in more pain. I have never also been in more empowerment.

I feel this is truly the perfect episode to celebrate the 400th show of The Empowered Principal® Podcast, the empowered school leader. Embracing this practice, it literally has set me free.

And if you are wondering how you do this, “But how do I do this? What action do I take to embody this? How do I stand in relentless responsibility?” Join EPC. Do it right now. Decide. Join. Let’s go. You sign up for coaching and you give yourself the gift of mentorship. Life is not easy. School leadership, it’s not easy. And I don’t know a person who does life or who does leadership completely alone. There’s no way.

You’re not a leader by yourself. You’ve got so many levels of support. You’ve even got this podcast. I can’t imagine not having a coach in my life. And I invite you into the experience and the power of coaching, and you can experience this through EPC, the Empowered Principal Collaborative. We are evolving schools, evolving school leaders, one thought at a time, one week at a time, one thing at a time.

Next week, I’ll dive into the difference between ownership and responsibility and how you can leverage your empowerment in these two ways. But there is a difference between listening to the podcast and implementing the content, the concepts, and the work of this podcast. I could not sit here today and record this podcast if I hadn’t been through what I’d been through and if I hadn’t shown up for myself and my clients and my life and my son and my business and my family the way that I did.

I was tested as a leader. “Oh, you want to teach leadership? Let’s lead your life. Oh, you need a little bit more? Here you go. Oh, you think you’re that? Try this.” I got tested and tested and tested, and my bridge is strong, and I’m ready to go. Are you?

Join EPC. Let’s go. Have an amazing week. I love you all fiercely. Go be empowered. Go be relentless in your responsibilities this school year. I love you. 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 398. 

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

Well, hello my empowered principals. Happy Tuesday. Happy new school year. Welcome to the 2025-2026 school year. I am delighted to be here with you today. And hey, if you are new to the podcast, if you’re a brand new principal and you just found The Empowered Principal Podcast, we’re so happy you’re here. Welcome.

I adore each and every one of you. I love my listeners, love my clients, love my audience. And this podcast is so special and near and dear to my heart because it provides a space for you to think differently and expand differently and to problem solve differently and to feel differently. So, welcome to this podcast. And if you enjoy this podcast, please share it with your colleagues. We really want as many people as possible to feel their empowerment, to step into the identity of an empowered principal. And this podcast, we bring it. We bring it. We bring it.

So, a short and sweet episode on a little story I have from a client of EPC last spring. I’ve been thinking about this conversation we had and I realized I haven’t shared it on the podcast. So I wanted to briefly share this with you. I think it will be highly valuable for you to implement as you’re entering into the new year.

This past spring, during one of our EPC sessions, it was towards the end of the school year, was one of our last few sessions. One of our clients was sharing a story about an ongoing conflict that she was having with a teacher, and the teacher was stating to the principal, “I don’t trust you. I don’t trust this process.” She was blaming the process. She was blaming the principal.

And the principal came into EPC and said, “Hey, I’m doubting myself. I’m fearing that I’m making a mistake. Maybe I misspoke, misstepped. Maybe I didn’t follow a process. Maybe something I did was wrong.” So immediately as soon as the teacher was deflecting and redirecting and attempting to project her own thoughts and feelings onto the principal, the principal received that. So something I want to say right here is that when we’re engaging with other people, we are bodies of energy. We energetically feel other people’s emotions. Emotions are energy, and we can transfer that energy. That energy can transfer to us or we can transfer energy to somebody else.

If you’ve ever been kind of super excited, and you’re super really in a good mood, everything’s going great, and then you get around a womp person, their womp energy, you can be like, “Oh, bummer. Like, that’s bringing me down, man. Don’t bring down the vibe.” But it can change your energy or vice versa. Maybe you’ve been kind of having a rough day and then somebody comes in, their energy is so happy, so excited, and they cheer you right up and your energy transfers from like being down to being up. Energy is transferable.

And we want to be intentional about understanding our energy and also protecting our energy so that we are in charge of our energy and we are not victim to the whim of other people’s emotional energy, okay? So I want you to notice that this teacher was coming in with very negative energy, you could call it. She was blaming, deflecting, redirecting, projecting, and the principal was saying, “Hey, this is putting me into question mode, into contemplation mode,” which is perfect. That’s perfectly fine. That is the place to go to say, “Hey, wait a minute. What is happening here?”

So I want you to think about when people are blaming, deflecting, redirecting conversations, and projecting their energy onto you, what the intention is behind that. People deflect in an attempt to delay conversation. They’re going to say, “Hey, wait a minute. It’s you.” They’re blaming. They’re deflecting the blame back onto you and you’re like, “Whoa.” Now you have to stop, delay conversation. It’s a tactic. It’s a strategy. Now, it’s typically subconscious. They didn’t go into your office with the intention of deflecting the blame, but they might feel very defensive and in response to that defensiveness, they deflect. But they want to delay the conversation because they don’t want the experience, the emotional experience of taking ownership of that conversation that you’re going to have with them.

People will redirect to another topic or to refocus the energy to distract from the original topic. So when there’s a redirection, you’ll see this all the time where, you know, somebody’s trying to have a conversation and then it jumps topics. Why? Trying to distract from the original topic, trying to avoid the discomfort of the conversation at hand.

People will project their feelings and their own actions back onto you. “Well, you’re the one who started it.” “Oh no, you’re the one.” If you’ve ever felt like you’ve tried to bring something up with a teacher, staff member, or even a personal friend or a partner or spouse, and they say, “Well, you did this. Well, you did that.” They’re projecting back onto you, trying to redirect the conversation, trying to deflect what they’ve done, trying to go around the original conversation and start up something else. They want you to doubt yourself, question yourself so that you slow down the energy of the original conversation.

So this was happening with one of the clients in EPC, and here is what I recommended. It will feel uncomfortable to hear this recommendation, but I want you to contemplate it. Here’s what I said to her. Drop the rope. Imagine the analogy of a game of tug of war. In the game of tug of war, it takes two people to pull at the rope. For there to be tension between two people, if the rope is energy and it’s connecting you to that other person, both people on both ends must be pulling at the rope for there to be tension in the rope. If one person or the other drops the end of the rope, the tension drops. The tension in the rope lags and it goes falls to the ground.

There is a disconnect. When one person disconnects, detaches from that attachment, there is no longer energy being transferred back and forth. So when you’re in a game of tug and war, for example, when we feel we are right, we feel very justified, very self-righteous that we are right. We have facts, we have data, we have information. We have proof. We pull at the rope to prove we are accurate. We’re tugging to prove we are accurate.

When we feel we’ve been wrongly accused, when we’ve been blamed, when we feel that blame is inaccurate, we will tug with defensiveness. We will do anything to try and prove ourselves not wrong. We will tug, we will engage, we will attach to defensiveness, we will pull with defensiveness, and we will engage in a tug of war.

When we feel that somebody’s lying to us or we feel they are withholding information or there’s something we feel energetically that they’re doing that’s an omission or they’re lying to us or they’re hiding something from us, we get engaged. We pick up the rope and we pull. We tug to try and corner them. We try to catch them in their lie.

Instead of picking up the rope and pulling and engaging in a tug of war, drop the rope. Know your truth without them needing to validate it. Know your truth without them needing to validate your truth. Know your truth without you needing to defend it. Know your truth without needing them to agree with you. Know your truth without needing to attack back. Know your truth without them not dropping the rope. They’re still pulling on one end, but you’ve dropped it. What happens? If they pull hard enough, they fall on their backside. They go boom, boom on their bum, right?

Drop the rope. Dropping the rope means aligning to what feels true for you. Squeaky clean truth, taking a peek at yourself. What about what the person is saying is true? Yep, that’s true. And you know what? You can agree with them and still be in agreement with your truth. There is no one universal truth when it comes to humans. There’s perspectives. That’s it. Perspectives. You have a perspective, they have a perspective. Get clean, squeaky clean with your truth, with your perspective. Be in agreement with your perspective and be open to hearing their perspective.

You can drop the rope by saying, “Yes, I’m human. Yes, it could be true that I misspoke. It could be true that I missed.” Your perspective is valid and mine is as well. Looking for the truth in their words and looking for the truth in your words. Dropping the rope means that you have the capacity to hold space for both perspectives to be present. It doesn’t mean you back off. It means they can be upset and you can move forward. It means you may have made a mistake in the process and you need to rectify that and reconcile it, repair it, whatever, and move on.

It may mean that nothing’s gone wrong on your end and they are just in a great amount of fear, a great amount of disbelief, or rejecting the truth or a lack of any ownership of their actions and behavior. And we can understand that people are afraid, afraid of ownership, afraid of consequences, so they abdicate that responsibility by blaming, redirecting, trying to project it onto you.

If you are squeaky clean, you don’t need a tug of war game. You simply drop the rope, allow them to feel their feelings, conduct yourself in a way that feels in alignment and true for you, and allow them to have their feelings without engaging in a tug of war. So practice dropping the rope this year.

It will feel like an ego death. It will feel like you are not honoring yourself, but the truth is that you are honoring exactly yourself. When you know you are truthful, when you know you are in alignment, you do not need to pull at the rope. You’ve decided my perspective is solid. It’s on the foundation upon which I choose to believe. This is my version of my understanding of my perspective of my truth. Or maybe there is some insight from that person. Maybe there is something from their perspective you can glean to clean up your perspective.

If your perspective perhaps is clouded with a little bit of blame and abdication and projection, clean that up first. Allow yourself to hear. It goes both ways. But if you can drop the rope and just listen to the perspective, check in with your own perspective, align it to what you believe is the truth to the best of your ability for you, it will feel squeaky clean. It will feel aligned. It might not feel good, but it feels truthful. It feels aligned. You know what it’s like to be locked into your alignment. Dropping the rope is what allows you to lock into your alignment.

Give that a try this year and let us know how it goes. Come on into EPC. I will teach you how to drop the rope. Have a beautiful week. Talk to you next week. Take 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.