Ep #77: Influential Professional Development

I was in New York recently for a networking event with some amazing people. They were the kind of people that when you are speaking to them, they really care and they want to know absolutely everything about you. Just the way these people were was so eye-opening to me and I came back with a ton of realizations around influence to share with you guys.

This experience really got me thinking about one of the tools available to us as school leaders which, to be honest, underserves the needs of our schools. Professional development could be incredibly useful to our schools, but the system is broken. I can’t tell you how many times I was told to attend PD courses that simply were not inspiring as a teacher – and nothing has changed.

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Ep #76: Reflection Creates Influence

We are now into June, and that means that most of you, if not all of you, are at the end of your school year. That’s amazing, you did it! But you and I both know, it’s not long before you have to really focus on what’s to come next year.

Last week, we discussed how to gain influence as a school leader. In this episode, we’re taking a good hard look at the process of reflection so we can really analyze what worked this year, what didn’t work, and how you can learn from everything that happened this year to be a more influential leader when summer is over and it starts all over again.

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Ep #75: Leading with Influence

We’re are officially into June now, and the topic that I have for you this month is absolutely critical for any effective leader. We’re talking about influence and how to be an influential leader. Some people think of influence as being manipulative or consider it a somewhat dirty word, but that attitude is not going to get you anywhere.

Being an influential leader is more than just being able to shock people into action. It’s an amalgamation of being consistent, trustworthy, fair, and in integrity in every decision you make. You don’t need everyone to like you to have influence over them, and likewise don’t need to be some obnoxious know-it-all who people are afraid to disagree with.

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Ep #74: 4 Ways to Act Courageously as a School Leader

As we’ve discussed this month on the podcast, acting courageously as a school leader is incredibly important. We’ve discussed what courage is at length on the show, but what specific things can you do as a principal to act in courage every single day?

Being a principal is not an easy job, there is no question about that. You have parents, students, and teachers all looking to you for decisions and guidance every step of the way, and that can become overwhelming. However, if you can take action every day and be sure in yourself of what you are doing, you can make your job so much more enjoyable.

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Ep #73: How to Act in Courage

One goal that almost every client I have had wants for their life is to be able to act in courage. When I ask them what that really means for them, the common response will center around not feeling fear when it comes to making decisions and taking action.

That is not what courage is, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be incredibly useful. Courage is complex and for sure it’s not easy to master, but as a principal, when you can create courage in those moments when you feel fear, you will be the leader your teachers and students deserve.

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Ep #72: Courage Before Confidence

Last week, we talked about fear and how it paralyzes you from taking action. I’m taking it a little further this week and giving you the tools you need to be able to go from inaction all the way through to taking action with conviction and from a place of genuine belief.

Whether you’re a school leader thinking about taking the next step in your life, or you’re a teacher who wants to move into a job as a principal, there is only one thing holding you back, and that is your thoughts. I’ve experienced this firsthand when I first started to dream of starting my business as a coach. I know that if I could get through it, you can too.

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Ep #71: Why We Experience Fear

We’re into May, which means we’re starting on a new topic for the month! This month’s topic is something that I know I struggled with for a long time, and it’s something we could all do to have a little bit more of – courage.

What better way to start off the topic of courage by talking about the thing that keeps us from embodying it the most? Fear. So many of my clients and people I speak to say they feel fear when it comes to making big decisions around their school and their career. Some people are afraid to leave the office before 6pm for fear of being fired. How crazy is that?

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Ep #70: Money Goals

We’re wrapping up the month of April with a great topic, especially as the end of the school year gets closer – goal-setting. I’m going to be using monetary goals as an example in this episode, but you can apply this work to literally anything in your school or home life.

As a school leader, I’m sure you have a lot of experience setting goals. However, a lot of the goals we are forced to set can be things we have little control over or are impossible to achieve. After a while, understandably, that starts to really bring up a lot of negativity around setting goals four ourselves, professionally and in our personal lives.

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Ep #69: Your Money Manifesto

Having awareness of and the ability to create a money manifesto is the one thing I wish I’d had when I was a principal. Imagine if every decision you made about the budget was totally expected by your staff because you’d laid out these essential ground rules for how you approach money from day one. For me, it would have made every financial aspect of the job so much easier.

Identifying how you think about money is a vital part of being a school leader, but also in your life away from work as well. As we’ve learned, we all have strong feelings about money that we have developed over our lives, but what can we do to shape our thoughts around money so that they can serve us properly?

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Ep #68: The Truth About Debt

We’re continuing on the subject of money this week with everyone’s favorite topic – debt. Okay, it’s nobody’s favorite thing to talk about, but it is incredibly important, both in your personal life and your job as a school leader.

We know that having a school desperately in need of investment in the students when you have a low budget to work with can be incredibly stressful. This crosses over into our personal lives when it comes to buying a house, or even just treating ourselves because, lord knows, we need it.

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