Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 409.

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. Welcome to the podcast. I have an interesting topic that I would like to discuss with you because I’ve noticed a pattern of this topic in conversation throughout the years as a coach, working with clients from all across the country. People from Canada and Mexico. I’ve had people from Europe, and so really this is a global phenomenon, and that just means it’s a human phenomenon.

So, I want to talk about the anxiety or fears that we have around people in positions of authority. So, I call this superintendent anxiety, but it could be any supervisor, boss, manager, direct person above you, anybody who is a superior to you who you view as having positional authority over you professionally at work, okay?

So, many of my clients will feel nervous, anxious, uneasy, downright afraid of their boss, of the person who’s observing them or who’s overseeing them, who is their supervisor. A lot of times for site principals or district leaders, it’s the superintendent or the school board. They’re all set up differently, but the majority of you have a direct supervisor, okay?

So, throughout the years, I’ve talked with people, and I’m like, what is it that bosses do that can feel unsettling, that feels uneasy to you? So the list were things like, they micromanage. They’re all up in our business, they nitpick at little things. They’re kind of focused on the details. Every little thing, they want to tell us what to do and how to do it at our sites. So, you might have somebody who’s micromanaging or nitpicking at every little thing or wanting their hand in the decisions and actions that you take at a site level, or even if you’re at the district level, they might be all up in your department, that kind of a thing, okay?

Other concerns were criticism. This was a big one. I fear being criticized, and bosses can come in and be very critical or very judgmental about your decisions or your actions or your approach to something. And because they have positional authority, they can express their thoughts and opinions about your decisions and actions, and it may come across as harsh or critical or judgmental, okay?

Some people fear constructive feedback. So, there’s a difference, in my opinion, between constructive feedback versus opinionated feedback. So, to me, constructive feedback is when it’s in it for you. That person is sitting down with you to walk you through what’s working, what could be working better, and how we might approach that in a different way, but their intention is to support you, to help you, to make things easier for you. So when you’re sitting down with a teacher, this is a great example. You’re giving constructive feedback. You want to help them.

Here’s what I’m observing from the outside, things you might not be able to pick up or see because you’re in it, you’re the one teaching. These are things that I can see from the outside, but I want to help you. I want to make teaching easier for you or feel better for you or smoother for you, or I want you to be able to communicate with your students better or connect with them. It’s when you’re in it for them. That’s constructive feedback.

Versus, opinionated feedback is when people are giving you feedback based on what’s in it for them, what they want you to do so they feel good or it serves them in some way. So they might say, I have a little feedback for you. I don’t like it when you do XYZ this way because it makes me feel this or people don’t like it or I look bad to the school board, you know, that kind of a thing.

So, be able to discern for yourself what you feel is constructive feedback and differentiate. When is it that I’m getting feedback that’s in it for me? It still might feel uncomfortable, but it’s a different kind of feedback than somebody who’s giving you opinionated feedback that’s in it for them. Like, I need you to change so that I can feel better about myself or that my image can be protected or something, right?

So, be mindful. Now, it’s not to say that you might not be afraid of either kind of feedback. It might be hard for you to sit down and receive feedback, and I’m going to talk about that in a second. But just observe if feedback feels scary for you, if you’re like, I don’t like to get feedback. What kind of feedback are you getting? What kind of feedback are you most afraid of? Or are you just afraid of all of it and why? We’ll get into that in a minute, okay?

Another thing that bosses can do is lack communication. They lack communication, conversation, connection, maybe their timeliness of their communication or the details of their communication. They omit things, forget to tell you things, they’re not timely, or maybe they aren’t good at connecting with you or having some compassionate or understanding. And they are, again, while they’re maybe well-meaning, and we’re not trying to sit here and just bag on them or criticize them, we are here to notice these are things that humans do when they’re in a leadership position. When they’re overwhelmed or they’re not sure of how to be connected or be compassionate or be understanding or how to effectively communicate, it can come across as a disconnect between you and your boss, okay?

Another thing that bosses will do is they will leverage their personal and positional authority, right? They will leverage positional authority. Basically, they will leverage their title, they will leverage their status, they will leverage their power as leadership. They will misuse title, status, power, and leverage it as a form of leadership. And there’s a difference, right? Between leading people and then leveraging leadership, what they consider to be leadership, but it’s actually leveraging their positional authority over you. I tend to call it fear and intimidation tactics, right? Where they’re like, well, because I said so, because I’m the boss, because I have this status, because I’m the one, because I have the power, that’s why you need to do XYZ.

That’s what I’m talking about when people use their position and, in quotes, coach, mentor, guide you, or tell you what to do because they’re this, then you have to do this, or you have to be this, you have to decide this. You can’t say no, kind of thing, okay?

Another thing that people will do is they will move people. They don’t like where you’re at, they don’t like you, they don’t like what you’re doing, they move you, or they simply fire you. Or, at the very least, but still not great, they might just talk behind your back, talk to people about people and gossiping, just not being constructive with their conversations about you. You might fear that they’re talking about you to other people, okay?

So when I think about these behaviors, when I look at this list of things people have shared with me over time, I take it to the next level. I go a little bit deeper. I take off the layer, and I’m like, why are the humans doing this? Why are the human leaders behaving this way? Why might they be doing it? Of course, it’s speculation, but we’re trying to understand them so that we can work with it instead of resisting and fighting against it. So, why might they be doing this? Fear of not having control. Think about it. When your parents told you because I said so, they wanted control, right? If they were micromanaging you, they wanted control. If they were worried that there wasn’t going to be an outcome, I see teachers do this, I see principals do it, I see district leaders do it.

We see state leaders do it, we see government people do it. We see all kinds of leaders who are afraid of not being in control or not being perceived that they have control. They’re afraid they’re not going to get the outcome that they want. They will leverage tactics to try and get what they want based on that positional authority. So there’s a lot of fear about not being in control or not looking like you’re in control.

And the other side to this coin is that they genuinely believe it is their responsibility. It’s my responsibility to be in control. It’s my responsibility, it’s my job, it’s my obligation to oversee everything, to be in control. I’m the last buck, right? It stops here with me. I have to be in control. So people might not be doing it so they feel in control. They might be doing it because they believe they should be in control.

Other times, people just get focused on the minutia. If you’re a very detailed person, and maybe you were a detailed teacher and you were a detailed principal, and now you’re a superintendent, you might be in the weeds. You might be not letting go of the details and the minutia, and you are so focused on the how and all of the details that you, in a position of district-level leadership, superintendency, the price of admission to those positions are your ability to trust the people working for you and to release and to let go and to empower them to do the detail work while you’re doing the visionary work, while you are in contemplation and reflection and studying and expanding and really building upon the vision that you have and creating that vision and bringing it into practice and inspiring and empowering others to do that versus being in the weeds, right?

As the superintendent, you’re not out, the soda machine’s out of soda, and you’re not running to Costco to pick up, you know, cases of soda to fill the soda machine or whatever, right? Like, there’s people that can do that for you. But there are superintendents, district-level leaders, site principals who get so in the minutia because they’re so concerned about controlling the how the outcome happens versus focusing on the reason, the why behind the outcome. Why are we doing this in the first place? Why does it matter if the soda machine is out? Why does it matter that there’s soda in it, right? Is that the priority, right? The things that happen on campus, does it matter where the kids line up? You don’t like where they line up, but it works for the school. What’s the outcome? That kids are, there’s a system in place, kids know where to go, teachers know where kids are lining up and why. Buses lines are in order, dismissal is running fairly smoothly. Kids are getting safely on buses and getting home. The goal is safe dismissal, safe transportation, safely home into the arms of their families.

And sometimes we come and say, “Oh, this dismissal looks terrible. It’s chaotic.” But if it’s working for the school and they’re not having a problem with it, but we’re coming in as district leaders doing that, it can feel like we’re getting into that micromanaging and focusing on the minutia. So they might be doing that again because they’re more focused on the how it gets done versus the what needs to get done and why, okay?

A huge reason that we do what we do in leadership is because we have an image as a leader. We have an ego as a leader, we have a reputation as a leader. And as people who want to have a positive image, have a positive reputation, we want people to like us, we want people to believe in us, to trust us, to count on us, to value our leadership and our approach. Bosses can want to insist that you take action, make decisions, that you act in a way in accordance with their image, their ego, their reputation. They want you to align with decisions, actions, communications, behavior that aligns with what they value, what they like, their identity, their opinions, their approach, their way of doing business, okay?

It sounds like it’s very self-centered, but a lot of times it really isn’t because we all do it in a way. We all want to be liked, we all want to have a clean reputation, a clean image, meaning just that people respect us, appreciate us, value us. And so we can easily slip into making decisions based on how it might appear, what it might look like, what our reputation will become, okay?

And when people are in leadership positions and maybe they are very introverted or they’re not super people, which we have plenty of introverted people in education just because we’re in the business of human development and the business of people, doesn’t mean everybody is this super outgoing, want to talk to everybody kind of person. So sometimes, it can be that we want to keep people at arm’s length. So it can look like aloofness, it can look like distance, it can look like a disconnect.

And other times, when people are worried about thinking they should know everything when they don’t. So have you ever had a teacher or a parent or even a student ask you a question you didn’t know the answer and you felt silly and you felt kind of goofy and you felt awkward and clumsy and embarrassed that you didn’t know? And so then you kind of like acted like you knew? Or you like deflected and kind of acted like a little aggressively. I’ve seen people like go into fear and intimidation tactics when they don’t know what they’re saying and they puff up, and they’re just like trying to make it sound like they know. They don’t really know, or how dare you ask the question, or, you know, that’s not an important question. They belittled the question or they belittle the content or the conversation because they are embarrassed and don’t want people getting too close to them or they don’t want people to know they don’t know that they’re actually human and they don’t know everything.

So, again, getting very caught up in what it looks like versus what it actually is. But really what this comes down to is there are times as leaders when we don’t know. We’re supposed to be leading and we actually just, we don’t know what we’re doing. We don’t know for sure how to mentor this person, how to coach them, how to inspire them. We’re not sure how to prioritize that. There’s so many things to do, so we end up not mentoring, not coaching, not leading. It’s just easier to move people on and fire them or move them around than to actually do the work of mentoring and coaching and building somebody up. It’s easier to coach them out than to coach them up.

So, if you are a person who finds yourself afraid of your boss, what are you actually afraid of? I’m going to give you three questions to contemplate, okay? Number one, what are you afraid of? Are you afraid of you’re going to get in trouble? You’re going to do something wrong? Are you’re going to miss something, you’re going to forget something, you’re not going to do something? So, a fear of getting in trouble, doing something wrong or not doing something. Are you afraid to disappoint them? You don’t want to let them down. You want to be the A plus student, you want to get the gold star. You want to make sure, you know, like as a firstborn child that you’re doing everything right. You’re afraid to disappoint.

Is it feedback? Are you afraid of feedback? Are you afraid you’ll be harshly criticized or judged or really raked over the coals unfairly or treated unfairly somehow? Or are you afraid you might not be heard? That it’s just their way or the highway. There’s no room for voice or choice. You’re not going to be heard, you’re not going to be listened to, you’re not going to be acknowledged, you’re not going to be taken seriously?

Or are you afraid if something goes wrong, I’m going to lose my job, public scrutiny, it’s going to be in the paper, public embarrassment, public shame? This is where I say like our brains can really go to the worst-case scenario. Like, we’re going to be excommunicated off the planet. We’re going to have to move to Mars or move to the moon because we’re going to lose everything, and the end of the world will happen for us professionally, right? And it feels like that sometimes. I understand. I’m with you on that.

So question number one to contemplate, what are you afraid of? What are you actually afraid of? Get specific. Number two, what do you think will happen? If one of these things happened, let’s say you forgot something, missed something, or you disappointed them, or you got some feedback, or you weren’t allowed to speak up, or, you know, somebody said, “Maybe you’re not cut out to be a school leader. Maybe I’m going to move you.”

Let’s say the things happened. What do you think will happen as a result of your fear? So you’re afraid of something happening. What do you actually think will happen in response to that, in reaction to that? You think it’s going to be a write up? You’re going to get scolded? Are you going to have to feel emotions of inadequacy, insufficiency, incompetency, embarrassment, shame? Or do you fear that your frustration, if you’re ever being silenced, that it will turn into a deep resentment and you end up working in resentment in silence and stewing over it all the time and just being unhappy as an employee? Or are you afraid it’s going to build up to the point where you might blow up or lash out and say something that could cause an issue? Okay?

Sometimes we think that our boss is just, it’s the more work. Like, every time we go to a meeting with this person, more work. Or we need to completely change, going in a different direction. I need to change myself. We need to do more work, a lot of effort here. People are going to be unhappy. I need to people please, I need to go against my values or my vision. I have to get out of alignment in order to just do this job, right? That is a fear, fear of misalignment is a big fear for people.

And then if you go down the worst-case scenario train, oftentimes we fear like if we get fired, which feels like the worst thing that could ever happen, we’ll never land a job. We’ll never get another job. Our career is ruined, our life is ruined, our finances are ruined. So we can go down this really dark hole of life is over if something goes wrong.

So question number two is, what do you think will happen? You have to answer these specifically for you. So, what are you afraid of? What do you think will happen? And then the third question is, why might I be feeling this way? Why do I think I’m so afraid? Why am I afraid of my boss? Why am I afraid of somebody in authority? What’s coming up for me? Most likely, there’s something from your past triggering you, whether you’re experience as a kid, you had a fear of authority, you feared your parents, you feared your older siblings. Perhaps it was a coach or a teacher. Maybe you had somebody in college that was really harsh on you, but there’s a reason why that you were feeling this way. It doesn’t just come out of nowhere.

So allowing yourself to explore the truth of what’s coming up, what’s being triggered and why you’re feeling this way. Oftentimes, we’ll find like, “Oh, this person reminds me of somebody in my life who, XYZ,” or “This happened to me as a kid, or this or that.” Past experiences are coming into the current moment, and that’s where we feel disempowered. It’s where we feel almost like we are, well, literally our power’s been taken away. We are not in positions of authority, internal authority. We lose that authority. We feel like a kid where we have limits. We have limitations to what we can say, what we can do, our opinions, our ideas, who we can be based on the people in authority, the people on the pedestals, okay? We put people in positional authority positions on a pedestal.

So contemplate these three questions for yourself because it’s going to take you deeper into the emotions behind and the understanding of why you feel your nervous system feels triggered and your emotional energy is so triggered when you are interacting with your boss, your superintendent, and why you have so much anxiety around either communicating with them, being in the same room with them, having a conversation with them, or receiving some kind of feedback from them. So contemplate those three questions and see what comes up for yourself.

And if you would like to go deeper, you’ve got a couple of options. Number one, you can post in the public Facebook group, the Empowered Principal Facebook group. It’s a public group, free, open to everybody. Come on in and ask your questions in there. Number two, you can join EPC, which is the Empowered Principal Collaborative. It’s a group coaching program for site and district leaders. You’re welcome to join us in there where you can ask questions, you can get support, love, compassion. It feels like a big hug when you’re in there. We talk about really deep things. We take leadership to the next level, but we also clean up some of these things that are obstacles in our way.

And number three, if you really want to dive deep and you want a more personalized, private experience, you want to have these conversations, maybe something’s triggered you that’s very traumatic, and you want to talk in a one-on-one setting. I do offer a limited number of one-on-one coaching positions in my coaching program. So I do have private coaching, I have group coaching, and then we have the free group where you can go in and ask your questions in the Facebook group, and I will do my best to answer them, to respond to them, and to support you, okay?

All right. With that said, I know this topic actually takes you really deep into who you are as a leader, who you want to become as a leader, and what’s preventing you from expanding your empowerment, to not feel afraid, to be in collaboration and connection with your boss, to feel a level of equality as you’re speaking with your boss and collaborating and having conversations around school leadership as a team. And the ideal is that we communicate and connect with one another and we see the power in each of us and the contribution that each of us gives, not from a place of fear and intimidation or anxiety or worry or self-doubt, but from a place of empowerment and confidence and certainty and assuredness that we have something to offer, that we have something of value to give, and our opinion matters, and our voice matters, and our leadership matters.

So, contemplate these three questions. You can reach out in the Facebook group, you can join EPC, or you can connect with me for one-on-one coaching, and I would love to support you. Have a beautiful week. I love you all. Take good care of yourselves, and I will see you next week. 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 407.

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 beautiful, empowered principals. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast. If you’re new around here, we are so happy you are here. And hey, if you are in the fall dip and the burn is real right now, you’re overwhelmed, you’re fatigued, you’re discouraged, you are exhausted, just know that combination is what’s creating the fall dip. It’s a collective little funkiness that people get into. And when people are feeling discouraged, disappointed, a little fatigued or a lot fatigued, and a lot of overwhelm, you add those components together, those feelings into one, and the outcome is the fall dip.

And when people get into the fall dip, what happens is they start to vent. They might commiserate. They might blame a little bit. They might ask you to come and do the heavy lifting for them because they’re tired. Or they want you to direct them or you to tell them what to do because they’re overwhelmed. Or they try to overwork and get in the overwhelm cycle even more because they’re spinning out of control so bad.

That’s the fall dip. When collectively the energy on campus, the frequency of your campus is in a little bit of a funk. And it’s normal. You’re not alone. I haven’t talked to a school leader across this nation that hasn’t felt this experience, this phenomenon that happens. I just coined it the fall dip because I see it happen in the fall after the peak and all the hype of a brand new school year and the kickoff of the year and getting ready, and that anticipation wears off, and we get into a routine. We have the whole year ahead of us. And we’re like, whoa.

Now the work is starting. The expectations are real. The demands are mounting. The deadlines are approaching. We’ve got to get these kids learning. We’ve got to get the test scores. We’ve got to make sure they’re making progress. And all of that internal pressure and external pressure ramps up. The volume goes to level 10 and people start to worry and feel anxious and get stressed and freak out. And when they’re in that, their nervous system is in fight or flight. And they start to feel a little funky. They start to be a little crabby. They might be kind of complaining, or whiny, or venting, blaming, all of those things.

So, when that happens, first of all, know it’s normal. Second of all, join EPC. We’re talking about it. There will be other dips. Each season has a little bit of its own dip. There’s a winter dip, a spring dip, and even summer has its own dip if you can believe that or not. It happens as we’re thinking about coming back to school. Not when we’re at school, but when we’re thinking about it, we get a little bit like, oh no. No. And we grasp onto summer and we feel that little dip in feeling that summer’s not long enough, that summer needs to last longer, that we need more time, that we’re not looking forward to going back to school. You know that feeling when your angst when you open up your emails and there’s like 300 emails? Yeah. So even summer has its own dips.

Okay. So, the fall dip is right now. It’s happening. And there are ways that you can redirect it, you can reframe it, you can navigate it in a way that’s much more empowering. So, the fall dip class that I just taught, it speaks to that specifically, and in EPC, we take individual circumstances and we work through them to help you stay empowered throughout your entire week. So, I invite you in to the Empowered Principal Collaborative. You and a friend bring, bring them all. The more the merrier. We love to create community, to create a sense of safety and belongingness and love and appreciation and all of those things we’re looking for at our school from our communities, from our families, from our staff. We just create it for ourselves here. We love on each other. We support one another. It’s a beautiful community to be in. It’s a part, I believe, the empowered principal movement, which is changing the experience of education for leaders, teachers, and students.

All right. I had a client who was very upset. She scheduled a one-on-one with me because she’d had an incident with a child and it started off as a normal behavior situation. So incident occurs, it gets reported, she initiates an investigation, and eventually upon conversing with students who were directly involved, the student who was accused of the behavior admitted to the principal that yes, in fact, they did the thing that they were told on for, that they were accused of. Okay.

So, this can be any student, any behavior. We’ve seen it happening before. So, student admits it to you. You’re writing up your reports, your investigation. You’re letting people at home know, the adults at home know the situation and your perspective on it and your decision around the consequences that are going to follow that are appropriate to the behavior.

The student goes home and says to the parents or to the family members that are guardians, no, I didn’t do that. And they are adamant. They did not do it. They, I don’t know what the principal is talking about. I never said that. I never did that. And now, the adult at home is like, wait a minute. Principal said this. My kid said that. And they come to you and they confront you because they’re confused. The parent says, wait a minute, you told me this and they told me that.

Now, we’re in a situation where it’s someone’s telling the truth and someone’s not. We’ve got a right or wrong, good, bad, we’ve got an all or none situation here, and it doesn’t feel good because it feels like it’s a win loss. And when that student comes in with the parent, you say, okay, well, we can resolve this. The parent tells their version, the child tells their version and they’re saying, no, I didn’t do it. And you’re looking at the two and feeling at a loss, feeling like you’ve been called a liar, that you have not told the truth, that you are the one not telling the truth.

That can feel very confrontational. It can feel very attacking. And if we’re not mindful of our body’s reaction to that attack or to that accusation or to even the inference that we might not be telling the truth, we may react in defensiveness. I know I do. Just ask my sister. When accused, my fight or flight will kick in faster than I can even brain think and I will go right into defensiveness, and I will fight right back. Or if I feel like the attack is too threatening, I will shut down. I will literally just stop talking. I will leave the room if I can. So, my fight or flight will choose all three options if possible. It will try to fight and then it will shut down and then it will leave the room.

So, know the signals in your body, know the triggers. When somebody’s speaking in a room and a child is like, no, I never said that. I don’t know why the principal is saying that. I never did it. All of a sudden, now you feel like it’s kind of this two against one and they’re looking at you like, why are you saying this about my child? Why are you saying this? I never said that. And you start to feel a little bit like, what is happening here? Why is this turning on me? Am I being gaslit?

So, when, first of all, I want to point out that in that moment, when a child is saying something differently to a parent than to you, we want to consider why that might be happening. And I also want you to consider that in that moment, if you react and you start to get defensive, or you start to call that kid out or pressure them back and you’re in fight mode and you’re attacking back, or you’re like pedaling backwards and feeling like, well, maybe I was wrong or maybe I’m doubting myself. If you are in fight or flight mode, the person in the room at that moment who has the floor is the child. The child is owning that conversation. The child is leading that conversation, which is very important to remember because we as leaders are striving to be the most emotionally regulated person in the room.

Now, we’re humans. It doesn’t always work that way, but it’s our goal. And we take classes or we take courses, we hire a coach, we listen to podcasts like this, we jump into EPC, we read books, we do things that help us learn tricks and tips and strategies on how to emotionally regulate ourselves because we want to be in a leadership position. But in that moment, when the kid’s saying something different and you’re feeling called out, they have the floor. They’re taking the lead. They’ve got the mic. And if you attack back, you’re pressuring that kid to wait for them to speak up and put them on the hot seat and make them feel cornered.

Now, if you think about why a child would tell you one thing, and you know the truth of it and you probably documented it, but even so, they go home and tell their parents something different, a couple of reasons why this happens. The primary reason is that the child is afraid to death. Remember how when you got in trouble, you would think to yourself, my dad’s going to kill me, my mom’s going to kill me. Like we literally thought death was upon us if we did something wrong, said something wrong, behaved in a way that was unbecoming or not alignment with our family’s values. We were so afraid.

And in that childlike state, when you are that afraid, especially if you had parents who were physically punishing you or really emotionally punishing you or maybe punishments were so severe. Maybe you were over punished and so you had a legitimate fear, whether that was a physical punishment or like you were grounded for life or grounded for a month, or you had all of your technology taken away, something that felt so threatening, so fearful that in a moment of panic, the child is going to do whatever they can to try and avoid that pain, whether that’s physical pain, mental pain, emotional pain, psychological pain. We don’t know what happens to kids at home.

So, if they’re that afraid to tell the truth at home, it could be that they’re just so afraid of the consequence or they’re afraid of the reaction, or something’s going to be withdrawn from them, or they’re going to receive physical punishment. Now, there are times when that does happen and then there are times when just children are afraid of a regular punishment. They’re not in danger. They’re not in danger physically or mentally or emotionally, psychologically, but they just don’t want the consequence. They don’t want their phone taken away for a day or a week. They don’t want to have to listen to the lecture, or they don’t want to have to repair and apologize. That’s different, right?

But we want to be mindful that when a child says one thing and then goes and says another thing that they are in such fear that they are in fight or flight. They’re so afraid versus how dare you come in and call me a liar or infer that I’m lying. I would never lie. That’s on you. You’re the liar. We pick up the rope. We get in the tug of war with the child and now we’re both on the hot seat. Who’s right, who’s wrong? And we’re throwing that kid under the bus when we go into a tug of war with them. So, consider why a child would say one thing to you and then go home and say something else to their family.

Of course, they’re freaking out. They’re so afraid. They’re in that young little mindset. They don’t know an alternate way. They don’t feel that they can handle the public embarrassment of being, you know, in trouble in front of their friends. You know how embarrassing it was to be in trouble in front of your friends at school? And then to go home and get in trouble in front of your siblings or to have your parents be upset with you. That felt terrible. These are people that you love, you care about, or you’re genuinely afraid of them. You’re genuinely afraid of what they’re going to say or what they’re going to do. Are they going to withdraw emotionally? Are they going to mentally, verbally say something that’s so hurtful that causes trauma? Are they going to physically punish somebody that causes physical pain and shame and embarrassment?

We don’t know. So we want to be mindful of that, right? So when you’re accused of lying, notice your own reaction to that. Notice if the child is now trying to have the floor because they feel no power. They are so afraid. And when you stay in alignment with your truth, you know what the child said and you also understand why they might have told the story that they told at home. Then we can approach with some compassion in, tell me more. What came up for you? I’m hearing this one story here. I believe this is what I heard you say. The story sounds different. We just want to get to the bottom of it. Is there something that you’re afraid of? And approaching the question.

And what’s interesting is in this case, when I asked the principal how she ended up handling it, she actually handled it in a very empowered way. Even though she was feeling attacked on the inside and after the fact, she was stewing on, how dare that child call me a liar. The way she handled it was, tell us more, what are you afraid of? Let’s talk this through. And the parent was actually very understanding and was not overreacting, at least in front of the principal to the child. And appreciated and understood why the child was saying what they were saying. Eventually, the child, through conversation, did admit to the action, the behavior, the words that were said.

And when the principal is not trying to defend their honesty, their truth, their integrity, and worried that people are going to think that you’re lying, then you can be in the mindset of service. When you’re in empowerment, you are in the mindset of service. How can I serve this family? Let’s work with the parent and the child to work through it together hand in hand, knowing it’s just a developmental stage for kids. It’s a natural thing to want to get out of trouble. And they’ve learned that lying sometimes does work and does get them out of a pickle once in a while. Sometimes it works, which is why we lie.

And hey, when someone calls us a liar, I’m going to go 2.0 on you here. The truth is that we all lie. We don’t call it lying when we grow up. We say, oh, I’m sorry, I can’t come to that party. I’m not feeling well, when really you just want to lay on the couch and watch Netflix and you don’t want to go mingle. It’s not really a lie. I just don’t feel like it. Or our husband says, did you get the oil change in the car? You’re like, oh, yes, I was going to do that. I totally got overwhelmed at work when really you just forgot.

We do say little white lies we call them, but we are telling something we know isn’t exactly the truth or omitting the truth of the full truth. And look, it’s not to say you’re out of integrity or you’re a bad person, and we make it mean, oh, we’re a bad person when we lie. No, every human on the planet doesn’t tell the full truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God all of the time. We want to lean into the fact that, yes, it’s understandable that sometimes we say things in a way that makes us feel more comfortable about saying no or about forgetting or about not doing something we said we would do, or about dropping the ball. It happens.

So we can lean into, yeah, sometimes I do. Officer, why were you speeding? Oh, I really have to go to the bathroom or I’m late to or my grandmother’s dying. We say some crazy stuff. When we feel like we’re going to get in trouble, when we feel like the consequences are going to be so painful, we will say things in a way that we try to smooth it out. So, can you embrace the fact that yeah, I understand why kids try to wiggle out of pain because we try to wiggle out of pain. We try to make our answers or our choices or our forgetfulness or when we drop the ball, we try to make that more comfortable for ourselves and less uncomfortable for the others around us. When our husband’s like, oh, okay, you just got busy at work, then he’s not upset that you just dropped the ball and didn’t get the oil changed. You hear where I’m going with this? Okay.

Lean into it. There is truth in that in this moment, you are telling the full truth and you were sharing very openly. And yes, it’s also equally true that sometimes we do soften our responses or the reason behind something because we don’t want to take that full radical accountability, relentless ownership of our humanness to say, oh my gosh, you’re right. I forgot to call. Let me do that and I’ll get the oil change this weekend. Or let me make an appointment. Oh, you’re right. That was something I said I would do and I didn’t. Or I would love to come to the party, but in full honesty, I don’t feel like I have the energy to mingle. Can I take a rain check?

So I like to lean into slightly uncomfortable truth because one, it makes me remember that I am a person of truth, even when I’m also a human who might soften the truth in order to not hurt somebody’s feelings or to get out of something painful or to forgive myself for being human and forgetting and dropping the ball. So play with that this week. See how it lands for you. And we can embrace that we all don’t always tell the truth, but we can embrace the truth of our integrity knowing that we’re still a good person and we are telling the truth and we don’t need to let children take the stage, call us a liar, or infer that we’re lying, and then pick up the rope and have a tug of war with them. Okay?

Go be human, be empowered. Have the most beautiful week and I’ll talk to you next week. Take great care of yourselves. 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 405.

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: Welcome to this very amazing episode. I have just met a new friend in the field of education. We met online. I actually met her through an assistant. You know, I get a lot of people who reach out and want to be on the podcast. And as you know audience, I’m fiercely protective of you. I monitor every interview that comes on to this podcast because I want it to be in service to you, the listener. And Lori and I just met in person on Zoom. And I felt energetically, she’s a match. I love this.

And I have never done this before, you guys. I have never pushed play on a meet and greet ever. And so there’s something special about what Lori has to say, and I am bringing her on. So the audio might not be great. I don’t have my podcast mic because I’m traveling. And sorry about that. But we’re going to just do this. This is a real conversation. This is two women on the planet who want to serve the field of education, the educators, students, families, communities. And I think you’re in for a real treat with this conversation. So Lori, welcome to the podcast.

Lori: Oh, Angela, thank you so much for having me. And I just love that, you know, when you saw synergy happen, you said, “Let’s make this happen.” And that’s how I operate. So thank you for that.

Angela Kelly: Yes, I agree. I could feel. Leaders, I just want to say something right here before Lori and I dive in. A lot of our leadership, there is skill involved. There is knowledge, wisdom, experience involved. There’s also an intuition, a feeling, a gut, whatever you call it. I call it my internal compass. There’s something that’s always guiding you as a leader. So in moments of overwhelm, confusion, indecision, sit in with your body and feel your way through that moment. Feel your way through that decision making process. Feel your way through that connection, that conversation, that whatever you’re doing in terms of taking action, allow yourself to feel the guidance, and you will be amazed at where that takes you.

So that’s a little side note here, but that’s what I was feeling and it was so strong that I just, I literally interrupted Lori and said, “Can we capture this now? The energy’s right, the moment is right.” And she said, “Yeah, my schedule’s actually super busy over the next six weeks.” So this might not have happened for another two or three months. And I’m just glad to capture it today. So little side note there. But Lori, could you tell the listeners a little bit about you, your background and education, and the story of how you created All It Takes and the other programming that you offer to educators?

Lori: Sure, and thank you again. So my background is school counseling. I was a school counselor, still am. Like I still carry my PPS for, I think, 32 years now. And I was a 30 year school counselor, like in schools. Seven years ago, I left to do what I’m doing now running this nonprofit. I left public education but still, everything I do is around education. And like so many of us, my identity is tied in education. For the good or the not good of that, it is, that is who I am and how I’m wired. But yeah, I started at 27 as a school counselor. Most all of my years were in middle school. Some people are like, middle school, and others are like, middle school, really?

Angela Kelly: It’s a love-hate, I think. You’re thinking as a counselor, what a beautiful time of life of development to study the human experience, right? Middle school.

Lori: Absolutely. And so many of my programs right now, like I’ve really, this is a little less about my background, but just really quick, like I believe like our seventh graders are the place that need us the most. So anyways, a lot of my work and a lot of our programming when we’re working directly with students is really pushing for those middle school years. Anyway, so that’s that is a big passion for me. But also being a K-8 counselor the whole time, I really am focused on prevention, right? Like I really saw early on that a couple things. My very first year as a school counselor, I had two amazing opportunities that I said yes to. And we’ll talk about yes in a bit. But I said yes to going to a three-day training on peer programs. And what I found out there is that it’s possible to teach our young people the skills that I didn’t get in formal training until my Master’s program.

And I was like, wait, if I can teach kids to do this, I actually duplicate myself times to however many are in that program. And of course, not the big heaviest stuff, but kids are their own best answers if we can give them the skill set, impart on them, have them embrace it and understand their own personal power, then they become assets to the work I was doing. So I – so lucky, year one. And the other thing I did in year one was attend an overnight experiential training. At the time was titled At-Risk Kids. I don’t love that, but that is what I was assigned to go to back then. It was a hundred kids who really were very affected by many, many different types of trauma. Let’s just leave it at that. And so they had a lot of risk factors. And in that first year, I was fascinated.

By year two, I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll watch the students as a chaperone, but I want to be for participating in the leadership of this.” By year three, I was like, “No, no, I’m not even going to chaperone anymore. I’m just going to be on the team that puts this program together.” And from that year on, I never stopped doing it. I changed locations. That program morphed into other things. But for my entire career, I was very experiential based, because what I realized by saying yes to an opportunity that I knew nothing about, that one of the best assets I had was to get people, get to create change with people feeling their feelings, feeling their why, rather than being told their why. So that was significant. Then in 2010, my daughter and I started All It Takes, originally with a lens on health, environment, and youth leadership. She quickly, my daughter’s pretty popular out there in the world of film, quickly got so busy that she could, she didn’t have time.

No, and she also was like 19 and like, “I got to go do me.” And so she, you know, went and did her life and I, it landed back in my expertise. So we really became a an education focused organization. Jump forward to pandemic when everybody pivots in a way that nobody believed they could or would ever have to, right? We didn’t even dream about what that would look like because how could you even fantasize about that kind of change? And we had an opportunity to make a film. So it’s again, it’s a yes thing. Like I got a text from a local client, an administrator, director of curriculum and instruction.

She said, “Please make a film on trauma. If our teachers have to pay to attend a workshop, they won’t be able to afford it. And we’re going to need this more than ever when this is on the other side.” So over that summer, without any funding or anything, we just made a film. That’s so cool. And I was in the yard. It was COVID, right? So we were in masks outdoors. But Dr. Pedro Noguera, Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, Dr. Pam Cantor, Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, who now is like this leading neuroscience and education, just mastermind. Yeah. We were interviewing them.

Angela Kelly: That’s so wild. I want to point out when you are working from an energetic state of belief and of service and contribution and you’re just looking at where is a need that I can support, you know, and I can create solutions for people and I can put my mind power to that, I think that the universe just like collapses time and then it just starts to snowball. And all of a sudden you’re making films and meeting, you know, people who are leading the industry and having these conversations that are so powerful, so impactful. And I really believe you hit on something early on when you said, you know, that students can learn at a younger age what we were maybe exposed to in our master’s programs or college masters or even adulthood, even in our careers, we the awareness of personal power tools, empowerment tools, personal development and growth, SEL, you know, skill sets, these aren’t things that we were maybe taught in our era of school, right?

Lori: Not at all. Absolutely. It was definitely, yeah, not at all.

Angela Kelly: Yes. And I’m curious to ask you this. I want to dive into your book and the, you said that you the SEL muscles, right? So I want to talk about those. But one of the things that was coming up for me when you were speaking was the challenges we’re seeing with bringing SEL, not just, I’m just going to say this like directly. I know we’ve been talking about SEL in education for probably over a decade. Like it started coming in when I was a school leader, but it felt like a little cherry on top of the foundations of like academics first, well, attendance, academics, behavior, and then maybe a little SEL sprinkling fairy dust on the top. Right? And that’s how it felt to me. It was just like this little like, if there was time and it’s kind of fluffy and I’m curious to hear your work in the schools. How are we, how are you approaching this conversation around, let’s talk about feelings and emotions and social emotional development and resiliency and maturity when the adults on campus find it very uncomfortable or uneasy to talk about their own emotional bandwidth?

Lori: I think that you just nailed my journey. So it was always about the kids and we either did direct service, you know, on campuses or we took them off site for field trips and things like that. And that was all fine if we were doing it, right? If we could get a school interested. And a lot of times it was just, you know, social capital because I’ve been in education for so long and as a trusted counselor, “Okay, we’ll give this a try,” right? So that’s how a lot of times we got to work with kids. But in my work, what you’re talking about with the adults who are uncomfortable, I think there’s multiple things. One, I think SEL is so much deeper than what we give it credit for. And also, it’s less scary than we think it is.

So it’s kind of an interesting thing, like we can go so much deeper and make so much more progress with it, and we don’t and it’s not super scary. Where it becomes scary and ineffective, which is what I think a lot of both, we hear students and admin and teachers all say, it’s not working, this is just actually kind of ridiculous, a waste of my time. I hear that so often it’s kind of heartbreaking. The reason that it is that for them is because it’s being seen as a, you know, check the box, word of the week, concept of the month. Like it’s compliance.

Angela Kelly: It’s a compliance thing.

Lori: Right. Yes, thank you. Great. Great word and. And so in compliance, the teachers aren’t really bought in. Right? So you get an elementary teacher or you get a secondary teacher, they pick their topic, right? They pick what they want to teach. Elementary is choosing multi-level and multi-topic, right?

So like all the different curriculums they’re teaching and they’re choosing that. And SEL kind of came in and said, oh, you have to do this without really an individual buy-in for it. And I think that it’s not really bought in because they see it as a compliance thing. They don’t really see it working because overall, my opinion is we’re not looking at we’re looking at it as learning, you get that tool, I check the box, maybe we test on it, but in SEL we really aren’t, and we move on, and we never revisit it again. And I think SEL is the L should be literacy. Like math or reading or like we need to be writing literate, we need to be reading literate, we need to be mathematically literate at least to some degree to have a future that we get to design and that the world doesn’t say you have to be this, but we actually take on who we are and say I want to be this. And so those skills, I think there’s been a miss in the thinking of it as not just cherries and fairy dust, but a integrated part of how we actually move through the world, through the classroom, through the playground, together.

Angela Kelly: Yes. Amen to that. That is so good. And it’s funny because I also call it emotional literacy in my conversations with administrators because they connect to that. Like it’s their language. They understand. We as educators understand and especially teachers, like I want my children literate. Yes, we want them mathematically literate, we want them, you know, reading and writing literate, but we want them socially and emotionally literate. And I will go out on a limb as far as to say, I think it’s the foundation of the academics because – and we’ve seen it. We’ve seen this play out in schools.

When students are emotionally dysregulated, when they feel socially illiterate and isolated, academics aren’t on the radar for them. And teachers will say, yes, if I have a group of dysregulated students or I come in dysregulated, the day is off, the learning is off, the rhythm of the day is off. And people acknowledge that the emotional component is there, and there’s so much pressure on educators. And actually, like, I will say this because this is my personal experience, the way that we’re leading our schools is this level, it’s coming from fear and intimidation. If you don’t perform at this level and get these test scores and get this many kids attending school and get your behavior referrals down, it’s all these, if we don’t get these numbers down and these numbers up, you’re incompetent, therefore you will no longer have a position. And so as much as I think educators want to prioritize social and emotional literacy, they’re afraid to.

Lori: I absolutely, I think they are afraid to, they don’t make the time for it, they don’t have the skill, they’re not trained in it to the same degree as we train a teacher who is in, you know, teaching calculus. You know, they have a lot of training to teach that subject and what we’re not necessarily doing is training educators to understand their own social emotional well-being so that then they have their own why. Oh, wow, if I feel like this when I’m dysregulated and these are my behaviors and attitudes and moods, and if we can start to bring, you know, the educator lens about themselves into the lens of looking outside of themselves at whether it’s their colleagues or the kids that they serve or you know, an admin serving a staff of teachers, like whatever it is and whoever we’re in service to, ultimately it’s always about the kids, but if we’re not doing it well as the adults, I just really, I saw, I knew that kind of intuitively all along, but I never really saw my in until the pandemic.

And that really changed our lens on the supporting of an educator, but not just in what I call death by slideshow. Like again, we used to say PowerPoint and somebody’s like, that’s kind of – that’s actually somebody’s licensed material. So you should say slide show. So you know, like we don’t, like it’s important for us to teach and facilitate growth through experiential lenses, like we know really great teaching happens that way, right? Don’t sit down, I sage on stage, that doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked and especially it isn’t working today. And so I feel the same way about anybody in service to the educators, to the adults in the room, we need to be in playful mode, we need to be in like an open-hearted, open-minded, receptive environment in order for us to really understand how SEL is the magic. It is the fairy dust, but it needs to be the base, right?

Like you said, it needs to be what we start with, building relationships, not, you know, like the whole mentality, “Well, I’ll be nice to them after a few months after they’re afraid of me.” I’m like, well, that’s never worked, but you know, we thought really right after the pandemic, there was a lot of hope. And right now, I think that there’s a lot of discouragement from a lot of educators because it doesn’t necessarily feel like some of the changes we knew needed to happen were are happening and there’s this like kind of almost a fight to go back to 20 years ago mentality of education. And our kids just, we’re not the same, we’re not teaching the same kids. It’s not the same world. And now and then we complain about the behaviors. And so we’re kind of, I don’t know, my heart breaks for what educators are putting up with and dealing with right now, but also, I think education needs to get more courageous about trying new things.

Angela Kelly: I agree. That’s what this space is for and this podcast is for. And I think the work that I do in the world, like empowering site and district leaders and giving them a space to have these conversations because you were talking about, you know, educators in an ideal situation, they’re playful and they experiment and they’re willing to go on a journey and they’re willing to trial and error things to see what works and what doesn’t because we know one size doesn’t fit all and you’re constantly in this journey of exploring like what works this year and what works with this group of students and what works for these teachers.

And I’m in my lens through the world of The Empowered Principal, I’m thinking what prevents the adults on campus from being open, from being playful, from being curious. And I think they again, they lack safety. I think they don’t feel safe to be open and playful because they don’t feel like they have the time to make a mistake or that they have the space to make to trial and error actually.

Lori: Yeah, they permission to.

Angela Kelly: Yes, right. And so there is a rigidity that’s come in with all of these expectations of, you know, students meeting, you know, grade level standards and assessments and all of that. And I will say, I saw a shift because what COVID did and I think it’s actually a beautiful thing, even though it’s a highly uncomfortable thing for educators. COVID opened, it exposed to society that education no longer needs to look the way it’s always looked. Like we kind of as educators held a container. You know, higher education was the holder and power of knowledge and then in order to access that, you had to go through the chains of command which was, you know, preschool, elementary school, middle, high school, graduate, go to college or go to, you know, trade school or go to a community college to access success in the world.

And kids saw, they’re like, wait a minute. During COVID, it was like, I can actually learn how to do math online. I can actually go out into the world to learn science and history and social studies and engage in the world and learn in these more interactive, comprehensive, and actually much faster ways. Like you can just Google YouTube and learn, that’s what parents do. They were Googling YouTube to figure and Khan Academy and all of these things to figure out how to teach their kids the math or just support them in their in their own learning. And so it cracked open and tell me what your thoughts are on this, but I feel like COVID cracked open an awareness in students and an awareness in families that it doesn’t have to be this one traditional box.

Lori: It’s so interesting that you say that we are kindred for sure. Because I like to say often that, you know, we like to say this is the way it is to kids and they’re like, I have this thing, this device you think, you see this thing that you gave me that tells me in real time, even if it’s not, you know, real, right? Because we don’t always know what’s real and not real, but they are seeing that what we’re telling them in so many ways isn’t true. And that there are other ways. And they learned it themselves through the COVID, you know, through the pandemic and the pivoting that had to happen.

And so I do think that there is a big issue between an education system that wants to go back to, dare I say, archaic ways and a world of students and families who are like, wait, it doesn’t have to be that way and my child doesn’t have to be bored and my child should be challenged and should be engaged, right? And then we have educators who are like, well, they just want to be, they just want to be entertained all the time. Well, that is a piece of it. Like our attention spans are shorter. That is the truth. But that’s what our today’s current society is. That’s what our kids are. We have to meet our kids where they are, not where we want them to be. And that’s I think a head space thing that’s a challenge for a lot of educators. Like, I want to do what I know, what I was comfortable in, not change me to help them in their own learning.

Angela Kelly: Right. And that is where we step in and offer that support because in order to, you know, you were saying like kids want to be entertained and I do think yes, for all of us, we are zoomed into these screens and we love to be entertained, which is why people are on social media. Like they’re looking for entertainment, they’re consuming content. And I also think that when I think about a teacher, it’s like they’re bored. They’re bored teaching in the old ways, right? And in order for them to be playful and to be maybe more entertaining, what would make teaching more entertaining? And this is where I invite the leaders and the teachers to come into a reflection space where they’re like, wait a minute, what is the purpose of education again?

What do I value? What do I like about teaching and learning? How do I want it to feel for me as the educator? And I want to feel good coming to work. I want to feel good. I want to feel re And so redefining and actually like exploring once again the purpose, the values, the desires, the goals and shifting them into like what would feel good for us as the educator, I actually think there is some more alignment than we realize. I think what would feel good for teachers will actually feel good for students when we allow that conversation to take place.

Lori: Absolutely. I see it firsthand in the work we do, right? Like I see educators remember how to have fun. I see educators like the light bulb goes off when they’re just like, “Oh, I could use this fun thing to reset my classroom when the whole ship goes sideways,” right? Like because a lot of classrooms with behaviors and stuff. Like I can rephrase ways that I communicate with kids that feel really good to me and have me going home feeling whole and complete and satisfied with my own actions, even if it doesn’t go my way or didn’t fix the problem, I can feel good about the problem. I mean, I can feel good about how I moved through it. And then when we’re feeling good, we have a lens of creativity that we’re able to apply, right? We’re able to lean into like joy or ease and I just, I feel like without those pieces, we’re being asked to make sure our kids have them, but we really just don’t know how.

And you know, there’s a lot of writing, there’s a lot of personal development stuff on, you know, finding joy as an adult. And when did we lose our joy, at what point? You know, but we all kind of, if you look through in the mirror, most of us left behind childhood. And I think we can be playful and grown up at the same time. Somewhere we’ve lost that, especially as behaviors are escalating and traumatized kids are escalating and you know, the ACEs numbers are going up. Like how many ACEs our students are dealing with. And we just think that this, I don’t know, that we’re trying to have control rather than collaboration.

Angela Kelly: Yes. My message to the world is like, education is about human development, developing humans and empowering them, not controlling them, not creating, you know, one size fits all, standardized this, everybody at the at the same age, learning the same thing at the same time in the same way. We were sold that standardization was for the students. And I have found it to be true personally and I’ve seen it in my work over the last decade as a coach and in my 22 years in education that it’s actually a detriment to students which then pressures the teachers to, they’re frustrated and why isn’t the standardization working, right? It’s kind of like saying, I have three personal children and each one of them has a different personality and I parented them all the same way. How did they not turn out the same, right? We’re doing this in our classrooms.

Lori: Yes.

Angela Kelly: And we’re selling teachers on the idea that standardization is the solution when it’s not. So it’s like the insanity equation is in effect.

Lori: Yeah. And I think there’s some reasons we got there, which is a whole different deep dive, right? I do think that, you know, we went from very rigid education and parenting to that didn’t feel good and all the psychology is like, oh, we need to let kids have a an opinion and have kids say what they want. And but then we didn’t really know how to keep that within safe and appropriate boundaries, not rigid boxes, but boundaries. Like, no, you can have a say and tell me you’re disappointed that you don’t have, this is super simple, but a cupcake before dinner, right? A parents are always like, they’re so compelling. I mean, that’s when it got hard for me. Like when my daughter was more compelling and her like all of my intuition’s like, that doesn’t make sense, but you somehow have spun that so like I’m questioning me. Right? The four year old’s got me questioning me, right? Like and that’s common.

And so we wanted to give more freedom, we wanted to give more voice. I think that was right, but we didn’t necessarily have the skill set to say how do we allow voice and feelings and encourage an understanding and awareness of our feelings and how our feelings are driving our behaviors and are we happy about that, right? So we gave them the access to their feelings and their words, but then we didn’t teach them what to do with that within a boundary that helps them understand recovering resilience.

Angela Kelly: Yes.

Lori: So that’s where I feel like there’s some enlightenment in that.

Angela Kelly: Yes. And I’ll just say this and then I want to dive into the context of your book. But I teach this concept called the land of and. So a lot of times our brains will do an all or none thinking, right? And it’s exactly what you explained in parenting. We went one side of the pendulum in education too. And then we swing all the way over to the other. We did it in, you know, it just that’s just how the human mind works. And our goal is to get into that land of and. It’s this and this. This and this. So we get to say yes and yes.

Lori: Yeah I hear it as both and, yes and. I like to say all and. Like it’s all the things and more, right?

Angela Kelly: Like, yeah, yes, yes. Yes, we’re speaking the language here. Okay, let’s dive in. I am so curious to hear about your book. Tell me the title of it again. SEL Muscles?

Lori: SEL Muscle Mastery: Six Tools for Building Connection and Resilience in Schools and Communities.

Angela Kelly: Awesome. Yeah. Just give us an overview. Tell us, I don’t know how far you want to dive into the book. It just came out in 2025, correct?

Lori: Yeah, just a few weeks ago, July 29th. It released July 29th. Yeah.

Angela Kelly: Oh, congratulations. Yay, congratulations. That’s so exciting. It’s so exciting. I’m in the book writing process myself, so I’m like, ooh. Yeah, it’s a thing. That was resilience. Yes, kicking in right now. Okay, so tell me, tell me about the book, tell me about the pillars and the muscles and all of that.

Lori: So first off, SEL Muscle Mastery really is the lens on social emotional literacy development with the thought that those skills, our social emotional skills, resilience, compassion, self-regulation, right? Those are skills that need to be practiced because life is going to always be throwing curveballs, right? Like just living life is living joy and living curveballs and living grief and sadness and it’s a living life is living a lot of different things and there’s no way any of us are avoiding the hard things. It’s just a mixture, right?

And so in order to stay physically healthy, everyone really thinks of muscles, it’s important. It’s important, you know, to keep, you know, strong. And then some of us have a different definition of what strong is, right? But we do know, pretty much everyone knows that if we do nothing and we sit on the couch a hundred percent of the time, we’re going to have some kind of weak and atrophied muscles. And if we’re not practicing our social emotional literacy muscles, if we’re not practicing not taking something personal, which is muscle one, what taking it personal, right? If we’re not consciously, purposely practicing not taking something personal, then when things happen, we instantly often take it personal and then that escalates our defensiveness which then escalates their defensiveness and then we’re just in a spiral of a power struggle.

And so many of the muscles and these muscles were written in the same summer as we were making the film as a co-curriculum for the film and then that was just a short hundred page curriculum and the muscles were just a small part of it. And now we were training on these muscles for four years and they were super popular and helpful to educators. And so then the book and I added one which was curiosity. It wasn’t one of the original five. And so the concept is as adults in the room, we need to look at what we can do to stay in self-regulation, what we can do to not do what I call an adult temper tantrum. Right? And because we have them too, right?

Angela Kelly: We definitely have them.

Lori: We have them. And some of us socially isolate or do the silent treatment and some of us throw fits or get combative and there’s just a lot of different ways that we react because I think many of us adults were not taught those skills either. And so if we can teach these skills, when we teach, not if, I know we can be teaching them, we are teaching them, when we teach these skills and what happens is it’s such an interesting thing. I talk about ouches. Like what is your own behavior when you’re triggered by that kid who, you know, acted out one last time that just basically sent you over the edge. Like what are our ouches that we’re not proud of? And what would happen on the other side with these tools and that’s what we explore experientially, how would we feel?

And you know, my premise is we go home now, a lot of educators and we’re so exhausted that the people we love the most get the worst part of us. And when we flip it and we practice flexing for, you know, flexing our muscles, then even if it didn’t go well, we know we tried hard. There’s this internal intuitive pride of who we are as a person. And so no matter what’s happening out there, we know the way we’re managing it feels like we feel at ease and at peace and more rested and able to bring a new lens of creativity the next day.

Angela Kelly: Yes. This is it. So tell me about your work, like tell me some success stories or some like what’s a really good story you’ve had in working with clients or working with a school district where you’ve seen this work integrated and creating new results.

Lori: Okay. So from a teacher’s lens, one story that I really love is I was doing a morning training, two trainings in a day and she was in the morning one. just in complete meltdown. She was so frustrated and the talk of like the SEL talk, right? Some teachers are like, “It’s just soft, it doesn’t make kids do things.” And that there’s that lens of it doesn’t work and it’s basically diminishing my power and authority rather than improving it because I think we are more powerful and more in authority, not authoritarian. They’re very different. But that, you know, we are the adult in the room and there’s an authority there, right? But she just felt like she’d given it all up and there was no support.

She had this student who refused to write and she just was taking it so personal. Literally every day this student, he hadn’t written, it was like four months into the school year and he hadn’t written a word. So whether they were doing something in actual writing or any other subject, no writing. And so we talked about it. We heard her out and then I was like, what if you apply a different lens? This is a storytelling muscle from the book. And I said, what if you applied this? What was one of your hardest subjects when you were a student? And she was like, “Well, math.” And I said, “And what was your experience of math?” “Well, I never felt successful. I always felt actually, frankly, stupid. I cried at homework. I didn’t do it. I got bad grades. My parents were…” It was just ugly all the way around.

I said, okay. So maybe if you approach this student with your story of what was hard for you, rather than your fear, because you’re so attached to this student writing for their future, like it’s coming from care. It’s coming from you feeling so attached to this kid’s future that if they don’t know how to write, they can’t have a positive future and you’re spinning this whole thing about this student’s life in your heard.

Angela Kelly: And you’re in panic mode. You’re panicked for them.

Lori: You’re in panic. So the more you panic, the more you try to grab and control. And the more you grab and control, the more he shuts down. Like it’s just this whole vicious circle. So anyway, so we talked about it, training ends, do the afternoon training. I’m packing up my car in the parking lot at the end of the day, and she comes running out and she has tears in her eyes. Literally same day.

And she said, “I went to him during writing, which is in the afternoon, and I said, ‘I wonder, I was thinking about how you must feel when you write or when you don’t write. And why? And I was thinking about what stopped me from trying when I was a kid. And I remember how hard math was for me. Mmm. You do really good in math, but for me, math was miserable and I never felt smart. Everybody else was done and I was I felt like I was looking at a foreign language. And I wonder if what I was feeling about math is what you’re experiencing when you try when I ask you to write.’” And she then started crying and said, “He wrote more for her that afternoon than he’d written in four months.” And all he needed, all he needed from her was to be understood. Not desperately attached to it, right? Like so it went from desperation to curiosity and understanding and in that moment it really transformed the way she approached not just him, but from then on all of the students in her classes.

Angela Kelly: Beautiful testament to the power of stepping back into our emotional maturity and our emotional bandwidth, because what they did was emotionally connect.

Lori: Right. That’s what she created.

Angela Kelly: She created that emotional connection. And I love that you brought up the concept of educators, their intention is to love, to serve, to care, but we care so much. And we’re so afraid of students’ lives and we’re so attached about what we make it mean about ourselves as educators, if that kid doesn’t write. And what’s going to happen to their future? And did we ruin their lives because they we didn’t make them write or get them to write in this the seventh grade, let’s say. And so detaching from their personal journey, life journey, and caring about it, teaching them, but also separating our responsibility and ownership of their life, literally our students’ lives, but finding emotional connection. What a – it’s such a beautiful story and a beautiful example of and how simple it was. And I think this goes full circle back to what you said, like it feels really scary, but it’s actually so much less hard than we think it’s going to be.

Lori: Yes. And I think that we think of storytelling or doing like going on the out on a limb, that wasn’t on a limb in my world, right? Probably not in yours. But for her, in the past before we simplified the vulnerable share, teachers and I hear admin, you know, administrators say all the time like, well, my teachers are really worried about they’ll give up power and they shouldn’t bring all the stories into the classroom, the personal things. And I’m like, look, you can come into a classroom as an eighth grade teacher or high school teacher and be like, wow, not my best morning. I’m feeling really cranky and that’s not on you. But if you could give me a few minutes, I’m going to work really hard to like calm myself down. Has anyone else ever had a morning that just was not a good start of their day? You don’t have to say my kid ran away last night or someone asked me for a divorce or you know, got the medical call that just upended my life. We don’t have to give them. Nor should we.

Angela Kelly: No. It’s the emotional connection. It’s, if we think about adults and what engages us, it’s storytelling. We watch movies, we read books, we go to coffee with our friends and family and converse, and it’s the stories of life that engage us because it’s about emotional connection. And what’s interesting is you mentioned that vulnerability, that willingness to be vulnerable. That teacher, she was vulnerable in the emotional connection piece, but she didn’t have to tell the details. Like it’s not about the details of the nitty gritty of the story, the like the good, bad, the ugly, the dirty stuff, it’s just the how it felt, how it felt, how it felt. And that is where we create connections, which open hearts and minds to conversations, which then allow people to then express themselves and create more awareness as to – that little boy probably had no idea why he was so against writing until someone allowed him to be aware of, oh, I’m so resistant because of the feelings I feel when I try to put pen to paper.

Lori: Yeah, and again, like never even maybe having voice to those feelings at all. But when she gave voice to it, it was like, like our stories, you know, there’s so many adults who are like complaining about their kids on their phones. Well, we gave them the phones. And then they’re trying to say, well, when I was a kid, I didn’t have. Well, they’re not living your life. They can’t relate to that. They have no idea what it was like to not have a phone. And for us to try and guilt them, shame them to feel bad for the gifts that we’ve given them that just the world today in 2025 offers through technology is like a full miss on connecting with our young people. And it’s a miss on connecting with each other in colleague to colleague or you know, relationships. Like there, all of these tools are really great in education and they are written in the book from that lens, educator and parents. But I love it. Really, they’re skills that anyone of us, I think, can benefit from.

Angela Kelly: Yeah, yes. I mean, technology is bringing us together today in connection and I really – you can choose to look at the internet as friend or foe, and I choose to see it as like a beautiful way to connect globally. We can be anywhere in the world and have these conversations and connections. We did so in COVID where we were, you know, we had to pivot and it took some stress and it took some time and it took some effort, but we were able to connect with kids online. And I see it as such a beautiful gift to the world when we choose to look at it through that lens. And again, that’s another level of emotional, you know, literacy is how our relationship with technology and relationship to kids and relationship to education. It’s all intertwined right now. And so building a relationship, a healthy relationship with our students in relation to technology and learning. Like, you know, what is our relationship with learning? What is our identity as a student, as a teacher, as a school leader and bringing in the concepts you’re teaching in your book into the classroom, not as another layer, but as an identity of who we are as students, teachers, leaders.

Lori: Yeah. And to have that awareness, right? To become aware of how we are affected, both in ways that move us to things that feel great and joyful and easy and successful, or the awareness of which things are dragging us down or pulling us into, you know, mind, you know, misery, right? Like there’s choice in it, but we can’t even make a choice to step into something different if we don’t start to recognize that it’s there at all. And I think that’s an important place to start is, you know, kind of shifting our autopilot into intentional and then we can do things differently and I think that personally, I think we first deserve it and then everyone we’re in service to deserves that better part of our selves.

Angela Kelly: I agree. I do believe the work that you and I are putting into the world, this is a concept that my master coach taught me and I apply it into my work, which is it there’s a foundation to this work. It’s for us first, then for them and for the greater good. So for us, for them, for the greater good. And if we do it greater good, them, us, there won’t be – we will have depleted, right? We will have given to the greater good, given to our teachers, staff, community members, students, and then what’s little left for us. We need to fulfill, it has to be, I call it a grand slam where it’s a win for us, a win for teacher, staff, students, a win for community and global, you know, education at large. And we’re looking for those moments of for them, for us, for the greater good. Or for us, for them, for the greater good.

Lori: Yeah, I love I love that. It’s like flipping the pyramid upside down, right? Like it took me a long time to not to get to the flip where I was taking, I was so in service and so passionate about kind of being heartbroken about what I was seeing and like needing to fix it, right? So like to settle down and to really see through the lens of self care and then other care and then global impact is – I love that lens that you have on it.

Angela Kelly: Yeah, that’s great. So any final thoughts, comments, insights, wisdom that you would like to share with our listeners as we say goodbye for today?

Lori: You know, you’re worth it as much as they are. And SEL, social emotional literacy is really not a hard thing. It’s actually such a rewarding thing for you first that it’s worth really diving in to see what’s possible in it for you.

Angela Kelly: It is. I believe that social emotional learning, growth, development, personal power, stepping into this world of empowerment is actually it’s much stronger. It makes you stronger. I think people feel like it’s going to make us weak or look broken or unfixable or disempowered. And I think the opposite is true. I feel most empowered when I’m in management and in regulation emotionally and mentally, socially, physically. And when I learn how to do that when my body is freaking out, when my nervous system has gone offline and is in haywire moment, knowing that there’s something that can ground me and bring me back to center and to remember that I have the capacity, that’s when I feel my most empowered, right?

Lori: Yeah. Absolutely. And so we have it a little backwards, right? Like if we control everything, we’ll be happy. And I think it’s the opposite, right? When we let go of control but stay focused and intentional in our own wisdom and our own intuition and our own dreams and purpose, then that’s when the magic happens.

Angela Kelly: Exactly. Lori, I thank you for this conversation. I thank you for your flexibility and your like spontaneity and jumping on. I do believe we captured the essence of the work you’re doing in the world and the services you are providing. And I love that you actually come from a school counselor background and not, you know, the traditional teacher, you know, leader, that kind of a thing because I do know that so many educators value what school counselors have to offer. They want to work more, they want those services and you know, they get taken away with budget cuts or depending on, you know, the mindset of the organization, but the value is there and your literally bringing that work and expanding it to make it accessible for the teachers in the classroom, the students and the school leaders out there. So thank you so much for having the courage to build this service, this company, these tools and resources for people. I think it’s fabulous.

Lori: Well, thank you for, yeah, thank you for having me. The identification, you know, kindred spirits for sure and grateful always to meet people who are in this work and coming from, you know, that yes, we can do this and let’s go and let’s be creative. Thank you for the work you’re doing.

Angela Kelly: Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. I feel like this podcast brings together a group of allies, a group of collaborators. And, you know, I always, when I have conversations like this, I always put into, you know, into my intentions to our paths crossing again, you know, collaborating in some form or another. And I feel that the future will bring us together once again.

Lori: I look forward to it.

Angela Kelly: Great. Awesome. Thank you so much for being on the podcast, listeners. If you enjoyed this, please share it. Share it on your social media, if you’re on social media. Share it with your friends and colleagues. We want to get the word out. We want to get this book into the hands of all the educators, all the leaders out there. And we want to promote social and emotional literacy in our schools to make it a mainstream practice. So grab the book. Lori, we’ll put down, you can send me all of your contact information.

We’ll get the links and all of the other information that listeners need in the show notes so you guys will have immediate access. But do share this with your friends, your family, your colleagues, because we want to get the word out that there are resources available, there are supports in place, there are services available. We are here to help. We’re here to serve, we’re here to support. So thank you so much. Have an amazing week and we’ll talk to you guys 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.

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 403. 

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 there, Empowered Principals. Happy Tuesday, and welcome to this week’s podcast. I have a very special guest. She’s somebody that I spoke with. We had a meet and greet, and I just fell in love with her. She’s got a great story to share with you about education and school leadership and has a unique experience to her path to leadership. So her name is Deepali Deshmukh, and she is a school leader who is opening a brand new school.

One of the reasons I love her so much is we connected on this very similar experience. So as I was a brand new principal, my first two years in school leadership, I was opening a brand new site. So I wasn’t just learning how to lead an established community, an established staff, an established school in terms of the building, the actual campus. I was opening one, dealing with construction and all of this, getting people into the program. So there was an element of sales and marketing and recruitment. And this is one of the things that Deepali is now adding to her repertoire as a school leader. She’s going to tell you her story of how she got into school leadership.

And I’m going to turn it over and let her tell the story. It’s so beautiful, and I really found her story and her journey inspirational. So, Deepali, welcome to the podcast.

Deepali Deshmukh: Thank you so much, Angela. And likewise, I’ve been listening to this podcast and I’m so honored to be here today. Yes, just like you, I am birthing a new school, but my journey is kind of unconventional. I do not have an educational background. So my Master’s was in biochemistry. I was a biochemist in a lab and doing my things with my instruments. I then went on to do my MBA in human resource management, and I was focused on organizational development, training, and developing grownups. And then we moved, my husband and I moved to the United States in 1999. So I was a new immigrant with a baby and trying to figure out my life.

And as I volunteered at my son’s school, I just fell in love with what the field of education was about. The teacher was amazing and she was just my inspiration. And so I wanted to get into education, didn’t quite know how, and she advised me about the credential program. And as I was getting into it, the private schools, I realized, do not need me to have a credential. They needed me to be well qualified and know the subject and really teach well. And so I got into education as a fifth-grade teacher. Taught for four years, loved it. And then I was offered school leadership, and I was really scared because it was a new field for me, but I said, “Okay, let me try it out.” And I became an elementary director, then a headmaster, and now I’m, I’ve been a head of school for years.

But the interesting thing is, no matter how experienced you are, anytime you’re doing something new, there’s this feeling of, am I the right fit for this? Am I going to do the right thing for my students? So yeah, that’s my journey. And this year I’m opening a middle and high school. So Stratford’s been around for 25. This is our 26th year, and for Stratford, this is new too. It’s the second high school in the Bay area. For me, I was approached, would you open the school? And that immediate question comes, right? Am I the right person? But I’ve gone out on a limb and this year has been a year of learning and adventure. I have a great team and I’m really excited to August 2025.

Angela Kelly: Yes. And so what astounds me about this story is that you were in corporate America. I mean, you had studied something completely different in the field of science, and then you find yourself transferring over into education. And you and I had this amazing conversation when we did our meet and greet around your thoughts and feelings, your identity as a leader, when they asked you to step into school leadership and you didn’t have the credential, right? Per se. Tell us about that feeling because a lot of school leaders, even when they have a credential and they have studied education, so they’re in the field with the credential. 

So technically they have all of the training or they are qualified, they get into that job, that’s so brand new, and there’s one thing, there’s theory and then there’s real life application, as we all know. But they feel like imposters. And we were talking about this fear of imposter syndrome. So you came from having a masters in science to now leading the people in the field of education. So tell us how that experience was for you.

Deepali Deshmukh: When you first are offered leadership, there is the sense of pride, excitement. You’re being recognized, and of course you want to prove yourself. So that initial sense is, I’m thrilled to take it on. And then you take it on, and you start the work, and you realize there is so much more to it. Like when you are a teacher in your classroom, you’re in an island, and you and your students are happily living your life together and you’re managing the kids. But when you get out into school leadership, the sense of responsibility for not only the students, which is of course the biggest one, but also the people, the adults in your ecosystem, so to speak, the parents, the faculty, every faculty member. And then you’re dealing with emotions. 

That sense of responsibility and suddenly you feel, okay, am I the right person? Am I doing what is right for my team? And you question yourself. There’s the sense of self-doubt that I started to feel. And it was weird because I consider myself a fairly confident person and I had fresh out of my Master’s, I had worked in a lab and worked with a U. N. United Nations Development Program situation, and I had presented to some ministers in India. So, why am I feeling this? This is I know I can do it, but why am I feeling this?

And so I had to go, literally talk to myself about it where first let’s acknowledge what I’m feeling, because at first I was just trying to bury it under, and it seemed to grow because I was not saying this is true. So I stopped and said, “Okay, I am feeling this. Why am I feeling it?” So there is a sense of self-doubt because I don’t have a piece of paper that says you have credentials. You are a professional in this educational field. And it helped actually when I kind of called it out, I’m going, “Okay, I don’t have that. But what do I have?”

And then I started kind of just reminding myself that having a science background, you’re kind of go through this process where you’re observing and you’re making mistakes and you’re learning, your hypothesis was wrong, but that’s fine. Making mistakes is part of the process and it takes you towards progress, not perfection, but progress. I could apply that same approach here. I don’t have to be perfect. I just have to bring my most authentic self into that space and work with my team. I don’t have to know it all. 

There are people who are experts and I have to bring that excellence together. That’s my job. I don’t have to be the best at every area. My office administrators know a lot. I can use their expertise, my teachers, my other leaders, learn from them, and my students, the kids know a lot. So you kind of come to that process and as I felt that as long as I kept myself very open and I admit, when I make a mistake, guys, I’m sorry. I messed up. What do we do from this? Or we’re working on any event or anything for school, you kind of do an after event analysis and say, what went well? First let’s celebrate that. And then what are things that we could do differently next time?

So it’s my initial problem was you constantly are critiquing yourself too much to the point where you forget to celebrate. That’s terrible because you have to find your joy first. If you’re not joyful, school is a joyful space. You have to celebrate and then say, “Yeah, but we can do better.” Sure, that’s always a process.

Angela Kelly: Yes. No, this that is so insightful because, and what I really want listeners to take away from this is that especially in education, we are so attached. I mean, this is kind of what we do. We say if you go through this program and you pass these courses, you will get a piece of paper that is a credential or a certificate of completion that now validate you as a content expert in this field. 

But we all know that you can have that piece of paper. You can have a PhD in education, and when you walk onto a school campus and into an administrator’s office, the responsibility and the weight that you feel when there are so many little souls under your watch, you’re thinking about their physical safety, you’re thinking about their mental and emotional safety, you’re thinking about their growth and development, cognitively, intellectually, academically, socially, mentally, emotionally, and it can feel like so much weight that there is no credential that will eliminate the pressure or the desire that you have to support all of these people and all of the moving parts that is your school.

So I’ve noticed this, like people will think, “Well, I have to get this credential and then this area of expertise, and then I need this, and then I need this.” And we’re constantly looking for that piece of paper. And it’s not that you don’t learn amazing things along the way, but what I heard you saying is, I was in a situation where I didn’t have the luxury of having time and space to do that paperwork or that field of study, but I could take what I knew about my other career and apply it here, and it doesn’t mean that you didn’t feel new. Of course you felt new, but it also doesn’t mean that without the piece of paper that it invalidates your identity as a leader, that you could build up an identity as a leader with or without having a piece of paper that told you are qualified.

Deepali Deshmukh: That is so true. I think you will agree. You and I kind of have the same experiences in terms of, I mean, you talked about starting a school, but the reflection piece that we go through as leaders, that’s really where the growth happens. It’s not that I did really well today and that means I’m perfect now. Every day there’s something you learn. This is what I did well. Here are things that I could have done differently. I could have listened deeper. I could have waited before I responded. You know, some of those things come with experience, they come with some maturity, they come with knowledge about yourself and work that you do within. So a piece of paper is very important. You need to have the knowledge, you need to have content.

So I’m absolutely, I respect those who have that credential and there is no – it does give you a sense of confidence that perhaps I lacked initially. But after you get into the field, you have to do more of that reflection and show that you’re open to learning every single day. There’s no one in our school that could say that we’re perfect. I don’t need to learn. The kids learn, the teachers learn, the leaders learn, everyone’s in this ecosystem of learning and that’s what helps us get great and have fun.

Angela Kelly: Yeah. Yes. And I love the way you said that because I think what happens is we want to avoid the discomfort of the learning by doing process, where we have to step in. We have to be vulnerable. We have to take a risk. We have to step in. We have to not know how to navigate something and we learn how to navigate it by just navigating it, and then we gain wisdom in the hindsight of having navigated something.

So when we have credentials or if you’re somebody who feels like you can’t move forward until you have the credential, I guess what I want to offer you is that getting a lot of credentials because there’s many different things you could do in education in terms of getting more and more credentials, but they won’t exempt you from the discomfort of learning by doing. It won’t prevent you from making a mistake or it doesn’t necessarily protect you from not knowing what to do, if that makes sense.

Deepali Deshmukh: It absolutely does because yes, I’ve worked with people who have the most amazing credentials in the field of education. And it’s interesting, and as you know, most of us in the field of education, there are lots of women. It is a women-centric. I mean, not to be sexist in any way, there are many very wonderful men, leaders and teachers, but we are, we see a lot of women and it seems like we have the sense of self-doubt as women more than men. We just kind of, even as mothers, right? Mothers will question and have these guilt trips. Am I a good enough mother? And I think that same approach also happens in the field of education. Am I good enough? Even these very qualified people will have that sense of self-doubt.

And so that process of, yes, put yourself out there, make yourself uncomfortable, try things out, it’s actually a good thing because the field of education also needs innovation, right? So when you’re coming from different spaces, you’re bringing ideas to a school, and the school will benefit from it. So you don’t have to have things done in the exact same way as your predecessor. Many times you’re stepping into big shoes, and that is scary because the relationships that your, the person, the leader before you has made, people kind of resent the new person coming in. Who are you? Why are you taking this person’s place? 

And you’re not intending to do that, but then you feel like, “What if, they will hate me? I’m different. I’m not that same kind of person.” And then you have to just stop and say, “Yes, I’m different, and that’s okay. I’m going to bring some different ideas. I’m going to be respectful of the culture, but I’m also going to bring something different that may be valuable to my school. Even if I make mistakes, there’ll be growth, and that’s okay.”

I think that idea is also when you’re a new leader getting into a school system that has existed before and has great leaders around that the person before you has been there for 20, 30 years and you go, “How can I ever do this?” You can. Just trust yourself. You have to be like, “Okay, take a deep breath. It’s okay. You’re not that person and you shouldn’t be. You shouldn’t try to be.”

Angela Kelly: No. No, that is everyone. That is so good. It’s so good because I thought a lot about this, like there is a universal self-doubt, a tape that we play in our mind about not being enough, like insufficient at some level. And then there’s also this idea, what you were just talking about where and think about this. We play this out. When we self-doubt, what we do is we retract because we’re afraid of getting it wrong or afraid of hurting somebody or getting hurt or doing it wrong and feeling the outcome of being wrong, and we don’t like that feeling so much so that it will literally make us retract back, play small, not take risks.

But when you are leading in the energy of self-doubt and for those of you who listen to the podcast on the regular, this is a STEAR cycle. So if the energy fueling your decisions and actions is self-doubt, you’re going to like, you’re going to spin out on decisions and either not make decisions and stall in indecision or you’ll ask everybody else’s opinion, which makes you more confused, or you’ll defer that decision, or you will make it in haste, thinking, “Well, I don’t really know, I’m just going to try this and see what works.”

But if you play this out, when self-doubt is the fuel behind your leadership identity, you play small, you procrastinate, you try to avoid because you’re trying to navigate around the vulnerability, around the discomfort, around the fear of making decisions and it doesn’t just like stall you out and stagnate you, it stagnates the progress of your entire school and community.

Deepali Deshmukh: Wow, that’s so well spoken. But it’s so true. I couldn’t have put it better myself. And I have done this, right? I think as a school leader, there have been times where I have been playing from that place of fear. And you are so right because it, it really diminishes you, it diminishes the people around you because you’re, you can’t make decisions and you’re like, “Well, I should do this, but what if this happens? What if…” you know, you’re always second guessing yourself and schools need to move on. You have to make a decision and go forward and be bold in that step. Trying to be somebody else is never going to help.

The lucky thing for me was that, for example, at Stratford School, we have a network of schools. So I had a lot of leaders who were kind of in this same situation as I was. When you talk to people and you realize what they’re going through, it helps kind of alley your fears as well. It’s like, “Okay, I’m overthinking this. Stop.” And learning from each other and sharing it out, being very open and vulnerable and just taking on those risks sometimes is okay.

I’ve also been fortunate that our families, our parent communities have been so warm and welcoming because you, you create that culture, right? To say, “I’m going to ask you for feedback. I need your feedback to get better as a school.” So the more you kind of put yourself in this fortress, the less you’re going to grow. But when you open yourself to your families also, they want a great school for their children, so they’re going to give you feedback that’s going to help you. So it’s the entire community around you. Your teachers have such great ideas. 

So I started asking my teachers, “What other, in the pandemic, it was horrible.” I think everyone who survived the pandemic feels we can survive anything. But during that time, it was like, “How do we create community when we are all behind masks? Nobody’s seeing our smiles. We can’t bring people in.” And then my teachers came up with some great ideas. What about doing this? And one day under the shower, I had this idea of let’s do this grandparents day where we celebrate them. We can’t bring them into the building. 

So outside on our porch, we put on some music. We had fruits and water out for them. And we invited them in, and we said, “We’ll be…” And everyone was like, “But they’re grandparents. They must be so old. We have to have chairs.” I said, “No, no, no. We’re going to do a fun, healthful activity. And we’re going to bring them in and going to have them dance.” And so we got them all in and the grandparents, it was a dance size. We got our students there. Everyone’s in masks, but it was such a joyful moment. And it just came out of, let’s try this out. Our communities are strength. So use that. Don’t think you’re alone in this whole process of figuring things out as a leader. We have so much support built into, in our community for us.

Angela Kelly: Absolutely. The possibilities really are limitless when you just decide to be willing to try things. And I love what you were talking about. The solution to imposter syndrome is not try to pretend to be somebody else or try to fit into the footsteps of or the into the shoes of the previous leader. What actually makes you feel better, less imposter syndrome like? Because that is exactly what you’re doing when you’re trying to impersonate somebody else, which makes you feel like more of an imposter, right? So the solution isn’t trying to fit in or trying to fit a mold of a past leader. It’s honoring that leadership and adding to it and expanding it and expounding upon what else it can be.

And when you identify for yourself, what do I bring to the table? What do I love? What are my talents? What am I good at? What do I think would be a really fun thing and really fun way to lead and to teach and to learn? When you bring those, and when they’re in alignment like you said, like grandparents day was something you just came up with. A lot of times those ideas come in the shower. So here we are in the, “Oh, let’s try this.” 

Yes, you want to weigh the amount of time and effort required, but you can do something in such a simplistic way, doesn’t require a lot of time, energy, and effort on the part of your you and your staff. And those, and what was the outcome? Like let’s talk about this. So you put it out there. You had no idea what to expect. Were people going to like it or not? But you felt it would be a fun thing to do. So you did it. And what was the outcome of your grandparents day?

Deepali Deshmukh: Well, on the day itself, it was funny because I had told the parents that this was the event for grandparents, you’re just dropping them off, you’re not hanging out. But of course, they wanted to stay there. And so one of the dads came to me and he said, “This Deshmukh, I did not know that my mom could dance so well.” And it was just, they were just so delighted to see their parents, you know? They kind of automatically put grandparents, they must be old and no, these are young folks at heart and they love the idea that they could build this community. They got to know each other. And after that, even though it wasn’t a parent event, they’ve been, hey, when’s the next party? We want to come. 

And they’ve been like, “Make sure you send your children to the school because Stratford really celebrates community.” They celebrated us. It was just a joyful, happy event. The teachers loved it. The kids were delighted and it’s become a tradition. And it’s not only become a tradition at my campus, but it’s spread to the other Stratford schools. So we’re all celebrating them in different ways, but it’s just such a great way to do things. So you never know. You have germs of ideas and you take a risk and you go out there and say, let’s try it out. And it may not always work. There are, of course, I have many stories of my mistakes, but there are those things that can suddenly be, look what happened. And now you know, everyone enjoys that.

Angela Kelly: Yes. And what’s so great about that is the outcome of this event, you’re not trying to raise money, there’s not a tangible goal. It’s about connection, fun, laughter, curiosity, movement, just, it’s simple in its intention. But it’s the probably the easiest way. Now, I know you are a private institution so that you do have a recruitment process that public schools may not have to actually go through in the same way that you do, but look at what such a simple decision and risk, basically, that you took, turned into actually marketing. Like it’s now like, “Bring your kid to this school because it’s fun, because they celebrate.” And I want to say something. The podcast that I just recorded prior to speaking with Deepali today was on celebration, was on like bringing closure to your campus and celebrating. And the value of celebration. Can you speak to the value of celebration and how you integrate celebration into the work that you do as a school leader?

Deepali Deshmukh: That’s such a great question because like I said, I had to remind myself from the beginning, I’m here because it gives me joy. I had other options. I chose education because of the joy that it brings me. And as a very conscious decision, as a school, we’re very fortunate. It’s not like your regular jobs where, you’re doing something meaningful, but it’s you and your computer. Here we get to celebrate people. And whether it’s your faculty, so we have, you know, awards for our teachers for, of course the serious things, service awards and all of those, but also the silly things that happen and you kind of have events around that for our students.

We recently, I started this orator festival. I just, again, another, let’s call it something, names are important. So we called it the Mighty Orator Festival and we had the students, the National Poetry Day, I said, “So what else can we do with this?” We call it National Poetry Day. And the kids started, we gave them challenging poems and speeches to recite, and everyone’s like, “It’s a little too difficult. What are you trying to do?” And a fifth grader doing Shakespeare. Yesterday I was watching the kids and they are astounding and they were so proud to celebrate their, you know, their public speaking skills in front of an audience, and it’s a joyful thing to see what kids can accomplish.

So whether it is a festival, like a narrator festival, whether you’re doing teacher appreciation week, there are so many things you can do to celebrate the joyous things. One of my mentors told me because when he would have a check in with me, I would be, “Well, these are, you know, I need to work with these teachers. I need to work with these parents. This is what the problems that I was facing.” And he would always say, “Stop. Let’s first talk about what was great. What was the most fun thing that you experienced in the past two weeks? And let’s talk about that first. Then we’ll get to the things that we need to solve.” 

And that really helped me kind of reshape my thinking. There’s a lot of joyful stuff, good stuff that we are doing at school. And if we only focus on the things that need to be fixed, we forget the good things. So just changing that paradigm and thinking about even in a classroom where a teacher’s new and learning her skills, she’s doing a lot of good things. First, celebrate those, and then coach on the other things that she can work on, the technique she can work on. So I think doing both of those together, it even helps my, my leadership in the sense that teachers want that coaching where you first celebrate them. You see the good things that they’re doing before you say, “These are things we can improve on.”

Angela Kelly: Yeah. Oh, I love that so, so much. Is there any advice that you would give to an aspiring school leader or a new school leader? There will be people out there who are so eager and so excited and also so scared to death. Just like you felt that first day. And I’m anticipating that you, Deepali, too, have some butterflies in your stomach this coming school year as it’s your grand opening. Am I correct?

Deepali Deshmukh: Yes.

Angela Kelly: And another thing Deepali and I have in common is we’re both Bay Area. Well, I’m not local currently as I’m, you know, supporting my family right now, but we are Bay Area women and Bay Area school leaders. So this was near and dear to my heart because I love the Bay Area so much over in the San Jose, Silicon Valley, San Francisco area. And I think you’re in the East Bay, right? In Milpitas?

Deepali Deshmukh: I’m in Milpitas, yes.

Angela Kelly: Yes. And so you are prepping for your very first, and you know what’s so cool about this, Deepali? This is the one time that it will be your first year opening a school. Like this experience only happens once. So can you tell us, describe how you’re feeling, what you’re thinking about, the butterflies that you have, and how you’re navigating the buildup and the preparation for this first year, this first day? Because I want school leaders to hear, this is also a magical time because it only gets to happen once, your first year, you know, leading a school or first year opening a school. So tell us a little bit more.

Deepali Deshmukh: Well, in the 23 years of education that I’ve been in, this is actually the first time I’m birthing school. I’ve always gone to an established campus and school, but this is that first time when I get to do this. So yes, it is butterflies in the stomach. What, what’s going to happen? But it’s such an exciting time and so actually tomorrow, we’ve just finished a hiring cycle. So tomorrow we have our veteran middle school teachers who’ve been with us and our new high school faculty team that we’ve just hired. We’re going to do a little celebration with them. We’ve called all of them together on campus and we have minute to win it games. We have trivia games. We have dinner, of course, for them, but just to get them introduced to each other and get excited, you know, about this journey that we are going to start.

And I think, learning from all these years, building that community is the first thing that I would focus on, that I have been focusing on. We didn’t have a building at last August 2024. So what we did was we invited all our families and said, “Come on in. We are doing a boba and blueprints bash.” I came up with that name and we literally put up the blueprints of our school on easels for parents to see in the parking lot. And then we got a boba truck for, because of course our middle schoolers and high schoolers love boba tea. 

And so we brought them into the parking lot. And then we had construction hats and we took them into the building to showcase, look, this is the empty space. We had just finished the demos. So it was just four walls. There was nothing there. But I said, now you can imagine, put that blueprint over here. Imagine this space. This is where we are going to all be learning together. This is where the labs are going to be. This is where the gym is going to be.

So right through this journey, my focus has been on the community first. And then, of course, we’re hiring the best talented people for this role. My construction updates, you want to share those out with your family. So initially in my first few years, I would have been, “No, it has to be perfect before I share things out.” And I’ve learned, no, people love being part of the process because then they feel that sense of ownership. So yes, it’s not perfect yet. It will be, but let’s share this whole journey with them. So we are sharing construction updates. We are sharing, you know, we are going to be sharing our faculty updates with them.

And if I had to give advice, because again, who am I to give anyone advice? But if I have to share one thing is really focus on building that community. They’re there for you. They’re there with you. They’re going to work with you throughout. So we’re never alone in our journey. What we are doing, it takes a village to educate children. And so bring your village along with you and take their help because that makes us really powerful.

Angela Kelly: Yes. You’re so right about that because when you think about the experiences that we have and the memories we create and the impact that we have, we are in the business of people. This education is developing young and adult humans alike. We’re here to connect. We’re here to expand and evolve and develop, but we want the experience to be a positive one, a fulfilling one for us and for those that we’re leading. 

And so when we’re doing it in community with them, and we’re having fun doing it with, I love the boba and the hats and bringing, you know, the kids and the families in because that it feels significant because they have ownership in it. They feel a sense of connection and community to not just come to this school, don’t be late, you know, attendance and tardiness, you know, all of that, and sit here and do your studying. It’s not just about that. The school is a community and just like a family, when a family is moving, if the children are involved in helping pack and helping choose the house and get going on the house tours and setting up the new house, or when you’re in your new house, your kids are involved in setting the table or folding the laundry or, you know, just life.

When you involve them in all of the life, not just you’re a child and you only do this or you’re a student and you only do that or you’re a teacher and you just teach. But this idea of we’re all in this community together building this school together. And you are more the collaborator or the facilitator and connecting all of the moving parts, which is kind of fun.

Deepali Deshmukh: It’s so much fun. And I think when the kids are older, middle and high school, that’s the other part, right? Their ideas are going to be so valuable. And the students that we have enrolled, I think they are really excited about this as well. It’s not just I’m telling you which clubs we are going to run for you. Tell us what clubs do you want to run? What is the enrichment you want to see at our school? Where’s the leadership? I want those opportunities for the students where they’re going to co create with us. It’s not the grownups doing it for them. So there’s a very different feeling when you are starting a school like this. And I think bringing everyone along in that journey, the kids, most importantly, their families, our faculty, everybody’s ideas are going to make such a difference. 

So, yeah, that’s my advice. Have fun building your community. And yes, you, of course, have to build your systems and your processes and make sure everything is, you know, aligned so that the school will run smoothly. And that is the back end work that we do. But that’s not the reason we do it. So we have to come to the why in front of us at all times.

Angela Kelly: Yes. Because the one thing that doesn’t change in education is people and connection. There will always be students, there will always be adults, teachers, staff members, community, family. There will always be the people. And so we focus on the people. The processes will change, whatever you need to set up systems, those systems are going to have to evolve and change just like with COVID. We had no idea that was coming and when it came, boy, did we have to pivot in processes, systems, and all of our old systems were completely invalidated in one day, it felt like. 

So those systems are important, but they’re not the focus. They’re not the primary reason we’re here. And the reason we are here, you guys, we’re here to have fun. Please give yourself permission to have some fun. Take some risks. Laugh at yourself. If it’s a failure, if you have grandparents day and you do a dance at your school, you’re going to borrow Deepali’s idea and nobody shows up and it’s a big bomb, laugh.

My son and I call it misadventure. Like, here’s to misadventure. So we’re going to take this journey together as a school. There’s going to be some adventures that really land and stick and there’s going to be some misadventures that didn’t land and stick, and that’s okay, but have some fun along the way. It is a big job, but it doesn’t need to weigh you down in fear, doubt, worry, all of that. So I love your spirit. I’m so glad that we’ve met. 

Thank you for taking the time to share your story to all of the listeners in the Empowered Principal world. And I can’t wait to stay in touch. I really want to hear, you know what would be really fun? I just thought this out loud. We should have you on at the end of the school year to hear how the first year went. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Deepali Deshmukh: That would be wonderful.

Angela Kelly: Like a year from now. I would love to share our adventures and our misadventures.

Deepali Deshmukh: I would love to share our adventures and our misadventures. Yes, I would be delighted. And when you are next back home, back in the Bay area, please come visit. Come see our school.

Angela Kelly: I will definitely do that. I’m actually, I should be flying out sometime this coming summer. A friend of mine is having her baby in actually in about a month from now. So I might be out in the next couple of months. So I’ve got your contact info. I’ll look you up and we can meet for coffee or something.

Deepali Deshmukh: We’d love to have you around.

Angela Kelly: I would love to come visit the school too.

Deepali Deshmukh: Yes, I would make arrangements with our – we’ll have your construction hats ready for you and you’ve been doing the space.

Angela Kelly: I am all in. Hey listeners, if you have any questions or you know, if they have more questions or they want to connect with you in any way or reach out or learn more about your school, how can they contact you? Do you want us to put all that in the show notes?

Deepali Deshmukh: Oh, that would be great. I’ll share my email and the school website and everything. But yes, we’re a phone call away, an email away. I’d be happy to connect.

Angela Kelly: Yeah, I would love to. And I hope that maybe you’ll join EPC too because we’d love to have you and your expertise in there. But if you want to learn more, we’ll put all of Deepali and her school, both contacts, information, her email and all of that in the show notes. If you are a brand new principal or you are opening a brand new school and you want to have a compadre in collaboration with the first year. So be sure to reach out to her. Again, thank you so much. This has been a delight. I hope it’s been helpful for you all. Stay empowered and we will talk to you next week. 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 401. 

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. Welcome to the podcast. So happy to be here with you guys. Welcome to August. We are in it. The kids are coming back, teachers are back. We are in the energy of the new school year. Please join us for EPC. EPC is the place for school leaders. This is the place where we talk the real talk, we walk the real walk, we live, we learn, we laugh, we love, we celebrate, we support. We make things lighter. We make things more joyous. It is an honor to be in the Empowered Principal Collaborative.

I invite you to join us this year. It’s going to be 10 times, 100 times better. Every year gets better and better. And after EP Alive, which you will hear the interview that I held with the members of EP Alive. So members of EPC were invited to attend a live event. That a live event happened in July, and the gals who came to the live event, we hosted a little conversation about it, and that will drop next week. So be on the lookout for next week’s episode.

This week, I wanted to keep it short and sweet. I mentioned that I would be talking about the difference between ownership and responsibility. So people will reach out to me and want coaching. And one of the top concerns that clients will come to me with is, I feel so responsible. Because I’m the school leader, because I have the positional authority, it is my duty, my responsibility to take ownership for how people feel, for what they’re thinking, how they’re feeling, the behaviors that they’re exhibiting, the outcomes that they’re creating, that because I’m the leader, it is my job, it’s my responsibility to take ownership of everybody else’s business, everybody else’s problem, everybody else’s feelings, everybody else’s emotional energy and the outcomes that they are creating or not creating, their satisfaction, their dissatisfaction.

I want to address this briefly, and I do dive much deeper into this concept in EPC. So if you want to learn how to separate responsibility and ownership and separate your emotions and your experience from other people’s emotional experience, meaning teachers, staff members, kids, students, families, your district administrators, if you want to learn how to stand in your empowerment and have a degree of separation between their experience and yours, come on into EPC. But I will outline it for you here on the podcast.

Responsibility means the ability to respond. When a situation occurs, a teacher comes in and complains, you as the leader have a responsibility, an ability to respond. As a leader, it is your job to respond, to have the ability to respond to this person.

Now, what responsibility does not mean is that in your ability to respond to the person’s words, actions, conversation, their emotional energy, responsibility does not necessarily mean that you take ownership of their thoughts, their feelings, their actions, their behaviors, what they want, solving their problem for them, the outcomes that they’ve created for themselves. And because we’re the leader, we will put on this hat and we will say, it’s my responsibility, it’s my obligation to solve this problem, to fix this, to make my teachers happy, to ensure they are feeling supported, that they’re feeling loved, that they’re feeling secure, that they’re feeling safe, that they’re feeling regulated.

And we walk a fine line versus our ability to respond and taking ownership for their thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and outcomes. Okay? And because we’re the leader, what we will say is we want to own their problems. If somebody comes to me and complains or they’re unhappy, it doesn’t feel good that they are unhappy and I want to fix it for them so that they can feel good so that I can feel good. Because when they feel good, I feel good. And we intertwine the way we feel based on how other people feel. If teachers are happy, I’m happy. If teachers are unhappy, I’m unhappy. And we own their emotional states, their emotional energy, but we also own their problems. We own their ability to solve that problem for themselves.

So a teacher will come and complain. It’s our responsibility to respond. How do we respond? We listen. We seek to understand. We may validate their feelings, acknowledge their frustration, their disappointment, their exasperation. We may thank them for coming to us because they did shed light on a situation where we do decide we’re going to take ownership of the problem or they do highlight something that is in our ability to control, that we do have the means to take ownership of a situation.

For example, if a, let’s say a teacher comes into your office and says, “Hey, Angela, I’ve got a problem. Your car is blocking my car and I need to get home and pick up my kids by 4:30. Can you move your car?” My responsibility is to listen to them, to hear them, to process them, to acknowledge them, and my ability to respond to that is, oh, in this case, yes, I’m going to take ownership because there is something within my sphere of control that I can do to solve this problem. I can get my keys, walk out to the parking lot, move my car, allow them to go, and problem solved. I took responsibility by listening to their needs, hearing them out, taking ownership of my reaction to their request. I could have been like, “Jeez, what’s the big deal? Just give me five minutes,” or, “Why are you so puffy?” or I could respond in a way that connects me to that teacher or disconnects me to that teacher.

It’s my ability to respond. And my goal is to respond with emotional maturity, emotional literacy, emotional fitness, wellness. I want to be managing my emotional reactions and turn them into emotional responses, that I don’t need to feel attacked or feel that somebody is putting me down or saying that I am a problem or that something is inherently wrong with me, making it some big deal about me versus listening, discerning for myself, is it my job to own this or is this a their job to own situation?

So let’s try another example. A teacher comes in and complains that she has a student who’s chewing gum in her class and the student, when asked, does not spit out the gum. And she comes to you very frustrated that the student is not spitting out the gum. Now, what we tend to want to do is say, “Okay, I’m going to talk to that student. They should be respecting you, they should be listening to you. I’m going to go in and handle that.” Why? It’s the easiest thing to do is to take ownership of their problem. They feel good because they feel heard and you came to the rescue. It’s like they came and tattled on the student and mommy and daddy said, “Okay, I will go and handle it.”

Versus responding to that teacher, “Tell me more. What’s going on for the student? What is it about the gum? Do we have a policy on the gum?” Like talking to the teacher and responding with our ability to respond, reflect, ask questions, connect with that teacher. “Tell me more. What’s coming up for you? Tell me more about the gum. Is this an everyday thing? Do they do it during a certain time of day? Is it after lunch? Is it, you know, maybe they have a girlfriend and boyfriend and they’re freshening their breath before lunch so that they can leave a good impression?” We don’t know what’s happening, or if it’s an elementary student where they’re getting the gum. There’s so many ways that we can allow the teacher to express themselves. We can take responsibility for our ability to respond without necessarily taking ownership of the problem.

So as you’re navigating this school year, ask yourself, when somebody’s coming in, what is my ability to respond to them? Where am I on the emotional scale of zero, I have no energy or tolerance for this, and 10, I’m full tank of gas, ready to go, I’ve got space, I can listen, let’s go. Where are you when someone comes in? Are you near empty where you need to get a refill, take a break, take a walk, get some space? Or do you have the capacity to respond? Do you have the ability to be in response to that teacher?

Find out where you are on the scale. Then, as you’re listening to them, you’re seeking to understand, what you’re listening for is, whose ownership is this? Do we need to explore a little bit more, get some more information to find out where the ownership lies? Is it a co-ownership? Is it something we can facilitate a conversation together with the student perhaps, or with a parent or with a colleague? Or has the teacher not yet taken full ownership and tried all of the things that he or she can do in the ability to respond for themselves?

Our job here as school leaders is to empower our teachers, our staff members to be in ownership, to be in their personal power. We want teachers to feel empowered, to be empowered, to act from empowerment. That means they need the permission to be empowered, they need the courage to be empowered, they need the awareness to be empowered. And it’s our job to mentor and coach them towards empowerment, not to have them rely on us and dependent upon us to solve the problem, to save the day, to wear the cape.

Think about this, contemplate the difference between ownership and responsibility, what is your role, what is their role, and when do you take ownership? Are you noticing you take ownership too much, too little, or just right? Same with responsibility. Do you have the capacity to respond? Do you have the energy? Do you have the patience? Do you have the bandwidth? Or maybe you need to say, “You know what? Right now, I’m running a little low on energy, give me five,” or, “Can we schedule a time to talk about this?” Check in with yourself, do a quick check in, assess your ability to respond, and then when you’re ready, you can respond and make a decision about ownership.

Hope that helps. Have a great week. I’ll talk to you next week. 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.