Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Are you feeling swamped by the demands of being a principal? From juggling emails, calls, and decisions to boosting test scores and wading through endless paperwork, the pressure is real.
But imagine a scenario where you no longer feel this overwhelming stress. Picture yourself as a more resilient leader, concentrating on enhancing your school rather than merely coping with the daily tasks that currently consume your time.
I‘m Barb Flowers. Drawing upon my eight-year experience as an elementary principal, with a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and certification as a life coach, Along the way, I've mentored and coached school leaders, guiding them to change their mindset, set boundaries and focus on their own well-being while navigating their roles.
Each episode offers practical insights on time management, communication, overcoming overwhelm, boosting confidence, and fostering a positive mindset. We'll also discuss topics like working with stakeholders, implementing new initiatives, and managing discipline. Let's set boundaries, focus on well-being, and reignite your passion for being a principal. Welcome to "The Principal's Handbook."
I firmly believe that to be an impactful educator, you must first become a confident and well-rounded individual. Join us in this journey to empower and enhance your confidence as a school leader.
Principal Reset: The Reactive Principal
===
Speaker: [00:00:00] in today's episode, we're continuing the summer reset series, and today we're talking about the reactive principal.
So this is going to be a common type of principal I see, , and work with a lot. And so I wanna just give you an example of the reactive principal that I worked with. So here is one example. I'm going to give this client the name Mike. He was an elementary principal, and every morning he came to school with good intentions.
He arrives with a plan. His goal is to get into classrooms, to coach teachers, to review instructional data, to work on really improving instruction in his school. He was a great teacher, took over as principal, and is ready to make a difference in the school that he leads. But as soon as he gets started with his day, it feels like there's so many interruptions.
There's a student behavior issue, an upset parent that wants to talk to him, a teacher that needs support, emails that come through that he needs to answer. He gets called to the bus. We've all had that, where [00:01:00] you get called to the bus as your day starts. A staffing issue, not enough subs.
And by the end of the day, Mike is feeling exhausted Okay, so he's exhausted, and he stays, and what does he do? He works after work. And so by 6:00 PM, he finally decides that it's time to go home, and at this time, his family's already been waiting for him at home for hours. He has a wife and little kids, and they're at home, and they're waiting for him.
, And so every night, they're having this conversation that tomorrow needs to be different. He needs to leave work earlier, and he needs to get home earlier. And what happens is the same thing happens every day, where he has the intention of being more proactive, of leaving work at a time that he wants to leave, but he ends up with the same type of day, where
He's constantly playing catch-up, and he's working all the time and putting out fires all the time, and things never settle down. , So I think a lot of principals can relate to Mike. Now, some principals, he's an elementary principal, [00:02:00] can relate to this in the fact of maybe being even a secondary principal where you have after-school events.
So maybe it's that you're just tired of the after-school events, or maybe it's the idea that, even on nights where you don't have after-school events, you're staying later than you want to. So I just wanna talk about a couple of reactive patterns that I see. So pattern one is that everything feels urgent.
So reactive principals often struggle to distinguish between things that are urgent and things that are important. So every request from a teacher, from a parent, from a student, it feels like it's all equally important. It feels like it's all urgent. Every interruption happening through the day, whether it's discipline, whether it's a staff member needing something, it feels like it needs immediate attention,
and so we have to remember when everything is urgent, nothing gets prioritized. So a lot of times, the first thing to go is instructional leadership because it isn't an emergency. That is something that is [00:03:00] proactive. And so because it's not screaming the loudest, it is the thing that gets pushed on the backburner, where, , we're always thinking, of course, about school safety and how do we keep people safe.
So behaviors, discipline, problems with staff, things like that always comes first, and then you get stuck in this reactive cycle. And I talked about this a lot, , in the Eight to Four Principal Blueprint. I actually have some coaching calls in there from, , some coaching I did where I really broke down the difference between, , reactive principals and proactive principals.
So that could be something. That's a great course if you're really looking to stop having everything feel urgent. Check out the A to Four Principal Blueprint. I have a lot of tools in there that you can use. Pattern two is that principals solve problems too quickly.
So a lot of times reactive principals , they pride themselves on being helpful. Someone brings a problem to them, they immediately solve it. Someone needs an answer, they give it to them. Someone's frustrated, they jump in. The problem with all of this is you become the solution to everything.[00:04:00]
So the more problems that you start solving for people, the more problems people bring to you. And so instead of building other people's capacity, really what you're doing is creating dependence. And it's really a natural thing as principals. It's interesting 'cause I see this with my husband or just in different situations.
I had somebody call it out where they're like, "You're such a problem solver. You come up with all these different solutions." But it's such a part of the day-to-day job that we become really good at it, which is great, but if we're the only one fixing problems, then we don't allow other people to become really good at fixing problems.
We don't allow them to build their capacity to fix problems. I think about this with parenting with my kids, right? If I'm constantly fixing their problem versus them figuring it out even though I might know the answer, they're not going to learn. And it's the same with our staff, with our students.
If we fix every problem right away and don't give other people the opportunity to have ideas, have solutions, [00:05:00] then we're really just enabling everybody and not building their capacity. I'm not saying you can't solve problems. Obviously, you want to as a principal, but give people the chance to solve them without you.
I notice this happens a lot if you're not there. People find solutions that they might not have found if you were there and ready to jump in. So that's the second pattern. Pattern number three is waiting for a calm day. , You have to remember as a principal, you create the calm.
Any calm that's happening, you don't wait for it, you create it. And so you can't wait for things to slow down because they'll never slow down. So you have to find your own calm, your own rhythm, your way of being proactive as a principal, your way of leading instruction
And being an instructional leader without the calm, because there's always going to be what some people think are emergencies, and I learned that early on as a principal. I used to think, that Everything that other people thought [00:06:00] was an emergency, but it's not. , So you just have to figure out how to bring that calm.
And pattern four is confusing activity with progress. Reactive principals are very busy. , But busy doesn't mean that you're actually making impact on what you're doing. Busy doesn't mean you're making progress in your building. So you could be busy answering emails, busy attending every meeting, busy solving problems, but you're not making impact on student instruction and how teachers are teaching.
Reaction keeps the school running, but leadership is going to create the improvement that you wanna see.
So now with this Summer Reset series, what I'm really doing is focusing on the T cycle. So that's how your thoughts create your emotions, which create your actions. So I just wanna review our four patterns. So everything feels, , urgent, , solving problems too quickly, waiting for a calm day, and confusing activity with progress.
So now that we know those common problems, I want you to think through the T cycle. So the T cycle is that your thoughts create your emotions, [00:07:00] which create your actions. So let's go through the situation that Mike planned to spend an hour in classrooms. He had it blocked on his calendar from 9:00 to 10:00, "I'm going to get in classrooms."
But at 9 o'clock, right when he's about to get in classrooms, three discipline issues occur back to back, and his schedule is gone. So the first thing, you're gonna be aware of the thoughts that you have. So what are the thoughts that you're telling yourself? What could Mike be telling himself? Well, he could start with thoughts, "I don't have time.
Everybody needs me. I can never get ahead. As soon as I block off time, discipline happens." So he has these negative thoughts. Or, "I'll just do walkthroughs later." The emotion this creates, it's overwhelm, it's frustration. Maybe it's even, , hopelessness of this idea of you'll ever be proactive, right?
Maybe it's , "I can't do it. I give up. I'm hopeless about this." So when this happens, your action is that Mike is probably abandoning the priority of getting into [00:08:00] classrooms for an hour. He's probably now... The day started being reactive, he's just going to spend that day being reactive. He's gonna have to stay late.
He's gonna say, "It doesn't even matter. I can't protect my time." And the cycle repeats. That's the action that happens. But if Mike were to change his thought to There's a couple things. One, is this a discipline issue that needs me right now? Is this something I need to handle right now? Unless it's a fight that kids aren't safe, you probably don't need to handle it right now.
Or if you do, the thought could be, "I'm going to pick another time to get into classrooms," which creates an empowering emotion, which creates an action of actually getting into those other classrooms. So choosing a different thought is going to choose a different emotion and a different action.
So if you wanna have the action to get into classrooms, you have to have thoughts that lead to that like, "It's possible. I'll reschedule those classroom visits instead of [00:09:00] abandoning them. I'll delegate anything I can when possible. I will decide what's a discipline incident that truly needs my attention right away."
Okay, so the goal isn't to eliminate interruptions. - That's never going to happen as a principal that there's not interruptions. But it is leading despite interruptions. It's figuring out how to lead even when people get interrupted, so that's something I want you to think about is how are you letting interruptions stop you from leading throughout the day?
So some reflection questions I want you to think about. What part of your day is most reactive? What problems are you solving that other people could solve? What leadership work keeps getting pushed to tomorrow? And where are you waiting for circumstances to change instead of creating a plan? And then the last question I really want you to think about, what would happen if you treated instructional leadership like a non-negotiable instead of extra, or instead of a I get to do this?
So you could take some time while you're driving [00:10:00] to reflect on these or take some time to actually journal about them. But now is when I wanna get into the actual reset piece of how you can reset this if you are the reactive principal. So the first thing you're going to do is you're going to identify what is your most important work.
So what is the highest leverage thing you can do to move your building forward? So for most principals, it is that instructional leadership, it's coaching teachers, , it's developing your staff. So I want you to really reflect on how are you going to do that even when you're interrupted. So identify that most important work that you're going to do and identify what that will look like.
So if it's instructional leadership, okay, what exactly does that look like? Is it getting into classrooms? Is it having conversations with teachers? Is it getting into PLCs? So what is that most important work? The second thing I want you to do is create protected leadership time. So schedule those classroom [00:11:00] visits, , schedule coaching conversations, be part of PLCs or whatever you have that are like a professional learning community or planning time.
If it's not on your calendar, it's not going to happen. So create that protected leadership time. So first, you're gonna decide what's the most important thing, then you're gonna create that protected leadership time. And in The H4 Principle, I talk a lot about this, a lot about time blocking, but how to do that within the job because, it's not like we just have all this time like other jobs where people aren't interrupting us all day.
So how to create those time blocks even when you're interrupted is super important. And then the third thing is stop being the first solution. So if somebody brings a problem Ask, "What have you already tried? What do you think would work? What support do you need from me?" So don't just give a solution right away.
Start asking more open-ended questions to help prompt them. "What do you think would work? What have you tried?" You [00:12:00] know, "What do you need from me?" Those are all questions that are open-ended that really help them become problem solvers. So that's another one. The fourth thing is focus on prevention.
So a big thing with being a reactive principal is when principals are spending all day responding to problems, it shows that you have a lack of system. So it could be a lack of behavior expectations, communication systems for when behaviors are happening, staff clarity around behavior or who's doing what, routines and procedures in the building.
You know, I think about this a lot. When I took over the last building, , that I was just in, PBIS Tier 1 was a huge thing that we were working on all year. And at the beginning of the year, I felt like I was so reactive until we got some behavior expectations into place and teachers were teaching them.
It's not that we didn't have behaviors anymore or I didn't have interruptions come up, but it definitely felt more proactive when everybody was on the same page with those behavior expectations and [00:13:00] teaching and reteaching what those were. So you really wanna focus on having systems and having prevention for the things that are causing you, , the most amount of interruptions and taking the most time.
And then The last thing I want you to do is replace your identity. So think about how your old identity might be a good prin- a good principal handles everything, a good principal solves everything, and really create the identity that a great principal is someone who builds systems so they don't have to handle everything.
They're somebody who's a systems level thinker, it's not about doing everything. It's about leading. So you really wanna replace that identity. So you're going to identify your most important work, create protected leadership time, stop being the first solution, focus on prevention, and replace your old identity.
So those are the reset items I want you to try. And a lot of times the reactive principle feels like a huge trap, and this is where it could lead to burnout that we talked about a [00:14:00] couple of episodes ago. But leadership becomes more sustainable when you stop asking, "How do I get everything done?"
And you start asking yourself, "What is the most important thing here? What should I be prioritizing?" Because The goal is not to eliminate every interruption, but it's really to make sure that interruptions aren't stealing your time. They're not taking over your day and taking over your leadership.
So I hope that you try some of these things and that they're helpful. Next week, we're gonna be talking about the people-pleasing principle. I see this a lot with elementary principals especially, but the leader who wants everyone to be happy, they avoid disappointing people, and often end up carrying burdens that were never theirs to carry.
So I talk about this a lot with principals, and we're going to be talking about it next week. So I hope you join us for that episode. If you love this show, if you're listening on Apple, please scroll down and leave a review. That's how other people find the podcast. But keep in mind, you have the power to shape your life according to the mindset you choose.
I hope you have a great week, [00:15:00] and I'll see you back here next time.