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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.
The Principal Reset Series: The Burned-Out Principal
[00:00:00]
In this episode, we're going to be talking about the burned-out principal, which is part of a Principal Reset Series that I'm doing for the summer. So that's all coming up next on The Principal's Handbook.
Welcome to The Principal’s Handbook, your go-to resource for principals looking to revamp their leadership approach and prioritize self-care. I'm Barb Flowers, a certified life coach with eight years of experience as an elementary principal. Tune in each week as we delve into strategies for boosting mental resilience, managing time effectively, and nurturing overall wellness.
From tackling daily challenges to maintaining a healthy work-life balance, we'll navigate the complexities of school leadership together. Join me in fostering your sense of purpose as a principal and reigniting your passion for the job. Welcome to a podcast where your well-being is the top priority.
Welcome back to the podcast.
Today, we are talking about the burned-out principal. For the summer, I am doing a Principal Reset Series where I'm going to share different profiles of principals that I've worked with and coached. I'll talk about some of the problems they faced, ways that I've helped them, and give you some tips and solutions.
So we're going to start today with the burned-out principal.
I want to know if you can relate to this: Have you ever sat in your car and thought, “I can't keep doing this. I can't do another day like this”? Or maybe you deeply care about education, your students, and the staff that you lead, but everything just feels hard. It feels really heavy.
You get to work in the morning already exhausted. You're taking work home every night. You are feeling responsible for everyone else's emotions, everyone's problems, and every outcome in the building.
And somehow, what happened is that you used to love your job and everything that came with being a principal. Now, you find yourself not loving it anymore, not wanting to go to work, and feeling like it’s all unsustainable. You don't know how much longer you can keep doing this.
So today, [00:02:00] that's what we're talking about. We're talking about the burned-out principal, and not from a surface-level “take care of yourself” or “practice self-care” perspective. We're talking about it from a deeper mindset and leadership-pattern perspective that principals get stuck in.
I always say that burnout doesn't go away on its own. A lot of times, especially in education because we have summers off—well, not all principals do—but people think, “Okay, I'll feel better over the summer. I'll feel refreshed, and I'll go back in the fall not burned out anymore.”
But the problem is burnout doesn't go away on its own. It’s really about fixing the systems that are causing the burnout. I promise you, I have felt burnout before, and when you go back to work, it can feel like you never left. So this is a deeper problem that you really have to address.
I want to give an example of a client. I'm not using her real name, but I'm going to call her Sarah. Sarah is an assistant principal in a middle school.
Sarah is an amazing leader. She loves being an assistant principal. She's good at what she does, but she arrives early every day, stays late, and works all weekend. She's working 60 hours a week.
When I talk to her, she’s working all the time, so she’s exhausted. She just wants time to herself—time to simply be home. Her husband keeps telling her, “You're always working.” She hears about it at home, and she feels guilty for working so much. But at the same time, she feels like if she doesn't work at home, she's never going to get everything done.
[00:03:00] She's a principal who jumps into every classroom issue immediately. She's answering emails at night. She sees systems that need to be fixed because she's really good with systems, and she's trying to fix all of them at once.
That’s what’s causing the overwhelm. She sees problems and wants to fix everything immediately. There are a lot of issues in the school because it's a turnaround school.
Then when she gets home, she's still working 60 hours a week trying to solve these problems, but she feels guilty resting. She feels guilty taking time off. She feels guilty if she’s not working on a Saturday or Sunday. So she’s constantly working and feeling really burned out—to the point where she doesn’t want to go to work anymore.
It’s getting harder. She’s feeling disconnected from the role and wondering if being an assistant principal is even right for her.
These are some of the conversations we've had.
Some of the things happening for her physically are that she gets sick. Your body eventually tells you that you can't just keep powering through. She gets headaches. She gets anxiety on Sundays thinking about going to work. She’s emotionally exhausted and dreading work most days—honestly, almost every day.
So these are the things we're talking about.
I want to point out that Sarah is not lazy. She’s not a weak leader. She’s actually a very good leader. She’s highly capable, very smart, and excellent at what she does.
But unintentionally, she built a leadership style that is not sustainable. She built a leadership style where she sacrifices herself in order to be good at what she does—or at least what she thinks she has to do to be good at what she does.
[00:05:00] That’s what I want to talk about today. If you can relate to Sarah and feel like you are sacrificing your personal life to become what you think the ideal leader should look like, that’s the problem.
Teachers need leaders who can sustain the position. They need leaders who can stay in the role without burning themselves out.
So it’s really important to think about where you’re at and which areas of Sarah’s story you can relate to, so you don’t get to this point.
Maybe you’re not where Sarah is yet. Maybe you haven’t experienced burnout to this degree. But I always think these stories are important because they remind us that anybody can get there.
I am incredibly passionate about education. I love leadership. But I have been where Sarah has been. I know what this feels like. I have experienced burnout. I have had panic attacks going to work. So I completely understand what this is like.
That’s where I come from when I coach and when I coach people like Sarah.
I want to break down some of the burnout patterns happening here, and then we’re going to talk about solutions.
The first pattern is the mindset that everything is mine to fix.
Sometimes this comes from being a confident leader. You think, “I know how to fix this, so I’m going to fix it.” It becomes over-responsibility. You’re carrying the whole building.
And sometimes it’s emotional. Because when you’re trying to make changes, people push back on you. So you end up carrying everyone else's emotions too.
[00:07:00] You feel personally responsible for every outcome. If test scores don’t go up, you feel like that’s on you. If there’s a problem and you don’t solve it immediately, you feel like you’re failing as a leader.
That’s one burnout pattern I saw with Sarah.
Another pattern is urgency addiction. You’re reacting all day. You feel productive when you’re constantly responding to things.
Sometimes this happens because solving a behavior problem gives you the feeling that you’re accomplishing something quickly. You can cross it off your list. But the hard work of leadership—changing culture, improving instruction, growing student achievement—is a long game. It doesn’t happen overnight.
So when you become addicted to urgency and constant reacting, you eventually burn yourself out.
The third pattern is perfectionism.
And I’ll tell you—this is not something that magically disappears over time. If you’re a perfectionist, it’s probably something you’ve struggled with your whole life.
Perfectionists want every initiative to work perfectly right away. They want every system fully in place immediately. But school leadership doesn’t work like that.
When I took over a new building, we tried a new arrival procedure where students came into the gym and ate breakfast there. We all hated it. So we had to adjust it throughout the year.
That doesn’t mean we failed. It means we learned and improved.
[00:10:00] School improvement takes repetition, consistency, and clarity. It’s not about perfection.
Another pattern I see is a lack of boundaries.
You start to believe that being available all the time is part of your identity as a leader. You feel guilty resting. You feel guilty leaving at a certain time.
Maybe your principal stays until 5:00, so you feel like you should too. Or maybe your assistant principal stays late, and now you feel pressure to stay.
A lack of boundaries also includes emotional boundaries. It’s not just about leaving work physically—it’s about mentally disconnecting.
When I was a new assistant principal handling discipline, I would go home and replay conversations in my mind all night long. That emotional rumination creates burnout.
Burnout is not just working too much. It’s the belief that you are not allowed to stop.
So these are some of the patterns you may relate to if you’re starting to feel burned out.
Now I want to teach a practical reset tool that I talk about often: the TEA Cycle.
Your thoughts create your emotions, which create your actions.
This is why all of my coaching—whether it’s about discipline, time management, or instructional leadership—always comes back to mindset.
[00:13:00] Sarah has done a lot of work around her identity and mindset. She’s realizing that her worth is not tied to her job.
She’s also worked on her perfectionism and understanding that she does not have to be perfect.
But it all starts with awareness.
She had to become aware that she’s a perfectionist. Aware that her identity was deeply tied to her work performance. Aware that praise at work determined how she felt about herself.
Once you become aware of the patterns causing burnout, then you can begin to change them.
So let’s walk through the TEA Cycle.
Imagine a teacher emails you upset about student behavior at 8:30 p.m.
The first thing I’ll say is that boundaries around email matter. But let’s say Sarah checks the email anyway.
The first thing she needs to identify is her thoughts:
“I have to solve this tonight.”
“If I don’t respond immediately, I’m failing.”
“If I don’t answer, the teacher will be upset with me.”
Those thoughts create emotions:
Anxiety
Guilt
Overwhelm
Pressure
And then those emotions create actions:
Responding late at night
Losing sleep
Ruminating
Becoming resentful
Feeling emotionally exhausted
[00:16:00] But what if she shifted the thought to:
“I can still be a good principal without handling this right now.”
“I can care about this situation and address it tomorrow.”
That shift creates calmer emotions and healthier actions.
Maybe she responds thoughtfully the next morning. Maybe she involves the teacher in problem-solving. Maybe she realizes she doesn’t need email on her phone at all.
The goal of the TEA Cycle is not toxic positivity. It’s not pretending everything is perfect.
It’s about intentional leadership.
Burnout is a feeling that comes from repeated thoughts, emotions, and actions.
So I want you to think about:
What thoughts are creating the most exhaustion in your leadership right now?
Where are you taking responsibility for things that are not fully yours?
What boundaries are you afraid to set?
What would sustainable leadership actually look like for you?
If you continued leading exactly the way you are right now for five more years, what would happen to your health? Your family? Your relationships?
These are important reflection questions.
[00:19:00] I want to leave you with a few action steps.
First, choose one leadership priority. What actually matters most right now?
Second, stop trying to solve everything immediately. Not every problem needs an instant solution.
Third, build one boundary this week:
No email after a certain time
Taking a real lunch break
Leaving at a consistent time
And finally, replace the identity.
Instead of:
“I have to be available all the time.”
Try:
“A sustainable principal has boundaries.”
“A sustainable principal doesn’t have to do everything alone.”
I hope this episode helped you see that burnout does not mean you’re failing as a principal. It doesn’t mean you’re bad at your job.
It simply means it’s time to become aware of what is causing the burnout and start addressing it—because burnout does not go away on its own.
Next week, we’re going to talk about the high-achieving principal. This one ties closely to burnout because we’ll discuss principals who look successful on the outside but secretly feel like they can never do enough.
If that sounds like you, make sure to tune in next week.
And if you’re on TikTok, follow me at The Principal’s Handbook. I share a lot of tips and free resources there.