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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.
Five Practices of Confident Leadership for Principals
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Speaker: [00:00:00] In this episode, we're talking about the five practices of confident leadership. That's all coming up next on the Principal's handbook.
Speaker 2: 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 wellbeing is the top priority. I.
Speaker: Welcome everyone to the podcast. Today we're talking about the five practices of confident leadership, .
I love talking about these practices with principals that I coach, whether I'm coaching on discipline, time [00:01:00] management, whatever the topic we are talking about. Usually something that comes up is confidence because a lot of times we think we're confident and then there are areas that we really doubt ourselves, and so.
I like to dig into these five practices with the people I coach, and I thought this would be a great topic for the podcast today. And again, I use this as a framework that I can integrate with in any area that a principal needs help discipline. Time management, instructional leadership, it all comes back to these five practices as the underlying foundation.
So I'm just going to jump right in to the first practice, which is acting from a chosen identity. So it's really important that you. Choose who you want to be and how you wanna show up. A lot of times we don't talk about this, but we actually get to decide each day how we show up. I'm a huge fan of Brendan Burchard.
He's , a high performance coach that I listen to. And what I love that he says often is, we summon our best self every [00:02:00] day. And how are we going to do that? And really, it is a, it's a decision. There are days that, I wake up and maybe I don't wanna go to work. Sunday Night Blues, right? We say the Mondays are harder and it can be hard to get up and wanna go to work, but
I have to decide to summon my best. I have to decide what kind of leader I wanna show up as. Do I wanna show up as the leader? Who doesn't wanna be there? Who's complaining about being there, who's tired? What do you want it to look like? It's also thinking deeper into, , who do you wanna be when it comes to discipline?
Who do you wanna be when it comes to having hard conversations? What do you want those things to look like? So really taking time to act from that chosen identity and know that person that you wanna be. One activity that I do with. Principals I work with is your 1.0 and 2.0 self. So really think about who you are now and who you wanna be, and you wanna always be acting from that 2.0 self.
So for example, let's say, , [00:03:00] one thing I hear from principals a lot is I'm not great at hard conversations. Okay, well decide. You're a person who has hard conversations and you're good at them. Or you're a person who has hard conversations, even if you don't feel like you're good at them, right? Like you are a person who gets to decide what that's like.
If you notice that you just let things go and you wanna hold people more accountable, then you decide you're a leader who holds people accountable. And then you decide what that looks like and you start doing it. So that 2.0 identity is really important for helping you feel more confident in deciding in advance how you want to show up.
The second practice of confidence is leading without needing approval. So a lot of times. We want to be validated. We wanna be validated either by our boss or by the people that we lead. But confident leaders take action based on their values and their role, knowing that you're that leader of the building and [00:04:00] you don't need to have everybody else's approval.
And so. You know what this could look like is if you're avoiding hard conversations or you soften messages or maybe you overexplain things. Another thing I see often is we explain so much to try to get everybody on our side. Versus feeling confident that you made the best decision in that moment, whether it was with discipline or you know, with a hard conversation that you had to have As the principal, you have to make these hard decisions and you have to be confident that you can lead without needing others' approvals.
So I think that this is really important for you to think about is where are you? Having low confidence and needing others' approval. In practice when you're leading without approval, you're really sharing expectations clearly, even when people aren't happy with them.
Again, you're making decisions without overexplaining it. You're allowing others to feel discomfort without trying to fix it. That can be [00:05:00] hard. As a principal. You wanna fix things, principles are problem solvers, so letting people sit in their own discomfort. And then also, letting people have their own emotions without you taking on that emotion.
That's another thing I think with the leading, without. Needing approval. That's really important. So that is the second thing. The third practice is prioritizing what matters most. So confident leaders are really clear on what they want for the building, and they use that clarity to decide their time, energy, and attention.
And I say clear for the building, but also for their life. This is my idea of the eight to four principle. As being really clear about what time you are leaving school, having a plan and leaving at that time. Because so often I see principals working till 5, 6, 7 o'clock at night, and who suffers from that is not only their own mental health, physical health, but their family.
? And it really puts a strain on a marriage and kids and all of that if you are in that [00:06:00] stage of life. And so. It's important that not only do you prioritize what matters most in your building, but what matters most in life. And a lot of school leaders that I talk to that have been doing it for a long time and , are getting close to the end of their career and maybe their kids are older.
Usually their biggest regret is that they spent too much time at school and didn't prioritize family enough. So it's really important to think about what that balance looks like for you, but also in your building. What does that look like? To say no to distractions? People are going to bring ideas to you all the time, and so you have to be able to.
Know where your building is going, the goals that you set for your building. You set with teachers, whoever was involved in that process. But saying no to those distractions that don't align with the priorities and really making intentional decisions. And this is where as a new leader, I feel like I struggled the most.
I would go home and have an idea. , I love instructional leadership. I love [00:07:00] reading about instruction and. Ways that I could improve my instructional leadership. So I would come the next day with ideas, but then I'd wanna implement them and it just stressed everybody out. And so what I realized over time is really the best leaders.
Aren't doing the most things. They're doing less things, but they're very clear about it. They have a clear plan and it's, they know what those important things are to move the building forward, and that's where their time, energy, and attention are going. So you wanna make sure that you are protecting time for what moves the school forward.
And what moves your own life forward? , As I took over a new building this year, I, I always think about, there are so many things we needed to work on and it was really hard to prioritize, but we did prioritize and we have seen so much growth with academics and behavior because we just stopped there and prioritize that.
And so. You could feel like you want to implement all of the things, but it's really about, what's gonna make the [00:08:00] biggest impact for your building and what's going to be the best , for your school moving forward.
So that's important to think about prioritizing what matters most and not living in that reaction mode.
The fourth practice of confidence that I see from leaders is regulating their thinking. So confident leaders, they notice unhelpful thoughts and are actively managing their emotions so that emotions aren't running their leadership. So this looks like they're pausing before responding. They question assumptions.
They don't. Except other people's emotions, assumptions as facts. We've all had teachers, , who come to you and they're speaking for everyone, right? And then, , that can put you in a spiral as a principal. , They choose thoughts that support calm, effective action. So this is really important and I talk a lot about the T cycle.
So your thoughts create your emotions, which create your actions. And this is what this is really saying. It's regulating your thinking that's going to help regulate your emotions. [00:09:00] So you're able to, be proactive, not reactive. You're not letting stress dictate reactions. You're not letting yourself feel mentally stuck or overwhelmed because you are constantly working on your thoughts.
And this is what I do with a lot of leaders in coaching is we have to work on your thoughts, whether it's thoughts about discipline, thoughts about instructional leadership, whatever that is, but find out where those negative thoughts are coming up and how can we flip that thought to be. A positive or neutral thought that can help you moving forward.
So you're going to have a more positive or neutral emotion. So this is really important in leadership with confident leaders, is they are noticing those unhelpful thoughts and they're actively managing them. Because as a leader, if you get into that negativity with your staff. Then you're no longer leading,
you're gonna be stuck in that with them. So it's really important. Confident leaders regulate their thinking. And the fifth practice of confidence that leaders [00:10:00] do is they stay committed to growth. So they treat challenges, as part of development. They continue taking action even when they don't feel fully confident yet, what I've noticed a lot is they just take action and they don't have to know everything moving forward. They just take action and , they know, they have the confidence that they'll figure it out, right? So they're constantly learning, they're taking action. They're committed to that growth.
They're seeking feedback without making everything personal. It could be feedback from their staff, feedback from the supervisor. , Reflecting instead of self criticizing. So they're really in that growth, adjusting and moving forward and knowing that they're not going to be perfect. This is where a lot of leaders get stuck as you feel like you have to know everything.
You feel like you have to be perfect, you feel like you can't make mistakes. But really, when you become more confident in your leadership, you know you're going to make mistakes. You know that not everything is going to go right. I always [00:11:00] say life is 50 50. I've heard this from other life coaches,
50% good emotions, 50% bad. And I think so often, , and I'm guilty of this too, we want it to be a hundred percent good, right? And that makes our expectations, one, not realistic, but two. Then when it's not good. Then we start to beat ourself up and think that, oh gosh, we're terrible, or There's something wrong with me.
I'm not happy all the time. Or you know, we just start to, spiral, which goes with that thinking again. , But it's really important as a leader to stay committed to that growth. What if, when those negative things happen, that's actually how I grow. I think of all the hard things that I did as a new principal and even now continue to do it, continue to do as a principal.
That's how I learn. If everything is easy, I'm never learning. So we have to stay committed to that growth and know that there are parts of the job that are going to be hard. But it's not [00:12:00] about taking it personal. It's not about, , criticizing ourselves. It's really about learning from each situation and moving forward.
So going back through those five practices of confident leadership, one, you want to act from a chosen identity. Two, lead without needing approval. Three, prioritize what matters most. Four, regulate your thinking and five, stay committed to growth. So these can be really helpful. And I always say the more confident you feel in your leadership, the more fun it becomes.
Because when you're not confident and you're second guessing everything and you're doubting yourself, that really is super stressful and it makes the job a lot harder, but when you can learn to just give yourself some grace and move forward, it really can be helpful for you. So if you want to do more with confidence and learn more about this, I do have the confident principle reset that I will link into the show notes, but it's a 14 day confidence action plan.
Where I [00:13:00] actually go through these five practices in depth, but I have activities for each day , so you can get better at these confidence practices in your leadership. I do a lot of reflection, a lot of coaching tips that I do with my one-on-one clients. And it can be really helpful for helping you build that confidence, but you have to be aware of where your weaknesses are and confident to get better.
One of my goals with this episode is really to bring you awareness to the areas of confidence that you need to continue. To work on in your leadership. So I hope you found this helpful. I hope you listen to these five practices, find the area you need to work on, and again, check out that action plan to see if that's something that could be beneficial for your leadership moving forward.
[00:14:00]