The Principal's Handbook

Balancing Leadership and Wellness as a Principal with Bonnie Finnerty
[00:00:00] 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, I'm Barb Flowers. 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.
Well, welcome everyone to the principles handbook. I'm excited today. We have Bonnie Finnerty with us and she is the principal health coach and she is helping and coaching principals from a health standpoint. And so I'm really excited to have her on today because this is a different approach from a lot of coaching.
[00:01:00] And consulting that we've seen from other principals. So Bonnie, if you want to go ahead and tell us about yourself and how you came up with the idea of the principal health coach, Well, good morning, Barb. And thank you so much for having me on your podcast this morning. So, as you mentioned, I am the owner of principal health coach, and that is a coaching.
support service for practicing administrators. It can be building level administrators, district level administrators. , and we are about to launch our membership. We're finalizing all of that work, but been coaching through principal health coach for a little over three years now and principal health coach or PHC, as we like to call it.
Really came out of my career of being an administrator. I started as a teacher, but I was tapped very early in my career after five years of teaching. And I got my CAS, which is the [00:02:00] administrative degree here in New York, the advanced degree, and then became an assistant principal. And from there, A principal, a director, , staff developer, , ultimately a superintendent and an executive director for our region.
And then also did some work as a professor in the educational leadership program in one of our local colleges. But PHC came out of, , my experience as a very You know, high performing administrator. I was a superintendent at the time at the peak of my career and loving my position. And I started developing symptoms that were really unexplained.
, I had like systemic hives. I would experience things like significant brain fog. So all of a sudden at this peak of my career, I was doing unable to perform some of the duties of my job, or I felt like I was unable to, I found I was losing my [00:03:00] hair. I had, , many other symptoms and nobody could tell me what was going on.
And the only reason I ignored the symptoms for quite a long time, but in my superintendent contract, every two years, I had to have a physical pretty standard for a superintendent contract. So I traveled back to my hometown area where my primary physician was and I had my physical and he's , great, I'll see you, in another year or so all as well.
And about an hour into that travel back, I was about, cause I was about four hours from where I was superintendent, about an hour into that drive, I received a phone call from my doctor, not even like one of his nurses. And he said, Bonnie, there's something in your blood work, turn around. I have you going to hematology oncology tomorrow morning at eight o'clock.
And I'm like, what? You know, I felt perfectly fine. I was doing great. So that led to months and months of tests and over time being [00:04:00] diagnosed with multiple autoimmune conditions, including systemic lupus and some liver issues and all these things that I had no clue was going on. And I spent about a year really diving into that connection between high degrees of stress.
And, just heavy workload because I was, I'm definitely a type A, I am a type A workaholic. I call myself a recovering type A workaholic, but you know, I was used to being on almost 24 seven working sometimes, you know, six or seven days a week, averaging 60 to 80 hours a week. And, you know, as an administrator, and I'm sure some of your audience can relate to that, there's just no off time.
and so I spent a solid year just researching because the [00:05:00] treatments that they wanted me to begin undergoing, I was just like, I am not comfortable with those. So I really looked at alternatives. And as a result, was able to. Make some changes in my own lifestyle, began to adopt some very different habits.
that were more health promoting, , definitely became extremely cognizant on protecting my sleep. And I say now, if somebody told me you could only coach on one thing, I would coach on sleep because sleep or the lack of it or the lack of restorative deep REM sleep impacts absolutely everything that we do.
And so out of that, , I became, I went back and got a certification as an integrative nutrition and the Institute for Integrative Nutrition health coach. And that just really kick started , and [00:06:00] accelerated the coaching and mentoring that I was doing. And it gave me a, like a totally different perspective on how to coach leaders.
And I had mentored almost my entire career. I have had mentees and I'd worked with my APs and everything, but when I decided to retire, I kicked off the whole principal health coach piece. And it just it took off my coaching load, you know Became even more than I could handle myself this year. We brought on five more Certified health coaches.
These are all career. Educators that are experienced school leaders, certified and experienced, and now they're certified as health coaches as well. So now in principal health coach, we have a team of six and we are servicing school leaders from, you know, everywhere , we coach virtually. We do some in person PD very little really, cause we really are focusing on that coaching piece.[00:07:00]
But yeah, so now we are a team of six and about to, you know, roll out the membership. So that's kind of in a nutshell, that's essentially it was, PHC came out of my own experience of recognizing that I was a completely out of balance. Workaholic school leader. Yeah. And I love one thing you brought up in your story that I talk about is sometimes you're going along, like you said, and you think you're fine, right?
Like you left the doctor. I'm healthy. I'm fine. , I am a workaholic and it's hard when you love it. Right. And you have this purpose that you don't realize how stressed your body is. , Because I talk about too, when I went through my burnout, part of it was, it was the job of being a principal, but then good stress causes stress on your body too.
I was married. Right. And so , that's also stressful. So add all that together. I thought I was okay. And then I had this panic attack and burnout. And I love that you, , talk about, you really have to be aware of that and know, even when you're [00:08:00] feeling like you're fine, . what that needs to look like, what that balance needs to look like, because there's no way our bodies can sustain 60 hours of work, not having time for ourselves here.
And that is, that's an excellent point, Barb. , and one of the things that I recognized was I I've always been a very pro health, pro wellness person. Pro balance leader. Like , I would stress to my teachers. I would stress as a superintendent, I would stress to my principals. You have to turn it off.
You have to, but I wasn't good at doing that myself and it was just the norm. It's just how I'm wired. And even when the symptoms were there, I really didn't pay attention until my body finally said, I've been trying to tell you something for weeks and months and years now. And now I'm going to stop you in your tracks.
Because you're not listening and I was forced to [00:09:00] really take my own advice and , really listen to my body and I thought I had healthy parameters. I thought I handled things well. But my body was clearly telling me that, you know, I wasn't. As I look back now, I think there's a part of me that kind of intuitively knew that, but I just didn't listen because it, you know, it's just who I am.
It's just how I work. It's just what I did. I can do this. I've never not been able to. Do this or do what I set out to do or work in the manner that I've always worked until my body finally said, that's it, you're not listening. I'm stopping you right here. Yeah, and I think that's so true that either do the preventative to take care of ourselves or our body will eventually say, you're done.
Yes. , and that can look very different in many people. I know what it looked like in my case, but it could be for many, it could be significant [00:10:00] weight gain. Like I talked to so many administrators and from the time they took their first administrative. job until now. Many of them say, you know, I've put on 10, I put on 15, I put on 20, I put on 25.
It can be, you know, before I became an administrator, I didn't even have to take aspirin or Tylenol or whatever. And now I'm on blood pressure medicine. I'm on heart medicine. I've been diagnosed with diabetes. I have, heart disease. I, just all these things that sadly come with the role of leader.
And they're not badges of honor working 80 hours a week. It's not a badge of honor. It shouldn't be, that should not be the norm in our profession. Yeah. Yeah. And you also talked about sleep and sleep is huge. I remember at one point our superintendent had told all of us as school principals, talk to your staff about sleep because there is so much about it and.
I actually, , for our listeners, [00:11:00] I did a podcast episode about sleep, so I will link that back in the show notes because it does affect everything. I think of myself, like I'm super sensitive to sleep. If I only sleep five to six hours, I'm super hungry. The next day I have a headache. Mm-Hmm. , I almost feel like I'm hungover like I was partying all night, you know?
Right, right. It's a terrible feeling and I would, for most of my career, I would average. No more than about five hours of sleep. And that was just, you know, I, that's just how I was, especially, when I became a principal of a middle school that was, , just in a very high needs middle school. And then as I transitioned to a superintendent, it was definitely during all of those years, that period of time in my career, , five years, and then it wasn't.
Or five hours, and it wasn't five hours of uninterrupted sleep necessarily, I'd wake up and think of something and I'd be like, Oh, okay, where's my pad? You know, where's my pad on my bed stand? I need to write this down. So I don't forget it. Oh, I wake up and be like, [00:12:00] Oh, I forgot to answer that email or I've got this to do tomorrow.
And so it wasn't like it was five hours of very deep restorative sleep. , it wasn't so as you're coaching school leaders on their health and leadership, what is the number one mistake you see that leaders are making the number one mistake, and I think I'll reframe that a little bit around it is one of the least health promoting habits.
Okay. I like it. Yes. One of the least, one of the least health promoting habits and it probably is. Failing to have like what I call an end of day routine and that's I coach on this end of day routine or EODR about how you structure an end of day routine at so that at the end of your day, you set an established time that you say, [00:13:00] I want to leave the office.
And I'm going to do these things as part of my end of day routine, so that when that time comes, I am able to stand up from my desk, push my chair in, walk out my office door, look back, close the door, and be okay with leaving for the day. And then not going home and necessarily doing more work or being on my phone or answering emails or lying in bed, finally falling into bed at 10 o'clock versus having a bedtime routine or ritual that leads up to and trains your brain.
To begin to, go to sleep and doing those things that are very pro sleep inducing and instead of that end of day routine, they are staying and they're staying till six o'clock or six 30 or seven [00:14:00] o'clock and then even when they leave, they're taking their bag of work home and then, you know, it sits in the corner of the room.
And then there's all this guilt associated with it sitting in the corner of the room, and I really should get to it, but, I haven't had any quality time with my children, or I'm so exhausted, or I need to care for my parents, or you know what? I have a spouse or a significant other, and I haven't even had a conversation with them today.
And yet I have this guilt, because I see that bag that sits in the corner. So I do all this stuff. Other stuff for everybody else. And at 10 o'clock I fall in bed, I grab my bag. , I pull out my computer or my phone. I start to answer emails. I start to create, you know, whatever it is. And then I realized it's 1130 and I've been on my devices and I haven't even gone to sleep yet.
So, I really coach them on end of day routine and then how that can tie into creating a routine that is sleep inducing or sleep [00:15:00] promoting. If you want to be in bed and you want to go to sleep by 10 o'clock, by 9 o'clock, what do you start doing that begins to condition and train your brain for sleep?
Yeah, that's great. It's kind of a combination of those things. Yeah, I think that's great advice because I do hear a lot of people saying that they're staying late. What do you say to a principal? Because another thing I hear a lot is, well, I don't know what to do because during the day I'm putting out so many fires, I can't get anything done.
What advice do you have for them to be able to have that balance while they're still being present in the issues? So that's the other half. I call that like the systems, processes, and procedures. That's the executive coaching piece. That's where, with our coaches, with our team, that's where the 20, 25, you know, 30 years of experience as , a leader comes into play.
We bring not only [00:16:00] that wellness and health coaching and that balance piece, but we bring years of. leadership experience where we can help building level leaders with that executive leadership coaching. And we primarily focus on establishing systems, processes and procedures because without well established, highly effective systems, processes and procedures,
you're on that rat wheel all day long, and all you're doing is whack a mole. You are whacking, whacking, whacking. You are spinning, spinning, spinning. And it's not that you're not working hard because you won't go home at the end of the day exhausted. Yeah. But the reality is you can look back six months later, a year later, and you're still on the same rat wheel.
You're still playing whack a mole. You still have the same issues that are popping up. So we help coach leaders. to move from that, that technician view where you've got your hands in the pot and , you are in the thick of everything and doing the work of the [00:17:00] technician , and Throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout the month, very intentionally stepping back and taking what we call that 5, 000 foot view and moving back up to that leadership view and saying, what are the missing systems, processes, or procedures?
What is broken? , why do I keep having this issue? What do I need to put in place? What do I need to help my team put in place so that we're constantly not still. , addressing this same issue or this is my Achilles heel. This just keeps annoying me. What is missing? What do we need to do to help address that once and for all?
And how do I empower my team? How do I build my teacher leadership if I'm a building level leader? But it's that executive level coaching of systems, processes, and procedures. Yeah, I love that. I think if you are a principal who can delegate and empower others to take on leadership, it helps with your own health and well being [00:18:00] so much.
I don't think we realize how they correlate in the fact of what you'll be doing during the day versus what you can actually then go home. You can set that boundary at night when you have all of those things in place. So that's great., What impact have you observed on school culture? Have principals shared when they prioritize their own well being?
When a leader begins to model wellness, health promoting habits and choices, seeking balance between work and home life, And , every other demand they have, then when they begin to model that and they begin to encourage, articulate, model, show that permeates the whole culture, what that says to your teachers as a building leader is.
This really is important. My principal doesn't expect me to work 24 7. My [00:19:00] principal doesn't want me to work 24 7. My principal doesn't expect that if he or she sends an email out , on Friday or Friday afternoon, that I'm expected to answer it or respond to it over the weekend. My principal is saying this is important.
He or she recognizes that my well being is as important as doing the tasks and the work of teaching. And , that happens. And that culture shift begins when the leader begins to model that. Yeah. I think that's so important. And part of that, that you've talked about earlier was if you're in bed, emailing at night, Making sure that you're not emailing to teachers and they're getting those notifications that you're emailing.
I always said I would schedule send once I learned about schedule send. Yes, this is a life changer because nobody knew when I was working, you know, exactly. [00:20:00] Boundaries. But I also didn't want to put it on teachers. If I was sending an email, I personally like to work at like five in the morning, sending them an email at five in the morning.
So I would schedule send that to help protect their own wellbeing. So they're not looking at their phone thinking they're going to get an email from their principal. Anytime of the day. Exactly. And with that email at any time of the day, is there the expectation for a response or action on that email?
And that really says a lot about the leader. So that schedule send is a godsend. I, I'm like you, when I learned about it, I was like, Oh, because I might be working on a Saturday a little bit, but I really don't want my teachers to be working on Saturday. Right, right. Well, as we finish up, what is one piece of advice you would give to an aspiring school leader, a new school leader as they start?
How could they maintain their health and well being? And even if you're a current [00:21:00] school leader, like what could you implement now to just help with your health and well being? Oh, let's see. If I was to just give one little piece of advice, I would say, Begin to formulate the health promoting habit of turning your devices off and not touching them 90 minutes before you want to go to bed and go to sleep.
No devices. Take that digital detox every single night. And do not put your phone on your nightstand. If you use it for your alarm, set it over on a different side of the room. It'll force you to actually have to get up and shut it off by keeping it out of, um, arms length and arms reach. Not only will you not be tempted when you wake in the middle of the night to [00:22:00] look at it, it will help you break the habit of potentially that being the very first thing you do in the morning, grab your phone and look at it.
Think about, how do I want to start my day? What is the tone? How do I want to feel? What do I want to create? What is my very first morning experience? And I don't know if we were to ask school leaders and they were really honest with themselves, I don't know if the answer would be. I really want to look at my email and see all the stuff that's in there.
That's how I want to start my day. So 90 minutes before bedtime, turn off all devices. Don't keep your phone right on your bed stand and then just begin to think about how do I want to start my day every single morning? Is it with looking at my emails and my text messages? Very first thing. I love that.
Well, thank you so [00:23:00] much, Bonnie, for being on today. Tell our listeners how they can find you if they want to reach out to you. Okay. Well, thank you, Barb. , you can find us at Principal Health Coach and that's Principal, P A L PrincipalHealthCoach. com. And thank you for having me today.
Mhm. Mhm.