The Principal's Handbook

Confident Leadership with Dr. Stephanie Duguid
[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 with us today. We have Stephanie do good who has experience over 30 years as both a K 12 and post secondary level instructor and administrator, and she has helped hundreds of women educators enhance their self confidence. grow professionally and [00:01:00] develop and motivate dynamic and positive leaders reach their leadership goals.
So I'm so excited, Stephanie, to have you on the podcast today and for our conversation. Thank you so much, Barb. I'm very excited to be here. And so today we're going to really be talking about confident leadership. So I have some questions here for Stephanie, really focusing on. Confidence. So I want to start by just in your experience, what is the difference between confidence and competence in leadership and how can leaders develop both authentically?
Well, that is a great question because a lot of people think that it's the same thing and it's really not. You know, you can be a competent leader if you're good or a bad leader. Meaning, can you lead people to meet their goals? Can you lead people to make their deadlines? Can you lead people to. Do the tasks, the policies and procedures and get those check marks done.
But in order to be a confident leader, it's really moving from being self serving to self [00:02:00] less and making sure that you are confident in yourself and your decisions and at the root of it all is you're really doing everything for the organization, the institution, the school, the students, and so it's where is your mind and where is your heart whenever you are acting on your leadership skills.
I love that. , say that again. You go from self serving to selfless. And so when we talk about self serving, you know, you have people that get into leadership positions and they just wanted the title or they wanted to be over people so they could tell them what to do, or they are just there so that they can get their own personal agendas taken care of.
Whereas if you're selfless, you're there to support the students, to support the teachers. It's not about you. You don't have to be at the forefront. It's all about how you can encourage, how you can develop, how you can enhance those that you're working with to take the next step on their positive journey.
I [00:03:00] love really differentiating the two. I think that's so key in an education. It is really important to be that selfless leader where you are focused on your staff, your students, and everybody else because it isn't about you right at the end of the day. It's not about you. It is not. And the crazy thing is most leaders don't realize that those who are around you know exactly what kind of leader you are.
And it's so important to make that shift. I always talk about leadership as like a manual transmission is as a manual transmission leader. That means that you are in control of the gears. You know, when you have to shift up to speed up and really, you know, take the wheel or you know, when you have to shift down and pause and figure out what's going on and address an issue.
Whereas if you're an automatic transmission leader, that means you're letting the car do all the work for you and you're just there. So I encourage you to really shift. So that you can focus everything of going from obstacles into opportunities. And then that really , is [00:04:00] what empowers those that you work with.
That's great. Can you share a pivotal moment in your own leadership journey when maybe you had to rebuild your confidence or you realize that your confidence was low after a setback or anything that might have happened in your leadership journey? So, My leadership journey , has been very diverse. I started out in athletic training.
And so I was over, , all women's sports at a university in the athletic training realm. I've been a high school teacher. I've been a high school assistant principal. I've been a college administrator as an assistant Dean of career tech, then an assistant Dean of academics and a Dean as well. So when I stepped into my position, the first Dean's position that I had or assistant Dean's position, I had I really stepped into a place where the faculty didn't really have any direction.
And I'll share, I had a new person who was in a department. I'm not going to get specific, but they were in this [00:05:00] department and they really had challenges with those that they were working with. And I had some of those challenges too. And of course I was the leader. So they were all looking to me. Well, what I started doing is I started having these one on one conversations.
And so instead of always being me, the leader speaking to everybody else, I started bringing in those that were directly under me for one on one conversations, not with any agenda that I had, but as a time that it's okay, it's just the two of us. We don't have any meetings. We don't have any agendas. What would you like to bring to me that we can work through?
And that really shifted the relationship that. leaders had with these individuals. Cause before it was always top down, if you will. But now they saw me as a partner in what they were trying to accomplish in their division. So I wasn't telling her what she needed to do. We were having a conversation and she was thinking through her process and coming up with her own [00:06:00] answers and her own guidelines.
And I was just there supporting her. And so we continue to do that with all the division chairs, with all the different departments, and just the growth that not only those individuals had as leaders, and then the support that I had from those individuals as their dean, it was incredible, that relationship that just kind of blossomed.
It was really now we were a community working together for the same end result. And so. It was really that shift that once I stepped in into a leadership role, I kind of took on all the baggage that the previous leader had, and I had to figure out how to navigate that. And by stepping back, having these one on one conversations and taking the time, that's the key point, is you're so busy, you don't want to take the time, but you have to make that time, and that's what made all the difference in the world.
Yeah, that's great. Building those relationships and really improving that. And it is hard when you're coming out from [00:07:00] somebody else's leadership, you know, and what people's expectations are of that, which leads into my next question, a lot of leaders struggle with imposter syndrome, especially in new roles.
And I'm thinking of myself when I was an assistant principal, I was 28 years old. I was so young and I looked like this. Yeah. Super young. And then I took over as principal , two years later. So I remember having that imposter syndrome when I would go to principal meetings, like I just felt like, am I old enough to be here?
Am I experienced enough to be here? So what practical strategies do you have to help leaders overcome? Self doubt when they're facing that imposter syndrome. So some of the self doubt comes from confidence and so a lot of times and I don't know if you were in this phase, but this is where I came from is I went from being a faculty at a college to being an administrator and now the supervisor of those that I worked with.
So now they were working for me. So that dynamic was huge in the shift. [00:08:00] And so when I did that, you start to kind of question yourself, why am I here? You know, do I belong here? Well, that's when you have to go back and look at all of your personal wins. And so a lot of times, especially as women, we don't give ourselves credit for what we have accomplished to get to where we are.
We try to just say, Oh, that was nothing. You know, I just have four degrees, but that's nothing, you know, anybody can do that. So. What I always encourage folks to do, and this is not do, and this is not my own idea, this came from, I do a lot of reading and listening, and I can't tell you exactly where it came from, but it was from one of the books that I was listening to.
But one of the things is to write down, your list of amazing things that you've done. And don't think that it has to be this massive thing where you've published all these books, or you have all these degrees, or you've, you know, done all of these seminars, it can be as much as I didn't hit my alarm for snooze, Five days this week, or I got my kids to school on time every day.
This way, whatever it might be, what are [00:09:00] your wins? And go back as far as you can. Even if you were, I was a sub junior cowgirl all around winter and in junior high, you know, I rode horses. So that could be a win, but put all those wins somewhere and then read it out loud as if you're talking about somebody else and show the excitement.
And when you do, when you read that list, you're like, Oh my gosh, That person is incredible. They've done so much. And when you read that list yourself and realize it's you, you're going, wow, I do deserve to be here. I do have the opportunity to make a difference. And at the same time, a lot of times what we do in a new role is we try to take on too much or change too much at the front.
They're like, Oh, well, I'm going to be this type of leader. I want to do , this, this, and this. I really encourage you to start with something small. Start with something small. Get your confidence. Once you have attained that goal, do one more thing, attain that goal. And as you keep taking those [00:10:00] baby steps, you're going to start building that confidence along the way.
So those would be two of my immediate suggestions to offset imposter syndrome. But It's really knowing and believing that you should be there, you know, positive affirmations are a great way to do things, giving yourself a high five in the mirror in the morning, like Mel Robbins always suggests, because if you don't support yourself, who are you going to support?
Right? Who else is going to support you? So just doing some things that give you that positivity in the mornings and really set your day off, right? And you're going to see a world of difference. Yeah, I like taking the time to really look at your strengths, , because I did this activity once with my teachers and it was crazy, they had such a hard time finding something positive about their day or what was going on with them and I'm like, there's lots of positive things, you know, it's just they don't want to give themselves credit and I think that happens with us so often as leaders.
Well, and I [00:11:00] had a meeting with my division chairs one time and you could just tell that they were defeated, you know, it had been a long semester. I think it was just after COVID. They were all tired. It was the last meeting of the semester that we had. And I said, I know you all have a lot on your plate, but I'm going to give you one more thing.
And you could just see the weight on their shoulders. So I had paper plates that I had punched a hole in and I put a string on it. And I said, I'm going to give you one more thing to put on your plate. So I passed out the plates and I said, all right, so we're going to put those on like a big necklace, but the necklace is going to be on the backside.
And so you're going to go around and you're going to write one comment for each person in this room. And so they went around and they wrote one comment, you know, a great thing that they had done, how they make them feel, whatever it might be. And at the end of that, we sat down and I said, okay, everybody can read their plate.
I had people crying. They said, I had no idea that I made that impact on this person, or I had no idea that they felt that way, or I didn't know that people thought that I was great at this. And so just getting some of that [00:12:00] external feedback that was positive made a world of difference. And even a year later, I still saw those paper plates with those comments on the walls of a lot of , my division chairs.
So just something that. You know, you're not doing the, the standard meetings and it's not all work, work, work, work, work. It's not all policies and procedures. We have to remember the people. Yeah. Yeah. And , I love bringing out the positives and what people bring to the organization because it's so easy to take things for granted that we do.
Yes. So how do you balance projecting confidence? I think this is something a lot of people struggle with. How do you balance projecting confidence as a leader, but still being approachable and creating this psychological safety that your team can come to you. They can share concerns, but
you project yourself in a confident way. well, and I believe you're right that this is a true balance because you have some that are overconfident and they [00:13:00] come across as what they say goes, you know, it's my way or the highway and that, that is more of a dictatorship in my opinion than a leadership because leadership is not just a title.
It's a It's action. It's how do you lead? And are you leading with your heart? And are you leading as a servant leader? Meaning if you walk across campus and you see trash on the ground, are you willing to be that person that picks it up? Are you going to walk by it thinking it's somebody else's job? So, you know, it's being the leader that you want people to see and resonate with.
But I think that a big part of it of balancing confidence and yet being approachable, um, one is, Yes, you have to understand the policies and procedures and follow those as the leader, but you also have to understand the human side of it as well. You know, there's always something that might not fit in the black and white, and so it's being the person that you can talk through situations and [00:14:00] scenarios.
but also being consistent. That was one of the things a lot of folks that I worked with loved is that I was consistent. If there were rules to follow, we follow them. If there was something that didn't fall in the black and white, we had a conversation as to why the decision was different this one time, but they knew that they could rely on me for consistency and following the policy.
So I think consistency is a big part of it. piece of it, but it's also letting your folks know that you support them, that if they come to you with a challenge or with an issue, that you're going to talk through it and you're going to support them the best you can. Now, have you ever had any faculty that come to you with this ridiculous request for something that was very minor?
Well, we're going to have a conversation and we're going to have a conversation and discuss why that might not be a reason for me to have this response to it or have a different response to it. But if they [00:15:00] come to you with all their ducks in a row and say, I really need help with this, this is what the situation is.
When you respond, you use your confidence and you use your consistency. But that psychological safety is huge and that comes in the way that you communicate with folks. And so whenever you're communicating, people don't realize that your personality tends to dictate your form of communication. And if you don't know your personality when you communicate, then you're not going to be able to figure out those that you communicate with.
And so it's really like those disc assessments. If you've ever done those, where you had the lion, the otter, um, you know, the beaver and the golden retriever, it's really figuring out where you are on that system. Because if you're a lion talking with a golden retriever, so somebody that is very, um, dominating in a conversation, kind of the logical analytical person with a golden retriever, that's the one that just likes to have fun with everything.
And it's the socialite, the way you [00:16:00] communicate with that individual is going to be different than if you communicate with another lion. So understanding how you communicate and being honest with feedback from others on how you communicate, Make the world of difference whenever you're working with other individuals.
So being open being honest, you know, letting them come to you with questions, concerns and comments. All of those things are going to make a difference on if they're going to come back to you or not. How did you respond to them? Did you snap at them? They're not going to come back in your office. How did you make them feel?
So I think that, you know, there are so many things in leadership and you can't cover them all today, but it. It's how do you respond to folks whenever they come to your office? Is your door open or closed? Do you make time for individuals whenever they come to you? How do you allow them to come in? You know, are you welcoming them in?
Have you offered them to come in? Are you just saying no, this is my office. This is my room. You can't come in no [00:17:00] matter what or it's my way or the highway, but it's also getting out of your office. Do you walk around and talk to folks without an agenda? Do you, do you listen to what's being said in the hallways?
Can you look at their body language when you walk in the room? You know, are they smiling or do they kind of, you know, close their face off and move over to a side? safe space because they don't want to interact with you. So all of those things can come together and figure out, Oh, you know, maybe it's me.
Maybe, maybe it's the way that I'm coming across. But the most challenging piece is you have to be open to receiving feedback, positive and negative as a leader. And that's one of the biggest struggles. Yeah, that can be really hard. I did a survey once, you know, and I had my own perspective of what I thought some of the results would be and then what some of them were.
And it was, it was really hard. It took a lot of reflection, to [00:18:00] make some changes. It does. And especially in communication, I have a survey that I give folks whenever I do the, my communication speech and, and when we're talking through, I ask them where they think they are on the specific grid. And then after they do the little assessment later, I ask them where they scored and are they the same?
And 90 percent of the people like, yeah, I'm in the same place, same place, same place. And I'll have a handful that say, no, it was completely off. Well, that means that their perception of where they are and where they actually are, are two different things. So they probably have some challenges with the way that they communicate with individuals.
And so it's, it's really kind of an eye opener , as I have participants go through that and they go, Oh my gosh, I did not realize that that's how I came across. And once they see it, , it's easy to make the shift, but it's just being open to seeing the challenge. Yeah, I think another thing you can kind of look at is like you said, do teachers come to the office?
You know, are they even coming to the [00:19:00] office? Do they stay away from the office? How do they approach that? Because that was one thing, um, in the building, they would come all the time, which was good and bad. It was hard to get in. Yes. But , they felt very comfortable coming in the office, coming to talk to me or my assistant or secretary, you know, it was definitely an environment where people were always in the office.
And I'm like, that speaks. Yeah. A lot, a lot to how comfortable people are with coming and talking. Well, and sometimes when you bring people in your office, they feel like literally they're in the principal office because they are. I mean, they're, they're in the administrator's office, but they feel like they're the ones in trouble.
And so I always made a point when folks would come to my office, if I was sitting behind my desk, , that was something that we had a serious conversation. But if we were over on a had a side conversation. It's a little side table. That was a little round table where we would have just these other conversations.
They're like, Oh, okay. Their guard would come down, their shoulders would drop, their face would soften. And so, you know, having a different space where it's not that I'm the leader and you're not, can really shape a [00:20:00] conversation even before it starts. Yeah, yeah, definitely where you're sitting. It does matter.
I see that for sure. Yeah. The other thing you brought up that I love, and I never thought about this connection, but confidence and consistency. And when I think about a confident leader, I'm like, yeah, they are always consistent. They trust their judgment. They don't doubt it. And so that consistency is a key component.
So I love the correlation between the two. It is. And it's not just. It's not just in the way that you respond. It's also in who you are daily. , I know that there's some leaders that I have worked with, , in the past, , not , in this way, but I've actually worked for them where you weren't quite sure what you were going to get that day.
You know, 1 day they were having a really bad day and they were just a bear coming at you. Other days they were your best friend. , other days they had their own agenda. And if you didn't do exactly what they wanted to do, it was a horrible day for for the institution. And so [00:21:00] being a consistent individual when you come to work.
That is huge as well. You know, I know that everybody has life outside of work. You have family, you have maybe, , you know, parents or kids or, or what have you have a lot of things that are outside of work, but it's really being present for those that you're working with and following through with what you need to do that day.
You know, we all know that we have family challenges. We all know that we have things that go on, but it's not wearing them on your sleeve and taking it out on those around you. So that's part of the consistency is, how do you present yourself every day? You know, I was always known to be smiling and whenever I walk around, I smile all the time.
And so I think that was, you know, part of getting to know my folks is I'm smiling, I'm asking them about their lives. You know, I had a teacher who had a really horrible day. She had , a parent call and complain on her and it was something [00:22:00] that was not valid at all, but it really brought the teacher down.
And so I just walked in her office and I gave her a Hershey bar and a six pack of diet Dr. Pepper, which were her favorite things. And I said, I said, this is for you. If you need to talk, you know where I am. And she just started crying. She's like, Oh my gosh, I didn't even know that you knew I liked these, you know, this, you know, thank you so much.
And in fact, she brought it up. She was at a recent conference with me. And at the end, she goes, I just want to stand up and say something. And so she shared that story with everybody saying, you know, she is the leader that gets to know you and knows how to Follow up if you're having a bad day or knows what to say when you're having a bad day, or even what to say when you're having a good day.
So it's getting to know your people and being consistent, not only in your actions, but , in how you bring yourself to work. Yeah, yeah, that's a great point., What is your perspective on the role of vulnerability and confident leadership? Because we know that It's important for leaders to be vulnerable, but how much do they share their [00:23:00] challenges or uncertainties without undermining the team's trust or belief in their abilities?
So , that is a delicate row. , but whenever you're talking about vulnerability, I think one of the most important things is to realize is that there are other leaders around that have gone through the same thing you have. at whatever stage it is. It's important to have a, and this is something that one of the individuals on my podcast said, she has a fictitious board of directors.
So she has people, women , is what she had that are in other companies or other colleges or other industries that are all very strong in certain aspects That she gets feedback from in her life. So it might be, you know, another president of a college, or it might be somebody that's in HR, or it might be somebody that is great at finance, or it might be somebody that's great at being strategic.
And so she will take and have coffee, virtual [00:24:00] coffee with them, and they'll have a conversation. And that helps validate some of the things you're experiencing while at the same time not being afraid that by being too vulnerable for somebody you're working with that it can get misconstrued and shared in a way that is detrimental.
You know, sometimes things get shared and , it wasn't by intent, it wasn't on purpose, but it's just the way it came across. you know, whenever you work for a place, and I was someplace for 15 years, and so I was pretty ingrained in everything, but as the leader, it does get lonely at the top because there's certain things that you can't share.
Right. You aren't allowed to for one for confidentiality reasons, but there's just other things policy procedure, you know, the levels, the chain of command and all those other levels that you just can't share with everybody. And sometimes by keeping it all to yourself, you don't always know what direction to go.
And so if you haven't had the experience with a situation [00:25:00] and you try to address it yourself, There's a good chance that you might make some sort of wrong decision. So why not reach out to others that aren't at your institution, that may have had the same experience or, you know, even on Facebook, they have groups that are private groups that you can ask questions in general ways.
And it's amazing the feedback that can come back to you when you have somebody who's on the outside. So with the vulnerability piece, if it's something that's big, I encourage you to have this fictitious board of directors, or I had , another president that called it her tribe. This was her tribe and they would meet once a month.
And if they needed to meet more often, they would, but I encourage you to have somebody that you can talk to. , I was fortunate that I was at the institution and my husband also worked there. So we knew all the same people and all the dynamics. So we would be our confidant with each other but by being vulnerable, I think that it's okay if you don't know the solution right away.
You know, I think it's okay to [00:26:00] say, let me think on this or , let me research this for a minute and I'll get back to you. It's okay to ask for some space. In fact, I would actually encourage it because whenever you take that pause, it really deescalates whatever it might be. So if you have a challenge, It might be that, all right, what would you do in my shoes?
If you have somebody that comes to you, what would you do in my shoes? Or help me understand what your response would be, or why would it? And it's funny because sometimes when I've done that, the person I was talking to came back with a harsher penalty or a harsher response than I would have even done.
Right, right. I've done that. I'm like, wow, okay. So I think it's just the way that you phrase it. Um, you don't wanna say, I don't know what I'm doing, that, that's probably not, not the right thing to say. , you probably don't wanna say anything negative about somebody else that you work with, with somebody else that is on campus , or at the school.
So you have [00:27:00] to be careful with your words. But I think that it is also necessary to be a little vulnerable so that you're still seen as a human. Mm-Hmm. . So, yeah. You know, if you have kids, you know, I had kids when I was the Dean. And so I might have something with one of my children that I had to go take care of, and it might've been a conflict with some sort of event.
And although that doesn't seem like a vulnerability, it really is as a leader that you can't be at an event at a certain time and showing that it's okay to put family first. And so I think that when they see the leader do that, that they go, okay. She really does believe that family comes first and then it's the job where most people have it the other way.
And it's also if you have a supervisor yourself that doesn't support that saying no, I'm going to stand up and I'm taking care of my family. So, you really have to look at your boundaries. But being careful with what you share and who you share it with, because some of it is [00:28:00] legal reasons that you can't do it.
But it's also making sure that things don't come out at the school. But having that fictitious board of directors or your tribe, I really encourage you to have somebody on the outside you can talk to. Yeah, I agree. I would always go to a monthly principal group and that was helpful. And then also talking to other principals in the district, you know, building those relationships and and using them as my colleagues instead of sometimes I've seen where people compete, you know, yes.
Well, and that's an important point, because you said within your district, you know, this could be way out, you know, and that's one of the reasons why things like conferences are so great to attend where you network, because you might find somebody that you're in the same boat, but you're in two different states.
And so there's no chance that any of the information is going to come back for anyone else, but it's just an unbiased opinion. Yeah, and sometimes you want that district opinion and sometimes you want that outside opinion. That's right. It's [00:29:00] somebody else who's like, huh, that doesn't seem normal you know, so yes.
Yeah, that's not normal. Yeah, I always, , enjoyed or, you know, appreciated when people would say things like to help me put it in perspective. So yes, love that. Well, thank you so much for being here with us today, Stephanie. Can you tell our listeners how they can find you and learn more about what you do with leaders?
Oh, I would love to. So first of all, thank you so much for having me on here. I love just talking about anything with leaders. I do have a podcast called Empowering Women in Educational Leadership and all the information on that and my mentorship program can be found on my website. Which is www.
drstephanieduga. com, which is d r s t e p h a n i e d u g u i d. com. And so if anybody wants to reach out to me, I do speak, , all over the nation. And so please reach out and if, even if you just want to connect [00:30:00] and, have a conversation, please feel free to do that. We'll jump on a Zoom and, , talk about whatever you want to talk about.
All right. Awesome. Well, thank you, Stephanie. You are so welcome.
Mhm. Mhm.