The Principal's Handbook

Episode 33- The Secret to Loving Your Job as a Principal
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And today's episode, I'm going to share the secret to loving your job as a principal. That's all coming up next, right here on the principals handbook. Stay tuned.
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.
Welcome back to the podcast today. We're going to be talking about the secret to loving your job as a principal. And yes, there is a secret to loving your job as a principal that you might've [00:01:00] not thought about.
We know that. To love your job as a principal, you have to love students and you have to love the work that you're doing. But the secret that I think that not a lot of people think about with loving their job is if you have self-efficacy. And if you have self-efficacy, that is referring to your ability to believe in yourself, to achieve a goal or complete a task.
It's aligned with confidence and think about it. If you're confident in your ability to do something. You usually like doing it more? And so if you have high self-efficacy and you have confidence in what you're doing,
you're going to enjoy your job. More. Someone with high self-efficacy has the confidence that they can do whatever they set their mind to. They can accomplish goals for their building. They have the self-efficacy that if they want to lose weight or start exercising, they'll be able to do that. Or the self-efficacy to set boundaries and go home. At four 30 and not be at school until nine o'clock at night.
Self-efficacy really [00:02:00] helps determine how you feel about yourself and how you enjoy what you're doing. , when you're good at something, it makes you like it more, it makes you more motivated to do something. And also you're going to keep improving and getting better because when we're happy and motivated, It makes us want to improve. And I think about this with teachers all the time. When I see teachers that are happy. And they love what they do.
They're more motivated to continue getting better if a teacher's negative and miserable and feeling burnt out . Or not liking teaching. I noticed that they're not getting better. Right. So think about that in your own practice as a principal. The problem with self-efficacy is it can be really hard to have high self efficacy. When you're questioned constantly in your job and in the job as a principal, we are questioned.
We're questioned by parents. We're questioned by teachers. We're questioned by students now, even. And so when you're being questioned about your decision-making and what you do in your job all the time, it can lower your self efficacy. It can lower your [00:03:00] confidence and it can make you doubt your abilities. And also in the job of a principal, there are so many areas you have to know.
It's not a specialized thing that you do like an instructional coach who might coach people on reading. That's very specific. You can focus on just being good at reading. In the role of a school leader we're focused on PLC's behavior. RTI MTSS. We have evaluations. We have student discipline.
We try to coach teachers and make them better. We have data to look at school improvement plans. There are so many different areas that we need to be well-versed in that it can make you have lower self-efficacy because you don't feel like, you know, as much. And that can be really hard. And so your self efficacy as a leader, it impacts everyone around you. Because good leaders bring certainty to situations.
People want to feel certain about situations, the people who are following you. And [00:04:00] so when you bring certainty, it helps create this positive culture where people trust in you and they know that everything's going to be okay with you leading them. And when you have low self efficacy, Or you have doubt or uncertainty about how you can perform in specific areas, whether it's, you know, leading teachers through RTI or dealing with discipline, it impacts how everyone views you and your abilities.
What can happen in the culture of a school is if teachers start to doubt your abilities, because you doubt your abilities. Then teachers are going to find other teachers to influence them. They're going to find a teacher leader to look up to instead. And that teacher leader is going to lead the teachers in a way that might not be great for the culture of the school.
And it may not be. In the direction that you, as the principal want them to lead, it also can increase conflict in the building because there's always personality conflicts. So when one teacher steps up to lead. Other teachers can [00:05:00] start to feel disengaged. They can be less motivated. And there's just a lot of reactivity in the building versus being proactive. So self-efficacy is really important.
I can't stress that enough. And. If you're listening to this thinking, I do doubt my abilities and I do have a hard time just knowing the decisions that I make are good decisions. I do want to let you know, I'm going to link in the show notes. I have a free workshop where I talk about how to stop doubting your decisions. As a school leader.
So do that workshop that'll really help you get better at doubting yourself as a school leader. And that can be a great resource for you. Today, I just want to talk about four ways that you can improve your self efficacy, because you want your teachers to have confidence in you and having self-efficacy.
It doesn't mean that you need to know everything. There are so many things to know in your job as a principal. So it could be that. You have higher self efficacy when it comes to instructional strategies, . But when it comes to the [00:06:00] topic of the science of reading, maybe you don't feel as confident.
It's the topic that you don't know as much that's okay. That doesn't necessarily mean you have low self-efficacy. It means you don't know as much in that area, but you probably know the people to talk to. You probably know the resources to get for your teacher. But having low self-efficacy is like saying, I don't even know what to do when it comes to the science of reading.
So you have to be really careful with that and you have to work on your self efficacy so that people can trust you as a leader. And they believe in your abilities. So today I'm going to give you four strategies to help build yourself efficacy. So number one, acknowledge that you have low self-efficacy.
This could be overall, or it could be in a specific area. So reflect on past experiences and understand how maybe you've searched for the right method. Or you've had so much doubt.
Acknowledge the areas you have low self efficacy in getting better and growing yourself efficacy. You have to start by [00:07:00] trusting your current methods and what you're doing. And. At, from what's going well in your building.
What are the positive things happening look for those wins, you know, acknowledge that. Your self-efficacy might be low in a certain area, but what are areas you have wins? So I'm going to give the example of tough conversations. You know, when I first started as a principal, that was an area I really struggled with was having tough conversations.
I'm a people pleaser. So I had a lot of self doubt when it came to tough conversations, I had low efficacy. I didn't know if I could ever get better in this area, and so I had to first acknowledge that this was something I struggled with and then acknowledge, I can get better.
Anybody can get better at having tough conversations for a long time. I thought it was a certain personality, I thought, oh, that's just not my personality to have those conversations. Well, when you become a principal, you have to have tough conversations. And so you get to decide that you're going to be a person who has those tough conversations. And you have to change that about yourself.
That's an area you have to build up. [00:08:00] And so once you acknowledge that that's an area that you're struggling in. Then you can realize that you need to build that up and start looking at ways that you avoid that problem. I started to look at ways that I avoided having those tough conversations. You know, and, I just committed to facing those challenges.
And I decided that , I'm going to get better at this. This is something I struggle with. I'll get better at having these tough conversations.
And so I did this by going to the next strategy I'm going to share, which is setting and achieving micro goals. I just started by having small goals.
When it came to tough conversations, it could be that I noticed I needed to have a tough conversation. So instead of shying away from it, like I would in the past, I decided to address it. Head-on and I would think I'm going to go have this conversation right now. I'm just going to have it. And it might be the smallest conversation.
It probably wasn't the biggest conversation because. If it was bigger, I would spend more time planning and thinking about what I was going to say, but I would just have these tough [00:09:00] conversations and just get them over with say what I needed to say and move on. And so when you focus on those small manageable goals, you start to trust your abilities.
So the more I had those small conversations that were still tough. The more, I started to identify as a person who could have tough conversations. So I would begin with those specific moments. And then as I met those smaller goals and had those little conversations that were tough. I felt more comfortable to have those bigger conversations. And I had to practice that first. I would kind of script out what I was going to say in those conversations, or have an outline of what my key talking points were. I would think about how somebody might respond to me in that situation. But I would practice what that would look like.
And I would go into that situation thinking I can do this and having confidence in my abilities because I did it with those small conversations and those small conversations added up. And so I knew I could do it with a bigger conversation. Starting with small goals and building [00:10:00] up is going to help you build self-efficacy in an area. And then strategy three is to document and celebrate successes. So one thing I like to do daily is I write down three wins for the day. And then I write down three wins for the next day.
And so if I'm working on a certain goal, I write down three wins related to that goal. , if I was thinking about tough conversations, I would think about three tough conversations or three tough things that maybe I did that I would have avoided in the past. And then I think about three things I was going to do the next day. We're an everyday, you might not have a tough conversation of that's your goal, but what are three wins that you had where you can build up your self efficacy? And then write down your three wins for the next day, because it's kind of like the idea of manifestation where you're deciding. That you're going to have wins the next day and what those wins are going to look like.
If I'm going to have a tough conversation the next day, I will say my tough conversation will go well, I will plan that out and be ready for that conversation. I'll [00:11:00] go into it, knowing that it's going to go well, the person might not like it, but I know it will go well. Or maybe. If I was giving feedback on an evaluation, I would think. I'm going to give really critical feedback here, but I'm going to do it in a way that's going to support this teacher and it might be hard. But I want to help this teacher.
I would go into it with a plan, knowing exactly what I wanted to do.
Having this habit of recognizing your wins for the day and then anticipating what success you're going to have the next day. Really helps you foster a positive mindset and it helps you see yourself in a different light. , it helps you create a new identity for yourself because identity is huge.
When you're thinking about, as I identify as a person who does not do well with tough conversations. Well, the more you tell yourself that the more it becomes true. So if you identify as a person who handles tough conversations and you handle them well, Or you don't shy away from those tough conversations, identify with that person who you want to be identify with having higher self-efficacy in [00:12:00] whatever area you're struggling in. And then my fourth strategy is to invest in targeted PD. So if you're choosing a specific area for improvement, you need to dedicate a lot of time to learn about that area to improve it. It takes about 30 hours of focused PD to effectively enhance a skill.
So if you think about that as a principal, what area do we have? 30 hours of PD in it. You know, at one time, not a lot of areas. There's not a lot of PD that you take. That's 30 hours of focused professional development. And so if you really need to get better at something you need 30 hours to learn it. Whether that's doing a book study or hiring a coach or joining a mastermind, or even getting a course online. Whatever that looks like you need a lot of practice and intention and developing that skill.
And so that's probably why you have low self efficacy in the first place, because you don't have a lot of knowledge in that skill in a lot of practice. So in my example [00:13:00] of tough conversations, there's a lot of great books about having tough conversations. And then I'd also use coaching from my superintendent about this topic, and I would share my wins with him and. Share conversations I had and reflect with him and having 30 hours of that is what is going to help you improve in that area. So I want you to really think about. A mentor or a coach that you could use to get that personalized feedback and support to target that professional development. So that you get better and you really feel yourself growing.
I just want to reiterate and go back through those four strategies. So to improve your self efficacy, you need to first acknowledge that you have low self efficacy in an area. You need to set and achieve micro goals. You need to document and celebrate successes and you need to invest in targeted professional development.
If you do these things, you will have higher self-efficacy and you will start loving your job when you feel bad about how you're performing in your job? It really makes you [00:14:00] not like your job as much. So the more self-efficacy you have, the more confidence you have in your abilities, in your job, your abilities to lead, the more you're going to love your job.
So I really hope that you try some of these strategies that you reach out to a coach. I would love the opportunity to coach with you. One-on-one I do a complimentary consultation with you where we go through, where you think your weaknesses are, and I help you bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to go. I would love the opportunity to do a free consult with you. You can reach out to me. On Instagram at bar flowers, coaching, or visit me at bark flowers, coaching.com.
I will put all that in the show notes as well, but if you love the show, if you're listening on apple, scroll down in your app and leave a review. And keep in mind, you have the power to shape your life. According to the mindset you choose. I hope you have a great week and I'll see you back here next time.
Mhm. [00:15:00] Mhm.