The Principal's Handbook

Managing Conflict as a Principal with Jen Schwanke
[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.
Welcome everyone to the podcast. I'm so excited today. Our guest is Jen Schwanke, and she is the author of The Principal's Guide to Conflict that we're going to be talking about today, but she's also the author of three previous books. You're the Principal, Now What?, The Principal Reboot, and The Teacher's Principle.
She has written for Educational Leadership Magazine, [00:01:00] Choice Literacy, Education Week Teacher, Principal and Principal Navigator. So I'm so excited to have her on the podcast today. Welcome Jen. Thank you so much. It's great to be here. And we were just talking about how we actually met Barb, , several years ago.
We don't need to say how many ago, but, , I was at , some, , conference speaking and you were there. So here we are again. Yeah, and actually, , you were talking about the book. You're the principal. Now what? And that is a book that I like to buy for every principal that I mentor and they're taking over their own building.
I love to buy them that book because it's so practical and there's so many good takeaways. So if you have not read , that's a great book. , but today I'm excited to talk about it. The Principles Guide to Conflict. When I saw that you wrote this, I thought, oh my gosh, I needed this so much when I started as a principal because my personality, I was an elementary teacher turned elementary principal and I'm a people pleaser and I want everybody to be happy.
And so conflict is very difficult. So talk to us [00:02:00] about what inspired you to write this book. Well, exactly what you said, , you become a principal and , you, , All of a sudden realize, Oh my gosh, every time there's a conflict, everybody's looking at me. Like I, I didn't do this and now I have to fix and create, , fix it, mediate it, ignore it, manage it, whatever it is.
And so I've actually been blown away by the response to this book, because I think so many principals are walking around thinking they needed to have this mastered. They need to know exactly what to do when a conflict arises. And here's the, what's most troublesome Barb is many measure their success or failure by the amount of conflict.
So they think that there'll be an awesome principle if there's no conflict in their building. And I really want to push back against that. Like conflict can be so healthy and productive and really open up perspectives , and. But if it's not managed correctly, or if there isn't space created to allow [00:03:00] for it, it can be devastating.
It'd be really damaging for, honestly, for many years. Yeah, and as you say that, I think about when I was a new principal on my BLT, my building leadership team, we had a very strong group of teachers, very strong personalities, veteran teachers, they were all wonderful, had different skill sets, and there was a lot of conflict.
And I remember one time I was so comfortable. Yeah. Just upset and overwhelmed by it. And one of them said to me though, and it was so helpful. She said, we're, we feel comfortable expressing this in this room with you. Like that is a great thing. And I thought, you know what? That is such a great thing. How boring would it be if we all just sat around and was like, yep, that sounds great and agree with everything.
Well, exactly. , you know, teachers can get into an echo chamber where we all agree with one another and that certainly feels good, but there's no production in that. , and I think too, it's easy for principals to confuse, , like maybe you did in that room at the beginning, the difference [00:04:00] between conflict and disagreement, conflict and confrontation, conflict and competition, all of those things, , it's nuanced, but conflict , I believe it can be a, , a word that doesn't have a connotation, whereas a word like, you know, a fight or a confrontation or even argument can be negative.
But I want to kind of rebrand conflict to make it so that, Hey, it's great. We can, we can be conflicting on this. It's fine. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great point. , what are your suggestions on balancing the need to address conflict promptly with, complex issues? Because sometimes, like you said, we immediately hear that people are disagreeing and we think, okay, I should address this.
But at what point is it, , let it kind of ride the waves itself and just be healthy disagreements and the principal needs to step in and handle it? Right. I think my measure is, and this is so unscientific, it's, it's probably laughable, but it works for me. And this is my four tens rule. If it is going to be [00:05:00] a non issue in 10 minutes, let it go.
, but what about 10 hours, 10 days? 10 months or you could even stretch it to 10 years because there are conflicts that can be so damaging that they Escalate fast and they do become a confrontation and somebody's still mad about it 10 years later, right? So you have to distinguish how much of this matters and what your zone of influence is And so there are times like let's just take a little squirmish on the playground It's not gonna matter in 10 minutes.
Somebody's gonna step in and say hey take a minute step away And everybody's, you know, goes to the drinking fountain and moves on with their life. That's not something you need to do anything about. , if something is still going to be, , bothersome or have a negative effect on your, on the students, on the teachers, on the parents, whatever in, you know, 10 hours, 10 days, then you might need to step in and, um mediate or facilitate or even oversee a conversation.
So I, I guess that's what I'm saying is the first step of it is figuring out the impact. , And I [00:06:00] have kind of a three step process I follow with that, that I can get into in a minute, but, , again, to your point, I think many times principals think they have to intervene every single time, but I think it's very healthy for a principal to be like, you know what, I'm not touching that.
That doesn't affect us, and it really has nothing to do with the work we're trying to get done. Yeah, I like that really discerning between the two because it does always feel like, okay, should I be addressing that? Should I not be addressing that? And you're kind of walking on eggshells in those situations.
Right. And I like to tell principals, you have to identify tattling from a real problem. Just like teachers do. All the time. They can recognize tattling and tattling to me is when someone comes and says, Hey, someone's behaving in a way that's bothering me, but it doesn't mean that it's actually misbehavior, bad behavior, problem, problematic behavior.
And , I think you can retrain a staff. Don't bring me your titles, bring me things that really are going to affect the students in this building. And it's interesting because the building I was [00:07:00] in, they were really directed by the union not to come to administration. Um, so I think it was good and bad.
In some cases, people were afraid to come to the principal because they're like, we're not supposed to. But in other cases, they really did try to mediate themselves so that they could. Better navigate it before administration was involved. Right, right. And that's like you said, there's good and bad. You don't want a place to be where everybody comes with all the little things.
, I work in a district where the union , is , really good at, , identifying what are management problems and what are just, you know, a little conflicts you need to work through , with one another. Yeah. And I noticed in the book, you talk about conflict with teachers, parents, , and students.
Talk to us a little bit about the three groups, because that's obviously one of the biggest challenges of principals is all the different groups that we work with and conflicts with parents, especially can be really challenging because you want to keep those relationships strong.
You don't have that. Same working relationships like you do with the [00:08:00] teachers, , but, you know, parents can have a really strong personality and can come at you hard sometimes, right? Right. Well, it's interesting to me. Administrators are trained in how to handle conflict with students and we have handbooks for that, right?
We have, we have certain steps you follow and it's pretty, , I don't want to say it's cut and dry because it never is. You can talk to two students who are involved in the exact same thing. altercation, if you will, and have completely different stories. But, so I don't mean to minimize the complexity of it, but you know, , we almost expect students to argue, to fight, to have fractures in their friendships, that type of thing.
But adult conflicts are a lot trickier. And I think there's, , The teacher bucket of conflict is complex because we do want them all to get along and be completely collegial and professional at all times. But teachers get tired. They get overwhelmed. They have big differences in their philosophical and stylistic approaches, and that can quickly manifest into, you know, gossip and clicks, that type of thing.
[00:09:00] And, , I think you have to work toward productive conflict. And I think the root of that. is respect. And, you know, I have, I've said to a staff before, listen, whether you teach, PE or IBAP chem, we're all here doing a really hard job. And one job is just as hard as the other for different reasons.
And, so you have to really root your approach in respect, mutual respect. Now parents fall, as we know, on a massive spectrum of over involved to disengaged. Regardless of where they are on that , spectrum, each one brings a unique perspective, right? An interpretation of response to relationships to the school and even on one another.
I mean, I've been asked before to mediate. in a neighborhood dispute, because when that happens, parents tend to say, well, I don't know, call the principal, right? , so that's one of those cases where people look to the principal to solve it. And [00:10:00] here's where, if it's okay with you, Barb, I'll go into my Three step process.
Yeah. That'd be great. Okay. So I always try to discipline myself for , this, , I say process, but it's more a cycle because you can kind of enter the cycle at any time. One of the parts of the cycle is anticipate. And I think this is something we don't do well as principals. See where it's coming.
See what situations in your school might lead to , regular response. conflict. So we do know that a lack of standardized systems or processes or protocols, that's where frequent conflicts bubble up. So you kind of need to look for trends and identify what will fix it. So you would anticipate, you know what, every day as the students move from lunch to, know, APOD in the building, , there's tussles, there's fights, okay, how can we fix that?
Improved communication, normed responses, , increased presence of teachers, whatever. And part of that too is identifying teams or departments who naturally can step in , and [00:11:00] mediate a conflict and kind of emulate that. So, as you know, again, anticipating you look at. Unstructured areas of time about imbalances of workload, maybe for teachers, , for parents, maybe a lack of communication and look for a picture of where conflict is likely to arise.
So then you've got the anticipation done. Your next part of the cycle is to analyze it. I actually think we do this really well. , this is where we look at a conflict and we really understand its antecedents and its effects. , this is where you distinguish facts from feelings, right? And you find that there's truth in both.
, my one caution here for principles is often we do this in isolation and I cannot tell you how many times I've been like, yep, got it, analyzed it. I know it. And then somebody comes in. from stage left and tells me something I'm like, Oh, wow. My own set of beliefs or assumptions really blinded me there.
And so, this is the part where, as we spoke earlier, you analyze, is [00:12:00] someone just tattling? Does someone need help? What's going to happen if I do nothing? , does somebody need empowered or supported to handle it without me? , and so , this is the analyze part. And then the final part of the circle would be acting.
And , this is where your path forward is developed, where you really identify what needs to be done. , and I can't stress enough, sometimes the answer is nothing. Your no action is an action. So let's take a parent who's really bad about a test grade and shoots off a nasty email at 4. 05 PM and the teacher comes to you in tears and wants you to stick up for her and call the parent.
You might say, you know what? We're doing nothing. This is a non issue. The grade is the grade. The parent can be upset. Here's what you might say in response, but not tomorrow. Not till tomorrow. You know, , that might be your action. But in other cases, you do need to really act. And I like to delineate between actions.
You know, do I need to manage, mediate, facilitate, ignore? And then you set up your environment of intentionality. And you know , what to do and what to say. And this, [00:13:00] I cannot emphasize enough rehearsing. If you're anxious about having a difficult conversation, sit down and rehearse some of your points and, , that, you know, that helps you complete your action and then you start the cycle again.
So that works for me. I like that. And, um,, I had a really difficult parent as I ended , last school year, and that analyzing was huge and I never did it alone. I always had someone with me who was in on the conversation. And on like, okay, did I hear this right? Am I getting emotional? Because I needed that outside because that parent was so emotion driven that even though I tried really hard, I had to have someone really watch me to say, am I bringing my emotions into this?
Because that's a skill in itself to just leave the emotions out of it. Right. And you probably had someone or someone's that you really trusted to be able to say, Hey, , Hey, let's step back here and slow down a little bit. Yes. Yes. And I'm privileged. I [00:14:00] had an assistant principal, but also bringing my counselor.
So principals, if you don't have , an assistant principal, a counselor is another great person because she was a huge part of the conversation anyways, and dealing with this parent. So that worked. Right. And , you know, the parents. piece is really, that causes, I think, the most heart flutters for principals, because parents can be really mean.
And they say things like, you know, I'm going to go to the media. I had two emails this week that said that. And what we need to remember is the media likes to pick up stories that aren't stories, but they won't pick up stories that are one sided. You know, they don't want to dip their toe in, You know, who's mad at the principal for what?
So, um, it's kind of a non threat, but threats still always make your heartbeat a little faster. It's human nature. The other piece of the Um, but where the um,, the most common reason that it makes our heartbeat a little faster is, again, principals judge themselves on lack of conflict.
And so if there's say a conflict with students you work through it, you're done. And then it's time to communicate with the parents. And it's like it starts all over. right? Because , you [00:15:00] know, ,, the. parent quickly questions your process, what you did, what you said, how you said it and the outcome.
And, you know, I think if every principal listening had a dime for every time they've heard, well, what would the other kid get? , we could all retire. , and so that question though, as many times as we answer it never gets easier because it feels so combative and it feels like we're on the defense for doing great work.
Thank you. Yeah, so how do you deal with, , really managing your emotions? And I'm thinking any time of the year, but I'm also thinking, we laughed, secretaries, everybody around December, spring break, everybody would be crazy. And we'd be like, what is going on?
And then somebody would be like, remember, it's the time of year. And how to manage the emotions during that time when you have teachers who are ready for break, students who are ready for break, parents, I mean, and then you're supposed to be the steady one. And then you're also ready for break. Well, yeah.
And name any of [00:16:00] them, full moon, Halloween, , party, whatever it is, parties, , pep rallies, whatever. It's easy for me to say as a 50 year old woman who has worked on this her whole life. , But I'm a very emotional person. I have a physical reaction to emotion and I have learned some strategies along the way.
The most important of which is weight. I have learned to identify the faster heartbeat, the, , armpits, you know, the shaky hands and say, okay, you have got to take a walk. You've got to take a break. You've got to get a drink of water because my instinct is act, fight or flight. I'm always going to fight.
And I, that is not good. That is not good. I've learned this about myself. So I need to force flight. I need to get out and breathe. I say to people, there is very few. , there are very few emergencies in education. There are some, school safety, you're hearing me there, but there are very few things that need handled immediately.
As a matter of fact, a [00:17:00] large majority of emotion inducing situations would benefit from saying, Hey, let's, let's swing back around and talk about this tomorrow. Okay. , all of those responses, are you listening to your body, listening to your mind and disciplining yourself not to do something impulsive.
So all of that is to say it's hard. , I manage my emotions through a lot of hard work, discipline and practice. I'm sure there's people out there that don't have that quick, , you know, serotonin or endorphin burst. I don't even know what it is. Dopamine burst. , but emotion cannot be part of it. A conflict resolution, unless that emotion is empathy, compassion, and commitment to hearing all the sides.
Yeah, I really agree with what you're saying. I love that you're saying to give it time because I think so often, and I, As a new principal, I can remember thinking everything had to have an answer right away. You know, everything had to be immediate. And it was learning over time that, okay, really it isn't an [00:18:00] emergency.
People want an answer now, but it doesn't have to have an answer now. And we can own it. I literally said yesterday, and I was kind of proud of myself for, I think I'll do this forever. I said to, , a colleague, , I'm having a really emotional reaction to this question, so I'm going to not answer it. Even though I, my answer will probably be the same in a day or two, , I articulated, Hey, I'm having an emotional reaction, which does two things.
One is it gives a valid reason for my pause. It shows that I'm disciplined in that pause. , and then the second thing is it models it for others, right? , hopefully that person will say, you know what? I can say it if I'm not thinking clearly. I can say, Hey, this is big. I'm not at my best. Let me circle back in an hour.
Or a day or a week, whatever it is. Yeah. And I think that's great because even though, like you said, you're going to have the same answer, your response will probably be so different. You're not going to have that heightened emotion that comes with delivering the response. I don't, I've not [00:19:00] ever met a principal who says to me, you know, I wish I had acted more impulsively.
Nobody ever says that. People do say, boy, I'm glad I waited on that. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great point. , any other last tips or anything you want to share, , from your book for our listeners? Well, yeah, , I think the thing I most want to, state is that conflict is to be expected. And in many cases, it is the sign of a healthy culture.
You know, people need to be able to disagree. They need to know or be able to learn healthy ways to respond when they don't feel heard, valued, respected, understood. , and, I don't believe school communities can do good work unless we kind of embrace that conflict is inevitable. And when we learn how to do it in a positive, productive way, it can kind of lay that foundation for respect and professionalism.
So all of that is to say that book is not about how to eliminate conflict. That book is about how to embrace it [00:20:00] and say, you know, we're going to do this. And we're going to write, , or even that's, let me erase that, not do it right, but do it well. And, , that's what I wish if I had a magic wand, I would say to principals, don't fear it.
Don't dread it. Certainly don't measure yourself by it. , walk in and say, okay, wonder what problems we're going to have to solve today. That'll be fun. It'll be a good day. And hopefully that will, , empower the people around you to also become problem solvers. That's such a great perspective because one of the things I teach in life coaching is that life is a balance of like 50 50 emotions.
It's not all happy emotions. So if we walk through life thinking like, you know, even when we start the school year, we're so excited for the year. And if we go into it, like, it's gonna be great. There's not gonna be conflict. Everything's gonna be perfect. , We're setting ourself up for failure. So I love what you're saying there.
Well, and like you said, there are times of the year that are not 50 50. They're 10 good, [00:21:00] 90 crappy, right? So it's okay to say, man, I had a bad month. Because it can be that it can be that tricky for that long. , and I, as a younger professional, I would have thoughts like, I can't do this. I need to find a new career.
This is too exhausting. And then three months later I'd be like, I love my job. So , the key to me is kind of give yourself a little bit of a break there with all the feelings and the broad brush of always and never. You know, this is always. So difficult. Parents are always so mean. I'm never able to get through to my teachers, whatever.
Always and never are pretty dangerous words to use. It's more like, you know, look at the leadership long game, stay calm, pause, and it'll be okay. Yeah, it really, you're right. Education is really an emotional roller coaster for the whole year. You love it. Yeah. Hate it. You love it. You hate it. And then, you know, but those [00:22:00] highs are so great that's what keeps you in it.
And that year, the highs and lows, and then multiply that times 35 years and you get why a lot of us are a little tightly wound, but, it's a game and it's a work in progress. We're all working on it. Yeah. Well, thanks so much, Jen, for being here. How can people find your book? What's the best way?
Yep. Absolutely. They can look on for the book. They can go to ASCD's website or Amazon, and then they can find me at JenSchwonke. com and drop me an email there and be in touch if they'd like. All right. And you can also find her. She's a co host on Principal Matters podcast. Yep. Yep. Will Parker and I do that.
Super fun podcast. And you can find that really anywhere where podcasts are, but listen to this episode first of Barb's podcast. Thank you.
Mhm. [00:23:00] Mhm.