The Principal's Handbook

The Principal Reset: The Perfectionist

Speaker: [00:00:00] In today's episode, we're talking about the perfectionist principle. That's all coming up next on The Principles Handbook

Speaker 2: Welcome to The Principal's Handbook, your go-to resource for principals looking to revamp their leadership approach and prioritize self-care. I'm Barb Flowers, a certified life coach with eight years of experience as an elementary principal. Tune in each week as we delve into strategies for boosting mental resilience, managing time effectively, and nurturing overall wellness.

From tackling daily challenges to maintaining a healthy work-life balance, we'll navigate the complexities of school leadership together. Join me in fostering your sense of purpose as a principal and reigniting your passion for the job. Welcome to a podcast where your well-being is the top priority.

Speaker: Welcome back to the podcast. Today, we are in our Summer Reset series, and we are talking about the perfectionist principal.

So what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks is giving you a different client [00:01:00] avatar of people I've worked with or even myself as a leader, and just some of the struggles that they have and ways that I would coach them through it. And , that's really supposed to help in this. And my goal is to really help you this summer, as you know we are in summer, whether you're working or not working, that you can start to see some of these patterns, become aware of the patterns, and start to make some shifts in your mindset and use some of these tools to actually reset so that next year can be different.

Because whatever you're dealing with as a principal, whether you're a perfectionist or a high achiever or a people pleaser, whatever type of person you are and the area that you struggle with in your leadership that comes out, it doesn't go away unless you really become aware that that's you and find solutions to work on it.

So today, we're talking about perfectionism. Perfectionism is a really hard thing, , to work through. So I just wanna say that, perfectionism isn't something that goes away right away. It takes a [00:02:00] lot of awareness that you are being a perfectionist, and it takes a lot of, practice to start to get better with this.

So I wanna talk about a client, Jennifer. This made-up client is a mix of a couple of clients because I've worked with a couple of different, , perfectionist clients. But Jennifer is an incredible principal. She's organized. She's thoughtful. She's very knowledgeable about curriculum, about instruction, about leadership.

She's dedicated and works a lot of hours. , But part of working long hours is because everything takes longer than it should. Her observations when she's observing a teacher could take two hours to do the write-up. , I've worked with some principals, it's about four hours per teacher. Hours creating staff meeting slides, hours creating professional learning opportunities for staff.

She rewrites emails three or four times. She constantly finds systems that, are okay, but [00:03:00] she wants to make them better, and so she's tweaking systems, whether it's the testing schedule, , the behavior system. Maybe , it's stuff with special ed and those systems. Constantly tweaking those systems, reviewing documents over and over before sending them to make sure they're perfect.

She's staying at work until at least 6:00 p.m. at night and then working on the weekends trying to make everything better. So some things that don't happen because she's so busy being a perfectionist, she doesn't get in classrooms, so she's not getting the joy of being around kids. Family time disappears, right?

On the weekends, she's constantly hearing from her husband, "Are you done working?" "It's time to be done working." She constantly feels behind. Some of my clients, we're gonna use Jennifer here, even take a sick day and get caught up on their sick day. So they took a day off work to get caught up. So the irony of this is that most people already think that this principal's doing a great job, but what she sees is all of the [00:04:00] improvement that she needs to make.

It's all of the things that need to get done. So if you can relate to this principal, Jennifer, , then you probably are a perfectionist. So I wanna talk about some perfectionist patterns that happen, , that go along with what I was saying about our client, Jennifer. Pattern one, done never feels done. So again, when you're a perfectionist, the standard is always moving.

When you do a presentation and you think it's good, oh, I have one more edit, or I could just tweak this one thing and it's gonna make it better. There's always this moving finish line. , Maybe it's the staff handbook. You get it finished, but then you need to revise it again. Or you get it finished, and then at night you're thinking about, "Oh, I didn't add this section to it," and you're constantly making sure it's perfect before it goes out to staff.

Or you wrote an email and then you're like, "I could make it sound better." , So with, uh,, this done never feels done, it's because you are constantly moving the finish line of what done is, you're constantly changing the standard.

[00:05:00] Pattern two, you're overthinking decisions. So perfectionists often believe that there's one right answer. They are very black and white thinkers, and so they spend a lot of time gathering information, getting reassurance from people, and analyzing every possibility because they think that there is one certain answer.

I always say when we're dealing with discipline, , just as an example of decision-making, there's not one answer. It's not always black and white. It could be different depending on the student or, the situation that's happening. And so if you are a perfectionist, you're looking for that perfect answer, and you really struggle with this idea that there isn't a perfect answer.

It's just the best decision that you can make in that moment. And so you have to remember that a lot of leadership decisions, they don't require a black or white answer. It just requires action and you feeling confident about that decision you make. That's the other pattern, is they're overthinking decisions.

Also, perfectionists spend a lot of time reworking things, editing things, instead of executing things. So this is where [00:06:00] perfectionism will really steal your time. . Maybe you're working on your MTSS system, and you spend so much time redesigning the forms or creating the system and tweaking the system that you never actually execute that MTSS 'cause you're so busy working on the tiny details.

You're recreating resources for teachers to use, but you never actually get them to the teachers because you're so busy making sure that they're perfect. So the problem with perfectionism is you're often spending time improving things that are already working instead of focusing on leadership priorities that are actually gonna shift things and move them forward.

Another pattern that I see is fear of mistakes. So at the heart of perfectionism is fear. Like, what is going to happen if there's an error in that? What if you get something wrong? What if someone criticizes you? What if something that you try doesn't work? What if people think that you're not competent?

Okay, so perfectionism is usually protection from judgment. You're [00:07:00] worried that people won't think you're smart enough, or there will be some sort of criticism, that you are hiding that fear, and so that's where the perfectionism comes from. The last pattern is confusing excellence with perfection.

So a lot of times we think that to be a really good principal or to be excellent at what you do, it means that you have to be perfect, but that's not true. To be excellent at what you do, that means you're thoughtful, you're intentional, you have high standards for what you do. Perfectionism is about an impossible standard, that moving finish line.

It's exhausting. It's never-ending. And so you have to be careful that you aren't confusing excellence for perfectionism because they're two different things. Okay? So those are common patterns that I see with perfectionism, and sometimes you might not even realize that you're a perfectionist. I go back and forth on if I'm a perfectionist or not because I feel like there are some things I can be.

I can catch myself. I can get things done really quick and just send it out. I'm not afraid to try things, [00:08:00] and get it wrong. However, I will find myself moving that finish line all the time. So even this idea of perfectionism isn't always black and white. You might have some perfectionist tendencies but not others.

So just pay attention to what patterns might fit you and where you could really work on that because I do get caught up in the moving the finish line depending on the situation. So I wanna start with the T cycle, which I've been doing in this, Principle Reset series. We're focusing on the T cycle, which is that your thoughts create your emotions, which create your actions.

So those thoughts that you have really impact what emotions you're feeling and what actions you take. So let's say the situation is that Jennifer needs to send, her weekly notes or weekly bulletin to the staff, and in it she's going to explain, a new procedure for testing. She's already spent an hour editing these weekly notes to the staff.

So the first thing you wanna do is be aware of what is the thought. Well, Jennifer has a thought [00:09:00] that the weekly notes need to be perfect, that she doesn't want people to misunderstand. She can't make a mistake, or everybody is gonna get upset if they don't understand what she means with this new, , testing schedule

so she's got all these thoughts about how it has to be perfect. So then the emotion that comes up is anxiety, it's pressure, it's self-doubt, it's stress. She's got all these emotions coming up that she's got to get this done and it's gotta be just right. , With those emotions, when you're feeling anxiety, pressure, stress, self-doubt, you continue to edit, you continue to fix it, and you delay sending it.

So you spend more time than you need to, and you end up staying late, you end up working on these weekly notes that should have taken you twenty minutes, and you end up doing it for an hour and a half, so to make that shift, so to make that shift happen, you really have to focus on those thoughts.

So your thoughts could be, "This doesn't need to be perfect. I'm going to communicate this the [00:10:00] best that I can communicate it." What I like to do is put something in ChatGPT and ask for clarification and make sure it's clear. But, what thoughts can you have? Or maybe it's not a big deal if people don't understand it right away.

It's not a big deal if there's a grammatical error. And , if you take away those thoughts, you're gonna create more positive emotions, , less anxiety. It's just going to be more about being productive and getting it done. So the action will be that you just send the email, send the weekly notes, move to the next priority, and make adjustments later if needed.

So just remember that Perfectionism creates delays and a lot of issues with time management, 'cause you spend so much time worrying on being perfect. Some reflection questions I want you to think about are: Where are you spending time right now trying to make things perfect?

What task are you overthinking right now? What would happen if you did it at 80% instead of 100%? I like to tell myself [00:11:00] my B+ is other people's A work, so you think something is an 80%, but maybe that's somebody else's 100%. So think about that. What would happen if you did it at 80% instead of 100%?

What are you afraid would happen if you made a mistake? How much time is perfectionism costing you each week? And I'm really curious about that. Think about how much time perfectionism is costing you each week. So now what I wanna do is talk about the reset, so how we're going to actually reset. So I have five things.

So first, I want you to ask, is this good enough? Okay, can this be better? Sure, but is it good enough? Is it that B+, that 80%? Everything can always be better. We can always make tweaks, but done is better than perfect sometimes because we have so many things on our plate as a principal, and if you get stuck in this constant feeling, "Is this good enough?"

you are going to be working on it forever, and you're gonna make yourself crazy. So that's [00:12:00] why it's this idea that done is better than perfect. I always think of when I was working on my dissertation, somebody would always tell me, "You know what the best dissertation is?"

And I would be like, "What? What's the best dissertation?" "A done dissertation," right? It's one that is finished. It doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be perfect, just finish it. And so it's the same with this idea. Is this good enough? Don't ask yourself, "Can this be better?" Because things can always be better.

The second thing is set time limits. I love to do this. I give myself 10 minutes to do a task, and that's it. I might say, "Okay, I have 10 minutes here before I go into classroom walkthroughs. I'm gonna work on my weekly notes. I'm giving myself 10 minutes to do it." And if you need to, set a timer on your phone.

Maybe you're working on your staff meeting agenda and slides that you're gonna do. Give yourself 30 minutes. This is where time blocking can be really helpful because it can set time limits for you. , But when it's time, that's the biggest thing is you have to say, "Time's up," and move on. You can't continue to [00:13:00] change the time.

You have to say, "Time's up," and move on. . The third thing is focusing on the impact, not the tiny details, so you have to ask yourself when you're working on something, is this improving student outcomes? So many people think that having things perfect is going to make things so much better in the building, but you have to think big picture.

Is having a grammatical error in your weekly notes improving student outcomes? So you're spending all this time on your weekly notes to not have an error, but does that improve student outcomes? No. It's important to be communicating with staff, and it's important for communication to be good, but if it's not improving student outcomes, then don't obsess about it,

so it's important, but we just have to watch on what are the things that are the bigger impact instead of focusing on those little tiny details all the time. And then the fourth thing is normalizing imperfection. Just reminding yourself every initiative you try, it's not going to work. Every decision you make, you're not going to like, [00:14:00] other people aren't going to like.

It's not gonna be perfect. Every conversation, even when you plan it out, when you have a hard conversation, it's not gonna go perfectly or how you planned it. That's part of leadership, right? We're working with other humans. It's not gonna go as planned. That's just how it is I always think of when you have a plan with a student with discipline and to keep kids separated so that, another incident doesn't happen, and no matter how good the plan is, something happens, and you're like, "Oh, my gosh, I've worked so hard to make sure that these students

didn't interact with each other, and here they are again. This situation happened again." That's just you're dealing with humans, right? you can't control everything. You try your best. You do your best in every situation, but it's not going to be perfect, so you have to normalize imperfection. And then the last piece I want you to think about is replacing your identity.

So instead of having that , old identity of, "I have to be perfect. A good principal does everything right," replace it with, "A strong principal takes action. They learn. They adjust. They're flexible. They move [00:15:00] forward." Change your identity to, "Leadership doesn't have to be perfect.

It just has to be my best," And when I say your best, It could be that 80%. It doesn't have to be perfect. We're asking ourself to achieve things at an impossible standard as perfectionists, and so it's really important that you look at what that standard is. You still wanna do quality work, but you wanna make sure that it's a realistic expectation.

So perfectionism often disguises itself as those high standards, but if we set those standards where they keep moving, it's going to steal your time, your energy, and really overall, it's going to take your confidence from you because you're gonna feel like you're never good enough. Because the goal isn't to lower your standards.

It's not to not care about things, but it's to have realistic expectations that you're working towards so that you're not constantly moving that finish line. , Your school, your teachers, the students, they don't need a perfect principal.

They just need someone who's willing to take action, and if you [00:16:00] get stuck in perfectionism, a lot of times you're not willing to take that action. So I hope that you take some tips away from this. Next week is our last week of this specific type of Principal Reset series, but we're talking about the self-doubting principal next week, so the leader who looks outside themselves for answers.

They doubt decisions. , And it's not because they don't know enough, but really, they don't trust themselves enough. So I think it's gonna be a really good episode, so make sure you tune in for that. Also make sure to follow me on TikTok at The Principal's Handbook for more tips and free resources.

If you love the podcast, if you're listening on Apple, please scroll down in your app and leave a review. That's how people find the show. , So that's really helpful if you can leave a review. But 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.

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