First off, let me explain…I love my job. I love leadership and I have a feeling deep in my gut that I am meant to be where I am and that I am headed in the right direction for wherever I may go next. I know, if you are reading this blog, that you have that nudge in your gut that you were meant to be a leader too. Otherwise, you would be scrolling another website that speaks to you or pulls you to it. Don’t get me wrong, I scroll websites for my other passions too, but this nudge is just way too strong to pass up. Like, I said, I love leading a school, working with teachers, and all the things that come with leadership. However, there are some things that I am not so excited about. There are things that I use to avoid at all costs because they are just too hard or uncomfortable. I wanted to dive into that because I was finding that the things that I didn’t love were starting to stack up. So, I decided to do something about the things that I tended to avoid in my leadership and figure out why.
It’s easy to quickly dismiss an opportunity or a task or an idea in your leadership and just push it aside or say, “I’ll do it later”, or “That job is just not for me,” or my favourite one, “Maybe I will do that next time.” I realized that I was starting to avoid alot of things in my leadership. And frankly, it was starting to really affect how I led. I was playing safe, and not really moving forward like I wanted. So I flipped the script on myself and started to zero in on the things that I was avoiding. I started to examine my why for avoiding something or having resistance around it. I even researched a few of my favorite mentors to see what they had to say about resistance and the best advice came from Amy Porterfield (yep, she is my fav…if you haven’t guessed it already.). She had some amazing tips that I implemented right away and things started to shift. I started to combine my own ideas for challenging myself to face things I usually avoid too and that helped too.
The first thing I did was I made a list of some things that I usually avoid in my leadership and I asked myself why I was avoiding them. I really honed in on the things that would get me the most bang for my buck if I actually challenged myself to face them. Amy Porterfield spoke about forward pacing yourself and thinking about the outcome that would happen should you tackle that task. She states that asking yourself, “is the outcome of this project or task or thing that you don’t want to do, going to outweigh the feeling of being uncomfortable or the feeling of uncertainty when you’re doing it?” Think, does the outcome outweigh those feelings you are trying to avoid? When I heard this idea of asking myself this question, it was like a light bulb went off. So for me, one of the big things on my list was team teaching in classrooms with teachers to build relationships and mentor other teachers. I always went into classrooms to observe but I always wanted to bring it to the next level. However, I always avoided it because I didn’t want to put teachers out or I didn’t feel confident enough in myself. Once I figured out my why, I started to look at the outcome that would happen if I did start team teaching and mentoring in front of the kids with the teachers inside of the classroom. I realized that next level mentorship would happen, extension of professional learning would happen, implementation would happen, valuable feedback would occur, and relationships would strengthen because I would be modelling and learning alongside instead of just telling. So, asking myself this question made me realize that avoiding just kept us at status quo.b Taking a risk and setting up team teaching workshops would move us forward in pedagogy, mentoring, my own leadership, and improve student learning. Yep, this was definitely something that I had to dive into rather than avoid. Once I realized the outcome, I made it happen and it has been a game changer for me and the teachers. And yes, it was hard… other wise I wouldn’t have avoided it in the first place.
I’m sharing this with you. I’m hoping some of you are nodding your head, like, oh, yeah. I can totally relate. For so long, I would tell myself, “I don’t want to overstep.” or “who am I to team teach with them.” and “They probably don’t want me in there.” I didn’t want to be in the class, off the cuff, but rather prepared and polished. But if I dug a little deeper, I realized I wasn’t doing it because I didn’t want myself to look unprepared or vulnerable. I was making it about me rather than about the massive teaching opportunity that I was missing out on. Once I started doing this, I felt the energy, the learning, the conversations open up, and when I team taught with people, it totally ignited the teacher, myself, and the kids because they saw their teacher and administrator learning right in front of them and they got to be a part of it.
Leading up to it, heck no, I did not want to do it!! But when you examine a little bit deeper, and you realize your why, and then you ask yourself, could the results of this, or the rewards of this outweigh all of those uncomfortable feelings, then it becomes way less avoidable. If the answer is yes, I want you to at least try it. Amy Porterfield states, “It’s important to take the time to examine your insecurities and how those are showing up versus what comes up when you focus on your audience and those that you serve.” (Porterfield, 2022)
I did this for all of the big things on my list. I had to really check in to see if my avoidance had to do with my insecurities or if it was really not my thing. So for me, one of the things on my list was scheduling special events in the school. I dug deep into my why and the outcome that would happen if I did actually face it. I realized that the outcome would be exactly the same if I did it or if my colleague, who was a master scheduler, did it. I decided that I needed to let that one go and continue to let him do that job.
Another example of this, is that I had meetings on my list. I had avoided looking at how to make meetings more impactful for years. We had the meetings and just did what we always do, housekeeping and to do lists. To me, I hated meetings. I wanted to avoid them altogether. So…I avoided why I didn’t look deeper into how to make these meetings more meaningful so that it wasn’t a waste of time. I finally dug into that and asked myself why I didn’t want to figure out a better way to do meetings. I realized that it was because I kept saying that the meetings snuck up on me each time. By the time I realized that I needed to plan better, it was too late. I did this month after month. Plus, I realized, I didn’t like meetings because, so often teachers were disengaged, on their phones, and nothing seemed to ever come of these meetings. Then I did the outcome work, I realized that if I tackled meetings agendas and made them more about professional learning rather than filled with monotonous housekeeping, then teachers would be doing more of the learning and thinking and would be more interested and engaged. It made me dive into the meeting agendas and revamp them so that I only did a 10 minute mini lesson where I modelled one action and then the rest of the meeting was for teachers to research, plan, strategize, and practice that action with the expectation to implement it into the classroom. I have a free guide of how I workshopped my meetings here! By weighing the outcome over the avoidance and how I would feel if I did it or avoided it, pushed me to dive into meetings. In return, we gained huge momentum and happier teachers. In fact, it built my leadership into more of a modelling style over a stand and deliver too. Modelling was a huge avoidance before but now I get up in front of the teachers and model, and I see their beautiful faces, and they’re engaging with me, and they’re smiling, and they’re excited, and they’re doing the exercises that I’m encouraging them to do from the mini lesson, and I finish the meeting and instantly feel like it the nervousness and hard work was totally worth it.
Think about the those things that you always tend to avoid in your leadership. What moments of learning might you be missing? How might these moments stretch you, push you to take risks, and make you actually proud of yourself? Can you imagine having that feeling of pride more often? Those moments of reward are so important for us, as leaders, to feel because it lifts us up, renews, and rejuvenates. It makes us love our jobs again and that nudge in your gut is reassured that you did, in fact, make the right choice to become a leader. Don’t miss out on those things because you don’t feel that you are good fit or you don’t want to. Dig deeper and unpack it and see what happens.
Here are some action steps for you to make sure that that feeling of dread is actually serving you after you have faced that thing that is on your list that you typically avoid. Really reflect on how you feel after you have pushed yourself. Think was it worth it? How do I feel after? Did I feel a sense of pride? If the answer is yes then you are definitely building momentum.
The next thing to pay attention to is your audience. How did they react? Did they feel like they got something out of it? Think about what they are saying about the thing you have done. Pay attention to that kind of stuff, because if they’re loving it, that just might be a little shot of confidence that you need to push yourself through the discomfort to do it again. You might dread it again but if the feedback is getting better and better, then keep doing it. So for me, an example of this was when I decided to tackle the way I share information with teachers. I decided to figure out a way to do a digital dashboard with hyperlinks so that teachers had a one stop shop. I hated every minute of creating it. It was very tinkery and time consuming but I knew in the end it would eventually save time. After, I had gone through a whole year of adding every little form, agenda, important info, standard operating procedures, etc. to the dashboard. Then I had some very honest conversations with teachers about how this served them and whether or not it was worth it. It was a resounding yes because it saved them massive amounts of time and that made their lives way easier. The best part was now that I had it, I could tweak it and make it better and better with their advice and feedback. This all happened because I asked myself why I avoided it and what was the outcome that would happen if I actually tackled it. Powerful stuff but also really hard.
Tackling the things you avoid is definitely a mindset shift. It drudges up some feelings of resistance and annoyance, trust me! But it is sooooo worth it. Do the work of determining why that thing is showing up as avoidance for you and if it is worth it to tackle. Let me tell you that some of the stuff is not a good fit for you. If it is absolutely not going to bring reward or benefit you and it will not outweigh the feeling of dread that you feel, don’t do that one. However, Porterfield states that the majority of things are worth it. Resistance, dread, and overwhelm are just part of learning new things, experimenting, being uncertain, not knowing if it’s going to work, but knowing that maybe those rewards are going to outweigh it so it’s worth sticking with it, at least for a little bit longer, until you can see the return of investment.
For a free guide to Starting Up and Shutting Down Your Day to Boost Productivity and Efficiency, click here.
Have you joined our private facebook group called Principals and Leadership yet? We are a group of leaders who chat about it all and mastermind steps to hacking problems, life stuff, mindset, family, kids, etc. See you there!
Porterfield, Amy. “Why We Avoid Things in Our Business.” Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast, produced by Amy Porterfield, 2022.
Even If You Miss..... 