Educational Leadership with Principal JL
Principal JL is an educational leader who explores various topics facing educational leaders today! The Mission of this podcast is to inform and inspire other Educational Leaders on how to be their best for their Schools by honing their skills and talents so they may impact their teachers, staff members, students, parents/guardians, and community members positively for their School District! Come with a Growth Mindset as we journey through Educational Leadership!
Educational Leadership with Principal JL
Episode 20: Coach'EM Up Leadership Series Finale: Leading for the Long Haul: Strategies for Sustainable Leadership
Are you struggling to maintain your passion in a leadership role? Join us as we explore the secrets to sustaining your leadership journey while avoiding burnout. This episode dives into practical strategies for setting healthy boundaries, ensuring you remain energized and effective in your role. We discuss the vital importance of building support networks, both within your institution and beyond, to create a collaborative environment that thrives on shared knowledge and experiences.
Discover how celebrating victories—big and small—can not only uplift team morale but also cultivate a culture of recognition and motivation. We also emphasize being proactive in your leadership style, including continuous self-improvement and remaining open to feedback from others in your professional network.
No leader should feel alone in their struggles; this episode encourages you to seek mentorship, build robust support systems, and implement strategies that can transform how you lead. As you tune in, expect to walk away with actionable insights that inspire growth and amplify your leadership effectiveness.
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Email: the.principal.jl@gmail.com
Hey everybody, welcome back to the last episode of the Coach Em Up Leadership Series. I cannot believe we are here in the final episode of this series. Don't worry, I have some things behind the scenes that I'm going to be working on to where I have some more content that I'll be having coming up for future episodes. I'm lining up some really good guests, some professionals in the field of educational leadership, and I'm really excited to bring those on. Next week I will be bringing you guys an episode with Dr Joe Sanfelippo that guy you got to check his workout. I'm excited to have him on talk about his educational leadership story. That's for next week, but this week we are going to talk about sustaining leadership. Okay, you guys, we've talked about how to build a culture, how to get it thriving. You know, in this journey of leadership, we got to be able to sustain the momentum without burning out. Once we set the tone, the challenge is maintaining it over the long haul. So we got to be able to have strategic thinking, authenticity, a dose here. We got to be able to laugh at ourselves and laugh at situations, because it's going to make it more enjoyable, cause I'll tell you what this last week, really, things just hit the fan on me. It was just like one thing after another, one personnel issue after another. It seemed like I was on. You know, I had my human resource person on speed dial all week, every day. That week I had to call and just get some advice on some situations that I was dealing with. And, man, some of these things aren't fun to do, but at the same time, that's our position, that's what we do. But you know what those things can drag you down, they can burn you out, and so today we're going to really talk about sustaining that leadership over a long haul.
Principal JL:I've been blessed. I'm in my seventh year of being a building principal and I'm really excited about being a building principal. But at the same time I have had to learn how to take care of myself. I'll tell you, in my first few years I didn't know how to set boundaries as well as I do now. I didn't know how to delegate that. You know some things that I do better now. Now the thing is, when I started being a principal, I was a small school role principal and that is a total another beast than being a bigger building principal than I am now. The biggest difference is as a small rural school principal. You have your a lot of hats. You know you're not just a principal but you're a curriculum director. You know you have your a lot of hats. You know you're you're not just a principal, but you're a curriculum director. You know you are HR. Sometimes you are um, putting out all the fires. You're working with building people. You're working with all these people as well. You know to where.
Principal JL:When I'm in a bigger district there's a lot of systems in place and out of small school. If you can create some systems, it does help bring some of that pressure down and some of the things you have to do and makes it better. But you have to be able to develop those systems and that's kind of what I did my first four years is have to learn the systems and how to create more systems or better systems to make what we do on the daily better and more sustainable for the long run. Coming into the position I am now, there's a lot of systems and there's a lot of things that I'll talk about today. That goes with that as well. So I'm coming from a small school, rural principal that I had to wear a lot of hats. I had to do a lot of things that I don't have to do now, but that's because there's a lot more people, a lot more systems in place for that. So for you, small rural schools you know what we're talking about will be things that you can implement, because I have done it myself as a small rural school principal, but yet I can also talk about the different systematic approaches in a bigger school district as well. So that's kind of what makes my experience unique.
Principal JL:So, when it comes down to it, the first thing we got to be able to do is take care of ourselves. We got to be able to set boundaries. Okay, the one thing that I have done, especially coming into this new principalship that I've been here for now, my third year, I had to set boundaries with them and say, basically, here are the things you guys need to know. Hey, I'm a human being, I'm a person. When I'm home, I want to be with my family. Now I have a rule to where please do not contact me, unless it's an emergency. It's something you got to get to me on. Do not contact me after six o'clock at night or before 6 am. So I have a 12 hour window that I have a boundary set to where, unless it's like a super needed emergency or something, I can't wait. They can contact me, I'll hold space for them on that, but yet that's happened very rarely and they've done a really nice job of of knowing my boundary, because I want to be able to go home and have to have family time when I get those.
Principal JL:Now there's times I do supervisions of different things so I'm out later, so those things are a little different, but for overall, in general, from 6 pm to 6 am. You know that is me trying to spend time with my family, also sleeping, things like that. Of course things come up and I will address those things as they needed. But this also helps you balance that work-life balance as well to know, hey, there's going to be times that I'm going to be on downtime and I'm going to be at home, I'm going to be doing those things, and so they know that and it's been very, very good to set that boundary.
Principal JL:Now, ensuring that you know this also allows me to be able to. People will email me and there's times I have to look at the. I look at that email. I'm bad at it, right, and I go. Is this something that they can. I can wait till tomorrow and I do that. If it's something that can wait till tomorrow, I'll wait till tomorrow to answer that. And a lot of times it's first thing in the morning. I take care of whatever that need is at that time.
Principal JL:But if it's a lot of times what you're doing, when you set these boundaries, when things come up, staff will go hey, what I have coming is like the most important thing right now and I want to solve right now. But at the same time you're also holding space to allow them to try to find a solution to that issue if it's something that could wait till the next day. So I've had situations where teachers will reach out and then by the next morning they had the problem solved and so you know, you got that's. That's also allowing them that that space, because sometimes people overreact emotionally about things. But being able to allow them the whole space to figure things out is another thing. So that that's kind of one of those things I also have, like my closed door rule. If my door to my office is closed, I can't be bothered. If it's open, come on in.
Principal JL:But there's times that I have to like get certain things done. Right now, I'm in the middle of doing some formal evaluations, so there's times that I chunk out in my calendar to where hey, this is when I'm going to write some evaluations, this is when I'm going to do this task. And so this is another strategy to help you keep things straight is I will purposely put what I need done agenda-wise on my Google Calendar and I'll hold space for that. What that does for me is A it gets it off my mind. I don't have to sit there and think about it. B it gives me a scheduled time that I know I'm going to get to that task. So I do that for all my different tasks because I will set out a calendar. I'll put my meetings in there. I'll do all the things I need to do. It could be one of those things I will write down a check-in, like hey, I'm going to check in with this teacher about this issue, you know, hey, I'm going to do that. I put it on my calendar. So, a I don't forget. B I make sure I'm being intentional on following up on those things, and when you do that, that takes a lot of stress, a lot of pressure off your brain, off your just overall anxiety that you can have when you're working through these things, when you're working through these things. So you know that's. Another tip is to you know kind of schedule things out on your Google calendars what I do, to where I could hold space for things and tasks that I do. So these are some things that I do to help self-care.
Principal JL:I like to have fun. I like to go out and do things. I blow off steam. I like to walk, I like to bike with my daughter once in a while, you know, when it gets nice out. You know there's a lot of things I, you know, this weekend I worked on my wife's car, so you know I was being the mechanic this weekend to where I had to change some spark plugs, do the oil change, make sure I take care of those things, and so those are things that I do to kind of help decompress and it keeps my mind, you know, sharp about the things I want to do. Actually, during those times I'm thinking about other things when it comes to work-wise and I actually come up with some pretty good ideas once in a while doing that.
Principal JL:So being able to take care of the things you need to be able to take care of is important. You need to hold space for your family. You need to have times and boundaries set so your staff knows what they are. I have my closed door policy is mainly hey, if I'm in there working, I can't be bothered unless it's like an absolute emergency because I'm holding space for different tasks that I have to do. But I love to get out, I love to be able to you know, get, understand what my boundaries are and they respect them really really well and they understand. Hey, I know, you know this is your expectation, but I have this coming up and I'll hold space for that because that's important to be able to do is understand that there are, like things you have to address right away, and I'm not saying not to do that, but I'm saying if you have expectations, your staff will follow them and they'll and they'll hold that, um, that space for you so you can not get burned out. Really, that's kind of what that's for now.
Principal JL:Delegating, uh, empowering other leaders. Now, even as a small school principal, you can do this. You can find ways to find people in leadership roles. What we did at my first principalship is we created kind of like a leadership team, kind of people we brought together where we meet once a week and try to get different people from different departments and you know, you know SPED people, core people, people not in the core, you know, in specialized areas together because we wanted to think through things together. Now we're able to delegate things based off of that leadership team. Same thing here at the big schools we have different roles.
Principal JL:So I have a couple assistant principals where one is delegated and runs the PBIS team and does a really fantastic job. The other one, really they both do a lot of things, but these are just examples. The other assistant principal will do the intervention piece, working with what we call ed efficiency, which is going away. We're actually going to go to securely flex is what they call it. So that's another transition piece. But he works with a lot of the intervention piece. But at the same time they both work with our attendance piece as well, to where they're tracking kids' attendance and knowing where we're at, because they bring that information to the attendance committee, to where now we have our leadership team come together and everybody on that leadership team has a role, and so there are systems in place that they just go, they just run and all I have to do is just check in on them, see where they're at, and if those people that are running those things need support, I support them and try to help them. But also it takes a lot of pressure off of me having to maintain all these different systems.
Principal JL:When I was at a smaller school, there's a lot of things I had to maintain. That's where I had to learn to know what's important, how to prioritize things. That's where saving space and that Google Calendar designating those tasks will help that with you. But then if there's somebody in your building that wants leadership role they would like to get into leadership you want to utilize that. Hey, I really believe that you can do this task. Would you be willing to help me out with that? And what you're doing is you're building leadership capacity within that staff member, and so those are things you could do at a small school as well as a big school, but understanding how to delegate, knowing whose people's roles are, knowing what your role are and knowing how all these things fit together, because those things will help you be able to avoid burnout so you don't feel like you have to do it all all the time, and so those are things you got to think about when it comes to that.
Principal JL:The next step I'm going to talk about is build support networks. As principals, we're on an island a lot, right, there's some of you in the small rural school. You're the only administrator K-12. You know, you may have a superintendent, you, and that superintendent may be the administrators of that whole district, right. Then you have some districts where you have one building principal and an elementary one in the 712, superintendent, maybe an 80, maybe you know an activities director, assistant activities director. That all comes into play on that.
Principal JL:Assistant activities director. That all comes into play on that. I'm lucky because I have in my building two assistant principals and a full-time activities director. My full-time activities director takes care of all that. I don't have to worry about that. If things come up, she comes to me and we talk about it. We build a plan on those things that need to happen and we work through those issues together. Same thing with my assistant principals. They deal a lot with our students and student discipline and different things like that. But we talk constantly about things and so we network within ourselves. But hey, guess what? We also try to network outside of our building. We try to network outside of our district as well. So I really encourage you when you're talking about building support networks, you know, utilize.
Principal JL:In Nebraska we have the educational service units. Utilize those people, they can help you. That's also part of delegating. If they have a training that they can bring into your building so you don't have to do it all the time, do it. You know small school rule principles. We use the ESU all the time here in Nebraska. They are fantastic for us, but we can also use them as a bigger school district principal as well. So don't forget about your service units in Nebraska to try to bring them in to help you, because that's what they're there for. They'll help support you guys, to help you guys learn and grow within your building.
Principal JL:Also, things you want to do is get in touch with your region or your you know different area. I don't know what they call them in other states, but in Nebraska we have different regions. You know that are divided about throughout the state and we try to come together every two to three months to meet. Those are good ways to get in touch with other principals, what are going on in your building and building that network there. We also have state conferences here in Nebraska as well. We have one big one in the summer, in July. We also have a principal one in December, which you know it's hard to get away, but I've made time to do that and it's good.
Principal JL:Networking, understanding where people are at you, you know what You're learning from each other going, you know what I'm dealing with that, how are you handling it. I'm dealing with that, how are you handling it, and coming together and building those networks is crucial. But those things are great. But then you want to start thinking about what can I do every week or day by day to have some professional development or networking? Know every week or day by day to have some professional development or networking. So that's where podcasts and my my journey have come into play, to where I will go ahead and I've built up support networks through just listening to podcasts, understanding where people are at, understanding you know how to solve different issues. Even if you never like get consulted by some of these people on these podcasts, you will learn through their podcast everything. So, besides, you know my podcast Educational Leadership with Principal JL, which is free PD. You know that right, there's some other podcasts that I'm going to recommend you guys to listen to as well. I love my podcast. I want to build that community of people, but really there's other podcasts up there that could help as well, because I'm not the only podcast out there. So here's some of the podcasts that I listen to that help me learn and grow, but also helps me network, and so one of the podcasts I listen to is the Empowered Principal.
Principal JL:I had Angela Kelly on the show a couple episodes back, so go listen to that one. You get to learn more about her podcast and the work she does. This one, "eaning Into Leadership with Darren Pepperd this one's a really good one as well. I've gotten to know Darren quite a bit just through the podcasting world and just through education world. We sat down and we're going to be working together on some things, so that's coming up. So I would definitely recommend leaning into leadership with Darren. Building a collaborative culture podcast that's with Curtis Hewson. I actually got to go on that show and that's episodes coming out on their podcast. You know, later on, in about a month or two from now, but I'm also going to bring Curtis onto my show and his wife, florida, and Curtis do a really nice job with that building a collaborative culture podcast Coach Tony Kimball.
Principal JL:Transforming lives podcast. That's a really good one. This guy is going around. He doesn't have just educational leadership stuff, but he has like math room Specific stuff as well, and so I would like you guys to check out transforming lives podcast as well. And this is this. Another one, the Principal Center Radio. That's another good one. They got a lot of content there that would be good for principals and networking and understanding how to do your job better. And then making key changes is another one that I got turned on to just recently. That's another good one. That's, you know, you know how to keep from burning out different things like that and that's a really good one as well. That's more like life coaching on the side, but that person was in education as well. So those are some podcasts that I would recommend you guys checking out to help build that network but also bring something into your daily life, and I listened to all these different podcasts. I have my own podcast bringing out content you know to from my perspective and things that these people have theirs bring it from their perspectives and all the great works. There's so many different great things going on out there. You guys got to tune in and check those out, and so those are some things that are really good to do to build that support network.
Principal JL:You also got to be able to celebrate wins. Celebrate the small things as well as the big things. Celebrate the things that the teachers and staff are doing well and let them know. Now, some staff members may not like publicity. It's okay, even if it's just going to their room and just thanking them privately is a big, big, big shift. Something you can do is very small, but it's still meaningful because you're actually going and say I'm taking the time to be intentional about this thing. I really appreciate all the work you do on this. Now I also do some things, like I'll bring in a food truck I've talked about this before to kind of spoil my staff. I will give them this past winter I gave them Dunkin' Donut gift cards.
Principal JL:There's a lot of things that you can do to show appreciation and celebrate wins, and so you know you don't. You can be creative with that, but make sure you're highlighting things. The cool thing that I get to do as a building principal at my district is we have a once a year spotlight on learning, and so every year I get to go present to the school board and guess what this year I'm going to present to the school board and guess what this year I'm going to present to the school board. But I'm bringing in some teachers and I'm bringing in some students to spotlight the awesome work that is going on at our high school, and I'm so excited that's going to happen in March. And so being able to have other people be involved in those processes and letting them share out the great work and celebrating those successes and wins is a great way to be able to A you're delegating, but you're also control the narrative of your school, and utilizing social media is another way is to share out the awesome things and be able to share that narrative of all the great things that are happening within your school, and so those are really good ways to kind of help. You know, keep yourself from burning out, delegate the power building supports and celebrating wins. Now you also we talked about last episode about continuous improvement and learning. So make sure you're always trying to find professional development that helps the school culture, helps the processes and things that you have in place so you can get make things better. So you're also the ongoing training collaboration, like. One of the things we're going to do is I'm asking staff to share out the this coming up Friday things that they have done with Magic School AI and I'm really excited because I've heard a lot of good things. I'm really excited to see what the teachers are going to share out with everybody to try to see where everybody is at with that professional development opportunity that they have Now.
Principal JL:Another thing is you have to have data-driven decision-making. You've got to have data to help drive the change and things that you want to do and you have to be able to track data. When you track data, you're more than likely going to improve on the data you're tracking. If you don't track your data, more than likely you're not going to improve on that piece. So make sure when you are doing improvements, you have data that you can track. That makes sense and you can see the effects of what's happening. Like I've talked about the attendance implementation of our new attendance policy, but our MTSS is attendance process that we have.
Principal JL:I track data all the time to see where we're at. I track data daily. I track data quarterly and so I know where we're at when it track data daily. I track data quarterly and so I know where we're at when it comes to our tenants and that's super exciting. But those changes won't be happening if we weren't tracking that data. And teachers they will track data in the classroom. You know when it comes to by student, by target. They will track those students where the students are, where are they achieving, where do they need to get better? You know where do we need more intervention piece Tracking data to make decisions is huge. So make sure you're doing those things, because that's going to help long-term success. That's also part of who you guys are and your culture that you built.
Principal JL:And then, building trust Be transparent. That's one thing I work really, really hard to do is be transparent and help people understand hey, there's things that we just got to do. But at the same time, there are things that I'm going to be very open. Why we're doing what we're doing and the thing is a lot of things that we do is we are collaborating together already and so we're already thinking through those things and not just making rash decisions and so being able to build that trust with people, building up those connections so they can trust you. So when you say, hey, this is why we're doing, what we're doing. They understand and there's clarity. And when you lead with clarity and trust, a lot of things are going to happen for you. That's going to be very, very good.
Principal JL:But if you're dishonest and you're not clear and you're not transparent, people will not follow you. That is flat out. It just won't happen. So make sure you're transparent and you also want to be able to. With that transparency, you encourage risk-taking. You want people to get better. You do not want people to be afraid to fail and if they're afraid to fail, they're not going to get better, because we learn through failure. That's just who we are as human beings. So let people fail but at the same time, be there to support and raise them up, and lift them up when need to be. And with that collaboration piece, you're going to do just fine. Community engagement. Collaboration piece you're going to do just fine.
Principal JL:Community engagement. This is another huge thing that we have done really, really well at the school that I'm at right now is we work with the hospital, the Central Community College, the law enforcement, the probation office, you know, the county court system. They have a program called STARS which helps people with currency issues to try to remove boundaries. So we have that piece embedded into our leadership team. Now to where we are trying to find people where they're at and trying to find support. But we're able to offer things at our school because we have that community support. We have things like our hospital coming down and saying, hey, we would really like it if we can somehow have this certain class at Hastings High, in this example we call us, go over to CNA class right, which we implemented about a year and a half ago. But there's another class called phlebotomy. But those classes wouldn't happen if we didn't have the support of our community. And we work together. We have some meetings. We try to figure out how can we do this, because what we're doing is help building not just our students up but our community up, and so being able to work with your community and have community engagement is super important because that's going to help bring people together, but there's also going to help drive the success of your building.
Principal JL:The final things we want to talk about is you want to be proactive when you are fighting burnout, so you want to be able to take regular breaks. You want to be able to you know, when you have like a weekend to decompress. Do that. Go do something fun. You know, some people like to read a book. I like to go walking. I'll listen to things, I'll listen to podcasts. So those are things I like to do. But at the same time, I'll work out. When it's not cold out, I'm going to start working out to get nicer now. But do things that you enjoy, because if you don't do things that you enjoy, because if you don't do things that you enjoy outside of this job, you're going to be, you're going to be miserable at times, you're going to be worn down. You've got to do things to recharge yourself. So I'm going to encourage that as a final step in here.
Principal JL:And also mentorship Guys, it's OK to look for people to mentor you. Ok, like I talked to with Angela Kelly. She helped me out a ton in my journey as an educational leader, but she was a part of my story. There's other people out there. There's Darrin leaning into leadership man. That guy is out there working with principals and trying to help them become better. I mean, there's a lot of people out there that you can work with.
Principal JL:If you want to, some sort of leadership coach out there, I'm more than willing to help you guys too. Just reach out to me and I'll help you. I'll advise you on things that you guys are going through, and actually I had a person that listens to this podcast reached out to me about some stuff. Her name's Kelly. Hey, kelly, good to see you. Thanks for listening to the podcast, but she knows who she is. She reached out and it was so great because I was able to talk to her about things and be able to go OK, you're actually going to step into this principalship role. These are some things that I have learned through this, but, yeah, she came up with some great ideas that I might be looking at. Some episodes coming up, and so I will take your guys' feedback. I will listen to you. I will help you as much as possible. There's other people out there that can too.
Principal JL:I just want you guys to feel like you're alone when it comes out there, because doing this job sometimes we feel like we're on an island, and if we can have people that we could build that support network with, to have, it makes the difference, guys. It really really does, and so do not be afraid of coaching. Do not be afraid to have someone come in and critique you and make you better, because that's how we're going to get better and the more people that are out there doing those things they're not on an island anymore and they're doing the job more effectively and more efficiently than anybody else that's not getting that help, so do not be afraid of that. I'm going to strongly encourage that when it comes to that.
Principal JL:Now the final thing is your vision of your building will change over time because you're going to make these incremental changes. Things are going to get better. Then you're going to be like what's the next thing? That's what I do every year. I'm like, hey, here's what we're working on, but this is where we're going and these are things we're going to have to move some things around. So your vision and your mission will change over time, but revisit it every year, revisit, update it, work with your leadership team on what those goals and tasks are.
Principal JL:One thing that we're working on with our leadership team is transitioning our eighth graders into freshmen. Ship right, we're transferring from middle school into high school. How can we do a better job? We're working on that right now to get ready for next year, because we understand we want kids to have a great start to the school year and everything like that. So that's kind of shifting from. We've been talking about attendance and getting kids in class and all that for the last two, three years. Now we're shifting on how can we get them into our building and transition them more smoothly, more successfully, and so that's the next step we're going into. So your vision is going to change. It's going to shift over time.
Principal JL:So hopefully you guys got a lot out of this Coach EM Up Leadership Series. It was really great to have you guys be a part of this journey. This is the last episode of this series, but don't worry, I got other things in the fire that are gonna be coming out. So I hope you guys stay tuned for those things and hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have, please leave a review. Let me know what's your thoughts. Hey, find me on my social medias. They're down in the show notes. You can email me. That's down in the show notes. Listen to all the different episodes as they come out. I really appreciate you guys. As we get going into educational leadership, we're always looking to be 1% better.
