Episode 62
· 49:39
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Resilient Schools Podcast, a proud member of the BE Podcast Network. We've got a show for whatever your role is in a school. Be podcast network. That's BE as in beyond education. I'm Jethro Jones, your host. You can follow me on all the social networks at Jethro Jones.
Today I am excited to have on Allison Smith. She is an author, speaker, and coach dedicated to empowering leaders to build unshakeable resilience, foster deep rooted confidence, and create meaningful impact by aligning their actions with their core vision and values. She helps her clients leverage the power of small acts of resilience to design thriving personal and professional lives.
Her work [00:01:00] has been featured in various publications and her book, drawing Your Line, setting Boundaries, step by Step Guides, many to Healthier Living. Of work. She enjoys a good book with a glass of wine and spending time with her husband and two kids. Allison, welcome to Resilient Schools.
Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Alright, well, what book is on your reading list right now?
Okay, so I have two going right now. One is Surviving Teacher Burnout, which is by Amy Eva. That is put out by the Greater Good In Education Group over at uc, Berkeley, and walking through it with a group of educators and education leaders right now in a book club. second one is. A book by Kristen Hannah.
That is my release and my, I'm going to exit this world and just go someplace else for a little while. At the end of the
Okay. And what, do you know the title of that book? Because I think I've heard.
I honestly don't
Okay.
I honestly don't remember. to go look on my
I think I've heard of this author and and I've heard of some books by her. I think.
Yeah, she has the, there's, [00:02:00] she usually does historical
That's the one.
Yeah. That's her newer stuff and some of her older stuff, but always does like powerful female
Yes.
and women relationships
there's one about Alaska.
yes.
Okay, same person. All right. I can never remember her name for some reason, but when I hear it, I'm like, oh, yeah. So for me, I've got two books also. So one that I'm reading right now is The Coddling of the American Mind, which I'm doing for a, for one of my doctoral classes.
And then the second one is my escape book, which is book five in the Jack Carr Terminal List series. And I always have some sort of action. Book that I'm reading where I can just like, life is too stressful. I'm going to go inhabit this other world for a moment. And that's one way that I stay resilient is knowing that I have an escape when I go to bed at night.
I can just read these books as I fall asleep. So anyway what is valuable from our podcast that people should stick around and listen to it for.
I think what they're going to learn is that. That [00:03:00] is easier than you think, and building resilient schools can happen with the smallest leverage
Mm.
So we're gonna talk about really small things that make a huge impact in building a resilient school.
Very good. The thing I think is great about what we talk about is getting to some real examples of what it actually looks like and talking about acknowledging what people are doing rather than you know, giving praise or handing out little. Cougar pause or whatever it is that you do at your school.
Really acknowledging what people are doing in a powerful way for them and for you. All right. We're gonna get to my interview here with Allison in just a moment to stick around on the Resilient Schools podcast. (ad here) So Alison, let's start by you telling us how you define resilience.
Sure. So to define resilience, I actually wanna back up and define. Thriving because what most people think of when they hear [00:04:00] the word thrive is someone standing on a mountaintop with their arms spread out. You know, we're picturing the height of achievement, we're picturing this you know, moment in time where we have it all together and where we have all the energy and enthusiasm that we could ever possibly have.
We're picturing this like real mountaintop moment, right? And that is actually very different from the original definition of the word. the word thrive comes from an old Norse word that meant to grasp to oneself.
And so when I think about thriving, I think where we've gotten it wrong, where this collective mental model around thriving, being, achieving has gotten it wrong, is that it's really easy to hold onto ourselves when we're achieving, when we're succeeding, when we're in those mountaintop moments of life.
Yeah, I wanna be right in the middle of myself in that moment. I wanna be real rooted. Myself and holding onto myself at that moment. 'cause it's a good moment. [00:05:00] But what happens when we're in the valleys of life, in the stressful moments, in the moments when we get thrown off center, how do we hold onto ourselves in those moments?
And we can, we've all probably been there where you had to go through something hard walk through a really tough season of life. When you hold onto yourself, although you'd probably not call it thriving outwardly to the world because everyone else has this collective definition of it being a really mountaintop moment, when you can be in that center of yourself, when you can grasp to yourself, even in the hard moments of life, you feel centered, you feel powerful, you feel clear, confident, you have the courage you need to continue to walk through whatever you're walking through. And so to me, with that in mind, resilience is coming back to that sturdy center, coming back to that rooted, grounded place so that we're holding onto ourselves [00:06:00] even in adversity. I.
Well, I really like that Allison. And the thing that it's bringing up for me is most of the time when we talk about resilience, we talk about pushing through the difficult times in life and being able to continue going. What I like about you bringing, thriving into it is that you want, you wanna have the same feeling on the mountaintop as you do in the valleys of your life.
And this. I like I'm certainly not perfect. I'm still learning how to do this myself, but one of the things that I noticed as I went through this really difficult trial this year is I did not feel depressed or frustrated or upset that this difficult thing was happening to me. I felt, oh, this is one of those times where.
It's just gonna suck for a little while, and I just need to keep putting my feet in front of me and just keep pushing forward. And I'm gonna come out on the other side and things are gonna work out just [00:07:00] great. And everybody that I talk to about it keeps giving me these things like, oh, when this happens, you'll realize it's all worth it and it'll be great when, et cetera.
And the reality is like, no, I'm actually really satisfied right now because I know that I'm doing everything that I can. And things just aren't working out the way that I want them to, but like I'm not getting bent outta shape about it. And that is a big. Big deal because it's really easy to get bent outta shape when things are difficult and so I, I really appreciate this idea here.
I'm not sure about the grasping to oneself, but that's interesting. So, so we will probably talk a little bit more about thriving later, but I thinking about that as an individual. Now let's transfer it to a school system. What does a resilient school look like to you?
Well, I wanna connect what you just said to what I had said previously, and then to this question, is. We can go through moments of life [00:08:00] feeling sort of centered, right? That might be a better word than or grounded in ourself. And I almost see this vision in my mind of like you being in a bubble and then things around you are happening and you're responding to the bubble, but you're, or I'm sorry, you're responding to those things happening around you, but you're doing it from that rooted place.
From that grounded place. And so instead of your own wellbeing being dependent on circumstances, your wellbeing is dependent on what you have created inside your bubble, inside yourself. And so that's when you talk about going through this challenging time in the, in earlier this year, what I think of, that you were rooted in something other than the context of your life.
You were rooted in your own self, your own self knowing and awareness. And so I think that that's both an individual thing and an organizational endeavor. [00:09:00] So when I think about resilient schools, I think about, all right, how aware are we? Of what's going on in the school climate. How aware are we of where that grounded rooted foundation is the school and are we connected to it? So ways that we can make a rooted foundation in a school is by having a clear mission, by having a clear value system for the school that everything comes back to. And this is so important. Research has also showed that this is clear, this is key to teachers feeling and full staff feeling like their efforts matter. Is that when they can connect even difficult, like, things that we don't wanna do the, like the duty on the playground or the the lunchtime. Duty, whatever it is. When we can connect that thing to the bigger mission and the purpose of why we're doing that thing in like individually or organizationally, then we know that those efforts matter. [00:10:00] They're still not easy. They're still not fun necessarily, but we know that they matter. So an example of this could be, Hey, you're gonna be having to do duty. I'm, I was a former elementary teacher, so I always go to like the elementary context in my mind. Well, let's just say you had to do recess duty.
A lot of elementary teachers have to. And what could we do with that research, that recess duty that would feel meaningful to our mission as a school, to why we're here? Um, and can we make that recess duty feel a little bit more purposeful? So this could be an opportunity for you to build relationships with students.
This could be an opportunity for you to connect with that student that really needs to move and is sometimes, you know. Getting in trouble during the school day, but but really needs you to see them and for you to connect with them in a different way. So in connecting to students, then we can create the conditions for their learning.
So when the leader can. Sort of connect those dots, right? [00:11:00] That's gonna create a more resilient school where things are still hard. We're acknowledging that, but two things can be true. It can be hard and it can be purposeful beyond just like, well, you just have to do it. You know, and so when I think of resilient schools, I think of schools that are rooted in their purpose, in their values, and they know what those are and they claim them. That's gonna resonate with some staff members and it's gonna not resonate with other staff members. And you know what? Eventually those staff members may leave and you're gonna get new staff members who are gonna resonate with those value systems. So when we can create a sturdy foundation as an organization based in our purpose and our values and what we are focused on, then that is going to help the whole system of the school be more
Yeah, exactly. And in my book, how to Be a Transformative Principle, one of the things I talk about is this idea of having a clear mission, vision, and values. That's so clear that [00:12:00] people know that everything they're doing is related to that thing. So that. It's gonna be hard. We're working with people like there's no way, it's not going to be difficult and there's no way we can't take it seriously because this is our students' lives that we're talking about.
So the things that we do really do matter to them individually, and it makes a big difference. And what we have to be able to do is say, here's why we're doing these different things, because there are so many things. Okay, so lemme just. Give a little example in, I'm working on my doctor right now and in my class last night, somebody said something about having to do these additional tasks that were like filling out paperwork or doing something for the district or going to a to a data meeting or some evaluation meeting or something that was like, is this really that important?
And. I said one of my jokes, which is that I never did anything the district asked me to do until they asked me three [00:13:00] times. If they asked me three times, I knew they were serious, that we actually needed to do it. And the re the reality of the situation is if you. Have each of these things connected to your mission and your values, then it's not a big ask to ask someone to do these things.
But if there's something that doesn't connect to your mission and values, then why are you doing it? Does it really need to happen? And that's also a good justification for doing things that don't have any. Value in our traditional educational context. But for example, we took the first three days of school and did not assign any classes or have kids go to class.
We just had kids build community doing these different things and doing different activities and group work and things like that without being in classes yet. And. People are like, no, you gotta like start educating kids. And it's like, no, our values are connection and making [00:14:00] sure that every kid feels seen.
So we need to start out with that. And it's easy to justify and maybe we need to take a week, maybe we need to take two weeks and not even start academics until we've done this for two weeks. Maybe that's the way we need to go. Whereas in a traditional school system, that is just not even a question because we have to get started on academics.
We gotta start testing kids as soon as they get there so we know where they're at so we can adjust cur instruction, all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, I mean, Roy Disney famously had a quote and I will probably. Butcher it here, but something to the effect of decisions are easy when you know what your values are and what you're talking about there is. Decision making and using your vision and values and mission to be the North Star, to be the compass North, right? To guide all the decisions of the school system, even if it goes against what is sort of quote unquote traditionally done. And so [00:15:00] it gives us not only the clarity of purpose, but the courage to go against the grain. So again. Context ambivalent. This is what we're doing because our vision and mission and values are aligned to these actions.
And I think this connects too to how we support staff because one of the things that is a real barrier to resilience is burnout. And I see them sort of on the same continuum that burnout is on the negative side of the continuum, and resilience is on the other side of the continuum. And so, and they're related intimately. And the things that to either our resilience or our burnout things like stress feeling like we don't matter, feeling like the things that we're doing don't matter. the second red flag. So the first red flag of burnout is exhaustion, which is just something we combat as educators. But the second one is ineffective. feeling ineffective. And so if I feel ineffective or like my work doesn't matter, [00:16:00] you're already starting to get toward burnout without. Really knowing why. So when we connect the mission, vision, and values to all of the things that we're doing, it automatically makes us feel like this work matters.
Even the menial parts of it or the parts that don't feel like traditional. And I'm doing air quotes when I say that because you know who says. Who says what we do in schools. You know, I think as leaders we have such a, an opportunity to leverage our leadership to, to create new ways of being and systems change that will support our ultimate goals. And so as a leader too, you can also use this principle to help. Teachers prioritize because let's be honest, there's a lot. There's probably more. There is just, I'm just going to claim it. There is more to do in a day for kids. Then we have hours in the day to do it. Simon Sinek used to call it an infinite game, right?
And so [00:17:00] education is an infinite game. There's always more we could be doing for students. There's always more we could be doing. And maybe some of it is the district initiative that we have to complete, et cetera. So always more on our plate than we have time to do. And it's the work of each of us to prioritize and when we are not clear. On our mission, vision, and values. We cannot prioritize. It makes prioritizing extremely difficult and we don't really know why we're mixing things, we're probably just doing as much as we possibly can. And then sort of, inadvertently letting other things fall. I. So there's like a lack of thoughtfulness and a lack of intention, a lack of prioritization that's happening.
So I see that both as a on this macro scale of what do we decide to do as a school, and even on the micro scale of person to person, how do we coach individual teachers to make, decisions and prioritize with our time?
Yeah, and I wanna get to that in just a second. But you hinted at something that I really wanna [00:18:00] draw attention to, which is that people are going to leave your school. And that is a part of having a school, is that people leave. Even you are going to leave. If you're the principal, you are going to leave if you're a 30 year veteran there, eventually it's going to continue to exist without you and the role of everybody left behind.
Is to define what it looks like to be a great and successful teacher at that school and what our values and mission are so that when the next person comes and applies for a job. It's very clear what we value and whether or not we do this intentionally and explicitly it happens. And so people come into a school and there is a culture there already, and the values are laid out even if they're not articulated.
It's very clear what they are to someone who's new, and those things are so important and you have a great opportunity when finding new people to come onto your team to [00:19:00] set them up for success by saying, these are the things that we value and you're actually going to attract people to your school. By doing those things and we need to be more intentional about that than we currently are in education. So let's talk about some of the core elements that should exist for schools to do this and how do we set this up and be effective in this.
Sure. And I actually love how you said it's the work of all of us to define. Success means, and that can either be sort of running in the background unintentionally guiding us, or it can be an explicit and intentional practice to define success. So I do wanna double click on that because I think that could be step number one. do we define success? is a good teacher here at this campus? What do they do? What guides them? What are their priorities? Imagine if we could all just get real clear on what that looked
Mm-Hmm.
because right now what happens and I'll speak for [00:20:00] myself. What happened for me is the internet, social media, these were things that were guiding what I thought a good teacher was.
In addition to my schooling and my, education as a teacher, but those are textbooks, right? And so we have to make the leap from our teacher education programs to the real life teaching. And then what happens in that gap is that social media and you know, Instagram and all this stuff will fill in the gap of like, this is what a good teacher's classroom looks like.
This is what a good teacher's worksheet looks like. 'cause I found it on teachers, pay teachers, et
cetera
(ad here)
What we have to do is actually get concrete and explicit about what success looks like. So I really am so happy that you brought that up and I agree. Other things that are important in a high trust, or sorry, in a resilience school is high trust and so really cultivating trust explicitly. if you don't know how to do [00:21:00] that a great resource to start with is actually Brene Brown's daring to lead. And her, there's a video that you can look for called Anatomy of Trust, and she breaks down the research on what the components of trust are because trust is this big. nebulous concept.
We either know if it's there or we know if it's not there. But how do we build it? We need to kind of break it apart and understand the components of it, like having good boundaries, understanding what the boundaries are, what's okay, what's not okay. And that kind of connects to our definition of success. That's helping us define the boundaries of what's okay and what's not okay. Being reliable, being able to count on each other in the school system for the staff to be able to count on the leader, for the leader to be able to count on the staff. Accountability is when I can take responsibility for the pieces that are my responsibility to take, and I know that that's not gonna be held against me, but rather seen as a strength.
So really looking at where trust might be breaking down on campus and building that intentionally is [00:22:00] something that a resilient school should be doing.
And if you're not, that's one place to start too.
Yeah that Anatomy of Trust talked by Brene Brown and linked it in the show notes@resilientschools.com, so you can go click that to see it. Right away. I link the abridge version. There's a longer version. It's like 45 minutes long, but the eight and a half minute version is probably sufficient.
So you, you talk about Thrive Design principles. Can you talk to us about what those are and how they. How they work in this context that we're talking about now,
yes, absolutely. I would love to. So the Thrive Design principles are the things I see over and over again, both on an individual level and on an organization level Either get in the way or support us in moving from that sort of burnout, survival mode at very unintentional place to a more intentional, thriving, resilient place. So, and hopefully they spell the acronym Thrive, so I'll go through them with you. Number [00:23:00] one is trust. And again, this is so important that we build it both organizationally and internally. As a leader, do I trust myself? Or am I suffering from things like imposter syndrome and judgment of myself? So really looking at that for you individually and for the organization.
The second one, H is human centered. Are we treating everyone like human beings? Are we encouraging each individual to treat them self like a human being and not forget that they have human needs that can't be ignored? it does the students a disservice when we ignore those. the, so that's T and H.
The R is responsive. And this is really in contrast to reactive, right? So reactive it in my definition is like, okay, I got thrown off center. And now I'm reacting from that thrown off place instead of first coming back to center, coming back to that grounded place, and then making a decision from there. [00:24:00] then I can choose how I wanna respond. So that's the R
Yeah, I jump in real quick before you get to,
sure.
when I talk about responsive, what I. What people default to is reactive, that there's also a piece to responsiveness where we can anticipate what's going to happen and plan in advance and be a little more proactive so that we're not just responding. To everything that's going on.
So, for example, we talk about response to intervention RTI and how we just respond to whatever the kid does, and then we just have to make a plan based on what they do. But the reality is that we can help set things up a little bit better. And to me, this is what real responsiveness is, and I highlight it just because.
We so often think that it's just reacting and you said it as opposed to reactive, but too often it defaults to that. We also need to be proactive and say, how is this going to be perceived? If I'm going to send out this email, if I'm [00:25:00] going to make this announcement, how's it going to be perceived and is that the right way?
So let me be responsive ahead of time and say, let's set this up a little bit better. So just wanted to add that in. 'cause that's one of my little, little things that I always like to bring up.
Yeah, and I'll double down on that. I think that an important component of responsiveness is curiosity. So that you can get curious about what's going on and then choose how you wanna respond. And that curiosity begets pattern seeking and solutions, orientedness, and then ultimately proactiveness. Because now I know the pattern that I fall into when I get into situations like this or if I don't spend an extra couple of minutes or I, if I don't sleep on my response to this person, I know that. I will have a more reactive or response rather than really considering the other person's perspective, et cetera. And so I'm gonna sleep on it. I'm gonna send that email in the morning, right, and look at [00:26:00] it again from their perspective, right? So if you are getting curious with yourself and with the, curious with yourself and the situations that are happening on campus, you're going to be able to be more proactive. So I see that on a continuum too. Reactive being the default, just because that's how our brains work, period. There's no judgment there. It's just how our brains work. So we have to hack it.
We have to understand that that's how our brains work, and build in ways that we can slow down, get curious, and even then be proactive in the long run.
Alright.
So that's the R, the I? Yeah. Did you
No, I was just gonna say, let's go onto the eye. I'm ready.
okay, the I is incremental. Incremental refers to focusing on the next small step. Rather than getting overwhelmed by the big changes you wanna make. So you may have huge changes you wanna make on campus in terms of trust building, in terms of resilience building, but what is that next? Right? Action [00:27:00] and always asking yourself and even asking your staff, what is our next right action. What's the next best thing to do and just focus there. And over time then you'll be able to look back and see how far you've come. But sometimes when we get too far ahead of ourselves, it gets overwhelming. So that's the I, V is values driven, which I feel like we have covered thoroughly, but the fact that you know, this is something that's so important just keeps coming up. In my work with individuals and with organizations as well, we have to be driven by our values and we can always ask ourselves.
What is driving here and is that the value that we want to be driving? So that's a key question I like to ask. Well, okay, so this is happening. What's driving that and is that the thing we want to be driving? And then finally, the e. is empowered and empowered refers to focusing on what you can control. Not what you can't control, right? So what is within your sphere of control? Sphere of [00:28:00] influence, and then let go of the other things that are not. So often, we spend so much energy and time focused on things that really are out of our control. Out of our influence. But there probably is something that is in your control.
You can use your voice, you can design a next step, but. We waste all of our energy focusing on what we can't control. Then we actually don't have the energy when it comes time to thinking about what we can control and how we wanna move forward. So that's truly how we empower ourselves, our staffs, our whole school community, is to continue to ask what is it we can do? Yes, we might have this district initiative. Part of that, I can go and I can influence at my leadership meetings, at the end of the day, this is what we have to do. So what can we do to make it the best it can be, et cetera? Or what can we do to fit it within our values? What parts of it fit within our values?
Maybe that's our first step is to cross match it. With our mission, vision, and values, right? So whatever the thing is that you're, [00:29:00] that people seem to be stuck on and looping on, if it's not something they can control as a leader, continue to focus on and guide focus back to, well, what can we do?
What can we control in this situation? So those are the thrive design principles. Things. Again, these just continue to be the drumbeats of my coaching conversations with leaders, and so that's why I just wanted to formalize them and give them to your audience and folks that I work with as a place to start.
They don't always develop in succession or in order. Sometimes you're jumping around, so whichever one is speaking to you as a. Next place to start. That's the right place to start. Maybe it is responsive. Maybe it is values driven. Maybe it is just focusing on what we can control. Then that's where you should start.
And then think about and consider how in the long term, you might wanna develop some of the other
Yeah, and we often think in terms of like, in, in order, like it's thrive. So we start with the trust, and [00:30:00] the reality is that these five are interrelated. I'm sorry, six. I miscounted that these six are interrelated. That if you are. More values driven. That actually increases trust because people are like, this person is reliable.
They're gonna do what they say they're gonna do, and I can predict what is going to happen. I wanna share a quick story about this because it really applies to this one of my. Main values is that I believe that families are in charge of educating their children. And we as schools step into support.
And when I say that, everybody's like, oh yeah, that's fine. But then when I, when that, when the rubber hits the road, then people are like, wait a minute. I don't think so. For example, I. Because I believe that families are in charge and schools step into support. That means that at homework is us telling the families how to use their time at home.
I don't agree with that. And so that's one of my [00:31:00] values is I'm not on board with homework. And as a principal, I don't think that it should ever, I. Be assigned like a blanket to everybody. Individual student wants it, individual family wants it, go for it. That's totally fine. But as a blanket, we have homework.
So it took me a while to figure this out, but once I defined that and said, dear teachers, I do not believe that it's appropriate for us to tell families how they should spend their time at home. Doing their own thing. That's not for us to decide. They need to make that choice. Therefore, homework is not something that I'm gonna support.
Once I said that, I. People, all my issues with homework just disappeared because people understood at that point that it was a value and they knew how I was going to react when homework ish situations came up and every concern disappeared immediately. Once I made that decision, it increased trust, it increased belief that I, they know who I [00:32:00] was.
All those things really happened. It also helped with the empowered piece where they knew like. I can control whether or not I give homework, but I can't control how jet's gonna react. In fact, I already know how he is gonna react. If there are any issues, he's gonna say, well, we shouldn't have homework.
And that's the easy solution. So by doing that, by saying that out loud instead of just hinting at it or being bashful about it, or suggesting maybe we shouldn't do homework, people didn't understand why I was saying that. And once I connected it to a value. They were like, okay, we're not even gonna fight about this anymore.
It's pointless. And that's a really easy place to build trust, is to explicitly say what you really value and what really matters. What would you, how would you respond to that idea?
I have so many thoughts. Number one, I love that you kind of kept grappling with this point of friction internally for you until you really articulated what
Bingo.
that was
Yeah.
about it. Even just that process, whether it's on [00:33:00] homework or it's on something else, if you've got a point of friction as a leader that you can't let go, or maybe it's a point of friction with the whole staff. That like just doesn't seem to be going away. Go beneath the surface. Keep asking yourself, what is it about this thing that needs to be clarified? That's where working with a coach can be really helpful because the coach is gonna be like, seems like something's here. What's that about? You know? And really gonna support you to go below the surface so often as leaders and as teachers too, right? You're just going through and getting as much done as you can. You're putting out fire after fire and you don't take the time. To really sit and think and reflect on what those points of friction or just what your values are, et cetera. And so any time that you can build in to spend in reflection on those points of friction, on what your values are and do an values exercise, et cetera, and then think about how those values are being played out or not, [00:34:00] where is the rub?
Where are the points of friction with your own personal values, where are the points of friction with the school values? then you can find much more meaningful solutions. So I really, I think that, that process that you engaged in is such a great model for really any of our leadership journey that needs some attention.
It's like, spend the time. Keep working at it and keep kind of noodling over what it is that needs to be clarified and then clarify it, claim it, and talk about it with the staff. You, when you communicated it, you started with the why of why you were making that change or why you wouldn't support it. So people can't argue with your why.
They can't argue with your values. Your values are your values. they may have different values and that may cause a clash. And oftentimes you see that on
Mm-Hmm.
We all have different values and at the end of the day, this is what's so helpful about articulating not only personal values 'cause we all are human [00:35:00] beings and we all have our own personal values and the school values.
Yeah.
What do we agree on that are our school values that that we will always come back to? That will be kind of the Trump card on any of our individual values because although we don't want our individual values to conflict with those, these are gonna be the things that drive our decisions.
And this is a really good example of when the school values are clearly articulated, then we all know that we need to make decisions that align with those, even if we don't agree with them, because that's what our value. Are as a school. And this came up perfectly where there was a task that needed to be done that nobody wanted to do, but it aligned with our values.
And so I spent an inordinate amount of time every week doing this task that I did not want to spend my time doing, but I also had to do it. Because it was aligned with our school values and nobody else was gonna do it. So as the principal had to [00:36:00] take it on, but like that is so key. We all agree this is important, and therefore I need to spend a gross amount of time doing this thing that I.
Despise because it aligns with our values. And so then that brings us to the incremental piece of how do we start shifting this so that it is not so time consuming so that it's not so heavy, so that it's not so annoying and we make it something that is more. Valuable and meaningful for everybody, and not just a drain on one individual person or one group of people, which is very possible also.
Can you give us one more step that a or example that somebody can use to build this type of resilience specifically?
Yeah. And I would just say on that too, what you talking about is that when we can be clear, we can actually reduce the judgment, val, like the judgment that we place on any person or anything. I see so much time and energy wasted [00:37:00] trying to justify ourselves and justify why we do things, justify why we didn't do something. When we have our values articulated, it just takes so much of that burden off because we can say, this is why I did it, and or this is why I'm gonna do it, even though I don't like it. So now, instead of spending the energy justifying why it's not a good idea, I can just spend the energy figuring out what the incremental actions are to help me get through it with at least some kind of efficiency and peace. So there is such a level of justification and and emotion and judgment that ends up happening when we're not clear. So that would definitely be a place to start, is just to get clear on your perspective as a leader and take the time. To do so. And if you need some support to do that, I think working with a coach can be, or in a group can be a really important and powerful leverage action. I call leverage actions are things that you do and they have a much bigger [00:38:00] impact than the time that it took you to do that thing. And so look for those, look for those. And certainly working with a coach can be one. thing that I see a lot is in terms of mattering and helping the staff feel valued is that sometimes we just say, good job.
We put the pizza in the workroom. We we don't really, I. Truly acknowledge the efforts that are happening and truly see people. And when people don't feel seen at work or in life, right? That just leads to dissatisfaction and burnout. So if you wanna increase resilience, another key leverage action would be to truly. See your staff, and again, this takes a prioritizing this in your schedule to go and really look and watch and witness what your staff is doing. Not to provide feedback to pro, but to provide acknowledgement and to just say, I wanna acknowledge that you right? So [00:39:00] instead of saying, Hey, good job, be specific. Really acknowledge something that the staff member is doing. And believe me, that has a tremendous effect, not only on the school climate and culture as a whole, but on that person's resilience and on o you know, ultimately overall resilience. so that would be something that I would suggest because so often I see the alternative where an educator feels that they are not valued, not seen. By their leader. And it goes for your own leader, right? Whoever is leading you, if they were to come in and truly acknowledge your efforts, your what you're doing, has such a tremendous impact. And so even if your leader isn't doing that for yourself, you can do that for yourself too. You can acknowledge your own efforts.
And where this connects to resilience is that part of resilience. Is awareness. can't build our resilience if we're not aware of where we're at. If we're [00:40:00] not aware of what we're doing well, and thus what needs to improve, we resilience comes back to. Self-awareness and communal collective awareness. And so really try to tune in not only to yourself, but to the whole school community and a very simple tool to do that. I told you I put resilience and and burnout on the same scale. So that scale, that continuum, I call it the wellbeing continuum. You can call it the resilience continuum, whatever you wanna call it, but it's very simple, just negative 10 to positive 10. How are you doing right now? And think right now, everyone listening, where am I at on this continuum right now, from negative 10 to positive 10? The negative side obviously is feeling burned out, feeling too tired to function, too ineffective, too resentful to function. feeling in survival mode, right? the positive side of the scale being, I'm feeling very rooted. I'm feeling like no matter what's going on with. context, I feel [00:41:00] solid in who I am and what's driving me and the actions I'm prioritizing. would be more the positive side of the scale. Positive 10, thriving. The zero is, I'm not good, I'm not bad, I'm just getting by. So rate yourself on that right now. That's step one of building your own self-awareness and you can ask your staff this. Rate yourself negative 10 to positive 10 right now. It's helping them build awareness self-awareness as well we spend so much time focused on other people, and that's adaptive and that's part of working in education, period.
We have to do that. And we should also spend some time checking in with ourself. This is part of emotional intelligence. This is part of how we provide trauma-informed service to our students. We have to manage ourselves. And that starts with self-awareness. So that's step one. But then step two goes back to the incremental actions. would it take for you to move up one on that continuum? So if you're at negative 10, what would it take you to get to negative nine? If you're at negative one, what would it take you to get to [00:42:00] zero. If you're at positive 10, what would it take you to get to positive 11? Right? So then you can design your next action from there. And I have had leaders who I've worked with who've said, you know what I love to do is I, BCC the whole staff? And I ask them this question, where are you at? And then reply to me and let me know what is something I could do to help you move up one. And oftentimes people will email back saying it's the 80 20 rule.
So 80% of people will email back saying, just asking actually me to move up. One that you're, you care and you're supporting me to tune in because you see that as valuable. And then sometimes the 20% will give you something easy. Cover my duty today. I have to leave a elite to go to a doctor's appointment, If you could do that, that would really help me out. 'cause I'm stressed about it, Sometimes they're just, they're simple actions, but there are ways that we can show up for our staff without fanfare, without applause, but just show up for their own wellbeing and ultimately [00:43:00] create the conditions and build the trust on campus that is necessary for the resilience we desire.
Yeah, I think that's really powerful and the self-awareness matters. The rating yourself matters. But I want to highlight one piece real quick about, the giving people acknowledgement, which you said, and I appreciate you using acknowledgement instead of praise, which is typically what we think about.
And anytime you give someone praise, like good job, you you make it a hierarchical thing where I'm above you and you're below me and I am doling out these. These favors to you saying, oh, good job doing this. Good job doing that. And what that does is it makes it feel fake no matter what. And my favorite illustration of this is if a parent is doing the dishes and a child comes up and helps them, and the parent says, thank you so much for helping me do the dishes, you were a [00:44:00] great helper.
Like, that sounds totally appropriate, right? But if you're. If the guy is doing it and his wife comes up and helps him with the dishes and he says, thanks for doing the dishes. You're such a good helper. That sounds totally misogynistic, totally inappropriate. Your eyes got all big. And it's like, that is, no, you don't say that to your wife.
That's messed up because your equals, right? And so instead of saying that, you say. Thank you for helping with the dishes. You didn't have to, and I really appreciate it. That simple change of you did a great job versus acknowledging what they did and saying thank you. There's a huge difference there.
And when you do that, I. In naturally hierarchical relationships, it makes people feel like they are your equal which everybody is right. There is no such thing as hierarchy in our human relationships because we are all created equal. And so this is a really powerful little thing that you can do is acknowledge.
Recognize, and most importantly, express [00:45:00] gratitude when somebody helps out and avoid praising and saying, good job. You did so great. That stuff doesn't really help and it just makes it hierarchical. So, anything you wanna add to that? I.
No, I, it is so good. And you're right to call that out, that it is, it creates this hierarchy, and it just doesn't it doesn't land the way you want. So here you're spending time trying to praise someone and trying to build them up. And it actually does the, sometimes does the opposite. If not, it's net neutral.
So instead, this is just such a great leverage action because. Without any additional time. It's just the difference in phrasing, really spending I would say it's actually more about presence than it is about time presence, being that you're actually noticing you're laying down whatever you have to do as a leader, whatever you're thinking about as a leader and you're tuning in to that staff member and you're noticing the things they're doing.
It could [00:46:00] be a duty aid at lunch that you are noticing bonds with the kids. just being able to tune your attention into them is what makes the acknowledgement feel so uplifting. So I love that you acknowledge that it does create a hierarchy when we praise and that's not what we want. So this is a great leverage action to
Yeah, and if you're listening, you wanna know more about that. I've got a blog post about that Jethro site slash praise. It's linked here in the show notes also. That is a very small, incremental thing that you can do, as Allison was talking about, to make a really big change, and it's so easy. It's just incredible.
I started doing it with my kids, by the way. Oh man. It's wonderful. It, they love it. They don't know what I'm doing, but they sure react differently when I say thank you, rather than you did a good job. So I.
And I think to notice their response, whether it's for your, in your kids or in your spouse, or in your staff, or even in your leader, like to [00:47:00] notice how they respond will end up reinforcing that behavior for you. tune into that too. Notice how they respond to your acknowledgement versus praise. That, use that to continue to fuel your own habit.
Yeah, for sure. Very good. Alright in closing, how would you like people to get more in touch with you? You've said a lot of great stuff here and people would be wise to reach out to you for more support because you do this on a regular basis. How could people get in touch with you?
Yeah, you can visit me on my website, the thrive designer.com. You can email meAllison@thethrivedesigner.com. I would be happy to engage in further conversation, whether it's about. You know, coaching or any of the groups of leadership groups that I have put together. I also wanna acknow or want to share that I am putting together a school leaders that Thrive Virtual Summit.
It's gonna be November 22nd, and I'm doing that with the Water Center for systems Thinking, because I [00:48:00] believe all of this. Is served when we use a systems lens to look at how the whole system works. So people can find information about that. On the Water Center for Systems Thinking website or on my website as well.
Would love to have you join us.
Awesome. That sounds very good. There are links to those in the show notes. So please check that out@resilientschools.com. And Allison, thank you again for being part of Resilient Schools. This was great.
You're welcome. Thanks for having me.
Listen to Resilient Schools using one of many popular podcasting apps or directories.