How to Love Teaching Again: Work Smarter, Beat Burnout, and Watch Your Students Thrive

[00:01] SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center and Champion of High Performance Instructional Leadership, Dustin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_02:

I am thrilled. to be joined today by Jamie Sussel Turner, the Less Stress Business Coach. Very excited to speak again with Jamie because her book, Less Stress Business, is incredibly relevant for our work as school administrators. And Jamie actually is a former principal now, and as a business coach, works with leaders in all kinds of industries, including business and nonprofit, to help them accomplish more with less stress.

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And now, our feature presentation.

[00:48] SPEAKER_02:

So, Jamie, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what brought you to the work that you're currently doing?

[00:56] SPEAKER_00:

Well, thank you, Justin. It's a pleasure to be here today and get to speak with your audience. I transformed myself from the role of principal about five years ago when I retired from education into a business coach, which was a surprisingly smooth transition. Because there's a lot that's very similar to what a school leader or school administrator does to what a business leader does day in and day out. And I was surprised by those similarities. Coaching was something that I always did as a school leader, and I saw that as an important part of my role.

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I got my coaching training in 2005, so several years before I retired as a school principal. So I was able to use those skills and practice them as part of my role as a school principal.

[01:42] SPEAKER_02:

So Jamie, your book, Less Stress Business, is a guide for hiring, coaching, and leading great employees. Could you tell us a little bit about what prompted you to write that book?

[01:54] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I had been writing a blog for about two years, and I had been writing a lot about those aspects of growth with my business clients. And I came to realize that a lot of their stress was coming from challenges they had around hiring, coaching, and leading their employees. So that was what led to the beginning of the book. And I actually interviewed all of my clients for the book, which was a great experience. And I did an informal data collection by asking them to rate their stress. And I think this is a great question for school leaders as well.

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If they were to rate their stress on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being completely maxed out stress, where would they have rated themselves at the start of our coaching relationship and where would they rate themselves now that we had been well into the coaching experience and i know when i look back to myself as a school principal i was definitely at the nine or ten and i found that was the same with with almost all of my clients they started our coaching relationship about as stressed out as the leader could be But what was most surprising was that after at least six months of coaching, they were down to a two or three in their self-reporting of how they had diminished their stress. So then I started looking at what was it that was lessening their stress. And I was able to generate seven less stress business practices that were the ways that helped my clients feel less stress.

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and lead with more clarity. And as I look back on my time as a school principal, those were the same things that helped me to lead with less stress as well.

[03:39] SPEAKER_02:

Fabulous. Well, let's talk a little bit about employees because I know a lot of the stress that we experience as school leaders and that business people experience, whether they're managers or small business owners, has to do with our relationships with employees. Could you talk about that a little bit?

[03:57] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. I think that is the most important thing, is nurturing those relationships and really creating trust in the relationships. That comes from many different places. There's not a place though for blaming employees for a lack of their performance. And really that was the other thing that led to my writing of the book because I discovered in my coaching, it kind of always got my attention that in the beginning of the coaching relationship, my clients were always blaming their employees for the problems that they were experiencing. And it took a while for them to realize that they had a role in the employee's performance.

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And it's very easy to blame someone else. And it's a lot harder to look within ourselves and see how we're contributing to the performance that we're getting. So I think that was a key shift in the thinking of my clients and also of school leaders when we start to realize that there are definitely things we can do to shift our mindset by realizing that we are not having a tug of war with our employees or our teachers. Lots of principals look at it and think of it that way, that it's me against the teachers. And I think that mindset is completely destructive. I think our relationships need to be one of that we're going in this together.

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We're in it together. And that really can change the dynamic and create better relationships with teachers.

[05:35] SPEAKER_02:

Very well said. Well, and I've seen that dynamic where, you know, maybe a leader is particularly reform minded and wants to bring in some big changes and teachers might see that as a kind of challenge to what they're currently doing that is working and, you know, as a threat to the success that they're currently experiencing. And I think what I hear you saying is if we frame the leadership relationship, the employer-employee relationship, whatever it is, as one that is fundamentally adversarial, we're not going to get the results that we want.

[06:10] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And, you know, I think you said that very well, Justin. And especially with new reforms, and I know when I was a school principal, I was also the curriculum director director for my school. So it was a small school district, even though I had a school of 450 students from preschool to grade three, it was a two school district. So I wore many hats and curriculum was one of them. And there were many new, actually, I think we overhauled the entire curriculum in the 12 years I was a school principal.

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So I dealt with that issue of change a lot. And what I found really helped most in building and creating trusting relationships was valuing what teachers were already doing well and not judging them for not automatically embracing the change and allowing them to embrace it at their own rate and not coming in and being highly critical when they didn't but recognizing the things that were already working and even if they were taking small steps to the new curriculum or new way of teaching to acknowledge them for that. And I think that was very helpful.

[07:19] SPEAKER_02:

That's so powerful. One of the workshops that we provided recently in the High Performance Instructional Leadership Network focused on a process called Appreciative Inquiry that takes a look at what's currently working well that we want more of. And I think what you said is so right on because we tend to look at change as something that needs to be new, that needs to be coming in from the outside and that people need to get on board with and that we need to kind of leave all the old stuff behind. And what I found from an appreciative inquiry lens is that often the things that we want more of are already present. And when we emphasize those, when we appreciate them, when we share the good news about those things that are already taking place, we get more of those things and we naturally get less of the things that we don't want.

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So Jamie, it sounds like our relationships with the people we lead and not being adversarial are a key part of reducing our stress as leaders. What are some of the biggest misconceptions that people have around this idea of stress that you write about in the book?

[08:27] SPEAKER_00:

Well, there are lots of misconceptions. I think if I could just go back to the previous topic, which I think was so powerful. So I think one of the misconceptions is that as leaders, we're fine just the way we are. And Just like our teachers need to grow, we need to be growing all the time as well because I have a highly critical nature. That's just who I am. And so when I would be observing a teacher or going in for a classroom visit, I had to consciously remind myself to notice what they were doing that was already working.

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So I think that speaks to what lessens our stress as leaders is when we look within ourselves to see where we need to grow. Another area that I find is really significant is the kinds of conversations we're having with our employees and teachers. If we're the kind of person who naturally avoids difficult conversations and is afraid to have them, we're not going to be as effective in helping people to grow because if we're not talking about the things that are most important, then we're missing many opportunities to be able to have conversations that allowed more time for silence and were more reflective of what the other person was saying. So they felt more heard. So those are some areas that as principals and school leaders, we can look within ourselves.

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And when we grow our leadership skills in those areas, the less stress and more comfort we have. and confidence we have in our leadership.

[10:00] SPEAKER_02:

So Jamie, it sounds like a lot of the stress reduction work that we need to do as leaders involves confronting things that we may have resisted confronting and having some kind of bold or courageous conversations that we may have been putting off. Am I understanding correctly that in your work with your clients, a lot of what you are seeing as contributing to their stress was simply a failure to establish clear expectations and have those tough conversations?

[10:29] SPEAKER_00:

I think that's a big part of it. And people carry around a lot of stress when they're avoiding those conversations. I have one client who told me she would have the conversations in the shower in the morning, and she would never talk to the people and never actually have the conversations with the employee she needed to talk with. And school leaders do this all the time. I know that there was a time when I did For example, you know, maybe you have a teacher who has retired, but they're still on the job. And you feel as a school leader, you need to talk to them about what their plans are for retirement.

[11:03]

That is a really tricky conversation. And I've had some of those. It's not easy to have a conversation like that with someone. But when we avoid it, we end up feeling frustrated with that employee's poor performance and attitude. And, you know, they seem to have be off the job while they're still on the job but yet we don't talk with them about it so we have really no hope of influencing that employee or that situation let alone all the children that that teacher is coming in contact with every single day when we don't have the courage to have that conversation or the skill to have the conversation we get the courage when we become more skillful and there are many ways that people can learn to become more skillful in those difficult conversations. And that is a huge stress reducer when we learn how to do that.

[11:57] SPEAKER_02:

I love what you just said there. So what's the best way for people to build their own capacity to deal with those uncomfortable situations?

[12:08] SPEAKER_00:

There's a lot that every human being can do to get better at those difficult conversations. I think one thing is to learn how to express them without blaming the other person. And it goes back to the typical I message that I know the social worker in my school used to teach the children starting in kindergarten. But I find as adults, it's very effective. I call it the five words. It's a strategy I teach my clients.

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It's using five words and remembering them as a framework, which is the five words are when you, I feel, because so it's talking about when something happens how do I feel and then why do I feel that way rather than making it about the other person when we own our feelings it creates an openness so that the the other person is more willing to talk and have a enter into a dialogue so if it's a teacher who's lost some of their performance by saying when I walk by your classroom and I hear you saying some difficult things to children that make your students uncomfortable, I feel really sad because that's not the teacher I've always known you to be. And I want you to end your career being a great teacher.

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And then when we stop and just say that amount, it opens the door for the other person to also be authentic and honest and have a good conversation. So that's just one strategy that I found to be effective.

[13:44] SPEAKER_02:

But I'm hearing kind of an undercurrent here that the more we own our own part in whatever mess we're in, the more likely we are to get out of it. Is that what you found with your clients?

[13:55] SPEAKER_00:

Yes, absolutely. And we're very quick to blame other people. And if I might share a quick story that I write about in the book, I had this flashback as I was writing chapter one in the book. And it went back to when I was 12 years old and I was at summer camp and I was at a horse show. And the counselor asked me to take the horse I had been riding and put him into the trailer. And I had never put a horse into the trailer before.

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But, you know, I was an enthusiastic, compliant kid. So I said, sure, I'm happy to do that. And I stood facing this horse and I had a rope. It was a very rough rope in my hands that was attached to the horse's halter. And I took tiny steps backing up into the trailer. There was a ramp leading up into the trailer and the horse just wasn't having any of it.

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He just started snorting and throwing his head back and I just kept coaxing him along the way. But eventually he tossed his head in the air and backed up down the ramp, pulling the rope through my hands and taking all the skin off my hands with it. And someone quickly brought me a bucket of cold water because it was extremely painful and I sat there submerged with my hand submerged in the water thinking what is this horse's problem why won't this horse cooperate with me and that's exactly how many leaders feel when they have employees that won't cooperate but my big lesson in that and I think it's a great metaphor for what we've been talking about today is that when we go against someone with you know, with force, it really just leads to pain and stress.

[15:33]

And lots of school leaders go to battle with teachers and they see it as an us and them dynamic or as a tug of war. But when we go with someone, which I later learned was the right way to lead a horse into a trailer was to walk beside the horse and go into the trailer with the horse and the horse will comply that way. So when teachers see that we are in it with them, and that we want their success as much as they do and we lead alongside them, it's much less painful and much less stressful.

[16:05] SPEAKER_02:

Well, Jamie, thank you so much for sharing with us from your book and your work and your experience as a principal. If people want to connect with you and find out more about what you do and find the articles that you're posting to your blog, where can they find you online?

[16:20] SPEAKER_00:

The best way to find me is to just put in Less Stress Business. My website is lessstressbusiness.com and they can also go to Amazon and if they also put in Less Stress Business, it will take them right to my book. On my website, I have several articles I've written for Principal Magazine and Education Week. So those are all posted on my website. I actually have written one about the conversation with the teacher who needs to retire.

[16:47]

So there's a more lengthy version of that for anyone who's faced with that situation, as well as many other articles.

[16:54] SPEAKER_02:

Fabulous. Well, we will link to all of that from our website as well. Jamie, it has been an absolute privilege to speak with you today. Thank you so much.

[17:02] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you, Justin. It's been a great pleasure for me too.

[17:05] SPEAKER_01:

And now, Justin Bader on High Performance Instructional Leadership.

[17:09] SPEAKER_02:

So high performance instructional leaders, what can we do to make sure that we're not creating stress for ourselves by blaming our employees for things that are really our failure to set them up for success? I really appreciate Jamie's powerful story of trying to lead a horse into the trailer and trying and failing to pull and drag that horse along and then realizing that it was more of a coaching role, kind of walking alongside of the horse that allowed her to finally be successful. And I think as strong leaders, we have this feeling, we have this attitude that we need to be out in front, kind of occupying the moral high ground and dragging people along with us sometimes. but often people feel that they too are on the moral high ground. And whenever we're dealing with some sort of change, everyone wants students' best interests to be at the forefront.

[18:04]

Everyone wants to succeed in the work that we're doing on behalf of students. And when we're asking people to change, often that means switching to something that we're less likely to be successful with. So when we encounter resistance, when it feels like we're dragging people along, I think often what has happened is not that we haven't been clear enough about why we're making a change or not that we haven't been forceful enough, but that we haven't really understood the objections that people are raising. And I want to recommend a book that is specifically about this issue called The Human Side of School Change by Robert Evans. It's not a recent book, it's from the 90s, but it has very powerful explanations of why people resist change and what we as school leaders need to do about it. So if you're dealing with stress from conflict and resistance from staff members, take a look at Jamie's book, Less Stress Business.

[18:58]

And if you're dealing with a major change that's introducing stress to your staff and that's causing conflict, I highly recommend The Human Side of School Change by Robert Evans.

[19:13] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.