The Assistant Principal Podcast

2022-11-18_Five for Friday_FINAL
Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal podcast. I'm your host, Frederick Busky.
The goal of this podcast is to help improve life and leadership of assistant principals. Today's
episode of five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of November
fourteenth through eighteenth twenty twenty two. Imagine setting a leadership intention at the
beginning of each day. That's what many readers of the daily email. Do for some, it's become a
ritual. They pour a cup of coffee, open their email, read the strategic leader daily, and then set 1
intention.
One thing to really think about or focus on or execute in their day of leadership. The daily email is a
powerful leadership practice, so if you aren't already a subscriber, I hope you'll consider joining the
list. It's just one more way to include me on your leadership journey, and that would bring me joy.
You can find a link on my homepage at frederickbuskey.com On Monday, I shared a little bit of a
story about a kitchen remodel that took place last year, and we switched out some kitchen cabinets
and drawers and we moved our silverware drawer from the West side of the kitchen to the east side
of the kitchen.
And yesterday when I was emptying the dishwasher. Well, not yesterday. On the weekend when I
was emptying the dishwasher, I had some forks in my hand and I turned and I went to the West wall
where the silverware had been for 16 years and realized once I opened that drawer that no things
had changed and I had to turn around and go back to the east wall and put the forks into the drawer
where they had really been for about a year. So I had these 16 years of habits of going to the West
side to put silverware away and even though I've been working.
With the silverware drawer on the on the east side for a over a year I still struggled to get it right.
And I think it's just a symbol or example of how powerful our habits can be, both for good and for ill.
And the thing that I encourage people to think about is. What habits have you developed? That
maybe don't work anymore because you develop them based on how the world was or how your
school was or students or how they were. But now they're not the same anymore, and yet we may
be stuck in that old practice.
So if you read that email, I hope through this week you paid attention to some of those things that
you just do by habit, especially things that you find just aren't working. I think a simple example of
that is giving detentions to students for being late to class. I've been hearing a lot about that on
some of the groups that I'm in. And maybe there was a time when giving detentions to students for
being late to class was effective, but in a lot of places it's not effective anymore.
So we really need to look at these changing situations and think about what are the ways that our
habits, our reactions, need to change. The rest of the week focused on different elements of what I'll
say is the leaders journey. The leader's journey happens in three stages. If you attended my
webinar on escaping the black hole of urgency then this should be familiar to you. But we can think
of the leaders journey as kind of getting in that rocket ship and you get your leadership job and you
have this vision of blasting off from wherever you were and getting to this new place and doing all of
this instructional leadership.
Work and vision creation and just helping make a better school. But it doesn't take long in your
journey to get pulled off course and get pulled into that black hole of urgency where you're just stuck
by its gravitational pull, running around doing all those urgent tasks. Being caught in the black hole
of urgency is the first stage of the leadership journey. The second stage happens when we learn to
implement key strategies for escaping the pole of that black hole. And so we begin to get slowly,
slowly back on course. And then the third stage of the journey is that we begin accelerating out of
that gravitational pull and really get turned into the direction and moving at a decent speed back
towards our original goal of being that strategic leader, being that instructional leader in our school.
On Tuesday, what I asked you to think about was where are you on that journey and are you in the
same place that you were last year? And if so, do you have a plan for changing course? On
Wednesday I talked about how I maybe misled people a little bit on Tuesday with the question of
where are you on the journey. Because that sort of implies that the journey is linear and that there is
a place to which you arrive, and that's really not true.
Because even when you've gotten into stage 3, even when you've escaped the black hole of
urgencies, you've escaped the gravitational pull and you're well on your way. There can be times,
they may be weeks, they may be days, may be hours that you slip back into that urgent mode. It is
something that just continually happens. So even when you've become a strategic leader and you're
focused on what's purposeful and what's important over what's urgent, and you're focused on
solving problems, not treating symptoms. And you're focused on making progress, not just taking
action.
And then of course on people over tasks, even when you're doing that on a daily basis. There are
still going to be times when you find yourself back in that black hole, back on that treadmill and you
need to shake yourself in and try to get back. So that's one of the lessons in the week was that the
leader's journey has those 3 stages. But don't be surprised if you've made it to stage three or even
stage two to find yourself back at stage one. On Thursday, I just said a couple words about the
transition points in each part of the journey. There's a transition that we make from being caught in
the black hole to becoming strategically reactive, which is at stage 2.
There's a transition we make from being strategically reactive to then being a strategic leader to get.
To escape the pole of that black hole, to get to the place where you're strategically reactive. The key
is to stop managing time. And start managing priorities. That's the first step. Stop managing time
and start managing priorities. Once you've moved to being strategically reactive and you've
implemented some of the strategies there, we then need to make that next step towards being a
strategic leader. And the simplest way to do that is to really focus on being fully present with others.
And when we're fully present with others, then we begin growing those people. And when you're
growing people, you are moving into that third stage of the journey into being a strategic leader.
Now as I just said. Even when you're in that stage three and you're a strategic leader, you're going
to get thrown off. And honestly, I don't know that there's anything that we can do to make it that we
will be 100 % always strategic leaders. I just think we're always going to get pulled back because
we're always going to get caught up in those urgent tasks.
But what we can do is to build supports for ourselves, to help us stay strategic more often and to
help us escape the urgent zone more quickly. We never arrive. Leadership is always a journey. But
isn't that actually really awesome? That this journey never ends and that every day we have the
opportunity to continue to grow. Fridays always reflection day, and I closed with four questions. They
were these. I ask you again, where are you on your leadership journey? What priority will you focus
on today? Who will you be present for, and how will you help them grow? And finally, how will you
avoid getting sucked back into that black hole? I also asked readers to go ahead and share with me
the answers to any of those questions.
I love hearing from people. It makes my day, but it also helps me learn more about you and then do
a better job serving you so. If you read the emails this week, I hope that you'll go back to that Friday
email and really consider responding and just telling me what's going on and which of those
questions. Really is important to you. And even if you're not on the email, list you've now gotten
those questions and been able to think a little bit about the three stages of the leadership journey.
And if any of that resonates with you, I would love to hear about it.
So the big takeaway from this is that. Leadership is a journey, and it will always be a journey you will
never arrive. And again, I think that's something we're celebrating. Ok. That wraps up this week's
five for Friday rendition of the Assistant Principal podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please
subscribe and rate the podcast. Rating the podcast really does help other people find it. I'm always
looking for ways to improve the show, so if you have feedback for me, or if you want to share about
where you are in your leadership journey, you can email frederick frederick husky dot.
Com i'm frederick buskey, and I hope you'll join me next time for the Assistant Principal podcast
cheers.