EPISODE #151

Is that a strategy or a coping mechanism?

You're listening to School Leadership Reimagined episode number 151

How do builders like us make a dramatic difference in the lives of our students in spite of all the obstacles we face? How do you keep your vision for your school from being held hostage by resistant teachers, uncooperative parents, ridiculous district policies or lack of time, money or resources. If you're facing those challenges right now, here's where you'll find the answers, strategies, and actionable tips you need to overcome any obstacle you face. You don't have to wait to make a difference in the lives of the people you serve. You can turn your school into a success story right now with the people and resources you already have. Let's get started.

Hey, builders, welcome to another episode of the school leadership reimagined podcast. I'm your host, Robyn Jackson. And today, we are going to start it's not a new series. But we the last few weeks, we've been talking about the school hierarchy of needs. And so for the next couple of episodes, I want to talk about some really practical applications of everything that we've talked about this season, around what it means to be a builder and how it's different than being a leader. And I'll tell you where this came from.

Now, I don't get to watch a lot of TV these days. But I was recently visiting my sister and we sat down and did something we haven't done a long time, which is the only thing I haven't done in a long time, which is watch an episode of This Is Us. And in that episode, it was focused on one of the couples on the show. And they were having an argument and the wife was was worried because she wanted her husband to be like he had been when they first were married, you know, as he had changed she and she she didn't like some of the changes. And she said Why? Why can't you be the way that you used to be and the husband said align to her that I've been thinking about for weeks. But husband said to her, you fell in love with a coping mechanism. That's not who I really am, I was doing those things because I was unhappy, I was insecure and I was coping, if that's what you fell in love with, you fell in love with my coping mechanism.

And the reason that that resonated to me was that I think a lot of us have been trained to be leaders. 

And a lot of our leadership training isn't strategic. It's really a series of coping mechanisms. So today, I want to take a deep dive and look at what you are doing right now. And I want you to start thinking about is the work that I'm doing right now truly strategic truly moving me towards my vision? Or is it just a coping mechanism? Now before we get into some examples, and take a deep dive into that, I do want to remind you about a couple of things, there are some really exciting things happening.

First of all, the next builders lab is coming up, it's coming up at the end of June, it's going to be amazing. And so we're probably about a quarter of the way full right now. But we are going to sell out we always during the summer and so you want to get your tickets sooner rather than later. And at builders lab, this is what you're going to learn. We have really been refining builders level for the last couple of years. And we now have it I think down to two, it's really targeted around helping you understand how to apply that school hierarchy of needs to your school, helping you figure out by looking at that school hierarchy of needs, where the root cause is of your biggest challenges that you face. And then how do you solve that challenge? How do you remove that obstacle that's standing in between you and your goal in the next 90 days. And so a builder slab it's really we're taking we're doing a deep analysis of your situation where we're trying to take a look at your school right now and try to figure out where it's stuck and why it's stuck there. And we do something called micro slicing a bill just love that I love and everybody does micro slicing is blown away. And we teach you two levels of micro slicing the first level is how do I micro size my school to figure out what is the root cause of why we are not achieving our vision.

Maybe you don't even feel stuck right now. Maybe you feel like while we're making some gains but those gains are tiny. And you're working really hard for those tiny little gains and you know that you could and should be a lot further along. Maybe you have a good school and you're just kind of complacent or you're maybe that you but your staff is complacent. And you know you can be great school. Maybe you have a school that's kind of you know really in trouble and you want to turn it around very quickly.

Well builder's Lab is a place you come to to figure out what's holding you back and get you unstuck. We spent three days doing that. The second level of micro slicing is not only do you figure out what's getting How do you get your school and stuff? But how do you get your teachers unstuck? We're going to show you how to go into a classroom and within five to seven minutes, be able to determine what is the root cause of a teacher's practice, what's the one thing a teacher needs to focus on right now in order for that teacher to make significant progress and growth in that school year. And so if you want to kind of get in very quickly, and figure out how to get unstuck, because you're ready to move to that next level, you're ready to start achieving your vision, builders laboratory for you.

Now, the other thing is that buildership University is for those of you who don't just want to get unstuck, but you also now want to execute and and build a ship University. It's really less about your school and more about you as the builder. And it's about how do you how do you develop the skill set and the competencies that make you the kind of builder that can walk into any school, and turn that school into a 100% success story. And then how do you develop to the point where you can reliably do that in three years or less, no matter what school you enter.

And so we've been doing beta testing with some ways and functionalities around builder ship University for the last year, and that beta testing is coming to an end. In fact, we only have two more cohorts that we're going that are going to go be able to come through buildership University at its current investment. After that, buildership University will be complete and full. And we will start that you can still join buildership university, but you'll have to join it at the regular investment for builder build a ship University.

Right now the people who are have been a part of the beta and going through these beta cohorts are paying half or more off of what the regular investment is going to be. Because it's a beta, we're still learning they're learning along with alongside us. But beta is coming to an end. And so if you've been thinking about joining builder's ship University, and you've been putting it off, I wouldn't put it off much longer, because these are your last two opportunities to get into builder ship University at $97 per month after that, the investment is going to be significantly more because the program will be complete.

And so we are opening up a cohort at the end of April, and you'll be getting started in May. And then we're opening up another cohort at the end of May, you'll get started working in June. After that the July cohort is the first cohort where we're going to have the full thing all finished out. And then you'll get Bill to ship University as regular tuition.

So if you want to join builders should be University and you want to get in and lock in for life at this particular price point, then you need to go to builder ship university.com. And you can look there either if you depending on when you're listening to this episode, either you'll be able to sign up for the waitlist, or you'll see that tickets, I mean that tickets, we don't sell tickets to builders university, but you will see that the cohort is open and you have an opportunity to join the cohort. Alright, so I think those are my two big announcements.

Let's talk about the difference between strategies and coping mechanisms. 

A lot of what you were taught in your leadership training doesn't teach you how to move a school forward. Instead, a lot of what we're taught is really about helping us to cope with a school that we have not build a better school. And that's one of the frustrations I've always had with leadership that that led me to start looking for something else and helping me to find a builder ship was that when you are a leader, you're taught that for the most part you kind of have to tolerate or live with what you have sure you can make little changes here or there. But you know, they say you're going to play the long game. And so you just have to endure. And you they teach you all these different strategies to cope with things like ineffective teaching to cope with things like, you know, broken cultures to cope with things like, you know, parents who are are disruptive or students who are disruptive. And what we never learned is how to instead of coping with that situation, eliminate that situation altogether.

I'll give you a couple of examples. You know, think about something as simple as I'm in a lot of principal, Facebook groups and online groups. And one of the things that I see show up over and over again, and it seems innocent, but it drives me crazy, is people will put on something like hey, do y'all have any cool ideas for Staff Appreciation gift? Again, on the surface, it sounds harmless, right? You know, people want to appreciate their staff. They want to do something nice for their staff and they love cute gifts. Here's the problem. Staff Appreciation gifts.

If you really think about it, it's a coping mechanism. What People are really looking for as my staff is feeling underappreciated, and overworked. And I need to find some tangible thing that will help make people feel appreciated. And there are not enough Starbucks gift cards or pellet ice machines in the staff lounge or, you know, 15 minutes seated massages, or movie tickets or anything else to compensate for an environment that is wearing people down and not treating people like full blown human beings. So whenever people are seeking Staff Appreciation gifts, it the first thing in my mind is it's a coping mechanism.

Why wouldn't you build a work environment where your staff feels appreciated every day? Work, those gifts are nice. I'm not saying never give your staff a gift. But you certainly don't want to give them a gift to make up for all of the nonsense that they've been putting up with for months. Because it's not going to do that help out, you create an environment where people feel valued every single day. And one of the episodes we're going to come up with that's coming up is the question, I'm going to tackle the question, are you taking up space that really belongs to your teachers. And a lot of times we are so busy trying to teach or prove teaching, that our teachers feel like they are not being appreciated, they're not valued for their opinion. Nobody cares what a teacher feels is important for moving students along. Instead, we all are saying you have to do it this way, because that's the way we were trained to do. And so teachers are not a part of that conversation.

When you're a builder, one of the first things that we take you through and build us up University is we spend the first 90 days just focusing on getting everything aligned. And part of that process is really nerve wracking for a lot of builders, because part of that process is a core values process. And the teachers own both core values, not you. And principles always say well, what if the teacher say something I don't like, listen, that's the risk you take when you trust your staff. But if you trust your staff, and if you have that conversation with your staff and use the core values process that we teach, you don't have to worry about what they're going to come up with, because you're going to create true consensus. That's not a Starbucks gift card. But that makes people feel like they have a voice and they have a choice and how your school is run.

That is the biggest and best teacher appreciation gift you can give them I've heard teachers say, Don't give me a school branded sweatshirt. How about treat me like a professional? How about treat me like a human being. I get a lot of teachers reaching out and telling horror stories about how they've been terrorized by by their district or by the principal. And that you can't compensate for by giving people a gift. The gift is a coping mechanism. What builders do is they don't rely on coping mechanisms. Again, builders still give gifts. But the gifts are the cherry on top. They're not the whole Sunday. 

Alright, here's another coping mechanism. I've heard principle, Sam when I get into three classrooms a day or 15 classrooms a week or five classes a day. And they they they celebrate that they they brag about that. I've been into 500 classrooms this year. Who cares? If you go into that many classrooms, but your presence in that classroom has not made a significant impact on the instruction in that classroom. We hold that up how many times you you show up in a classroom? And we say that is what instructional leadership looks like.

Builders are not counting how many times they're in a classroom and making sure they're in a classroom. How many times how many times do build how many classrooms? Do builders get into a day enough? And and how do builders Know what is enough? Well, builders have a teacher dashboard that shows them which teachers need visits from you and and what those visits should entail.

And what should the result of those visits be in terms of changes or improvements in teachers behavior. 

You see, if you're just showing up in classrooms to say, Hey, I've done my job, yet well, and you're not changing the the instruction that's happening in the classroom, then you're just an annoyance. But when you're a builder, it's not about how many times you get into a classroom, it's about the impact that you have when you visit. And in many cases, builders visit fewer classrooms but have bigger impact. And when they go into those classrooms, they're staying for far less time. You know, one of the things that I've mentioned earlier that you learn to do in builder's lab as micro slicing, that's five to seven minutes of a visit. But in those five to seven minutes, you get more out of it than if you'd stayed 30 or 45 minutes. And the conversations you can have with teachers based on that five to seven minutes when you do it correctly, is more rich and more meaningful. Those conversations are more rich and more meaningful than the ones that that you have after a 30 minute visit where you're tied to your your script.

So the number of times you get into a classroom as a hoping this mechanism, it makes you feel good. It makes you feel like you're doing something. But that's not the point of your role. Your role is not to visit classrooms, your role is to provide teachers with the kind of feedback and support that improves instruction. If your visitors aren't doing that, they're wasting time.

Here's another coping mechanism, any kind of rules that we have around employee behavior, those rules, especially as we we try to figure out how do I enforce rules? How do I get people to abide by my rules? Anything you do in response to that question is a coping mechanism. Why? Because you're trying to make people do something, but they clearly don't want to do they're not interested in doing. So people will say, How can I make teachers turn in lesson plans every single week? Well, you know how I feel about that? I don't think you should be collecting lesson plans at all, I think you should be looking at unit plans. Another episode another day, people ask me, What do I do about a teacher who doesn't show up on to work on time? What do I do about a teacher who isn't posting enough grades?

Any answer to that question is going to be a coping mechanism. 

Why? Because you're just trying to figure out how to deal with behavior that you should not be seeing in the first place. Here's what builders do that we're not worried about, how do I get somebody to do XY and Z, what builders do is they settle they start with that purpose row. So they start with a vision, mission and set of core values. They work on securing commitment there, rather than trying to control individual behavior. Because once you have commitment there, then if someone violates that vision, mission or core values, then you have opportunity for mental health and be accountable that goes beyond the individual behavior and goals board towards what their commitment is to your school.

So rather than talking to a teacher about you didn't turn on lesson plans, what you're going to talk to that teacher about is if we if you are not planning on a regular basis, and if your plans don't reflect the standards that are going to move us towards our vision, and if your plan doesn't reflect instructional practices that align with our mission, and if you're if you're if your plan is if you're not submitting your plan is in violation with your core values, then we have a problem. And the problem is that you didn't turn in your plans.

The problem is, you're telling me that somewhere along the way, you stopped believing in our vision, you stopped believing in our mission, and you no longer hold our core values non negotiable. And that's a much bigger and more important problem, the whether or not you got your plans to me on a Friday, do we set ourselves up by getting into the skirmishes with people about you are supposed to get in and by 12 o'clock, I didn't get until three you are not your vote, you know, I'm not arguing about that. I don't have a leg to stand on in most cases when I argue about that. But when I say the reason that I want your plans, and by noon is so that I have an opportunity to review them, and so that we can make sure that we're collaborating around instruction. And so now when you don't get an N by noon, I don't give an opportunity, I don't have an opportunity to give you feedback and time for you to make adjustments before you teach students and therefore students aren't getting the right kind of instruction. And therefore we're not moving towards our vision, mission and core values. And by the way, one of our core values is x. And when you put us in a position where we don't have the information, we need to move forward, you are in violation of x. That's a totally different conversation.

So if you find that you are spending a lot of your time trying to enforce rules for coping mechanism, what builders do is we have a solid foundation. And when you spend your time working on nurturing your your foundation, your vision, your mission, your core values. That's a strategy.

All right, here's another one. So I see this all the time to people will post, Anybody got a great idea for a PD activity I can do for an upcoming PD day. Or people will call my office and say, Hey, I've got this PD day in February, can you do a one day workshop on extra? My staff? The answer is unequivocally No, because I don't deal in coping mechanisms anymore. And those one day, you know drive by PDS are coping mechanism you're trying to fill a day, builders are not thinking about their PD days that way we're builders have as a teacher dashboard that tells them what the needs are of the staff. And those needs are in alignment with what it will take to get to your vision, mission and core values. And so professional development is not just a day, professional development is on going every conversation we have every meeting we have. And that day gives us an expanded opportunity to really take a deep dive into what we've been working on already. But it is not a separate event.

And so when you think about your PDE as a series of of disconnected separate events, or even a series of trainings, that is not in alignment with your overall vision, mission and core values, you're coping, you're trying to fill slots, you're trying to either fill slots by just grabbing a day, or maybe you're trying to be a little bit more thought Full and big, but you're still filling a slot in your head, okay, I've got a PD Plan, check and move on. It's a coping mechanism.

When you're a builder, you can't have a PD Plan without having a vision, mission and core values. 

First, you can't have a PD Plan unless you really understand the needs of your staff. You can't have a PD Plan unless you understand what the root cause is for where your school why your school is stuck where it is right now. And unless you have a plan for uncovering and removing that barrier, so that you and your students and your staff can move forward towards your vision. If your PD Plan is not nested, in that it's a coping mechanism.

Here's another example. Chasing checking and correcting teachers. I see principals wearing themselves out and they you know, principals will say to me, you know, I see what you mean about being a boss, leader builder, but sometimes you just have to be a boss, I've done a podcast episode on that before. Any time you are spending time chasing, checking and correcting people, you are coping with a problem. What builders do is we don't spend time chasing, checking correcting people, we spend time coaching people and mentoring people, and helping people be accountable and setting people up for success and providing the feedback support accountability and culture they need to be able to thrive.

That's strategic, because I'm building a foundation and I'm building my staff, I'm building their will and skill so that they will make the choice to do the right work the right way. Even when I'm not looking. ever you find yourself chasing, checking and correcting people know that that's a coping mechanism, stop first and then go back to that school hierarchy of needs and say, Why is this behavior happening? The other day in office hours, we were talking and someone was talking about an incident and their school. And they were talking about like, you know, what, what strategies can I have to talk to this teacher? And as we were having the conversation we started? That's the wrong question.

The real question is, what is missing in either your purpose, your people your pathway, your plan that makes that behavior seem okay to that teacher. And the more we dug, the more we realized that there were two problems. The first problem was there was a there was a piece of the purpose that was missing that needed to be reinforced. And then once that was there, there was a piece of the People section that that will and skill section that needed to be addressed. So that that teacher would know what the right behavior was the next time. In both cases, instead of chasing checking in and correcting that teacher, instead of just writing that teacher up and putting it out to file. This builder was actually building this teachers capacity, so that this teacher knew how to handle things differently next time. And they would never have to deal with that problem with that teacher, again, notice a difference. One is a coping mechanism. And it's a coping mechanism because you know that the problem is going to come up again.

One is a strategic decision that eliminates the problem altogether. 

Here's another one. Dodging or tolerating some degree of toxicity. I've had people say to me, Look, I can't eliminate all the toxicity. Because you can't control people, people are gonna be what they're gonna be haters gonna hate. And so you just have to deal with it and keep it from, keep it from deterring you from your goal. How are you going to keep toxicity from deterring you from your goal when toxicity and culture eats strategy for breakfast? That's a Peter Drucker quote, I think.

So you can't tolerate toxicity in your building because it will fester and it will grow. And anything you do that tolerates or ignores toxicity in your building is a coping mechanism. Well builders do is builders are constantly monitoring their culture looking for those early warning signs of toxicity. Builders are, are taking the time to deliberately engineer the right kind of culture. And when you do that, when you do that as a builder, then you don't have to worry about tolerating toxicity, you eliminate it altogether.

A couple of more. And again, I'm gonna I'm gonna step on some toes here. I think SIP plans are coping mechanisms. And I think that they are such a huge coping mechanism. We don't even realize that that's what they are. I think that states and districts use CIP plans as a way to make them feel like people are being strategic in schools, when in reality, and they know this. Most people write sub plans, and then never deal with them again, never touch them again.

So because they know that states revise CIP plans and create CIP plan, you know, kind of check ins and CIP plan templates and all of this paperwork to try to get schools to think strategically, when instead of the states Instead of looking at my CIP plan, I said, What is your vision mission and core values? And what is your goal? How are you going to move your school closer to that vision mission and core values this year? That's a simple two step process that would accomplish everything the state wants, or the district ones, without all the paperwork.

So I've started to believe that school improvement plans are coping mechanisms, they make us feel like we're in control, they make us feel like we have a strategy. But when you really look at most school improvement plans, there's nothing strategic about them. It's just hey, we want to move test scores up by 5%, how we're going to do it, and then it's spaghetti on the wall, people are just saying, Oh, well, we're going to use a new reading curriculum, or all we're going to increase the number of out minutes students are reading every day or all these strategies. And then we try to give ourselves a little bit more confidence by saying, Oh, we're going to use research based strategies. Okay, but you can use you can use a Reese a quote, unquote, research based strategy in the wrong way. So SIP plants make us feel like we, they make it they give us a false sense of security and confidence. Because in reality, the way that most implants are written does not ensure that you're going to achieve your goal.

It's wishful thinking. 

you know, what builders do. Builders have a vision mission and core values, that's the target. And every 90 days builders are coming back and developing a new plan. And the plan is not about what we're going to do. The plan is about what's the next obstacle we need to remove. Because if we remove obstacles, get things out of our way, then we have a clear shot towards our vision, mission and core values. Rather than writing a plan and hoping it's going to work builders have a plan that is respectful of the change process.

There are six pieces that I talked to you about in earlier episodes, those six ease, and builders not only have the process of the plan down pat builders hold themselves accountable to to achieving that plan by creating a scorecard. And by choosing the right pathway first. And because we're doing it every 90 days, we're not committing ourselves to a year long thing, when we realize you know, two months in, it's not going to work, but we turned it in already. So we have to stick to it. Instead, we give ourselves the grace to understand that every single 90 days, it's a series of experiments that are teaching us more and more and more about what it will take to achieve success for 100% of our students.

You know, I used to not use that word experiment, because people were saying you can't experiment on children. Now, that's not what we're talking about here. But even in school, we teach the scientific method we talk about good scientists are always conducting experiments. And that's how knowledge is created in science. So why is it such a bad thing to treat our planning, not like a locked, you know, a locked in kind of death sentence, right? Once you put it on the CIP plan, then you know, somebody's gonna come looking for you. Instead, why not say you know what this is the thing I think is in our way, this is what I think we'll remove it, let's try it. Let's keep track of it, let's adjust along the way. And then either we will remove it, or we will learn a lot more about how to remove it that we can do on the next 90 day cycle. You will get further in a year by going those and it will using those 90 cycles than you ever imagined you would get by locking yourself into a year long CIP plan. It's a coping mechanism. All right. Why are you for another one? I want to step on somebody's toes here.

I think data dives are a coping mechanism. 

Especially the way that we were mostly trained to conduct that we go in we look at the data, we you know, do we do red, yellow, green, or, you know, we find the lowest numbers and we you know, how are we going to move this number? There's it most of what we deal with data is a much ado about nothing. We spent all this time studying the data. But we don't change our behavior and response to the data. And yet, we do that Data Dive we feel really good because we know our data and principles come to me all the time.

It's like well, here's my data. And I know my data. And I'm like, Okay, well, how was how was your behavior changing based on your data? Silence. Because most of how we were trained to look at data, as a company mechanisms that builders, it's not that we don't look at data, but we're very careful about what your data we're paying attention to. One of the things that you learn and buildership University is how to create a data scorecard. And that scorecard helps you keep score. It helps you adjust your actions in response to the data and learn from the data.

And instead of looking at all of the data at the very beginning, you're going to be very intentional about what data you're going to focus on right now with a goal of changing that data during that 90 Day planning cycle. And that way, the day data is not just data, it's it's a way for us to, to give some really good information that helps us adjust our behavior so that we can reach our goals. So instead of being a four letter word data really becomes a translates into creating wisdom for us. Because as we look at that data and adjust our actions, we learn from it. And we have we become even more empowered to change that data over time. All right, one more action plans, whether these are action plans for teachers, you know, a lot of times we put teachers on like school improvement plans and action plans. I mean, I've even written a couple of myself. And I think there's one in one of my books about you know how to do that. And as I'm learning more, I'm not so sure that an action plan is the right thing. I feel like it's a coping mechanism.

Here's why you have a teacher is underperforming. 

And so you go into the classroom, you say, the teacher is underperforming, you pull out the form. And usually the form is really, it gives you an opportunity and an excuse to say, I did everything I could for this teacher and see this, this is why this teacher doesn't need to be here. And usually those action plans or those improvement plans, or works of fish fiction, or they're too bloated, the time limit is so small, that it doesn't really change teachers behavior, to the point where it changes outcomes for kids. Notice what I said there, some teachers are savvy, they can't they once they get put on an action plan or an improvement plan. They do everything on the plan. But as most of us know, even if a teacher does everything on a plan, if they are just doing it to comply with a plan, it's not going to change outcomes for students. So why are we doing it?

What builders do is we don't, we're not creating action plans. Again, that teacher dashboard helps us to figure out how do we move teachers up at least one level in one domain or one year or less? So rather than action plans, we're sitting down and we're having meaningful conversations with teachers about what does that look like? What does it mean, we're helping teachers kind of develop what they need by having the right feedback conversations with them to get them moving in the right the right direction to change. And then we are creating true accountability, where teachers choose to do the right thing, even when we're not there. And we're building an overall culture where all of our teachers are moving forward. And the tide of that of that culture moving forward helps teachers who who may be doubtful, who may not truly fully commit to everything yet be swept along with that tide, and they start moving forward and improving too. And that's why builders are called builders, it's part of reason why we're called builders is because we're building teachers up, and stead of putting people on improvement plans and tearing people down and killing their confidence.

Now, a lot of these distinctions I've talked about today, some of you are saying, Wait, Robyn, you you kind of hurt my feelings, because I do that I rely on that. That's okay. As long as you understand that what you're doing is a coping mechanism. And there is something better. You see, you don't have to cope with stuff when you're a builder. Things that aren't working things that you don't like things that are getting in the way. Builders see those things. And rather than coping with them, they say, Why am I coping with this? Why don't I eliminate it altogether? Why don't I remove it entirely. So I never have to deal with that again. So if you've been coping, and relying on these coping mechanisms and and tolerating things that you have no business tolerate, you don't, you shouldn't be tolerating. I want you to know that there's hope.

You don't have to tolerate things. 

Instead, if you start making the shift from being a leader, who tolerates a lot of stuff, to being a builder, who eliminates the things that are getting in their way, and never have to tolerate anything again, instead, you build a place where where you can thrive, where your students can thrive, or your staff can thrive, where people are happy, you build a place where people are glad to be to come to work every single day, because the work is important and rewarding, and they're committed to it. And when you give them something, you know, some gift or some token of appreciation, you're not having to compensate for all the junk they've already gone through. Instead, you're truly appreciating them and they appreciate what you're doing, they can welcome it, because they're not weighing it against all the junk that they've been putting up with for all this time. When you create plans, those plans don't give you a false sense of security. Instead, the plans that you create give you true confidence that you not only will you reach your goal, but that you will reach your goal in the time period that you've set and you will reach your goal in a way that honors who you are and your students are not going to kill anybody or drag anybody to your goal. You'll reach your goal in a way that that starts to add texture and substance to that vision that you've had.

It is instead of instead of putting, you know, putting up with behavior or trying to control behavior from from teachers or even students, you empower your teachers, the students to be their best selves, and to commit their best selves to the bigger vision, mission and core values. You don't have to spend your time going from one coping mechanism to the next. Instead of your builder, you can stop coping and tolerating, and start building a school that you, your teachers and your students deserve.

So I want to invite you this week, take a look at your work. If you if you if you have a lot of coping mechanisms in play, then I think you need to come to builders lab so we can figure that out. And then come to build a ship university, so that we can start giving you the real tools to replace those coping mechanisms. So you can actually make the difference that you were meant to make, so that you can actually enjoy the work again, that the work feels rewarding, not just because you created a better environment, but it feels rewarding, because you are seeing progress. So many of us are working really hard. And we're not seeing the growth that mirrors the amount of work we're putting into our day, every single day. It's because you are spending all of your time on coping mechanisms.

And when you're ready, you can you can come join this growing tribe of builders who have decided that we no longer want to traffic and coping mechanisms that were ready to do the work that we were meant to do. And that's how you can get off the coping mechanism, drip and start building something that is going to be lasting and eliminating challenges instead of coping with them. Because you've you started to put processes in place that are much more strategic, like a builder. I'll talk to you next time.

Hey, if you're ready to get started being a builder right away, then I want to invite you to join us at builder ship University. It's our exclusive online community for builders just like you where you'll be able to get the exact training that you need to turn your school into a success story right now with the people and resources you already have. Inside you'll find our best online courses, live trainings with me tons of resources, templates and exemplars and monthly live office hours with me where you can ask me anything and get my help on whatever challenge you're facing right now. If you're tired of hitting obstacle after obstacle and you're sick of tiny little incremental gains each year, if you're ready to make a dramatic difference in your school right now, then you need to join buildership University. Just go to buildership university.com and get started writing your school success story today.

Thank you for listening to the School Leadership Reimagined podcast for show notes and free downloads visit https://schoolleadershipreimagined.com/

School Leadership Reimagined is brought to you by Mindsteps Inc, where we build master teachers.