The following article was written by Dr. Oscar Macias.
During the first few weeks of a school year, a leader’s nervous system is tested prior to testing their calendar.
Scheduling changes occur. Staff shortages develop. A parent is angry by day two. Before the first bell rings, a student-related incident occurs on your desk. Each hallway conversation seems to carry the emotional weight of a new beginning.
It can be tempting to base whether or not you are ready for a new school year on binders, bell schedules, staff assignments, compliance reports, and well-thought out plans. These items are important. However, these do not ultimately determine the emotional health of a school or district.
Leaders who establish the tone for a healthy organization are not always those who have the best developed plans. Leaders who have established specific habits for managing themselves, understanding others, and maintaining their connection to purpose when pressure exists are the ones who do this.
All of these habits are simple. All of these habits do not require a new initiative or another workshop. These habits require intentionality, particularly during the first few weeks of school when the emotional climate of an organization is established for the remainder of the school year.
Listed below are seven habits that can assist us in moving past simply managing schools to establishing places where people truly flourish.
Respond After Pausing, Naming the Emotion, and Choosing a Course of Action
Leadership exists in the space between a trigger and a reaction.
An emotionally charged email from a parent, a teacher’s push-back regarding a schedule change, or an unforeseen problem at 7:45 A.M., can create pressure to respond immediately. However, urgency does not always necessitate an immediate response.
Sometimes, the best action is to take a deep breath, lower your voice, or state, “Give me a moment.”
This brief delay creates sufficient distance to recognize what is occurring internally. Am I frustrated? Am I anxious? Am I feeling defensive, ashamed, or overwhelmed? Identifying the emotion does not eliminate it; however, it decreases the likelihood that the emotion will determine your response.
Leaders do not possess control over every situation that enters their office. However, leaders can become more deliberate about what leaves their office.
Once leaders interrupt their impulse to react, they will be capable of completing something equally as important: learning from what the moment is attempting to teach them.
Select Growth Over Perfection
Each school year begins with ambitious goals and high expectations. Leaders desire opening days to function smoothly, new initiatives to gain immediate traction, and each decision to land precisely as intended.
Excellence is not synonymous with perfection.
Excellence develops through reflection, adjustment, and continuous improvement. Schedules will require modification. Plans will encounter unanticipated realities. Some decisions will require reconsideration.
Effective leaders are not those who possess all answers on day one. Effective leaders are those who remain curious, honest, and willing to learn alongside their team members.
Instead of asking, “How do I avoid making errors?”, we can ask, “How do I learn, adapt, and improve?”
This shift does more than relieve pressure from needing to appear faultless. This shift provides permission for other team members to develop as well. When leaders can admit to making an imperfect decision without losing their authority, they create cultures where reflection is valued more than performance, and improvement is valued more than image.
Growth cannot occur in isolation. Growth requires trust, and trust begins when leaders remember that the work is always about people before it is about programs.
Lead People Before Programs
Schools are based on relationships.
Before an instructional initiative can grow, people must feel seen, appreciated, and supported. Before a strategic plan develops momentum, trust must be built. Before significant change can occur, people must believe that their leaders care about them.
Every employee arrives at school this year with a distinct story. Employees arrive at school this year with various levels of enthusiasm and hopefulness. Some employees arrive at school this year recovering from a difficult year. Other employees arrive at school this year balancing professional expectations with personal realities that may never be apparent at work.
Therefore, listening must occur prior to solving problems.
When an employee arrives at your office with a concern, your initial reaction may be to provide an immediate solution. However, employees do not always need you to resolve problems immediately. Sometimes employees need you to sit with them in their difficulty long enough for them to feel understood.
Validating an employee’s feelings does not require agreeing with their feelings. Validating an employee’s feelings simply communicates, “I understand that this is genuine for you.”
When leaders lead people before programs, leaders do not reduce expectations. When leaders lead people before programs, leaders build the relational foundation that enables employees to fulfill their expectations.
Naturally, caring about employees does not imply avoiding conflict. Strong relationships actually create an environment where honest conflict is acceptable. The next habit assists leaders in maintaining an open mind when conflict arises.
Encounter Opposition With Curiosity
Every leader will encounter questioning this year.
A teacher may question a new expectation. A parent may disagree with a decision. A colleague may question the direction of an initiative. A supervisor may provide feedback that is challenging for a leader to accept.
Defending oneself is human nature. However, defense often hinders leaders from recognizing the information embedded within opposition.
Prior to explaining, correcting, or defending oneself, ask one clarifying question:
“Could you please explain what concern you have most?”
“What am I failing to perceive?”
“What experience have you had?”
Curiosity does not imply abandoning judgment or accepting all criticisms. Leaders must still determine which criticism is beneficial and which is not. However, asking before answering helps ensure that leaders do not miss an important signal due to protecting their position.
This is also where influence becomes more effective than control. Control may result in short-term compliance; however, curiosity creates trust that permits long-term commitment.
Remaining curious under pressure requires emotional capacity. Emotional capacity cannot be maintained if leaders never allow themselves space to recover, regulate, and reflect.
Establish Time to Regulate and Reflect
Stress that is never processed will eventually enter a leader’s leadership style.
Stress manifests itself in emails written too rapidly, meetings where patience is limited, or hallway interactions where an employee receives the burden of a problem that they did not initiate.
Leaders require intentional methods for releasing tension and gaining perspective. Methods for releasing tension and gaining perspective include walking hallways, stepping outside for five minutes, driving quietly without listening to podcasts, or sitting in an office for a few minutes before attending another meeting.
Walking helps the body process what the mind may still be carrying. Silence allows space for understanding how the day actually unfolded.
These methods are not avoidance, nor are these methods self-indulgence. These methods are maintenance.
Leaders regularly allot time for budgets, schedules, evaluations, and operational priorities. Leaders must also allot time for developing the internal capacity necessary for successfully addressing these responsibilities.
Reflecting enables leaders to look beyond their own experiences. Once leaders have reflected upon their experiences, they become more capable of considering what other individuals may be feeling and experiencing.
Continue to Be Interested in Other Individuals’ Stories
Empathy is not merely a personality characteristic. Empathy is a practice.
Reading memoirs, personal essays, or colleagues’ reflections enhances a leader’s capacity for imagining a life beyond their own. Reading memoirs, personal essays, or colleagues’ reflections reminds leaders that every individual experiences experiences, pressures, hopes, and fears that may not be readily observable.
This practice accompanies leaders into the workplace.
Leaders enter difficult family conversations asking, “What fears might this parent be experiencing currently?” Leaders listen to frustrated employees and ponder, “What might have transpired prior to this conversation?” Leaders examine a student’s behavior and inquire, “What message is this behavior attempting to convey?”
Understanding another individual’s story does not eliminate boundaries or accountability. Understanding another individual’s story assists leaders in responding with increased knowledge.
When leaders remain knowledgeable about other individuals’ stories, compassion and high expectations do not necessarily conflict with one another. Compassion and high expectations can operate collaboratively.
When compassion and high expectations are evident in a leader’s daily actions, compassion and high expectations begin to shape something greater than any individual interaction. Compassion and high expectations begin to shape the emotional climate of an organization.
Be the Emotional Thermostat and Remember Why You Perform This Work
Every leader influences the emotional temperature of a school or district.
When leaders react impulsively, feel anxious, or act unpredictably, their emotional energy transfers. When leaders demonstrate stability, resilience, and realistic optimism, their emotional energy transfers as well.
Leaders are not merely participants in organizational culture; leaders are architects of organizational culture.
Employees observe how leaders respond when plans change, when conflict develops, and when the path forward is uncertain. Employees often use leaders’ responses as authorization for how employees respond.
Being an emotional thermostat does not mean pretending that everything is satisfactory. Being an emotional thermostat does not require continuous optimism or suppressing genuine emotions. Being an emotional thermostat means remaining grounded enough to acknowledge reality without permitting fear, frustration, or urgency to control the environment.
The most dependable method for remaining grounded is to remember why this work is important.
Amidst meetings, reports, deadlines, and operational requirements, each decision ultimately impacts students. Each interaction with teachers, classified employees, family members, or colleagues contributes to the educational experience of children.
When leaders remain connected to this purpose, even challenging work becomes meaningful. Leaders cease evaluating their leadership solely based on what they completed; rather, leaders begin evaluating their leadership based on the conditions they established for other individuals.
From Managing to Thriving
These seven habits are not intended to create the appearance of composure for the purpose of creating the appearance of composure. These seven habits are intended to create capacity: a leader’s capacity for maintaining clarity-headedness, presence, empathy, and stability sufficient for leading effectively when a school year becomes challenging.
Each framework, initiative, and improvement project will pass through leadership first. If a leader’s self-awareness and emotional regulation are not intact, even the finest designed plan will impact staff and students inequitably.
This is the foundation for something I have developed over the past few years: the ThriveSense Framework, a leadership model designed to assist educational leaders in cultivating excellence through well-being.
ThriveSense begins with a leader looking in a mirror and extends throughout classrooms, organizations, and communities. ThriveSense focuses on five conditions that enable people and organizations to thrive:
- Purpose
- Belonging
- Growth
- Well-being
- Impact
When these conditions exist, students thrive. Staff thrive. Schools thrive. Communities thrive.
As leaders initiate this school year, perhaps the most critical question is not merely, “What will we accomplish?”
Perhaps the most critical question is, “Who will we become as leaders while accomplishing this?”
The answer lies within leaders’ habits: pausing before responding; questioning before judging; connecting with people before initiating programs; and recognizing why this work is important beneath it all.
That is where thriving initiates.
As we begin this school year, let us commit to leading with intention, compassion, resilience, and purpose. Let us focus not only on what we will accomplish, but on who we will become as leaders.
Together, we can create environments where every student, every employee, and every family has the opportunity not merely to succeed, but to truly thrive.
Oscar Macias, Ed.D., has dedicated over 25 years to public education, serving in various roles including campus supervisor, classroom teacher, high school assistant principal, middle school principal, Director of Education for Equity, Access, and Family Engagement, and Director of Secondary Education for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He is currently the Assistant Superintendent of Instructional Services for the Burbank Unified School District and is a proud member, supporter, and advocate of ACSA.
