Show Intro

Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. This podcast compliments APEx, the Assistant Principal Exceleration program, but you certainly don’t need to be an APEx member to find value in the podcast.

It’s just me today talking about the transition to being driven by the important, instead of the urgent. The beginning of today’s show will recap a couple of the frameworks of strategic leaderships. We will then dive into five strategies for being strategically reactive.

Before we do that, I want to celebrate. The first episode of this podcast released in August 2021, with six additional episodes released sporadically prior to the new year. Beginning in mid-January we have released a new episode every Thursday and last week the show topped 1000 total downloads! We have listeners in 41 states and nine countries, so thanks to everyone for becoming a part of this community. 

I also need to give a big shoutout to the podcast team, which is a family affair. Editing each episode, uploading it and then working on the website is a lot of work and I could not produce a weekly podcast without Lance Buskey, who assumed all of those duties at the beginning of this year. Lance, your help not only makes this show possible, but the quality of your work brings something else – peace of mind.

If you found this show via the daily email, Instagram, or LinkedIn, then you have Mara Buskey to thank. Mara has been instrumental in helping to spread the word. She brings a creativity and energy to our social media posts that I cannot match. And if you subscribe to our daily leadership email, you can thank Mara for that as well. She is also coordinating a special episode of this podcast that will feature a panel of first-year teachers discussing what they need from their APs, so you’ll get to hear her voice soon.

Okay, to today’s topic.

Back in episode 1 we talked about the Six Dimensions of organizations:

Purpose

People, structures, resources

External forces

Internal forces (culture)

The degree of alignment within the organization determines how successful the organization is in fulfilling its purpose.

The work of leaders is to increase organizational alignment. Increasing alignment leads to achieving purpose. It also improves internal forces, or culture.

A fundamental challenge to doing the purposeful work of alignment is the way urgency drives our actions. In episode 14 we talked about the Eisenhower Matrix, which divides tasks into four quadrants:

When we are driven by urgency, we focus on quadrants 1 and 3, at the expense of quadrant 2, which is the work of aligning systems and supporting teacher growth.

This brings us to the two most important responsibilities of school administrators:

1.     Keep everyone safe

2.     Improve outcomes for students by helping teachers grow

And since growth activities are primarily q2, in order for APs to become strategic leaders, they need to be able to escape the treadmill of the urgent.

There are four keys to getting off the treadmill. The first of those is to act with intention on a daily basis. At the end of today’s podcast, I’ll encourage you to sign up for my daily leadership email, specifically because it helps you to set a leadership intention each day. But I digress.

Ideally being intentional means being proactive, but even when we are reacting, we can become intentional by applying five strategies to become strategically reactive.

Strategic reaction, applied consistently, will help us to slowly recapture some time to devote to quadrant two. More importantly, applying the five strategies conditions us to be intentional. 

When forced to react to a situation, you have five options for action. The actions are arranged hierarchically. Think of them as a sorting method. Try to apply the first action. If you can’t, move to the second option and so on. 

1.     Give it up. Ask yourself whether this is a necessary task. You may be surprised how many tasks are not important (quadrant 3). If it is not important, let it go. Items in this category include lots of email, especially the FYI types, some meetings, and paperwork. This is also an effective strategy for dealing with requests the appear mundane or capricious. 

2.     Give it back. Some issues are important to others but not to you or the organization. These shouldn’t be ignored as they can impact the invested party’s motivation. Think of these issues as monkeys. When someone tries to give you their monkey, give it back to them! You don’t need to care for other people’s monkeys. You can give monkeys back by:

a.     Acknowledging the concern and emotions of the monkey owner

b.     Rephrasing the concern as you understand it

c.     Providing them with a task as a next step. This task could include:

                                               i.     Further reflection on the root problem

                                             ii.     Developing a list of options

                                            iii.     Talking with others

                                            iv.     Doing some research

                                              v.     Scheduling a future meeting

These steps help assure the person that you have heard them and validated their concern, but they also put the onus on the person to solve their own problem, or care for their own monkey. 

Some people will never bring that monkey back to you again. That’s good, because if they aren’t willing to work for their own monkey, why should you? Others may spend some energy in the task you asked them to do and come back. That’s a sign that they are invested in taking care of their own monkey and you can respond appropriately.

3.     Give it away. Ideally, you should spend most of your time doing what only you can do. That may mean do...