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. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of September 19-23, 2022. If you already get my daily leadership emails, then I hope you’ll find some added value here and if you don’t already subscribe you can find a link on my home page at frederickbuskey.com. Many readers like to begin their mornings by reading the email and setting a leadership intention for the day, but please don’t feel any pressure to subscribe. You are already doing more to grow yourself than many others out there, simply by listening to the podcast.

This weeks theme revolves around a single quote uttered by a friend at a party we had a couple weeks ago. It was later in the evening and most people had gone home and my friend said, “Everyone who’s not here has left.” Of course, my head went to leadership, and to thinking about the people who had left.

Monday:

I began the week by telling the story and simply asked readers to sit with the statement and to think about it. In your organization, what does it mean when we state, “Everyone who’s not here has left.”

Tuesday

If people have left, think about where they have gone?

·      If they aren’t with you, are they with someone else?

·      Are they next door (with another organization) or far away (different profession)?

·      Are they gone for the moment, or forever?

Wednesday

Are the absent people missing good stuff, or bad stuff?

This could go two ways. They could be missing the good stuff:

·      Your presence,

·      Growth opportunities

·      Opportunities to develop their own leadership skills

·      To serve others

OR

·      Loneliness when leaders are too busy to be present

·      Being told what to learn without any help to learn it

·      Being overwhelmed by inits that will be gone in 12-24 mionths

·      Always fighting a system that makes it harder to do the good work

Conclusion: leadership matters

Thursday

There is a magic bullet for leadership

The second most important question for us to ask about those who have left is this: Why did they leave?

·      Missing good stuff v missing bad stuff

Art teacher story…

Because she worked for a principal who cared for her. When the teacher had broken her ankle while coaching softball, the principal had been there for her. But just as importantly, that principal was there helping the teacher grow and get better at her craft. And she impowered this young teacher to practice her leadership.

There are many reasons why people leave, but there is one overriding factor in why they stay – YOU!

You can be a leader who people walk away from, or you can be a leader who people make sacrifices to remain with.

Being the second one is hard work, but it is also simple work!

●      Be present

●      Care and build relationships.

●      Help people get better at what they do!

This is the magic bullet.

Friday

The most important question we can ask about those who aren’t here is “how do we call them back?”

·      Physically gone but also mentally and emotionally

The secret?

●      Be present

●      Care and build relationships.

●      Help people get better at what they do!

Be present, even if it feels like they don’t want you there.

Care. Truly care. How tragic is it that somebody is working for or with you and they hate their job? What a lost opportunity to shuffle in every day, just waiting until you can leave again.

Build the relationship by learning the stories the person has. Who were they? How did they become who they are now? What dreams did they have? What dreams do they still hold?

Help them grow! 

Reflect:

●      Are you too busy to invest time in growing your people?

●      Were you too busy to attend Thursday’s webinar on how to not be so busy?

●      Will it ever change?

Takeaway

·      Leadership matters

·      People stay because of you, because they know you value them and you help them grow.

·      Distill leadership into one magic bullet:

• Be present
• Care and build relationships.
• Help people get better at what they do!

This wraps up this week’s Five for Friday rendition of The Assistant Principal Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s show, please subscribe and rate this podcast. Rating the podcast really does help other people to find it.

I’m always trying to improve the show, so if you have feedback please email me at [email protected]. If you’d like to find out more about what I’m doing to support assistant principals, you can head over to my website at frederickbuskey.com/theassistantprincipal.

I’m Frederick Buskey and I hope you’ll join me next time for the Assistant Principal Podcast.