The Assistant Principal Podcast

None of this week’s messages were earth shattering or focused on big changes, but that is the whole point. It is the small changes that matter. Making one or two small changes today lets us invest an extra minute or two in supporting someone who needs it – and that is where the big change happens. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of February 6-10, 2023. 

Show Notes, Episode 97: Every building, every class, every day!

About this show:
Unless you are a first-time listener, you have heard me talk about the flywheel – the core set of
instructional practices that drive continual teacher growth. But what does this flywheel look like
in practice, in a real school? We explore the answer today with a special principal who has a
reputation for supporting and growing teachers.

Notable Quotes

Eleanor:
We're putting systems here in place at Fairview that will long outlast individuals, and I
think some of the problem is that we rely on certain people and we're trying to create a
system so that it doesn't matter who the principal is, it doesn't matter who the assistant
principal is, because the systems will be in place. So, when that leadership changes and
our teachers change, that system is still going to work and that's our goal.
The goal is to get through every building, every class, every day.
I do feel like the game changer is that accountability piece, and that intentional planning,
and really breaking down those standards so they know exactly what they're teaching.
There's no questions. And then the coaches do a great job not only planning with them
but pushing into their classrooms. So, they're in their classrooms seeing how it works. It
could be a Co teaching lesson, it could be you know, just a concern with that group of
kids. And so, they have really fostered such positive relationships because it's non
evaluative. They're their support and so they're coming in to support.
It's not a one-person show.
Sometimes I think that we get so caught up in having to do all this work that we forget to
take a deep breath and take that time to enjoy the adults around you and the kids around
you.

Frederick:
Faculty meetings, I think, are one of those things that exist almost universally that we
think they're important, but they're really not because there are so many other ways that
we can get that information out to people.

Improving life and leadership of assistant principals

https://www.frederickbuskey.com/appodcast.html 2
You're building the systems and supports and I think one of the pieces that I want
listeners to really take away, is that you have to protect that time, but you can protect
that time. But it is a conscious choice, right. You are thinking you know the interruptions
will occur if you don't do something. So, you look at your resources and build the
systems in place so that that time is protected.
I think we sometimes underappreciate how complex the observation process is and the
different ways that we can do it in order to achieve different ends and support people in
different ways.

Frederick’s Links:
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/strategicleadershipconsulting
Daily Email subscribe: https://adept-experimenter-3588.ck.page/ff61713840

Five for Friday Show Notes

Teaser:

This week was all about leadership as a concept. What is leadership? Beyond what leadership is, we looked out how leaders gain power, and the ability they have to build – or destroy. In today’s episode I will deviate significantly from the short messages of the week and expand on these important themes.

This week’s big idea: Real leadership is about people

Hello colleagues and welcome to The Assistant Principal Podcast, I’m your host Dr. Frederick Buskey.

 I’ve been growing leaders and future leaders for over 30 years. Through my own experiences, and through working with hundreds of other leaders, I’ve learned that school leadership is a journey that occurs in three phases:

Urgent leaders spend their time completing tasks, but…

Intentional leaders invest their time building systems. However…

Strategic leaders create time by growing people.

In 2018 I founded Strategic Leadership Consulting to help make this journey more enjoyable for leaders like you. Through my daily email, monthly micro-journal, online community, my upcoming book, and, of course, this podcast, I keep you company on this journey and provide you with actionable ideas and tools to live and lead better today and tomorrow.

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of January 30-February 2, 2023. Can you believe we are through January already? I’m just now getting used to saying 2023. 

Monday:

“Being in the left lane of a superhighway with a string of cars behind you does not make you a leader. It may just mean you’re slow and too stupid to get out of the way.”

-Dr. Jacque Jacobs, Mentor, Professor Emeritus, and so much more

So if having people behind doesn’t define leadership, what does?

Some quotes from scholars (none of these appeared in the weekly emails):

• “Leadership is not a person or a position. It is a complex moral relationship between people, based on trust, obligation, commitment, emotion, and a shared vision of the good.” – Joanne Ciulla, philosopher and director of The Institute for Ethical Leadership
• “Leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less.” – John Maxwell
•  If you want to govern the people, you must place yourself below them. If you want to lead the people, you must learn how to follow them.” – Attributed to Lao Tzu
• “Intentional use of power to influence a person or people to achieve a specific outcome.” – Frederick Buskey

From here Wednesday and Thursday talked about power, specifically three forms:

• Legitimate
• Expert
• Referent

Hierarchical v. non-hierarchical

Main point: cultivating your expert and referent power helps you be able to mentor others

I wrapped up the week trying to drive this point home by asking you to think about the mentor’s you have had in your life, and then work to emulate some of what made them have such a profound influence. One of the missed opportunities in my career was realizing too late the influence I had on my colleagues. It has only been in the past five years that I have consciously begun mentoring people, but in reflecting I realize I have been unconsciously doing it for almost 20 years. If I had been more intentional, I could have had a bigger impact. So that is my invitation to you. Think about the power you hold. Legitimate power yes, but much more importantly think about the expert and referent power you hold. Embrace it. Use it. Be intentional about mentoring others and helping them grow.

Before we close: Dr. Ryan Donlan was our guest this past Tuesday and we discussed coaching up down and around as an assistant principal. It is a great show for anyone wanting to be more intentional about mentoring – and leading – others.

And… in Friday’s email I invited people to share with me the stories about their mentors. If you have someone who has had a profound positive impact on you, consider doing this:

Record a 1-3 minute tribute and email it to me at [email protected]. I will do my best to work your tribute into an upcoming show so you can publicly acknowledge someone important. Share a quick story or a list of qualities, or just say thank you. I’ll do my best to get your tribute on the show. 

That is this week’s Five for Friday rendition of The Assistant Principal Podcast. 

If you enjoyed today’s show, please forward it. I’ll give a shoutout to my new LinkedIn friend, a school head in Kuala Lumpur who found the podcast because someone shared it with him and said, you should listen.” If you are finding value in the show, please forward the show link to a colleague and say “you have got to listen to this.”

Thank you for including me on your leadership journey. Remember that you can walk more with me by subscribing to my daily leadership email and Quadrant2, my monthly micro-journal. And if that isn’t enough, we can walk further together in APEx, my virtual paid community for assistant principals. APEx helps you network with other APs and participate group coaching with me! You can learn more about APEx and my other offerings at my website, frederickbuskey.com.

I look forward to seeing you again next Tuesday when k-8 principal Eleanor MaCauley takes us deep inside how the flywheel works in her school.

I’m Frederick Buskey and thank you again for joining me on this episode of the Assistant Principal Podcast. Remember to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode. Cheers!

Frederick’s Links:

Email: [email protected]

Website: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/ 

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/strategicleadershipconsulting 

Daily Email subscribe: https://adept-experimenter-3588.ck.page/ff61713840 

Show Notes, Episode 95: All Other Duties as Assigned with Dr. Ryan Donlan

About this show: 

There are a couple of closely related questions I am frequently asked:As an AP, what’s my role in helping to support the principal’s vision?How do I lead if my principal and I have different leadership styles?How do I practice instructional and/or visionary leadership if I’m stuck doing butts, buses, and books?This gets at an essential challenge in developing principals. The job of the assistant principalship is very different from the job of the principalship, and it can be hard to prepare to be a principal when you are busy being an assistant principal.
These are questions focused on assistant principals, but the answers will be relevant to principals and other school and district leaders, so I hope you will stay with us as we unpack what to means to be number 2 (#2).

Notable Quotes

Ryan

I got an opportunity very early on in my career to become an assistant principal. It came with another position: the Alternative Education Director. So you can imagine it came with championing kids. What I found out very quickly, Frederick, is that it also came with championing adults.

I'm celebrating a daily opportunity to be only as good as my next day's best work.

Whether it's an informal visit, quick walkthrough or formalized evaluation, it seems the scripting, logging and scribing with tablet or clipboard in hand is more the rule than the exception. I suggest something completely different that may be even more important - a visit just because.

How number twos in leadership have influence and roles in all directions continuously teaching up, teaching down and teaching around.

Frederick

I think that's one of the challenges when we say we're going to go into classrooms and do an observation, like, what does that mean? What are we supposed to do? And then what are the teachers actually expecting from us?...And so I call this performative observation where it's like I'm an audience member. And I'm going into your classroom and you're giving a performance. So the benefit is for me, I'm just there to enjoy and to appreciate your performance. So it's you're not going to get any feedback from me because I'm there for me for my own growth and for my own benefit.

But if I'm being authentic and I work at my authenticity and I work to prioritize the things that are in line with what I value, and to behave in the ways that reflect my own values when I can be authentic and I am just being. Then I think I'm naturally going to be having more of an impact, right, because I'm going to be true and people are going to recognize that there is that kind of sincerity or that authenticity to me. 

If I'm willing to share with you what I'm working on and ask for some accountability, then that means that we're building that culture where that's your expectation and you can do that too. So I think as school leaders, we need to be really transparent about what we're trying to grow at, what we're trying to get better at and consistently share that with our teachers and ask for their support and ask for their help, which then makes it, I think, a lot more appealing when we're pushing into classrooms and we're asking them to grow or we're asking them how they want to grow right now there's an equity in that situation that I think is really positive.

Ryan Donlan Links:

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.ryandonlan.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/ryandonlan, or @RyanDonlan

All Other Duties As Assigned, Quick Reads (Blog)

https://allotherdutiesasassigned.blogspot.com

Minds Unleashed Book Website

https://www.mindsunleashed.net

Solution Tree Website: All Other Duties As Assigned

https://www.solutiontree.com/all-other-duties-as-assigned.html

Amazon Author Page for All My Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Ryan-Donlan/

Frederick Buskey Links:

My email: [email protected] 

The Assistant Principal Podcast website: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/appodcast.html 

Sign up for the daily leadership email: https://adept-experimenter-3588.ck.page/ff61713840 

Website: www.frederickbuskey.com

Blog: www.frederickbuskey.com/blog (reposts of the daily email)

Five for Friday Show Notes

Teaser: Outside of Monday, the theme running through this week’s emails is care. We look at care from a couple of different perspectives that include increasing attention, decreasing attention, and giving some love to the second principle of leverage – working A-B.

Hello colleagues and welcome to The Assistant Principal Podcast, I’m your host Dr. Frederick Buskey.

 I’ve been growing leaders and future leaders for over 30 years. Through my own experiences, and through working with hundreds of other leaders, I’ve learned that school leadership is a journey that occurs in three phases:

Urgent leaders spend their time completing tasks, but…

Intentional leaders invest their time building systems. However…

Strategic leaders create time by growing people.

In 2018 I founded Strategic Leadership Consulting to help make this journey more enjoyable for leaders like you. Through my daily email, monthly micro-journal, online community, my upcoming book, and, of course, this podcast, I keep you company on this journey and provide you with actionable ideas and tools to live and lead better today and tomorrow.

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of January 23-27, 2023. 

Monday: Just because I like to do something doesn’t mean I should be doing it!

Tuesday: Putting people first fulfills both or own and their needs and leads to intrinsic motivation.

Wednesday: Providing extra care to people before a big challenge is critical.

Thursday: Less is more – decrease the number of change initiatives you are implementing.

Friday: Less is more part 2: People can implement change better when the demands are smaller.

That is this week’s Five for Friday rendition of The Assistant Principal Podcast. Before we go, I encourage you to make an intentional choice to take something you’ve heard today and to reflect more deeply or to act on it. 

If you already have a clear idea of what to do, that’s wonderful. If not, let me offer three possibilities:

1. Look for ways to lighten people’s packs. The job of teaching is overwhelming, so simplifying the demands of external initiatives can be a huge gift. Teachers will appreciate it more than jeans day!
2. Forward the show link to a colleague and say “you have got to listen to this, I want us to talk about it”
3. Identify the one big takeaway or question from this episode and share it with me. You can share a written, audio, or video message with me by emailing me at [email protected]

Thank you for including me on your leadership journey. Remember that you can walk more with me by subscribing to my daily leadership email and Quadrant2, my monthly micro-journal. And if that isn’t enough, we can walk further together in APEx, my virtual paid community for assistant principals. APEx helps you network with other APs and participate group coaching with me! You can learn more about APEx and my other offerings at my website, frederickbuskey.com.

I look forward to seeing you again next Tuesday for Episode 95 with Dr. Ryan Donlan. This will be a wonderful episode as Ryan and I discuss specific strategies of how APs can influence others. This podcast will kick off our February focus on mentoring and influencing others. It also gets us ever-closer to episode 100, an interview with my career-long mentor who shares incredible wisdom and kindness.

I’m Frederick Buskey and thank you again for joining me on this episode of the Assistant Principal Podcast. Remember to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode. Cheers!

Show Notes, Episode 93: Cultivating Motivation with Mike Anderson

About this show: 

There once was an old man who didn’t like baseball. He likes quiet and solitude. But every day all summer long, the neighborhood kids would gather at the empty field next to the man’s house and play ball all day long, yelling, screaming, and sometimes crying. The man put up with the noisy kids for years, until finally, he came up with an awful, evil, dastardly plan. And if you want to hear what that plan was, stay tuned because today we are taking on the complex issue of motivation!

Notable Quotes

Mike:

We are programmed to seek out enjoyment and fun. And so, the key to all of these six motivators (autonomy, competence, belonging, purpose, curiosity, and fun,) is that the learning itself should tap into these. It's not the something that we dangle as the carrot… that if you finish your regular work then you can choose an activity to do. Or if you do what I want you to, then we'll have an ice cream party. It's the fun itself, the autonomy itself, the belonging itself needs to be woven into the fabric of the learning.

The way we offer the feedback is so important as the administrator. You go in and say, “I really loved how you were keeping your direct teachings short”. The energy is coming back to you without meaning to. Probably you are making this about your approval, which can actually feel like an extrinsic motivator. It takes a little bit of the power away from the teacher. So instead, you might say “Your goal was to keep your lesson short. I observed you kept your direct teaching to 7 minutes. That's totally in line with your goal congratulations”.

We need to build relationships outside of feedback, but not give feedback in terms of relationship.

I think about the first principle that I ever had, Cherry Jones in East Lyme, Connecticut. The nameplate on her office door did not say “Cherry Jones, Principal”. It said “Cherry Jones, Chief Learner” since she viewed herself as the lead learner of the building and that made such an impression on me as a young teacher. And she did try lots of things. She was always experimenting and learning and growing and making mistakes and it was open and sometimes raw and public and it was awesome, and it was such a great example of somebody who was truly a lead learner.

Part of what you got to do if you're going to help lead adult learning is you have to feel the same joy in working with adults that you did in working with kids and recognize that everybody's going to be in different places and some days are going to be hard. But you need to see the people you're working with as learners and you're there to support their learning and get this sort of joy and satisfaction from watching them grow and learn.

Frederick

Well, and when people have choice, they're going to choose the things that are valuable to them. And then when we serve them. And support them. We're decreasing that effort and creating a little bit more safety so that they can push the envelope and take risks because they know we have their back.

I think one of the challenges is that a lot of us have this mindset. Of professional development is something we do to our teachers. And so, the planning and everything is coming from the top. And that's one of the things I'm trying to breakthrough, and it seems hard. I think we need to really flip that on the head, and we need to be serving our teachers and our teachers need to be pushing and saying here's what I need, here's where I need to grow.

So, one of my big new points of emphasis is that it's people before purpose and I used to be a purpose driven, you know why? Type person. But it's people before purpose and that's exactly what you just said. I have to invest in you as a person and when I build that relationship because I care about you, and I value you. In that process, you're going to tell me what you need, you're going to tell me what you want, and then I can serve you.

Links:

Mike Anderson Links:  

Website: https://leadinggreatlearning.com/

Online Courses: https://courses.leadinggreatlearning.com/

Frederick Links:

My email: [email protected] 

The Assistant Principal Podcast website: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/appodcast.html 

Sign up for the daily leadership email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialedition 

Website: www.frederickbuskey.com

Blog: www.frederickbuskey.com/blog (reposts of the daily email)

Five for Friday Show Notes

Teaser: Today’s Five for Friday will be a bit different. Leading off we will talk about the best pot to use for cooking oatmeal. I bet you didn’t see that coming! After the brief cooking lesson, we’ll invest the rest of our time exploring a question I received from a reader last week.

This week’s big idea: Strategies for coaching up

Hello colleagues and welcome to The Assistant Principal Podcast, I’m your host Dr. Frederick Buskey.

 I’ve been growing leaders and future leaders for over 30 years. Through my own experiences, and through working with hundreds of other leaders, I’ve learned that school leadership is a journey that occurs in three phases:

Urgent leaders spend their time completing tasks, but…

Intentional leaders invest their time building systems. However…

Strategic leaders create time by growing people.

In 2018 I founded Strategic Leadership Consulting to help make this journey more enjoyable for leaders like you. Through my daily email, monthly micro-journal, online community, my upcoming book, and, of course, this podcast, I keep you company on this journey and provide you with actionable ideas and tools to live and lead better today and tomorrow.

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of January 16-20, 2023. 

Monday: Don’t waste time fixating on decisions that don’t matter (a story of oatmeal)

Two things:

1. We sometimes try and force people to grow in the direction we want them to grow, instead of the direction they want to grow. In the big picture, the direction of the growth is irrelevant. The fact that they are growing is enough. So let them decide what size the pot needs to be, or to lead their own growth.
2. I am guilty of fixating on decisions over things that, in the big picture, don’t matter. It is a waste of time and attention, our two most precious resources.

Tuesday-Friday: Question of the week

I occasionally receive powerful questions from listeners and one of my intentions in 2023 is to do more with these questions by sharing more widely. Here is my first attempt.

“I would love to know your thoughts about how you try to lead an organization strategically when your superiors are not leading with the same mindset.  I'm currently struggling to get my manager to see the need to train and listen to feedback from our employees instead of just harping on them for ‘not doing their job.’”

Ryan Donlan, an upcoming podcast guest, talks about the idea of leading “up, down, and around.”

Leadership is not a hierarchical activity; leadership is a human activity! 

Way back in episode 20, Dr. Gabby Grant discussed restorative practices and when I asked her about how to begin implementing those practices she said “Change starts from within.” Before we can change others, we need to change ourselves. In the process of changing ourselves, we may create the space for others, including those above, to also engage in changing themselves.

You can’t make your leaders change. You can provide them opportunities to reflect and help them grow in ways they determine, but only if they make that choice themselves. Although I didn’t point this out in the daily emails, I realize now that the only way to get leaders to grow is to invite them into that space and the easiest way to do that is to bring them along on our own journey – if they are willing to walk with us.

Three strategies for coaching up:

1. Providing third-party examples of good leadership can facilitate leadership growth within an organization.
   1. Podcasts
   2. Articles
   3. Books (caution)
   4. My daily emails!
2. Working on a leadership skill and then processing our growth, or lack thereof, with other leaders provides learning opportunities for everyone involved.
3. Set a leadership growth goal, then share it (and ask for help).
4. Invest some time in your own growth by creating space to reflect with other leaders.

Takeaway: You can’t force someone to grow. You can only provide space and an invitation and the best way to do that is to start by changing yourself. Invest in your own growth, make it public, ask for help, and invite others to come along with you.

That is this week’s Five for Friday rendition of The Assistant Principal Podcast. Before we go, I encourage you to make an intentional choice to take something you’ve heard today and to reflect more deeply or to act on it. 

If you already have a clear idea of what to do, that’s wonderful. If not, let me offer three possibilities:

1. Begin sitting in with your leader at the end of the week and focus on learning about them and from them. Use this time to change yourself, and you will open the door for your leader to do the same.
2. Do you know someone else who withes they could “coach up”? Forward the show link to a colleague and say “you have got to listen to this, I want us to talk about it” And yes, that is one of the strategies we discussed today and if you listen closely it is included as part of our new outro in every episode!
3. Identify the one big takeaway or question from this episode and share it with me. You can share a written, audio, or video message with me by emailing me at [email protected]

Thank you for including me on your leadership journey. Remember that you can walk more with me by subscribing to my daily leadership email and Quadrant2, my monthly micro-journal. And if that isn’t enough, we can walk further together in APEx, my virtual paid community for assistant principals. APEx helps you network with other APs and participate group coaching with me! You can learn more about APEx and my other offerings at my website, frederickbuskey.com.

I look forward to seeing you again next Tuesday when we explore intrinsic motivation with Mike Anderson, author of Tackling the Motivation Crisis. This was a great interview and it will give you lots to think about and maybe help you put a critical eye on some common school practices.

I’m Frederick Buskey and thank you again for joining me on this episode of the Assistant Principal Podcast. Remember to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode. Cheers!

Frederick’s Links:

Email: [email protected]

Website: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/ 

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/strategicleadershipconsulting 

Daily Email subscribe: https://adept-experimenter-3588.ck.page/ff61713840 

Show Notes, Episode 91: Meet the New Principal with Dr. Sam Sircey Part 2

About this show: 

I’m working with three new principals this year. They are all first-year principals in new schools, two of them in a new district. Going to a new school is never easy, not for a new principal, not for a new assistant principal. However, most of you listening have either gone through that experience or will go through that experience or both. Today, we have an experienced principal with us who is also in a new school this year, and she is going to help us think about leading in a new school.

Notable Quotes

Dr. Sircey

Being mindful and present and being on the journey with them not in front of them, not behind them, just with them.

I think the best advice is to be very honest with the new administration and if something doesn't feel good, or look good, feels like you're crossing a line, be professional and bring that to the table in a setting and establish that relationship.

Principals are teachers at heart and we love growing other people to take our jobs and that's what I hope I do with my.

Don't lose sight of your passion and why you do this job every day. It's heavy at times. But the outcome is important. And you're not alone.

Frederick

I always think of the principles as a lighthouse… But that's not enough either, because you also have to be helping people, really helping the situation really get better, and supporting people. Because if you're just a lighthouse, then you're rah rah.

If you have a principal that's in there Friday afternoon if you have that opportunity that's the time because your principal is not been able to process all of this stuff all week long and now the quiet comes and now there's that moment and if you can be in there, if you're an assistant principal and you're wanting to grow and you can be in there. Just to listen, a lot of times you're going to learn so much and the relationship that you can form becomes really special.

Links:

My email: [email protected] 

The Assistant Principal Podcast website: https://www.frederickbuskey.com/appodcast.html 

Sign up for the daily leadership email: https://mailchi.mp/c15c68e6df32/specialedition 

Website: www.frederickbuskey.com

Blog: www.frederickbuskey.com/blog (reposts of the daily email)

Five for Friday Show Notes

Teaser: 

This week’s big idea: We are here to support people, and the first step in supporting is listening.

Hello colleagues and welcome to The Assistant Principal Podcast, I’m your host Dr. Frederick Buskey.

 I’ve been growing leaders and future leaders for over 30 years. Through my own experiences, and through working with hundreds of other leaders, I’ve learned that school leadership is a journey that occurs in three phases:

Urgent leaders spend their time completing tasks, but…

Intentional leaders invest their time building systems. However…

Strategic leaders create time by growing people.

In 2018 I founded Strategic Leadership Consulting to help make this journey more enjoyable for leaders like you. Through my daily email, monthly micro-journal, online community, my upcoming book, and, of course, this podcast, I keep you company on this journey and provide you with actionable ideas and tools to live and lead better today and tomorrow.

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of January 9-13, 2023. 

Monday: It’s not about your vision, it is about the collective vision of the people who do the work.

Tuesday Leaders listen, and new leaders begin by listening.

“The first thing I did was listen… until you sit with an individual and ask them important questions and to say what is on their minds, you will never get to the meat of what’s going on.”

-Dr. Sam Sircey

Wednesday Put people first

Thursday If we care and trust, we let people take the lead in their own growth.

In his incredible 1971 treatise, On Caring, Milton Mayeroff said that if we really care about someone, we help them grow in the ways in which they determine. We take their lead in the process, in contrast to us trying to remake them in our image or turn them into what we want them to be.

Friday We can use a single word to help us maintain focus on our growth.

Takeaway

1. We are here to support people, and the first step in supporting is listening.
2. One word can be more powerful than many words. My word is coherence, what’s yours?

Question of the week:

That is this week’s Five for Friday rendition of The Assistant Principal Podcast. Before we go, I encourage you to make an intentional choice to take something you’ve heard today and to reflect more deeply or to act on it. 

If you already have a clear idea of what to do, that’s wonderful. If not, let me offer three possibilities:

1. Figure out your one word!
2. Forward the show link to a colleague and say “you have got to listen to this, I want us to talk about it”
3. Identify the one big takeaway or question from this episode and share it with me. You can share a written, audio, or video message with me by emailing me at [email protected]

Thank you for including me on your leadership journey. Remember that you can walk more with me by subscribing to my daily leadership email and Quadrant2, my monthly micro-journal. And if that isn’t enough, we can walk further together in APEx, my virtual paid community for assistant principals. APEx helps you network with other APs and participate group coaching with me! You can learn more about APEx and my other offerings at my website, frederickbuskey.com.

I look forward to seeing you again next Tuesday when we continue with part 2 of our interview with Dr. Sam Sircey.

I’m Frederick Buskey and thank you again for joining me on this episode of the Assistant Principal Podcast. Remember to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode. Cheers!

Outline

Guest: Sam Sircey

• Preferred name/title?
• Relax and laugh
• Will be video recording and may use small or big pieces
• Small things won’t be edited
• If there is a gaff – long pause
• Intro-interview-outro
• Questions for me?
• FB hit record

Show Description:

I’m working with three new principals this year. They are all first-year principals in new schools, two of them in a new district. Going to a new school is never easy, not for a new principal, not for a new assistant principal. However, most of you listening have either gone through that experience or will go through that experience or both. Today, we have an experienced principal with us who is also in a new school this year, and she is going to help us think about leading in a new school.

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 Community, the Assistant Principal Exceleration program, but you certainly don’t need to be an APEx member to find value in the podcast.

Guest Intro

Today I’m joined by Dr. Sam Sircey, the principal at Owen High School in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Sam is here with us today to unpack moving to a new school.

Hello Sam! I am so glad to have you on the show. We have been walking our leadership journeys together for a while and it is great to be able to be on this podcast path with you.

Questions

Sam, can you tell us briefly how you got to where you are today?

And we always like to start with a celebration. What are you celebrating today?

• Let’s begin in the present moment. You came to Owen X months ago. From the perspective of being the Principal in a new school
  • What were the three wisest things you did? We want people to learn from your experience, so please do not be modest – share what has worked!
  • What have been the two biggest surprises?
  • What is one thing that you would have done differently?
  • [Astute listeners: 5 mc]
• Briefly talk about the APs role in onboarding a new principal
• I know you are a strategic leader – you focus on purpose, problems, progress and people, but there is always a struggle and there are always things trying to suck you into the urgency mindset. How do you stay grounded? How do you continuously focus on people before tasks?
• Maybe talk about growing teachers, but we will probably run out of time.

Summarizing

As we wrap up, I have three questions for you.

First, what part of your own leadership are you still trying to get better at?

If listeners could take just one thing away from today’s podcast, what would it be?

Is there anything else that you’d like to share with our listeners?

Guest Outro

[fname], this has been great, thank you so much for taking time to share today. 

Show Outro

Well Colleagues, this brings us to the point in the episode where it is your turn to participate by making an intentional choice. If you do nothing with what you have just heard, then you have spent the last 30 or so minutes being entertained. But if you choose to do something with what you’ve heard, then you will have made an investment in your own leadership. If you already have a clear idea of how you can apply Sam’s wisdom, that’s wonderful. If not, let me offer three possibilities:

1. The big takeaway in this episode is that we need to listen to people and give them ownership – and responsibility – for their own challenges. Instead of thinking “Let me tell you what to do…”, think about asking “What’s the problem? And What outcome do you want?” Then listen. If you can work with people to identify the course of action that help them get to their desired outcome, you have helped them to be fully invested.
2. Forward the show link to a colleague and say “you have got to listen to this, I want us to talk about it”
3. Identify the one big takeaway or question from this episode and share it with me. You can share a written, audio, or video message with me by emailing me at [email protected]

Thank you for including me on your leadership journey. Remember that you can walk more with me by subscribing to my daily leadership email and Quadrant2, my monthly micro-journal. And if that isn’t enough, we can walk further together in APEx, my virtual paid community for assistant principals. APEx helps you network with other APs and participate group coaching with me! You can learn more about APEx and my other offerings at my website, frederickbuskey.com.

I look forward to seeing you again on Friday when we recap this week’s daily emails.

I’m Frederick Buskey and thank you again for joining me on this episode of the Assistant Principal Podcast. Remember to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode. Cheers!