There Is Never A Shortage Of Opinions

‘A lesson you quickly learn as a leader is that there is never a shortage of opinions about the decisions you make.  It doesn’t matter how big or small the decision might be, people are going to let you know about it.  People make the phrase “what if?” their job or even worse they just don’t like or agree with your opinion but have no alternative solution. There are so many opinions out there that we can even classify them into different groups or at least I know I do. Below you will find some of the names I use for the opinion groups:

Monday Morning Quarterbacks (The I would have done it this way group)

Awfulizers (It can’t be done, it will never work, it's horrible etc… group)

Not Gonna Do Its (The decision is just stupid group)

I Don’t Care What We do (But I Really Do Crew)

It’s Not My Rodeo (This is my passive aggressive opinion group)

I would imagine you know several people that could fit into any one of these groups.   Let me be clear about something before we get any deeper into the opinions of others.  I know as a leader I like to hear other opinions, however there is a time and place.  When we are seeking opinions and people participate in that process we are working collaboratively using all of our best ideas to create the best outcome.  The opinions that frustrate us the most are those that come from the people that didn’t speak up or take part in the process when they had an opportunity to do so.  I think every leader can identify with this but the question we need to ask ourselves is: How is getting frustrated going to help us?  It never serves us to let something frustrate us as my friend Dr. Gilbert from Success Hotline says “don’t get frustrated, get fascinated.” 

What to do when the opinions start coming in?

When the opinions start to flood our inbox, social media and voicemail we need to maintain some perspective.  An important piece to dealing with all the opinions we receive is being able to filter them into different categories because if we don’t we would never get anything else accomplished.  Here are a few questions I use  to organize the opinions I’m receiving.

Who does the communication come from? (bosses, team members, staff etc.)

Does the decision directly involve the person sharing their opinion with me?

Is the opinion asking for clarification or understanding?

Is the opinion actually an opinion or is it just criticism or people venting?

Is it a decision that we need to spend any additional time on?

The last question is probably the most important.  We make a lot of decisions that we just don’t need to spend anymore time on.  The vast majority of the decisions we make in a single day will be minor decisions and will not have a major impact on the culture of our organization.  The one thing that will give you insight into whether you should spend more time on a decision or not is if you get flooded with a high volume of opinions and they continue to come in for days after your decision.  That may be telling you that some deeper reflection and reevaluation is needed.  This is where the idea of becoming fascinated rather than frustrated comes alive. 

How do we get fascinated?

Instead of getting frustrated with the opinions of others we need to do a few things

1. Show some grace and understanding.  The opinions of others are rooted in their feelings.  Sometimes people just need to feel like they have been heard.

2. Make sure that we didn’t exclude people in the process that should have been at the table when we were gathering information and ideas.

3. Take time to reflect and see if there is merit in their opinion.

4. Remind yourself that you may have information that others don’t so don’t take it personally.

One last piece of advice WE ALL have opinions, so show some compassion and lean into people when they come to share their opinion with you.  You will probably find yourself on the other side of someone else's decision with your own opinion soon enough.  Have a great week and make sure you light the WICK of Leadership for those that you are leading by Working hard, acting with Integrity, being Committed and treating people with Kindness.

Jovestickel.com - Principalstickel@gmail.com - Jovestickel.substack.com - @Jovestickel

Welcoming Hope

Reframing complaints into hope and welcoming conversations without judgement

This week I have been inspired by two quotes that I can’t get out of my head and have challenged me to think about how I approach my relationships with people.  The first came from my pastor when she asked the question “are we going to welcome people or judge them?” The second quote was a Jonathan Soroff quote “underneath every complaint is a hope.” I couldn’t help but see that they have a connection that we can’t ignore.

Are we going to welcome people or judge them?

As leaders we probably have a natural tendency to judge people, situations and problems too quickly sometimes.  There are two reasons for this; the first is that we are protective of our people and our organizations because we care deeply for them.  The second reason is that we have so many demands on us as leaders that we learn to assess and make decisions quickly to maintain efficiency.  We also all allow our personal history and experiences to influence how we receive people.  The question I asked myself after hearing my pastor pose this question was: can I be welcoming if I’m being judgmental?  When we lead with judgement people can tell and it sets us up for a less than ideal situation.  Our body language, tone of voice and facial expressions will give it away.  Once that happens our interaction moves into one that lacks trust, safety and a mutual respect. When we welcome people with an open mind free of judgement it puts us in a much more natural place to work together.  This is especially important when we consider the mission and vision of our organization.   

Underneath every complaint is a hope.

We hear a lot of complaints as leaders.  It is the nature of our job that people will come to us with a variety of complaints on any given day.  People bring us complaints because they want a solution, need help or they may  just want to vent.  We see them for what they are complaints, but let me ask you this: what if we stopped framing things as complaints and looked at them as things people hope to see happen?  What if we coached our teams to come to us with their hopes instead of their complaints? Is your conversation going to be different? I bet you that the conversations will be more positive, collaborative and less judgmental. We don’t ever get excited about complaints but I know people get excited about hope.  Hope is about the possibilities that we can create for ourselves, schools, businesses or teams.  That sounds a lot more interesting and fun than dealing with a list of complaints doesn’t it?  

How are these two things connected?

It wasn’t hard for me to connect the dots with these two quotes.  Both of them are grounded in positivity and the importance of building strong relationships.  If we lack a positive outlook then our relationships will lack trust and respect.  We all know if people don’t trust their leaders they will be less likely to share with them.  When this happens our relationships are fractured and true collaboration and partnership will not be achieved.  When we reach this point people are operating in a vacuum and we all know that we are much smarter, more capable together and achieve so much more when we are working together..  Have a great day and don’t forget to light the WICK of Leadership for the people you are leading by Working hard, acting with Integrity, being Committed and treating people with Kindness. 

Jovestickel.com - Principalstickel@gmail.com - Jovestickel.substack.com - @Jovestickel 

The Leadership Plate Is Overflowing

Sunday I was at our weekly family dinner.  We always have great food. You know that good old fashioned comfort food that makes us feel good even when we are feeling sad, overwhelmed, depressed or stressed out.  I bet you can see your plate now. For me it’s that homemade mac and cheese my wife makes, BBQ brisket, my Mama’s corn casserole, cheesy potatoes and a couple of my Sister’s buttermilk sugar cookies. I will be in a food coma before the evening is over.  The thing about the food at our family dinner is that there comes a point where there is so much food on my plate I have a decision to make.  Do I continue to eat that food until the thing that brings me so much joy makes me sick or do I push that plate away and save some for later?

The Plate Is Full

Leadership is a lot like that plate at our Sunday dinner, however we don’t get to pick everything that ends up on our plate.  Most of the time we get to choose the things that are on it but sometimes things find their way there that nobody wants.  An example would be the last piece of cake your grandma forces you to eat so she can go ahead and wash her cake pan with the rest of the dishes, even though you are so stuffed you know it won’t even taste good.  As leaders things get piled onto our plates all the time. The key is how do we manage it all when we think there isn’t any more room.  My grandma would say “my plate is so full I don’t even have room for the gravy.” The funny thing is she always found room for that gravy.  Our leadership plate is the same way we always have room for more even if we feel like we don’t.  

Where Do We Put It

When that plate is overflowing we have to make some decisions and these questions will help you decide what you need to do. 

1. Are we going to clean our plate regardless of how it makes us feel?

2. Can I get a container and take some leftovers home for later?

3. Do I find somebody to share my plate with?

4. Can I just push my plate away for a few minutes and finish it later?

I know that the leadership plate can fill up pretty fast and get overloaded before we know it. I also know that as leaders we know we have to clean that plate and we want to clean it, but how we get it done matters especially if we want to enjoy it. 

Question one: Powering through 

The thing I did way too much as a young leader was just powering through in one sitting and clearing my plate regardless of how I was feeling.  This may have felt good to get everything off your plate, however you can make yourself sick if you keep doing this everyday.  It is no different than filling your plate to the brim at Sunday dinner and eating until you feel so sick you are unhappy and miserable.

Question two: Taking home leftovers

I used to take home a lot of leftovers.  I thought this was what hard work looked like and sometimes you do have to do it, but it isn’t the best way to get things done. The problem I would have with leftovers is that I never thought they tasted as good so I would let them sit on a shelf in my fridge and they wouldn't get eaten. This just allowed for more problems to pile up and lead to me cleaning out some pretty gross containers from my fridge.  If you have to take home some leftovers make sure it is something you love.  I know if I take home my Mama’s corn casserole from dinner that I will eat it because it’s my favorite. If you have to take work home make it be things that are easy to do that you enjoy doing. 

Question three: Sharing my plate

As leaders we need to collaborate and delegate more often.  We are not the only leaders in our building, everyone is a leader and the truth is when we share everyone feels better.  Leading a building or an organization is a huge task and if you want to be effective and create community you need to be willing to share with others.  This isn’t always easy to do, however there are times where it can be a real benefit. For example there will be things on our plate that we end up not liking.  I tried a brussel sprout ONCE and it wasn’t my thing, but I know my wife likes them so she will eat what I don’t.  Find out what your team is good at and what they like to do and use that to your advantage.  

Question four: Let your stomach settle so you can go back for more

Sometimes all we need is a break to let our stomach settle so we can make room for seconds or that favorite dessert my Aunt Susan makes.  We have to remember as leaders that it’s ok to take a break.  I know that when I eat too much but I want more I can get up and go for a walk or loosen up a notch on my belt and take a quick nap before going back for another plate.  There is nothing wrong with pushing that plate away when you are full. It doesn't mean you are done, it just means you are going to finish later.

Call To Action

This week I challenge you to take time to recognize when your plate is getting too full.  When  you start to see that gravy running off the plate ask yourself the four questions and decide what decision is best for you.  Will you stuff yourself so full that you will feel like a tick, grab a cool whip container from grandma's shelf for leftovers, share what you can’t eat or will you take a short break before dessert? Have a great week and light the WICK of leadership by Working hard, acting with Integrity, being Committed and treating people with Kindness.  Oh, by the way don’t forget when your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results(C>F=R). 

Jovestickel.com - Principalstickel@gmail.com - Jovestickel.substack.com - @jovestickel

When Change Is Required Lean On Your Integrity

One of the toughest things a leader must do is rally their team, their staff and themselves to make changes.  Why?

• Change is hard

• People fear change

• People don’t always see why it is necessary

• Conversations around change can be uncomfortable

I was reading a biography on Jimmy Carter by Jonathan Alter and he quoted a line from a speech President Carter gave in 1979.  Carter was addressing the people about the direction of our nation.  It included a variety of topics but a good chunk of that speech was about the economy and what we needed to do as a nation to improve our situation.  Carter told the American people that “there is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.”  First of all this statement had to take some courage to say, because Carter was in his first term as President and wanted to run again.  He was delivering difficult news that would require a nation to change including our President.  

The mark of a true leader in making change rests with their ability to do the difficult things and maintain their integrity in doing so.  As a leader there will be a lot of times when you have to set aside your personal feelings, goals and vision to do what is best for the greater good of your school, organization or family.  It’s easy to become compromised by money, pressure, judgement and popularity.  At the time the decisions you may make based on these things  might seem harmless but they can have far reaching implications.  You might be saying to yourself that making the right decision even if it costs you these things can have a negative impact on you as well.  Both of these things are true and it doesn’t make your decision or implementing change any easier.  

One of the core principals in my leadership philosophy is always acting with integrity.  Integrity has to be your guide.  When we break down integrity what is it? Integrity is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary  as “the quality of being honest and having a firm, uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles.” Integrity doesn’t owe us anything, it doesn’t have friends, it isn’t popular and it provides no judgement.  Integrity is what is honest, moral and ethical.  Is this an easy line to walk?  No way, it is hard. It relies on two more of my key leadership principles: hard work and commitment.  There is no other way or another substitute for achieving integrity.   Actually let me say I don’t think we achieve integrity.  Integrity is something we live by and we can’t choose to use it one day and then choose not to the next.  If we are living in that scenario then we really don’t have integrity.  

This brings us back to that Jimmy Carter quote “There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.”  Integrity is sacrifice, it's a daily choice and without it we compromise our character and the trust of the people around us.  If I don’t have the trust of the people that I’m leading, what do I have? You have nothing.  People will respect your honesty. They may not like the changes you’re asking them to make but they know that you are coming from a genuine place if you are always acting with integrity.  Who is more likely to get the changes they need out of their staff: a person they trust or one they don’t?  I will let you answer that question.  As you navigate today remember to light the WICK of leadership by Working hard, acting with Integrity, being Committed and treating others with Kindness.  Don’t forget when your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results (C>F=R).

Jovestickel.com - Principalstickel@gmail.com - Jovestickel.substack.com - @Jovestickel

“I Didn’t Have A Choice”

We all make tough choices in our lives. We often try to explain our reason for making those choices with the phrase “I didn’t have a choice.”  Monday I found myself reflecting on some of my recent choices and it got me thinking about that phrase and the different ways we use it.

We Use It To:

• Make excuses

• Deflect answering the tough questions

• Avoid doing the tough things

Making Excuses

When we try something that fails and we feel insecure or are worried about the judgement that is bearing down on us we will say “I didn’t have a choice.” This is us rationalizing more for our own benefit than anybody else's.  This is really about making us feel better and that isn’t going to help us maintain our standards.

Deflecting 

When we have to be accountable for our actions it is easier to say “I didn’t have a choice” than to answer for something we know we shouldn’t have done or could have done differently.  This is more about keeping others at bay.  The worst part of using it in this way is that it is treating people as if they couldn’t possibly understand the situation we are dealing with.  When people use it with us we feel like we are being lied to and disrespected.

Avoiding

Most of the time we know we have more than one choice.  We know if we search long enough, keep asking questions and ask others for input we can find alternatives.  What we also know is that this is hard work and it will require us to get out of our comfort zones and do things that we may not like to do.  It is easier to say “I didn’t have a choice” than to pull ourselves up by the boot straps, roll up our sleeves and get to work doing hard things. 

One final point that must be mentioned is that when we use  “I didn’t have a choice.”  It’s a lie.  We always have a choice because it never comes down to just one choice.  We made a series of choices to get here and we can’t get out of it by using this tired old excuse that deflects and avoids the real issues at hand.  Remember to have a great week and light the WICK of leadership by Working hard, acting with Integrity, being Committed and being Kind.

Jovestickel.com - Principalstickel@gmail.com - @Jovetickel - Jovestickel.substack

My Secret Weapon For Communication

I have a tool that I have been developing since I was four years old.  You read that right at four years old I started to develop a tool that would serve me for the rest of my life.  It doesn’t matter if you are 4 or 54 you can start using it today.  This secret weapon will help you become more confident in your decisions and conversations.  Do you want to know what this tool is? If you do, I need you to have an open mind and be willing to use your imagination. 

When I was a kid we would play all kinds of pick up games, race bikes, climb trees, you name it we did it. If it was storming outside we would simply move inside and play board games, card games or make up a new competition entirely.  When there wasn’t somebody to play with I would use my imagination and play entire games by myself.  This is a pretty common part of most childhood experiences, but the thing that took it to the next level with me was the post game interview.  I would pretend that I was meeting with a reporter and I would play both roles: the interviewer and myself.  I would ask a ton of questions imagining that I was on the evening news, Wide World of Sports, Johnny Carson, Oprah, Barbara Walters and later Sports Center.  I’m sure some kids do this too but the older I got the more I did it.  This obsession didn’t go away and I started to do it when I was playing sports in high school or when I was visualizing doing something that scared me or that was hard.  I would ask questions about what I felt I did well, my feelings about what was happening, what I would do to get better and a ton of other questions that I may have seen reporters asking athletes or other successful people.   

I graduated from college and started my career in education and guess what continued to do? You guessed it, I kept interviewing myself.  If I had a difficult decision to make I would have an interview, a board report to give I would have an interview, a difficult conversation with someone had an interview, an opportunity to present an award I had an interview.  These interviews evolved. I started doing them to prepare for the things I mentioned not just after they had happened.  I have literally had tens of thousands of press conferences in my lifetime and I believe they have made me infinitely better than if I wouldn’t have been conducting them. Here are the reasons why:

• Opportunity to reflect 

• Opportunity to prepare 

• Builds confidence (You have already answered the tough questions)  

• Practicing communication (The more you practice the more clear you become)

• Hearing what it sounds like (It’s important in avoiding faux paus)

• Positivity Training (Allows you to focus on positive language)

• Reduces Stress and Nervousness (You’ve essentially been there before)

• Coping mechanism (allowed me to work through my mistakes in a safe format)

• It doesn’t take a lot of time or preparation 

I would imagine when I was doing this at four it was something cute my parents just laughed at because I did it with my parents in the room.  I’m sure they had no idea I was building something that would serve me for the rest of my life.  When I got older and was doing it behind closed doors in my bedroom or office people probably thought I was just on the phone when they could hear my voice.  I had no idea what I was building for myself until a principal I was mentoring asked me “what is your secret weapon as an administrator?"  I didn’t even think about my answer. It rolled off of my tongue like I had been dying to say it for my entire life.  “I interview myself all the time.” I was stunned at what I had just said and he was confused.  For the next 30 minutes he asked me all kinds of questions and for the first time I discovered that the 4 year old who liked to talk about what had happened in the game he played in the backyard was the mastermind behind my leadership and communication skills.  

Call To Action

My call to action for you is to start your own private press conferences.  Try it once or twice a week just to get the hang of it.  A great place to do it is in the mirror when you are getting ready for work or in the car on the way home.  It doesn’t take a lot of time or effort, just the willingness to use a little imagination and the desire to improve.  I encourage you to go out into your world this week and light the WICK of leadership by Working hard, acting with Integrity, being Committed and treating people with Kindness.  Have a great week and remember when your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results. (C>F=R)

Jovestickel.com - @jovestickel - Principalstickel@gmail.com - Jovestickel.substack

Clean Your Closet

Today I went into my closet to get out a pair of running shoes to go for my daily run.  When I reached in to grab them I had a flashback to the day I moved into this house 5 months ago and how organized this closet was.  I took great care and time to make sure I had things put away in a manner that made sense that would allow me to get to them quickly when they were needed.  Everything had its place and I was certain nothing would get lost.  It didn’t matter if it was a new pair of shoes, my favorite ¼ zip, or a photo album I’ve had for 40 years I was going to know exactly where it was.  The other thing I wasn’t going to do was make this closet a catch all.  

Did I Keep My Promise?

The more time I spent in this closet grunting and groaning about how I couldn’t find the shoes I was looking for the more irritated I became.  I said out loud to myself “how did I let this happen? I had vowed never to let this happen again.  Why am I in this situation?”   

The idea that I was going to keep this closet clean and organized went well for the first couple of months but then I made a couple of purchases, we had some people coming over and instead of taking the time to find a place for things I threw them in the nearest closet.  This coupled with me kicking my shoes off into the closet instead of taking the extra 30 seconds to place them there neatly was making things an absolute mess.  It wasn’t as bad as how I kept my closet in my first apartment.  That was a bona fide danger zone.  My mom would come for a visit and everything I owned got stuffed in my closet about 20 minutes before she arrived.  When I finally moved out of that apartment I found things I thought were stolen or lost forever.  The real problem came when I would replace those things that I had “lost.”  I would find myself with less and less space because I had doubles and triples of things I already had buried in a closet.

Cleaning That Closet

There comes a time where we get so fed up, unorganized and overwhelmed that we have no choice but to clean that closet.  Our leadership skills and knowledge are the same.  We accumulate so many ideas, skills, experiences, stories and practices that we can forget about what we have and don’t have.  Information comes at us fast and we have to make a lot of decisions.  If we don’t have a system to keep it all together and take time to pull everything out and review it once in a while our brain is going to become a mess.  If our brain is a mess there is a good chance the people and buildings we lead in will become a mess as well.  Just like a closet has a limited capacity, so does our brain.  If we continue to shove stuff into it until that  door will reach a point where we will no longer be able to get it to close.  The stuff in that closet is going to spill out all over the place and you're going to have bigger problems than just shutting the door.  It starts with taking the extra seconds to put things away correctly, because in the end that will save you more time on the back end.  Each season you have to set aside the time to review what you have, what you use and what you don’t use and make room for the most important things. It’s no different than rotating your close in the Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter.  We don’t use all of our skills all the time, we just need to know where we have them stored so we can access them when the right situation arises.  Remember to light the WICK of leadership this week by Working hard, acting with Integrity, being Committed, and showing Kindness. Have a great week and remember when your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results. 

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I WAS KILLING MYSELF

I was killing myself.  There is no other way to say it. I can't rationalize or sugarcoat it. At the end of the day I was making choices that were leading to an early exit from this world.  I knew better but I couldn’t seem to stop what had become a runaway train.  Seven years ago I weighed over 600 pounds, was addicted to nicotine and drank way too much alcohol.  You take all of those things, shake them around in a bag with some anxiety and you get a person that was on the brink of death. I was drowning in a pool of depression, poor choices, addiction, hopelessness and laziness and I was choosing to cope by engaging in doing all of the things that were killing me.  I would overeat, chew tobacco, drink and watch television all night long, sleep for a couple of hours and head to one of the most stressful jobs on the planet as a middle school principal.  The absurdity that I was leading students and staff to be their best and expect them to confidently and proudly follow me and achieve excellence was ridiculous at best.  

I had reached a point where I was a prisoner to myself.  At work I would camp out in my office because walking around our building left me incredibly out of breath and standing up for 5 minutes made my back hurt.  I would purposely walk a ridiculous route around the building to avoid 10 steps because walking up the stairs was difficult and I was so out of breath I had to take a break when I got to the top of the steps.  I couldn’t fit in most chairs, couldn’t use a seat belt, couldn’t get on a plane, couldn’t keep up with my grandkids, couldn’t look myself in the mirror and traveling and leaving the house was painful and embarrassing.  Again I knew better I had been an athlete and I had lost tremendous amounts of weight before but had gained it back.  Food had been my go to since my father died when I was 7 and when my mother passed when I was 38 things got really crazy.  I didn’t want to die but I had become so disgusted with myself I didn’t see the point in trying anymore.  It would be easier just to dig a deeper hole and hope that the end came swiftly and with as little pain as possible. 

What changed? Why am I here today? I finally got scared.  I had an incident where my heart felt like it was skipping beats and I was sad and felt bad for my wife being stuck with what I had become.  This prompted a visit to the doctor, but it still didn’t elicit much change, however it was a start.  One morning I woke up and was getting ready for work. I looked in the mirror and without thinking about it this phrase came out of my mouth “how can you lead other people if you aren’t even leading yourself?” This was the moment when things began to change and I started to become committed to truly changing my life.  I went back to the doctor and started the process to have bariatric surgery.  This was something I had always been against before because I thought it was cheating.  I hadn’t seen it as a tool to change my life, it was a support that I desperately needed and I would find out that it wasn’t easy but it most definitely would change my life.

Something nobody tells you before bariatric surgery is that you have to say goodbye to your old self and that is harder than you may think.  My identity had become ingrained in food, it had become who I was, how I coped and one of the only ways I knew to make myself feel better.  This brings a lot of fear and anxiety particularly as you move closer to your surgery date.  My surgery almost didn’t happen because of my fear and overconfidence.  I had started to lose weight already and had lost around 90 pounds.  I thought I could do this without surgery. I thought “I don't need to give up so much. I know what I’m doing now.”  Thankfully I had what I call my beached whale moment.  Family vacation 2020 Gulf Shores, AL the final moment of clarity came on July 6th.  I had waded out into the surf and fell over and it’s important to understand when you are as obese as I was getting up off the floor is a huge chore let alone a sandy beach with waves pounding you in the face.  I tried to get up once, twice, three times a total of seven times I tried to get up and I literally thought I would drown on the beach that day in less than a foot of water.  Eventually I crawled to an area where I wasn’t in danger of drowning but was still struggling to get up.  I looked toward my family on the beach and they were laughing and I don’t blame them I’m sure it looked funny. The thing that struck me was the people around them laughing with their phones out filming my struggle. This was the turning point that solidified my decision to have surgery.  I was struggling and all I could think about was all of the things I have accomplished in life and the love I have for my family will not be what people know or remember about me it will be a viral moment of a morbidly obese person drowning on a beach because he was too fat to get up.  From that moment on I never looked back and thank goodness the videos they took never went viral.  

After the surgery I was committed to eating better. You have no choice, it forces you to address your eating habits and with that comes a new clarity and relationship with food and yourself.  You begin to address your real issues that are at the root of your problems and start to develop new coping mechanisms that are healthier and more satisfying.  For the first time in my life I began to put myself first and began to truly invest in leading myself.  This change in my life released me from a prison I had been living in.  I was truly living for the first time in over a decade experiencing life traveling, exercising, enjoying nature and celebrating all of the gifts I had been given but taken for granted.  By taking this leap and being fully committed to myself the people around me were lifted up as well.  I was better for them and I had the energy to lift them up when they needed more support.  I wasn’t fully available or capable of doing this when I weighed over 600 pounds.  

September 28th will always be more than just the day I had bariatric surgery; it will be an unofficial birthday or more appropriately my own independence day.  Kris Kristofferson’s song “Me And Bobby McGee” has a line that sums up my decision to have bariatric surgery: “freedom is just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” I had reached a point where I had nothing left to lose and I desperately needed freedom. Six years after surgery I weigh 300 pounds less, have run half marathons, marathons and ultra marathons, started a run streak that stands at 1612 days and started my own business. It doesn’t matter if we are 16, 46 or 60 we can change the course of our lives by learning to lead ourselves.  Have a great week, light the WICK of leadership and don’t ever forget when your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results.

Jovestickel.com  -  @Jovestickel -  Principalstickel@gmail.com 

Earning It, Deserving It and Getting It

Nothing gets on my nerves more than when people who don’t get what they want use the following two phrases, “I earned it” or “I deserve it.” It takes a lot of energy and restraint for me not to say “no you didn’t.” Some of you may think that is a less than compassionate view and I would agree it can hit pretty hard.  I didn’t always think this way.  I was one of the people who would use those phrases when I had worked and sacrificed for something I wanted and didn’t get.  

Earning It

Earning it implies that I left no stone unturned.  There was nothing more that I could do to get what I wanted.  My commitment was greater than my feelings.  There was never a day where I took it easy or didn’t work to my potential or beyond.

Deserving It

Deserving it implies that for some reason I’m more deserving than someone else.  It screams of entitlement.  In reality I have no idea what that other person has done to get what they want.  In my heart it just isn’t possible to deserve something that I didn’t rightfully earn.   

Getting It

The people who get what they want are the people who have the right to use the words earned and deserved. Those words are reserved for them and the effort and work that they have put into the pursuit of what they want.  When someone else gets what I want it is highly likely that they did more than more or did it better than me. 

The Ifs And The Buts

There will always be those people that will bring up the ifs and buts.  Those are nothing more than excuses.  People will talk about lucky bounces, unfair officiating or some obscure scenario that somehow makes them a victim or at a minimum feel better about not actually getting what they wanted.  My high school football Coach John Danks had a quote he used often to sum up this topic perfectly.  “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts it would be Christmas year around.” 

Call To Action

Don’t allow yourself to get wrapped up into the “ifs and buts” or the “earned and deserved” game.  Go back to work, evaluate what you did well and where you can do better.  Take that information and formulate a new plan and put it into action for yourself so the next time the opportunity arrives you GET WHAT YOU WANT.  Then and only then can you say you earned it and you really deserve it.  Have a great week, light the WICK of Leadership and never forget that when your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results.   

@Jovestickel 

Jovestickel.com

Principlastickel@gmail.com

(573) 692-3448

Pressure

We all have some kind of relationship with pressure there is no denying it.  It’s always present whether it's self imposed or thrown on us by someone else. Pressure is a part of our daily life and the decisions we make.  The four most common types of pressure are:

• Social and peer pressure

• Professional and academic pressure

• Internal and psychological pressure

• Economic and financial pressure.  

Each of these four types of pressure can be broken down into more specific subtopics. Our life experiences make us more susceptible to some of these types of pressure than others.  To be honest I know I can experience all of them in the course of my day.  Pressure isn’t just something we put on ourselves.  We also experience pressure from the people we have relationships with in our jobs, families and friend groups.

One phrase I used to quote all of the time was “pressure is a privilege.” I thought that phrase was telling me that I was important and what I was doing meant something.  It reminded me of the gravity that my decisions and choices could have on myself and others.  Today I have a much different view of that phrase.  Why do I have to feel pressure to understand how important my decisions are or that what I do can make a difference? That question led me to another, Does pressure help me perform better? Both of these questions really opened up my eyes and forced me to reflect on a deeper level. 

Social And Peer Pressure

Social and peer pressure have always been a significant factor in how people act and react to what is going on in their lives.  The advancement and popularity of social media has only made this type of pressure more influential and harder to navigate in our daily lives.  We internalize this type of pressure but the reality is it often starts from the judgement, beliefs and experiences of others.  It’s rarely built on what is best for us and it can invade our subconscious and control us without us even recognizing it.  We get overwhelmed with comparison rather than being fascinated with who we are and what we want to be.  

Professional And Academic Pressure

When I think of this type of pressure I think of performance and how deeply rooted it is in success, achievement, advancement and meeting deadlines.  This can be self imposed and also directed by our colleagues, bosses, family and friends.  I find that this type of pressure can be combatted by learning to focus more on the journey and on personal growth. When we invest our time more on progress and less on the end result the pressure isn’t nearly as great.  This takes a lot of work and self confidence and must be practiced. Positive affirmations have made all the difference for me in this area. I tend to see how far I’ve come and that provides me with a sense of satisfaction and the encouragement to keep going.  

Internal And Psychological Pressure

This type of pressure is associated with things like imposter syndrome, guilt and obligation.  Guilt and obligation are the things that we probably deal with a lot and can recognize more easily.  Being a self professed people pleaser I never used to want to say no to people.  Letting others down even if it wasn’t something important could literally stick with me for years.  Textbook guilt and a loyal obligation to people could send me into a pretty dark place if I didn’t come through for people.  This wasn’ t something they would make me feel either; this was entirely on me.  I have tried to analyze this for years but I’m just not sure where this has come from.  

Imposter syndrome has been something else that I have struggled with during my career.  When I would get a promotion or take on a new leadership role I was always excited initially, but that would change in a heartbeat.  I would immediately experience a high level of anxiety, think I was unworthy and think to myself “what am I doing? I don’t deserve this, I don’t know enough to meet expectations.” The level of anxiety I’ve had to work through would surprise even my closest friends because I would work so hard to try to hide it from people.  This in itself created a pressure I didn’t need.

Economic And Financial Pressure

I feel that of all the different types of pressure this is probably the most obvious.  It comes down to making ends meet and providing for myself and my family.  This is probably the most understandable type of pressure.  Now I will say there is also that pressure that comes from comparing ourselves to the Jimmys and the Joes when we see the material things that they have accumulated.  I think that speaks more to jealousy but I can easily see how people would view this as pressure and want to keep up with their peers.  This can cause a fear of being left behind.  

What Does It All Mean?

All of this pressure regardless of what kind it is can be connected to a few common themes.

• Comparison

• The opinions of others

• Our own perceptions of success

This might be an oversimplification of pressure, however the more simple we can make it the easier it is to combat it. I’m sure some of you may disagree with my take on pressure and that’s fine.  I’m not saying that all pressure is bad, but I am saying it can become a negative factor in our life if we don’t maintain our perspective.  Why not change the perception of pressure? Instead of pressure being associated with the outcome we transfer the energy we feel from pressure to focus on learning and growth.  

We allow people to apply pressure on us based on their experiences and perceptions.  Those things aren’t the same as standards.  Our best performances come from our ability to apply what we have learned from our own experiences to meet the standards set for us.  We should never internalize the pressure of others because that’s an unfair comparison.  We’re all different people with a different set of experiences that have shaped our perspectives.  

This week take the time to reflect on the pressure you feel from yourself and others.  Identify what type of pressure it is, how it makes you feel and if it is improving your performance?  Write down your answers and at the end of the week review what you have written. Is your life, not just your performance better because of the pressure you have felt? Once you have answered this question, take the time to look for any patterns or trends that show you when pressure benefits you and when it doesn't.  Have a  great week and remember to light the WICK of leadership by working hard, acting with integrity, being committed and practicing kindness.  When your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results.  

Attitude Isn’t A Feeling It’s An Action

The only two things we can control in this world are our attitude and our effort.  I have uttered this phrase so much over the last 30 years to students, athletes, teachers, friends and family members that it should probably be stamped on my forehead.  This phrase has always been at the center of any team or organization I have been leading and it always will be.  The real star of that phrase is the word attitude.  Effort is important but if you don’t have the attitude to match the effort it really doesn’t matter.  Attitude is defined by google as “a settled way of thinking, feeling, or behaving toward a person, thing, or situation.”  When I visit with people about attitude I like to take the emotion and feeling out of it.  To me attitude is a purposeful action in response to the events, individuals and experiences that impact you.    I like to focus on the last part of the definition “behaving toward a person, thing or situation.”

Attitudes are a funny thing.  People can say that someone has a good or a bad attitude but what does that really mean? It really tells me very little.  Does it mean people are happy or does it mean they are sad? Does it mean that they are positive or negative? These were questions I started asking myself when I had my first job as a teacher and a coach.  The more I thought about it and the more I experienced I began to realize that attitude was really about the way we reacted to what was happening in our lives and how we approached those situations and people.  When I started to look at things from this perspective that is when the word attitude became very clear to me.  It was simple attitude was one of two things either:

• It was an opportunity to grow and we could choose to embrace it or

• It was going to be something we allowed to control us and swallow us whole. 

I think given the opportunity most of us see, that the first one is far more appealing than digging our way into a deep hole and making things worse for ourselves.  It isn’t until this point when our effort will factor into our attitude.  Rarely have I seen people give great effort unless they had a growth mindset.  People with a poor attitude are rarely ever focused on growth and more often than not in my experience they never achieve the results they are looking for.  

Take some time and visualize the highest mountain peak you can.  The sun is setting in the background, the top of the mountain is snow capped and the light is glistening against the snow revealing those beautiful golden hues you get as it begins to disappear.  It is truly breathtaking and inspiring and your task is to climb up that mountain.  You know if you get to the summit you are going to receive the biggest reward in your life.  It’s going to be THE grand award and it's going to be a very satisfying experience.  Now visualize the deepest darkest hole on the Earth.  You decide to descend into the hole and the deeper you go the colder and darker it gets.  You can’t see anything but darkness, not even your own hands in front of your face are visible.  When you finally get to the bottom there is no reward, just more darkness and the rope you used to climb down is lost in the dark.  

The reality in attitude is that even if you have a growth mindset and you are focused on climbing towards the summit there will be days when you dive into that dark hole.  So what do you do when that happens?  You don’t panic or overreact, you remain calm and remind yourself you want to get to the summit and receive the ultimate reward we talked about.  Stay vigilant and remind yourself that the more times you dive into that hole the harder it gets to climb out of it and the further away that beautiful mountain sunset is from where you are.  I know this can be easier said than done, but as I wrote this piece this week I was reminded by my friend Dr. Gilbert of something very important. .   

Dr. Gilbert was talking on his success hotline (973-743-4690) about how the easiest things to do are sometimes the hardest for us to do.  I don’t know if that’s because we take it for granted when it’s easy, but I do know that in my life that’s been the case from time to time.  When things are easy I feel like I can just start and stop it at any moment so I put things off or take for granted the harm I’m actually doing by not starting.  We know it’s going to be easier to climb that mountain than having to find our way out of that dark hole we have jumped into, but we let external factors get in our way as well.  We let our feelings, emotions and people drag us into the holes we need to stay out of instead of removing ourselves from those things and seeing the growth opportunities in them.  Everyday it needs to be a purposeful conscious decision to keep ourselves climbing towards the summit of that mountain to catch that beautiful sunset.  

So how do we fix this? How do we practice resisting the dive into the darkness and climbing to the summit instead?

• Have a mantra to lean on mine is “when your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results (C>F=R)

• We have talked about visualizing a mountain. Visualize the palace that you love the most. it will put you in a positive mindset.

• Create a connection with a mantra and touch.  For example when things get tough I repeat the phrase “I can do this” over and over again and while I do that I touch my thumb to each of my fingers with each word I say.

• Create a playlist of positive upbeat music that inspires, motivates or makes you happy.

I don’t just use these things when I’m struggling or focused on the negative.  If I have spare time or even when things are going well I will use all of these to reinforce my approach to the situations that are before me.  The more I do this the harder it is for my mind to wander away from the growth mindset and into the darkness.  This kind of thinking becomes second nature and my attitude is an action for growth and success.  

This week take time to focus your attitude not on feelings or emotions but the behavior and actions you want to have and take as you experience the people and situations that visit you in your daily life.  Attitude is about your approach and the phrase that best exemplifies that to me is “Things don’t happen to us, they happen for us.”  If you take that approach and make things happen for you then you will grow by leaps and bounds and have a more full and happy life. Have a great week and remember when your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results. 

What Would You Change?

We’ve all heard the question “If you could go back and do it all over again what would you do differently?” This question comes up a lot after I speak to groups and tell them my story.  They assume and I think it’s a fair assumption that I would choose a different path for myself knowing what I know now.  The funny thing about this question is I rarely ever think about it and that started pretty early on in my life.  When I was 7 years old my father passed away and it was devastating.  In my early teens I was overweight and bullied and I would carry that issue with me for decades.  These events in my life gave me a reality that bad things, unfair things can happen and you could roll with the punches and find a way out or you could wallow in it and sink further into a pit of hopelessness. 

I’ve always taken on two approaches to the question of what would I change? The first approach is focusing on the past, particularly things like the death of family or friends just made me sad and I couldn’t change those things no matter how much I wanted to.  The second approach was all of the situations, events and experiences I had been through shaped who I was now and that was something I always felt grateful for.  I don’t know if it was because of my Mother’s influence or my faith but I just felt that my journey and all of the suffering, pain, sadness and even happiness was for a reason.  I’m not saying I didn’t get upset or angry about the things that happened but I chose to see the value in them even when I was struggling.  

With every experience in my life I learned something new and I know a lot of the time I didn’t realize I was learning a lesson until years later.  We are constantly evaluating our lives and taking notes of what works and what doesn’t work and that leads us to the next step where the process starts all over again.  The growth we make as people comes from the sum of our experiences and without them we don’t ever get to the next level.  We would never experience the growth we need in order to be the best we can be for ourselves and our people.  When we start to replace experiences we take away from other ones that we had along the way.  I’m sure you have all seen the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life,”  It is probably my favorite movie.  Jimmy Stewart’s character George Bailey walks through his life with Clarence Oddbody, this guardian angel and he finds out just how important all of the events of his life were.  His sacrifices, good deeds and hardships made a difference in the lives of others and it uplifted a community.  We found out from watching the movie that the town George lives in would be a much more cynical and sad place without him.   

If we take the time and reframe the events of our lives into the lessons of our lives instead, not only will we live more in the present and experience more growth, but we will also live a more full and satisfying life.  My challenge to you this week is to work on strengthening how you look at the events in your life. Instead of seeing things that were tragedies or mistakes as something you would do over or change, find a connection from them to something positive in your life.  For example, when my father died I became incredibly close with my mother and as I grew into adulthood she became my best friend.  I learned to rely on her wisdom and saw her as the most valuable member of my life’s board of directors.  Without her influence I would have never gone as far as I did in my career.  Another example would be my struggle with obesity.  My obesity led to me being bullied when I was a kid but from that experience I learned resilience and toughness that would become valuable when I went through tough times as an adult.  It also gave me insight into what other people were going through that were being bullied.   I hope these examples can give you a point to start from.  Have a great week and remember when your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results.  

Lacking Confidence?

Confidence is defined as the feeling or belief that one can rely on something or someone.  When I first became a building principal I constantly thought about two things.  The first was “please don’t let me mess this up.” The second thing was “I hope that I can get to the point where the decisions I make will be made with 100% confidence.”  I thought so much about these two things that the thoughts consumed me and at times could even paralyze my decision making process.  There was a perception in my mind that good principals always knew what to do, and they made their decisions with an efficient and calm confidence that was absolute.  After a decade as principal I can say with certainty that the level of confidence I was seeking not only wasn’t possible, but sure wasn’t desirable.  

Being confident is something that we all crave in our jobs.  I don’t dispute that confidence is a positive, but I will dispute that it shouldn’t be our goal.  The goal of having absolute confidence in our decisions is honestly arrogant.  When I think of the job of a leader, particularly a building principal you will encounter things on a daily basis that you have never seen before.  There is no amount of preparation, reading, research or experience that can prepare you for everything.  If you think there is then you are doomed from the start and that overconfidence will be your undoing.  Now with that being said there will be things that you will become very confident in dealing with as a leader.   

You might be asking what are the things that I think you can become confident in?  Setting up routines, minor tasks and applying your core values would be some examples.  So, what kind of tasks or decisions will make you question your confidence? 

1. Decisions that involve people

2. Decisions that involve things that are new to you

3. Decisions that will have lasting effects on the future of your building

These three decisions were the type of decisions that made me question my confidence?  I truly believe that it comes back to the idea that it will affect other people and their emotions. These were things beyond my control and could create dissent, hard feelings, and division in my relationships with individuals and with the staff as a whole.  Remember when I mentioned  that I could become paralyzed by my lack of confidence in decision making?  I viewed a lack of confidence as a weakness.  I don’t know if the reasons I felt that way were because I was overwhelmed, new to a higher level of leadership or if it was my previous life experiences.  I saw great leaders as calm, cool and collected so I didn’t consider the fact that great leaders even good leaders didn’t get there overnight.  

The longer I led a staff the more I realized that the lack of confidence in my decisions wasn’t a bad thing, it was perfectly natural.  I started to look at my inexperience or indecision as an opportunity instead of a weakness.  When I was faced with difficult decisions it was a new chance to learn and grow.  I began to look at these situations like an athlete looks at practice.  I was going to have to test myself, push through the discomfort and maybe even suffer a little in order to get where I needed to go.  It meant stretching my thinking, doing some research, and seeking the opinions of experts and the people around me.  With this mindset you must be prepared for things to fall flat, miss the mark or even go horribly wrong.  When that happens what do you do?

When things go badly it’s not time to feel sorry for yourself, but it is time to take accountability, reevaluate, dust yourself off and try again.  This is where real leaders are born.  They are born in the chaos of not getting it right and only through that chaos can you truly become confident in your decisions.  Truly great leaders will fail more often than they succeed, because they will continue to search for the best solution and the best path.  They don’t see failure, they see feedback.  Some of you might be asking yourselves “is this guy saying there isn’t really a true level of confidence in the decisions you make?”  Well, kind of.  What I’m really saying is you need to have confidence in the process of getting better.  Establish a routine that will help you make the tough decisions so when you don’t know what to do because you’ve never seen it you have a starting point to get you to where you need to go.  

If you are paying attention you know I’ve brought you back to the beginning.  Earlier in this post I stated that one of the areas you can be confident in is the routines you establish for yourself.  The key word is routine.  Routine is about process and procedures. If you have a clear process and procedure established for yourself when you need to make decisions and you are consistent with applying it then the lack of confidence doesn’t matter.  The reason for that is that you have strength in what you have built for yourself.  My challenge to you is to sit down and develop the process and procedures you will use to help you make the best decision possible when you don’t know what to do.  Have a great day and remember to light the WICK of leadership today.   

Focus On The Journey More Than The Results

This week I have been extremely focused on my message “Lighting the WICK of Leadership.”  I believe that leaders, and we're all leaders, have a responsibility to bring energy to our lives each day that will inspire others and propel us to be the best version of ourselves.  The energy we bring is distributed through Working hard, acting with Integrity, being Committed and treating people with Kindness.  Everything in life and leadership comes back to these principles.  As I sat with these principles this week and did some reflecting I had some deeper thoughts about how I measure the effectiveness of this message when I apply it to my life.

As a lifelong competitor and coach I have always been obsessed with results.  The wins and losses I accumulated and the statistics that gave me insight into my performances were always so important to me and my evaluation of my performance or the performance of the teams I was leading.  We live in a world that is consumed with the results.  This isn’t surprising based on the competitive nature of our economy, politics and love for sports.  The problem with this philosophy is that you don’t always win and we don’t always get the results we want.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but we make it out to be bad and in some cases people allow it to become catastrophic.  

Please don’t get me wrong. I believe in goals and I want to be successful, but our approach needs to be amended.  I know when I became a leader the hardest thing for me to learn was how to build a like minded culture especially when you had a lot of different personalities with their own individual goals on the same team.  I learned to always focus on the standards, expectations and procedures we had established for our program along with group cohesiveness to get us to where we wanted to go.  Even with this focus I still struggled to get it right until late in my career when I started to put together some key pieces of advice that I had received along the way.  I was reminded of this advice this week and as things fell into place I wanted to include it in this week’s post.  

I have been reading Jim Murphy’s book Inner Excellence and he was talking about how important the process is rather than the results.  This instantly took me back to my first year in teaching and a man I coached with named Howard Griesinger.  He would often tell us young teachers and coaches that the most important thing in coaching was to “take care of the little things and the big things would take care of themselves.”  In his own way he was telling us that what you did during your journey was important and that is where your focus should be.  

The second point of reflection for the week came when I saw my high school football coach John Danks, in my hometown at a football scrimmage.  We began talking about players, teams, coaching and all the memories that go along with a conversation on a football Friday night in your hometown.  The thing that struck me was I remember when he told us all one of the great secrets of life when we were young high school athletes.  He told us that when all of it was over, when we had played our last game the thing that would matter the most was the memories we carried and the people we shared them with.  Wow, that is what it’s all about. It speaks directly to the idea that Jim Murphy was talking about.  This life and our march through it really is more about the journey than the results.  

The reflections, conversations and readings I’ve had this week got me to dive into what is most important to me.  When I became a head coach I worked hard at building a feeling of togetherness and when I became a principal I constantly reminded people that it was about relationships first, last and always.  If we aren’t building an appreciation and love for the journey and the people we are on it with, the results don’t matter.  The most fun I’ve ever had is visiting with the people I have suffered with talking about what we went through and all the laughs and even tears that come with those memories and lessons.  The last thing we mention and sometimes we don’t even mention it is how successful we were.  When I was a principal I used to tell our staff on the first day of each school year that people won’t remember everything you teach them but they will remember how you make them feel.  Take a moment to think back about the teachers, coaches, bosses and coworkers you’ve had in your life.  I bet the first thing that comes to your mind is how they made you feel and what opinion you have of them based on that experience. It isn't what you accomplished or didn’t accomplish.  

This week I want to call on you to focus more on the journey and the people that are on it with you than the results.  I will guarantee this will bring you more joy, happiness and ultimately success than being focused on the outcome.  Start with making your interactions with people count by being kind, being a good listener and being genuinely engaged in your time with them.  Have a great week and don’t forget to light the WICK of leadership. 

Growing As A Leader Who Is A Reader

As a young kid I developed a love of reading.  What I enjoyed most about books was that I could disappear into the characters and the stories being told.  My imagination could wander to places I didn’t know existed, allowing me to see things from a perspective that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to have.  I went off to college and all of that changed. I started to read for the purpose of consuming as much content specific material as I could.  It didn’t take long and I had lost my joy for reading altogether.  When I entered the workforce  I remained on that path and saw reading as a chore more than an opportunity or a delight.  Once I became a principal one of the things that came up over and over again was that “leaders were readers.” I took this so seriously that my focus on reading was solely directed towards improving as a principal and a leader of people.  I was reading books on leadership, management, curriculum, instructional practices and culture, but I wasn’t going beyond those areas.  The only thing I was consuming was what I felt was helping me become a better leader from a technical and practical sense.  This strategy led to a lot of professional growth, helped me flatten the learning curve and even brought some excitement back to reading for me, however a problem was brewing.

I know you’ve all heard that “variety is the spice of life” and I certainly had variety in my professional readings. I read books and articles over the aforementioned topics, but I was neglecting some of the most important things I needed in my life.  I needed to allow my mind to be entertained so my imagination could develop.  There were lessons to be learned in reading fiction things like relationship dynamics as well as experiencing the emotions of characters that I could relate to.  Through fiction I got to experience the emotions of people that were completely different from me and that could allow me to see things from a much different perspective.  

When COVID hit us in 2020 I started to expand my reading and surprisingly discovered that some books weren’t meant to provide entertainment or an opportunity to gain knowledge.  Some of the lessons I was learning from books were simply to reaffirm the things I already knew.  Books could provide me with the comfort and confidence that I was on the right track and doing the right things to find what I was searching for or trying to achieve..  There might be several of you reading this and saying to yourself “this is pretty obvious to me, how did he not see this for himself?” I can tell you from my experience at that time I was treading water so frantically that I couldn’t see beyond my problems and fears.  I was so afraid that I wasn’t prepared enough or didn’t know enough as a new school principal that I acquired serious tunnel vision.  My only focus was on survival and what I needed to read next to keep me from drowning. 

As I sit in my office writing this I’m looking at my book shelves and I can tell you what was going on in my life when I read those books.  They are grouped on my shelves  in chronological order of when I read them.  What makes me chuckle now that I never noticed until today is that you can see exactly what my focus was because although they are in chronological order that are also ordered almost entirely by subject..  Biographies of historical figures and events, coaching biographies and manuals, books on instructional practices and curriculum, leadership books, self help books  and fiction all grouped together by those subjects.  As I look down towards the bottom of my book shelves you can see more variety in subject and content.  It is no coincidence that during the time where I had the most variety in topics and subjects I was experiencing the most growth of my life and I was also happier than I had ever been.   

I have hundreds of books and I can’t seem to get rid of a single one of them. This is a source of frustration for my wife because they do take up a lot of space and they seem to get heavier every single time we have moved to a new home..  Just this week I was talking to someone about how our books weren’t just books, they were a reference library for our lives.  We needed to have them close by so we could use them over and over again.  I may go years between looking through some of them but a conversation with someone may spark an idea or provide an opportunity for me to pass on some information from my personal library.  There isn’t a book on any of my shelves that doesn’t have things underlined, circled, dog earned or notes written in the margins.  Books are more than just books, they are a way to make us think, reflect, stimulate growth and spark ideas.  They are tools, entertainment and a catalyst for change.  If we want to lead we need to read, but more importantly we need to read beyond our chosen discipline, comfort zone or passions.  We need to read everything, from fiction to self help.  Imagine the influence actually reading books could have on us instead of being glued to our social media pages or whatever is streaming on the television.  We need to make time to read each day. Just 20 minutes could make a significant change in your outlook and attitude.  Have a great week and remember when your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results.  

Don’t Get It Wrong

When I graduated from college and got my first job as an educator and later when I became a principal I had several seasoned veterans give me the standard speech.  Don’t let them see you smile until after Christmas break, don’t show your emotions and make sure you don’t give any leeway with your expectations.  I listened to the advice I was receiving from the teachers and administrators around me that were leading in their buildings and I tried to follow that advice, but it just didn’t seem to work or fit my personality at all.  Don’t get me wrong, not all of that advice was bad. Being grounded in my expectations with students and staff was very important, but those other things just didn’t hit the mark.  I got it wrong with those things and years later I would make the necessary adjustments, but I wish I would have been confident enough to follow my instincts from the very beginning.    

Leadership requires us to be clear and consistent. Those two things were the most important things for a young leader to learn and should have been my main focus.  I didn’t need to change who I was. I could smile, share who I was, show appropriate emotions and build relationships as long as I maintained clear and consistent expectations, boundaries and procedures.  When I followed that early advice I got it wrong.  I didn’t rely on the thing that was my greatest asset, my own personality.  I had a gift for humor and a calling to create community and build trusting relationships with my students and staff. The use of humor and fostering strong relationships requires you to use your emotions.  The advice I was given and was trying to follow was in direct conflict with who I was and it was creating more problems than it was stability in my classroom and school.  

The day would come when I would put it all together and realize that I could still be me as long as I was clear and consistent didn’t happen overnight.  It took several years of trial and error, misery and joy, failure and success to build the formula that made the connection to what was required for me to be the best leader I could be.  The answer ultimately came through my own reflection during a time where I was very unhappy and dissatisfied with my role as a leader.  I realized I was trying to serve two philosophies.  One built on the advice I was given by others and the other was built on my own core values and personality.  It was really as simple as making a t-chart with two questions: What is working? and What isn’t working?  

Once I had this list I got to work on what I could change. I started with the things I needed to focus on, the things I needed to eliminate that just didn’t work for me and the things that didn’t serve my students or staff.  The answers to our problems are rarely complicated.  We just need to take the time to slow down and do an honest reflection and evaluation on what’s wrong and how to improve it.  Don’t get it wrong.  Take the time to sit down and evaluate and reflect on the advice you are given even if it comes from experts in the field.  You may need to try things out for a while to see if they fit, but the most important thing to remember is to be clear and consistent.  As long as you’re able to do that you’ll have the ability and freedom to take some chances and figure out what works best for you.  

Have a great week and remember when your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results.  

Three Types of Regret

Regret is a simple six letter word defined by google as: a negative emotional state of wishing you had made a different choice in the past that can lead to feelings of disappointment and self-blame.  After reading that definition I consider regret a four letter word.  Regret doesn’t serve us or those around us.  Regret is the byproduct of bad decisions, inaction or wasted time.  This week I really took some time after listening to John Perry’s podcast Never Stop Getting Better to think about regret and how to classify it in my experiences as a leader for myself and others.

I believe there are three types of regret:

• Regret in the choices we make 

• Regret in not taking action 

• Regret in the time we waste 

Choices

The type of regret we are probably most familiar with on a daily basis is regretting the choices we make that were bad decisions that had a negative outcome in our lives or the lives of those we lead on a daily basis whether it is our family, friends or people we work with.  These kinds of choices can be eliminated or at the very least limited in our lives by slowing down and thinking through our decisions instead of making snap decisions and judgements.  We often move faster than we need to and create a situation where we just don’t analyze what is in front of us. There are even times where we act out of our own convenience because we don’t want to feel uncomfortable.  This strategy eventually ends up being our own undoing  and it’s just not worth it in the end but we still do it from time to time.  The barometer for making decisions should always come down to what is moral and fair.  Using those two guides has rarely made for a decision I regret later on.

Action

For years I wanted to write a book.  I talked about it and wrote down ideas but I never started.  Do you know why?  I was scared I was afraid to put myself out there and take the risk of being judged.  I made so many excuses and had so many reasons/justifications for not starting that they had their own zip code.  It was ridiculous.  I remember a D-1 coach coming to do a summer camp for me one time and he asked a kid, “what do you want to have at the end of the season?” The kid looked him in the eye and said “I want to be a state medalist”  The coach without missing a beat said “when are you going to start?"  The kid had his own excuses for why he hadn’t done the work and the coach didn’t let him off the hook he told him “the only thing you’re going to get if you don’t put in the work is REGRET.” We have got to take action.  Nothing is going to look perfect, we aren’t going to know everything we need to know, so get started.  Movement is better than sitting around watching the paint dry.  Just take the leap it's better than saying to yourself “I wish I would’ve.”  Why live with that phrase when you don’t have to?

Waste

The last kind of regret is wasting time.  This type of regret is the most silent and deadly form of regret there is.  With the invention of technology dating back before the industrial revolution we have been making life easier and with that people now have more time on their hands.  This isn’t a bad thing but we don’t use that time like we should.  How many of you pick up your cell phone and look at how much screen time you are putting in each day.  I would bet most of you even get the notification that sends you how much time you average on your cell phone each day that week.  This needs to be a wake up call for all of us to get more engaged in our own lives and the world around us.  Just ask yourself this one simple question at the end of your lifetime: Do you want to be taking your last breath and wish you would have spent more time living life or scrolling through it?  

None of us are perfect. We will have regret in life, but when you look at the decisions you make, the actions you take and the time you waste, is it worth the feeling of regret?  Do you want to feel that sorrow, do you want to know life could have been so much more, do you want to have the REGRETS of a life that didn’t serve you to the fullest?  I hope this week’s blog was one you could identify with and take something from that will improve your life.  Have a great week and remember when your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results. 

Establishing High Standards

I post a leadership tip of the day to my social media pages 6 days a week and they’re inspired by the conversations I have with other leaders, books I’m reading or conversations with my clients.  Last week I was meeting with a potential client who was really struggling with setting the standards and goals for his staff.  He knew where he wanted to go, but he was afraid of how it would be received by his staff and if it would create a backlash that he might not be able to overcome.  As a leader we should always be thinking about how to work with others and get the best out of them by providing the support they need to reach the standard that has been established.  That is good leadership, however the train tends to go off the rails when we compromise what is best for what is comfortable.  

Most people live in a state of comfort and doing hard things isn’t their idea of a good time.  As a leader if you are choosing comfort over high standards then you are choosing to limit your opportunity for success.  The leader I was talking with knew that they needed to raise their standards if they wanted to have any chance of meeting their goals for the next year. He even went as far as to say “if we don’t have high standards and goals that challenge us we won’t even come close to meeting the requirements of the minimum standard”  He went on to say “our board doesn’t want mediocre and neither do I, we want excellence”  Those statements told me two things.  The first was that he knew that he needed to raise the bar for his staff; he had to put forward a bold vision even if it was scary for people to hear.  The second was that he was already in trouble because he was considering compromising what he knew to be right because it was going to be hard for the staff to accept.  

So what is his course of action?  He has three basic options to choose from.  The first is he can go ahead and compromise what he knows to be the right thing in order to make the staff happy and eventually resent his staff.  The second choice is to do absolutely nothing and wish and want for some magical miracle to happen and be disappointed in yourself for not having the character to do the hard things that need to be done..  The third choice is to make the necessary changes and provide the support and encouragement that the people need to get the job done.   It’s obvious that the final option is the best option but there is one key element that will determine its success.  The culture of your building specifically if you have created a team of people that have trust in you and each other based on a solid foundation of integrity, transparency and collaboration.  

One final thing to keep in mind is things won’t change overnight even if you have a committed staff.  It will take a lot of hard work and commitment to have a culture where the standards are high and being met on a daily basis.  The part of this puzzle that will separate you from all the others is not giving up.  High Standards scare people and goals that are difficult to achieve bring out doubters and nay sayers.  It’s important for you not to give up or give in. People will want to give up even some of your best team members. It's human nature.  Your job is to encourage them and work to provide them with what they need.  Listen to them, validate their feelings but don’t make excuses because the standard is still the standard regardless of the situation. 

Call To Action

This week take some time to sit down with yourself and think about the standards you want your organization, business or team to have.  Once you have done that, ask yourself do we have the culture that will embrace working on meeting the high standards needed to be excellent? If your answer is no then you need to start working on integrity, transparency, trust and collaboration.  If your answer is yes then you can get to work on rolling out those high standards.  One final bit of advice when you take over a leadership role that’s the time to establish and implement high standards.  Don’t ease your way into it.  I’ve made that mistake and it’s a painful and difficult lesson you don’t want to make if you can avoid it.  Have a great week and remember to light the WICK of leadership by bringing the energy to ignite your staff everyday.  

Chain Of Communication Not The Chain Of Command

When I was a young person the phrase “chain of command” was something that would make me so frustrated and more often than not angry every time I heard it.  I believed it was just a polite way of giving me the run around and putting as many people between what I felt the problem was and a real solution.  I wasn’t sure exactly why but I suspected that it was because they didn’t care enough about what some kid had to say to do anything about it. The older I got the more I was told that it was a way to be more efficient and solve the problem closer to where it originated from for a better, more informed solution.  It was a system of leadership with a variety of different ranks and positions. With maturity this made sense to me and I learned to accept it until…….

When I got out of college I had to take on some real leadership responsibilities in my first professional job. Prior to becoming a leader I relied on others to make the changes I felt necessary, now I was in a position to make changes, fix problems and act on the ideas of other people.  But it was made clear to me by my supervisors that the chain of command was to keep things off of their plates that were “below their pay grade.”  This took me back to what I had mentioned previously and it disappointed me.  I realized that if I wanted to see a change in the chain of command then it was up to me to do it from the inside out.

I started to ask questions and really think about what I wanted the chain of command to look like for all of the different groups I was leading.  The first thing I needed to do was to define what the chain of command was? Merriam Webster states that it’s “a series of executive positions in order of authority.”  This makes sense and it definitely jibes with what I had been told a chain of command was supposed to do, but I still didn’t like it.  Over the next couple of years I continued to ask myself what is the chain of command?  It eventually came to me one day when I was listening to a problem that one of our staff members was having with a colleague.  I couldn’t for the life of me understand why this problem was in front of me and why I was hearing about it for the first time from this staff member. This problem should have been reported to me by another supervisor first.  This was especially frustrating given that the problem had been going on for months and the solution seemed so simple.   

The chain of command in its most basic form is a communication tool.  One person communicating with another about an idea, concern or set of problems that need attention.  Once I realized this I asked myself what is the most important lesson about communication that I have ever learned? Communication has to be clear, concise and consistent.  In my opinion these are the pillars that are central to having successful communication in a team or organization.  A great example of how poor communication would occur with no real chain of command would be the following.  

There is a race across the state you live in and you are going to compete.  There are several teams in the race but each team must have five people, travel on foot, carry their own supplies and only use a compass to guide them from the start line to the finish line.  If the communication in this group isn’t clear,if  the decision making process lacks decisiveness and if you lack any real leaders in the group it could be nearly impossible to gain a consensus to even move a short distance let alone the entire distance across the state through the wilderness.   Your group could have clear communication and have a great leadership structure developed but if you are not decisive or concise in your decision making it will most likely not reach its potential.  You have to have all three of those pillars in order to have a chance to win the race.   The day to day operations of your organization are no different.  

Remember that young kid (me) I mentioned in the beginning who didn’t like the chain of command and thought it was an excuse.  I wish somebody could’ve explained the chain of command to me from a communication perspective rather than the perspective of a hierarchical leadership structure.  Think about how my experiences would have been different if they said we want to help you and we want to make sure we work together to share the message and concerns in a way that people understand them so we can work with our entire team to come up with a solution?  That sounds a lot better than what is your problem? I will see what I can do?  Or I will take it to my boss for consideration and get back to you? The first version seems like I’m being listened to and people really are taking action because we are actually communicating. The second version just sounds like excuses.   

As leaders we need to make sure that we frame the chain of command as a tool for problem solving but we must remain aware that there are people that see it as nothing more than a way to give them the “run around.”  For those people we have to take the extra time to show them that the chain of command is a communication tool that’s made to provide them with the best opportunity to be heard.  In order to do this as leaders we need to be certain to act with integrity, be kind and to remain committed to serving the people involved in our organizations.  Have a great week and remember when your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results. 

Are You Wishing For A Big Break?

Hitting the lottery, finding that one great revolutionary idea that will help me strike it rich, that long lost relative that leaves me a surprise inheritance that will change my life. Tell me you haven’t dreamt of these things before and I will question your honesty.  This idea of catching that one big break the easy way is as much a part of the American dream as anything. It can be fun and exciting to think about what would happen if we struck it rich or found instant success. People are always in search of that one great idea, that one great opportunity that’s so special that’s so unique that it will change their life. I can't say that I blame them really. I mean it’s a great distraction and it can provide us with a bit of hope.  The fact that we could become rich in a moment's notice is why people bet on sports, that's why people go to casinos and buy lottery tickets.  The idea of putting in minimal effort and getting everything we want seems pretty appealing. 

I know personally I think about these things because I’ve taken my turn at slot machines, purchased more than my fair share of lottery tickets and bet on a Super Bowl or two, however at the end of the day, the things that are going to change my life are not the things that come easily, and they’re not the things that happen overnight.  One indicator of this is when you hear stories about people who get a large lottery payout for millions of dollars only to go bankrupt a few years later.  They may have won big but didn’t put in the work, sacrifice and dedication to get there that will create a foundation of positive behaviors and choices. I may win a couple of hundred dollars in a slot machine but do I put it away and invest it? I sure don’t because I didn’t sacrifice to get it.  The money came too easily so it was easy for me to gamble it away again or spend it on things I don’t need.  The get rich quick moment just won’t take us to the next level.  Obviously the odds are against that happening but the things that will truly enrich our lives are the basic everyday things we do over and over and over again.   They are the boring things that people don’t like to do and so often overlook or take for granted because they’re searching for the easy way to get what they want.  

The people that will achieve the most success don’t get bored with the small everyday tasks that aren’t glamorous or fun; they keep doing them regardless of how they feel.  The difference between the people who get it and the people that don’t most generally is what you are willing  to do to get it, are you willing to sacrifice? Are you willing to be committed? Are you willing to learn from those that come before you because if you are, if you’re willing to do all those things you have the opportunity to get where you want to go?

I used to sit around and say things like “if only this could happen, if only that could happen, if this one thing just broke this direction everything would change for me and it would completely make my life better.” The problem with that is those things just don’t happen. We waste time wishing instead of working. I’ve got to focus on what I can do. What do I already have? What are the things that I possess that will allow me to get better to improve my situation? The odds are against me if I’m trying to come up with that one great idea or one big score.  The odds are in my favor if I do the simple things every day there’s no denying it. 

So stop looking and wishing for the quick fix and get fascinated with the simple things, the mundane, the everyday things, the sacrifices, the struggles, the suffering; those are the things that will take you to where you want to go now. Is it true that our neighbor may strike it rich? Is it true that somebody we know might hit the lottery? Is it true that somebody might hit a $1 million bet that we hear about of course it is but those things are so incredibly rare in life.  How about we stop wasting our time wishing on one thing and throw our energy into what works. This doesn’t mean we stop dreaming, it just means we need to find a better way to take action in order to achieve our dreams.  Have a great week and don’t forget when your commitment is greater than your feelings you get results.