Clarity is not a perpetual state. It needs maintenance

Just over a week ago, I hosted a reset session, where I led subscribers through processes that would help prepare for the term ahead.

You get sick or other stresses get in the way. The time you scheduled to work on a priority project gets sidelined by an unexpected crisis that needs attention. The plan you set for a team meeting doesn’t quite land the way you hoped. Other circumstances out of your control swerve into your path and you have to suddenly course correct. Feeling resilient amongst these constantly changing conditions and remaining agile in the face of them is a trait I admire in many school leaders I know or have had the privilege to work with. However, if you are not careful the reactivity loop can soon become the norm and it is a very difficult state to find an escape from.

In education, we often talk of ‘the learning pit’ - the point where the learning gets hard and it is easy to feel like you want to give up. Well, there is a ‘leadership pit’ too. It is a symptom I have seen in leaders I have worked with in 1:1 coaching. At some point, maintaining momentum and leading becomes hard, and there is a temptation to feel it is too difficult to recover.

As a result, the important, long-term, strategic focus can become stalled or derailed altogether which only serves to shatter your confidence.

Your clarity of the situation, understanding the shift you are driving and why it matters, along with your ability to take decisive and strategic action are not ‘nice to have’ attributes. They are the foundation for achieving lasting, positive impact on the lives of your colleagues, students and school - especially when things get difficult.

This message should ring loudly. You have agency. You have choice. You also have a responsibility to steer the course when things get difficult. Don’t wait for the problems to come before you respond. Protect your view, use your Clarity Maintenance Kit to keep your focus sharp on the things that matter, why they are important and what is needed of you - day to day, week to week, month to month, each term, and so on.

How do you start building your kit? I am glad you asked!

Three immediate solutions to help build your ‘Clarity Maintenance Kit’.

I am not interested in poking at your leadership pain points for cheap clicks. I have spent considerable time examining the routines, skills and habits that support leaders achieve long term impact. By enacting these practices in your leadership, they have a flow on effect for those in your team. When team practices shift, they can have ongoing impact, given the right circumstances, on classroom learning practices and behaviours.

To make a start on building your own signature ‘Clarity Maintenance Kit’, here are three immediate solutions to help you make a start.

1. Clarity Audit - Figuring Out Your Routines and Rhythm

The first part of this solution involves examining carefully what you currently do to keep your understanding of your situation clear. This is an “as needed” process. When your rhythm for maintaining clarity in your leadership, team or shared priorities is feeling lost, a clarity audit will help.

Write a response to the following questions.

• How often (and specifically when) do you update your thinking on your strategic priorities?

• How often (and specifically when) do you check in with your team, shared priorities and projects?

• What practices/routines do you use to achieve these?

The second part of this audit explores the practices that are needed to maintain your leadership clarity. There are three important factors to consider here. For each consider the practices/routines you need and the frequency required.

• Your Leadership Priorities: What do you need to maintain clarity and lead effectively?

• Your Team: What do your colleagues/team need to take action and feel supported?

• Shared Priorities/Projects: What do the shared priorities/projects you are leading need, to be successful?

The rhythm is totally dependent on your situation, the meeting architecture and activities in your school setting. For example, daily routines would be overkill and unsustainable for meeting with your team or in managing your projects. Keep the expectations sustainable and achievable.

Download your ‘Clarity Audit’ template below:

2. Weekly Reflection and Reset

This is a routine reflection for the week gone by. The routine helps to refresh your clarity for the week ahead so you can use your time effectively and act with strategic intent.

Step 1 - Reflect

• What were the wins?

• What didn’t we achieve that we hoped to?

• What is needed or different now?

• What are my priorities (and supporting actions) for this week?

Step 2 - Reset

Make a list of your priorities for this week in your diary, chronicle, planner or journal. Allocate the supporting actions you need to take to the days and times where you will do them. If you need to schedule this time into your electronic calendar or set up meeting times, now is a good time to do this.

Remember, it is doing the maintenance to keep the view through the next week clear.

Download your ‘Weekly Reflection’ template below:

3. Monthly Reset Live Stream

As we get closer to the end of the month, I will share some tips for resetting your focus for the next.

Let’s do better than that though! Do you prefer to engage in your strategic thinking/planning in a supportive environment? Sometimes having the accountability of showing up in a space that someone else has created takes the pressure off you needing to create your own rhythm. This is why I am hosting reset sessions. On Friday 31st July, I will be leading a Monthly Reset Session. In this session you will:

• Reflect on the learning from the work in July using effective prompts.

• Assess your progress and priorities while shaping and refining your strategic focus for August to support them.

• Have the chance to share your thinking for shared accountability and feedback.

• See me model one way you can set up your month to track your priorities and progress as you continue through the month.

Give the session a go! It will help you set up your own rhythm for maintaining your leadership clarity, staying on track with your priorities and protecting your sanity.

School life can get complex very quickly as the term gets underway. Start building your ‘clarity maintenance’ routines and rhythms now to keep your strategic focus sharp and leading with intent.

Tried this? I would love to hear from you

I am still learning the ropes here and finding the things that are most helpful.

If you have any questions or tips that will help make this process even better, please Contribute to the comments below.

Leave a comment

AI Disclaimer

100% Human Creativity and Content: Every word in this article is written and crafted entirely by a human. No artificial intelligence is used to generate the text, tools or ideas it contains. All illustrations and images are by the author, used under license or with permission.

Thank you to everyone who tuned into the live video on Friday 10 July!

While the activities in this routi…

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Ever feel like you are alone in your planning for the busy term ahead? Well you are not alone, and you don’t have to feel lost as you start to switch back into ‘work-mode’. I have a really effective process to help you lift the fog and set yourself up to lead with strategic clarity and intention. Use it to help enhance your existing planning processes and fly into the term with confidence.

Join me on Friday for a live Reset for Term 3, which is open to all subscribers.

Details are below and I will send a reminder to your email an hour before it starts.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Shaun

Right now is the perfect time to reclaim control and feel more intentional in how you take on the second half of the year. To assist you in getting there, I have a practical routine that will help you shift from feeling trapped on the ride to steering your own course.

The ‘roller coaster red-flag’

I know the feelings. The mix of energy, excitement and uncertainty at the beginning of the year. Moments of concentrated stress and pressure. Short periods of relief. Exhilaration at the highs and some lows that can give that sudden stomach drop feeling. All of the fun twists and unexpected turns. I have struggled through. Held on with white knuckles. Prayed for the ride to end at the next bend. Felt the relief at the end of the year, before it all starts again. I used to think this was how it would always be.

This feeling immediately triggers alarm bells for me now. It is this feeling that alerts me to moments when I need to step back, reflect and refresh my view of things. Pay attention to how I feel and avoid getting stuck in reactivity mode.

One of the key drivers for writing this is to remind you, that no matter what your situation is you have agency and control. You can reclaim the course of your leadership.

While there are things out of your control, don’t forget the impact you have. Every day you make decisions that affect your work and the experiences of others. I am not writing this to overwhelm you, but to remind you of the importance of leading with reflective, considered and strategic intent.

It is not easy, especially when you are under stress, with deadlines looming. However, you can plan for and take charge of the way the yearly cycles impact on you and mitigate any slides into reactivity.

Routine practices set you up for a confident run

Incorporating effective thinking and planning tools along with routine practices into your leadership rhythm enable you to act with strategic intent. These are not one off actions. They should help you develop recurring beats to your days, weeks, year that you sharpen over time.

While you can’t plan for every event that impacts your work, there are patterns you can anticipate. Consequently, you feel more in control of the actions you take and the decisions you make. Today we are focusing on reclaiming the flow of the year. Building your awareness so you can plan when to take action, where you can reset and when to anticipate the challenges.

If you have been feeling more roller-coaster lately, have no fear. I am hopeful we can have you feeling more “bobsled”. Yes! You heard me. Remember the 1993 film Cool Runnings? The one about the Jamaican track athletes who compete as a bobsled team at the Calgary Winter Olympics. I am reminded of team driver Derice memorising turns, flipping through photographs, in preparation for their Olympic run. You will see Formula 1 drivers doing the same thing. There are so many factors they don’t have control of, but they routinely prepare, practice and plan how best to execute their skills to achieve their goal.

Know thy course

Understanding the way your year looks and feels doesn’t just help you plan what you are doing, but also how you will get there. It allows you to anticipate what additional factors may help or hinder you.

This is the first step in taking control of your year. Many of the processes I rely on come from the journalling techniques developed by Ryder Carroll in his book “The Bullet Journal Method“. I am by no means an expert journaller! However, regularly using enough to get by, reflecting on and adapting my day to day operations, help keep me feeling more agile, intentional and accountable.

Carroll uses future log pages as a way of preempting events or deadlines and tracking things he commits to doing across a year.

Today’s routine is adapted from this approach, with a school leadership twist. Think of it as your Year on a Page. It is a routine you ideally return to at least once a year, especially at the beginning. Refer to it often and update it as regularly as you need to so it is an accurate tool.

The “Year on a Page” Leadership Routine

Level 1

Routine Rhythm

Set up/review at least once per year. Update as required. Refer to it often! Anytime you are planning or completing a reset.

What you need

• Minimum of 30 Mins - don’t rush it.

• An A4 page or a spread in your journal, diary or notebook. Alternatively, you can use the template provided.

• A pen and a pencil.

Method

1. Set Up Your Page - Space for Each Month

You can use a single A4 page to do this. I am increasingly a fan of books with dotted-grid pages. Why? Dot grids add greater flexibility than lined pages and more structure than blank ones. They allow me to divide up the page when I need and also keep my writing from going all over the place!

Ok let’s set up our page. Or you can download the template at the end of this article to help you get started!

First, orient your page to a landscape view.

Divide your page to evenly fit each month. In my example, I have divided the page in half with a horizontal line. I have allocated January to June to six boxes above this line. I have then added July to December to the six boxes below this centre line.

2. Mark Out Key/Recurring Events

Add any significant events and deadlines that impact on you, your work and your team to their respective months. Include dates if you know them.

3. Include Reminders for Yourself

We are going to add two more pieces of information for each month. These don’t have to be long. Think of them as reminder notifications that inform your planning. For each month add your responses to the following prompts:

• What do I need to lead effectively?

• What do others need from me?

Ok that is the structure for your Year on a Page built. As it is, you have a useful outline of your year to support you in plan. Keep it visible, wherever you do your strategic thinking.

Ready to level this up even further?

Level 2

Let’s Visualise the Course!

This step is optional and it is ok to stay with your page as it is at Level 1.

Although if you are feeling bold, we are going to add a visual representation of one critical factor that impacts you most in your year. Think of it like charting the flow of particular cycles so we can anticipate how they may affect you. You don’t need numerical accuracy here, just a visual reminder.

What factor do I choose to visualise?

This is your call. Avoid the temptation to overwork your document with too much information.

Choose the option that provides the most helpful data for you. The choice really depends on the nature of your role, what your current priorities are and the potential challenges. Some possibilities include (but are not limited to):

• Energy levels: where are they at their highest, lowest and how do they change/compare?

• Stress points: where are the stress points concentrated?

• Sprint cycles: where do your team’s sprint cycles start, peak and reset before the next round?

How does the visualisation work?

To create your visual think of the horizontal axis as a representation of time. The vertical axis for each month is an “intensity” scale.

Month by month, we are going to plot out a visual course.

Let’s take the examples above and think about how to scale and chart them. The table below provides a starting guide.

Use a pencil to mark the ‘high’, ‘low’ and the points in between first. Pencil helps us fix anything along the way. Plot points month by month using a version of the scale above or your own. Avoid getting too particular on measuring your points. You don’t need a ruler! Just capture what you know and expect.

Then use a smooth line to connect them. The result? A river? A Formula 1 track? Your very own “bobsled” course? If these metaphors help, great! What they are not...is a rollerc...Ok I am going to treat that word like Voldemort. It shall not be named any more. You are not a passenger. You are in control!

How to use this

It helps to step back from your page and identify where you are in the year. Keep this page visible. You want it there when you take time to strategically reflect and reset. Anytime you use this page in your planning, ask yourself:

The Year on a Page tool helps draw your attention to the factors to anticipate as you move through the year. Regularly incorporating this routine in your yearly flow, you are less likely to forget deadlines and more likely to feel better prepared to lead with confidence and clarity. By visualising your year, you understand the cycles that impact on you, your work and your team.

Change and update it as often as you need. It is valuable to check-in at least once every year and ensure that it accurately reflects what you expect from the year ahead.

What does this work reveal? What insights help inform your leadership/strategic planning?

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Do you ever get to the holidays at the end of a hectic term, feeling like a large part of your brain is stuck in the unresolved worries you thought you left behind at work? Perhaps you get back from your break, having switched off completely, only to feel your strategic memory has been completely wiped and you are starting the term from scratch again.

Well, you are not alone. I know just how easy it is to fall into these traps. You are already feeling drained and looking forward to some much needed time away, and instead you are bogged down with worry or unable to get the start you ned to act with clarity, energy and intent when you return. The 5 minute “Progress Save” leadership routine is designed to help take the pressure off your nervous system so you can enjoy your break - rest, recharge and reset, the way you deserve.

The demands on the profession impact on your ability to lead and to switch off

Teaching is already highly demanding profession and leading in this context adds even more complexity. When the pressures on teachers and schools as a whole increase, so do the demands on you. Research across the workforce shows that 7 in 10 teachers describe their work as unmanageable. Even more report experiencing moderate to extremely severe levels of stress. This burden has an additional impact on you and the mental load you are carrying at the end of term.

When you make it to the end of term, working relationships are under additional strain, people are tired or recovering from illness, deadlines have collided and you are paddling to keep things together and afloat. You (along with your colleagues) really need and deserve the break!

However there are some common traps that are waiting for leaders like you, and the high stress moments leave you easily susceptible to them.

Two traps we want to avoid

There is a strong temptation, when under stress and barely hanging on until the clock ticks over at the end of term, to just turn off the laptop, leave everything where it is and promise yourself you will sort it all when you get back.

However, in education, it is hard not to take the work and the worries home with you on the weekend and it can be even worse at the end of term especially in leadership when complex the responsibility falls on you to steer the direction after the break.

There is a high risk the frustrations, responsibilities and worries you have been managing, follow you. This reduces how fully present you feel with family and friends. It can impact on your sleep and ability to feel fully rested. In extreme cases your nervous system perceives impending threats are waiting for you when the next term commences. This makes it impossible to relax or focus on anything else. Instead of recharging, you feel even more anxious, frustrated and resentful.

Another trap is where you manage to close off completely from the work, feel rested only to return to the pile of unresolved problems that were left hanging weeks earlier. This can leave you wondering where you left off, having to retrace your steps to remember those critical actions and priorities before you are able to start developing a clear action plan for the weeks ahead. You are starting from square one and there is a risk from sliding into higher levels of reactivity as the term progresses and you play catch up.

Without a clear strategy to mitigate these traps, your mental health, wellbeing as well as your capacity to lead effectively are at risk.

5 minutes this week, a page and a pen that will save your break

All you need this week is 5 minutes to save your holidays and give yourself a clear starting point for your return.

I call it the Progress Save. We don’t just want to save your holidays we also want to make sure that there is a process that helps save your progress when you get back.

A leadership routine, is a tool that helps create your own routine ways of operating. Processes that you come back to regularly that support you develop positive habits for leadership growth.

I promise this just needs 5 minutes. It is critical though to mark the time in your schedule and make it happen. I have tried to make this as frictionless as possible, but it will require some mental effort, courage and determination from you to make it work. You got this. Your future self is relying on you!

The“Progress Save” Leadership Routine

What you need

• 5 Mins - but you can take more if you have it.

• A page - in your diary, journal or notebook, on a notepad, from the copier, wherever! Just make sure you don’t lose it. If you regularly use your diary or notebook for planning this makes sense. Keep it secure and somewhere obvious you know you will be going to right away when you return.

• Something to write with.

• Distraction free environment while you do this.

Method

Get your phone or a timer and set it for 2 minutes seconds (or 40% of the time you have)

1. Shake it Off

Make a list (bullet points are ok - it is not an essay) of everything that is on your mind right now about your work. Don’t try to fix them. Write them down. Just write! This includes the hopes, priorities, worries, joys, fears or whatever else is pressing in on your thinking (or how you are feeling) at the moment. Get them out of your brain and onto the page.

Write until you have emptied these thoughts onto the page, or the timer goes.

The beauty of this process is that any time your brain is feeling full, writing like this (physcially ‘writing’ here rather than typing) is a proven approach to reducing anxiety in high stress situations. Naming your feelings, worries and thoughts on a page allows your nervous system to feel more regulated and gives you enough time and distance to engage your executive functioning.

Getting this distance helps to prevent the worries from descending into your thinking at 3am in week one of the holidays or days before you return to work.

Reset your timer for 2 minutes again (or 40% of the time you have)

2. Save to Recalibrate

Now write down the questions and priorities that will be critical to driving your work when you return.

Help your future you begin the next term with renewed clarity. Capture the really important things you need to begin with that you will need to develop, investigate, plan for or remember.

Again, when the timer goes, stop. You are still not trying to fix anything.

3. Set a Clear Finish Line

Ok, you have one minute on the clock now. Make a list of the critical ‘to-do’ tasks that you must complete before you can switch off for the term. These are the essential things that can’t wait for you to get back after the break.

With this you achieve clarity and a clear designation of where the finish line so you can leave, knowing you did what you need to do.

4. Save to Find

Make sure you protect your thinking here. Save your page somewhere you will find easily when you get back.

THAT’S IT! You just took deliberate, proactive steps using the Progress Save leadership routine to save your holidays and set up for success when you get back.

Being able to switch off and enjoy your holiday break is critical to not only protecting your mental health and wellbeing, but also to being able to reset on your return and continue to lead with clarity and intent.

Enjoy your holidays!

Shaun

Tried this? I would love to hear from you

I am still learning the ropes here and finding the things that are most helpful.

If you tried this and how it impacted on you, your break and your work, please get in touch. If you have any questions or tips that will help make this process even better, please leave them in the comments below!

Leave a comment

AI Disclaimer

100% Human Creativity and Content: Every word in this article is written and crafted entirely by a human. No artificial intelligence is used to generate or outline any of the articles, tools or ideas it contains. All illustrations and images are by the author, used under license or with permission.

If you stumbled upon this and the room looks empty, stay tuned.

There will be more to come. If you are a new to leadership or a middle leader in the education sector I will be sharing insights, experiences, strategies and tools from the field to help you thrive in your role. It will be like having a supportive leadership coach in your inbox.

I can’t wait to hear from you and connect.

Shaun