Place your own mask first before helping others

Educational Leaders must focus on themselves in order to best support their staff.

Educators are scrambling to offer ‘business as usual’ during a global pandemic. Many have been forced to create new teaching practice overnight and while managing anxiety over the safety of their families, loved ones, their students and themselves.

The primary role for a School Leader is to create a setting where teachers can deliver great outcomes for students. Today, there are more challenges than ever, including:

· Compliance – Adhering to rapidly evolving government directives

· Ambiguity - Fast moving situation changing weekly or even daily

· Maintaining enrolment -financial hardship / providing value to families

· Budgetary concerns – additional costs associated with the crisis

· Supporting families - remote learning/ financial hardship/ anxiety/ illness

· Providing a safe work environment for staff and students

· Balancing student progress vs student wellbeing vs staff wellbeing

· Maintaining focus on medium to long term school priorities

While juggling all this, strong leaders know they need to also remove obstacles for staff.

The cost of overwhelm, fatigue, stress, anxiety, confusion and new external pressures compound.

As flight attendants say, ‘You must place your own mask first before helping others’.

What is needed at a time like this is a cool head and a resilient mindset. Most people are now familiar with the concept of resilience but it is more than just keeping on going when things are hard. Resilience actually enhances your executive functioning by helping you regulate emotions, control your impulses, remain flexible, organised and staying on task.

It may sound easier said than done. We are here to simplify it for you!

Human Synergistics have recently released a Resilience Kit – a targeted intervention designed specifically to support resilience in Leaders.

At its core is the same premise used in psychological counselling sessions and cognitive behavioral therapy the world over. If we can gain awareness of our thoughts and feelings we can control our responses.

When faced with challenges, our values, beliefs, childhood and life experiences inform how we feel about what is happening. Our thoughts and feelings in-turn shape our response. It is our ability to develop a healthy, constructive mindset that increases resilience.

The Resilience kit offers:

The Life Styles Inventory diagnostic which is an incredibly powerful development tool that provides insights around what our individual thinking styles are and how they influence our personal and professional satisfaction and effectiveness.

Supported by the specially developed RISE coaching framework to help leaders effectively regulate their mental and emotional state.

Let’s take a look at Culture Shock COO Nathan Hayes’s personal story

Many years ago I was the Deputy Principal at a large, dynamic early years to year twelve college. The role was very enjoyable and challenging at the same time. Everything was going well and I was very engaged in my work, but keeping up with the operational demands and strategic priorities of a large school took a lot of time and energy, not to mention also trying to be the type of father and husband I wanted to be. I was very lucky to be offered an opportunity to participate in the Human Synergistics LSI diagnostic after hearing about it from a friend and it was genuinely life changing. I hadn’t come across anything like this in education before and I was totally blown away by the process. My key learnings included:

· To be at my best I had to prioritise and put myself first – I couldn’t be everything to everyone.

· I was trying too hard to please which was leading to anxiety and impacting my effectiveness.

· Self-worth shouldn’t be linked to accomplishments

· Mistakes are necessary

· It’s ok to be totally yourself at work

· Consistent habits and routines are important

I felt a load off my shoulders, enjoyed my work more AND performed better. This process had such a tremendous impact on me I eventually decided to dedicate my career to sharing these tools with other Educational Leaders to help them thrive. I have now spent many years working with school leaders on organisational culture change and the impact of starting with individual mindset has been profound.

Feel free to contact us at Culture Shock if would like to learn more about the Resilience Kit, or any other tools to empower Educators to transform their culture.

info@cultureshock.education