S4E1 - Exploring Teach, Lead or Leave: An Interview

Positively Leading is back with a new and exciting season! In this episode, we turn the tables and Jenny is interviewed by Jocelyn Seamer about her new book, Teach, Lead or Lead: What to do when you feel like you can't do it anymore. 

This is a delightful conversation between Jenny and Jocelyn - exploring why Jenny set out to write the book, who it's for, and importantly, what it's NOT about. Settle in for a conversation between friends who are as passionate about education as you are.

Did you know there is more? You can access every episode, show notes, links and more via my website Positively Beaming.

Transcript

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Jenny Cole: [00:00:00] Welcome back, to Positively Leading, the podcast. I'm your host, Jenny Cole, and today's episode is a little bit different, and honestly, a little bit special to me. I'm being interviewed, which is, as anyone can tell you, not my natural, space. 

I'm far more comfortable asking the questions than I am answering them. But when Jocelyn Seamer offered to turn the tables on me, and I said yes, because if there's anyone I trust to do this, it is her. You might know Jocelyn. She's the founder of Jocelyn Seamer Education, a former teacher and school leader who made the courageous decision to step out of the classroom and into her own business, where she now supports educators in a way that lights her up completely. 

And here's the thing, Jocelyn's story is actually part of the story I want to tell you today, and part of the book that I wrote. Because she's living proof that what happens when an educator stops shrinking to fit themselves into a system, and [00:01:00] expands into a role that she loves, all sorts of magical things can happen. 

So today we're talking about my book, Teach, Lead or Leave: What to Do When You Feel You Can't Do It Anymore, which is coming out late June. And we're gonna get into why I wrote the book, what's inside it, and what kind of support is available to you if you're thinking about whether you should stay teaching, move into leadership, or to leave. 

And if you're someone who's quietly thinking, "I'm wondering if it's time for me to go," then maybe this conversation is for you. So Jocelyn, let's do this. All right. Hey, Jenny. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. Absolute pleasure, as always. All right. And for the listeners, who are listening to this episode, full disclosure, Jenny and I have a professional and a personal history that has lasted since about 2019, I think, [00:02:00] Jen, when I was in school leadership, and you were my coach. 

So why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about that? So I've been an executive coach working predominantly with school leaders for almost 

15 years now. And, Jocelyn was referred to me by a mutual friend who was running a school in the Northern Territory, and he rang me up, and he said, "I'm looking for some coaching for one of my deputies, who is just a gun, but, she needs someone besides me." And Brian was always very, he's an interesting character, to say the least, but he was always very supportive of new leaders. 

And so when I got on the phone with Jocelyn, to be honest, I didn't know what I was expecting. But, two minutes into our first phone call, I thought, "Oh, my goodness gracious. I think, I think this is gonna be the best six hours of coaching that I've ever had." I think we [00:03:00] clicked immediately, but what we clicked over initially was our desire to make sure that all kids could learn and could read, and also around explicit, direct instruction, structured literacy, which is something that I'd trained in but that you were actually doing, in a fairly tough school. 

So over that series of sessions, started at the kind of surface level of how do I implement this program, and by the end, it was how do I make a difference more broadly, and how do I leave education? And there have been hours of coaching and friendly conversation since, but that's a snapshot of where we began. 

Yeah, absolutely, Jen. 'Cause I think we as educators want to make a difference more than anything. We get into this work not for the holidays or the staff meetings- ... but for the work that we can do that [00:04:00] impacts students. And when we can positively impact students, then that's when we are at our best. And in reading your book and writing the forward for the book, which was a huge privilege, thank you so much, that's what comes through for me. talk a little bit about the title and how listeners can understand the purpose of the book, because the title could be a little jarring. It could be interpreted as a book that's telling everybody they should leave education, which it absolutely is not. 

But I'd love for you to share in your words where this has come from, and what you really, what's the clear message that you want people to have about themselves and their career? Yes. I, as always, you are absolutely right. It's about, for most of us, we go into teaching, into education because we wanna make a difference.[00:05:00]  

Jocelyn Seamer: And Teach, Lead and Leave came about because, I'll probably tell the story about how I ended up, outside education a bit later on. But I was coaching people, and I was really conscious that education had become very different to what it was when I first began. There was a lot more pressures on teachers, a lot more pressures on leaders, and people's wellbeing was suffering. 

So that was ha- happening on, on one end. I was also coaching a lot of aspirant leaders who were really keen to get into leadership. And then there was a sort of se- second, third quiet group that, were ready to do something different. But I had this kind of moral obligation to make sure that people stayed in education if they possibly could. 

If we could get their wellbeing under control, if we could [00:06:00] make, c- reconnect them with their purpose, if we could provide other avenues that they could explore within education to stay and do the good work that they started to do. But this little group of people became a larger group, and they were restless. 

They were stuck. They wanted to know what else. They wanted to know whether they should stay or step into leadership or leave. And so when I first started the book, there were only three pathways. But as we're gonna talk about a bit later on, I realized that there were more options than that. So I wrote this book to give back and to serve the people, if I was seeing these folk in my coaching practice, they were out there. 

Those who were restless, those who were stuck, those who were a little bit over it, those who were really ambitious and wanted to step into leadership, but also people who knew in their heart of hearts that it was time to go. So that's where it came from, a need to [00:07:00] give people some, insight into what things that they could do with their one and precious life. 

and I think that's really important. And in thinking when I, as I was reading the book, I thought I could have picked this book up at any point throughout my teaching life and my teaching career and gotten something different out of it. So if you're a school leader listening to this thinking, "Oh no, I wouldn't ever want my staff to read this because they're all just gonna wanna go and leave,"  

and craft our work and our life in a way that helps us to fulfill that. And there's just so many different decisions that a person makes, and there are different decisions to make at different points in your career. 

Jenny Cole: So one of the things I really like about the way you've structured the book is it's, there's a clear process to follow. It's not putting out a whole range of ideas and then the reader has to [00:08:00] sift through. So can you share a little bit more around the structure of the book and what people can expect? 

There's a couple of main elements to the book, and one is Understanding your energy and your impact. So I have a matrix that's pretty simple that says, are you currently high energy, high impact, doing great work, feeling good about it? If so, stay. Stay in education. Knock your socks off. 

We're th- you're the people that we want. But maybe you have high energy and you no longer have the impact that you think that you're making, and I describe that in more detail in the book, and then I give some possible options for what you could do. could you pivot into something else? Could you step up into leadership? 

Then low energy and low impact, so you're not feeling good. You're not [00:09:00] doing the fabulous work that you want to do. And again, I describe that in more detail, and I give you some possible, ways through that, and that's probably the sort of wellbeing lens. Which if you're not feeling good and you're not making an impact, then at very worst that leads to mental ill health. 

But also, you're not doing your best job as a teacher or a leader if you're in that space. But you might have low energy and still be having high impact, and that's where I find a lot of teachers in particular, which is this is a hard slog, but I love it and I still love the kids and I still love the work that I do. 

And so we investigate in more detail what, Once you've understood where your energy's coming from and had a think about the sort of impact that you're making, then we divide it into six pathways that you could possibly take. You could stay. You can stay [00:10:00] and stretch into something, so do something a little bit more. 

You could stretch into leadership. You could pivot, so you might just pivot roles. You might move from primary to secondary. You might move into a support role. You might become an instructional coach. So getting out of the context that you're in. The really important one is pause, and I spend a lot of time talking about how teachers can pause and regroup, reset. 

and that's again probably the wellbeing pathway, but it doesn't... You don't have to quit is my message in the pause pathway. Then, of course, there is leave. You can leave if that is what you want to do, but I investigate in that pathway what are some of the options you might wanna think about beforehand, before you leave? 

And in fact, all of, when you've investigated the previous , four pathways. You'll have a better understanding about [00:11:00] whether or not you wanna leave. And then if so, where do you wanna head to? What kind of transferable skills do you have? Do you wanna set up your own business? Whatever that leave might entail. 

And the last one is about legacy. So maybe you are at the end of your career, and you're ready to go with grace. You wanna end your career really well. What that might look like and how you might do that so it's not just the quiet quitting or the, the difficult person, we've all met them, who've decided they've only got five years left, and they're gonna do nothing for the last five years of their career. 

So they're the six pathways, and we explore those in more depth, as well as the mindsets that keep us stuck or make us restless. I spend quite a lot of, one major chapter looking at what are some of the things that we tell ourselves as educators that might be keeping us stuck [00:12:00] or might be stopping us from taking the next step, whatever, that may be. 

So going back to the beginning, it was never my intention to write a book that helps people leave education. In fact, I want you to stay if that's where you want to be. But sometimes when we're stuck, when we're a bit overwhelmed, we can't see any options. and I suppose my... the point of the book, the takeaway is for you to walk away with some options, some clarity, and some action for very first steps that you might take regardless of which pathway you've chosen. 

It's, looking at my own career and working with so many teachers and leaders in the last five years, it seems that this kind of measured approach is really needed. Because often we make a knee-jerk- ... decision without properly thinking it [00:13:00] through, or we do get stuck, as you said. And so we may actually have the answer, but we spend so much time doubting ourselves and second-guessing and all of the things, that we find ourselves in a worse position down the road because we didn't move or we didn't make that adjustment. 

Jocelyn Seamer: We didn't stretch, we didn't pivot, we didn't rest, we didn't do whatever we needed to at the time we needed to, and we just kept putting one foot in front of the other saying, it'll be all right. We'll just see what happens." And see what happens ends up being three years or five years or, and then we're a bit broken. 

Jenny Cole: So can you talk about the mindsets a little bit more that you see people falling into when they're approaching this point of thinking something needs to change, but I'm not entirely sure what it is? Yeah. I think that this is really underrated , the mindset piece. And the mindsets [00:14:00] that you have will depend very much on the phase of your career that you're in. 

so some of these will resonate a lot with people, and some you think, I never think that." and I jokingly say we sometimes put more effort into designing the interior design of our house than we do of our career. many of us, we go to university. We we study to be a teacher. We do that. 

We love it. We might move into leadership. But things just evolve, and then we might find ourselves in a position where we think, "I'm not loving this," or, "I don't think I can do this for the next 15 years." And this is when these little pesky mindsets start to, to, to ooze in, and they're things like I've devoted 10, 15, 20 years. 

It would be a waste of time if I moved or did something different now." And this is- Oh, the good old sunk cost fallacy right there It is the sunk cost fallacy, which is I've [00:15:00] devoted all this time and energy. It would just be a waste of time and money if I did something else. And then if people are brave enough to do something else, they don't know what, and they don't know I don't have any transferable skills, or I've got to go back to university. 

And because most of us are lifelong learners, we think that we have to start again from the beginning, and that feels really hard. , And then there's just all the stuff about, I get 12 weeks holiday a year. Now, we all know that's that's not necessarily always a break, and, or that we get good superannuation, and it's a good career. 

and it's all of those conditionings around being a teacher is a good thing, and it would be a, just a waste to give it up. I'm curious to know, when you were thinking about leaving, what are some of the mindsets that, that you were aware of, that you were... that weren't necessarily serving you or helping you take action?[00:16:00]  

I think imposter syndrome is always something that, that we all experience. And I particularly like hearing about how very successful people still live with imposter syndrome every single day because, , it always makes us all feel better to hear that we're not the only ones. , I think personality comes into it though too, because that impacts your mindset. 

Jocelyn Seamer: I'm not risk-averse. I'm also not, I don't t- I don't make risky decisions, but I'm, I don't need every single p- piece of the puzzle to be in place before I can make a move. I don't know, we'll figure it out, fly by the seat of our pants, it'll be right. I'm quite comfortable with that, but other people are not. 

Jenny Cole: So when we're thinking about this and thinking about the diversity of individuals who may be approaching a similar situation, the, there's just differences. And then we start getting in our own head about, if I was tougher, I would be able [00:17:00] to, or if I was more sensible, I would. 

And we sit in judgment of ourselves so much. We can also see that if we leave a situation, whether we move school or we change grades or we go into a different role in education, maybe it's in a regional office or some other role, because what we were doing wasn't working, that can feel like failure. 

 I'm leaving because it wasn't, I wasn't good enough- Yep ... at that to make it work. But sometimes situations are just unworkable. Yep. So I think all of that comes into play, and the thing that for me makes me brave is that there's an obligation- to provide support to people who need it. That's what's always been my driving factor, because I've [00:18:00] made every single one of those changes that's described in the book. 

 I've stayed and taught, I've left schools, I've moved states, I've to find that opportunity to contribute. And each time it has been hard and, there is the unknown. But I think imposter syndrome is something that gets in so many people's way. I know I've said to so many, , really fantastic curriculum leaders in schools, one day when you have your own school..." 

And they go, "Oh no, I'm p- not good enough to do that." And of course, that's the flip side of Dunning-Kruger. The first version is, "I know a little bit, so therefore I know everything." And the other one is, I see how much there is to learn, so I'm not gonna claim expertise." I'm curious if that mirrors, what in the coaching work that you've done, Jen. 

 Imposter syndrome is always there, and just when you think that you've nailed it, [00:19:00] there's another challenge that, that that makes you guess, second-guess yourself. I- if people have devoted a lot of time, and by a lot of time, that could only mean five years. Maybe you graduated and you came out absolutely gung-ho, and you've given it your best shot, or maybe you've been there for 20 years. 

Anything, anything new is gonna cause you to self-doubt, whether it's a new pedagogy or a new year group, or the thought that you maybe can't continue to teach. That is always gonna put doubt in your mind, and we're designed to try and keep ourselves safe. And you and I share the fact that we don't mind a risk, but most people are a little bit more risk-averse. 

And also if you've got a family who also relies on your income and [00:20:00] your stability- ... and your mental health, we're a little bit more cautious, and all of that just makes the imposter syndrome pop back up into your head. What would I know about? Or why would I step into leadership? What makes me so special that I think that I could be a deputy or a principal? 

Or what makes me think that I could write curriculum? And those things k- keep us stuck, and if you don't have strategies for moving past those, you're never gonna cure that. But if you don't have strategies for taking action, then you just stay stuck. And- At worst, there's a cost on our mental health, but also we don't wanna be that person that's jaded and sarcastic and cynical and hates the system because we can't think of any way past it. 

 A- [00:21:00] and so it's a cycle. We wanna try something new, we get a bit of imposter syndrome, so we don't try anymore. So then we start to think we're failing, I can't do anything, this is shit, the department this education that. And we stay stuck, a- and we're not good to anyone anymore. 

 So it's about having some ways to move through some of those mindsets, but also knowing that there are more options than you think there are. A- as you're talking, Janet, I'm thinking about how alone so many people feel. And how there are departmental or system driven wellbeing initiatives that's, there's a sticker on the staff room board or a website or a morning tea or whatever, and that seems to be the extent of the wellbeing. 

Jocelyn Seamer: I want, I wanna just say here, anyone who's listening to this who is feeling relief because you've realized you're not the only person to have gone through this [00:22:00] or have found a transition point difficult I just wanna reassure you, you aren't on your own. So what is the education system broadly, not whether it's a Catholic system or a government department system, what's the education system broadly getting wrong? 

Where are we missing the mark in the support of our teachers and our leaders so that they don't feel like they're having to do it all on their own? I'm ... It's an excellent question. And I think ... Look, if we took 10,000 educators and asked them what was wrong with education, we'd get 20,000 responses because there, i- if you look, there is plenty wrong with education. 

But I didn't wanna write that book. I didn't wanna write the book where we slammed the system, in inverted commas. However [00:23:00] it is a system that we know could be better. We also know that it was designed many years ago for a completely, for, during the Industrial Rev- Revolution, things were very different. 

Society was very different. But in terms of what is the system doing that is not helping educators, ah- as much as I'd like to answer that, I actually think we can't control the system. We can't even control our line managers, our principals, our deputies, or further o- than that. The only thing we can control is ourselves. 

Jenny Cole: So what is it that you can do to make sure that you are showing up the best version of yourself, fit and healthy and okay to do the job? Regardless of what the job is, regardless of whether you've decided to leave and start a lawn mowing business, or whether you've decided to stay, what is it [00:24:00] that, that you as a human being needs to do to ensure that your own wellbeing is is as good as it can be? 

And so While I can offer many suggestions for how the system can be better, I wanna offer you a couple of suggestions for how you can make sure that you turn up as, as good as you can be. And in basic terms, I call it eat, move sleep, restore. So you need to make sure that you're eating good quality food. 

You need to make sure that you're moving your body and often. You need to make sure that you're getting enough sleep, and you need to make sure that you are actively restoring your body. And this is where I think a lot of teachers go wrong, because we start a 10-week term, and we go full at it for 10 weeks, and we save all the good stuff for the holidays. 

We save catching up with our mates. We save trips to the beach. [00:25:00] And so we don't adequately top up our wellbeing reserves, and no amount of cupcakes or Wellbeing Wednesdays are gonna help you connect to those things that give you more energy. So right at the beginning of today, I said I look at the energy and impact matrix. 

I can't give you more time. I can't fix your toxic school culture. I can't make curriculum simpler. What I can do is encourage you to look at what gives you energy and what drains your energy. And at the fundamentals, eat, move, sleep, restore, but inside the book there's a raft of other things, such as your values, your strengths, your style, and your purpose. 

All have the ability to add to your energy reserves, making you better, whether you're a year two teacher or, as I said, you've decided to quit and start a [00:26:00] lawn mowing round. So I've dodged the question about how can we fix education,  

I want you to focus on yourself, because it's the only person you've got, and you need to be the best for yourself, for your family, and then for education. And I tend to think we do things in reverse, and that's what gets us burnt out and overwhelmed and wanting to quit. I have a slightly different perspective, and it leans into where I think this book is so important I think that one of the things that we don't get right is we don't prepare our leaders to understand the journey of an individual as they develop and grow. 

Jocelyn Seamer: And so we tend to have in our leadership kit bag one or two tools that we use, and they're usually based around what works for us, not work, works for the other people who we're supporting. [00:27:00] And what helps with that is coaching. And you, Jenny, for the last 15 years- ... have been coaching leaders to work on their own development, but also to support their teams. 

Jenny Cole: And when you were writing this book, I think I remember saying, "Wow, this needs to happen because now everybody gets Jenny." That's very lovely of you. So for leaders ... no, it's absolutely true. I had the benefit of having you as a coach- ... to help me work through my own learning about leadership, but also to help make big decisions, to help me move into a space of bigger, more sustainable impact in the work that I wanted to do. 

So as a leader, this book, had I had this book, it would have done two things for me. The first thing it would have done is help me understand myself better. Yeah. And to name up things like the mindsets that make us stuck. To understand the importance of values and absolutely in our [00:28:00] coaching, the values work, is something that's central to the work that you do broadly with so many people. 

 As an individual thinking about my own journey, it would have given me that framework and the steps to think through. So I think it's okay to say that, hey, we're not preparing leaders well enough to support themselves or others. And so this book steps into that space to help fill that gap in what's happening, because it's always the people aspects-  

that are the most challenging. Whether the people aspect is us thinking about ourselves, we are a person, we have to manage ourselves as a human, or whether we're supporting others. So from my perspective, having gone through that whole journey with you as my coach, with which I've been so grateful, and seeing where this book fits in I think that it's an absolutely important contribution to help lots of people be able to access the wisdom that [00:29:00] you bring to the space. 

thank you. It's probably, it's something that I became very conscious of when I first started to coach, which is the fact that- I had no idea when I left education that there were people such as coaches who I could access in order to make sense of what was going on in my day-to-day world as a leader. 

So I knew about therapists, and I was pretty sure I didn't need therapy. I question that decision now. But it's not something that we encourage in education, either for leaders or for teachers. We just assume that people can do all of this on their own, that they're clever and they'll work it out and if they've got a problem, they'll talk to their boss, or they'll talk to their best girlfriend, or they'll talk it [00:30:00] out with their spouse But all other professions have coaches. 

if you wanna be an elite athlete you get a coach. If you, if you wanna be a really great chef, you have chef colleagues, even those people around you, who are giving you good quality feedback all the time. You put something out there, you get some feedback, you get some advice, you do the next thing that you talk to your coach or your mentor again and it's a real iterative process. 

But we say to teachers, "There's your classroom. Off you go. We'll come in with a clipboard at some point and judge whether your daily reviews are good enough." But we definitely say it to leaders, "Congratulations. Welcome to principalship. Now we're gonna leave you alone." And that, one, is lonely. Two, you're not getting enough feedback. 

And three, you're not being able to talk out some of [00:31:00] those issues that just come up in your day-to-day practice. And one of them is transition. None of us do transition very well cause cause transition is hard. So moving year groups, moving schools, all of those transitions are really tricky. 

Change is really hard, and having somebody on your side who can lead you through that is, is so important. But I'm curious to know, before you got coached with me, had you gotten any coaching? I know that your principal at the time probably tried, but had you had any access to formal- No 

Jocelyn Seamer: professional support? No. No. No. You were the first coach I'd ever had, and when you... and working remote- Yeah ... and we see this as well in regional or rural settings, "Congratulations, you're the last one standing." Yeah. "You get to be the leader now. Here's the keys." "Call us if you have any dramas." [00:32:00] and it's ex- exactly what you described. 

or even if you're in a metropolitan area- ... or you have access to some leadership training, it's usually around strategic planning and dealing with system structures. It's not necessarily that the people aspects of- ... the work. And I think that your Your contribution in that space, has been a real gift to so many people, myself included. 

 You've written this book, and anyone who's done any work with you or listened to this podcast will hear your voice as they read, and so that's fantastic 'cause it's very much your voice. But what else is there in the ecosystem that you have available to support people who maybe want some more personalized help, or wanna go deeper with this work of transition and change, and finding the way to live out your purpose? 

Jenny Cole: I was [00:33:00] very intentional when I wrote the book that I didn't wanna to be one of those books that says, "Here's all the problems. Now go find the solutions yourself." so at the same time as writing the book, I was also writing , or developing some online pro- programs, because as you say, there's a lot of people who are remote, a lot of people who perhaps can't access me or another coach, but who want some professional learning. 

So there will be suites of professional learning that go along with this majority of which are going to be online. So there will be one about your self-leadership profile, so you don't need to be leading, but who am I as a person and what gives me joy and energy, and how can I leverage that more more readily? 

There's another one called Teach On Your Terms, which is about crafting the job that you have, so staying in the role that you're already in and making the most of that. [00:34:00] And there will also be group coaching programs and a sort of mastermind as we go through. So there will be a whole suite of resources available to people that they can find on the website, Teach, Lead Leave. 

And those can be things that you dip into, or far more developed leadership programs such as Launching into Leadership, which has been there for a long time, and that's for aspirant leaders ... You talked about the imposter syndrome. It's a lot about confidence and building that confidence to step into leadership. 

So I wanted to make sure that people had access, if they didn't get access to me, they definitely had access to the resources and the skills and the sorts of things that I teach and share with my clients. And so it, they will all be on the website for whenever people are ready to access them. 

Fantastic. And I know people who've gone through your Launching into Leadership [00:35:00] course and just found it so valuable and confidence-building to hear from someone who's been in the shoes. Because you are a recovering principal- not a failed principal. Two completely different things. 

Yeah. and so to hear from someone who has been there, done that, worked their way through, and has developed tools to help others, I think is really important. One last thing to finish us off, Jen. If someone's listening to this episode and they're thinking, "Oh my gosh, they're describing me. I feel stuck. 

Jocelyn Seamer: I've got that restlessness. I'm not quite satisfied, but I'm not quite sure what that means for me," what is step ... Besides buy the book and read it, what is step number one for them? to make a plan? This might seem a little woo-woo, but step number one is self-compassion, which is, stop beating yourself up. 

Jenny Cole: Talk to yourself the same way that you would talk to a valued friend and [00:36:00] colleague, , and know that you are not failing, , that what you're feeling is normal. So that's step number two. And step number one and step number two is I would actually encourage you to get out a journal and start journaling what's happening for you in your work life, specifically around the things that bring you energy and things that drain your energy, the things that you still love about the work that you do, and the things that are irritating you. 

This is about just getting bit of a bit of an overview, a bit of a snapshot of where you are. And what happens when we journal is we start to see ourselves from the outside, and we start to be, in educational terms, we... It's a bit m- more metacognitive, and we can start to see themes and patterns. 

just start to find out what is going on for you. If the book would be helpful, then obviously buy the [00:37:00] book. But just to realize that you're not stuck, and take some action. Tiny action. Just Google, "What else could I do as an educator?" And see where that takes you. Because we can get- Jenny, I'm going to call you, I'm gonna call you out on something right now. 

Jocelyn Seamer: Because I think your imposter syndrome has just reared its head. Yeah, probably. And so everyone, don't Google. Because if Google had the answers, we'd all have them. Correct. Buy the book. Buy the book. So this is Jenny's 15 years of coaching experience and her leadership experience in schools w- wrapped up in a neat little bow with easy-to-consume content. 

Jenny Cole: It's such an easy but impactful read with the frameworks that you need to help you make sense of where you are now. Oh, thank you, Jocelyn. And what I was really keen in the book, if you read the book, you'll get my entire story, but I was keen for it to be an easy read. This is [00:38:00] not theory. This is not research, although there's plenty of that in there. 

This was designed to be real and for what- whatever- chapter you open at for it to feel relatable and to feel like there you could take away some action. So if you're thinking, "Oh, this all feels a bit highbrow to me," it was ...  

 our work is very important, but we don't have to take it seriously, and we don't have to Life can be fun, and we're always ready for ... I'm always up for a little bit more joy and a little bit more enthusiasm and a bit more excitement. 

And so pick up this book not because you're crashing and burning, but because you think maybe there's some options that I've not considered, and maybe it'll be a fun read. Wonderful. Jenny, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. It is always fantastic [00:39:00] to connect with you. And I can't wait for the book to come out and for lots of other people to be able to read it as well. 

Jocelyn, thank you generously and genuinely for giving up your time. There's something really lovely about being interviewed by someone who has literally been there from the first word. And your story and the story of the many other people that I talk about in the book is the reason I do this work. 

And so for all of those who are listening, Teach, Lead or Leave is coming out in June, and we will put in the episode the links to get your hand- hands on it, and so you can be the first to know when it's available. And if the conversation stirred something in you, whether that's a flicker of, "Yes, that sounds like me," or, "I've been waiting for someone to say that out loud," I want you to know that your, what you're [00:40:00] feeling is a sign not that there is something wrong with you. 

It just might be a sign that it's time for an honest conversation with yourself, and this book, I hope, is a really great place to start. So until next time keep leading with heart. I'm Jenny Cole, and this is Positively Leading.