The Role of Fear in Achieving School Excellence

Have you ever considered fear to be a secret weapon in school leadership? As we peel back the layers of this rarely discussed topic, we uncover how fear, often viewed as a crippling force, can be harnessed and transformed into a powerful asset in achieving school excellence. I walk you through my unique journey of leading a struggling school to success, and the pivotal role that fear played in that process.

We delve into the importance of speaking up, taking initiative, and documenting decisions. The power of innovation, community feedback, and understanding of the gatekeepers in any situation are also explored. In the heart of our conversation, we affirm the invaluable role of support systems in managing and using fear effectively. Coaches, mentors, and leaders are indeed the anchors that help us sail through the stormy seas of fear.

In the grand finale, we unwrap fear from its intimidating package and present it as a motivator for taking calculated risks. I share personal anecdotes of overcoming my fears, which I hope will inspire you. The goal is not to eliminate fear, but to use it as a stepping stone towards school success. Remember, fear is not the enemy, but how we handle and use it, makes all the difference. So, put on your sneakers, and let's face our fears together on this episode of Sneaker Principal Podcast.

Chapters

• 0:01 Fear and School Leadership
• 10:59 Leading Schools With Innovation and Overcoming Fear
• 25:47 Speaking Up and Taking Initiative
• 40:44 Transforming Fear Into Leadership Asset
• 49:49 Unveiling Fear

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

What's going on, guys? This is UChainJoku Sneaker Principal Podcast, and today we're going to be talking about fear. We're going to be unveiling fear and how it impedes principles from achieving school excellence. Let's do this.

Speaker 2: 0:16

When they see me, they know that every day, when I'm breathing, it's for us to go farther. Every time I speak, I want the truth to come out. Every time I speak, I want to shiver. I don't want them to be like. They know what I'm going to say, because it's polite. They know what I'm going to say and even if I get in trouble, you know what I'm saying. Ain't that what we're supposed to do? I'm not saying I'm going to rule the world or I'm going to change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world, and that's our job is to spark somebody else watching us. We might not be the ones, but let's not be selfish. And because we're not going to change the world, let's not talk about how we should change it. I don't know how to change it, but I know. If I keep talking about how dirty it is out here, somebody's going to clean it up, and now he's been promoted. His job is principle.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Good morning, good morning, good morning, good day, good afternoon, whatever time it is, wherever you are. Again, this is Uchey Jokey, sneaker Principle, and this is the Sneaker Principle podcast, and today we're going to talk about something that I talk to a lot of people about, but what I do is I these conversations are happening in corners and, you know, dark alleyways, because there's this word that is not supposed to be part of the language of school leadership, but it's very important, so you'll get into it. But before I start, I'm going to extend myself again. If you are in need of coaching and you're like, listen, hey, Uchey, I want to talk to you about something real quick. Whatever the case may be, go ahead and send me, drop me a message. You can go to my website, tspmediapub. That's TSPmediaPubcom. Leave me a message there, or just leave me a message, or DM me wherever you're watching this, and let's talk, let's talk, let's come up with something.

Speaker 1: 2:17

One of the things that I know that has really helped me, and still has me to this day, is coaching. I have several coaches. I just picked up another one, tom, if you're watching, who was actually a senior principal when I first became a principal and then he he left my district as I was starting my career as a principal and now, you know, all these years back here he is now, you know, as one of my coaches. It's very important. You know, coaching is very, very important. Mentorship is very, very important. If you're a plate sports of any kind or you've been in any high level space, whether it's academic, whether it's professionally, there's always somebody there who's showing you the ropes, somebody there even after you know the ropes, somebody there who's guiding you, somebody you can lean on and say, hey, I'm stuck, or I'm thinking about this big thing here, or whatever it may be. So I just wanted to accept myself in that capacity.

Speaker 1: 3:14

But now let's get back to this word, this thing that we don't want to talk about. Or if we do talk about it, we talk about it with shame, and that thing is called fear. You know, I remember, when I was a kid, a church. I was told and I'm pretty sure if you've ever been gone to church or you're, especially in that Pentecostal space, the whole notion of fear is false evidence appearing real and yes, that's an awesome acronym false evidence appearing real. But however, fear is real. Fear is real, no matter how you want to break it down psychologically, sociologically, or what kind of meaning or actually what you want to put it fear is a real thing. And fear is a real thing especially for school leaders.

Speaker 1: 4:02

Because let's look at the typical trajectory of a principal or a system principal. At one point in time you were a teacher, you were in a classroom. You might have been, you know, starting off kind of shaky, but eventually you get to a point where you're realizing you have skill sets that put you in a position to support other teachers. And then, all of a sudden, maybe your principal or your administration says, hey, we want to give you more leadership responsibilities. But you take on and you do your thing right, and you start to tell yourself you know what, maybe I think I can do this myself, maybe, just maybe I could also be I'm sorry, I'm trying to adjust my mic I could also be a school leader one day, maybe a system principal, maybe the principal. So you go through all that right, and the whole time I tell you watching.

Speaker 1: 4:55

You're watching the leadership of your leaders from the outside in, you know, because you're not privy to, by closed doors, on all the decisions and all the things that have to happen, all the conversations with you know the hierarchy of the system. I'm talking about potentially the superintendent's and the central office. You're not there for the reviews and the and sometimes the tongue-lashing that your leader might have to take. You're not understanding why there's so many pivots. You know one day you're doing one particular curriculum and the next day that switches to something else and you're like what's going on?

Speaker 1: 5:37

Man, the principal, administration, they just so they don't communicate. They're all over the place but you don't realize that often it's because they are. They're really in a position where they're negotiating directives. You know some directives that are, you know, non-negotiable, some directives that are kind of like, implied as being non-negotiable, and in that space you have to remember that person, that principal, that school leader, who maybe even superintendent, are people who are put into a position in which their role is not necessarily secured in the sense of that. You know, unlike a teacher who might be, who I mean, teaching unions probably tend to have pretty strong agreements on how teachers are evaluated and moved out of the position. And those rules, I mean, they're still pretty good for administrators but they're also kind of like, you know, much easier to use to remove a principal or school leadership.

Speaker 1: 6:52

So what's up happening? You have people who come into the position and then they realize, oh my God, there's so much more than what the textbook said with my professor, at you know, at my Leisure Program said there's so much more, so many more nuances, right, and all of a sudden you're like man I don't want to mess this up because, unlike a teacher, where there might be tens and dozens, in some cases hundreds of positions still open like right now in New York City, thousands of positions still open you know there's an opportunity for you to find another space, but as a leader it's not the same. You don't have tens and thousands. I mean so tens and hundreds of positions. So you could just say, okay, it didn't work out here, since the principal wanted to go over here and then, where he's a principal, I gotta go over here. No, there's so much more monitoring, there's so much more eyeballs, so, and you're so much more exposed. So you find yourself questioning whether or not you know, if this doesn't work out, I can go somewhere else.

Speaker 1: 7:55

And for a lot of people it literally means going backwards, and I've seen principals who've gone from being a principal to being back to being a teacher in a classroom within the same district. So yesterday you were running school, today you're teaching third grade. You know, I've seen principals who you know and that's I mean okay. I've seen the leadership to back to the classrooms of teacher. I've seen principals back down to being assistant principals. I've seen, you know, some people was to remove. They just walk away. You know they can't handle the shame or the burden of the questions of what happened, or in my case, what happened was very public.

Speaker 1: 8:36

So I always say that fear. Fear becomes that kryptonite for a lot of leaders because they don't want to get in trouble, they don't want to be put in a position of being removed or being shamed. So what does that mean? What does that mean for leading in spaces, leading schools, supporting students, parents, the community? You know it means that you have a lot of leaders who don't go a hundred, like I'm wondering. I'm talking about, I'm not talking about going out and just going to being like at least I'm just going to do whatever I want to. I'm saying they don't go a hundred in the sense that you don't ever see their full potential, their full, you know, battery of of ability and intellectual weapons and educational. You know, expertise in the experiences, all the things that that are reality. That's why they were put in that position. You see them taking baby steps, being cautious, and this is what I want to talk to you about today. You know, and and there's nothing wrong with being cautious, but when fear cripples you as a school leader, that's a whole other thing. So let's first talk about identifying the roots of fear, thank you.

Speaker 1: 10:05

I want to share with you a story of me being in that position as a new school leader and being very, very careful. But first of all, okay, let me take one step back to when I became the assistant principal. So first, unfortunately, I was very lucky to have had a mentor principal who I'm still really good friends with to this day. His name is John, and John, you know, I tell him every time, like you know, you put me in a position where you forced me to think outside of the box. You do so much of my play as your dean, then as your assistant principal, that I didn't know that leadership wasn't the typical leadership wasn't what he did for me, and what I mean by that is as a dean, you know.

Speaker 1: 10:59

He became a turn around executive, became an executive principal, and he was given a school that literally, they pretty much said listen, you have but a year or so to make some significant changes, or the school shutting down. And this offer was made to him. He was already in a very successful, successful school and then he asked me and another gentleman to join him to go to the school. And I said, yes, this is a man who gave me an opportunity to really stretch myself. So I said yes, we went to the school and we were there, for we were there together for about two years. Two years, yeah, two years, two, two, maybe three years. I'm getting old.

Speaker 1: 11:45

And in that space I came in as a dean. My job was culture, right, but then he said you have a special education license, so you also go to be my special education coordinator. I was like, okay, he says and you also taught science. You know living, environment and physics. You know you also going to lead the science team, yes, sir. And then you know, he said you know what pick the math team as well.

Speaker 1: 12:13

Mind you, I was at this point in time when all this transpired. I was in my fourth year as an educator and I was now the dean of a school that was on a chopping block with eyeballs on it. Then I was, also for that same school, the special education coordinator. I was the math lead and the science lead, and it was a very young team of teachers and mixed with some teachers who already had gone through they've gone through the ringer, you know. They were at a school who was struggling for a couple of years.

Speaker 1: 12:49

And here I am in that position and, yes, I was kind of like, okay, how am I going to do this? I wasn't scared, but I was like I was a little bit overwhelmed. How am I going to do this? And my principal said to me I trust you. You know, listen, I'm going to give you every tool you need. I need you to know what's happening there so you can tell me what's happening, so it could be on the same page, you know, because I can't be everywhere. So I was like, okay, that's my mandate, I'm going to lead these teams, I'm going to make sure they were meeting all our compliance, that we were assessing and we knew where all the kids were and we were doing what we need to do. And that's how I function, that's how I rolled. I rolled like that and the way he led me is how I led my teams and that school is still standing to this day.

Speaker 1: 13:33

It's been well over a decade. That school has already been one of the better high schools six to 12 schools in the Bronx and it's also an international baccalaureate school now, and I know that the seeds were planted when, you know, my principal said hey, I need your lead and I'm going to give you the space to lead and be innovative and really, you know, do what you think you need to happen. You know, just make sure you're painting within the lines. Sometimes I cut it off out of the lines, but don't ever any surprises. I told me exactly what I was doing and he gave me full support and I rocked out. I rocked out and that year there was article posted I think it was like daily news that we were the most improved school in New York City based on parents satisfaction surveys, and that was incredible. And then, to go to boot, our scores were pretty dope as well. So again, school does never close down and it's still there.

Speaker 1: 14:33

But now, when I became a principal, the first school that I'm years later that I became principal of was a school that had its issues, had its issues and I had a superintendent who was pretty much like, okay, here's your school, here's the map that I've created for you, and it was a good map. It was a good map. These are the things that I want you to do at this school to turn the school around. I looked at it and I was like, okay, this is cool, but it didn't speak to the way I was trained. Look at the details of what was happening. Studying the space this is what John taught me. And who are the players? The teachers, the students, the parents, the community. What was the community saying about the school? All these little things.

Speaker 1: 15:26

We approach leadership from a very assessment driven mentality. You go into the hospital. We're going to assess, you, evaluate, you, you're going to see what. Like you know, remember the TV show House, the way the team would walk in there with the patient and be like that's no ideas. What do you think this is? Oh, it might be this, it might be that, it might be this, until you came down to two or three things and, by process of elimination, you came down to the probability of this one thing, and sometimes it wasn't. But that's the level of thinking we're doing in that space.

Speaker 1: 16:00

My first year as a principal, was given a task that was like here You're going to bake a cake, here's the recipe, don't deviate from this recipe. And I had a problem with that. But I was a new principal and I want to lie to you, I was a little shook, I was a little nervous, I was a little bit like you know, I don't know what I don't know. So I'm going to follow the instructions given to me, and what I did also was it made me very nervous because, again, I didn't want to screw up the recipe, I did not want to screw up the task that I was being given. So that's how I moved.

Speaker 1: 16:45

Everything that I did was because the superintendent said so and, even though it might go, I knew this is not going to work Like what I'm looking on paper and I'm like this is not what the school needs. Because at the same time as I'm trying to apply this recipe, I'm studying, I'm assessing and evaluating and I'll be honest with you, it crippled me. It really did cripple me, and so at some point in time I had to, kind of like you know, make a decision. You know, am I willing to sit here and drive a bus that I know that's going to break down pretty soon. Or do I stop the bus? You know, pull out the right tools, fix it, do what I need, do what I know needs to happen, then we'll do what's for it. So that's what I did.

Speaker 1: 17:35

I sat down with my AP. You know, my core team had a conversation and I don't think they even realized what my thinking was. The thing is, I just needed to get them on the same page with me. I knew what the mission was. The mission was to bake a cake.

Speaker 1: 17:49

You know the recipe, you know there's the outcome, but sometimes you might have to make some adjustments to that recipe, and that's what I had to do. I had to make some other things. I built my team out, who I put in what position. I had some strong people and my thing was the blueprint was given to me when I was led. So all I did was to get that same blueprint and tweak it just a little bit to fit my style and identify the strong people in my team, and I said listen, I need you to take over in special education. This is what you're going to do here. You can do this. You're going to do that. You're going to do it in a weekly basis, in some cases by weekly, for you to share with me what's going on, you know. Then we can make the right adjustments and all that. And the outcome, the outcome, you know what's great at the end of the year, you know. But I did take a tongue lashing. I did take a tongue lashing.

Speaker 1: 18:44

That superintendent met with me and was happy about the results, but did question me about why I didn't follow her instructions. And I argued the data. And that's the thing too. I was fearing that conversation, but also I realized because this is also what I learned from my training in turning schools around the data, the data, the data. You can do, all the cosmetic things you can put in all the curriculum and programs. That sounds great on paper, but if there's a number to support the implementation and to support the value of that thing, then what are we talking about here? And yes, she was mad at me, but at the end of the day, you couldn't deny the scores.

Speaker 1: 19:40

You couldn't deny the scores and it was great because I didn't allow fear to stop me from doing what I had to do and even though listen, it was nerve-wracking but I was like, no, if I let this be the way I move forward, then I'm not going to survive. So I just want to say this, like in sharing the story as a leader you may face, you might face no, you will face fear. Fear is going to be in your face. I'm trying to find a way to. Are you going to feel, feel, how are you going to put that? But in the fear, it's going to be based on the possibility of failing judgments and what happens if you make an unpopular decision.

Speaker 1: 20:36

But, however, if you know what you're doing is the best direction for your community, sometimes you just got to do it and sometimes you might not know if it's the best, but have the data to support the decision you're about to make. Have the data to say listen, there's a high probability that this is going to work or this is where we need to go. Yes, nothing is guaranteed. Of course, nothing is guaranteed. I made some decisions where it did not go right at all. But, however, how would I know if I didn't try it? And I've always mitigated my decisions Again, like I said, with data, like okay, what's the probability of this working?

Speaker 1: 21:17

You know where have I seen this work before? You know, in these other spaces? Were they similar to my situation, to my school? You know, I talked to other leaders. I'll call. I've called leaders from other states where I was reading an article or something. I was like this person's a principal, just like me, and they're in Ohio. Let me hit them up real quick and ask them some questions and people will pick up. People will pick up because their leaders, just like you and they've gone through they've gone through a lot of similar things, just like you and the so there's a ripple effect of fear and leadership that needs to be addressed.

Speaker 1: 21:58

This ripple effect is I'm going to make this very, very clear when you're leading, all eyeballs are on you. Everybody's watching you, everybody's listening to you. You're literally hanging on the tip of your words, like whatever you say, and the thing is that you don't have to be a, you don't have to be a phenomenal leader. You don't have to be, and you may be just brand new traffic or things out, but when you're leading people, people are literally following your directives and it also goes beyond your words. Do what you carry yourself, your level of confidence, what you believe, what you espouse, like they're literally hanging on every word in motion, how you carry yourself, you know. So if you are afraid, are you zipping fear or you're kind of all over the place? It permeates itself throughout the hometown community. It really does.

Speaker 1: 22:58

When I visited many schools, I've known many school leaders, the leaders who were just like locked in on top of their game. When you walk through these schools, you can see it. The school becomes a direct reflection of them, no question about it. Then when you walk through school where there's a lot of nervous energy and you know the principals over the place or the APs are just all over the place and they're barely hanging on. That's what you see A school that's barely hanging on.

Speaker 1: 23:31

You know it's very important to understand that fear-driven decisions do cascade down. It ends up affecting staff around. Student achievement is school culture. It's something that you have to make sure that you're aware of. You know it's sad. I've seen schools that were phenomenal and the leadership change of leadership was because of my retired, you know. Unfortunately it might have been a tragedy. Maybe the leader might have passed away.

Speaker 1: 24:06

The systems in that school were amazing. They were long-standing. They bring a leader in who's new to the space and all of a sudden they're now coming in with their fears and their self-doubts and slowly, slowly but surely, they start to unravel. Because they're not making the decisions or they're allowing fear to make them change things that were working, but because they're trying to impress their own leadership. And maybe that new leadership might say, or maybe their leadership, the superintendent office might say hey, there's this new program that is working in Delaware and we want to bring it over here. And and over a sudden, you're like I have something here that's been here for a long time, it's been working amazingly well. But you know what though I'm not going to argue it, that's my, that's my boss. And then they take out the things working, put in a new thing and the bus crashes and you're wondering what happened, like what happened? And then they start thinking to themselves well, maybe it was me, I just didn't, I wasn't able to implement it. Well, I didn't implement it with fidelity. No, it should have been changed and you knew this. And she says you should have said something, you should have fought harder, but you didn't fight because you're like, you're not the one rocked the boat. I don't want to be that person. And that's when it's happening, that ripple effect your fears, your anxiety, your, your issues starts to impact everybody else. So this is something that you have to really be aware of and I'll tell you this Many leaders find themselves in this position because they don't speak up.

Speaker 1: 25:47

If they do speak up, they don't speak loud enough.

Speaker 1: 25:50

I'm not saying go yell at your boss, no, I'm just saying speak loud, be sure you're being heard, make sure what you're being, what you're saying, is being documented. So that is very clear. This is where this is where what I thought you know and I would love to negotiate with you as my leader, and best steps to go, move forward, and if it's said like, no, we're going to go this way, then let it be documented that you know I opposed, but I respectfully I'm part of the team and I respectfully said okay, I will, I will implement with fidelity. But you guys speak up, and I'll tell you this every time I've ever spoken up, the outcomes will almost always positive, positive in favor of what I was speaking up for.

Speaker 1: 26:33

I can only think about one school leader that I've had that was my leader who shut down everything I said. Shut down everything I said and it was okay. She was the principal, I was the assistant principal and, yes, assistant principal. Sometimes you have to speak up because your principal might not be seeing the full picture, you know, and if you're the assistant, that means you guys have. You guys should have a much closer relationship because you're working together.

Speaker 1: 26:57

You know, I was told. I've always told my system principles Is do I have a run? It's not me hearing you here. No, it's me here at the center and you next to me. If I have multiple system principles, then we are all standing. I'm just I'm the one in the center because when people focus in and lock in, they see me, but your shoulder shoulder with me, because you're an extension of me. That's what I believe.

Speaker 1: 27:23

Now I'm trying to think about if I should share another scenario, another scenario where fear played a role in my decision making process and in the ensuing results. And I want to give you a negative one, not a negative one, one where I didn't go with my gut. I don't know, there's probably one. It's just that I've just been very lucky to be not lucky Fortunate. You know, good fortune has been on my side that that I just speak up. I speak up no-transcript. I mean, the only thing I think about maybe is when I was outside of education, when I was in corporate sales. I used to work for Kingco, so I was an account manager for them, and I could think about times where they were like, hey, this is your sales pitch and this is what we need you to say and everything else. And I've never been good with sales pitches, but I did that for over a year where I went by the script. I said you got to follow the script and my sales was just like mediocre at best, because I'd be like hello, this is Uchean Joku. I'm calling from Kingco's Incorporated. I am a territory sales representative and I'd like to find out for you if you have any upcoming projects. Whatever we can support you. I was more like listen, I don't be on the phone. So my process which again I was told didn't work, because if I was hitting the phone I would be at 100, 200 calls a day. The chances of me getting business was much higher than me pounding the streets and maybe in a day only hitting four, five or six businesses. But, however, this was my system.

Speaker 1: 29:24

I would look at sales records like who bought what, when, where, how much they buy, and because I wanted to create my own spreadsheet of companies that should target based on the month and then also and also based on their, their purchasing history. But I was going to just call you. You know I also looked through and see who are the gatekeepers, secretaries and who who do that speak to. We took meticulous notes. The good sales people did, and I did. I would try to find out who was spoken to, who is the person who handled that particular order as far as calling us for the order or, you know, managing the work that we're doing for them. And I went through all that. I had all that stuff and if I and if I didn't know, maybe that was the phone call hey, this is a chain joker call from King goes. I was territory sales rep Last year. We did a couple of jobs for you. It was amazing. I just want to update my records. It's so, so still at the company, but that was. That's what I make sure that you know. If I'm not around and they call for the same job again, that you know my team knew no, so it's be expecting, and this is the kind of stuff I would do who's the secretary? Who do you talk to? And then I pound the pavement.

Speaker 1: 30:40

So I was up in Rochester, new York, um years ago and I was the work of King goes in the sales and I got two jobs back to back months Because my, my sales goals were always like hey, if you get 40, 50,000 dollars for the for the month and in small to medium, medium to in small to medium um business orders. That was amazing. If you broke, if you win over a hundred thousand, that was like like oh my God, what. That was just like. Oh my God, right. So what I was doing was I had a little you know um penny cash situation so I can buy, like coffee and whatever, whatever for, for for um our clients.

Speaker 1: 31:25

So I would go buy flowers or buy a little gift basket, depending on who I was going to go see, oh, or it might be a gift card for some coffee, whatever. And I would go to the office and say, hey, I'm here to see Lynn and Lynn would. It would be like the secretary at Bosch alarm or something like that, and they'll say who I'm, like I'm called blah, blah, blah. You know, I just want to stop by and drop this off for her. No, as a thank you for the order from last year, bro. So I'd walk in and they would not be expecting it and I would do mid morning. But I tell me you're getting hungry, you want to get lunch or you've been annoyed by by your team, and that gift card, those flowers, that gift basket that maybe cost me like $5 from from Wegmans, you know, or $10 from Wegmans, they'll be so happy.

Speaker 1: 32:17

And I wasn't there to get to get to get a job. I was there to to just bring some sunsight into their lives and get them talking. And I found myself now closing consistently 60, 70, 100, 150,000 jobs without having to call a hundred companies. I would have two or three companies that do that for me, based on, you know, maybe a total of 20 visits to different companies, versus sitting in the office and making phone calls, Because my thing was always how many other people are sitting in the office making phone calls with these same companies? Because, I'm sorry, you all had those calls that come to your house or to yourself or wherever, and they're like you know, hey, I'm coming from. What do you do? You hang up, click, because you know you don't. I don't want to take a sales call, but what I did was I wasn't going to do sales calls. I was going to stop by and just say, hey, I'm just here to bring the sunshine to your day and thank you again for what you did for the order from, from from last month or from last year. I just want to. I was just in neighborhoods, wanting to make sure that if there's anything coming up out that you, that you remember I'm here for you. Here's my business card. Again, that stuff worked. But yeah, I'll tell you this, though it was working.

Speaker 1: 33:34

But before it worked there was double start coming in. I took a lot of stuff. You know, the, the, the, the regional sales manager was like what is going on here? We're looking at your sales force and you have built any calls in there. What's going on? And blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like you know, this is what I'm doing. I'm sorry, I will, I will jump on those calls. Sometimes I had to lie to them, I'll jump on those calls. But I wasn't going to jump on those calls. But I had something I was doing that jump on those calls was going to take, take away from me. I'll tell you this.

Speaker 1: 34:05

When they got that first $100,000 plus sales hit from my branch, from the work that I did, everybody left me alone. They left me alone and it was funny because my peers were like I mean, how are you doing this? How many calls are you making? And I'm like I'm making maybe two or three, maybe four or five calls a day. And it was a follow up calls to the people I was visiting and then I'll hit the road. Sometimes I'll be on those calls, for I've been on calls where I just called to say hey, it was good seeing you yesterday, and that call turned into a 15, 20, 30 minute call about football or about gardening or whatever the case may be.

Speaker 1: 34:51

Oh my God, I didn't realize I kept you on the phone for this long. I have a question. We have this little job. We have this order here. Let me call, let me call Frank, and next thing, you know, I'm going to phone Frank and Frank is like. You know, I do have this order and this job and it's just annoying. I need 300 copies of this particular binder and back then this is before Google Docs and all that stuff Everything was all manual, those copies, color colors and everything else, and they were not cheap and that's how.

Speaker 1: 35:23

That's how I did it. You know, I refuse to allow a system to pressure me into doing something that I didn't think was going to work. But I also knew that once I bucked the system, I better be able to prove or have evidence of what I was doing successful. And yes, there was moments where it was kind of dark and I was like, oh my God, this is going to. You know, if this doesn't work, I might lose my job. But I I would say 99.99% of the time I was came up, came up on top, and even those times when maybe the results would probably have been the same, I had evidence to show, like, okay, this is what I did. I documented what I did and why I did it and hear the results and most of the time you know my leadership would like whoa we love this. And a lot of times they just left me alone. Keep doing what you're doing. But also understand that if it stopped working, the expectation was I was going to go back to doing what they wanted me to do.

Speaker 1: 36:23

So now, strategies to overcome fear. You just don't wake up and say, okay, I'm not afraid anymore. No, it doesn't work like that. Listen, every decision I make, there's always still fear there. There's still some level of fear like what if that doesn't work?

Speaker 1: 36:39

A lot of you know that I took over ISPS 224. Now living we call MS224, exploration and discovery, in the South Bronx, district 7. And yes, fear is there on a daily basis. It's there. There's nothing I do about it. That's part of the human, you know human experience. I overcome fear.

Speaker 1: 37:03

Fear does not overcome me. I acknowledge the fear. I'm open about it. You know, with I have my core team at the school money ship team and we talk about this. I say, hey, this is the thing that we got to watch out for. This Like this is going to be a problem if we don't resolve this. You know, this is what I'm, this is, and I and I paint a picture for them. If we don't do what we need to do, this is the outcomes of what we're facing. So what I do is, rather than having the fear live inside of me and I'm having this internal conversations and dialogues, I, I involve my team Because and they know, I need to hear from you what are you thinking?

Speaker 1: 37:41

You know, there is so much, there's so much in my school right now that, honestly, is strange, because I have to let go, because I had, because I, I gave permission to strong key members to take over certain aspects of the school. So, and and and I tell like, for example, I'm a big culture guy how we move in the hallways to transitions and everything else. My Dean took it over. You know, and anyone who's been in that position you know is that it requires constant monitoring, constant monitoring and and, and I'll be honest, on Friday I had a staff member who was calm like you know, I'm not happy with the way things were moving and came to me I said don't I like you listen, listen, I hear you, but you got to go talk to the Dean because that's that's the space that he's taken over. And I know it's easy to come to me as a principal and say, hey, we have fixedness, but you're going to go to the Dean.

Speaker 1: 38:40

And everything in my core wanted to be like, okay, here's a solution, like no, I'm creating systems here. And if I allow my fear to take over, I mean now me jumping to the mix and fix the thing. That. What am I? What am I teaching my Dean, who will one day be an amazing principal, what am I showing them by allowing my fears to jump, jump into the mix? So I said to her do you talk to him? And I will also. I will also hear from him, because when we have a meeting, I need to know what's going on and whatever the case may be, and that and that's the thing you know, and and the same thing with my, even my supervisors. I talk to them, I speak.

Speaker 1: 39:19

Okay, this is my concern, and that's one of the hardest things. When you talk to your superintendent, deputy superintendent, district people because one of the issues was fear too, the fear of being judged. You don't want to, you feel like you don't want to say anything, then I make them think that you're not ready, you're not capable, absolutely not. Because, listen, if I was that damn good that anything I touched to turn the gold while my principal has to be president, I should be king of the world. If I'm, if I'm just like King Midas, I'm just that dope. But we're all human, we all have our faults and and and. Allowing your fears and the things you're concerning to not be articulated and expressed to your team, so do we, so it could be all hands on deck it's actually doing you more harm than good. Actually, it's doing you no good, it's doing you all harm. So that's something that you have to really, you know, keep in mind, you know, and, and again, it's important that you, that you talk, you talk, you know and and I said this earlier about mentorship and coaching At any given time, at any given time I want to say I have at least five coaches.

Speaker 1: 40:44

Some are formalized and some are not formal, some are just like people have known for years that can call on my role. That's right now. I have former deputy chancellors, I have chancellors, I have superintendents, I have principles like high-performance principles, from around the country, some, some international people that I, when I call, they pick up the phone and say, hey, what's going on? And I don't just call you about. Hey, you see the football game, how's the weather out there? I'll call him, but I, hey, how's the family?

Speaker 2: 41:12

You know okay.

Speaker 1: 41:15

I'm calling because I need a thought partner in this thing and I am so grateful to have that. You know, I'm so grateful to have that because, again, fear thrives on, on the self-talk, what you're saying to yourself, what's happening in your head, because then you start to build all kinds of negative scenarios in your head. But when I talk to people, guess what happens? When I talk to those trusted colleagues, coaches, mentors, I hear myself speak, I hear them saying to me all of a sudden the fear is out the window. It becomes more of a strategy session. We're sitting here now trying to to figure out and calculate the risks and figure out what are the next steps, and I'm sorry, that's why I mean you put you into a winning position. When you do that, you know you got listen, I'm going to say it again you got to involve your staff, your core leadership team, your you know console with your mentors, you know, have dialogues with your, with your own leadership. You know your principal, your, your, your direct supervisors, whether superintendent W superintendent, maybe it's your principal if you're AP, it might be your AP if you're a team leader. You got to have these conversations because once you start having those conversations, trust me. The fear goes away and then, on time, the fear becomes less and less potent, it becomes less loud in your head because you know, hey huh, problem, let me go talk to somebody, you know, rather than problem. Oh my God, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? This has nothing to do with I Listen. The school is a team. I look, I'm going to be, I'm going to be that corny. There is no I in team, you know. So you have to engage people, you know. And so transforming fear into leadership, into a leadership asset and I know this sounds weird, right? Everything I've been saying seems like we need to put fear in its proper place, put it in a box and lock it away. But fear is, can be, a leadership asset.

Speaker 1: 43:39

I'm going to use combat as an example. Do you think if you were out in combat like, let's say, you were in a war, you know you're in a scenario where you had to survive and you were a soldier do you think that fear would not exist at all? Do you think that general Patton had no fear? Genghis Khan had no fear? I'm trying to think Shakazulu, I'm thinking Khorlam Powell, I'm thinking about, like Hannibal of Cartage had no fear. Of course you have fear because, again, you know you're going to a space where you might not come back from.

Speaker 1: 44:26

The question now is this do you say I'm not going there because I'm afraid that I might not come back, or do you say how do I leverage my expertise, my knowledge, to make sure that the scales are tipped in my favor? So, for me, fear the things that I fear, the things that I face head on, that I have to sit down and figure out what's going on. This must sound corny. Like I hate heights, I hate heights. Like I hate heights. But you know what I hate more? I hate the things that I hate the feeling of that feeling, that fear. I hate that even more, but it cripples me. So my thing is this how do I make sure I reduce the potency of that thing that makes me scared? So what heights? When I was younger, I would just say listen, I'm going to go to the roller coaster, I'm going to walk, I'm going to go at the whole entire time in time, I'm going to keep my eyes open and I'm just going to be like you know in other times, you know, I'm going to put my hands up in the air and see what happens. I was still afraid, but the fear had less and less of a hold on me.

Speaker 1: 45:49

The ultimate thing I ever did. No, actually, before I tell you the story, I'm going to the Grand Canyon and we got anyone who's been to the Grand Canyon, I think it's like the west or north face, whatever that thing is and you have the glass bridge or the. It's like a plexiglass. It's not a bridge, it's called a skywalk and it just saw maybe about 20 or 30 yards, if that, maybe less than that, and it's just literally a plexiglass. So it's over edge of the Grand Canyon. So we step on this thing. You look down on the floor, you can see straight through to the bottom of the canyon Terrifying. But you're thinking, if this thing cracks, we done. But I had to do it. I had to do it. I was like yo, but look in, the pictures made me nauseous. So I was like I got to do it. But it's again. I want to be able to control that thing. You know, the ultimate, the ultimate thing that I did with my fear of heights I went skydiving, you know, and I've done like I've done.

Speaker 1: 46:54

Replying out of helicopters does like that for a job, but jumping out of a plane, just to jump out of the plane, like literally jumping out of a plane, I think it was like 16, 1600, see some somewhere between 12 to 1600 feet, 1600 feet in the air and you're falling and you're like if this passion don't don't pop off. Thank you mom, thank you dad, thank you brother and sisters. I know that's a little bit of a pain, but when I landed my heart was still racing but I had a big smile on my face. I know I conquered that. It doesn't mean the fear is not there, you know. I just want to look back at the pictures.

Speaker 1: 47:35

I was like what were you thinking? But a part of me also said, huh, false evidence appearing real. So it's very, it's very important that you you take your fears and and use them as a way to strengthen yourself. And that's what I've done. And, like, jumping out of a plane wasn't, it was not just for the novelty of it. It gave me a leadership edge because it made me not necessarily fearless but more bold and sometimes leadership. You have to be bold. You know the ability to say hey, boss, I need to talk to you about this. Can I show you some data. This is what I want to do, and I don't think this decision might work well for my school or my team or my classroom, while others would just say hey team this is the director, the director that's coming down and there's nothing we can do about it.

Speaker 1: 48:33

So we just got to do our best, like no, no, no. And again, don't get me wrong, I don't. I'm not sitting here saying you got to fight on everything that happens because you, that makes you afraid. No, you got to assess what's going on. Why are you fearing this thing? What is the? What is what is really happening? Because social coaches, your mentors, whoever then, when you realize what the thing that you need to fight for is, then that's what you go after, and it might not turn out in your favor, but being bold man, that's the outcome of transforming fear into a leadership asset. I'm going to say one more time being bold is the outcome of transforming, transforming fear into a leadership asset. Genghis Khan you know, alexander the Great Shakazulu you're talking about Colin Powell like our great military leaders, they were bold. They were not fearless, they were bold. The bold, their, their, their being bold was based on data, information, strategy tactics to ensure that they earned a favorable outcome.

Speaker 1: 49:49

Um man, so, in conclusion, this is much longer than I expected. I thought it was going to be a 20 minute episode. It's pushing more like around 50, but I'm pretty sure whoever sits to watch this whole entire episode, listen to this whole entire episode, is going to get something out of it. Um, because, again, this is something that I know for a fact. Too many of us are suffering through, you know, fear and crippling us, and it makes it breaks my heart when I come across a principal who tells me man, if I could, if I could have done this differently, I would have done it. If I could do this all over again, I would have done it differently. You know, and um, and and that's one of the things that I think we got to do a better job at, you know, coaching on fear, making sure that our leaders are not necessarily fearless but they're bold and they're and they're being given the space to speak their minds and allow, allow leadership. Shut down, shut down leaders and a lot of systems shut down leaders and so leaders keep quiet. We wonder why things are still messed up because they're seeing things in the frontline, but that that, um, they're not being given permission to speak on.

Speaker 1: 50:58

So, if we're going to, if we want our schools to achieve excellence and be functional highest level, fear has to be controlled, and that thing too. We cannot perpetuate fear. We cannot perpetuate fear. We have to allow fear to be what it is, because it's going to exist. We want leaders who are going to be bold and speak their minds. We also need leadership who are going to listen to the leaders and make sure that we come to to, to that space, to internet, the best possible solutions for our school communities.

Speaker 1: 51:28

So, um again, thank you so much for your time. This, this, I didn't this moment in time and listening to this, um, I'm going to put myself out there again. If you are interested in just having a conversation and you're like, listen, I need, I need to work something out here and I don't have the, the coaches or the, the mentors, and I reach out, reach out, and if I don't have the answer, I'm pretty sure I know somebody who does. Um, all right, this is Uche and Joku Sneaker Principal. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the sneaker principal podcast, in which we talked about unveiling fear. Um, specifically how fear impedes principles from achieving school success. Ah, y'all be well.