Yesterday, I had the opportunity to reprise my role as Principal for a Day at Holland Elementary as part of Dallas ISD’s “principal for a day” program.  In addition to the joy of having the students remember me and arguing with one young student about who loved gummy bears more (clearly, I do), I got to watch first-hand what Principal McDonald, Assistant Principal Davis & Tamayo, and Counselor Johnson do to try and keep their teachers performing at their peak.  A few of the lessons I took from watching them interact with teachers are lessons I think we can all benefit from.

1. Have a Problem-Solving Focus – notice I said “solving.” Too often we place emphasis on the problem and not the solution. That small change in perspective will lead you to massive results
2. Add Pause Points to your life – Pause points are times in our life that we build in to help us catch up. We all stack our calendars and to-do list to maximize our days, but when something happens (and life inevitably happens), we get behind. Adding pause points allows us to catch up and if we’re caught up, to have a chance to take a breath and relax.
3. Schedule Upcoming Look Backs – I hate the word review. So many people have a negative association with the word review because they deem it is as a time to look back at what they did wrong.  So much of life is making small tweaks to the words we tell ourselves.  To have an upcoming (which typically means something to look forward to) “look back” (which looks like reminiscing), we can soften the negative associations most of us have with reviews and look at our past performance from a more neutral standpoint so we can correct what isn’t working and double down on what works

Check out my podcast on my experience as Principal for a Day >> HERE