BACK TO PROJECT BASED LEARNING BLOGS
By: Ryan Steuer, CEO
Magnify Learning
Dallas, TX
@ryansteuer
What is the most important task you can do next?
Where should you focus your time and energy?
Do you have any worries before you go to sleep?
Life and Leadership Coaching has helped me answer these questions well. In this blog, we're coaching you for free. You're going to love it. You'll need a writing utensil and a journal. You'll want to sit down and take some notes.
I'm going to walk you through the process right now that I use personally to coach myself…that’s right…coach myself.
I have had multiple leadership and performance coaches over the years, and I’m currently in a paid mastermind group. I believe in coaching as a way to level up your life and leadership. I believe in coaching so much, that I went through a coaching certification process to refine my processes as a coach to others. I coach educational leaders, entrepreneurs, and missionaries. Coaching is where I see others make big moves in their lives and leadership.
Why do the best athletes in the world have coaches, but you don't? Why did Michael Jordan have multiple coaches—a strength coach, Phil Jackson, and a mindset coach? He had all these different coaches to be the best in the world. The best in the world have coaches, and you should too, because you want to be world-class at leading your school and your classroom. So you need to get a coach.
But what do you do in the meantime? What do you do right now? What are some next steps that you can take? I'm going to walk you through a simple coaching process that's absolutely free for you and will give you a ton of value. So buckle up. It's going to be fantastic!
So what do you need to get started with this coaching process? You don't need anything fancy. We don't have to hop on a call. You need to go to the dollar store and get a composition notebook. I have several of these. Yes, I also have a cool, fancy leather one that I do my gratitude journaling in, but these composition notebooks are a dollar and will work perfectly.
I'm going to ask you these questions, and I want you to write down the answers. Now, I do this whenever I get stuck, at least once a week or more.
While I’m answering these questions, I’m either picturing one of my coaches or my 85 year old self. Both are great frames to take you out of your urgency and help you find the important and true.
So the very first question you're going to ask yourself:
Q1: What's on your mind?
I only take five coaching clients a year, and we do high-level coaching, but this question is one of the places I start.
I start with ‘What's on your mind?’ Why? Because you're a high-flying leader. You're thinking about things that matter, so you've already got something on your mind. I don't need to dig far.
Q2: What else?
Write down a few more bullet points of what else is on your mind. Or write it out in story form. However you best process, but don’t overthink this. Let your mind tell you what you’re concerned about. It might be school, but it might be family. Both are valid because they are on your mind and until you get a better handle on them, you are not your best self as a leader.
Q3: What's the most important thing on this list that you've just created?
Prioritize your list. I just want the top three. If you wrote down seven, I want the top three. So you're going to say what the most important things are on your mind right now, and you're going to list them out. One might be a staff issue. Maybe you have a staff member that has been difficult to deal with. You're not sure what to do about that, so that might go up there. Or you've got a district mandate coming out. Or you've got these literacy standards that just came on you from the state and somehow you've got to get this curriculum implemented. You're not sure how to do it and it's keeping you up at night, so that goes down there. So once you've got that, now you're going to ask yourself another question.
Q4: Why is this priority so much more important than the others?
Why is this the one domino that, if it falls, all the other dominoes fall? That's what you're looking for. You're looking for the priority that will give you the most bang for your buck. So why is it so important? Take the time to journal.
I don't care if you write in complete sentences, I don't care if you write in cursive. You probably wouldn't be able to read mine. That's not the point. The point is that I’m processing, and I want you to do the same thing.
You picked the most important thing that's on your mind. Now…
Q5: What will it look like when you have it completed?
It's going to look like you've got meetings scheduled out. It's going to look like you're set with the district, and you know how it's going to work with your project-based learning initiative. Your staff all see the vision clearly, and you are leading, not just managing your school. So now you know why you're doing it. You know why it's most important, right? You know what it's going to look like when it's done.
Q6: What are your next steps?
What's the next thing for you to do? The next right thing? Write that down. What's the next right thing? It might be research. It might be to make a small focus group with your teachers. Whatever it is, write that down.
Q7: And then what else?
What's the next right step after that? And give yourself about five steps.
Q8: How are you going to feel once you've gone through these five steps?
What's it going to feel like? Oh, it's going to feel great to have this big decision made. What you're going to find out is that in less than 20 minutes, you're going to have a really good plan. Your shoulders are going to come down as the worry and stress will lessen. This is going to feel great, and you're going to be able to start on that next important thing, to get that most important item done.
You may not have an easy first step ahead of you, but once you are certain it is the right next step, you can dare to take that step.
You might be done here, or you might be so fired up that you go after your next priority in the same way. You can journal all three of your top priorities to get a clear picture of your next steps.
So, that’s how I can coach you through your journal about these priorities that are currently on your mind.
Don't you get overwhelmed sometimes because it’s all the most important thing? It's all important. You’ve got an overflowing email box. You’ve got these district mandates. You’ve got teachers that need your leadership. They need additional training. How are you going to do all this? There's so many things, but if you can pause, you can start to walk down the path with confidence.
Part of the beauty of coaching is that it allows you to pause. It's 100% worth the time and investment—and in this case, it’s free!
Once you allow yourself to prioritize these things, you get the biggest domino to fall and now you see things clearer; you can see the path. You can see what it looks like and it makes it much easier to walk down that path.
Keep these eight questions in your journal. Do this weekly or any time you are stuck.
Again, just like Michael Jordan and Olympic athletes, you need a coach. But this is a great place to start. So start with this kind of self-coaching piece. See where it takes you, and then reach out. Let me know. I would love to hear how this works for you. I know how impactful it is for me and for the clients that I work with.
I take five clients a year and we start working on, yes, some of these questions, but we go deeper. We set and achieve goals.
One of the first things I walk through with principals, superintendents, and educational leaders is this question:
Bonus Q: How many hours are you working on an average weekend?
You would be surprised by how many hours we can reduce for the high-flying assistant superintendent or the principal who does it all. Every coaching client I've ever had decreases or eliminates hours on the weekends. Now, can you shut your cell phone off on the weekends? Probably not.
There are some things that, as school leaders, are different from the business world. It's different from the entrepreneurial world. You have a different environment, so you're going to have your phone on.
I worked with one principal, and we found out that she was actually printing report cards on the weekends because she wanted it to be done right. We walked that through, and we saved 5 hours every nine weeks.
You've got projects that you're saving for the weekend and you shouldn't be. Controlling your calendar seems impossible, but it’s not.
What would you do with that extra time on the weekend?
I'm going to ask you what hobbies you have. Or what hobbies did you have before you became an administrator?
What's one family goal?
What's one future career goal?
What's one system's goal that, if you implemented it, would make things easier for you?
These are the kind of questions that I go through with some of my coaching clients, and I think that you would love it too.
When you get better, your whole school gets better. Find a grant, get a coach.
You might need to get a grant for some of this high-level coaching, but I guarantee you that it's worth it and worth putting into your school budget.
You’re thinking, “If I just work this hard for three years, then I'll get there and I can take it easy.”
But that's not true. If you set up your life like this for three years, that's what your life will be for the next three years, and then it doesn't change because that's what you've set up. That's the (poor) boundaries that you have.
You need somebody to come in and disrupt those boundaries and show you a different way of doing work and doing really great work. Your work is not going to suffer. It's going to be the exact opposite. You're going to have the margin to think about these things differently, and you're going to solve problems before they arise. Right? That's what happens when we start coaching and you get a coach and you start looking at this from a different perspective.
You have somebody asking you questions that you wouldn't normally ask yourself, and as you're doing this, it may seem impossible for you not to work the weekends, but I guarantee you that it's possible.
There are some mindset shifts that you need to make.
There are some systems you need to put in place, and they can absolutely be done. I don't want you to be a principal for three or six years. I want you to be a principal for 20 years, right? I want you to have a career where maybe you're at the same school, which the research says is unlikely.
Only 11% of principals are at a school for 10 years or more. I know some of those 11%! They are pillars of their community. They're crushing it, but it's because they have systems in place that allow them to thrive, and they don't have to move on. They don't even want to move on because they're in their sweet spot.
So, I want you to find that sweet spot because that's where your longevity will be, and that's where your wisdom will compound.
It's just like compounding interest as you save and you earn interest on your interest right in that 401k or 403b that you have. It's the same idea as you're gaining wisdom.
You've been in tough conversations, so now you know how to do those tough conversations. You've done enough strategic plans that you could do them in your sleep, right? So it's all that wisdom that builds up.
Your best work is 10 years out, and I hope that's not discouraging. It should be encouraging. You're getting 1% better every day. As you do that, you're getting better. But we need you to have a long career so that you can reach that huge hockey stick at the end, where you're gaining that compounding interest of wisdom and experience.
All right, so I'm fired up about this. I love coaching. There's life transformation in this. Coaching has transformed my life, as has being in mastermind groups. These self-coaching questions are a great place for you to start. It's going to cost you $1.07 to buy a notebook.
I’m super excited to be on the PBL journey with you and coaching you now. I'm excited to see what dividends this pays and how it helps build your PBL movement. Go lead inspired!
I’m Ryan Steuer – author and thought leader who specializes in Project Based Learning training, coaching, community, and content to help educational leaders fulfill their vision of deeper learning in their schools. I’ve worked with leaders in school districts of all sizes, from 400 students to 100,000 students. These visionary leaders care about their students, but they are often stressed, overworked, and overwhelmed with the work ahead of them. That’s where I come in! I help leaders achieve their PBL vision, lead their staff, AND stop working weekends.
When I’m not guiding school leaders through Project Based Learning mindset shifts, I am outdoors with my wife and 5 kids - canoeing, hiking, biking, and traveling the US in our RV.
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