Smart, Capable and Stuck: A Teach, Lead or Leave Episode

Episode Transcript

Jenny Cole:
[00:01:03] Hello, and welcome back to Positively Leading the podcast. I'm Jenny Cole, coach, consultant, and author through my business Positively Beaming. I'm currently doing a special collection of episodes focusing on the themes from my new book, Teach, Lead or Leave.

I'm someone who knows intimately what it's like to sit in a school car park trying to summon the energy to walk through those doors. And if this resonates with you, If you've had that experience of sitting in your car with the hand on the door handle taking deep breaths, maybe scrolling your phone for just a few more minutes before you have to go in, then you are in the right place. This podcast is for educators who are stuck. Not stuck because you're incompetent or uncommitted or unskilled.

Stuck because something has fundamentally shifted, and you're not [00:02:03] sure what to do about it. Maybe you're restless, that kind of pesky restlessness that you can't quite put your finger on. Maybe you're exhausted, maybe you're bored, maybe you're overwhelmed, or maybe you are just cooked. Maybe you're done.

Done with the politics, done with the expectations, done with giving everything until you have nothing left for yourself and your family. Maybe you can't even articulate what is wrong. You just know that something is off, that this used to feel different, that you used to wake up with energy for this work, and now you wake up with dread, sometimes in the middle of the night.

If any of that sounds familiar, stay with me, because today we're talking about why smart, capable, dedicated educators end up feeling stuck, and why it has [00:03:03] absolutely nothing to do with your capability or your commitment. Let's dive in.

After I left education, I became a facilitator, a consultant, and a coach. And here is what I have learned after coaching hundreds of leaders and educators through their careers. Not just career transitions where they've felt stuck.

But all of those tiny transitions, those tiny obstacles, those obstacles that feel insurmountable. And these don't just have one face. They show up differently for different people at different stages. So I thought I would, in today's episode, introduce you to some of those people that sit in my coaching chair [00:04:03]face-to-face, and those that I have coached online.

Some of the people I introduce you to aren't real people. I've changed, obviously, the details and combined some stories to protect their confidentiality because that's really important to me as a coach. But I guarantee that you will recognize yourself or someone that you know in at least one of these stories.

Meet Sarah. She's a year three teacher. She's been teaching for eight years. She's really good at it. Good, really, really good. Her students adore her, parents request her, her principal relies on her, she gets excellent results, and she is miserable. Not because of the kids. She possibly still loves the kids.

She loves the moments when a struggling reader finally cracks the code. She loves the creativity of designing learning experiences, seeing her students grow. But everything else, the endless [00:05:03]compliance, the data entry, the changes to the curriculum, the reporting that takes longer to complete than it actually takes to assess the students, the meetings that could have been emails, the initiatives that get mandated from above with no input from the people who actually have to implement them.

The expectation that she'll give up her lunch breaks and do her planning in her evenings and weekends because, that's what good teachers do. Sarah doesn't wanna leave teaching, but she also can't imagine doing this for another 30 years, and she feels trapped between loving the parts of her job and hating the system that she has to work within.

That's one face of stuck Meet Dean. Dean's a deputy principal. He's worked incredibly hard to get to this position. He did all the right things. He took on extra responsibilities, completed his leadership qualifications, applied for roles multiple times before he got this one. And now here he is, [00:06:03]and it's not what he thought it would be.

He thought leadership would mean that he would have more influence, he'd be able to create more positive change, and really make a difference at a systems level. And sometimes he gets to do that work. But just sometimes. Mostly, he's managing crises. He's doing timetables and duty rosters. He's dealing with student discipline and parent complaints.

He's attending meetings where nothing gets decided. He's implementing policies he doesn't always agree with. He's caught between staff who are frustrated with the leadership, and leadership who are frustrated with the staff. He feels like a middle manager in the very worst sense of that term. Squeezed from both sides with responsibility but no real authority, expected to make everyone happy, while having the power to make absolutely no one happy.

Dean is exhausted. The job is consuming his life. His family barely sees him. His health is suffering, and he [00:07:03] can see no way out. If he steps back down into classroom teaching, he'll feel like a failure, and if he stays stuck, he's not sure how much longer his nervous system can take it. That's another face of stuck.

Meet Liana. Liana's been teaching for 22 years. She's a veteran. She's seen it all. Curriculum changes, leadership changes, educational reform after educational reform after educational reform. And she is so incredibly over it. She's bored, and she can't see any challenge anymore. She could teach her year level with her eyes closed.

She knows exactly what's gonna happen in every staff meeting before it even happens. She can predict the exact professional development that will be offered on a school development day, and she knows that nothing really changes. She used to be a teacher [00:08:03] who tried new things, who volunteered for committees, who brought the energy.

She was the one that would innovate and try new things. But over the years, she's watched her good ideas get shut down, and enthusiastic teachers get burnt out, and the system grind everyone down to mediocrity. So she's not caring, she's just stopped trying. She does her job and she does it well, but there's no spark anymore.

She's going through the motions, counting down to retirement or whatever's next, and is feeling guilty about the fact that she's become the kind of teacher that she used to judge. Those who are just keeping the seat warm. She's stuck in Groundhog Day, and she can't see any way to make this role feel interesting again.

That's another face of stuck.

Meet Eliza. [00:09:03] Eliza is a head of department. She loves her subject. She loves the intellectual challenge of it. She loves designing curriculum and thinking about pedagogy and developing the team's skills But her school has been through three restructures in five years. She's had four different principals.

The goalposts keep moving. The priorities keep changing. Every time she builds momentum into something, the direction changes and she has to start again. she's tired. Not physically tired, even though she is physically tired. She's tired of investing emotional energy into things. Things that get abandoned before they're finished.

She's tired of building relationships with leadership only to have them leave. She's tired of trying to shield her team from the chaos. It feels like she is standing on the oval and there's a helicopter [00:10:03] above her throwing out new things, and her job is to catch them and protect her team from them and at the same time sort out what's important and what's not, while pretending that everything is fine, business as usual.

Eliza feels like she's running on a treadmill that keeps speeding up, and she's starting to wonder if she should step off before she is flung off. That is another face of stuck. And then there's me. I was a principal. I'd worked my way up over 20 years. I was living the dream, or what I thought was my dream.

And yet I walked out in the middle of a case conference because my nervous system literally could not take it one more minute. I couldn't see any options. I couldn't see any possibilities. I could only see two choices: to stay and suffer or to leave. [00:11:03] Well, I had no idea what would come after leaving.

I just knew I couldn't stay, and that was my face of stuck. So here's my question. How do smart, capable, dedicated people end up feeling like this? It's not because you're failing. It's not because you're not resilient enough. No amount of wellbeing Wednesdays seems to fix it. It's not because you're not committed.

You got stuck Because you were good and because the system is designed to keep you stuck. Let me explain what I mean First of all, we normalize the intolerable. In education, we get really good at tolerating things that shouldn't be tolerable. We normalize working [00:12:03] exceptionally long hours. We normalize working through lunch or having to work through lunch.

We normalize taking home work every night and every weekend. We normalize being available 24/7. We normalize sacrificing our health and our relationships and our we- wellbeing, even if it's only during term time for those 10-week sprints. We tell ourselves stories about being, "This is, you know, okay. This is what teaching is," and, "If I really cared about the kids, I'd do whatever it takes," and, "Everybody else seems to be coping, so I should cope too," and, "If I don't do this, I'm letting down my team members."

But what I want you to know is just because it's common doesn't mean that it's okay. Just because everyone is doing it doesn't mean that it's sustainable. Just because you can survive it doesn't mean that you should. After normalizing the [00:13:03] intolerable, you wake up every day and you realize that you are completely depleted, and that is not what our students and our schools need. But you don't know what to do because you've been telling yourself that this is just how it is possibly for so long. The second reason is we tie our identity really strongly to our role.

For many of us, being an educator isn't just what we do, it is who we are. We introduce ourselves as teachers or principals or heads of department. We think of ourselves as educators first and everything else is second. And that's beautiful in some ways. There's something powerful about having a strong sense of purpose and identity.

Teachers and leaders do good work.

And it's social justice work. You know, we are making it better not just for students, but for their families, for the community. [00:14:03] But what this also means is that when we start questioning whether this role is right for us or not, it feels like we are questioning our whole identity.

As teachers, it's even harder because we've become institutionalized. We went to school. We went to primary school. We went to secondary school. We went to university. Some of us went straight into teaching and didn't do anything else. So who am I if I'm not a teacher? Who am I if I'm not a leader? If I step away from this, do I even know who I am anymore?

And frankly, that is terrifying. So we stay, even when every part of us is screaming that what we need to do is something different. Because changing our roles or moving [00:15:03] careers actually feels like we might be losing a really big chunk of ourselves. Reason number three, and I think this is very important for women, is that we feel guilty for wanting more.

Education has a real martyrdom culture. We're supposed to be selfless. We're supposed to sacrifice. We're supposed to put students first always, no matter what. And if we dare to say, "I want a work/life balance," or, "I want to feel energized, not depleted," or, "I want a job that doesn't consume my whole life," we feel guilty.

We feel selfish. We feel like we're letting ourselves, our kids, and everyone else down. I can't tell you how many educators I've coached who whisper to me, almost ashamed, "I just want to enjoy my life. Is that so terrible?" No, it is not terrible. It is human. So the guilt keeps us stuck because if wanting [00:16:03] something different feels like betraying everything that we've worked towards, our calling, our core purpose, our North Star, we're not gonna seek something different.

Reason number four is we can't often see our options, and this is a big one. When you're in the thick of it, when you're working a really challenging, difficult role, when you're exhausted and overwhelmed, and you are just trying to get through every day, you lose the capacity to see possibilities. Your brain goes into survival mode, and survival mode does not do creative problem-solving.

Survival mode doesn't think strategically about the future. Survival mode just gets us through the day.

So I'm gonna ask you, when you think about your career, can you only see two options? To stay exactly where you are, or to quit and do something completely different? [00:17:03] Or can you see the middle ground?

Generally, the answer is no. We can't see the middle ground. We can't see the adjustments. We can't see the pivots. We can't see the other pathways. And when you can't see options, that's when we feel stuck.

Reason number five is that we're all pretty good at waiting to see if someone else will fix it. We wait for the principal to reduce the workload. We wait for the department to change the policy. We wait for the next curriculum reform to see if it's better than the last one. We wait for that toxic colleague to retire or leave.

We wait for circumstances to change. And sometimes circumstances do change, and sometimes the new principal is a breath of fresh air and absolutely amazing. And sometimes, just sometimes, a policy gets [00:18:03] reversed or changed to the point where it's usable. Sometimes that difficult colleague does move on. But often we're still waiting, still stuck, and still hoping someone will create the conditions that make it bearable.

Unfortunately, here is what I've learned. No one is coming to rescue you. There is nobody, no shining knight on a white horse coming to rescue you. And I know that feels harsh, and it feels, um, overwhelming. But we have to rescue ourselves. And there's one more reason, and there's some of us who really wanna fight it out.

We want to challenge the system. We want to work with the unions and professional associations to make it better. We agitate, we irritate, we try really hard to improve the conditions for ourselves and for others. [00:19:03] But this can also be draining, de-energizing, and it can feel like we're spitting in the wind

So let me give you some permission because I think this is what many of you are waiting for. Permission to acknowledge what you are actually experiencing. You have permission to say, "I'm struggling," without having to justify it or prove that it's bad enough. You don't have to say, "Well, they've got it worse somewhere else."

And maybe it's not so bad in my school. You have permission to feel restless or bored or dissatisfied, even if objectively your job is fine. You have permission to want something different, even if you don't know what that thing is yet, [00:20:03] even if you can't quite put that into words, even if you don't know what that is.

 You have permission to question whether this is the right fit for you without having to have all of the answers already. You have permission to be tired. Not just end of term tired or term two tired, but deep bone tired, soul tired. The kind of tired that a weekend or even a holiday can't fix. You have permission to love education and also acknowledge that the current system is broken in a lot of ways.

You have permission to love teaching and also wanna do it differently or do something adjacent to it, or even, yes, to stop doing it. You have permission to be excellent at this [00:21:03] work and also be ready for something else. Your own personal growth is not a betrayal. You have permission to prioritize your own wellbeing and your own life satisfaction.

That's not selfish. In fact, that's necessary. And guess what? You have permission to be stuck, to be restless, to think that there's something more. Being stuck is not a failure. To not know what you want is not a failure. It's just information. It's just your little internal compass telling you that something needs to shift, and you don't need to know what that something is just yet.

And I just wanna say right here that I believe deeply in education. I believe very deeply in government education. And I'm not here to slam the [00:22:03] system. I wanna be able to work with and next to and adjacent to the system so that we have teachers and leaders and employees who truly love what they are doing, who truly wanna get up and thrive every single day.

And if for some reason they can't or they no longer want to do that, they have permission to step sideways or to leave.

Over the past 15 years, I've come to understand quite a lot about being stuck. And it's not the problem. In fact, it's just the symptom. The problem isn't that you're stuck or bored or restless. The problem is usually one of these things: You've outgrown your current role and you don't know what comes next.

You've been doing it for a while, and you don't wanna do it anymore. Or your [00:23:03] values and your work are no longer aligned, but you don't know how to name or find that misalignment yet.

You may be using your energy in unsustainable ways, but as I said, we've normalized it for so long that you don't even notice anymore. Or rather, you're living according to what you think you should want or what you think you should do, rather than actually what you want and what you need. Maybe you're trying to force yourself into a role that used to fit, but it just doesn't fit anymore for a whole variety of reasons, and that just could be the stage of life you're in.

For some of you, you've been so busy surviving that you haven't given yourself space to actually think about what you need. It is hard to put yourself first when you are literally trying to keep your head above water.

So being [00:24:03] stuck is just your internal system saying, "Hey, notice me. Something not right here. Pay attention. Something's off and something needs changing." But instead of pushing that down, what if we got curious about it? I talk about pesky restlessness, where something's off and we don't quite know what it is.

Feel a bit, eh, different or strange or off. And rather than coping or blaming or doom scrolling, what if we actually said, "What is this feeling actually trying to tell me?" Wouldn't it be great if we could give ourselves permission to explore what we're experiencing without immediately needing to fix it?[00:25:03]

As educators and as leaders, we are great fixers. We are great problem solvers. But what if we gave ourselves permission to experience it and find out what was really going on? What was the problem we're actually trying to solve? Maybe if we acknowledge that being stuck is actually the first step in getting unstuck.

That feels like a lot. It feels like if you, if you're still with me, but you've got distracted, come on back. Because that's a lot of words. What are these episodes actually about? They're about helping you understand what being stuck actually means. They're about giving you permission to acknowledge your experiences without shame or guilt or judgment.[00:26:03]

I'd like to help you see that you are not alone, that restlessness and exhaustion and confusion are really normal, typical responses to systems and circumstances that aren't working. And not to blame yourself, but to get curious. But I'm a coach, and one of the tenets of coaching is that we have to have unconditional positive regard for the people sitting across from us.

We have to trust that you know yourself best and you know ways that you can get unstuck. So they're not necessarily about me telling you what to do, or at least not about me prescribing actual solutions, and they're definitely not about me telling you to quit your job or to [00:27:03] stay in your job or to nominate any specific pathway.

What I want to do is help you to see that you have more options than you think you do, more options to thrive and have the life satisfaction that includes your job than you could possibly even imagine.

I wanna help you get curious to understand what it is that drives you, what motivates you, what it is that you need, what it is that you want. And I wanna be able to help you gather information so that you can make informed choices.

Over the coming episodes, we're gonna explore all sorts of different aspects of this experience. We're gonna talk about the guilt and the fear and the patterns that keep you stuck. We're gonna talk about life stages and transitions and what it means when work used to fit but it doesn't fit anymore. I'm gonna have some [00:28:03] fabulous episodes with guests who have changed roles or systems or jobs or careers so that you can get their perspective.

We're gonna talk about the different kinds of being stuck, burnout versus boredom versus n- not being aligned with who you are anymore. Because we're not all the same and you don't all need the same solutions. You are different humans. You're at different stages in your career. You have different motivations.

So we're gonna talk about a whole range of things. We are gonna talk about the questions that you are afraid to ask and the patterns that you can't see for yourself, and some of the mindsets and myths that keep you paralyzed. And eventually, but not today, eventually we're gonna talk about what comes after being stuck.

What comes after restlessness? What comes after burnout? Or in fact, what could [00:29:03] come before burnout to stop you getting to that point? I want you to be able to find ways to make sure that you make clear, aligned decisions to find work that actually fits you, your family, your life, so that you can live each day with more joy and more purpose.

But today is just about acknowledging the stuck, about naming it, about recognizing it, and if you're experiencing it, letting you know that you're not broken, you're not failing, you are enough. You're not a failure. We're just at a crossroads. And the one thing that I know about a crossroad is that it is uncomfortable, and the thing that I know about humans is we hate to be uncomfortable.

And we're gonna look at in subsequent episodes, dealing with the uncomfortable. [00:30:03] But I want these episodes to be really practical. I want you to walk away with clarity about what it is that you need to do next. Not next in your career, not in the next 10 years, but in the next 10 minutes. So clarity.

Clarity on where you might be heading, and then some actions that you can take pretty quickly to gain some momentum, and then energy to do things. No point you walking away with a very long to-do list of stuff to do that drains your energy and just adds to your already amazingly huge workload.

Here's what I want you to do. Absolutely nothing. I don't want you to do anything yet, and I know that feels really frustrating because if you're listening to this podcast, you are probably ready for [00:31:03]somebody to solve your problems. You want a solution, you want an answer, you wanna feel better right now.

But before we can make really good decisions about our career, about our job, about our life, we need to be honest about where we currently are.

So your only job right now Is to acknowledge what's true. Not what you think should be true, not what is true to other people, not what your husband or your mother thinks is true. What is actually true for you. And if you're someone who likes to journal, this is a really good place to start. Or you could take a voice note, get out your notes app, you could scribble it on a piece of paper.

So if you are multitasking, come back to me. If you're driving, make a little mental note. What is true? [00:32:03] Maybe it's, "I'm exhausted and I don't know how much longer I can do this." Maybe what's true for you is, "I'm actually bored and I need to feel challenged again." It's really possibly that I love parts of this job that I'm doing, and I hate other parts, and I don't know how to separate them.

Some of you might actually feel trapped and can't see any way forward. Or you might just be at a point in your life, in your career where something has shifted. Something just feels different, and you don't understand what or why. Scribble it down. Give it some thought. Whatever it is, just acknowledge it.

You don't have to fix it, and you don't have to decide anything right now. Tell yourself the truth about where you are right now, and understand that if you're writing this down in your journal, [00:33:03] that, this is very likely to bring up some big emotions. And in my coaching, when I ask people to acknowledge where they are right now, it is not unusual to have tears or to have anger or to feel blame.

They are all very valid emotions. And so sit with those if you need to, but just acknowledge where you are, because you cannot find your way out of the quagmire if you won't acknowledge that you're stuck in it.

In next episodes, we are probably gonna talk about something that might be holding you back from even exploring what you're experiencing. The fear that by actually acknowledging that you're struggling or you're stuck or you're restless means that somehow you are betraying education [00:34:03] or being ungrateful, or that in some way saying, "I need help," or, "I need something different," or, "I want to change," is proving that you're not cut out for this, and so not good enough.

So we're gonna talk about why in this podcast series, in this conversation that I'm gonna be having with you, it isn't about denigrating education or encouraging people to quit. I'm gonna say that over and over again. I've said it before. I really value educators and education, but there are gonna be times in your career where, where you are, either the current role, the current school, the current system, is not where you need to be.

So for now, I'm just reminding you again to sit with where you are at.

What are you grizzling about when you're talking to your bestie? [00:35:03] What are you worried about at 3:00 AM? If you were honest with yourself, what are the words coming up for you? Is it restlessness? Is it exhaustion? Is it confusion?

And I want you to know you are not in it alone. I'm here with you, and hundreds of other educators, possibly thousands, are also grappling with some of this stuckness. And stuckness doesn't last forever. This is not for always. I hope that by listening to this podcast and reading my book, Teach, Lead or , Leave, you are gonna have some very clear and accessible ways to get yourself unstuck.

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being honest with yourself, [00:36:03] and thank you for trusting me enough to listen to the end. I'm Jenny Cole. I'm the CEO of Positively Beaming and the author of Teach, Lead, or Leave, and I am looking forward to catching you in the next episode.