Why Two Teachers Can Do the Same Job (and One Burns Out): A Teach, Lead or Leave Episode

Episode Transcript

[00:01:03]

Hello, and welcome back to Positively Leading. 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 in my new book, Teach, Lead or Leave. In the previous episode, we introduced the career decision-making matrix, which is a framework that helps you understand where you are in your career based on your energy and your impact.

And if you listen to that episode, and I really encourage you to do so, if not, head back and find it, and if you did the homework, and if you honestly assessed which quadrant you're in, you've probably already made some discoveries.

Maybe you've realized that you're in the overwhelmed quadrant, high impact but running on empty. Maybe you're in the underutilized quadrant, [00:02:03] plenty of energy but not making the difference that you were hoping that you could make.

But the question here is why? Why does some work energize you while other work depletes you? Why can two teachers do exactly the same job and one thrives while another one burns out? The answer comes down to understanding what I call your energy sources, and there are three main ones that we are going to explore in subsequent episodes.

They are your strengths, what you're naturally wired to do and that you enjoy doing. Number two is your values, what matters most to you and what needs to be honored. And the third one is your working style, how you naturally prefer to operate. Today we're starting with strengths because [00:03:03]understanding your strengths is absolutely foundational to understanding why certain types of work can feel easy and energizing, while others feel hard and draining, even when you're capable of doing both.

So let's dive in. First of all, I need to make a really important distinction that many people miss. When I say strengths, most people immediately think of things that I am good at, and that is not at all what I mean, and this distinction is quite critical I'm gonna summarize it by saying skills are things that you have learned to do.

So you have learned how to enter student data. You have learned how to manage a classroom of 30 students. You have learned how to run a staff meeting. You have learned how to collect census data. You have learned how to do difficult conversations with parents. [00:04:03] These are all skills, really important skills, essential skills, but they may not be strengths.

A strength is something that actually energizes you. It's something you could do all day without getting tired. It's something that feels natural and easy, like writing in your dominant hand. It's the work that leaves you feeling fulfilled rather than depleted. It comes from the field of positive psychology, especially the work of Martin Seligman, and Chris Peterson and the VIA Character Strengths research, as well as things like CliftonStrengths work from Gallup.

And the key insight from within this research is when you use a strength, you feel energized. Time flies, you're engaged, you finish feeling satisfied, even if the work is challenging. But when you're using a skill that's not a strength, you can do it, and maybe you can even do it well, but it takes effort.

It requires conscious thought. It drains [00:05:03] your battery rather than charging it. And here's the thing that many educators don't realize. You can be excellent at something that drains you. Let me give you an example from my days as a principal. I was excellent at crisis management. I developed that skill very early in leadership.

I taught and worked in special schools, and there was lots of crisis. I could stay calm under pressure. I could make really quick decisions with incomplete information. I could navigate complex political situations. I could manage multiple stakeholders with competing needs. It was absolutely a skill I had, but it was not a strength.

Every time I had to manage a crisis, it drained me. I could do it. I could do it really well. By the end, I was exhausted. Even if I had multiple crises a week, I could do it, but by the end of the week, it felt like there was absolutely nothing left. On the other hand, [00:06:03] I have a strength around sort of big picture thinking and systems design.

I love seeing the big picture. I love identifying patterns. I love creating frameworks and systems and ways of working. When I got to do that as a principal, when I was working on school improvement, or designing professional learning, or thinking strategically about how to structure teams, I could do that for hours, and in the end I felt energized, fulfilled, like, yes, this is exactly what I need to be doing.

Same person, same job, completely different energy outcomes depending on whether I was using a skill or a strength. In a previous podcast, I think in this series, I talk about asking audiences in my workshops about who can use Excel, the spreadsheet program. And I say, "You don't need to use it well.

Put your hand up if you can use Excel." And about 80% of the people in the room put their hand up. And then I said, "Who can [00:07:03] use it to the point where you can sort some data and maybe create some graphs?" And, you know, 50% of the people had their hand up. And then I said, "Who absolutely loves using Excel spreadsheets?

Like you literally use it for your meal prep and your travel planning at home. You love to color code. You can do macros, and you can make it do amazing things." And in the room, there are about three people. So a skill is something we can do, a talent is something we can do well, and a strength is something we can do well, we do often, and we get joy out of doing it.

So even though 80% of people in that room could use Excel, there was only three people who got absolute joy out of doing it. And so you might be thinking, "Okay, Jen, this is a nice theory, but what does it actually matter? We've all got jobs to do and [00:08:03] so forth, and, you know, is this just feel-good psychology?"

But the research is actually really compelling, and it comes from several different fields; positive psych, organizational psychology, performance psychology. The Gallup research on employee engagement who found, has found that people use their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged in your work, in their work, three times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life, and less likely to experience worry, anger, or sadness.

So you want to be engaged and fulfilled, and you want the people around you to feel it, too. Using your strengths is more likely for this to happen. The VIA Institute research says that people using their strengths, associate it with higher levels of wellbeing and life satisfaction, lower levels of stress and depression, greater resilience, more authentic living.

 Alex Linley and colleagues found that people who use their strengths are more [00:09:03] confident, they achieve their goals more effectively, and they have higher levels of wellbeing. They're more resilient during difficult times. And here's a really interesting part from organizational psychology. The research shows that focusing on developing your strengths is more effective than focusing on fixing your weaknesses.

And as human beings, we are somewhat obsessed with fixing the parts of us that are broken. Instead, org psych says focus on what are already strengths and put that to work more often, which goes against just about everything we've been taught in education. We've been conditioned to identify our weaknesses and work on them to get better at the things we're not good at, but the research suggests that's actually backwards.

You'll get better outcomes both in terms of performance and wellbeing if you focus on identifying and developing your strengths, and then finding ways to manage around your weaknesses. So we don't ignore them completely. If you [00:10:03] have a weakness that's genuinely holding you back or causing you problems, you need to address it enough so that it's not getting in your way.

But you shouldn't spend all of your development energy trying to become good at things that will never be your strengths. I will never love Excel. I could become very good at it, but it would still always drain my energy. I'd rather be much better at finding creative solutions than data analysis.

And so my creative solution might be to employ somebody to do the data analysis for me. Radical, I know.

In terms of career design, it means that you should try and structure your work so you are using your strengths as much as possible, rather than try and force yourself to be good at things that will always drain you. So how do you actually identify your strengths, and how do you distinguish [00:11:03]between something that you're good at, a skill, and something that energizes you, a strength?

Here's the key test, and it comes from Positive Psych. When you use a strength, you'll feel more energized at the end than you did at the beginning. Not less tired, just more energized, which might sound a bit weird, but have a think about it. Have you ever worked really hard on something that you loved and finished feeling satisfied and fulfilled even though you were tired?

So if you're a gardener, have you ever worked a really long day in the garden, and at the end you felt absolutely fulfilled by what you'd done? Or if you worked really long and hard on a piece of work, a board report or an annual report, and even though it took a lot of time and a lot of effort, you were really pleased with the outcome?

That's because you were putting your strengths to work. Compare [00:12:03] that to working really hard on something you had to do and finishing feeling depleted and resentful and slightly pissed off, even if you did a really good job. That's a skill without the strength behind it. So let me give you some questions that might help you identify your strengths.

And if you're new here, I'm a great one for journals, so pull out a piece of paper. Pull out a journal. Feel free to push pause on this podcast to write the answers down. If you're driving or walking, you might, have to just keep the answers in your head, but they are worthwhile giving some thought to, because these are the things that are gonna give you energy at work.

And God damn it, who doesn't need more of that? Question number one: What activities make you feel like you lose track of time? This is the flow state that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi researched. And [00:13:03] it's when you're so engaged that you lose awareness of time passing. So even in your work, what are those things where time just disappears?

For me, that's literally getting creative. I've just batch recorded a whole lot of podcasts. I looked at my watch. I'm due out of here at 4:00, and it's 3:30, and I've got plenty more that I could say. But what is it for you? Is it teaching reading? Is it, um, mentoring another staff member? What is it that you're doing and you look up and you realize that hours have passed?

Question two: what do you find yourself volunteering for even when you're busy? When something is a strength, you want to do it. Even when you don't have time, you'll make time for it. I know teachers who will volunteer to lead professional learning sessions even when they're swamped because they love that work.[00:14:03]

That's a strength showing up. I know teachers who will, stay back and work with kids who are struggling because that's a strength and they love it. Is there something you consistently volunteer for? Question number three: what could you do all day without getting tired? Now, I know you don't have the opportunity to do this, but what might that be?

So this is the critical test, not what is easy. Strengths don't mean that you don't have to put in effort, but what kind of effort leaves you feeling energized rather than depleted? If someone said to you, "You're gonna spend the entire day doing X," what would you think? "Yes, that sounds amazing." Versus, "Oh, God.

What? Sounds exhausting." Let me give you an example. I recently ran a whole [00:15:03] day workshop on a school development day for a group of teachers. I had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to get on an airplane, turn up, present professional learning. I wasn't able to, leave, fly out until the following day. But this staff were fantastic, and the professional learning I had designed was good, but it was engaging, and these people had engaged.

They laughed at my jokes. They were doing all the right things, and about 1:00 somebody said to me... No, it was probably at lunchtime. They said, "How much coffee do you drink for that level of energy?" And I said, "Oh, no, this gives me energy. I don't need coffee on days like this because this work is energy-giving."

For many of you, that day would sound like hell. Energy-sapping. So what is it that you could do all day, and [00:16:03] under what conditions? Question number four is actually easier to answer than some of the others, and that is, what do people consistently come to you for? I talk about this as your superpower. Other people can see your strengths before you do because for us, our strengths just feel natural.

They feel easy. We've always done them. Doesn't everyone find this easy? No, they don't. That's your strength showing up. What do colleagues consistently ask you for? Do they ask for your planning? Do they ask for you to listen? Do they ask for your advice on how to deal with, parents, building relationships with kids?

 What do they come to you for? Do they come to you to unjam the photocopier? What's that about? And if you are the only person who can unjam the photocopier, is that a skill or is a strength? Does it give you energy to do those kinds of IT jobs, or does it drain your [00:17:03] energy? Question number five.

What feels easy to you but hard for others? Related to the previous questions, strength often doesn't feel like a big deal to us. They just feel natural. Doesn't everybody love color-coding their informational systems? No. Doesn't everyone find it easy to build relationships with difficult students? No.

Doesn't everybody do empathy and kindness? No. What feels effortless to you might be genuinely difficult to others. Question six. What were you doing the last time you felt really satisfied with your work? Think about a time when you finished something and thought, "Yes, that felt right," or, "Yes, that was an awesome lesson," or, "Yes, that's exactly what I was supposed to be doing."

What were you actually doing? What abilities or capabilities or capacities were you [00:18:03] using? Let me give you some examples of common strengths I see in educators. As I go through, notice which ones resonate for you. And again, if you've got your journal out, push pause and record your responses. So here are some common educator strengths.

Strategic thinking. Seeing the big picture. A classroom teacher with 30 bodies is really good at taking complex information and organizing it into systems that make sense, and we're often thinking several steps ahead. Relationship building. Most of these are pretty obvious, so I'm not going to explain them.

But, some of us thrive on connecting with people and building trust. How do you do that? And that might show up as pastoral care or mentoring or building classroom communities, working with challenging students, working with families. Teachers have the strengths of problem-solving. We think about and solve lots of problems every single day.

Everything from [00:19:03] curriculum problems, behavior problems, organizational problems. and I'm not talking problem in the negative, but our challenges that are put in front of a teacher every day demand really good problem-solving skills. Learning. We are naturally curious. We understand how people learn. We love acquiring new language.

 We're often energized by being a perpetual student. We try new pedagogies. We attend PL, we do research, and we refine our craft. Another strength is developing others. Most educators are energized by other people's a-ha moments and their progress. Seeing potential in others, mentoring, coaching, differentiating for students, creating growth opportunities for others.

Another strength, creating and designing. We create and design, lessons, [00:20:03] units of work, scope and sequences, whole school planning. We design and then bring that to life. Organizing and systematizing. Communication. Empathy and support. Achievement. Again, these are just some of the strengths that some educators have, and these are some of the very transferable skills, for want of a better word, but your strengths, into other industries.

So how we can put our strengths to work, particularly in relation to the impact and energy matrix, can be a little bit complex. But let's think about Sarah, the teacher. She's in overwhelmed. She has some really core strengths of creativity and relationships, and she loves designing innovative learning experiences and connecting with students.

But she was spending a lot of time on data analysis and compliance, paperwork, and standardized [00:21:03] assessments. Maybe she had the role of literacy coordinator, and she was no longer in the classroom. Instead, she was collecting data and analyzed it, and she was actually getting drained. No wonder she was exhausted.

She was still having impact, both on perhaps the students she taught, but also the teachers that she worked with. But the work she was doing wasn't aligned with her strengths. We had a look at how she could redesign her role to spend more time on creative design and relationship building and creating or at least minimizing some of that data work.

Then I had another client whose core strengths were learning and developing others. She was a veteran teacher. She loved acquiring new knowledge, and she loved helping others grow. But after a long time in education, she kind of had nothing left to learn, and she wasn't actually in a mentoring or in a leadership capacity.

So all of her strengths were just gathering [00:22:03] dust, and she was slipping towards low energy and low impact 'cause she just wasn't using those strengths. So her pathway was either to take on mentoring responsibilities or move into an instructional coaching role or find some other way to use her strengths around learning and development.

So see how this works? Understanding your strengths helps you diagnose why you're in a particular quadrant, but also helps you understand what needs to change. Before we finish, I wanna give you one important warning, and this comes from the psychology research, and that is there's a sweet spot. If we overuse or underuse our strengths, they stop being strengths, and they start being weaknesses.

And they are often referred to as your shadow side. So one of my [00:23:03] strengths is humor. I'm able to use humor positively in my workshops. I can tell a joke and I can put people at ease and I can make people laugh and it can be fun. But if I overuse my strength of humor, I'm the person telling very inappropriate jokes in public or I tell a joke that, alienates a group or someone finds offensive.

That's overusing it. If I'm underusing it, it means that I get all serious and scholarly and I'm not as engaging. So if you've got a real strength of empathy, using empathy just at the right level means that you can connect well with people. But too empathetic and we slip into sort of toxic positivity space or over-caring.

Organizing is a strength, but if you are paranoid [00:24:03] about having everything in the right place and you've become a perfectionist, that is overusing your skill of organization and you're likely to struggle when things don't go to plan.

So here is your homework for the next episode. Understanding your strengths doesn't automatically solve everything, but it does give you some critical information about what needs to change. If you're in the high energy, high impact quadrant, you're probably using your strengths already. If you're underutilized, high energy, low impact, you might be using your strengths, but they're not being applied to work that creates the impact that you care about, and you need to find ways to direct your strengths towards more meaningful outcomes.

If you're overwhelmed, meaning low energy, high impact, you're probably using a lot of skills, but they're not necessarily strengths. So you're capable [00:25:03] of having impact, but the work is draining you because it doesn't align with your strengths. So just, you know, keep a note of, am I using skills or am I using strengths?

And disengaged, low energy, low impact, your strengths are likely to be gathering dust, and you're not using them regularly, and that's a big part of why you have no energy and that you don't feel like you're making a difference.

What I'd like for you to do, and it is not my job to give you homework, but I'm going to anyway, I want you to spend some time this week really thinking about your strengths. Go back through the questions that I asked and journal, and identify three to five core strengths, the things that really energize you when you do them.

And look at your typical week and say to yourself, "How much of my time am I actually spending using those strengths?" If it's less than half of your time, that's probably a big part of why you're feeling drained. And in subsequent episodes, we're gonna talk about the [00:26:03] second energy source, your working style.

Because even if you're using your strengths, if you're working in a style that doesn't suit you, you will feel friction and depletion. That was a lot. Thank you for sticking it out. Thank you for being here and doing this really important reflective work. Understanding your strengths is such a foundational piece of figuring out what kind of work will actually sustain you long term.

If you wanna go deeper into this, there are some really great free assessments available, and I would recommend that you start with the VIA Character Strengths, viacharacter.org, and I'll link those in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here. I am Jenny Cole, and I will see you in the next episode.