Stression is a fusion of the words ‘stress’ and ‘depression’. It involves job related stress that stretches physical, emotional and intellectual resources beyond capacity to the point where that work becomes unbearable. Principals know all too well that stression can be an unsavoury and unwanted feature of the job – it can rob the joy from life. Whilst stression can come from one prolonged event, more often it is from a suite of subtle stressors that grind against each other to wear away at a Principal’s internal mental well-being. Stression spawns from three main areas – self, leadership and society. It is important to understand each of these areas and to learn how they impact upon Principalship. Self-Induced Stressors Some stress is self-created and self-induced. ‘You don’t know what you don’t know’ and sometimes this can contribute to stress. Self-induced stressors require reflection and personal development to overcome. Two examples of stression from this area are: 1. Stressor: Thinking like a teacher when a Principal should think like a leader. Principals get promoted into Principalship from the classroom. Yet, being a good Principal is not about translating the technician mindset of a classroom teacher to the running of a whole school. This can reap a whole lot of unnecessary stress as it can present itself as micromanaging. Solution: Think like a leader. Work through people. Focus on improving the system not working in the system. Lead people, manage resources. Become strategic, future focused. Plan ahead. Listen, observe, discuss then act. Embrace and manage change. 2. Stressor: Trying to please everyone, all the time, with everything. In leadership it is not long before the 3Cs appear at the door – complaints, concerns and criticisms. Each wants their perceived needs met, now, instantly! Principals can find themselves bending this way, that way and every other way, like an Olympic gymnast to meet all these demands. This response is people pleasing, motivated out of a desire to be ‘liked’ believing that ‘liking’ equals ‘support’. It is natural and very understandable. Few Principals want to be hated. People pleasing can create an insatiable monster that demands more and more and more whilst giving back very little.
Solution: Learn the art of the graceful ‘No’. Saying ‘No’ to someone sets healthy boundaries that protect mental well-being. At a deeper level it is important to understand that leadership is less about liking and more about respecting. Respect is a deep value that comes with saying ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ in equal measure. Leadership Based Stressors There is stress that comes with taking on the mantle of Principal leadership. It is in the role. These stressors require in-school support structures. Two examples of stressors from this area include: 3. Stressor: Diverse multifaceted responsibilities. The expectations inherent within educational leadership are considerable. In any given day or week what a Principal does can be incredibly diverse. Whilst this can be stimulating and motivating it can also be stretching and frustrating. When things are going well it is fine, but the waters are not always smooth. The more ‘hats’ that a Principal wears the more fronts that can open up for conflict. Many Principals also have sizeable teaching functions. A Principal’s work does not go away when teaching a class, nor does teaching work go away when being a Principal. This diverse multifaceted stretching can swiftly ratchet up stress. Solution: Delegate, delineate, deputize. Whereever possible establish defined, delegated roles. Get the right people doing the right things. Try not to become the secretary, caretaker, plumber, photocopier fixer, ICT trouble shooter, electrician, social worker, bus driver etc. Whereever possible pay someone else to do that. It is important for a Principal to delineate what they will and will not do based on their strengths and weaknesses. That means admitting weaknesses – a thing that the wise and the strong do regularly. Then deputise through clear and shared procedures. There are times when staff are just looking for the authority to do something. Give them this in advance. This will stop the permission seeking door knocking. Clear deputized procedures encourage initiative and build trust. 4. Stressor: Staff. The very nature of leadership is to be a change agent journeying a group of people towards a common goal. This does not come without
David McKenzie is the principal of Edendale Primary School
challenges. Leading a mixture of staff with their different experiences, skills, knowledge, beliefs and protective silos is not easy. There can be all kinds of passive or active resistance. Every leader experiences this and these are stressful times. Principals can suffer work place fragging where isolating back stabbing comes thick and fast from employees around them. Leadership in these times is hard. Solution: Take a long term approach. Plan, strategize and prioritise. Point to your school’s vision. Use the appraisal process to drive change. Undertake whole staff professional development around growth mindsets and fixed mindsets. Work on a lighthouse approach where you trial in one part of the school, work out the kinks and then roll it out across the school using existing staff as coach mentors. Be the change you want to see. Stand tall. Remain resilience. Be alert. Grow where necessary. Societal Based Stressors There are stressors that come into schools that are the result of broad societal trends. These stressors require broader system and societal responses. Two examples of stression from this area include: 5. Stressor: Being seen as the ‘fix-it-station’ for society’s problems. Our society has many and varied problems that generate public debate because of genuine public concern. Media outlets pick up the issues and highlight them for everyone to see. Local and national politicians are then targeted for solutions. The government of the day then acts using the levers at its disposal which, when it comes to children, is the school system. Schools get tasked with fixing issues from childhood poverty to teen pregnancy, from early obesity to pre-criminal behaviour, from youth suicide rates to teenage unemployment. All this is added in, one at a time, out of genuine desire for a better nation. It steadily cranks up the range of problems schools are expected to solve. It is a difficult conundrum. Schools are full of caring and compassionate people who want to help. Well-meaning programmes with genuine intentions are taken up by dedicated staff on top of everything else they do. Schools are also the only places that all children attend making them the most logical place to exercise leverage. The compounding impact of this makes schools very complex places to lead and manage.
Solution: Realign community expectations. School attendance only makes up 14 per cent of a child’s year. Progressively the responsibility of parents, whānau and community has shifted into and onto the school despite the vast bulk of a child’s life – 86 per cent –residing outside of school under the control and influence of other significant adults. If there is no social partnership between home and school working on a child’s problems, then it creates an unhealthy relationship, distorted towards creating dependency upon the school and enabling corruptive behaviours to persist outside of the school, meaning the problem will continue to be the problem. Problemsolving-creep has systematized rescuing at the cost of self-responsibility. Are we brave enough to say that a school system cannot
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and should not do it all? Are our politicians brave enough to say that our schools are already doing their darndest to help? Are we brave enough to recalibrate society’s expectations saying that schools can only do a small portion of what is required? It took a generation to get to this point so it may take us a generation to realign expectations to a more healthy two-way relationship between society and the school. This rejigging would see genuine high functioning partnership become the norm. 6. Stressor: Diverse and fragmented society. As family structures diversify, parenting patterns shift and society changes, the results of these changes arrive in a school to be managed by Principals and classroom teachers. Schools, situated at the fulcrum of society, are doing their best to understand, adapt and respond to these changes. There can be seriously sad situations, with complex needs, requiring multiple interventions, from a range of providers. The solutions are not easy nor do they come quickly, the time and stress of such cases can be considerable. Solution: Rethink staffing formulas. A solution to this problem needs to be structural and system wide. To become proactive in dealing with the diversity of need Principals need a lowering in the classroom child-teacher ratios. Children with diverse and complex needs require intense teacher time and programme oversight. As
numbers increase in the classroom, stress compounds upon school leadership – smaller classes enable teacher time to be invested more swiftly, equitably and appropriately at the point of need. A welcome start would be rolling out the lower junior class size ratios across the first three years. From there the senior primary ratios can be progressively lowered. This, occurring over an affordable, predictable time period, across progressive governments would make a system wide improvement and incrementally reduce stression upon school leaders. Stression is a dark place that seldom gets acknowledged. It is a silent thief that can steal away vitality, resolve, energy and joy. It can feel overwhelming. It comes about through a range of stress areas including self-induced stressors, leadership stressors and societal stressors. Principals can get tested and stretched to breaking point. Being aware of stression is an important first step. It places the problem on the table for all to see. Shining light upon something that survives and grows in darkness, disempowers it. Collectively let us make a commitment to ensuring that Principalship is a sustainable, vitalizing, energizing, prospect for all those that aspire to educational leadership.
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