As I write this, we are getting ready to enter into spring.  This can be a very stressful time for school leaders.  My most stressful times as a principal, however, were not seasonal, but situational. They were when I was supporting teachers in extreme student behavior situations.  In my first two years we had several students who exhibited severe behavioral outbursts daily. These were situations that did not have an easy fix and there weren’t systems, processes, nor the supports to handle those situations.

I realize now that part of the stress I felt was because I would enter into these situations with some unconscious or conscious notions that my job was to fix them.  In my mind, I had to remove barriers to learning for the student involved in the behavior and the other students in the classroom.  With that as my mindset, when I wasn’t able to fix the behaviors, I felt like a failure.  

Eventually, with the help of a wonderful therapist, I realized that it wasn’t the situation that caused my stress—it was what I thought about the situation.  I also learned that I could change what I thought, and by doing that, I wouldn’t be utterly defeated by an outcome I couldn’t control. The one thing I could control is how I, as the leader, showed up. 

Later, I realized that having a personal mission statement can help you stay focused on what you can control.   Your mission is the action.  It’s gets at the higher purpose for your actions.  According to an anonymous source on Linked In, your mission is your reason for being—your core purpose as a leader. It is what you do, how you do it, and why you do it.  While your vision is what you’re projecting into the future, your mission is all about your behavior now, it’s how you need act now to stay in line with your purpose.  It’s the daily actions you intentionally take to help you be the leader you strive to be.  Your vision is how you want to end up as a leader and the mission is how you get there.

When you’re thrown into a stressful situation and you haven’t laid this groundwork—if you are not thinking about how you want to show up so that you can act according to your purpose—you might be (like me) reacting instead of responding, and then later feeling disappointed with the outcome.  I just wanted to fix the situation.  When I couldn’t fix it, I felt like a failure.  

A year later, when I was in a leadership cohort, we spent time developing our mission statements. This is what I came up with:  My mission is to support a collaborative environment of continuous growth and improvement where teachers want to teach and students want to learn.  

So let’s say I had gone into a behavior situation with a different mindset.  What if I focused on ways to help the teacher feel supported just like my mission statement reads?  Perhaps, we would both foucs on collaborating to improve this child’s situation and that of the class. Perhaps, if that was our collective focus, we both would have had more peace instead of stress.   

Once you have a clear purpose or mission you can ask yourself questions in tough situations where you need to show positive leadership, but might not have a solution: How can I stay on mission? How can I act away that is congruent to my mission?

Once I started reframing stressful situations as opportunities to do my best as a leader, supporting my teachers, not only did I provide better leadership and support, but I also left those situations more resilient and less beaten down and stressed.  Changing your focus and being intentional about staying on mission helps you choose to concentrate on those aspects of school leadership that you can do something about, instead of lamenting and beating yourself up about the things you cannot.

Download your step-by-step guide and template for writing your mission statement here.   I also walk you through in Episode 2 of Season 2 in my Imagine Believe Achieve Podcast.