What do you do if your school administrator doesn’t fully understand your role and your expertise?
What if you have the information and knowledge they need to drive important decisions for your school? How can you get them to listen to your input?
If you’re a therapist, educator, or aspiring school leader, these questions may have popped into your head from time to time.
If that’s the case, it might feel like your boss (or maybe even your boss’s boss) has all the power.
But what if that wasn’t the case?
What if you could step into a leadership role NOW and be an advisor to those who are “technically” your superiors?
This is called “leading up”.
In episode 112 of the De Facto Leaders podcast, I invited Jethro Jones on to talk about how to be a leader, no matter what your job title says.
Jethro Jones, is a national award-winning former school leader, podcaster, and author of the books “How to be a Transformative Principal” and “SchoolX: How principals can design a transformative school experience for the people right in front of them!” .He is also the founder of the BE Podcast Network, the best educational podcast network out there. Jethro currently consults school leaders on strategies to help them save time, lead more effectively, and overcome their own weaknesses. Jethro has worked as a principal at all K-12 levels, including a prison school, a district coach, distance learning team lead, and English teacher.
In this conversation, he shares:
✅How to “lead up” to your school administrator when they need your input on programming decisions (even if they don’t realize it yet).
✅How to “lead out” to other people on your team, even if they’re resistant to changing their practices.
✅How to make a case to your school leader for more resources and support, even if it’s not in the budget.
You can listen to the entire episode here:
You can connect with Jethro Jones on LinkedIn here, and listen to the Transformative Principal Podcast or learn more about how to work with Jethro on his website here. You can also learn more about the BE podcast network for aspiring school leaders here.
You can take the quiz on how to level up in your career as an educator/leader here.
You can listen to the School AI podcast where we discuss AI, interdisciplinary units, and executive functioning featuring Dr. Karen here.
In this episode, I mentioned my free online training for K-12 therapists who want to offer social and academic support that’s evidence-based and neurodiversity-affirming. You can sign up for that free training here.