What's the Story You're Telling Yourself?

I was standing in front of a staff meeting, silently doing the math.

My staff had been teaching 2-3x as long as me.

Heck, some of them had been alive twice as long as I had.

I had waaay less experience than most of them.

Awkward.

So I did what a lot of new leaders do in that moment: I started an internal monologue, narrating a made-up story about myself.

Every question I asked myself was about whether I'd earned the right to lead them.

What do I know that they don't already know better?

Who am I to tell a teacher with twenty years in the classroom how to run things?

I knew it was self-doubt run rampant. And I knew it was dangerous.

I was letting my internal dialogue get the better of me.

Impostor syndrome sometimes masquerades as self-awareness.

It feels like you’re seeing yourself clearly: I'm in over my head, I don't have what this staff needs, and someone's going to notice.

You trust that voice because it sounds rational.

So instead of arguing the point, you just start shrinking to match the version you’ve invented.

But the story isn’t true, even if it’s convincing.

If the story sounds like I don't belong here, the truth is closer to: I'm leading people with more classroom experience than me. That's uncomfortable, but uncomfortable isn't the same as unqualified.

Those are two different sentences.

I just hadn't learned how to tell them apart yet.

What I learned as I gained experience is that the more visible you become through your role in leadership, the louder that voice becomes.

The more confident I became as a leader, the more I was willing to Do School Different and push back on things that weren't working.

I learned to stand my ground.

And the more I did that, the more that voice showed up, chirping in my ear that I hadn’t earned it yet.

When you put yourself out there, that visibility raises the stakes of being "found out."

The Ruckus Maker who feels this the most is usually the one doing something radical and exciting.

That voice might be evidence you’re doing something right.

The voice still makes an appearance.

The work is learning to continue to take bold action, and not let self-doubt influence the decisions.

That's the discipline of Selfmentorship.

You can't out-source the learning.

You learn to trust your own judgment.

Nobody else can do that for you.

But you also don't have to pretend the doubt isn't there, or wait for it to dissipate before you act.

You act anyway, and relegate self-doubt to the passenger seat.

If I could go back and give my younger self some advice, I’d say you're not going to think your way out of this one alone at your desk.

That story is too convincing when you're on your own, in your head.

You can quiet it by yourself eventually, but it takes longer, and you'll spend a lot more nights doubting yourself than you need to.

What shrinks the voice is hearing other Ruckus Makers tell the exact same stories:

It’s just evidence that this is what leadership looks like when you’re on the way up.

That's what the Mastermind is, at its core, a room full of people who've stood exactly where you're standing.

Let us help you tease out what is actually true for you.

👉 Join the Mastermind: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/mastermind/

You've had the hard conversation. Now what?

Once an important meeting reaches a resolution, the work needs to "Move to Action."

In Crucial Conversations, Joseph Grenny and his co-authors argue that dialogue without action is just a nice conversation nobody remembers, whether it’s PD, a staff meeting, or an actual difficult conversation.

They lay out three strategies for closure:

First, recap the conversation. Briefly summarize what was discussed and decided, so everyone is leaving with the same understanding.

Second, assign clear ownership. Who is doing what, by when, and what is actually going to change as a result of this commitment. Vague commitments ("we'll work on it") dilute the importance of the dialogue, and people leave the room without a concrete picture of what they're responsible for.

Third, build in a follow-up checkpoint. Book a specific time to revisit progress, and keep the agreement alive.

Together, these three actions have the potential to turn a good meeting into reliable results.