The Art of Effective Communication and Leadership with Dr. Stephanie Duguid

0:00 As a leader, you're going to work with so many different people, and if you don't know how to communicate and how to adjust the way you communicate to your different audiences, you're not going to be successful. Welcome to the Leader of Learning Podcast. I'm your host, doctor Dan Krinis, and this is where I help educators grow their impact as instructional leaders because my research and leadership experiences have led me to understand that someone like you, regardless of your role or your title, can have a tremendous impact on your organization. I chat with inspiring guests who are truly making an impact as instructional leaders. Whether this is your first time listening or you come back for more, I hope you've subscribed to this show on your preferred podcast app so you don't miss any of the great episodes, topics, or guests. Anyway, I'm so glad you've tuned in. Now let's get started. Welcome back to another episode of The Leader of Learning podcast. In this episode, we're joined by doctor Stephanie do Good, a renowned expert in educational leadership and inspiration for professional women everywhere.

1:18 As the founder of do Good Leadership, Doctor Stephanie has carved a niche in fostering positive educational environments and championing women in leadership roles through her personal anecdotes and profound insights. We'll explore the themes of overcoming imposter syndrome, the power of effective communication, and the essential steps to becoming a transformative leader. So we're gonna jump right in after these messages is my interview with doctor Stephanie do Good. All right, Leader of Learning, Welcome back, another exciting episode with a great guest. Doctor Stephanie do Good is an expert in educational leadership. So right up, my Aali and I know that's what you enjoy listen into. Also, she's an international best selling author and a recognized leader among professional women. She's the owner and founder of do Good Leadership Go figure, with over one hundred conference invitations and numerous appearances at colleges and universities. Doctor Stephanie is a renowned speaker known for her expertise in positive educational leadership and effective communication. Furthermore, she is a consistent advisor to educational leadership programs, leveraging her background as a former chief academic officer and state educational leader. Her educational contributions have earned her accolades, including the Excellence Award from the National Institute of Staff and Organizational Development. Doctor Stephanie, Welcome to the Leader of Learning podcast.

2:46 I appreciate it. I know that when we connected and I saw all the commonalities that we have in the content that we create and the messages that we love to spread, I knew that it'd be exciting to get you on here. Are so welcome, and if you could, if there's anything I missed in that introduction, please let us know a little bit more about who you are, where you are, and what you do. Oh, of course, thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. I always love sharing learning and the love of learning with others. So I am doctor Stephanie dugid. I'm originally from Houston, Texas via Phoenix, Arizona, and now I live in a small town called westn Mississippi, which is about two thousand folks, and so I just love where I am because it is, you know, such a community of individuals, and I think that being a Leader of Learning, that's that's exactly what it is. It's finding your own community. And even though we are not in the same city, or same state. You know, we found some commonalities between our connections and that's how we're here today. So it's just like having a small town through the digital age, right, So let's start with your you're speaking when you are speaking to full first of all, who are they? And if you could just kind of take us through a little bit of the message that you provide there when it comes to leadership and I guess empowerment, you know, take us through that absolutely. You know, I've been speaking for many years in different platforms. The majority of it has been to educational leaders, educators themselves,

4:20 administrators, but more recently I left the college where I was working to focus on empowering others. And one of my main areas is empowering women in educational leadership because that is an area where you know you and I talked about it briefly before this, that you need more confidence and courage, but also that sneaky imposter syndrome that tends to set in. And so that's one of my main areas. And part of that came from my mom, who was a very amazing educator in a Texas high school for forty years and she was just able to connect with people, and I watched her as I was growing up about how she could communicate, how she could connect, and I was just enthralled with how she could do that. And she was really my mentor and everything that I did. But unfortunately, when I was twenty seven, she died in a car accident, and so my mentor was all of a sudden gone. And I determined that I didn't want to find some of the mentors that were out there, you know, like the Tony Robbins and you know, and those although they're amazing, they're very masculine for me, and I really wanted to have that feminine guide, and so I did a lot of professional development and reflection and introspection and I decided to you know, figure it all out of my own, but I didn't want other women to have to go through that themselves. And so that's where my speaking came in, is that I am now a mentor to a lot of women and help guide them along the way to gain that confidence, that courage, and you know, offset that imposter syndrome so they can take those steps into those leadership roles.

5:51 So my main keynote that I do is called Decide, Discovered, Defy, and it's really all about exponentially elevating the packed in leadership. And so if you think about those three terms, it's decide. You know, you have to be so uncomfortable with your situation that you're going to make a decision that you're going to make a change, and so that's where the decide comes in. Then at that point, you're like, all right, if I'm going to make a change, now I have to really do some of that growth, that reflection, that introspection. I'm discovering who I am and who I want to be. And then the defy is when you're putting all of this into action and you're stepping into that new role and you have the posture and you have the voice and you're filling that space. And so that's the main speech that I tend to do. But others always include communication or effective communication, positive conflict resolution, mindset, all of those pieces. Positive leadership is another big one, and it's all around ways that you can connect and empower one another. It's not in an aggressive format. It's not I deserve to be this because of whatever reason it is. I'm really connecting with people and we work well together. We find each other's strengths and how can we grow and be successful. Yeah, first of all, sorry to hear about your mom. I know it was a long time ago, but I am curious, especially given your your your mission and your impact on empowering women in leadership. You said you you did look up to your mom as a as

7:25 a mentor, a female mentor leader. I'm wondering when, when you, unfortunately did not have her anymore, who else did you look to? Who else did you look up to? Well, it's and people might think that I'm crazy when I say this, but it was still my mom. I mean, even though she was gone, She's the one that I always thought about, you know when when somebody passes, And I felt this myself. When somebody passes, you know, I remember the good things. And she was kind of my idol. So I would I would think about how she did things. I would think about how she would communicate. And so I was a when she passed away. It was my third day of my first teaching job, and so she knew that I was going into teaching, but she didn't know the expent of it. And so let me let me kind of give you a little bit more of a backstory on Mom. I don't know if you've ever heard of the term a welcome wagon lady. So in Shiryland, Texas, where I was raised, she was the welcome wagon lady, and so that was the one that had to meet all the new people in town, you know, give them some great things, and that she was the communicator with them. And when she died. She died on August twenty third, two thousand and one, which was just before nine to eleven.

8:31 And so when nine to eleven happened, I finally realized why Mom had to go. And my way of dealing with her is that she had to be the welcome wagon woman in heaven for everybody coming from nine to eleven. And so I felt that she was still doing what she always did, and I just everything that I did, I would always go, all right, Mom, you know, is this where you want me to be? Or am I doing the right thing? And so I would I would talk to her more or less and just get these these feelings and really feel like she was still talking to me because I didn't have anybody else that I would look to when I was that young and that new I had been married about three years, so my husband was amazing. My dad was still around, so of course, you know, I look to my dad and my family, but beyond that, it's really it's still always been my mom, and still a lot of what I do is because of her and her influence. Yeah, you mentioned the three terms that make up a big part of your speaking and your keynote, but you've also mentioned the term communication quite a bit already in the first seven and a half to eight minutes of this conversation, and so I wanted to dive into that a little bit. You know, I speak a lot about leadership and really that anyone can be a leader, regardless of your role or your title. So I talk about building trust and how communication is a big part of that. As a matter of fact, shameless plug, I have a free course called Unlocking your Leadership Potential, and it was literally all built around this idea of building trust and the dos and don'ts

10:07 and so so much of what to do and what not to do when it comes to leadership is around communication and that aspect of relationship building as well. And so, what is it, you know, specific to women or not, what is it that you really want to get across when it comes to how to leverage those communications skills and strategies in that leadership realm. You knows, as a leader, you're going to work with so many different people, and if you don't know how to communicate and how to adjust the way you communicate to your different audiences, you're not going to be successful, you know, as an educational leader. And as you mentioned, you don't have to have a title to be a leader, and even some leaders with titles aren't leaders. You know. It's the way that you work with one another and treat one another. So as an educational leader, I had to work all the way from my board, all the way down to the students, to the maintenance staff, to the legislators, to parents to grandparents, and you have to be able to change your message every time that you do that.

11:11 So one of the biggest things that I do is I encourage everyone to learn their communication personality, believe it or not. And so there are some questions that describe you, and the one that you resonate with the most tends to lend you to identify what kind of personality you are. Are you the lion so you're very dominant? Are you an otter or a beaver or a Golden retriever, and the golden retriever is the friendly you know, doesn't like the rules and wants to make everybody happy. So if you figure out how you communicate, and then you can kind of figure out who the person is that you're communicating with, what animal they are, you can figure out how your message is going to be a little bit better and a little bit more tailored.

11:54 Because if you get two people that are exactly the same in a room, they might have some challenges with the way that they communicate. They're probably going to be on target with their goals, but how they communicate they both want to be dominant, whereas if you get two Golden Retrievers in there, you're not gonna get anything done. They're going to want to talk about the weekend and the plan is for next year, and you know all these other things. It's the fun the fund group. So that is one big thing is figuring out what your personality is with your communication. The second piece is realizing and we always talk about verbal and nonverbal. You know, verbal is seven percent of communication and nonverbal as all the rest, but people forget that when you're texting or emailing that's only seven percent. You're losing the body language, you're losing, the facial expressions, the voice intonation, everything else you're losing. And at the same time, even when you text or you message somebody, how many times do you really understand what is being said? That breaks down that message? Even more so, as we're talking to these leaders, it is let's not only folks on the digital messaging. Let's get to know your folks in person. You know, have those walk around the office so that you get to know who they are, learn about their family, get to know who who they are whenever they're not at work, you know, spend some time outside of the four walls of your office or your institution, Because when you know somebody as a person, then you're going to understand how they communicate best, what messages they understand, If they're having some challenges,

13:28 they're going to be more likely to speak with you about them. And so it's all about that relationship building, but learning the communication process as you go along. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better podcast Network. Better Today, Better Tomorrow and a podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at www dot Teach Better Podcastnetwork dot com. Now let's get back to the episode. I love so much of what you said, and I'm going to pull a few things out, and it's not to take away from the entire message, but it's just a couple of things really stood out to me. First, you said something about understanding how to change and adapt your message according to who you're dealing with, who's in front of you, and what their communication personality is like. And you know, a lot of my audience or educators, and some of them are still in the classroom, And it's the same thing with students, right. We call that personalized learning or differentiated instruction. It's understanding and tapping into the unique ways that students learn and learn best. And we used to call it learning styles. Now it's more like universal design for learning. But it's all the same thing, you know, understanding who you're working with and how to really get the most out of them. So I really love that you said that, and it also reminded me when you were talking about personality in community, you know, your communication personality. When I started getting more into educational leadership and when I became a full time instructional coach, I took a course that was kind of my first

15:01 introduction to the term the growth mindset, and it was discussing basically placing people into like four buckets according to really how much of a growth mindset they had, and it really made me think about how I needed to approach people given their either you know, willingness or their reluctance to change and to grow. And that has served me so well over the years in terms of, you know, coaching teachers and working with them and understanding that sometimes changes is harder for some than others, and but really understanding who I'm dealing with. I've thought less about the communication part of it, but it is that's something that I've tried to really keep in mind too. You know, as I go, I was wondering, actually speaking of the personality, you know, communication personalities is their way for people to kind of find out their communication personality.

16:00 There is and you reflect on what kind of Oh sure, yeah, I mean there's all kinds of little surveys and things that are out there, and I can't give you the specific name of it. I wish I could, but I don't have it in front of me, But there are things about your communication personality if you put it out there, then there's going to be some things that might be different animals, or it might be different adjectives or you know, descriptors. But it's really on a grid axis if you think about an X Y axis as if you're in a math class again, and I hope nobody has any you know, any stress that really just builds up when you think about that. But if you have, you know, if you're introverted versus extroverted, or if you are you know, a thinker versus a feeler. So those logical analytical and then those touch touchy feeling types.

16:45 So if you put those on a grid and figure out where you are, that's going to lend yourself to understand what grid you're going to be in. But if you just look up communication personalities and then you put lion, beaver, otter and golden retriever, I'm sure that you could find it because there's all kinds of assessments about it. Okay, we'll do I'll do that. You know, I will tell the listeners right now too, because we're recording this a few weeks ahead of time. Between now and the time this episode comes out, I'll do some research and my hope is that in the show notes for this episode, so listeners, you can go to the description of the episode and I'll have link in there, but I can send it to you. I can send it to you so that you have it. Yep, we'll link that in the show notes and our listeners can go and find out what animal they are when it comes to their communication personality. I love that. That's really cool. I'm definitely gonna look into that myself. Now.

17:38 One of the things that we talked a little bit about on the recording so far, but a little bit more even before we hit record, was the idea of imposter syndrome. And I think you brought that up again because it pertains to specifically women that is your target audience, but you know in general as well, with a lot of people who are looking to get into leadership, or maybe when they first get into leadership, and they kind of have this feeling of like why me, why am I here? You know, why am I an expert? But I was wondering, like, when you are speaking or when you are coaching and consulting with let's say women specifically, what are some ways that they can combat that feeling of that they're not enough or they're not enough of an expert, or they can't compete with the men in the in the same field. You know, whatever feelings contribute to that imposter syndrome, how can they really get around that? You know, there are a lot of strategies, and every person has to find their own strategy as to how they're going to overcome that. But first and foremost is whenever you're in education, you know, we are so great at focusing on the policies and procedures, you know, making sure that we onboard people completely forget about the person themselves. So we are so great at saying, okay, do this, do this, do this, and oh wow, you're great at that. Let me put you in this leadership position with no leadership training and see how you do. So that is the first challenge, is

19:11 that a lot of times we are thrown and when I say We'm using that loosely, it could be men, women, I mean, old, young, It doesn't matter. Whenever we are put into a position like that, you often wonder, oh my gosh, am I prepared for this? I have no training? How am I going to do this? So right away you're wondering, how did I get in this? Position, and how am I going to be successful? So right there at starting. So one of the best strategies that I've heard, and I just heard this recently and it came out of a book by Jen Gottlieb called Be Seen, and it was just released not too long ago. But her strategy is, whenever you are having that feeling, you know, get a piece of paper out, write down the amazing things that you've done in your life. It could be that you raise two great kids. It could be that you know you made it to all your daughter's days. It could be that you know you have a podcast, it could be that you created these online courses, whatever it is.

20:07 Write down this list of your amazingness, and then read it out loud as if you're talking about somebody else. And when you read that, you're like, oh my gosh, that person's pretty cool, and then you realize it's yourself. You know, you have done some amazing things in your life. You know, own it. Make sure that you're your authentic self and to believe in yourself. And whenever you have those moments of I don't know if I belong here, look at all that you've done, read that list, post it close, to your desk space or someplace where you go if you have these thoughts and refer to it, because then you go, you know what, I know how to do this. I can do this, and you start to get a little bit more confidence. Now at the same time, whenever you're in a position and a lot of individuals they say, oh, I'm going to go in and I'm going to change all these things and I'm going to do all these things, and you're setting yourself up for failure if you try to do too much at the beginning. So I always encourage folks, you know, find one small thing, feel that success.

21:11 Do one more thing, feel that success, and as you build a little bit at a time, you're going to realize that your confidence is building, your courage is building, and you're being successful at that opportunity. That's really cool advice. I appreciate that very much, and again not just for women, but for everyone. You know. And some of that question and part of the conversation stem from the fact that it was me who brought up that I face imposter syndrome quite a bit, so I really appreciate that. Now. I have to admit also that while we were speaking, I was looking you up on Amazon because I know you're an author, and I'm seeing, unless there are lots of doctor Stephanie do Goods out there, I'm seeing some kind of diverse writings and take us through some of the work that you've done there. It's pretty intriguing, it is. And so it all started again back to my mom, and I'll do a quick story about a recipe book that I have. So I told you Mom died in two thousand and one, and my mother again was this amazing teacher that connected with her students, and she had this one student that she really connected with and the student was good at typing, and so my mom, unbeknownst to me, gave her all of her family recipes and gave them to her to type up well between the time she gave them and you know, a few weeks later, Mom passed away in the car accident. So again I didn't know that the student had this. Fast forward thirty years or twenty years. So this was in

22:44 two thousand and twenty one, after my thirty year high school reunion, I got a phone call from one of my classmates and said, Hey, somebody from Dulla's High School where my mom taught is trying to get a hold of you. She said, she has something of your mom's. IS said, okay, if I give your nue it absolutely, you know, if it's something of moms, absolutely, So the student called me and she said, I have something of your moms that I want to give back to you. I've been holding on to them for all this time because they connected me with her. Even after she was gone. I was in a bad relationship, I had a health crisis, I was in a negative family atmosphere, and this just really helped me stay grounded. She goes, but now my cancer's and remission and I have a great relationship with my soon to be spouse, and so I felt like I could finally get rid of these recipes. So she sent them to me and I opened them up and they were all these teacher folders of handwritten recipes of my moms that I never knew existed. And so whenever she sent them to me, it just it brought back all of these emotions. And I actually had a dream one night that I just have to publish this. I have to put this out there because it just was a calling that I had to do. So there's a story about it in the beginning of the book, and it is a one hundred and ninety two bait page cookbook of over eight hundred recipes from our family. And my mother was born in Maryland. My dad was born in Idaho. His dad was

24:14 military, so they moved all over and my dad lived in Italy for a few years. I grew up in Texas, and so these are recipes from all over. My grandparents lived in Colorado. So you're not going to find the word microwave in this book because they are old fashioned recipes. But that is one area that you know. I've been on the Kate Delaney Show because of that book. I've been invited to go to a whole lot of festivals for books because of that book. And it's just the story that's behind it really is what pushes it. Some of the other books that I have, there are two there called Texas Angel one in Texas Angel Part two, and those are Texas Angels my mom. And so when I started doing the recipe book, it got me thinking, and one's about connection and once about life lessons, and those are small reads. And then while I was writing, We'll see one that says Dalton, do get on it, which is my son who said, Mom, you're writing a lot. I want to write a book and I said, Okay, what do you want to write a book on? And so he wrote a book about his grandpa baseball because his grandpa introduced him to baseball and lives in Arizona. So that's one that he wrote and he really did write that. I just helped with some of the editing. And then the other one that you'll see is called Dream to Rise, which is an anthology I did with several other authors, and it is the story of love and loss and that was the story of my mom and how I came out of that because it was it was very challenging at the time and what I'm doing now. So those are the different books that you'll find on Amazon. And I'm in the process of working on a few others, as you said you were. But yeah, but the next one's going

25:45 to be about exponentially elevating your impact as a leader. Mine will be of a similar content as well. And again like it's it's probably my imposter's in Rome. I don't know, it's taught for me to even put out there because I'm like, what if I don't actually do it. Then I'm I'm telling people I'm going to publish a book, and then I don't. But no, I'm I'm basically my working title is Scope of Influence. You know, I'm empowering and inspiring growth and success and others. So you know, a lot of what I've talked about for years now and studied in my doctoral dissertation. It's similar to to the stuff that you share as well. But again, well, I will link the your author page on Amazon so that my listeners can find all of your publications and hopefully you know, stay in the know on any future ones that are coming out as well. As we wrap up. I'm just wondering if there's anything else that maybe I haven't asked you or that you wanted to add and share, you know, to to my audience in terms of leadership and empowering them and overcoming imposter center of anything that well, if if anybody is interested, I do have something called fifty two Week the Courage to Lead. It is a weekly series over the fifty two weeks for a year, and every week you get a one to two minute video of something about leadership and it goes through you know, developing your why and determining your purpose and establishing your vision and goes through communication. And

27:15 it's just little nuggets that you can take each week and it includes a journal prompt, an affirmation, and a positive quote. And so that is something that you can jump on off of one of my Facebook pages. I tend to post that on Fridays, so that if anybody wants to do it, it's a QR code that can jump you into that. But I also love affirmations. You heard me just say that. I do have a list of one hundred and twenty five affirmations for educational leaders because we always need that to make sure that our mindset is in check and to make sure that we're not letting that awful imposter syndrome come take away our greatness. And so if anybody wants something of that nature, you know, you can go to my website. You can find me on Facebook. I also have a group for women in leadership or women in education on a Survely Leadership that is on Facebook.

28:03 Just look up do Good Leadership and jump on and you'll find quotes there and I do all kinds of fun things in there. So I would love for anyone to join that awesome. Well, I'm really glad that we connected, and I'm so glad to have had you on. You know, hopefully my my listeners, especially my women listeners out there, will you know, join those groups if they're not already, we will all, you know, start reading your stuff and check out, by the way, check out doctor Stephanie's podcast as well. Just just got started a little well maybe not just got started, but still relatively new to the space. We're comparing notes a little bit beforehand on the podcasting as well. But no, I really appreciate you coming on and giving us some of your time, and it's been really for me, really thought for you know, thought provoking and and just getting a better sentence for what people need to think about to break into leadership but to be successful in it as well. So thanks so much. You are so welcome to That podcast is called Empowered Women in Educational Leadership, so it is right down the same road of everything that we've been talking about. But thank you so much for having me on. I truly appreciate it and I would love to stay connected. Well that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you haven't done so yet, don't forget to subscribe to this show on your favorite podcast app. If you enjoy the content covered on this show, I want to ask you to do this one thing for me. Please share it. The biggest favor you could ever do for me

29:37 is to please let others know about what I'm doing and how I'm helping educators grow their impact as instructional leaders. I hope you can share this podcast with other educators, leaders, friends, or anyone you think would love listening and learning. If you're interested in leaving a positive rating and review of this show, links to do so are always in the show notes for every episode. For more information about me or this show, and to access the great content that I share, please visit my website at Leader of Learning dot com. That's where you can find my online courses, YouTube channel, blog, how to connect with me on social media, and even ways that you can support the show, like donating or purchasing Leader of Learning merchandise. Thanks again, and remember, no matter who you are or where you are, you are a Leader of Learning.