Communication, Reflection, and the Principled Leader with Bobby Pollicino

What's going on everybody, I hope this finds you striving and thriving and doing absolutely amazing. This episode is a good one, you're gonna learn all about ways that you can strengthen your physical fitness, your mental fitness, and your spiritual fitness so that it's going to help you inside the classroom and outside of it as well. And if you think someone will benefit from this conversation, please share, and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. So New episodes come directly to you. And my guest today is Bobby power Casino. He's the head of Upper School at both school and Potomac, Maryland. He served as Minister for over 15 years. He's also been a Dean of Students and assistant principal. And before becoming an administrator, he was a high school teacher, and a varsity soccer and lacrosse coach. Bob is also the author of the book principled leader. And then this conversation. Listen, as Bobby talks about the power of communication, and the ways that we can communicate better. Listen, as he talks about the importance of making each interaction count. Listen, as Bobby talks about the power of reflection, and as he talks about the importance of mental fitness, physical fitness, and spiritual fitness, and there's so much more, I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. I am super excited for this episode, we have someone that has a ton of wisdom, someone who I've listened to on several different podcasts, and I feel like we have so much in common, and he just has a lot of knowledge to share that we can all benefit from. I want to welcome Bobby policy no to the teaching champions podcast. Bobby, welcome, my friend. Thanks, Brian. Excited to be here and look forward to connecting. Yeah, this is gonna be an awesome episode. Now, for those people who are not familiar with you. Could you give a little brief about your journey? Sure. I'm originally from upstate New York outside of Albany, grew up there with the working class blue collar family, older brother had an opportunity to head down to Maryland, where I went to college, Washington College and played the cross there for four years and had no plans going to teaching was actually going to go into college coaching and had a teammates older brother gave me a call. I'd said in August and said we're in need of a biology teacher. He knew I majored in Biology and so figured I'd give it a shot and actually fell in love with teaching had no plans had no idea that was going to happen. After four years at a boarding school, I moved up outside of Washington, DC. I've been at the bullet School, which is a K 12 Independent School since 2003, served in a variety of roles coach varsity soccer, varsity lacrosse, and I'm in my ninth year as head of the upper school there. And so that's where I am today. Excellent. And I know you have a book out that we're gonna definitely dive into. But I want to dive into a little the sports background because I'm playing sports myself, coaching sports, there's so many lessons that we can take away that are transferable. Let's call you as a player first. When you're playing collegiate, and you look back, what would you say would be the biggest lesson that you took away from playing lacrosse at the collegiate level, the bass lesson probably didn't hit until my senior year we had we had a very successful run my first three years. We got a new coach my senior year shattered my wrist in the fall was dislocated have surgery and coming back out to sort of trying to find our way back into the team. And it was a new coach. And it was it was difficult spring and a lot of you know, looking at others for why things weren't going the way I had wanted. And it took halfway through that senior year to realize like if I want something to happen, then I need to take control of that. You know, and I wish that I had had that thought process in high school. I think I could have accomplished more and done more as a player and a student athlete. Same with the first three years of college. So that's the lesson that I take is, you know, there was just a time where I realized I have more I can give there's more than I can do and And I don't know that everybody realizes that consistently, you know, just sort of what we, what we can overcome what we're capable of achieving, and what can happen when we put ourselves through the tasks that will allow us to be successful. Yeah. And for the listeners, like you played at a high level lacrosse, like, so Division Three went to the National Championship three years in a row and you going into your senior year you get hurt. It's so true. Like you hit that adversity. And when you're younger, not I find myself sometimes, you know, I'll be saying, saying things, like focusing on the things that I can control. But I need that reminder. Because I find myself as an adult in my 40s, that I can find myself focusing on all this extra noise outside and looking for reasons, that external piece when it should be on that focused on that internal? Absolutely, absolutely. That was a message, I certainly would try to deliver as a high school coach, you know, to our students and student athletes and get them to, to understand that and to recognize, you know, in high school, you're starting to develop habits that you're going to carry with you, you know, and I want to help you go to that next level with the right habits. Absolutely. And with your coaching journey, you know, a coaching is just like teaching, there's so much growth from the time that you start to, you know, the, the time of year, a couple years, and what would you say was the biggest lesson from the beginning of your coaching career to go all the way up to your final season? As a coach? That's a great question, Brian, I would say when I started coaching, I very much believed that you should treat everybody the same, right? That's how I looked at equity was that everybody gets treated the same, no matter what. So everybody's gonna get coached the same way. And I certainly my experience growing up was a little more probably Bobby Knight than then maybe John Wooden, or Dean Smith. And so that was certainly my fault. You know, I've raised my voice, I would yell and everybody got the same thing. And it wasn't until near the end of my coaching career, I would talk to the other coaches and recognize like, hey, this player is going to respond, we call him out in front of his teammates. This one's not this one needs to pat on the back and say, Hey, go get the next one. Hey, we believe in you, you can do this. And recognizing that you got to have, you know, take your golf bag, right, you got to have a different club for different shots, you gotta have a different approach for different kids in your team. And that was something that I then needed to carry over into an administrative role that I struggled with initially. Same thing sort of thinking, I'm going to teach all, treat all adults and all teachers the exact same way. And that's just not how we build relationships. It's not how we connect with people. And it's not how we help people be their best selves. Yeah, I agree. 100%. And I think that we do sometimes we think that we got to treat everybody the same way. But everybody's unique. Everybody responds differently. Right? That's so true. Now, can you tell us a little bit about your book, the principle leader, so I had no intention of writing a book, it wasn't something I anticipated happening. In my second year of this position. As you know, being a school administrator, I just realized some things I needed to start doing differently. Some Marshall Goldsmith quote, of what got you here won't get you there. And just realized that I wasn't quite ready for this job that I was put in, and needed to do some more learning some more growing some more developing. So I just started to put together ideas that I was finding in podcasts and books, articles, looking at Harvard Business Review, McKinsey, just all different areas to pull in leadership tips and strategies and ways to connect. And then, you know, march 2020, things shut down, slow down for all of us in the education world. And I was used to, at six o'clock in the morning, having to get all my kids up ready with me, you know, certainly with my wife support, too, but then getting them in the car and going to school. And I'd have to that now, they were staying at 737 45. So I decided to take that time that I had in the morning and put it to use. So that's when I decided to sort of put this put all of these ideas together and spend about an hour writing every morning and really looking to identify these principles that were helping me develop as a leader than I thought could help others as well. Axon, what were some of the principles that you found were the most successful for you? Sure. So I sort of broke it down into this idea of leadership principles, relationship principles, fitness principles, decision making principles and sort of those broader categories and then broke those down from there. So when I think about leadership and relationships, both, you know, looking at communication, you know, how do we communicate with people? Are we communicating effective Lee, you know, you think about, you know, kids are scared in the dark because they can't see, right? They don't know what's there. So they start to conjure things up in their head. And adults are the same way. They might not be scared of the dark, but they're scared of what they don't know. And so, you know, what are you doing to make sure that people on your team know what's happening? You know, sort of asking myself, you know, what do I know? Who else needs to know it? And have I told them, you know, so how am I communicating? Am I being effective in my communication, getting feedback on, on how that's going? You know, when I sit down and talk to students, or to teachers, you know, when I'm listening? Am I hearing what they're saying? Or am I hearing what's not being said, and sort of how am I, you know, going to contribute to their growth and their development and thinking about that. And then one thing I always think about for educators is to such a selfless group of people, and we certainly saw that even more so during the pandemic, and right after, but they don't always leave room for themselves, or people in their family. You know, sometimes we put other people's children ahead of our own children, or other relationships ahead of ours. You know, I think about as a young father and a coach, I would sometimes I would leave in the morning and my my firstborn and be asleep. I'd have a late game, I'd come home, my wife started, put her to bed, I leave the next morning, she's still asleep. So here, I'm going 3648 hours living under the same roof as my child, and rationalizing why I haven't seen her because we have to win next week, or because I need to get these kids ready to go play college lacrosse. And so really stepping back and thinking about sort of, who are the important people in your life? And how are you showing them that you're that they're important to you? You know, and what are some things that you can do? So a lot of the techniques that we put in our classroom with our students, or our colleagues, how come we're not bringing that home? Yes, 100%. And I think when you talk about that, and that struggle with that time piece, as a coach, you're not the only one, like I've coached with some phenomenal individuals and know a lot of coaches in that time piece. It's such a big thing where they're coming home during the season. And even though they're under the same roof, yeah, they're just not able to see it, see their kids. And I was listening to the leaning in the leadership podcast, and Hal Bowman was on and how subtle it is that you know, and this goes for all teachers, not coaches, you know, sometimes at school, they get the best of us were at home, they get the rest of us. And, you know, there's so much truth to that. Now, when you talk about, let's dive into this communication piece, because I think it's such a big piece, whether it's with administration, to teachers, but also at being a classroom teacher, myself, how I communicate with the students, how I communicate with the other adults, how I communicate with the parents, communication is huge. What, what tips do you have to really make communication go really well, within your school? I think number one, and I say number one, because it's the most difficult, I believe, at least it is for me, it's assume best intentions, but because in schools, you know, we have interactions with different students, with teachers with parents, you know, and, and how quickly can we as humans go to our, our lizard brain, right of like, we see someone in the hallway, and we think this is going to be difficult, instead of assuming best intentions and all of our interactions and all of our communications and, and really seeing our relationship as an opportunity to, to grow it and to help that person and find ways to support them. You know, because I think that in all of our interactions, one of two things is happening. We're either growing that relationship, and we're strengthening it. Or we're damaging it. And we're weakening it. I don't know that we maintain relationships, because that person walks away based on what we said, how we said it, feeling really good, or not feeling good. It's pretty rare. If you stop and think about, you know, every interaction you have during the day, how many times do you walk away completely neutral? 100 positive a few to zero. And so I think that assume best intentions. I think being curious, you know, asking questions, looking to to hear more about what their experience has been, and finding out what's happening there. You know, a lot of times in our conversations, we think that as we're hearing a story, we have to share a similar story to connect. And what we don't realize is we just took the power away from that person because we just took their Story, and we made it about us. He has. And that's not how you connect, the way you connect, is by showing genuine curiosity. And by, you know, tell me more. What did they feel like? You know, how did you how did that feel at the end of of that experience, you know, share more about that and sort of thinking about how we go into those, those conversations, because not everybody gets a chance to be heard. And you might be the only one that does that for that student on that day, or for that colleague, maybe or for that parent, you know, when a parent calls, they're upset about something involving their child, they're not always going to be rational, it's because this is the most important thing to them. You know, I say to pick sometimes, not all the time, sometimes a parent will apologize when they get done yelling, and I'll say, I appreciate your apology. I'm more upset. If a parent doesn't care, and works at the parent is uninterested than a parent who maybe cares too much that we have to walk back a little bit. No doubt 100%. You know, I had a situation a few years ago, when a parent was really upset, not not not necessarily upset at me, it was a different situation that was happening at the school, but they're kind of given it to me a little being very loud in a parent teacher conference. And that, you know, he made sure he told me, it wasn't about me, it was the situation, right. But I kind of said the same thing. It didn't affect me emotionally. Because I knew that it was his baby girl. And they, it was more about the situation. So creating that space, and not getting so emotionally attached to what it is that's going on. And, you know, I had a school secretary, that was unbelievable, that retired last year. And, you know, I talked to her because our secretaries there the first line, yeah, it deals with the parents. And so then they deal with all sorts of issues. And I was talking to her about it. And she said, You know, sometimes it's just important to listen, they want like you just said, they just want someone to talk to to be heard to listen to them. So yeah, it's so important. And you know, I get when you talk about having the best of intention, the Mayo Clinic, they have a little video that I was watching the other day, and it's a little bit old school video, but it was they created it, I think, to try and create empathy, whether it was for the people that I don't know if you've seen it or whatever. But yeah, yeah. So it goes through like a hospital for the people that, that haven't seen this video, they go through a hospital, and every single person that you see in the hospital, has a caption underneath them. And it says something that they're dealing with in that moment. And some of the people in that hospital, they have amazing things going on in their lives. And some of the people in that hospital have devastating things happening in their lives. And we don't know what's going on in other people's lives. So being curious, assuming having the best of intent is so critical to get in that relationship. Yeah, absolutely. We were doing some some coaching work this fall. And I liked this idea that was shared with us about, you know, when you go into these conversations, you know, how was your cup? You know, when he said that your cup cracked, you know, are you bringing in some trauma or some some issues with yourself? He said, Is it overflowing? Because you have so much on your plate? And so you can't really be there for the person? Is there residue on the cup? Is it Is there stuff on there from the last interaction with that? And so, you know, before you go into some of these conversations that you think may go a certain direction, you have a preconceived notion. Just take 30 seconds and say, Okay, where's my cup right now? I love that. So have that little moment, you know, before you go, and I think that's what's so important. I think sometimes because we don't have much time during the day to ourselves as educators running from class to class or meeting to meeting or you know, one groups in next groups out whatever it is, depending on the age group that you teach. We don't always get that time to just give ourselves that little break there. And I think you can work that in I think you can work it in with your students too. You know, we talk about the hustle and bustle the student experience today and how fast things are going and getting them on board with some breathing techniques and relaxation techniques, you know, which will help you and your students 100% 100% And you know, I love love when you're talking about like that self awareness piece, really having our finger on our personal pulse and understanding where we're at in the moment and and how that can affect our interactions, whether it's with other college, whether it's with the students, and like you said, teaching our students, right from the get go some self regulation strategies, yes, some breathing and different ways that they can release some of that energy, or the those tough emotions that they're feeling in that moment. Now, you also talked about, you know, you got in and you were talking about the book, and you started out and one of the purposes, the reasons was that you recognize that growth. Yeah. What are some strategies that you've been beneficial for yourself that maybe we can use to help ourselves? Grow? We're never a finished product, or I should always be looking to grow? So what are what are some ways that you personally look to do? Yeah. So I do a morning reflection, something that works for me, you know, I think everyone should find a strategy or, you know, a plan that works for them. But so for me, every morning, I journal about the previous day's events, sort of what transpired different interactions. And so I just sort of brain dump what happened? And then I have four questions at the end of that. What were your wins yesterday? What lessons did you learn? What's next? So that's what I'm starting to get sort of my mind thinking about the day, you know, moving from the previous day, to the actual day. And then what are you grateful for unless three things that I'm grateful for, and so that that's a reflection that's done every day, seven days a week, I can probably count on one hand, the last five years that I've missed a day. And then Saturday morning, I do a weekly reflection. But then I have more questions in there that I asked myself that I have on a Google Doc, and then I do a monthly reflection to where I go through, and I look at all of the weeks in that month. And so that really helped me to start to see some patterns, to see some things where, you know, maybe I had a few interactions that didn't go well. And maybe that's because of stress from different parts of my life. You know, sort of maybe it was because of a stressful moment, before that I, you know, carried over into that next conversation, you know, and didn't do a good job of that and realizing, okay, you know, I give, I tend to be terse and give some short, you know, one two word answers to people when he's stressed, or when I'm feeling burdened, or whatever, it may be starting to see those patterns, and then also seeing the positive patterns and say, okay, so what was working? How do I grow those, you know, so often we're thinking about, we have to stop all of these things. But if we see the areas that we're strong in, and we can grow, those don't block out some of those other ones, they actually fill that space. And I think sometimes we're too quick to look at the negative aspects, and we get very critical of ourselves. So I would say that reflection piece has been very helpful. Another one would be just getting feedback from people, you know, having surveys and asking folks on my team to give feedback and, and seeing how people are viewing me, you know, am I doing things the way I think I am? The way that I intended to has been a good one. And then I mentioned this as part of my journal, but just having this gratitude practice, I think has gone a long way. And in shifting my mindset, you know, I mentioned I have a story in the book that I know is painful for both of us being Buffalo Bills fan, you know, having this long stretch of have no bills playoffs only tend to knock in the playoffs in the 21st century, before everybody else did. And I'd gotten a text message that said, hey, congrats, the bills went to the playoffs because the Bengals had won that game. They backdoored their way in first time since 1999. And I started to text a person back and said, you know, it just extends the season by a week and they're going home and I and I deleted it. I didn't hit send. I read and I rewrote the text and said can't wait till they win wildcard weekend and had to do England SMAC Brady and Bella check. That didn't work. They lost wildcard weekend, right? But I would never have thought of that five years beforehand, like the gratitude practice really does change your outlook and it does get you to see things in a different light. And I never would have believed that before I started the gratitude practice for gratitude journaling. And I think that's important for for people to know that you can be a skeptic and you can try it out and see what happens 100% And it's amazing, just simple little twist of our words. One way or another can have such a profound impact on our mentality. And you know, I'm just wanting to jump back because you just gave me a lot there. Number one, I love your reflection, the fact that you do a daily but then you have a weekly review Oh, yeah, then you have a monthly review, and how you're looking for patterns, because patterns will show up. And I love how you talked about it's not just the negative patterns. But there's positive patterns too, that we can look for, and how can we, essentially how can we make those happen even more? And how can we work to eliminate some of those negative patterns? I think that's fantastic. How long does would you say your reflection piece in the morning take when you sit down to do that? About 10 minutes? I would say, I think that's probably it takes less time, you know, than it did before, I think because it's a little more narrow, focused now. And so I think, again, for everybody, it's going to be a little bit different. And there's a ton of resources online, you can look at for reflection prompts. I mean, you could just start with what are my lessons from yesterday? Or what were my wings from yesterday? Or what am I grateful for whatever it is, I think, you know, or you can hone in on specific things in your classroom. You know, like, if you want to think about you have kids, if you're an elementary school teacher, and you're teaching, you know, the kids in there all day, like, How did my math lesson go? Right? Or how did my language arts lesson go? Or I'm a preschool science teacher, how do my labs go? You know, my, am I a different person with my students? When I'm teaching this? Yes, maybe you are. Because it's something you're really excited about, and you're passionate about, and something else that you aren't. Or maybe you shouldn't teach math in the afternoon everyday, because that's when you're, you know, starting to lose some of your willpower, your patience is going away. But looking for those patterns, I think is really important for folks. Yeah, 100%. And sometimes I think we get worried about like the time restraint and everything. But maybe it's just that, you know, getting in that habit and establishing that routine, because 10 minutes really isn't that long. But the value when I look at what you say, the value of being able to look at yourself, and you said another good thing, besides the patterns that those wins, because it's so important. Like you said, I believe you you talked about, you know, we can get so caught up on seeing the failures, where we came up short, that we forget about all the wins that we have. And we do have so many wins throughout the week throughout the month, that we shouldn't be, you know, focusing on and seeing too. Yeah, I mean, it's when I do think about my monthly reflections, and no, you know, we're on the Saturday morning, that's probably about 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and then the monthlies closer to an hour. And you go back through and you're looking at your calendar, and you're looking at other reflections in like, there's things that you just forget happened, and it was only three weekends ago, three weeks ago, but you just aren't thinking about it. Because in education, you know, a lot of our days are Go, go go, yes. And so you just don't think about like, Hey, that was a pretty good month, I think it's been really great things in my classroom, I had some great conversations, or I made some great connections or, or whatever it may be, and then that can fuel you. Right for that. That next week. Yes, 100% 100%. I love that. And then you talked about that feedback piece, because I think that's so important. It's something from the coaching world, and maybe you ran into it when you're coaching lacrosse or soccer. Like when I was coaching assistant coach for basketball, we would go and we went to like a coaching clinic at VCU, we went to a coaching clinic at West Virginia and visited some other division one colleges, and it was amazing, these colleges, taping their practices. And using that watching the game or the practice film, to get feedback, or talking to other coaches and getting feedback from them, sometimes in the teaching world. And I'm gonna say it's tough for me to say, you know, I want the teacher, if I'm being honest, you know, the teacher next door to come in, watch me teaching, give me that feedback. But it's so important because sometimes we don't see little things that might be happening, that we can make a little adjustment. Is there any way that you found within your school that you've been able to help your teachers with or something that's beneficial how you communicate with your teachers, as far as the feedback that you give to them? It's a good question, Brian, I think you're right, you know, teachers are so critical of themselves, you know, they want to make sure everything is just right and perfect. And I think and they see the flaws in themselves. And that's why I think sometimes folks are nervous about bringing other people into their classroom because they think they're gonna see that and, and don't realize all of the great work that they're doing, that's actually going to be seen by the folks who come in there. You know, so it's something we've We've tried to work on to grow to get people more comfortable with that, you know, I do, I pop into classrooms, teachers, now I'm just gonna pop in for, you know, four or five minutes here, they're not sort of formal, and then shoot them an email about what I saw and try to, you know, provide that positive, you know, feedback, if something didn't go, right maybe, or something just sort of caught my eye, don't put that in an email, that would be a follow up conversation, just so I could say, hey, help me better understand sort of what happened here. But one of the things we're trying to do is sort of separate our sort of feedback and growth and look at that separately, and you know, evaluations over here with feedback, maybe, but then a growth model of, you know, where do you want to grow? What do you want to do better in the classroom? Where do you see areas you can improve and to try to separate those out? So folks are, are more comfortable, but it's definitely a work in progress. No, it's tough in the ear. So true. Like, we want everything to be perfect. We, you know, what, sometimes we feel is that ego, you know, a great book, Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy. But one thing that I try in another reference to the sports world, but I look at someone like LeBron James, he has coaches, here's a guy that is hundreds of millions of dollars, considered one of the greatest of all time, and he hires people to critique him, to help him get better. And the you know, I think, if we can lower down those walls a little bit and not be afraid, and welcome that, you know, welcome it from the administration, welcome it from our colleagues, the growth that can take place with us can be amazing. Absolutely. You also in your book, you have so many great tips on the individual. Because to be a great teacher, I think we got to take care of ourselves as well. What are some things for yourself some things that you included in your book that can really help out the person that's listening. But I think you're right, he touched on this earlier, Brian, from Darren podcast write about sort of, you know, we have our best at school, and then you know, at home, they get the rest of us. And I think, recognizing that if we want to bring our best to our students, to our colleagues to our school that we have to take care of ourselves, you know, and I think it's cliched now, private and Tamata for over 10 years, but the whole oxygen mask example right from the airplane, right? If you got to put your mask on first before you put it on for somebody else, because if you're not breathing, you can't help anybody. And so, I know it's cliche, but it's accurate. Because if we're not taking care of ourselves, when we get rundown, and we're not our best, it's going to negatively impact our interactions. And we can try to kill ourselves and say, we can power through it, we don't need to sleep or skipping lunch here. They're, you know, eaten fast food on the way home, whatever it is, you know, there are things that we need to do to take care of ourselves. And so in the book, you know, I talked about fitness, and I break it down into mental, physical and spiritual. So I think that physical fitness piece, you know, number one, there's so much research, I mentioned the Mayo Clinic before around exercise, reducing our stress levels, and what it can do for our overall health and wellness, and figuring out an exercise routine that works for you. And that might mean, going for a 10 minute walk at lunch every day, it might mean that you're someone that is going on those long bike rides or runs on the weekends or, you know, swimming wherever it is, you know what, but finding something. And even if it means getting up five minutes earlier, maybe, you know, and just sort of starting to build a routine, build a habit. Um, it doesn't need to be, you know, 90 minutes every day. But just figure out a routine that works for you and get that sort of physical fitness and the mental fitness. You know, again, just looking at some different strategies, I mentioned gratitude. So for some folks, it's, you know, a gratitude journal at night. For some, it's when they wake up in the morning and just saying it out loud, or whispering it if there's someone else in bed you want to wake up, you know, but just thinking about sort of where your mind is there. I use headspace as a meditation app. And actually, they have a free version for educators. So any educator can go in and put that in. And headspace is the name of the app. And I do a meditation every morning. And for me, it's five to seven minutes. Again for folks, you know, figure out what works for you. You know, mine's a little bit on the shorter side because I also exercise in the morning and I'm doing a gratitude journal and so I'm sort of stacking things up, for my own fitness the way I do it in the morning, but that mental peace and think in your mindset. So that's going to come from that reflection, where you're writing down your wind, you're writing down your successes and, and sort of how you're going in there. And then the last one I have in there spiritual. And I think your spiritual fitness Can, can come in a variety of different ways. For some, it is religion, and that works for them, that makes sense for them. For others, it's just getting outside of nature, it's going for a walk in the woods. For others, it's, you know, looking at a body of water, if they live near one or might be swimming could be surfing, you know, surfers talked about that connection, they feel with the waves, you know, I just think from a to be listening to the birds in the backyard, there's so many different ways that you can feel connected to something bigger than yourself. And that's that, that spiritual piece. And so looking to see, how can I bring all those together, in a sense of harmony. And I use that phrase, you know, we hear a lot about work life balance, and I just don't believe in that phrase, you know, because to me, balance means I'm trying to keep everything equal 5050. And there's just some days and some weeks, that's not going to happen. If I, if I go on vacation with my family, I don't want work and vacation to be equal and balanced. I want to all focus on my family, and my vacation. And there's other times during the year where I might have to say to my wife, like, this is what's happening this week. And I know I'm not going to be around as much, and that's where it is. But if I can then take stock of that, look at the end of each week, the end of each month, the end of the year. Where was I out of harmony? And what did that look like? I think if you can find what works for you around that fitness piece, mental, physical, spiritual, you start to feel better, you start to act differently. You You really carry yourself in a way that people see and they notice and you're going to feel better about the work that you're doing. And it comes back to those relationships again, and how you're cultivating and, and growing them. Yes, 100%. You know, there's so much that goes into the whole person, you know, that mental, that physical, that spiritual, it's so important. And you know, getting into that gratitude piece. When we're at school, taking that time, maybe you're having a tough moment to maybe look around, what's something that you can be grateful for in that moment. I know, you know, we're going with the seven or eight years, eight year olds, excuse me that sometimes they bring a lot of energy in certain moments and getting stuff calm down. And just, you know, in this moment, I'm going to look for something that I'm really grateful for, because there's there's stuff to be grateful for all around us. Yeah, we just have to be conscious and look for it. Absolutely. 100%. And, you know, I love how you talk about the the physical finding what works for you. And that that spiritual that connection piece, you know, it brings it all together. Absolutely. Now, two of my favorite questions there, Bobby, and you are so well read that, you know, I was looking through some of the books that you've read, and we we aligned so much. So I can't wait to hear some of your book recommendations. If you could recommend some books, what would they be? Sure. And I do have a list of books I recommend at the end of principled leader, you know, a few that I think of, you know, when I think about mindset, the choice by Dr. Edith Eger, you know, is one that comes to mind survived the concentration camp and, you know, ended up emigrating to the US. And just this idea of you have a choice every day, and how you're going to face the world and what you're going to do in her story, so impressive. So I think that's a great one. Adam grants got a lot of great books out I really enjoyed think again, you know, just this recognition that we are constantly getting new information and things are always changing, and how are you looking at things and so that's when I enjoyed Kate Murphy, you're not listening. It's a great one, you know, think about how you're connecting with people and you know, she does a great job of explaining the challenges we face in today's society of of not listening. You know, we're just so quick to give our answers. And the last one I'm gonna say start with why Simon Sinek that book really helped me it's one it's been out for a long time obviously, but really helped me in my position now, you know, I think it was very clear to me what my why was as a as a lacrosse coach and as a science teacher and why I became an administrator, I sort of lost I didn't stop to say, Okay, what's different now? And so that book hit me at the right time. So, lots of other books I mentioned in at the end of my book, but those are ones that really jumped out at me. Yeah, so some phenomenal reads right there. And, you know, I would suggest to anyone listening that if you are not familiar with Simon Sinek a good starting places, just go on to YouTube. And because Simon's an unbelievable speaker, and you know, type in Start With Why check out some of his YouTube videos, because he definitely has some phenomenal ideas and, and really bring it to your why. And I just saw, are you familiar with the finding mastery podcast? Yeah. So yeah, that's a great podcast. And Edith Eger, I believe was just on there recently within the past. Yeah. And she This is an old, obviously, she survived the concentration camp, a woman in her 90s, I believe, just amazing listening to her talk. So this is a you know, this is a book that I wrote down recently that definitely want to check out. So, um, how about a podcast? Do I have any podcasts recommendations? Tour Lainey Morales evolving with gratitude, which you've been on? Yeah, that's a fantastic one. I think especially because she all of her guests have a little bit of a different take on what gratitude means and how they practice it. So you listen to these different guests who are realizing there is no one single way to do it. And I think that's what's so great about that is hearing different journeys and different experiences. And so realizing that there's not a secret, you know, that people are keeping from you, you know, your person, find your own way to do it. Meaning into leadership with Darren peppered, you know, again, same idea, you know, different folks that have different approaches to, to how they're leading. And one that I've been getting into quite a bit lately is Essentialism by Greg McEwan. Really enjoying that there tend to be on the shorter side, you know, 3545 minutes, but just thinking about sort of, what is our focus we try to do so much during the day. And he does a great job of sort of breaking that down. You know, he wrote the book essentialism. And so his podcast is one that I enjoy as well. Yeah, that's fantastic. Laney and Darren are both top notch and wonderful podcast. Yeah. And I didn't realize that Greg McEwan had a podcast out. So I read I read essentialism, and great book, and check that one out. Now, if somebody wanted to check out your book, if they want to connect with you, Bobby, what's the best way they can do that? Sure. So then go on my website, Bobby policy no.com. And on the website, you can subscribe to the principled leader newsletter. If you're interested on there. You can also find me on Twitter at Bobby policy now. And then my book principled leader, not as in a school principal, but as as then having principles is available on Amazon. Fantastic. And I'll leave all that information in the show notes as well. Now, Bobby, if you could have the listener, walk away with one thing? What would that be? I would say that you're in control of your mindset, and the choices that you make each and every day. And if you want to start making different choices, it begins with evaluating those. And so start a reflection practice, however small it is. And just learn about yourself from there. Develop your self awareness, and find the areas that you can grow in and that you can help change in yourself so you can help others to know that's important to you as an educator. Yeah, I saw this so good. I think, you know, one of the most important things that we can ever learn about is about ourselves. Yeah. And I think that's a never ending process. So, so good. So good. My friend, Bobby, this has been so much fun. My brother that is a fellow Bill's fan. They understand. We've understood, we've gone through the Super Bowl years with Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas to not seeing the playoffs for over 20 years to you know, finally getting back and having the Kansas City Chiefs, Robert into us again, but it's been so great. The message that you have and what you're putting out is so important, and I think people educators especially that we need to hear and we need to hear often. So thank you so much for you know for what you do for your staff but for what you're doing For all of us out there, my friend, well, thank you to Brian, you're doing a fantastic job and really appreciated the opportunity to talk. Yeah, this has been awesome, my friend have a great night, Bob, you too. This conversation was so good. Bobby is so knowledgeable and he brings so much wisdom to the table. Now, this is a teaching champions take where I share three of my favorite takeaways from this conversation. And the first gem that I loved was all about communication. And Bobby dropped so much truth when he said, We need to ask ourselves how we're communicating with people, and are we communicating effectively. And that goes for administrators. But that's also true for educators as well. Because one of the most critical aspects of every educators job is how we communicate, and is the message that we're giving, being received, how we would like it to be received. It's important that we're conscious of that. And it's important that we remember that not everyone communicates the same way. And I also loved when Bobby dived into the fact that a really big piece of communication is not just us speaking, is us being listeners, and that we need to be aware of how are we hearing what other people are saying, and just as important is, are we aware of what's not being said, because we can learn a whole lot by what it's not being set. In the second gem that I love was all about reflection. And Bobby has such a fantastic reflection process, where he writes about his wins, he writes about the lessons that he learned what he'll do next, and the thing that he's grateful for. And he also does those weekly and monthly reflections. And he said something that was really profound. He talked about how this reflection process really helped him identify patterns in his life, those positive patterns that he can focus on, building off of, and the negative patterns as well, that he can try and look to eliminate certain things. The third gem that I loved was when Bobby talks about having the mental, physical and spiritual fitness, that all of us really need to look at each of these areas, be able to identify ways that we can strengthen them. Now these are just a few of my favorite takeaways. Let me know at BU Martin real on Twitter, or teaching champions podcasts on Instagram, what were some of your favorites. And a big thank you to Bobby for dropping so many wonderful gems. And a big thank you to all of you for being here for being part of the teaching champions community. We support we encourage we lift each other up. And always remember, whether you're from rural America, to urban America, to Canada, to Spain to Bahrain, we're all on that same team. We're all on that same mission. And we're always better together. Keep being amazing, my friends, and as you go out into the week, May you step into strength may step into shine, and let's build our champions. Have a great week, everybody