Acknowledgment Isn't Weakness

A principal I know insisted her school had "great relationships" between counselors and administrators. Then she read the staff survey. Seventy-three percent said they felt alone in their student support work.

She had a choice: defend the story she'd been telling, or tell a truer one.

She chose the truer one, publicly.

"I thought acknowledging problems would make me look weak," she told me later. "Instead, it made everyone stronger."

Counselor retention hit 100 percent within the year. Crisis response moved from days to same-day. It started with a leader willing to say, out loud, that the story she'd been telling herself wasn't holding up.

For school and district leaders, that's the harder version of leadership — naming plainly what isn't working, before the people closest to students have to say it for you.

Office hours are open if you're sitting on a version of the story you haven't said out loud yet.

— The Principal School Counselor™