This is something I’ve had to learn the hard way

You can squeeze compliance. You can squeeze output. You can squeeze just enough performance to get through an observation cycle or survive an accountability audit.

But excellence? Genuine, generative, this-is-why-we-got-into-education excellence?

That doesn't come from pressure.

It comes from people who are alive to their work.

The numbers are not kind when it comes to those of us doing the deeply impactful work of education

A 2022 statistical summary found that 44 percent of teachers reported being burned out, 35 percent planned to leave the profession within the next two years, and 42 percent said their teaching suffered as a result of their mental health.

But here’s the flip side:

58 percent of educators say the primary reason they stay is meaningful work.

Not salary. Not summers off.

Meaningful work.

Your people are not primarily motivated by what they earn.

They are motivated by what their work means.

And when that meaning disappears, the exhaustion that was already present becomes something much harder to recover from.

That's not a human resources problem. That's a leadership problem.

There's a version of school leadership that is entirely transactional.

You set the expectations. You monitor the compliance. You manage up and manage down and try to hold everything together with sheer force of will.

And yet here’s exactly what that version of leadership produces:

Tired teachers who have stopped believing their work matters. Staff who show up but checked out months ago. A school that functions, technically, but doesn't flourish.

Pulitzer Prize-winning leadership scholar James MacGregor Burns put it plainly: "Power wielders may treat people as things. Leaders may not."

The research on this is unambiguous.

Schools with transformational leadership experienced a 40 percent increase in teacher engagement and curriculum innovation.

And transformational leadership has a significant negative predictive effect on teachers' job burnout — meaning the way you lead doesn't just affect performance metrics.

It literally determines whether the people in your care burn out or don't.

As a school administrator, you are not just an instructional leader,

You are the single greatest environmental factor in whether your teachers flourish or fade.

Burns described transformational leadership this way:

"That people can be lifted into their better selves is the secret of transforming leadership."

Transformational leadership, at the end of the day, is guiding people towards the better angels of their nature

Which means, then, that excellence is not a product. It's a condition.

It grows where people believe their work matters, where they trust the person leading them, and where they have enough margin to bring their best rather than just their minimum.

Of course, only leaders who are flourishing themselves can do that.

So here's the invitation — not to work harder, not to add another initiative to an already crowded plate.

The invitation is this:

Become the kind of leader your school needs you to be.

One who understands that the most important resource in your building is not your budget, your curriculum, or your data platform.

It's the human beings who show up every day and give themselves to this work.

Tend to them like they matter. Because they do.

Transformative leadership doesn't begin with a new strategy. It begins with an honest question:

Am I flourishing?

Or have you been running on reserve capacity so long you've forgotten what full feels like?

You cannot model rest if you never rest. You cannot cultivate meaning if you've lost touch with your own. You cannot call your people toward excellence if you've quietly stopped believing it's possible.

Your organization will only go as far as you are willing to go — and that journey starts on the inside.

For the leader who is ready to go deeper.

I work one-on-one with school leaders who are ready to stop leading from exhaustion and start leading from clarity, conviction, and genuine strength. Not by working harder. By working differently. By doing the inner work that transforms not just your leadership, but the entire ecosystem around you.

If you're ready for that conversation, I'd be honored to be part of your journey.

→ Check out the work I do coaching school leaders and schedule your free discovery call here

You were not called to this work to survive it.

You were called to it to transform it.

Until next time — keep leading with intention.

— Scott