SamTastic Weekly Tip: 2/2/26 - Be Thoughtful

This week’s Tip: Be Thoughtful

Have you had this experience? Someone higher in the organization expects you to drop everything and attend a meeting or take a call…with no consideration of how this impacts what you had planned for the day.

Thoughtless? Probably. Bad intent?  Probably not.  There may be a critical issue which needs to be addressed.  More likely, there was little understanding of how these demands impact your mission: improving teaching and learning.

In SAMs, we advise leaders to focus on what they can control…not what they can’t. You can’t control what your supervisor does. You can control what you do, however.

Begin by teaching people how you’d like to be used.  Instead of fuming about the disruption, train your office staff to explain what you are doing when someone demands your time, and then ask for direction.  Example: “Mrs. Superintendent, the principal would love to take your call.  Can you give me direction?  She is in a feedback session with a teacher right now.  Should I go get her…or could she call you back in 30 minutes?”

Consider asking if you can send a representative to a meeting in your place.  For example: “Would it be possible for me to send my counselor to the testing preparation meeting in my place so I can spend more time coaching teachers?”

Dale Carnegie suggested that we should always assume a good intent. There is no advantage in doing the reverse.  Besides, in most cases, the person demanding your time has simply not thought through the consequences of disrupting your day.

Think about how your own actions impact teachers.  Do you force others to change their plans to meet what you need without consideration of their plans?  Does this impact their mission?  Yours?

Thoughtful SAM leaders would never consider interrupting a teacher’s class, or “pulling” a teacher away from a PLC or PD session, unless it was truly an emergency. Give this some thought. Do your actions demonstrate that you are thoughtful or thoughtless?

Have you considered that many public address announcement that you, or your front office make, interrupt the flow of the teacher’s work?  This is exactly the opposite of what you likely intend.

Working to be a thoughtful and caring leader is not easy. You are under a lot of pressure. Consider, though, that people know you from your actions.  Talk about what you can do to decrease the interruptions in your SAM Daily Meeting.  Then, talk about how the office staff can best protect your time by use of the First Responder system.

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