Why “Just Be Resilient” Is Burning Out Your Staff With Steph Hawkins

Middle leaders are where school performance so often lives or dies, and they are the leaders Steph Hawkins has built her work around. As Founder and Global Leadership Sustainability & Wellbeing Director at Well Well Well, she helps organizations strengthen that middle layer so capable people stop compensating for broken systems through personal overextension.
 
She brings more than two decades of leadership experience across the UK and internationally, along with postgraduate qualifications in Applied Positive Psychology and Leadership. Her edge is turning research from positive organizational psychology, behavioral science, and work design into practical tools managers can use when pressure rises.
 
Teacher burnout gets plenty of attention, but most schools still treat staff resilience as the plan instead of the backup. When "dig a bit deeper" becomes the default, nobody redesigns the work itself. Here's how principals can rebuild staff wellbeing at every level of the school.

🫶 What You'll Learn

  • How toxic resilience lets schools avoid fixing the work that's burning out teachers.
  • Why bore out drains educators just as badly as burnout, and why nobody talks about it.
  • The three layers of staff wellbeing and which one principals can't delegate to a wellbeing lead.
  • How to give recognition that is timely, specific, impact-focused, and fair.
  • Why appreciative inquiry drives faster school improvement than fixing weaknesses.
🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules

🚀 Key Insight #1: Toxic Resilience Is Hiding Teacher Burnout in Your School.

  • What's broken: Schools assume staff will stretch a bit further to cover unrealistic demands.
  • The shift: Leaders examine timetables, job descriptions, accountability systems, and meeting schedules instead of asking people to absorb more.
  • Impact: Staff stop compensating for broken systems, and other problems ease once the workload is designed for real people.

🚀 Key Insight #2: Staff Recognition That Actually Improves Teacher Wellbeing.

  • What's broken: Praise is a passing "thanks" in the corridor, days late, and it goes mostly to the people whose work is easy to see.
  • The shift: Recognition is timely and specific, names the impact on students, gets tracked for fairness, and matches how each person likes to be praised.
  • Impact: Quieter high performers finally feel seen, and recognition stops creating friction on the team.

🚀 Key Insight #3: Appreciative Inquiry for School Improvement Planning.

  • What's broken: School improvement plans start with a list of weaknesses to shore up.
  • The shift: Leaders ask staff what already helps them work at their best and build the plan around doing more of it.
  • Impact: The school grows faster from its strengths than it would by patching gaps.

💬 STEPH HAWKINS QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"Resilience used to be something that we draw on when times get difficult or in kind of real adversity. And it's almost now become like an assumption."

— Steph Hawkins

"I think middle leaders are like the connective tissue of the school."

— Steph Hawkins

"If you build on your strengths, like I said, like the growth and the progress you can make on that is actually significantly more than focusing on those areas of weakness."

— Steph Hawkins

"How we lead and how we work shapes what becomes possible."

— Steph Hawkins

"Design for people and performance will follow."

— Steph Hawkins

"You can't build a great school with burnt out staff."

— Steph Hawkins

"Depletion isn't a mark of dedication."

— Steph Hawkins

🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

  1. Tomorrow: Pick one staff member whose impact is less visible, and give them timely, specific recognition that names exactly how their work helped a student or class, in the format they prefer (public, a handwritten note, or a quiet conversation).
  2. This Month: In every professional review conversation, name a strength you've seen in that person and ask where it might be getting overused.
  3. This Semester: Run an appreciative inquiry round before your next school improvement plan by asking staff what already helps them do their best work, then build the plan around doing more of it.

⌚️ Episode Timestamps

  • 00:00 - Toxic resilience and unrealistic demands
  • 03:58 - Bore out, burnout's overlooked twin
  • 07:36 - The three layers of staff wellbeing
  • 10:08 - Why toxic resilience blocks system change
  • 12:17 - Middle leaders as the school's connective tissue
  • 14:25 - Staff recognition that actually land
  • 18:30 - When your strengths start to drain you
  • 21:28 - Appreciative inquiry for school improvement
  • 22:58 - How opposite strengths create team conflict
  • 31:22 - Work design exposes hidden strain
  • 33:47 - The connections every new educator needs
  • 36:35 - Marquee message and dream school principles

00:03
Speaker 1
I talk about this concept of toxic resilience and this notion that resilience used to
be something that we draw on when times get difficult or in kind of real
adversity. And it's almost now become like an assumption, whether that's
implicit, explicit, whether it's kind of internally or externally imposed. This kind
of idea that rather than stop and look at the work that people are being asked to
do and how we're designing that work, there's this notion that actually people
will just dig a bit deeper and work a bit harder and stretch a bit further to
compensate. So it's kind of like become that bridge between unrealistic demands
and like human capability really.

00:44
Speaker 2
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01:57
Speaker 2
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LLC Leaders. That's Kids First LLC Leaders. Corey talked to digital Danny910
times in just five months. And when I asked him about why he hired Digital
Danny he said well, the first job was to communicate things. Those high stake
messages I needed to share a non renewal of the teacher, a difficult parent
situation and I needed those messages to land and Digital Danny helped.

03:04
Speaker 2
I had an idea of what I wanted to share but Digital Danny gave me other ways
of thinking about how to communicate based on the stakeholder. So if you have
high stakes messages that you need to land as well, maybe you should hire
Digital Danny for that job as well. Get started and try for yourself at
myprincipalcoach.com Ruckus that's my principalcoach.com Ruckus. All right.
And Steph, welcome to the show.

03:36
Speaker 1
Hi. Nice to be here.
03:38
Speaker 2
Yeah, good to be here, too. Especially navigating digital wormholes and, you
know. But, yeah, that was. That was wild. I'm glad were able to connect, though.
And I want to. I want to start with. If you could bring us back to a moment
where you just. You realized, oh, this is it. Something has to change.

03:58
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I've been giving it some thought. I've got a slightly unusual story, I
think, probably in the context. So I talk a lot about professional depletion in the
work I do. I think my story speaks to the fact that we need to broaden our
horizon when it comes to our understanding of that term. So I didn't burn out in
the traditional sense. And burnout obviously gets spoken a lot, spoken about a
lot in education, and rightly so, because it's rife, it's prevalent. We need to kind
of be working towards bringing those levels down. But my experience was in
some ways the polar opposite. Right. So I went through something that's more
commonly known as bore out. It's kind of a form of languishing.

04:39
Speaker 1
It doesn't get spoken about very much for a variety of reasons, but it is almost
just as impactful as burnout. Like, the symptom profile is the same. So it's that
lack of energy, lack of motivation, disengagement, that kind of erosion of
confidence, that feeling of not really doing anything that's having any impact or
meaning, but kind of the origin story, I guess, is different. It's that mental
underload, if you like. So it's kind of either not having enough to do, which
sounds crazy in the context of education, or not having enough, that kind of
challenges you. And I think I kind of very much fell into that latter camp. And
it's something that's really quite difficult to talk about.

05:19
Speaker 1
And I still don't love talking about it now because as well as the stress and
frustration that comes with it, there's a lot of kind of anxiety and guilt and
almost shame around it because you're surrounded by people who are
overextended, overworked, like burning out in the traditional sense. And there's
that kind of fear that you're going to get caught out almost and kind of
mislabeled as lazy, which is far from the truth. Like, I was still showing up for
my students. I was showing up for my team. I was showing up for my
colleagues. But the kind of exhaustion came from maintaining that image that
everything was okay. And everything started to feel very performative because
internally I was like, I can do more, and I haven't got an outlet for it.

06:03
Speaker 1
And it was just that real kind of sense of misalignment then actually led me to
my postgrad studies and the masters that I then fell in love with when I was
doing that work. And I was like, oh, hang on a minute. That. That is another
way. Like, there's data out there that tells us kind of how we can create
conditions that allow people to thrive at work. And that's kind of like we know
how to pull those levers to make it happen. And I was like, so why aren't we
doing anything with this? And it was kind of at that point, I was like, I need a
new challenge. I need something different after kind of 20 years of a very kind
of cyclical process of teaching and leading. So, yeah, well, well was born as a
result.

06:41
Speaker 2
Cool. Yeah. And, you know, what can a leader do about what you're talking
about? You know, it's a big question. And I do. I do know. Like, I realize. And
sometimes I. I challenge people to think. Like, it's called self care for a reason,
not district care. Now, obviously, there's stuff we can do as leaders to create
conditions where people can thrive. Right. So I don't want people to hear me
and think, okay, well, wash your hands with it. And, like, don't. Don't worry
about it at all. But I do want to. I do want. I do want folks to think deeply, too,
about, like, what's within their locus of control that they can take care of, to take
care of themselves. Right. I think too often we sort of want everybody else to fix
it, I guess. Right. So that.

07:25
Speaker 2
That's sort of my point of view. And feel free to disagree. Right. Like, this is a
great place to just have a conversation.

07:31
Speaker 1
No, I'm with you.

07:34
Speaker 2
Oh, you're with me. All right. Right on.

07:36
Speaker 1
Because I think there are. I think when we talk about wellbeing in any
organization, including schools, it's kind of this idea that it's kind of one thing.
And in a lot of schools, it even sits with one person. Like you've got the
wellbeing coordinator or the wellbeing lead, and that. That just doesn't sit very
comfortably. Because I think we can look at wellbeing in kind of three different
layers. If you like. So you've got the individual layer, which I guess in a lot of
ways is what people refer to as self care. I think that individual responsibility
comes very much down to awareness and agency. So it's kind of knowing what
depletes you, knowing when you're kind of running low and also knowing
what's going to replenish you. So that could be really small stuff.

08:18
Speaker 1
Kind of in the workplace it could be just adding a couple of extra boundaries, it
could be seeking support earlier. But in your personal life it could be knowing
that kind of real passive leisure, the box set binging and that kind of doom
scrolling isn't really what you need and kind of trying to engage in a bit more
active leisure time. So I think that kind of individual level is kind of taking
responsibility for just knowing yourself, knowing your signs and knowing what
works really. I think there is a leadership level when it comes to wellbeing and I
think that's very much relational. So that's kind of how you communicate
priorities or how you kind of buffer pressure, how you make people feel seen,
how you create psychological safety. And a lot of that comes down to kind of
individual day to day actions.

09:05
Speaker 1
It's not necessarily the kind of stuff that's written into policy. And then you've
got the organizational level, which I think is the tricky one. I think it's the one
potentially that can have the most impact, but it's the one that's the hardest
because that's your kind of top down workplace design. So when we're talking
about schools, we're talking about kind of timetabling, we're talking about job
descriptions, we're talking about accountability systems and meeting schedules,
that kind of stuff. And I think to look at that effectively you need systems level
thinking, you need data. And I think you also need like a lot of courage, I
suppose, because you might have to look at things and go right the way we've
always done. It isn't working anymore. So what do we want to change and how
do we change it?

09:51
Speaker 1
And I think we need to kind of look at wellbeing across all of those levels to
have an effective approach to it.

09:57
Speaker 2
Yeah. If that systems level is maybe one of the more challenging ones. Can you
double click on that piece a little bit and talk about how to make those, you
know, those shifts?

10:08
Speaker 1
Yeah, so I think that is hard because that also is going to require time. Right.
Like to press pause and be like, okay, let's actually have a look at this. And I
think one of the issues within schools is there's so many different competing
priorities. It's like, well, what are you going to invest that time on? Like, you've
got to keep going day to day operationally, but. But you've got to have that
reflection space as well. I think the other thing that's happening, and this is
organization wide, but it's happening in schools as well on all of those levels. I
think I talk about this concept of toxic resilience and this notion that resilience
used to be something that we draw on when times get difficult or in kind of real
adversity.

10:49
Speaker 1
And it's almost now become like an assumption, whether that's implicit, explicit,
whether it's kind of internally or externally imposed, this kind of idea that rather
than stop and look at the work that people are being asked to do and how we're
designing that work, there's this notion that actually people will just dig a bit
deeper and work a bit harder and stretch a bit further to compensate. So it's kind
of like become that bridge between unrealistic demands and like human
capability, really. And I think when you've got so many competing priorities and
you're trying to work out what to invest your time and reflection on, the fact
that's kind of. That's just what people do, people step up, people absorb a bit
more, they do work a bit harder. That means you can get through without really
addressing the wellbeing stuff.

11:36
Speaker 1
So I think on that organizational level, there's a number of challenges and I
think kind of it takes bravery to really prioritize that. Although I would argue if
you do prioritize that, a lot of other issues you might be having kind of fall into
place as a result. Because if you've got healthy, well, lively staff, you know, they
can cope with a lot of the other stuff that's going on. I think with that kind of
leadership level, I tend to work quite a lot with middle leaders. And what I mean
by that is the kind of people who are leading departments or faculties or year
groups, grades, those kind of. They're not senior level making all the decisions.
They're the ones that kind of still on the ground, kind of running with it all
really.

12:17
Speaker 1
And I think with them, they often have more autonomy than they believe they
have. So some of the things I can come on to talk about, the kind of ways that
we can shift the balance a little bit and step out of that toxic positivity and find
better ways of working, some of the adjustments can be really micro like it
Sounds almost like they're not really going to have a huge amount of impact.
But, you know, like I said, we've got the research that shows that they do, and
those kind of micro adjustments that we can make fall within the remit of that
kind of middle leadership. Quite often it's not going beyond the scope of their
role to make those tweaks and adjustments. And I think that if we can support
the middle.

12:54
Speaker 1
Well, you're kind of supporting the whole as well, because those middle. I think
middle leaders are like the connective tissue of the school because they're kind
of, you know, they've got the pressure from both sides. They're in that real
squeeze position, but their span of impact is huge because if we take all the kind
of team leaders they are between them, kind of covering every member of staff
in the school, so that kind of means that the impact is spreading to every student
in the school as well. So, yeah, it's those kind of micro adjustments that I think
of a good starting point.

13:25
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. They're certainly close to the action. Right. Serving the staff that
are getting things done and creating results for kids. You know, courage has
come up a lot, and the. The idea of just having time to think through this stuff.
Right. And that's a challenge in the busyness of running a school, that kind of
thing. As long as you're not a solo senior leader, I think if you could find
somebody who's great operationally and let them run with a lot of that stuff so
you can do the strategy and do the thinking. Right. That's really important.

13:59
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely.

14:00
Speaker 2
But so easy to get pulled into all the stuff, you know, and maybe even feel like,
oh, I'm thinking deeply about what needs to happen on campus, but I didn't do
anything today. Right. And that might be something that folks struggle with, but
if you're not putting in that thought, who is? Right, exactly right.

14:19
Speaker 1
And it's the firefighting that is so characteristic that just kind of derails the best
intentions a lot of the time.

14:25
Speaker 2
So I heard something interesting, you know, that we shouldn't celebrate the
firefighters, so to speak, on campus, even though they're putting out the fires,
because that's a good thing. We don't want those fires to remain burning. But the
person's take was, you know, we should celebrate all the people that don't cause
fires in. In the beginning. Right. And I think that leadership. Right. When you're
putting out the fires and all that, it's. It's very clear to see, I guess the value
you're adding to campus because I have a toothache now, my tooth doesn't hurt.
Right. Versus you know, as your parent, I didn't let you eat all the candy in the
world so you never got a toothache in the first place. You know, but you know,
thinking about people and recognition and celebrations, how do you. Yeah.

15:14
Speaker 2
Wrap your mind around rewards and recognition?

15:16
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I think reward and recognition is a, it's a, there's a science behind it.
Right. To do it. Right. There's kind of certain key pillars that you need to hit
with that. And quite often again because of the busy environment, because of
the pace of everything, kind of recognition is often quite off the hoof, like a
passing comment in a corridor or just a really simple thanks, which is great and
you know, it's better than not doing it. But to, for it to kind of really land and
have impact, you know, it needs to be kind of timely. So a couple of days later,
oh, I haven't had a chance to say thanks, but thanks not ideal. It kinds of really
needs to be timely. It needs to be really specific and focused on impact as well.

15:57
Speaker 1
So rather than just going thanks for that was great actually just doing a little bit
more with it and kind of really painting the impact that had the kind of how it
impacted on a bigger picture or kind of like if it was to do with a particular
student or class, like really highlighting why you are giving them praise in the
first place has to be kind of fair as well. Like I don't want to, I'm all about not
adding work to people but kind of almost keeping a tally of like who's had some
praise and who hasn't. Because that can be a real source of friction actually. If
somebody's great at their job, they're open to a lot of praise. Right. Whereas if
somebody's working hard but maybe their impact isn't quite as visible, where
can you find those opportunities to praise them?

16:38
Speaker 1
So it feels equitable in a way and I think as a leader as well. If you're talking
about the well being of your team and how that links to praise and recognition,
it's really about understanding your team and knowing how they like to be
praised. So if somebody really is uncomfortable with being praised publicly,
don't do that because they're not going to get the benefits from it. If they prefer a
little kind of handwritten note or a little quiet conversation somewhere. It's
about kind of really understanding the way they like to receive praise and kind
of taking that into account too, I think.

17:09
Speaker 2
Yeah, I like that. Understanding your people. I learned that when I was a
principal and I wanted to do like staff shout outs and that kind of thing. And one
of the department heads was like, oh, everybody hates it. You know, it's like, oh
my gosh, everybody hates it. This is not good. So I took it away and then the
staff was like, why'd you take it away? And I, I. And I learned an important
lesson. The department chair was talking about probably her experience, right. I
should have checked in because when I took it away there was an uproar. But
she also didn't like it as well. So it's knowing your people. So, yeah, lesson
learned there. And you know, whether it's tally marks or whatever, I kept it on a
spreadsheet.

17:52
Speaker 2
But I, I think you do need a system for, you know, obviously you have one for
observations and providing feedback, but recognition and celebrations as well.
Because if you left to your own devices and biases, you're going to recognize
and celebrate the people you like and the people that are harder. Right. They're
just not. Even though they might be doing some good stuff from time to time,
you're going to miss it just because of how you're built. So that's interesting. I
know in the pre chat you brought up an idea that I don't know a lot about, but
you called it appreciative inquiry. So can you dig into that please?

18:30
Speaker 1
I can, yeah. So this is kind of like, this falls within the remit of strength and in
terms of how important and how valuable they are in the context of the
workplace. So strength, actually, now that you said that, it's a great example of
kind of operating on those three different levels and how you can kind of
implement one strategy at that kind individual, team and organizational level.
So individually we know that if you can work in a way that's aligned with your
strengths, the benefits of that are massive. So you've got motivation,
engagement, dedication, creativity, innovation. All of that shoots up
dramatically if you work in a way that's aligned with your strengths. By
strengths I mean the kind of things, the way you act, think, behave, that kind of
allow you to function at your best, really. So strength, alignment, phenomenal.

19:20
Speaker 1
But equally on the individual level, it's about kind of really understanding your
strengths. A lot of people go, oh right, strengths are great, let's max them out.
Let's make sure that everything we do is like tapping into our strength. And
actually that's not great at all. It's about kind of really understanding your
strengths, optimizing it, and kind of balancing it in a nuanced way. Because as
soon as you default to a strength, particularly when things get challenging, you
just kind of. That's your default way of working. People come to expect that of
you. They know that's what you're good at. It can become overused, and then it
loses its kind of energizing power. It becomes what we call a competence,
which is actually something that really drains you. So actually you don't. You
want to be really pulling back on it.

20:00
Speaker 1
So it's about kind of almost like driving a car, understanding when to press the
gas, when to press the brake, and kind of using your strengths in a sensible way.
So on an individual level, strengths can be phenomenal and a kind of leadership
level. If you can talk to your team about their strengths and if you can kind of
spot strengths in them. And I talk a lot about how you actually do spot strengths
just in a conversation with somebody. If you can bring that into things like your
professional review or your professional development conversations, and
actually really get into a conversation with somebody about their strength when
you've seen it when it was like, brilliant, talk to them about maybe situations
where it doesn't work so well or kind of alternative strengths that they could
use.

20:43
Speaker 1
That is a really kind of positive, enlivening conversation. That member of your
team is going to feel really seen, like authentically seen, because you've spotted
something in them that is kind of like core to them in some way. So it kind of
facilitates that connection. It kind of feels very authentic. You can also do it in,
bizarrely, you can do it in competency conversations. So if you're kind to trying
to address some underperformance issues, like a way in talking about, we know
you're great at this, how could we maybe utilize that to support you in this kind
of work just again becomes a more positively framed conversation. You get all
of those benefits that come with kind of strengths and trying to utilize strengths
to their full effect.

21:28
Speaker 1
Team strengths is a whole other thing, like looking at your team as a whole and
looking at your team strengths profile. And often that's a source of conflict. So
kind of understanding that again, can help you resolve issues that you might
have in your team that are causing wellbeing concerns. And then a preach of
inquiry, which is one you actually asked about, is that kind of organizational
level. So it's quite common when you're looking at kind of school improvement
and school Development, planning, to focus on things that aren't going
particularly well, like areas of weakness, if you want to call it that. And what
you need to change to kind of firm those up and strengthen those. There's a lot
of evidence that suggests actually a better approach that's going to get you
further faster is to focus on strength.

22:14
Speaker 1
So kind of to inquire about what you already appreciate and what your staff
already appreciate. So kind of things that you do well, things that staff really
value that they say actually helps them work in their best way or kind of things
that kind of make them feel great. Okay, how can we introduce more of that?
How can we do more of that? Because if you build on your strengths, like I said,
like the growth and the progress you can make on that is actually significantly
more than focusing on those areas of weakness.

22:45
Speaker 2
Did you say that team streaks can lead to conflict? Did I hear that correct? What
do you mean? Is that. Is that out of like. Like a jealousy thing or people feel like
they're being overshadowed or what? Yeah. What's going on there?

22:58
Speaker 1
It's. I can probably best explain this with an example.

23:01
Speaker 2
Yeah, please, let's.

23:03
Speaker 1
So, yeah. Many years ago. And I can tell this story because I've got full
approval from Chris, who's the other. The other character involved. I was part of
a school improvement team and we had a remit to design a series of days across
the year that they were called whole school enrichment days. So everybody was
off timetable. We wrote the kind of activities for the day. Staff were allocated to
various groups. They were given all the resources. It was a complex thing. And
I worked with Chris on this. Now, my strengths, like, I'm a planner, like, I like
to have things done in advance. I showed up early to this meeting, right? Like, I
need to know weeks in advance that things are in place because then if it goes
wrong, we've got time to fix it. Right.

23:43
Speaker 1
And I need to make sure everybody's got everything they need. Chris does not
have that strength. Chris is. I don't even know what you call Chris's strength, but
basically he's a kind of last minute.com guy, right? He is awesome under
pressure. He thrives under pressure. I do not thrive under pressure. It was kind
of like a opposite there. He thinks on his feet. If there was something that came
up on the morning of our event that I was like, oh, my God. He was like, I'm on
it. I fixed it. I've done it. So our strengths were completely opposed. He drove
me insane because I was like, chris, have you done this now? It'll be fine. Fine,
Chris. But I need this. Yeah, yeah, you'll get it. And he just thought I was a real
pain in the ass, Right.

24:24
Speaker 1
Cause I was just like, chris, Chris, Chris. So actually, initially there was quite a
lot of conflict there until we realized that our strengths actually could
compliment each other. But initially I'm like, I hate the way you work. I can't
work with you. You're a nightmare. And he was like, yeah, you're really up,
right? You're a nightmare. So over time, we kind of. We got to know each other
better. We kind of. I knew that if something came up, right. Chris is on it. That's
Chris's job. He knew that I would have things in place in advance. So we kind
of leaned into each other's strengths and we appreciated them a bit. Whereas in
those kind of first year of working together, it was a nightmare. So that's my
example of how team strengths can cause friction.

25:04
Speaker 2
Yeah, that makes sense. That's where I get. I really value. From having
operational people around me. Right. Because I am the big thinker, idea guy.
Creative. Not so much on the details or like the follow through all the time, but
that I see how that at times. Right. Causes conflict. Right. So, yeah, thank you
for sharing that. That example, it really resonated with me. It was like, oh, I
might be Chris.

25:34
Speaker 1
It's okay.

25:37
Speaker 2
Yeah, right on. Most career plans end with a checklist. Take the quiz, you grab
the brochure, you name three careers, it's done. But checklists, they're not a.
They're not a plan. Orchard's different students have an AI career buddy named
Orchi to explore options. Compare real plans. Compare colleges, trades,
apprenticeships, military. And it builds a personalized plan with steps they can
take right now, that Sunday, this week. And it grows with them as their interests
change. This is what career readiness should have looked like all along. Go see
it for yourself at BetterLeaders Orchard Careers. That's BetterLeaders Orchard
Careers. ODP Business Solutions, formerly Office Depot Business Solutions
division, has been a trusted partner for schools for 30 years. At ODP Business
Solutions, we're by your side to meet your evolving education needs. Picture
this. A learning environment so engaging students forget to check their phones.

26:53
Speaker 2
Sounds impossible. That's exactly what we helped Belago Academy create.
Their secret Working with ODP Business Solutions to build collaborative spaces
that actually work. We didn't just deliver furniture. We delivered a completely
new way of learning from tech integration that makes lessons come alive to
flexible spaces that adapt to any teaching style, to sustainable solutions that
reduce your carbon footprint. We're here to help you do school different. And
the best part? You get it all from a single supplier. All to help you simplify
ordering and streamline budgeting while staying compliant with easy access to
cooperative contracts. However you want to advance, ODP Business Solutions
has 30 years of experience helping districts like yours get ahead. Visit
ODPbusiness.comeducation to learn more.

27:49
Speaker 2
That's ODPbusiness.com education as a school Leader Time is your greatest
resource and there is a real sense of urgency when it comes to getting students
what they need right now. That's why I love IXL's universal screener. In 20
minutes or less, you can identify students in need of intervention, and IXL's
Learning Adaptive Platform makes differentiating instruction easy. As students
learn, IXL adjusts to the right level of difficulty for each individual student. Get
started [email protected] leaders. That's ixl.com leaders somewhere under the
emails, the compliance and the crises, there's a reason you got into education. It
was for the students. The Kids. Kids First Education exists to help school and
district leaders put that reason back at center. It's led by educators who've done
the work that have partnered with teams across the nation on coaching,
leadership development and professional learning.

29:05
Speaker 2
And it's all built around what's best for your students. It's practical, it's personal,
and it sticks. 98% Of educators that Kids first works with says they left ready to
use what they learned that week. Principals Admin District Leaders let's put
Kids first together. You can partner with Kids first at KidsFirst LLC leaders.
That's Kids First LLC leaders. Of all the principals who use Digital Dandy, the
one who uses him the most lost a teacher in the first week of school. It was an
abrupt resignation and students and staff thought about quitting or leaving the
school in response. This principal had to address his staff Monday morning. The
wrong tone in any direction would have made the situation worse. Too soft and
it sounds like nothing happened. Too hot and it sounds like you're blaming the
teacher who left. What he needed wasn't a rider.

30:14
Speaker 2
He needed someone who'd sat in that same exact seat for hundreds of reps to
help him land the right move. Teaching as a calling connection over compliance
and then crafting the right words. The principal followed up with his speech and
our memoir to the staff that week. And it worked. If you also have high stakes
messages that you need to Land Digital. Danny can help. He was built for this.
And you can get started with him@my principalcoach.com Ruckus. That's my
principalcoach.com RuckUS. You know, you're talking so much about wellness
and you know, how to take care and to thrive, be bore out. I've never heard of
that before, so thank you for sharing. That's a new idea to me. But when it
comes to, you know, like, our work.

31:22
Speaker 2
And I love how you said, just reminding people that they have this power in this
agency, you know, even in education, where there's a lot that needs to be done
and it's sort of told to us that these things need to happen. But how do you think
about work design, especially in the context of schools?

31:39
Speaker 1
Yeah, so I love work design. Like, it's one of my favorite ways to work with
people because it kind of gets to the heart of the issue, Right. So there's a
number of different models that you can look at. But one of the things that I
think it's really valuable for is identifying what's going on when you kind of
know something's not right, but you just can't put your finger on it. So maybe a
leader that's kind of been leading for years and they kind of know what they're
doing, but for some reason it's starting to feel harder or something's just feeling
off and they can't quite work out what it is. You can use kind of work design
frameworks to really pinpoint that unseen strain that otherwise might be
difficult to target.

32:20
Speaker 1
So one of the models I use a lot is the Smart work design framework. And it
talks about a couple of things that, again, a lot of people don't necessarily go to
or think about when they're considering what's going on. So things like mastery
is one of the kind of pillars in that particular framework, and that covers a whole
host of stuff. So that's like, do you really know what good means for your role
and your job? Like, do you know what it means to really do it well? And are
you getting good constructive feedback on a regular basis so you can kind of
gauge where you are with it? Or is it kind of like one conversation once a year
with your line manager that goes, oh, yeah, you would do great at that. Let's
work on this next year.

32:58
Speaker 1
Also kind of like, do you really understand your role in terms of what's your
responsibility, what you've maybe just started to absorb along the way, that
never really should have been yours. That's become yours. Looking at kind of
stimulating work. Coming back to that notion of bore out, like, have you got
enough task variety and skill variety in what you do? Are you tapping into kind
of different areas that are going to stimulate you differently? If not, that's going
to cause all sorts of issues. So I think that's one thing they do really well.
Because if you can identify what's causing that kind of underlying stuff that
maybe you can't quite put your finger on, then you know exactly what levers
that you can pull to rectify those situations.

33:39
Speaker 1
You can bring in a range of different tools that you know are going to be
targeted in the right place. So, yeah, work design, absolutely fundamental, I
think.

33:47
Speaker 2
And what would you say that sort of maybe newer teachers entering the
profession and yeah, just how to take care. There's so much negativity at times
about where education is these days. I still think it's a brilliant, you know,
profession and one that is deeply meaningful. You can have great impact. Yeah,
but what do you say to new teachers on earning?

34:11
Speaker 1
We got two hours. I would say, I would say it's about getting your habits in
early, actually. And I say this to new leaders as well. So kind of if you're
embarking on that kind of thing, it's about establishing those patterns that are
going to work for you. So coming back to that individual level, kind of really
knowing the signs in yourself that are telling you that kind of like, okay, you're
being stretched a bit too thin here and kind of responding in a timely way to
those. I would also say make sure we talk a lot about connection in education as
well and that kind of sense of belonging, connection. I would say hopefully
you're going to find friends along the way and that's kind of super important.
But look beyond friendship when you talk about connection as well.

34:58
Speaker 1
I think it's really important to have kind of people who you can have the right
conversations at the right time with for you. And I don't want this to sound
transactional in any kind of way, but people who are going to focus on your
kind of development and progression and talk to you about kind of how you
might want to upskill yourself or kind of promotions that you might want to
start thinking about. So they are kind of like your people that are driving and
pushing you. Have you got people or can you find people who ground you and
care about you and give you that kind of balance and perspective? Have you got
people who give you perspective? Perspective and Inspire you.

35:38
Speaker 1
So kind of allow you to have that kind of bigger picture rather than getting kind
of tied up in the minutiae. Have you got people who you can collaborate well
that just make jobs feel a little bit more exciting and interesting and fun? So
yeah, it's kind of thinking not just about like, oh, I need a support network of
kind of friends here. It's kind of like actually if you can surround yourself and
nurture relationships with different kind of kinds of people, that's going to be
super useful. And I think that's going to stand you in good stead as you move
forward.

36:09
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. That's. And don't wait for it to happen for you. Right. Just like
how we started this conversation. Take ownership over that and try to form
those groups, you know, on your own. So cool. At the end of each show, you
know, I like to ask each guest the same three questions. So, Steph, if you're
going to put one message on all school marquees around the world for a single
day, what would your message be?

36:35
Speaker 1
My message would be, fortunately I had time to think about this one. It would
be how we lead and how we work shapes what becomes possible.

36:42
Speaker 2
That's good. And how about building your dream campus? If you didn't have
any constraints in terms of resources, your only limitation was your ability to
imagine what would be the three guiding principles of this dream school.

36:55
Speaker 1
Okay, so the guiding principles would be design for people and performance
will follow. Number one, key belongings should be built, not assumed. So that
kind of idea about connection again and you can't build a great school with
burnt out staff. Would be my path.

37:10
Speaker 2
Good reminder. Well, we covered a lot of ground in today's conversation of
everything we discussed today. Steph, what's the one thing you want a ruckus
maker to remember?

37:21
Speaker 1
It would be that depletion isn't a mark of dedication. And that is another way.

37:29
Speaker 2
Hey ruckus maker, thanks again for pressing play. I hope you enjoyed this show
as much as I enjoyed repeating recording it. And before you go, if today's
episode shifted something for you where you want to do school different or you
have a new idea about education, then I want to invite you to subscribe to
ruckusmakers News. That's our newsletter. And you get three new opportunities
to do school different every week sent to your inbox. It's trusted by over 5,000
school leaders. And if you want to reimagine education within a traditional
setting so that you can could create a campus experience worth showing up for
subscribe for free at Ruckusmakers News.


Transcribed by https://fireflies.ai/

🔗 Connect With Steph Hawkins

🌎 Website: https://www.wellwellwell.work/

👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steph-hawkins-mapp/

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Meet Digital Danny — your Self Mentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com

 

🫶 Today's Ruckuscast Partners

IXL
IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening.

🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders

ODP Business Solutions®

ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts.

🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education

Orchard

Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board.

🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers

Kids First Education

Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned.

🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Twelve Practices LLC © 2026 | If Education Ain't a Bit Disruptive, Then What Are Your Students Learning?

If education ain’t a bit disruptive, then what are your students really learning?

This show isn’t about doing school better.

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Today’s RUCKUScast in Partnership with:

IXL: Meet your students where they are and take them where they need to go. Join over 1 million teachers who trust IXL to drive data-informed excellence in their classrooms.
🔍 Learn more: ixl.com/leaders

The Ruckus Maker Club Community beats compliance every single time. The Ruckus Maker Club is your on demand network of bold school leaders designing the future of education. Join today for $100 a month and get coaching on demand courses, AI prompts and custom GPTs and all our automatic school frameworks and tools within our private digital community.
🔍 Learn more: here

ODP Business Solutions®: Solutions “Our STEAM program is too complicated” = Code for “We’re doing it wrong.” Stop letting fear kill innovation. Some leaders are transforming STEAM with a three-part framework that’s not what you think.
🔍 Get the playbook: ODPbusiness.com/education

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