What's In Your Control?: What Stoic Thinking Taught Me About School Leadership

School leadership can feel heavy.

There are days when a difficult parent conversation sits with you long after you leave the building. A staff member is frustrated with a decision you made. A student issue did not go the way you hoped. You replay a conversation in your head all evening wondering if you should have handled it differently.

Then there are the bigger moments. A difficult personnel situation. A major campus challenge. A year where student growth is not happening as quickly as you want it to.

As principals, we can spend a tremendous amount of energy trying to change things that have already happened or worrying about reactions we cannot control.

Ryan Holiday writes about this idea in The Obstacle Is the Way, drawing from the thinking of Stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. One quote in particular caught my attention:

"Does what happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness? No? Then get back to work." (Holiday, 2014)

I laughed a little when I first read it because, stated that way, it sounds pretty blunt.

But there is something useful in that question for school leaders.

We spend a lot of time "what if-ing" ourselves into exhaustion.

What if the staff is upset?

What if parents disagree?

What if I made the wrong decision?

What if this doesn't work?

Many of us replay difficult moments over and over, even though we know we cannot go back and change them.

When I think back on my years as a principal, I remember decisions that were unpopular at the time. I remember parents who were angry. I remember worrying whether I had gotten something wrong.

But when I look back now, I can ask a simpler question:

Did I do my best with the information I had?

Did I act in the best interest of students?

Did I lead with integrity?

If the answer is yes, then eventually you have to stop reliving it and move forward.

Focus on the Part You Can Actually Influence

One of the ideas Ryan Holiday discusses is the translated Stoic phrase "what is up to us and what is not up to us." Knowing the difference can influence the most important decisions we make.

I use a version of this all the time in coaching conversations with principals.

When a principal is struggling with a situation, we often do a simple locus of control exercise. We identify:

• What is within your control?

• What is within your influence?

• What is completely outside your control?

Once we separate those things, the conversation changes. Because principals often walk into coaching carrying the weight of everything. Student situations, parent reactions, district decisions, staffing challenges, personalities, mandates, and outcomes.

They can't always see this clearly, but not all of that belongs on their shoulders.

After identifying what they actually control, we define the outcome they want and build an action plan from there.

Then during our next session, we come back and ask:

• Did your actions move things forward?

• Do we stay the course?

• Do we pivot?

Working from what is within our control almost always creates better outcomes than spending our energy fighting what is outside of it.

Sometimes Experience Gives You Perspective

Being at this point in my career gives me something I did not have when I was a younger school leader: long-range vision.

I cannot tell you how many times I have watched parents and students feel devastated over something that happened in elementary school or middle school. In the moment, it felt life-changing. They were convinced this mistake would follow them forever, making it something they had to desperately fight against, and sometimes not accept responsibility for. 

Then years later I see that same student standing proudly at a high school graduation or walking across a college stage.

Life went on, growth happened, and everyone in that situation learned something that was important for their journey. What felt impossible in one season often became a difficult but important chapter in a much bigger story.

Principals need someone who can help them hold that wider perspective. A leadership coach who has walked in their shoes, but is far enough outside the day-to-day pressure to see the bigger picture, can become a lifeline for a campus leader.

Because school leaders have days that make them wonder whether they can keep doing this work. Support for them in this moment is crucial, because research consistently shows that principal effectiveness and principal stability (and staying power) matter tremendously for school and student outcomes. (Xu, Xianxuan, 2018)

Their work has a real impact on schools, so supporting principals well can strengthen far more than one person’s leadership. It can affect teachers, students, families, and the larger community around the school.

Obstacles Sometimes Show Us What Needs to Change

Another idea from Holiday that stood out to me was this:

"Our best ideas often come from a place where obstacles demand new options." (Holiday, 2014)

Schools can become very attached to "the way we've always done things."

I understand why. Schools value traditions, systems, and predictability.

But sometimes the obstacle itself is trying to tell us something.

Maybe the PLC process is not working.

Maybe professional learning is not changing classroom practice.

Maybe the systems we have built no longer fit what students need.

Sometimes the challenge is not an interruption to the work.

Sometimes the challenge is pointing directly at the work.

The strongest principals I know do not respond by jumping to ten new initiatives. They slow down enough to examine the problem, look honestly at the data, involve the people closest to the work, and identify a few meaningful shifts they want to make.

Then they stay with the work long enough to see whether it makes a difference.

Get Back to Work

One of the things I appreciate most about Stoic thinking is that it eventually moves back toward action.

Not avoidance.

Not endless worrying.

Action.

As leaders, difficult things are going to happen. Parents will disagree. Teachers will become frustrated. Plans will not always work.

None of that automatically means you are failing.

The question is whether we allow obstacles to consume our thinking or whether we use them to sharpen our perspective and move us toward better action.

School leadership has always required resilience.

But resilience is not pretending things are easy.

It is deciding that even when things are hard, we are going to keep showing up, keep learning, and keep doing the work that serves students, teachers, and schools.

Works Cited

Holiday, Ryan. The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph. Portfolio/Penguin, 2014.

Xu, Xianxuan. Principal's Impact on Student Achievement. Strong & Associates Educational Consulting, 2018.