Be your Best Self

​I’m sure this is not news to you, but teachers are stressed and it is a big problem. 46% of teachers have high rates of daily stress, which ties with nursing to be one of the most stressed groups of professionals. 78% of teachers feel exhausted at the end of the day - both physically and emotionally.

​The impacts of this exhaustion include increased illness, absenteeism, cynicism, and poor decision making as well as decreased energy and enjoyment. And it’s not just the teacher—students are impacted by their teacher’s exhaustion as well. Teacher burnout predicts student academic outcomes and is correlated with lower levels of student motivation and increased student stress (Lever, Mathis, & Mayworm, 2017). 
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​What can we do about it? 

We can help ourselves and our colleagues thrive. When people are able to thrive at work, there are positive outcomes. When you feel energized, you have enough capacity for the work and don’t burnout.  When you’re able to learn and grow in your job, not only do you accomplish more for your organization, but you become increasingly confident in your ability to achieve. When you are able to create resources, see the positive impacts of your work, and spread knowledge, this spirals upwards to generate continued thriving. Finally, when employees are able to co-create the work environment, they are able to flourish (Spreitzer & Porath, 2014). 

Spreitzer and Porath’s (2014) chapter in How to Be a Positive Leader: Small Actions, Big Impact, lays out several steps to take to enable thriving at work. Here’s what you can do:  

• Job craft. Research shows finding meaning in your work fuels thriving by increasing focus, productivity, and trying new things. Job crafting is simply redesigning your work to focus on what fulfills you. Just reflecting on how you make a difference and focusing on those difference-making activities, can yield more vitality. 
• Seek out opportunities to learn. Self-determination theory says feelings of competence enable vitality and growth at work. Mindful engagement theory makes this actionable, suggesting that experimenting with new behaviors and then reflecting on how it went is a powerful way to learn. 
• Foster high-quality relationships. They can increase your motivation, engagement, well-being, and learning. Also, avoid de-energizing relationships!  They can be 4x as a powerful (in a negative way).
• Manage your energy. Exercise, eat well, and sleep 7-8 hours a night. This will enhance positive moods during the work day. 

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​Spreitzer and Porath (2014) also suggest several steps for organizational leaders: 

• Share the leadership. Notably, teachers seem to be one of the least autonomous professional careers, reporting the lowest level of agreement with the statement: “At work, my opinions seem to count” out of 13 occupations surveyed (Lever, Mathis, & Mayworm, 2017). So, at the organizational level, systems of shared leadership could powerfully impact teacher well-being and reduce burnout! Include teachers in important school decisions by setting up a school leadership team in which each grade and subject are represented as well as non-teaching staff. Share how teachers are contributing to the organization to energize them.  Share a clear, focused vision for the school and the roadmap to get there to amplify teachers’ sense of learning and growing as a teacher leader.  If a decision doesn’t yield ideal results, frame this as a learning experience to encourage future risks and innovation (Spreitzer & Porath, 2014, Ch 4).
• Foster a learning culture. Another way to create a culture of growth and flourishing is to foster a culture of respectful support, in which teachers seek feedback rather than wait for it. The best organizations do this (De Stobbeleir & Ashford, 2012, see Chapter 17). This could look like professional learning communities (PLCs), teachers visiting each other’s classrooms, or signing up for instructional coaching. The respect piece of the culture is key, as experiencing fear or anger inhibits cognition and thus, learning. 
• Gamify growth. Gamification can enable thriving by offering incentives for solving an identified problem. Some restaurants do this, tracking progress via scorecards to reduce customer wait time or increase kitchen cleanliness. (Spreitzer & Porath, 2014, Ch 4). For schools, this could look like a team-based competition for professional growth points. Scoreboards could track points teachers earn by engaging in a collaborative learning experience or individually learning something new and putting it into practice.

The Reflected Best Self
One activity I absolutely love that contributes to thriving both at work and in life is the reflected best self (RBS).  Developed by Roberts, Spreitzer, Dutton, Quinn, and Heaphy (2005), you can use the RBS to identify your individual strengths and leverage those to increase your future potential. The exercise asks you to gather contribution stories from people in your personal and professional life to deepen your understanding of your best self, how you contribute to the world around you. 

The RBS helps regenerate people’s resources to help them advance and become extraordinary. It expands one’s constellation of possible selves, and when a person’s possible self is more vivid, performance improves. It also improves well-being as a result of social architecting, or the “pro-active selection of settings, people, and tasks that draw on their strengths” (Roberts et al., 2005, p. 726). Remember, job crafting? The RBS also helps people live authentically, as their true selves, experiencing and intense involvement in their work, a special fit that is not typical of daily tasks, feelings of being alive and fulfilled, and the impression that “I’m meant to do this” and “This is who I really am.” This also promotes psychological health, so your body functions better (Roberts et al., 2005). 

So, we know teachers are exhausted, and we know helping people be their best selves has a ton of physical, mental, and job performance benefits. In fact, feeling a greater sense of purpose and seeing how you add value, improves your ability to cope with stress. Doing this work creates a cycle of thriving! You may be thinking, "This sounds great, but where do I start?" 

Here's my small step challenge to you: Help yourself thrive at work by job crafting and setting goals for your work that bring out your best self. Roberts et al. (2005) share that when you are able to identify goals that are aligned with your true self, and then you take action to achieve these goals, you experience a heightened sense of living as your true self, feeling alive and fulfilled, and being physiologically healthy. So, download the job crafting template below, fill it out, and post it in your workspace. Then, share this blog post with a colleague so they can do the same. 
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Get your job crafting template here!

You got this, you amazing educator, you. 
​Just remember: think big, act brave, and be your best self. 
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