How do I keep email and other communication from consuming my whole day?
The key insight is that staying current is different from staying caught up. You don't need an empty inbox at all times. You need to know what's waiting for you so you can make informed decisions about where to spend your time.
Most principals have too many communication channels competing for their attention — email, voicemail, text, messaging apps, two-way radios, people stopping by. Some of those channels store information reliably until you're ready to deal with it. Others are interruptive streams where messages disappear as new ones arrive. Consolidating your action items into a few reliable channels makes an enormous difference.
For the channels you keep, the discipline is simple: process every item by deciding to delete it, do it immediately if it's quick, delegate it, or defer it to a specific time. Do that consistently and you'll be current without being chained to your desk.
I lay out a complete communication management system in Now We're Talking!, Days 7-9.
From the Book
Now We’re Talking! 21 Days to High-Performance Instructional Leadership
About the Author
Justin Baeder, PhD
Justin Baeder, PhD is Director of The Principal Center, where he helps senior leaders in K–12 organizations build capacity for instructional leadership. A former principal in Seattle Public Schools, he is the creator of the Instructional Leadership Challenge, which has helped more than 10,000 school leaders in 50 countries around the world:
- Confidently get into classrooms every day
- Have feedback conversations that change teacher practice
- Discover their best opportunities for school improvement
Dr. Baeder directs the Instructional Leadership Association, the premiere professional membership for school leaders, and is the author of three Solution Tree books on instructional leadership:
- Now We’re Talking! 21 Days to High-Performance Instructional Leadership
- Mapping Professional Practice: How to Develop Instructional Frameworks to Support Teacher Growth (with Heather Bell-Williams)
- Cultivate and Activate: Building Teacher Capacity for Instructional Leadership (with Keith Fickel)
Justin is the host of Principal Center Radio, a long-running audio podcast featuring more than 400 education thought leaders and more than 500 books, as well as The Teaching Show and The Eduleadership Show. A prolific education commentator, he has more than 250,000 followers and 30,000,000 annual impressions on social media, and is frequently consulted by major media outlets on issues of education research, policy, and practice.
As a consultant, trainer, and speaker, Dr. Baeder has worked onsite with groups across the US, Canada, and Central America, and virtually with groups across the Middle East, Australia, and around the world. He is a frequent speaker at conferences, and regularly provides administrator professional development on classroom walkthroughs, teacher evaluation, and instructional leadership.
He holds a PhD in Educational Leadership & Policy Studies from the University of Washington and an MEd in Curriculum & Instruction from Seattle University, and is a graduate of the Danforth Program for Educational Leadership at UW.