I wasn’t planning to send anything when I first visited this website. A colleague shared one of your stories, and I opened it while waiting for a meeting to start.
I’ve come back a few times since. Today I finally thought, okay, maybe I can put this somewhere instead of going over it in my head again.
Linda will do for a name. I’ve worked in education for more than 20 years, including eight in school leadership.
A few weeks ago, I answered a teacher before she had even finished explaining.
I didn’t shout. What I said wasn’t cruel, and I still think the decision was reasonable.
But the way I said it.
That’s the part I wish I could take back.
I usually think of myself as patient.
At least I try to be.
I listen.
I ask questions.
I don’t like reacting when I’m angry.
That is the version of myself I like to believe people usually get.
But apparently there is another version of me that appears when I am tired enough.
That is the one I met that afternoon.
The strange thing is, I knew almost immediately that I had handled it badly.
Not five hours later.
Not the next morning.
Almost immediately.
The teacher had barely left my office and I was already replaying the conversation.
That is why I’m writing.
I keep wondering how many bad conversations would never become bad conversations if we gave ourselves permission to say:
“I’m not ready to answer this properly yet.”
I wish I had said that.
Instead…
I answered too fast.
That’s the whole thing.
Not because I didn’t understand the question.
I did.
I just answered before I had finished being angry.
And I knew it almost immediately.
The teacher came into my office near the end of the day. She had a concern about a decision I had made earlier that week.
Nothing dramatic.
She wasn’t shouting.
She wasn’t disrespectful.
But the timing was bad.
I had already dealt with a parent complaint, a district request, one staff issue, and a meeting that went longer than it should have.
So when she sat down and started asking why I had handled something a certain way, I heard it as criticism before she even finished explaining.
That’s probably the first mistake.
I was already defensive.
She said:
“Ma’am, I just wanted to understand why…”
And I cut in.
I don’t even remember her exact sentence anymore because I interrupted it.
I said something like:
“Because I already explained this. I cannot keep going back to the same issue every time someone is unhappy with the decision.”
Not screaming.
Not even loud.
But sharp.
Too sharp.
The room went quiet.
She looked at me for a second and said:
“Okay, Ma’am.”
That’s all.
No argument.
No reaction.
Nothing.
And somehow that made it worse.
Because the second she said “okay,” I heard myself properly.
You know that horrible moment when your own sentence comes back to you after it’s already out?
That.
I wanted to rewind maybe ten seconds.
Just ten.
Let her finish.
Take a breath.
Ask what she actually wanted to know.
But no.
Too late.
She stood up.
I said:
“Wait.”
She stopped.
I tried to soften it.
“I’m sorry. It’s just been a long day.”
Another sentence I didn’t like.
Because now I was using the day as an excuse.
She said:
“It’s okay, Ma’am.”
It clearly wasn’t.
Or maybe it was.
I don’t know.
That’s the problem.
She left.
And I sat there feeling stupid.
The worst part is I still agreed with the decision.
I wasn’t wrong about that.
What I regretted was how fast I made the conversation about defending myself instead of listening to what she was asking.
Those are different things.
I realized that maybe five minutes too late.
Which is usually how these realizations work.
Perfect timing.
I tried to go back to work.
Couldn’t.
Opened an email.
Read the same paragraph three times.
Closed it.
Checked my phone.
Nothing.
Then I started replaying the conversation.
Her face.
My tone.
The pause after I interrupted her.
The way she said “okay.”
I even started rewriting the whole thing in my head.
Version one:
I let her finish.
Version two:
I say:
“Tell me what part doesn’t make sense.”
Version three:
I say:
“I’m tired right now and I don’t want to answer badly. Can we talk tomorrow?”
That one annoyed me because it was so simple.
I could’ve said that.
Literally that.
“Can we talk tomorrow?”
Why didn’t I?
Because in the moment I wanted the conversation gone.
That’s the truth.
I didn’t want to process another concern.
I wanted to end it.
So I answered in a way that ended it.
Congratulations.
It worked.
That night I kept thinking about whether I should message her.
I typed something.
Deleted it.
Typed again.
Deleted that too.
Everything sounded too formal.
“Regarding our conversation earlier…”
No.
Awful.
Then I thought maybe I should leave it alone.
Maybe bringing it up again would make it bigger.
Then I thought maybe that was just me trying to avoid feeling embarrassed.
Eventually I sent:
“Hi. I’ve been thinking about our conversation earlier. I don’t think I gave you a fair chance to explain. Can we talk tomorrow?”
That was it.
No speech.
No explanation.
She replied:
“Sure, Ma’am.”
I still didn’t sleep properly.
Because now my brain had moved on to tomorrow’s conversation.
What if she was still upset?
What if she had already told someone?
What if I apologized too much and made it weird?
What if I apologized too little?
Very relaxing.
The next day she came in.
I said sorry.
Properly this time.
No “but.”
No “I was tired.”
No “you caught me at a bad time.”
Just:
“I answered too quickly yesterday. You were trying to explain something and I cut you off. I’m sorry.”
She said she understood.
Then she explained what she had actually wanted to ask.
And this is the part that really bothered me.
Her question was reasonable.
She wasn’t even asking me to reverse the decision.
She wanted to know how to explain it to someone else.
That was it.
I had defended myself against an argument she wasn’t even making.
Fantastic.
We talked for maybe fifteen minutes.
Everything was fine.
Actually fine this time.
She left.
No damage.
At least I don’t think there was.
But I still think about that conversation.
Not because it became some huge problem.
It didn’t.
Because it showed me how quickly I can become someone I don’t like when I’m tired and already carrying too much.
That’s uncomfortable.
I like to think I’m patient.
Fair.
Reasonable.
Most days, maybe I am.
But apparently there is a version of me that hears a simple question as a challenge when I’m tired enough.
I don’t love knowing that.
Still useful to know.
There are other conversations I wish I had paused before answering too.
A parent I responded to too defensively.
A staff member I answered before I had all the information.
A meeting where I said something because the silence made me uncomfortable.
Sometimes I think half of leadership is learning what to say.
The other half might be learning when not to say it yet.
That sounds obvious.
Still took me a while.
Now, when I feel myself getting irritated during a conversation, I try to ask:
Do I need to answer this now?
Not everything needs an immediate response.
I forget that.
A lot.
Sometimes:
“Let me think about it.”
is not weakness.
Sometimes it is the only thing standing between the sentence in your head and the sentence you’ll spend the whole night replaying.
I wish I had remembered that sooner.
I think that is what I’m really asking about.
How do you know when you need to answer now…
and when the more responsible thing is to wait until you can answer without turning the conversation into something it isn’t?
Because I do not want to use “I need time” as an excuse to avoid difficult conversations.
But I also do not want to keep answering people from the worst five minutes of my day.
I’d really like to hear what The Good Principal thinks.
And I’d like to know whether other school leaders have had a conversation where the problem was not the decision itself…
just the fact that they spoke before they were ready.
Thank you for giving us somewhere to admit the moments we handled badly even when nobody else made a big issue out of them.
Sometimes those are the ones we remember longest.
— Linda
FROM THE GOOD PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE
Linda, I think the most useful distinction in your confession is this:
The decision was not necessarily the problem.
The response was.
That matters because leaders often replay an uncomfortable conversation and start questioning everything at once.
Was the decision wrong?
Was I unfair?
Should I have said yes?
Did I handle the whole situation badly?
But sometimes the answer is much more specific:
The decision may still have been reasonable. I just answered from a bad place.
That is a very different problem.
And in some ways, a much more fixable one.
You described the moment clearly.
The teacher had not finished her sentence.
But your mind had already decided what she meant.
You heard:
challenge
before she had actually challenged you.
You heard:
criticism
before she had finished explaining.
You heard:
Here we go again
before you knew what she wanted.
That is what fatigue can do.
It shortens the distance between stimulus and response.
The question arrives…
and the answer comes out before judgment has had time to catch up.
That does not excuse the tone.
But it does explain why the pause matters.
And I think that is the first lesson here:
Not every question deserves an immediate answer simply because it was asked now.
Sometimes the most professional response available is:
“Let me think about that.”
Or:
“I want to answer this properly, but I’m not in the best place to do that right now.”
Or:
“Can we continue this tomorrow?”
Those phrases can feel uncomfortable to leaders because we often associate authority with having an answer.
Now.
Clear.
Certain.
But sometimes immediate certainty is just fast emotion wearing a professional voice.
Waiting can be the more responsible choice.
There is also something very important about what you did the next day.
You apologized without defending yourself.
That sounds simple.
It is not.
A lot of apologies quietly become explanations:
“I’m sorry, but it had been a very difficult day.”
“I’m sorry if my tone came across badly.”
“I’m sorry, but I thought you were questioning the decision.”
Those sentences make the speaker feel better because they restore context.
But they also put part of the responsibility back on the other person.
Your second apology was cleaner:
“I answered too quickly. You were trying to explain something and I cut you off. I’m sorry.”
That is enough.
You named what you did.
You did not ask her to excuse it.
You did not force her to reassure you.
You simply repaired your part.
That is probably why the conversation had somewhere to go afterward.
And then you discovered something uncomfortable:
you had defended yourself against an argument she was not making.
That is worth sitting with.
Not because it proves you are defensive in every conversation.
Because it shows how easily we can stop listening once we think we know what is coming next.
Especially when we are tired.
The mind fills in the rest.
She is going to complain.
She wants me to reverse the decision.
She thinks I handled this badly.
Here we go again.
Then we respond to the story in our head instead of the person in front of us.
A useful habit may be to notice the moment you begin finishing someone else’s sentence internally.
That may be the signal to slow down.
Ask:
What is she actually asking me?
Not:
What do I think she is about to accuse me of?
That one question can completely change a conversation.
There is another part of your confession that deserves attention too:
you wanted the conversation gone.
That is honest.
And probably more common than leaders admit.
Sometimes you do not respond sharply because the issue is especially difficult.
You respond sharply because you are already full.
The conversation becomes one more thing.
So the brain starts looking for the fastest way to end it.
A firm answer.
A short answer.
A defensive answer.
Anything that closes the door.
That is where capacity matters.
You may not always need a better communication technique.
Sometimes you need to recognize:
I do not have enough room for this conversation right now.
That does not mean the conversation should disappear.
It means it may need a better time.
This is where a specific boundary is useful.
Not:
“We’ll talk later.”
That can sound like avoidance.
Instead:
“I want to give this proper attention. Can you come back tomorrow at 9?”
Now the conversation has somewhere to go.
You are not rejecting it.
You are creating conditions where you are less likely to mishandle it.
And if the issue genuinely cannot wait?
Then perhaps the internal rule becomes:
Listen before deciding.
If all you can do in that moment is hear the person out and say:
“Let me think about what you’ve said,”
that is still better than answering from irritation.
There is also something else worth noticing:
you repaired the conversation…
and still kept replaying it.
That is where reflection can become rumination.
Reflection asks:
What happened?
What was I feeling?
What would I do differently next time?
Then it gives you something usable.
Rumination keeps reopening the same scene after the learning has already happened.
Her face.
Your tone.
The silence.
The sentence.
Again.
Again.
Again.
At some point, replay stops being preparation for the future and becomes punishment for the past.
That is usually where a private process can help.
And this is one of those moments where I can genuinely say:
there is something built for that.
The Principal’s Private Pages gives school leaders somewhere to put the conversation after it is over.
Not to decide whether you are a good principal.
Not to force every mistake into some inspiring lesson.
And not to keep the replay alive forever.
The point is to slow it down enough to separate what actually happened from everything your mind has added afterward.
You can ask:
What was I feeling before I answered?
What was the other person actually asking?
What part do I regret?
What part of my reaction came from something that happened earlier in the day?
What would I want to do differently if a similar conversation happened tomorrow?
Have I already repaired what can be repaired?
That last question matters.
Because sometimes the answer is yes.
You apologized.
You listened.
You understood the real question.
The relationship continued.
The learning happened.
At that point, the page can also become somewhere to say:
I handled this badly. I repaired it. I am allowed to stop replaying it now.
That is just as important as reflection.
The journal is not there to make school leaders obsess more thoughtfully.
It is there to create enough distance from the noise in your head that you can see what deserves to be carried forward…
and what can stay on the page.
So if you have conversations that keep returning long after the other person has moved on, The Principal’s Private Pages may be useful.
Not because every uncomfortable moment needs journaling.
But because sometimes writing the conversation once is healthier than having it silently ten more times.
And perhaps that is the biggest thing to take from your confession:
You cannot always control the first feeling.
Irritation happens.
Defensiveness happens.
Fatigue happens.
But you can learn to create a little space between the feeling and the sentence.
Sometimes that space is five seconds.
Sometimes it is:
“Let me think about this.”
Sometimes it is overnight.
And sometimes that pause is the difference between a difficult conversation…
and a conversation you wish you could rewind.
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