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This audiobook is read by Digital Danny. If you prefer reading, click the link below.
The One Document Most Principals Never Write
Your staff spends 18 months guessing who you are as a principal. One document fixes it in an afternoon.
A principal user manual is the document that tells your team how you actually work — your scoreboard, your tells, your non-negotiables, and your worst characteristics — before they have to guess.
Average principal tenure is four years, and your people spend half of it running an interpretation of you and getting it wrong. The veteran teacher who stopped bringing you problems. The AP who CCs you on everything. The first-year teacher who won’t ask for help. That’s the cost of being unreadable.
This audiobook breaks down the eight sections of a principal user manual and why writing one is self-mentorship, not an HR exercise. It also names the four reasons most principals nod along and never write it — and dismantles each one. The hardest section is naming your own dysfunction on paper. Do it anyway: when you name it first, you take its power away before it becomes a whisper in the staff lounge.
⌚️ TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - The principal nobody can read
00:41 - Everybody is lying to you unintentionally
01:41 - The fix is a user manual
02:18 - The compounding cost of being unreadable
04:18 - The fork between ruckus maker and play it safe
06:01 - Why most principals never write it
08:26 - The eight sections of your user manual
10:49 - What your tells mean and don’t mean
11:26 - Naming your worst characteristics
12:05 - Your non-negotiables and the hell no line
13:22 - What you need from your team
13:42 - Block 90 minutes this weekend
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