Leadership is often imagined as strategy, vision, direction, and decision-making. But in the day-to-day reality, especially in a school, it can also look like answering a phone call from a parent who sounds determined to tear you, your judgement, or the entire school apart. In my earlier leadership days, and admittedly even now depending on how much coffee or sleep I’ve managed, those calls could feel like personal attacks. They could tighten the chest, speed up the heart, and turn a routine conversation into an internal storm.
Parents call for many reasons: a misunderstanding of a situation, disagreement with school processes, dissatisfaction with disciplinary decisions, or even simply the belief that a different teacher or class would magically solve everything. Sometimes the information they’re working from is factually incorrect; other times, the disagreement is philosophical; and on the more difficult days, the emotion is so high that the conversation itself becomes the problem.
In those moments, the instinct is often to defend, correct, or brace. But leadership, true leadership, isn’t just about holding your ground. It’s about reframing the situation so you can see it through a lens that moves the conversation forward rather than allowing it to spiral.
One recent phone conversation brought this home for me again. The parent on the other end was someone I had interacted with on numerous occasions – a parent who only called with problems, and someone whose instinctive response to conflict had always been explosive. Their go-to emotional setting seemed permanently fixed on red: blame, accusation, and finger-pointing as though it were a competitive sport.
In the past, their tone would have wound me up, set off the internal alarm bells, and made me feel like I was suddenly the villain in a story I didn’t even know we were telling. But this time, before I picked up the phone, I paused. I told myself two things:
They are a parent. And I am a parent.
And underneath it all, we both want the same thing - to support their child.
That moment of reframing changed everything.
The issue they were calling about wasn’t especially complex, but the emotion behind it was. Instead of preparing for a battle, I deliberately put on a different hat - their hat. I reminded myself that they weren’t calling because they disliked me (well they may have) or the school. They were calling because they love their child. Their intensity, while difficult, came from care, not cruelty.
Once I adopted that lens, the conversation became more human. When they said unkind things - things that, on another day, might have felt affronting - I didn’t take them personally. I translated them. I reframed their words into what lay underneath: worry, frustration, confusion, and the deep desire for someone to genuinely hear them.
This shift allowed me to respond not with defensiveness, but with clarity, grace, and calm explanation. Instead of reacting to the emotion, I led the conversation back to intention and perspective. I guided them gently toward understanding the whole picture - the teacher’s perspective, the classroom dynamics, the school context, and their child’s needs within that ecosystem.
And it worked.
The tone changed. Their aggression softened. The conversation moved from accusation to cooperation. The outcome shifted from confrontation to a shared plan - one that still required work on my end long after the phone was hung up, but one that avoided the emotional carnage that so often derails these interactions.
Now, reframing doesn’t remove the exhaustion. You still hang up thinking, “What on earth just happened?” You still feel the emotional weight of absorbing someone else’s storm. You still wish anger didn’t seem so many people’s first language.
But reframing preserves something vital: The Relationship.
By wearing a different hat, even temporarily, you maintain respect, trust, and the possibility of future collaboration. You transform conversations that could end in frustration into opportunities for growth.
Leadership isn’t about winning arguments. It’s about widening your lens.
And sometimes, the most powerful leadership tool is the quiet, deliberate choice to see a situation not from where you stand, but from where someone else is standing - even when they’re shouting across the fence.
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