What happens when you've done everything right, built the SOPs, color-coded the calendars, created the checklists, and your business still finds a way to make you sick?

That's exactly where this week's guest, Kathy Gray, found herself. Kathy is the owner of Creative Critters, a growing early childhood education company based in Virginia with five centers (and counting). She's been part of the Schools of Excellence community for years, and in this conversation, she gets real about what it actually looked like to lead “with empathy first” and what it cost her.

If you've ever felt like being a good leader means being endlessly available, endlessly understanding, and endlessly willing to make an exception for one more person, this episode is going to hit close to home.

Kathy and Chanie unpack the difference between leading by example and leading by self-sacrifice. They talk about what happens when a director is too afraid to protect the standards because she's afraid of losing staff (spoiler: you lose the right staff anyway). And they get into one of the most important distinctions in leadership: care is not the same thing as capacity.

This episode also digs into how Kathy started using data, specifically staff time-off data, to finally see what her culture was actually telling her. One number she found: at one center, they had a full staff only 35% of the time. That's not a staffing problem. That's a standards problem.

By the end of this conversation, you'll understand why the phrase “protecting the standards” matters so much more than “being consistent,” and why the goal isn't to stop caring. It's to stop absorbing everyone else's outcomes as your own.

• Why leading “by example” can quietly turn into leading by self-sacrifice
• The critical difference between care and capacity, and why confusing them costs you your best staff
• How Kathy used time-off data to uncover what her culture was really telling her (and what she found)
• Why protecting the standards is different from being “a stickler” or being harsh
• What it means to let the company, not the leader, carry the weight of the standard
• Why healthy dependence on your team is not weakness, and what's lost when leaders try to do it all alone
• Kathy's honest reflection on what still isn't where she wants it to be, even after years of growth

Resources Mentioned:

• This Can't Be Normal by Chanie Wilschanski: https://thiscantbenormal.com
• Access Chapter One of This Can’t Be Normal for Free: https://thiscantbenormal.com/chapter-one

Connect With Us:

• Let's Chat on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chaniewilschanski/
• Join us on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

Ever notice how the first staff meeting of the year gets the ironed tablecloths, the good snacks, and the outfit you actually planned in advance... and then somehow still leaves your team overwhelmed instead of inspired?

That's the paradox we're unpacking on this episode. As a new school year gets underway, it's tempting to use that first meeting to hand your team everything you think is mission critical, all at once. Handbook. Policies. Vision. Values. Classroom management. Every important thing you've been sitting on, verbally dumped into one meeting because it finally feels like the right moment. And then we wonder why the team walks away foggy instead of focused.

In this episode, Chanie breaks down why that approach backfires and walks through a framework for designing a first staff meeting that actually sticks. The core idea: different topics activate different parts of the brain, and a meeting that jumps between all of them without intention is asking your team to do something their brains simply can't do well.

• Why cramming vision, policy, and logistics into one meeting works against you, and the three-part structure to use instead
• How to turn abstract concepts like mission and vision into something your team can actually use when a parent is yelling or a kid needs stitches
• The exact questions to ask your staff so they define, in their own words, how they want to show up when things get hard
• How to build a school theme or headline for the year that actually guides decisions about time, money, and energy, instead of getting lost by October
• A hands-on team activity that gets your whole staff thinking creatively about what your theme looks like in real classrooms
• Why investing in people will always outperform investing in another piece of software
• How to close out the meeting by having each teacher commit to one small, doable habit for the year

Connect With Us:

• Let's Chat on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chaniewilschanski/
• Join us on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Jessica Hampton and Katie Dank on Child Care Confidential, and about ten minutes in, Jessica said, "You just described my life." That's usually how these conversations go.

We talked about what's in This Can't Be Normal, and specifically about why a bigger team can still leave a leader feeling completely alone. We got into the difference between systems, standards, and rhythms, why "getting buy-in" is often a leader avoiding a hard conversation instead of building real alignment, and why waking up at 2 am with your brain looping isn't a personality flaw. It's a drift, and it's a signal worth listening to.

If you've ever felt like the only one actually working while everyone else gets to play pretend until things get hard, this conversation is for you.

• Why "protecting your energy" is the wrong goal, and what to do instead
• The real difference between systems, standards, and rhythms, and why only rhythms create safety
• What "performing confusion" looks like when a director avoids holding a standard
• Why proximity isn't accountability, and how leaders end up being the business instead of building one
• Why resistance to a new standard is often a sign the standard is a good one
• The three-part definition of a rhythm: pre-decided, mood-proof, and identity-giving

Resources Mentioned:

• Download Chapter One of This Can’t Be Normal: https://thiscantbenormal.com/chapter-one
• Grab a copy of This Can’t Be Normal: https://thiscantbenormal.com/

Connect With Us:

• Let's Chat on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chaniewilschanski/
• Join us on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/