127. The Road to Awesome: Creating an Effective Leadership Team with Dr. Darrin Peppard

0:03 Welcome to the Catching Up with Casey show. If you are tired of chasing buy in, frustrated with teams who can't seem to get on the same page, or over the constant struggle of holding people accountable without micromanaging, this is the show for you. I'm Casey Watts, speaker, author and the creator of the Clarity Cycle Framework. I help leaders just like you take teams from frustration to alignment, so teams can work collectively toward a common purpose in a committed way instead of against each other as though they are functioning in different organizations. And we do it all through the craft of clarity. Whether you lead from the middle or you were the front facing leader of your organization.

0:45 On this show, we bring clarity to the seemingly small things in leadership that make the biggest difference, because clarity precedes capacity. Now, with all of that said, let's dive into today's episode. Well, hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Catching Up with Casey show. I am really excited and honored to be joined with Darren Peppered, who's going to be talking to us about how to create an effective leadership team with a very special framework that he has developed and written about.

1:32 And so that's what today's episode is bringing clarity to is how we can create effective leadership teams. I'm pumped about this topic. It's so interesting. Darren. I was writing about this topic earlier today, just a LinkedIn article. And then I've got a podcast episode coming out next week. Or I'm going to be talking a little bit about what happens during team meetings to make your leadership team or your team meetings more productive. So today's episode is like perfect timing. So before we get started, Darren, tell our audience a little bit about who you are and the work that you do. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on Casey. I really appreciate that. And honestly, I really appreciate that.

2:14 You know, your focus is so much on clarity because that's to me two most important things in leadership are clarity and intentionality. And so, so certainly when when we first connected and I saw your focus on clarity, I'm like, Oh yeah, we're we're going to hit it off really well. There's no question about that. So a little bit about me in public education for 30 years, I teacher, principal, Superintendent. I identify as a recovering high school principal, loved being a high school principal, enjoy being a Superintendent. For the last four years I have been speaking and consulting and coaching leaders all over North America and really helping leaders.

3:01 My my big focus is helping leaders get clear and be intentional so they can actually walk in their purpose and do the work that truly matters. I know we'll we'll talk a little bit about my story in a minute and and and then that'll be a little bit more clear. Why, why I'm so passionate about that. But author of two best selling books, Ro Dawson, The Journey of a Leader, and my newest book that I co-authored with Katie Kinder, Culture first Classrooms, Leadership relationships and practices that transform schools. Have an awesome podcast, Leaning Into Leadership. Do a weekly blog. Just I do everything I can to pour into school leaders.

3:41 So there you go. That's me in a nutshell. Yeah, that's awesome. And all of the things that Darren just mentioned, guys, that's going to be in the show notes. So be sure that you scroll on down, look at the show notes, and then after you do that, be sure you keep scrolling or find the place where it says leave a review and leave a review for this show. Then pop on over to Darren's podcast, listen to his podcast episodes. They're fantastic. And leave a review for his show too, because that's the way that we can get to reach a broader audience. And we want to be sure that our messages are getting across to those really need it so they can have really impactful leadership and teams. So I want to know, Darren, just on a personal like life level, what is something unique or interesting that makes you totally 100% ordinary or human?

4:32 I love this question. I was thinking a lot about this one and I think maybe one of the things about me that certainly makes me very human and is very humbling is I love to play golf and I am really bad at playing golf. I am, I am not somebody who is ever going to be confused as being a really, really talented golfer or anything like that. I just, I just love getting out and hitting the links. I love getting out and being outside and just, you know, taking in, taking in nature. I'd love to walk. I I probably would call it a run, but it's really more of a really fast walk at at my age every single day just before we jumped on here, I I just finished up my run slash walk and that's there you go. I mean, I'm, I'm a girl dad, I'm a husband and you know, all the all the things.

5:36 I'm so much more than just an educator, but and certainly that's that's how people get to know us and or that's how they, you know, connect to us. And so I really appreciate that you asked that question. Yeah, So tell me this, do my husband, it sounds like you guys have a lot of similar some things in common like the girl dad and all of that, that kind of he loves to play golf too. He's not great at it. But my question is, do you go golfing by yourself or do you go with other people? So at this point in in my life, I pretty much go and play golf by myself. So it's it's almost like it's more for the steps than anything. You know, when I first started playing golf and that kind of thing, there was, you know, kind of a connection to a group of guys, couple of golf carts, probably some beverages, that kind of stuff.

6:28 And when I when I first started as an assistant principal, so I was a teacher in Arizona, but moved back to my home state of Wyoming to be an assistant principal and ultimately became principal in that same building. The the group of administrators got together every morning at 5:00 and played golf in the in the morning we went and played 5:00 AM golf. What you know, you guess you could have a Bloody Mary, but no, we were out there with our cup of coffee. And as that group kind of started to move in different directions in their career, I just kept doing it. I'd I'd be out there at 5515 every morning, walk nine holes, head to the office in the summertime.

7:12 I mean, it was just it was wonderful. And that's kind of carried on. I have a little all par 3G course that's less than a mile from my house that I'll go in and play frequently and played for a very, very long time with my father-in-law. And that was kind of one of our favorite things to do together. And so yeah, for the most part, it's most low activity. Yeah, that sounds so nice. But it also, I'm interested to hear if we kind of if you allude to this in this episode. This is totally me being a wanderer and kind of taking what you just said on a tangent. But I'm wondering because it sounds like you have routines. You are a routine kind of person.

7:52 Am I making assumptions like that? And I'm assuming that maybe within this framework you're going to talk about there has to be some sort of connection to the importance of routines and what they do for you. So I'm just interested to hear that. So with that said, let's talk about the topic for today. What is it that you are bringing clarity to today for us? So we're going to talk about leadership teams today and we're going to talk specifically about what I call the awesome framework. And within that framework, so it's using the word awesome. I actually got a little card here that that, that you can see there.

8:33 So what the, what the framework actually is, but it's, it's a, it's a system that, that I think is really important for school leaders for even if you're not in a school, you know, I, I, I do some work on the corporate side as well. Leadership teams. There are a lot of things that regardless the context that they, that they work in, have in common. And so we're going to talk about the, the framework today. I'll, you know, maybe drop some ideas and some hints and some strategies along the way for how we can move from individual leaders who are thriving to leadership teams that are thriving.

9:16 Yeah, What I'm curious about what made you lean into this framework? Where did? How did it come about? So there's a couple of pieces to it, you know, and you've been in the space speaking for a while too. You, you listen to and you pay attention to speakers, workshop presenters, keynote presentations very differently when that's what you do. I, I, I don't know if you've experienced this, but I listen in a very different way. I look for what strategies people use and and so forth. And earlier this summer I was at I actually attended a conference that was not I'm paid to be there to speak. I went for my own professional growth. There was a business leadership conference and listened to a keynote and she shared her framework for the ideal day. This was this was kind of her thing. Her speaking style certainly doesn't doesn't fit like what I do, but she had and it's sitting here on my desk by happenstance, she had her own framework card.

10:29 And I thought, you know what, that's really, really clever. I like that a lot. And I've been playing around with some different ways to utilize the word awesome because road to awesome. I know we'll talk about that in a few minutes. I'll tell you the story behind that. And just really leaning into how can we take something that that's going to stick that we're going to remember and put it into an actionable framework. And so the last couple of months spent a lot of time just with the different schools that I've been supporting and the conferences that I've been speaking at and, and those types of things leaning into this framework. So really that's kind of where it came from.

11:11 It was definitely something that I had been wanting to develop. And, and seeing this speaker, her name's Aaron Deal. When I, when I heard Aaron Deal speak, it was like, OK, that's, that was the clarity I needed to to unlock this unlock this framework. Yeah, that's fantastic. And yes, I approach when I listen to keynotes or go to sessions, I approach it in very much the same way as you. I'm probably there probably several other things that you're looking at too as far as like how are they connecting with their audience etcetera. But when you come across those connections in terms of content, it can be so powerful.

11:52 And it makes me think about too. You know, I was listening the other day to a business podcast and one of the things they were encouraging, especially new entrepreneurs to think about is there's, there's nothing new under the sun necessarily. But we all are taking everything that we learn and we are packaging it or transitioning it in different ways so that it can connect to our audience or maybe we have something to share that's not necessarily new, but we can share it in a way that appeals to their needs or their mindsets or the circumstances that they're in, in the in the time given. So that's fantastic. So now let's talk about why Road to Awesome because you have this framework and I know you're going to talk about that, but you also have written a book that's Road to Awesome, right? And it's all over.

12:45 Like when I looked on linked, look on LinkedIn, your profile, it's Road to Awesome is everywhere. So tell us the story behind that. Yeah, it's it has certainly become, you know, our brand. I mean, it's it's the name of our company, both our, our publishing company and of course the, you know, speaking and leadership coaching and consulting work all flies under that same flag. But it really goes back to there. There's two moments in my career and we we all know the phrase 2 roads diverged in the wood and I took the road less traveled by Robert Frost poem The road Not taken. But there are sometimes those moments in our life where literally 2 roads diverge in front of us and two professional moments that that truly defined who ultimately I became as a leader and reshaped who I was into into, into somebody very different.

13:42 The first that truly was when we would say we discovered traveling the road to awesome was when I was an assistant principal. I'm in charge of all discipline and attendance. We're in that staff meeting. I, I worked at a in a building honestly that had pretty toxic culture. I didn't realize it at the time, but we just did. We were all about catching people doing things wrong. Punishment to gain compliance was like the only club we had in the bag as leaders. Like that's what we did and we're in this staff meeting part way through that school year. And because I'm in charge of discipline attendance, I get to facilitate this very important topic, the two most important issues in education.

14:23 If we solve these lookout, we're going to we're going to soar as a school. We had to figure out what we were going to do about apps and cell phones. So I'm in that staff meeting and somewhere between buy the calculator things and put them on the wall and my woodshop teacher Harvey, who said let me just crush one with a hammer, somebody ask a question, actually 2 questions, raised a hand and said, Darren, why does it always have to be about what they do wrong? Why can't it be about what they do right? And two roads, 2 roads diverged for me and starting the next day, I'm going to show up a little bit differently. Instead of running around the hallways trying to catch kids doing things wrong before the day even starts, I'm going to show up at the front door and just greet kids and just build relationships.

15:09 And people started to follow. Our culture turned not overnight and it took time. We did a lot of other very intentional things that I that I write about in Journey of the Leader. But that moment in time. The second was why I'm a leadership coach. My first two years as a building principal, I was a nightmare. I thought I had to be everything to everybody. You know, Casey, you probably fell into this trap, too. But, you know, I showed up and put on the superhero Cape every morning and I'm going to solve everybody's problem. I'm going to answer every question. I'm going to be the smartest one in the room. I'm going to prove to everybody that I was the right choice.

15:49 And by doing that, I was proving I was not the right choice. I was just totally not prepared. I was a mess. I resented a couple of my my assistant principals because I didn't feel like they were doing anything and they weren't because I didn't give them anything other than discipline. That's like all they had. But we had really solved a lot of those problems. So they didn't have a lot to do. And that was my fault, not theirs. So my, my new Superintendent hired leadership coaches. And the first day my coach showed up, we're we're out and about. We're in the hallway. I had been firefighting all morning and he's doing walkthroughs and he's like, you know, let's let's go do walkthroughs. I'm like, I don't need you to teach me how to do a walkthrough.

16:32 Like I, I know how to do that. But when we stepped out in the hallway after doing a walkthrough, he said, Darren, you've got to make up your mind. Do you want to be a firefighter or do you want to be a leader? And there you go 2 roads. I, I can be this person on the hamster wheel that's just constantly trying to solve everybody's problems, or I can take this other road and I can actually focus on being that leader. So focusing on on the positives, you know, back to the first moment in time and then, you know, being that leader who is going to show up to empower others and not just try to do everything for everybody. Traveling that path to me is my road to awesome.

17:13 And through through my writing, through my books, through, you know, podcast, I mean, all of that stuff. The number one thing I want to do is challenge others to find their own road to awesome you. You don't don't travel my path. Everybody's got their own. But you know, we have those moments where the roads will diverge. So choose that road to awesome. That's that's why Road to Awesome I I can riff on that for hours and hours, but that's that's why Road to Awesome. Yeah, that's that's so powerful. Just the image of the two roads, the two paths that you have a choice to take and everybody has the choice.

17:54 I want to know though, and that you might get into this when you start talking about the framework for someone who's listening, who's in the thick of it, how, how would you suggest that they intentionally choose the, I don't want to say right path, but the path that that would be their road to awesome. What does that look like? Well, I think it starts with with knowing what is it that matters to you? What is it that you're really about? My coach, one of the questions he asked me after, do you want to be a leader or a firefighter? Later in that day was Darren, what do you, what do you even care about? Like what's really important to you as the leader of this school? And I didn't have a good answer over time I was able to really dial in and identify 6 things that I thought were genuinely important as a school leader.

18:48 They're the six things I write about in, in, in journey of a leader and just getting clear I, I, This is why the clarity piece is so important to me. If leaders can be clear about what really matters to them, if they can be really clear about what they expect of others and of themselves, and if they can get really, really clear about where they see their organization going, like identify what is that compelling vision for where we want to be. And I'm not talking Casey about that vision and mission that goes in the, you know, in the handbook or, or, you know, the board adopts when they do a strategic plan. Those things are important.

19:30 I'm not, I'm not saying negative things about those. I'm saying as the leader of your organization, whatever your organization is, let's let's say, let's say you're a high school principal like I was, you got to be really clear. Where do I see us at the end of this school year? What is possible this year? What can we really do? Because as the leader of your organization, you're the only one who can do that work. You don't delegate vision and and purpose of your organization to somebody else. That's your work. It's your work to bring everybody else along. This is where the leadership team pieces come in, you know, getting everybody to understand what their piece is. But if as a leader you're not clear about what you care about, what you expect or where you're trying to go, all the rest of the work really probably isn't going to matter. You might as well just keep putting on superhero Cape because that's that's what you're going to do. Yeah, I have to pause this right here and say specifically to the audience.

20:32 So if you're listening #1 if you are a leader of your campus or district, you noticed or hopefully you noticed that Darren was talking about the Superintendent who hired leadership coaches. Advocate for your Superintendent or whoever it is in your district to hire leadership coaches. And if that's not a possibility, I highly encourage you to figure out how you can get a coach of your own or at the least a mentor. So I'm just going to go ahead and say reach out to Darren, who is a leadership coach and can coach you through a lot of this, because you do have to make that decision intentionally and daily. And it's easy to get caught up in the fire hydrant world, right?

21:19 The fire hose world, if we don't have someone coming alongside us that's not in the thick of the everyday things that everybody else is going through. They come in and coaches come in with a different perspective and an eagle eyes view of what it is you're going through. And they can see things that you can't always see. So I'm just going to put that plug right there. Are there other things that you would want to add to that, Darren? I, you know, I think you said it extremely well. I'll, I'll add this one piece. And this again, came from, from my coach working with me. And something that I encourage everybody that I work with now is find that space where you can be reflective. And that was something my coach would do with me. I call it balcony level leadership. Again, it's, it's another piece I wrote about in, in journey of the leader.

22:09 But I was a basketball coach when I was a teacher and I relied on film, and film is always shot from balcony level. Well, I needed that as a leader. So I would literally go stand in my gymnasium at my high school where I was the principal on the balcony overlooking the gym floor and put the six things that were important to me in my mind's eye down on the floor. And then, OK, what evidence do I have? What am I doing here? Having having a coach to reflect with you, to ask you good questions, man, I'm sure you're this way too. As a coach, probably the my biggest superpower as a coach is the questions that I ask, not the advice that I give. You know, I work with some really smart leaders. They don't always need, hey, have you tried this? Sometimes it's tell me more about that or you know what, what was your, you know, what was your plan behind this or where do you see yourself going or what might be some possibilities.

23:10 The more the more that we reflect. And that's why I think having that person who is not your supervisor, who is not attached to the organization, who isn't there every single day that has has been there, done that walk, that walk has the has the battle scars, the whole bit. They can help you do that reflection in a way that somebody who works inside your organization just can't do. Yep, Yeah, it's interesting. One of the questions that I ask probably most frequently and I and I think that this comes up when I'm when I'm working with teams as well as what is the purpose like what this decision that you're making, what is the purpose behind that decision? I don't think we always think too deeply about what is my purpose?

24:02 We're just trying to put out fires. That's my purpose, to put out fires trying to. Survive, yeah. Exactly, exactly. But we don't think long term about, you know, what impact does this have long term and long term, where are we headed? Which is why that clarity of direction is so important. OK, I love. That. Take us through the framework as much as you can. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. No, we can, we can, we can fly through it real quickly. So a is for accept the challenge. We we have to accept the challenge of being a leader's hard. If, if being a school leader was easy, everybody would do it. But it's not easy. And so 1, you have to accept the challenge that the work is difficult.

24:47 But two, you have to accept the challenge that you may need to do some things a little bit differently and be willing to take a look at yourself and take a look at your team and really think about are we all focused and and working in in the right direction W welcome feedback and support. It's the coaching piece that we just talked about. Again, whether it's a coach from the outside, it's a mentor, it's another administrator in your district who has, you know, been there for quite some time and can give you some good feedback. Something you, you need somebody who can give you feedback, who can give you support and not just the evaluative feedback that you get in your annual review or evaluation or whatever title your district puts on that form that the Superintendent signs off on. We really get into the meat here in East, which is examine your priorities again, what do you care about? What matters to you?

25:53 My 6 very quickly #1 Build and maintain positive culture and climate #2 Ensure that everyone on the campus feels seen, heard, valued and trusted #3 Empower and embrace student voice #4 Be the instructional leader of your campus #5 lead with a coaching mindset. And number six, be the champion of the organization. To me, those were my priorities. I don't think my priority should be the same as anybody else's, but I like to give those as an example so people can think like, like, OK, yeah. Now, now I know what really matters to me as that, as the executive leader of my campus, I got to be clear about what what really matters to me.

26:38 So really examine your priorities, really examine how you're leaning into utilizing your time and that kind of stuff which takes us to S, which is stand in your values. So if those are the things that are important to me, how am I standing in those values? We we all have experienced this, right Casey, where somebody tells us one thing, but then their behavior just absolutely does not match up with what they're saying. You've got to stand in those values. If that's what you truly believe in, then you got to walk the walk. You got to talk the talk. You got to do the work. And in order to do that, you have to ensure that you are prioritizing your time and, you know, making sure that you are working on the work that truly matters and not just running around putting out fires. Always operate intentionally.

27:32 One of my, one of my favorite pieces in this entire framework is operating intentionally. We did a lot of work to repair the, the culture of our school from that moment in time. Why does it always have to be about what they do wrong? Why can't it be about what they do right to where we to where we ultimately got? And a big part of that was doing things on purpose. If we said that what was really important to us was student attendance. If what we said was really important to us was academic achievement, If we said what was really important to us was citizenship and positive behavior, then we really lead into recognizing, rewarding and reinforcing those behaviors, those actions, and did them in so many intentional ways.

28:22 And there's a lot of ways you can be intentional about things that you are focusing on. Instructional leadership is the other one. A lot of leaders I work with, you probably run into this too when I initially will work with them. When we go into classrooms, we're we're going into classrooms. But is there like a specific purpose, you know, are, are we just logging time? Are we just checking a box saying, hey, I'm doing walkthroughs. OK, what are you doing to provide really high quality feedback? And for that matter, what have you done to ensure that your staff knows very specifically what are you looking for? One of my favorite questions to ask leadership teams right now. What do you expect to see in every single classroom every single day?

29:07 Like the minimum, not, not the, not the whole mic. Wow, that blew me away. No bare minimum. What do I have to see every single day, every single classroom? If, if you can figure that out, then that should be the first thing that you're giving feedback on, you know, And if, if you say, well, I want to see great rigor in the classroom, Cool, Define that. What does that mean? What does that look like? Intentionally teach that to your teachers because if you just say it and they don't have a clue what it is. Yep. You're not the intentional. I think we, we, I talk about all the time these assumptions that we make that just because we are in a school setting with all of these people who have decided we are going to teach, we have this common understanding and definition of all of the jargon or of just daily expectations as they stand.

30:01 But we cannot make those assumptions because, for example, Tier 1 instruction could mean something totally different to one person than it does for another. So, and I think too, there are so many leaders who, if you were to ask, what do you want to see? Like what's just the, the basic things you want to see in the classrooms? Sometimes they don't even know. Correct. And I and I think it's important to recognize that we can't assume that because someone has made it into leadership, because they were probably potentially a master teacher in their classroom and then a a high achiever as an assistant principal, that they are going to have an idea of what they expect to see in classrooms or even how to function as a leader of such a large group of adults. Right.

30:55 Well, the skills don't transfer. Just because you are a great teacher doesn't mean automatically you're going to be a great principal. I mean, it may mean that you have, you know, the intestinal fortitude and the grid and all of that. But there's a skill set to that. And certainly getting really clear about what matters to you and being able to take that, take what that is and teach that to your staff and give feedback to your staff and coach them up around those particular things. It's a different skill set than it is to lead a classroom of teenagers or 7 year olds or or or whatever, whatever you know it is that that you did as as a classroom teacher, which which takes us to AM really which is model what you expect. I'll, I will, I will give you a, a story to, to talk about this one.

31:48 One of the, one of the districts that I work with is in Virginia and working with their high school, fairly decent sized high school 1800 kids, leadership team of 6. Three members of the leadership team are new this year, including the building principal and they're doing wonderful. But we're going through this during the summer. We were going through expectations, working through their opening staff meeting, that kind of thing. And one of the new members to the team, when talking about expectations, said, well, I expect teachers to greet kids at the door every single period. And I said, you know what, I think that's great. I, I don't have a problem with that. What are you going to do at the beginning of the day? What are you going to do at the end of the day? And he said, what do you mean?

32:39 Don't ask them to do something you're not willing to do? Don't ask them to do something you're not willing to do. So if you're not greeting your teachers and your kids at the door, don't ask them to do that. I had that same thing. Yeah, teachers greet your kids at the door, right? It's a common practice. But we weren't doing that as far as greeting people at the door. And then I made that shift. You know what? I'm going to be at the front door. Why shouldn't I? 90% of my kids came in the front door every day. 90% of my teachers came in the front door. 90% of my bus drivers dropped off, their parents dropped off there. Why shouldn't I be at the front door? And I never asked anybody to join me.

33:20 I just, I am going to go do what I am saying I want others to do. Casey. It was amazing. Probably within a few weeks, there wasn't a day that went by that there weren't 456 others at the front door with me, teachers who were in that front hallway or assistant principals or whatever. Often times I think teachers came out there because they knew that's where they could find me. But that was fine, you know? But I have to model what it is that you know, that I expect of others. And the same thing goes with instruction. If you're telling teachers, I don't want to see lots of direct instruction. I don't want to see, you know, kids just staring into their computer screens.

34:06 If you then turn around and do that in your staff meetings, you are guilty of malpractice. Just stop it. So I can riff on this one for hours too. So that's model. And then E is engaging reflection, which I already talked about. But we've got to make sure that we're taking the time to reflect. And when we talk about leadership teams as teams, we need to come together on Reg on a regular basis around very specific things. And most teams have a standing meeting on their calendar, but they're not super intentional about what those meetings are. One of the things I push leadership teams to do is identify specific things for this week's staff meeting or leadership team meeting. Next week is going to be this.

34:52 The week after is this. So maybe 1 is on operational issues and just focus on operational issues because let's be honest, school leaders operations takes up about 85% of your time. Have a staff or have your leadership team meeting the following week on just instruction, just teaching and learning. Then the next one don't even get together. Pair up, go do walkthroughs and then third one or the 4th one of the month. You know, maybe it's, maybe it's calendaring, maybe it's, you know, reports that you need to do or, or whatever. But be intentional about, you know, taking that time to reflect or even your meeting time and saying, let's focus on things that are very specific.

35:40 Because if you try to cram all that into one meeting, it's it's all surface level. Instead, go deep and spread it out over time. So anyway, that's the framework right there. There's way too much for us to talk about in this one episode based on everything you just said, but there are some things that I very specifically want to piggyback on. First of all, and this is for you, Darren, and for our listeners, have you read the book Essentialism? I have not. Oh my gosh, you're going to get it. And it's going to look at all of these sticky notes that I have in there. I'm not quite finished, but I'm almost. Done.

36:20 Let me see the cover again. It's covered in coffee stains because I get it from a thrift. Thrift Books. By the way, Thrift Books is a great place to get used. Books. Everybody but the subtitle is The Discipline Pursuit of Less. It's fantastic both for like it will you'll see so many connections to what you talk about like as far as your content goes and and working with leaders, but it's also very, very applicable to life in general. So highly recommend essentialism the discipline pursuit of less. But here's what else I want to I want to talk about. You know, you talked about modeling what you expect and there are a couple of things I want to mention there. I think sometimes or a lot of the time actually also as leaders, we have to remember that there are other people who are leading as well under our authority. So it could be assistant principals who are following the lead of a principal and they're going to mimic unless they are really, really intentional and want like digging into the research and digging into literature and listening to these podcasts.

37:32 Unless they're the kind of person that's doing that as a high achiever, they're probably going to mimic what they see you doing when they go to lead a school. And I'm betting that a lot of principals are mimicking what they were taught. And I want you to address just for a little bit the importance of thinking about who your mentor is and not necessarily. And I think the same goes for teachers in in the in the classrooms, like we don't need our teach our mentors necessarily to be people who have done it for a really long time. We need to very intentionally choose who's going to be our mentors based on what our values are, which is important to determine what your values are first.

38:16 So can you talk about that just for a little bit? Because I just feel like it's so important for people to consider that. It is and I'm going to talk about it from a little bit different angle. I'm going to talk about it from being an entrepreneur. So you and I were talking before you hit the record button and you know I'm a good four years into my full time entrepreneurship. We're we're past proof of concept at this point. We are running a successful business. And when you first start, especially when you transition from education into now you're going to run a business. Even though the business is connected to education, you are now running a business and let's just say the learning curve is pretty steep.

39:08 As educators, we're really not taught anything about marketing. I mean, unless we were business education majors, I was not, I was a science teacher. So marketing is something that man, I've had to learn a lot. The running the business side, I've had to learn a lot, you know, the, the, the art of speaking, the processes that that we go through for identifying and finding clients and all of those kinds of things. There's a lot of parallels between that and what, you know, I did as a, as a school administrator or as a district administrator.

39:48 But, but I'll talk about it as an entrepreneur #1 because it's fresh, but #2 because I've had to do exactly that, find those mentors. Yes, I am a coach, but. I will tell you, I have three coaches. We have a finance coach, we have a business coach, I have a speaking coach. And those people are so supportive and I've learned so much from them. And in many cases they're just a little bit further in the journey than I am. They're not way at the end of their journey. Now, there are a few people that that I can lean into who have done it for a very long time and who have have provided some, some guidance and support.

40:37 But I'm probably a mentor to a whole lot of early career entrepreneurs too. And just simply because I'm a little further into the journey than they are and because they've gone through the struggles that maybe I am, or in the case of me mentoring others, hey, I could tell you what didn't work. You know, I can share with you some of the stumbles that I had or some of the successes or how we have found that real strong success. Those people, you're absolutely right. You've got to have those people around you, whether you pay them or they're just, you know, they're there to support or just pour into you whether yeah, you're, whether you're administrator or you're an entrepreneur or whatever it is.

41:28 Having people who can just give you a little bit of guidance, a little bit of support and that you could just reach out and ask questions to. I got a handful of them that I, I don't pay that I can just just jump on my phone and shoot a quick text and say, can you tell me about this? Or have you experienced this? You know, probably one that you, you, you've bumped into too. It's like, how do you price what you do? You know, that's for the longest time I struggled with that. And when you start to get some really big number contracts, it's then the imposter syndrome kind of kicks in and all of the, all of the things, right.

42:10 But hopefully it was OK going in that direction with the entrepreneur thing, because I, I just think there's so many parallels with it. I mean, no matter what you do in life, having somebody who's just a little further ahead of you. Sorry about that. Having somebody who's just a little further ahead of you, I got all choked up about it. Apparently. It's just really, really helpful. It it certainly made a difference for me. I know that. Right. Likewise, I can count on my hand, just one hand, the people that are in my immediate reach outs and then a couple of hands because I only have two. But these two hands, the people who are in my broader circle that I'm going to reach out to. And then there are the few that I am willing to pay. I, I have a speaking coach as well and I anticipate having a business coach as well.

43:00 You know, so there it is something I firmly believe in and I believe in it for people who are in leadership, no matter the organization that you are in, it is, it is just you can't put a price on the value of that. So this has been fantastic. I'm I would love for you to share with our audience just one thing you would hope that they take away from this episode. Oh man. OK, so so I'll go with what we were just talking about. Find that person who can be that support to you. You know, you talked about, you know, advocate for yourself, you know, go to your Superintendent, go to your, you know, assistant soup, whoever that person is and say, man, I really want, I want to have Casey come work with me. I want to have Darren come work with me. Maybe they can help, you know, help you, you know, to to figure out the finance side of that.

44:01 Having a coach completely changed me as a leader. I mean, it wasn't overnight, but but I stopped being a firefighter. I stopped living in that world where I just ran around like a crazy person trying to just solve every problem and became this person who lived in the leadership world. You're still going to sometimes have to visit firefighter world. It happens. But if you can live in the leadership world and just visit it, the number one way to get there is to have that coach, have that mentor, have that person who can support you who's not in the fray with you. They've got to be somebody who comes from outside of the walls of your building in some capacity. That if if people can take that away from this episode, there's a lot of other really great stuff that we both shared. But I think that would be the number one piece. Yeah, I'm going to sum it up and tag on your phrase. Find someone who can help you to navigate the road to awesome. Find that person.

45:03 OK. So Darren, where can our listeners catch up with you? Yeah, all over social media. I am Darren M peppered on literally every platform. You can catch up with all of our work at Road to awe-some.net and you can e-mail me, Darren, at Road to awe-some.net. That's probably the easiest ways to find me. The Leaning Into Leadership podcast is everywhere that podcasts are my blog releases through through our social media every single week. So yeah, just social media. You get up rdawe-some.net. Perfect. OK. And remember, listeners, you can find all of that information and more in the show notes, plus leave both of us a review. We would very much appreciate that. OK, Darren, thank you so much for joining this episode. Absolutely, thanks for having me. All right, Bye, every.

46:00 Hey, listener, I am so honored that you listen to today's episode, and I hope you gained something valuable from it. I'd also be honored if you did ME3 solid favors. First, subscribe to this show. I've got a lot of great content coming up, and I don't want you to miss any of it. Second, be sure you're following me on social media platforms. You can find me at. Catch up with Casey on LinkedIn or Instagram. And finally, if you were looking to book a dynamic and relatable speaker for your next event, conference, or retreat, I would love to bring a message about how the crash of clarity makes a significant impact on both leadership and life. Until next time, always remember.