Episode 222: Culture, Systems, and the Power of Listening with Jeff Linden

Darrin Peppard (00:00.984)

Hey everybody, welcome back into the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. This is episode 222. And let me open by asking you a question. If you're stepping into a new leadership role this year, what is your plan to build culture from day one? You see, this is the kind of work that I support leaders with every single day. Through leadership coaching, speaking, and professional development, I help school leaders, especially those early in their journey, gain clarity, develop systems, and lead with purpose.

Because, let's face it, without clarity and a strong culture, leadership can feel like a never-ending fire drill. My mission is to help leaders move from overwhelmed to intentional, so they can focus on what really matters. Now, my guest on the show today knows a thing or two about that. Jeff Linden is a high school principal, a fellow podcaster, and a leader who brings a unique blend of military discipline, coaching experience, and heart-first leadership into everything he does.

In this episode, Jeff shares how he approached his transition into a large high school by focusing on systems, relationships, and listening first. We talk about how culture isn't built overnight, but with intentional planning and collective buy-in, it can be shaped in powerful ways. Whether you're a brand new principal or just looking to level up your leadership this year, Jeff drops some serious insight into what it means to lead with purpose. So let's get right into this.

Episode 222 of the Leaning Into Leadership podcast with my guest, Jeff Linden.

Darrin Peppard (00:00.977)

Alright everybody, welcome back into the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. My guest on the show today is Jeff Linden, who is a high school principal, a man after my own heart. Most of you know I identify as a recovering high school principal. So always great to sit down and have a conversation with a fellow high school principal. Also, as it turns out, Jeff is here in Nebraska, like I am, and is a fellow

podcasters. So we have a lot of stuff in common. As we kick off this episode, I know we're going to talk about school culture, which is of course something I love. And it's something that Jeff loves. And who knows where else the airwaves might take us. But before we go too far, Jeff, welcome into the Leaning Into Leadership podcast,

Jeff Linden (00:50.712)

Hey, thanks Darren for having me. I am excited for the opportunity to be here on your show and I'm ready to go.

Darrin Peppard (00:58.063)

Yeah, right on, man. I'm excited to have you here on the podcast and to talk about maybe some awesome things happening at Hastings High School, some of the things throughout the course of your journey. And you and I were talking before we hit the record button that when this episode drops, this is going to be around the time with a lot of people that'll be listening to the show, maybe have just landed their first.

administrative gig, or maybe they're getting ready to step into their next administrative gig. And so we're going to talk about maybe some steps that people should consider when it comes to really shaping and building the culture in their organization. But before we get to all of that, let's maybe kind of set the footing here for everybody. So they understand just exactly who Jeff Linden is. Just give us a little background, man.

Jeff Linden (01:54.157)

Yeah, I like to tell people, you know, when I got into education, I took the tenure route to graduate college because I didn't get into education right away.

be considered one of those, you know, you know, not transitional, but that's the word that pops in my head right now. But, you know, later in life, educator to where I had some experiences, I served in the army reserve for eight years, did a couple of deployments there. And then I also worked in a factory. I did go to college, but I had to step away from it. It wasn't until really I got into coaching at Carnegie Catholic.

to where I go, I put it together, go coaching, education, and that's really what spurred me to become an educator. And then from there with my leadership background in the military and being a head football coach right out of the gate in my first teaching gig.

you know, and wrestling and track and coaching all the things and teaching math and PE. I just knew eventually it wasn't until my grandfather or my mom, my mom, sorry, my wife's grandpa sat me down and just said, hey, you could probably, you know, become an administrator someday. And that's kind of where I was like, I don't know about that. it took me a while to come around to it, but he kind of motivated me.

and encouraged me to look into that. And so that's kind of where becoming an administrator or principal down the road really came about.

Jeff Linden (03:34.383)

And so just going through my experiences in rural schools in Nebraska as well as the Omaha Metro, being able to see those different types of districts really gave me a lot of good background to become an effective principal when I got into my first principal ship in Southern Valley. And then now I'm currently at Hastings Public Schools where I'm the building principal going from a school of about 175 students to a school of 1,000

students is quite the change but it's been I look at it kids are kids wherever you're at leadership is leadership wherever you're at whatever capacity so you know you can lead you know a small organization or a large organization the same and so I really lean into that and really

want to be the best principal and I want to lead people in a way that I would like to be lead as a teacher. So that's kind of a little bit of my background there.

Darrin Peppard (04:37.785)

Yeah, no, that's good stuff there. there's so there's a couple of things in there that that I'm really interested in one, I appreciate that you shared your story of kind of who tapped you on the shoulder to head into leadership. I always find that fascinating because very, very few of us just, you know, right off the bat, I want to be an administrator. In fact, you know, it's almost like it's ingrained in us when we become, you know, rookie teachers, you know, you don't want to become one of them. And

Jeff Linden (05:04.418)

Mm-hmm.

Darrin Peppard (05:05.627)

But then, eventually somebody taps us on the shoulder. And so I appreciate that you shared that. The other thing too, that I, that I found really interesting, I want to come back to, were a head football coach from the word go. Now, yes, you had the leadership background in the military, but man, I, as a high school principal and, I was a head basketball coach. I was a head tennis coach, head tennis coach, not, not near as big of heavy lift being a head basketball coach, being a head football coach.

being the band director as a rookie had to be an interesting challenge. If you don't mind, let's just go back to that a little bit. What were some leadership lessons that you took away that the first year, two, three years, however many years as a head football coach, being a rookie teacher?

Jeff Linden (05:42.37)

Ha ha ha.

Jeff Linden (05:54.435)

Yeah, really it was one of those things where I was coaching at Karnat Catholic for six seasons. So wasn't like I didn't know how to coach when it comes to that, or I didn't have the experience on the coaching side. What I did lack experiences was actual teaching because you can go through your college prep courses and you get an idea, but you really don't know what it's like until you show up and you're actually doing the job. for me, at the time personally, I was going through a divorce, so I had a lot of time.

on my hands at that time. So it wasn't, you know, it was just something I did. It was, hey, I wanted to be a head football coach. I got the opportunity in my first teaching job to do that. And I felt like, you know, I was ready for that challenge just because of the experiences I had. I was also an older teacher at that time. Like I said, it took 10 years to graduate college. So I'm like 28 years old. So, you know, being in that position, I wasn't worried or scared about it.

it was just figuring out how to manage my time, figuring out, you know, how to teach, you know, how to lesson plan, but also game plan and practice plans and getting that all together was a challenge, but I had to figure out systems. And this is where, you know, the first introduction to systems came to me was I have to find a way to juggle all this. How do I come up with a system to where I'm grading all my math papers on time, giving the kids feedback, making sure I'm

being there for my kids when I'm at practice, making sure we're putting a game plan together. So there was a lot of things I was juggling right out of the gate, but I loved it and I enjoyed it. And so I was always tell people the worst day in education was the best, better than any best day I could have working in my factory job. I was pretty happy and content with what I was doing because I had experience from outside of education.

and coming in I'm like this is a pretty sweet gig and I would like to say you were right on when I got into here there was no no thought of becoming a principal or administrator I was perfectly happy being a head football coach being a teacher for the rest of my life it wasn't until like I said my my grandpa my my wife's grandpa who was a former administrator and head football coach said you can do more and that's kind of where that kind

Jeff Linden (08:23.984)

of resonated with me in my mind throughout my career.

Darrin Peppard (08:27.897)

Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's like how you said that, you know, I, was in the same boat. You know, I wasn't thinking about being an administrator and my first principal, Betsy was the one who tapped me on the shoulder. And I mean, I think it was either my second or my third year, as, as a, as a junior high school teacher. And, certainly that kind of kind of reshaped the way I thought about some things, you know, I didn't like immediately say, yeah, I should do that. But I,

had a student teacher and part of the deal when you had a student teacher was, I was in Arizona, Northern Arizona University would give you, you your option. We can pay you X or we can give you three credit hours. And we had to, by state law, earn our master's degree within the first eight years that we taught in the state. They ended up doing away with that like four years into my career, but like, Hey, here we go. Tap on the shoulder.

free master's classes, maybe there's a sign here, right? Maybe there's a reason that this is coming up. So, no, I appreciate that about your path to get there and some of the things that you learned as you went along there. I'm curious, I I want to get into more of the culture stuff here in just a minute, but you talked about something there that I think

so often, and I know you know this, I think most of our listening audience knows this, I work with school administrators all over the country. I mean, that is my primary role, speaking and leadership coaching. And one of the biggest struggles that many early career administrators have is the inability or maybe the tunnel vision that causes some blindness to develop systems.

We'll talk more about culture in a minute, but you brought up systems. And I know for me, that was a huge struggle. My first two years as a building principal, when I started working with my leadership coach, one of the things he asked me about was, tell me what your system is for this. I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Like I was not, I mean, Jeff, was not a systems thinker. That's not how I did things. Or at least I didn't realize I was. And then he really helped me.

Darrin Peppard (10:55.949)

examine what we were doing, but then also think through and become much more of a systems thinker. So you're the one that went there. So I'm going to come back to you with that. Talk a little bit maybe about, so you've had some different opportunities along the way as an administrator. What are some things that maybe you've learned about the importance of systems for administrators and maybe share a couple that

Jeff Linden (11:05.231)

Hahaha.

Darrin Peppard (11:25.709)

you've used everywhere you've been. Maybe you've modified them, but you've used everywhere you've been.

Jeff Linden (11:30.018)

Yeah.

I would say, you know, when you're talking about systematic approaches and education, I think they're necessary. I think they make this job much easier to do because you have a way of doing what needs to be done. So when I got into my first principalship, there wasn't as many systems in place. And so we created some. And it could be as simple as, you know, when a kid is sent to the principal's office, right? When's when is

time for this is something that needs to be addressed by the administration. What do you empower your teachers to do in the classroom? And so we developed a protocol is what another word you can use into hey if the kid it just needs a pencil give him a darn pencil like they shouldn't be sent to my office because you decided that they didn't have a pencil they weren't ready and then I have to deal with it like that should never happen and that was like something that actually happened.

Darrin Peppard (12:22.917)

Amen.

Jeff Linden (12:31.758)

So where I was like, no.

Give them a darn pencil. Like it's fine. Like that. have other things I got to worry about than that. Just that's one one example on that. But we develop systems to where if it's to a certain degree and here here at Hastings we actually have our PBIS model in place to where we also have our expectations and teachers know these are the behaviors or things that you should be able to manage within your classroom. But if it gets to these levels we have this

Darrin Peppard (12:36.741)

yeah.

Jeff Linden (13:03.968)

best process that you have to go through and if it doesn't work then that becomes the Administrator's role right so are we have these different systems in place to where when something gets activated we know exactly where to go and how to follow that process and what helps me as a principal I can look at that systematic approach and go where are we at in this process this is where you're at okay well you look like you skipped a couple of spots let's go

go back here and then run those things to make sure we run the system correctly and we do everything the way we needed to do it because it keeps consistency and it keeps everything moving in the direction you needed to go because without systematic approaches, I look at it, you're going to have chaos and you don't want to be dealing with chaos and triage and things like that. so like that could be just a simple example, but also I found having the collaboration with my team and

developing policies and having people be a part of that process creates a culture of buy-in to where I can hold people more accountable because we collaborated on this and we all decided this is what's important and now because we all say and agree this is important now it becomes using a systematic approach becomes an ability to hold people accountable to different types of things you can think of.

a lot of things to do that with but I mean I can give you examples all day long on this but yeah just having systematic approaches in place that everybody knows and understands helps you run the building more efficiently and effectively because you know how things need to go or the system that needs to happen the process.

Darrin Peppard (14:53.317)

Yeah, no, no, but what you're saying, think is just totally spot on. I'm going to squirrel chase for a second because I'm going to loop back to the pencil thing. I had that guy in my building too. And it was when I was an assistant principal and I was in charge of discipline and he sent and he had the same kid like three times a day and he sent him at least three times a day. And finally I just gave him a box of pencils and, and well, what if I run out of pencils? I'll get you more. I think I went through like two cases of pencil, but

Jeff Linden (15:00.747)

Yeah

Darrin Peppard (15:23.043)

Exactly, right? Eliminate the excuse. Right? There's the excuse on both sides. The kids doing it on purpose. And honestly, so is the teacher, right? There's, there's no reason for stuff like that. But, but now to come back to what you were kind of finishing with there, to me, what I heard you say, without maybe saying the exact words is, is coming to collective agreement on how we do certain things as a collective staff.

Which, number one, this will lead us into culture because it's a huge part of culture. When we have those collective agreements of this is how we do X, Y, and Z, and we've all collectively agreed this is what we're gonna do, when you talk about holding someone accountable, that's not I'm looking for punishment to gain compliance. It's wait a minute, we've agreed collectively this is what we're gonna do, so help me understand why you have chosen to go in another route.

I'd love to have you elaborate on that just a little bit.

Jeff Linden (16:24.94)

Yeah, I mean, like I said, I could probably do several examples of this, but let's go into our creation of like our cell phone policy. Let's go there. So when we decided, this was my first year here at Hastings, I was able to collaborate with my school improvement team and cell phones were like a topic, like, let's get this figured out. We have this policy, no one really follows it. And so what can we do to A, make it better, but then

have accountability into it, not just for it's for students, staff and parents, even even our community members understand that there's this accountability piece within this this policy. So working together and looking at other other schools have done it. We didn't feel like a total school ban was necessary. We always look at, hey, we got to do something to where there's an expectation upheld. But we also got to be able to teach digital citizenship on top of that, because we

are also teaching our kids how to function in the real world outside of just, you know, coming in and learning the core subjects and then moving on, right? So there's a lot of, you know, other things that we're teaching kids on top of that. So when it comes down to it, we collaborated, we came together and said, Hey, we're going to have the expectations that our students will put their phones in the phone caddy. If they do not, it is taken. So it goes directly to the office, they serve an hour

detention and then they get it back but they won't have it the rest of the day. If that happens the second time it goes to the office their parents are called and their parents must pick it up and happens a third time I request that the parent leave the phone at home.

because now it's become an habitual problem. So that's kind of the nuts and bolts of it. But during classroom time, instructional time, we cannot see it. You have a one-on-one, you know, Chromebook to where you can access the things you need to access. Parents, if you want to contact your child, go through the main office, we'll get your child the message, you know. So a lot of those things came in place. And then we said, you know what, as a collective group,

Jeff Linden (18:39.042)

within my teaching staff because my teaching staff really drove this. And they're the ones that I had them put it out to the teachers at a professional development towards the end of that first year and say, this is our expectation. We've collaborated with you. We brought back information and feedback from you for this policy. So we got everybody collectively basically joining in and buying in on what we want to do. And we all say this is important. Now with that,

As someone isn't running that correctly, I can go, hey, what did we agree on? And then I can come and we can have a conversation about what the expectation, why we have the expectation. Just yesterday, I sat down with a parent and had to explain the policy. We're two years in. And I basically said, student.

What's our expectation? Put the phone in the phone case. What happens if you don't? Well, it's taken. You understand why? Yep, we got to be learning in class. Parent, did you understand that? Parents like, okay, I get it. You know, they didn't like it. But at the same time, they understand that we have expectations. So that helps me hold students accountable. My APs, it makes their job easier. And it makes my teacher's job easier because we understand this is what we decide is important and we're going to hold people

people accountable for that. So when I talk about holding accountable, it's not me playing the gotcha game, because that some people will do that. It's me saying, we have an approach we decided and agreed on, we need to stick to that. And I'm here to support that and have accountability where it needs to be what it needs to be. And that's part of my role.

Darrin Peppard (20:18.885)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think, again, I think that ties in so much with setting the expectation and setting the culture of the organization, you know, whether that's the culture in the classroom, cultures in the hallway, culture in the building, culture in the community. When everybody is clear on what that expectation is, man, things just go so much further. so let's let's kind of maybe jump off into what

But I've kind of teased a couple of times here. Especially again, if you're if you're about to become a new administrator for the first time, first off, congratulations. Don't let anybody say condolences because no, it is congratulations. You're going to love being an administrator. You're going to have hard days. You have a lot of hard days. You're going to have some great days. And second, to me and Jeff, I know you know this, I've been on your podcast and talked about it. You know, the new the the new book.

Culture first classrooms pretty much says what I truly believe. Culture comes first. So with that said, let's maybe pick Jeff's brain a little bit on what are, what are some steps that, that you have taken that you would suggest to either brand new administrators or people who are new to maybe, maybe they're transitioning from one building to another. And this is the first time they've gone to a second building.

What are some steps to put culture first in that building?

Jeff Linden (21:53.667)

Yeah.

So I'm going to speak on when I made the transition from Southern Valley as a principal and to my first year of being the principal here at Hastings High School. Now I have a little bit of an edge because I've been a principal for four years coming in, but I learned through that process because I didn't really have a plan coming in the first time. I really didn't know what I was doing. I was just kind of flying by the seat of my pants and guessing on some of the stuff, but I did have a superintendent that was pretty supportive.

and you know helped me through some things and I learned a lot through that first experience so I knew coming into this one you know I wanted to build a certain type of culture within my building and I wanted to take the lessons I learned from my first experience into my second experience as a building principal so what I did is I developed a 60 90 30 day transition plan that was specific for Hastings High School now I had

to some research because I needed to know what kind of systems do they have in place. I knew we were PLC school. I knew we had PBIS. I knew we had these different things. Did I know everything at the time? But no. But what I also needed to understand, what did I believe was possible? And I think that's where I had to think on that. So my biggest belief coming in was we're on the same team. It didn't matter.

If I was the principal, the teacher, the support staff, the Paris, the custodians, the bus driver, it didn't matter. We were all working together for the same goal and being on the same team. That's where my coach mindset comes into play. And so what I did is I clarified in this transition plan, my four goals. Basically what I wanted to see have happened in the first year. a lot of it was how do I build

Jeff Linden (23:51.609)

the culture of the building because I didn't care about what our test scores were. I didn't care about any of that because I figured if we get the culture right that stuff will come later. And so I really focused on building relationships. So within my first 60 days I went intentionally found every staff member in my building and had a conversation with them. I did not make this you come to my office I went to them.

into their classroom, went into their office space and I said, hey, how are you? And it was pretty simple, like, let's get to know each other. It could be a quick five minute conversation to where I'm learning about them. I may hear out something that they're concerned about or things that they're, you know, hey, what are some things we need to work on? Hey, what about you personally? What do you like to do? Things like that. Just try to make some small talk, get them to know me, I get to know them and then building trust through the

conversations. So within the first 60 days I was able to accomplish that. I was able to have my list of names and I would check them off as I got them through and it took me time to do that. And then on top of that I was getting into every classroom right away to just see what's going on, just saying hi, get used to me being out and about, get used to me being visible, get used to me being in your classroom. And so that was another really important thing for them to understand that, hey I'm here to help and support you but you're gonna

to see me around and I don't want you to be afraid of me because there was some apprehension coming in.

So I wanted you to understand where my heart is. want to understand you build that relationship. And so then I started hearing out things as well as listening. Hey, here's some things we're hearing. Cell phones were an issue. Kids wandering the hallways were an issue. We started, I started realizing this was a common theme throughout these conversations. Then I started getting to know my administrative team as well. I got to get to know them a little earlier because we started in the summer, getting to know each other on those things.

Jeff Linden (25:58.369)

But getting to know the school improvement team getting to know the different systems and how they work was also really important within that first 60 days Then the next 90 days it was we're meeting because I'm hearing these issues What are we going to do to solve them? So we started collecting data. We started looking at things started analyzing things started reaching out talking to different schools How do you do this cell phone policy? We started figuring out. Hey, there's this e-haul pass so that maybe help us with

the accountability because we're still on paper passes my first year. So my second year we went into an e-haul pass system. Everything became electronic. So how can we streamline some of this repetitive remedial stuff? And so that all went through our school improvement team to where in our first year, that first 90 days we collected data, we were able to get that information. And then the last 60 or 30 days, we were taking that information, getting approval for policies, getting the

Darrin Peppard (26:34.161)

Yeah.

Jeff Linden (26:58.192)

things worked out, bringing our district leadership in and getting the things we needed to prove through the school board within that last 30 days to implement. And so that's kind of a rough draft of that 60, 90, 30, but that's kind of the process we went through in that first year. But it all really starts on building the relationships first so we can have an understanding, but then utilizing that trust and that relationship building to solve issues. And I will tell you,

after that first year when we were solving those issues and figuring out what we needed to do, had one of my school improvement team go, this is the first time we felt like we've actually accomplished something with this team. Thank you. And I thought that was really, really a powerful moment going, on the right track. So.

Darrin Peppard (27:48.058)

I love that. think, man, there's so much good stuff in there. And a big part of it too was just reinforcing again, systems thinking, identifying, you know, the importance of relationship building. And something you said it in there kind of just in passing, but something I want to maybe just, you know, pull back up a little bit again. Again, if you're a new administrator, there is so much.

that you can do. But listening needs to be at the top of your list. Really listen to what your people have to say. That doesn't mean you have to go take action on it. That was something that Jeff just said. He didn't just run out and start solving everything right away, but he looked for those common themes. If you don't find those, if you don't listen to everybody, I think that's a really, really powerful piece right there. Jeff, I love that.

One more topic I want to get to before I get to our last question that I ask everybody here on the show and our time is already just flying by. So I want to touch base really quick on your podcast. So maybe share a little bit about the podcast, kind of what kind of your purpose is behind that. mean, I, not everybody, but most people, if you listen to one podcast, you're always looking for more podcasts. I know I'm that way. I listened to your podcast.

So talk a little bit about the show, of what your drive is behind doing that show.

Jeff Linden (29:18.446)

Yeah, I think for me to start the podcast was there was limited resources for educational leaders. And so I really wanted to give back and try to help other people that are in the same position as I am. And, you know, if I can learn something along the way, that was the crazy part about doing a podcast and meeting people and doing interviews. And I'm learning through the process and figuring out, hey, maybe that's something I could use at my school. And so it's really been powerful as a professional development

the tool for me, as well as getting to meet a bunch of great people and a bunch of great educators, but also let people like share my experiences as a leader. Could it help somebody? And that's really the motivation and drive behind my podcast. And really, I've had it out since 2022, but I really haven't really done much with it till this past December. So I've really hit the ground hard the last four months and learned and grown a lot through this process.

Darrin Peppard (30:18.319)

Yeah, outstanding. You know, the thing about about doing a podcast is it's just it's quite addictive. And you know, when when I first started this show, I, I really thought it was just going to be a solo podcast, just me talking. And I think it was either episode four, episode five, it was episode four, Alex Carter, my first guest. And my gosh, I was hooked. I wanted to have these conversations like the one you and I are having right now.

Jeff Linden (30:24.526)

Mm-hmm.

Darrin Peppard (30:47.597)

And man, they're just so much fun to have and you learn so much. For me, certainly this keeps the saw sharp. And it's not just the schools that I get to be in through the work I do, but it's also these kinds of conversations. certainly podcasting is just so much fun. And it's always a lot of fun too when you get to sit down with another podcaster.

Jeff Linden (31:12.492)

Yeah, this is kind of a unique opportunity and I've really enjoyed my time here and you get to know a little bit about me but then, you know, I get to share the things that I have been privileged to do in this role as a principal.

Darrin Peppard (31:28.335)

Yeah, right on. All right. So Jeff, we are at that point in time. I'm going to ask you the same thing I ask everybody here on the show. This is the Leaning into Leadership podcast. So tell me, tell me some more ways that you are leaning into leadership right now.

Jeff Linden (31:42.241)

Yeah, I know, like I've talked a lot about collaboration. I've talked about, you know, building a culture and building relationships and a lot of those things are super important. I think for me, what I'm currently doing with my podcast and leading into leadership has really grown me as a leader. So I would encourage people to seek out, you know, other podcasts of like leading into leadership. You can come check out my podcast, Educational Leadership with Principal JL. But there's a lot of people out there

doing a lot of great work and I think we need to work together and network and really we can help each other grow but at the same time I'm learning through this process I'm learning how to become a better leader and but I'm also learning things to help my building become better and so that's kind of where I'm learning to lean into leadership is there's other ways to do that besides you know your your usual networking within your building and your district

but sometimes reaching out beyond that is also very beneficial and building those relationships up.

Darrin Peppard (32:48.973)

Absolutely. that power of the podcast without question. My very good friend, Josh Tovar, who is a podcaster as well, says all the time that it's free professional development at your fingertips. You just have to be willing to lean into it. So Jeff, some really great stuff. People are going to want to get in touch with you. I'm sure we're going to put all kinds of stuff down in the show notes.

Jeff Linden (33:06.605)

You bet.

Darrin Peppard (33:13.819)

What's the best way for them to catch up with you and to check out educational leadership with Principal JL?

Jeff Linden (33:19.82)

Yeah, educational leadership with Principal JL is on all your major podcast platforms. So you can look it up there. You can get in touch with me through my email, the dot principal dot jl at gmail.com. That'd be the best way to get in touch with me on that. But yeah, I'd be looking forward to it. I'm on Twitter and you can if you find my podcast, you'll find all my handles. So yeah.

Darrin Peppard (33:47.259)

There you go. Yeah. And we'll put all that stuff down there show notes anyway, folks. Jeff, thanks so much for coming and hanging out with me here on Leading Into Leadership. This was a blast.

Jeff Linden (33:57.516)

You bet. Thanks, Darren.

Darrin Peppard (01:39.35)

All right, man, exceptional conversation right there. I really appreciate Jeff being a part of the conversation, being a part of the podcast. I was actually on Jeff's podcast. If you have not checked out Educational Leadership with Principal JL, I would specifically recommend that you check out episode 31, which I was a guest on Jeff's show. So make sure you check that out. Again, thank you to Jeff for joining me here on the podcast. And now,

It's time for a pep talk. Earlier this weekend, I shared a blog post where I talked about how the Fourth of July to me really became kind of a pivot point in my leadership every single year. You know, I remember that very first summer, the conclusion of my first year as a principal. And those of you who have been following the show for a long time have followed me for a long time, you know, year one, even most of year two was not that good.

for me as a leader. I remember very specifically July 4th, 2012. We were out at the fairgrounds, we watched the fireworks, and as we're driving back to our house, all I can think about is, okay, it is time now to start thinking about the upcoming school year. It is time now to really get focused, get clear on what my goals are, and how am I gonna start to show up a little bit differently?

I use June as a really good opportunity to recharge but then, hey July, it's here, right? Folks, you know what I mean. It's time for us to make that pivot and time to really start thinking about how are we going to show up differently this year and what are we gonna do to improve our leadership? And I wanna share with you three questions that I wrote in the blog that I think are very relevant here in this pep talk. Number one, who needs more of my attention, support and trust this year?

Number two, what routines or rituals will help us build a stronger culture? And number three, what is the one thing I will keep front and center all year long? If you can focus on those three things, if you can get good answers to those over the next month or two, whatever you have left before the school year begins, that's going to help set you up for success. So that's my challenge to you. Think about those three questions and really lean into those as you head into the month of July.

Darrin Peppard (04:04.215)

Thank you so much for joining me here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. Get out there, have a road to awesome week.