Episode 267: Listener Question - Managing Parent Communication Without Losing Your Day

Darrin Peppard (00:00)

All right, everybody, welcome into the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. This is episode 267. One of the things I love most about doing this podcast is hearing from all of you out there who are doing the work every single day. Over the past few years, I've received messages from listeners from all over the globe, teachers, assistant principals, leaders in other walks, superintendents.

sharing what they're experiencing in their schools and often asking just a simple question like, Darren, what would you do in this situation? Well, today's episode actually comes from one of those messages. I heard over the weekend from a first year principal in upstate New York who told me that he listens to the show regularly, which first of all, thank you for that. But he also shared that his first year has been incredibly fulfilling.

as well as incredibly challenging. And if you've ever been in a school leadership role, you know exactly what that means. One of the biggest challenges that he mentioned in his message to me was parent communication. It's emails, it's phone calls, the questions, the concerns. You know, sometimes those things feel like they come in faster than you can possibly respond to.

He asked me a real thoughtful question. Essentially, said this, Darren, how do you structure your day so that you can respond to parents quickly and effectively while still doing the rest of the work that a principal needs to do? Now, when I read that message, I had two reactions. First, I absolutely love when listeners reach out with questions like this. This is exactly why I started this podcast, to support leaders who are trying to do the work well.

My second reaction was this. I know exactly what he's experiencing because I lived it. You know, when I first became a principal, I spent so much of my time just reacting. was reacting to emails, reacting to problems, reacting to whatever it was that popped up next. And I had this belief. I thought that if I just worked harder or if I just responded a little faster,

then I could keep everything under control. But what I eventually learned, and in many ways the hard way, the real problem wasn't the email, wasn't the interruptions. The real problem was I had slipped into what I now call the cycle of chaos. This is that space where leaders just get stuck and the inbox is no longer just a communication tool.

It's that thing that owns you and controls you throughout the entire day. So on today's special midweek episode, I wanna walk through this listener's question and share a few of the systems and strategies that helped me move from reacting all day long to leading with clarity and intention. So throughout this episode, I'm gonna talk about communication systems, protecting your time, setting expectations with parents.

and even a real simple email strategy that my friend Ray Huert shared on this very podcast a while back. And honestly, it's a system I have shared and recommended to leaders ever since. Along the way, I'll share also a few resources that have come out of my own leadership journey, including some ideas from Road to Awesome, The Journey of a Leader, and tools like the School Leaders Weekly Planner. Now, before we jump into the conversation,

I want to take a quick moment and thank the sponsors who make this show possible. One of the challenges school leaders face today is trying to ensure every student gets the support they need while also managing all of the other responsibilities that come with running a school. And let's be honest, when students struggle academically,

That often leads to more communication with parents, more meetings, and more pressure on teachers and administrators. That's why I'm so excited to partner with HeyTutor. HeyTutor provides high quality tutoring support for schools, helping students get the targeted help they need while giving teachers and leaders additional support in the process. Their tutors work directly with districts to provide structured academic supports that help students grow and give schools confidence

that learning gaps are being addressed. When schools have strong support systems in place for students, it makes communication with parents more proactive and productive instead of reactive. If you're a school leader looking for ways to better support your students and your staff, I encourage you to learn more about what HeyTutor can offer to your school community. Check them out at the link down in the show notes or go to heytutor.com. Another thing we're gonna talk about today in

this episode is the importance of leaders being intentional with their time. Now, when principals spend the entire day reacting to emails and issues, one of the first things that often gets squeezed out is time in the classrooms supporting instruction. And that's where Digicoach comes in. Digicoach is a powerful walkthrough and coaching platform designed to help schools capture meaningful instructional data.

during classroom visits and turn those observations into real coaching conversations with teachers. Instead of juggling sticky notes, spreadsheets, or complicated forms, Digicoach makes it easy to collect insights, organize feedback, and support teacher growth in a way that actually improves instruction. And when leaders have systems that streamline the work of instructional coaching, it frees up more time to focus on what matters most, supporting teachers and improving student learning. Check them out.

at digicoach.com. Let them know you heard about them here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast for special partner pricing. All right, folks, let's get back into this conversation. Before I start sharing systems with you, I want to be very clear about something. I did not start my career as a principal with any of this figured out. In fact, if I'm being completely honest with you, this was one of the things I struggled with the most early in my leadership journey.

Like many new principals, my days were just this constant stream of interruptions. And that stream of interruptions was things like emails from parents or teachers stopping by with some type of a question, students who needed support with a variety of things, phone calls from the front office, phone calls from the district office,

text messages from the assistant superintendent, and so on, and so on, and so on. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I was supposed to lead instruction. I was supposed to support teachers. I was supposed to build culture. I was supposed to actually be present in my building. What I found myself doing most of the time was just reacting, reacting to whatever the newest issue was or the latest email, reacting to whatever problem.

happen to pop up next. You know, the thing about that is in many ways it makes us feel needed, makes us feel necessary, makes us feel effective that we're able to go and solve other people's problems. But the problem with that is then who's doing our work? Who's doing the work that our listener asked about? The real work of a principal. You see, I remember keeping just this

thought in my head constantly that if I could just keep up with the communication or if I could just answer every email quickly or return every phone call quickly, then people would know that not only do I care, but that I am doing my job extremely well. I'm a really effective principal because I'm responding to all of these asks of me and demands on my time. What actually happened though was something very different. The inbox

my cell phone, they started to control my day. Instead of going and leading the work of the school, I was just responding to whatever came at me in the moment. And I finally realized, and really, to be honest with you, I didn't do this on my own. Because I was working with a leadership coach, that's the reason I do what I do now, my coach helped me realize something very important.

The problem wasn't the email. The problem wasn't the cell phone. The problem was I had fallen into what I now call the cycle of chaos. Now, if you're a regular listener to the show, you'll remember the episode on the cycle of chaos here just in the last six, eight weeks. We'll link that one down on the show notes for you as well. I'd love to tell you the number of the episode. I can't remember it right off the top of my head, but

We talked about the cycle of chaos at length in that episode. Here I want to just maybe hit a little brief piece about that. You see, the cycle of chaos is what happens when leaders spend their days reacting instead of leading. The interruptions pile up, the decisions come at you faster and faster and faster, your calendar is overwhelmed with meetings and issues, and before long, the work that really matters, the being in classrooms, the building relationships, supporting your team, kind of gets pushed to the side.

Ultimately, communication, especially email, becomes like the fuel that keeps the cycle of chaos spinning. Because there's never a shortage of email. There's never a shortage of stuff in the inbox. And the reality is every message, when you are stuck in the cycle of chaos, feels like it's urgent. Every issue feels like, have to respond to this right now.

I'm gonna stop what I'm doing. Instead of walking into this classroom and giving a teacher some feedback, I'm gonna go answer this email. I'm gonna take this call. I'm gonna respond to this text message because it feels like it needs an immediate response. I'll tell you, I remember working with a leadership team. I still work with this leadership team, but when I first started with them about a year ago, the first day that I spent at their school,

man, they were the cycle of chaos. Everybody was stuck in that mode. Every one of them was running at breakneck speed. You know, we've all seen those videos where there's one person standing still and everyone else is moving in time lapse, just so fast and buzzing around. And that was my point of view with that leadership team.

every one of them running at just breakneck speed, just trying to get ahead of things. And the reality is they were not really making any progress on the work that really mattered. They were reacting to whatever it was in the moment. Calls from the assistant superintendent, issues with student behavior, concerns from teachers in the classroom, concerns from parents, something showing up on Facebook.

whatever it was, they chased after it. Towards the end of the day with that particular team, we were having a conversation and I said something to them that I have repeated many times since. It's actually become kind of a staple in my keynote presentations. But when I said it in that moment with this team, it really resonated.

And I think it has, every time I've said it since. I told them, stop sacrificing the important on the altar of the urgent.

Yeah, it's that big. I'm gonna say it again, it's that big. Stop sacrificing the important on the altar of the urgent. That is exactly what the cycle of chaos does to you. It makes you put the important things off to the side so you can react to whatever is coming at you now. And when that happens, the real true important work, the leadership work,

just gets pushed further and further and further down your list.

Okay, everybody breathe. Because now let's talk about how do we get out of the cycle of chaos. I want to share four systems with you that can help you break the cycle.

The bottom line is build systems. So again, I'm gonna share four systems. Systems that will allow more effective communication while still protecting time for the important leadership work. And the first one is take control of your inbox. One of the first things I did, and again, I learned this from my leadership coach.

I stopped living in the inbox. I stopped checking email constantly. And I started scheduling communication blocks on my calendar. One in the morning, one in the midday, one in the afternoon. Outside of those times, inbox was not my priority. And it was hard. I mean, really hard.

because you're gonna see the inbox on your phone, you're gonna see the inbox on your laptop. It takes discipline. But I decided these are the times I will respond to email. Because when I'm not in those times, I needed leading the school to be my priority, not my inbox.

Over the years, working with so many leaders, I've seen that most really effective leaders have discovered the same thing, that very few emails actually require an immediate response. I mean, think about it. If you have a big situation and your superintendent or your assistant superintendent needs you to know about it, they're not emailing you. They're texting you. They're calling you.

If it's an email from a parent, well, the parent might feel it's immediate. It probably isn't. It doesn't require you to respond right in the moment.

That's a tough thing, requires discipline, but set some blocks of time. Eventually I got to where I only had two time blocks for email. Right after the bus was rolled away in the morning, so about eight o'clock. And then right after the bus was rolled away at the end of the day, about 3.30. That's when I responded to email.

I had some tricks, and I'm going to share those with you in just a couple minutes, that helped me to bridge those gaps. Here's one of them, and this is the second system.

This one is simply about setting communication expectations. And this one, I mentioned it earlier, but this came from my friend, Ray Huert from Teachers Deserve It. Ray was a guest on this very podcast, episode 199. And on that particular episode, right around the 15 minute mark, she shares a very simple, but very powerful email strategy. And folks, I'll put a link in the show notes for you.

I'll actually put a YouTube link so you can go to the YouTube version of the podcast and watch Ray talk about this. I'll set it right to where she starts talking about this strategy. If you haven't listened to the episode, listen to whole thing, but definitely check out this specific strategy. Essentially, this is the strategy. Ray is very intentional about setting communications whenever an email comes to her.

She has her email set up in vacation mode, which means it will automatically send a response. So your automatic response to anything that hits your inbox is a response of, thank you for your email. Here are the times that I respond to email. Again, for me, that would be eight o'clock and 3.30 PM. I'm telling people, here's when I'm going to answer emails.

I'm going to also say something like, I will respond within 24 hours, but here are the times that I respond to email. The beauty is if you need an immediate response, here's the phone number to the school, please call the school. You can also put something in there like, here are a few frequently asked questions. Need to know something about your student's grades? Click here. Need to talk to the counseling center? Click here. Whatever it might be.

But number one, when people get that immediate response from you, it's, right, my email has been received, and now I know here's when I'm going to get a response. It sets the expectation without you having to fire off an email when you're supposed to be paying attention to maybe a classroom observation or a meeting with students, whatever it might be. When people know when to expect a response,

They're going to accept that. They're going to know what is coming their way.

As a leader, if you can manage that communication...

now you're leading and you're not being owned by the inbox. The third one, this one is putting together some really good, even basic communication filters. This was another really important lesson that I learned from my coach. I see the reality is not every email that comes to you really needed to come directly to you.

So often people think, well, I'm just going to email the principal. Well, the reality is, is the principal's probably not the person to answer that question. know, really strong leadership teams have systems in place where communication will go to the right people. That might be to the assistant principals, or it could be to the counselors, or it could be directly to the teacher, or maybe somebody in the front office staff. But so often people email you, and then you're going to end up being the one who forwards that email to someone else. So.

Again, learned this one from my coach, but a big change that I made was giving my secretary full access to my email and my calendar. So she was able to then manage a lot of the scheduling and a lot of the communication stuff that did not need to be done by me.

most of those emails that would come to me that really should have gone to one of my assistant principals or my athletic director or whatever she took care of. She responded, thank you for your email. Gonna loop the correct person in. They are CC'd on the email. If you need anything further, please let us know. And then that person would take care of it. That's something I probably wouldn't have done until the end of the day. She could do it right away, get it taken care of.

And we met on a regular basis, just for transparency. We met on a regular basis and she kept me in the loop on almost everything, which was great. But once we started doing that, man, everything changed. Now the work flowed to the correct place for the most part. Nothing is perfect, but it really made a huge difference and it freed me up to go lead my school, go do the work of the principal. The fourth system I wanna talk about is proactive communication.

And I think it's one of the best ways for you to reduce the amount of reactive communication and just cut down on stuff that really doesn't need to come to you. Really doesn't need to come to anyone.

I recommend to everyone that I work with, and I'll tell you one of the districts I work with this year, they transitioned from one superintendent to another, and the new superintendent put an expectation in place, and I love it. And it ties in perfectly here with this fourth system. He requires a weekly update sent home to parents from every teacher and every building administrator.

parents love it. They know what's going on with their kids school. They know what to expect in the coming week or in the coming weeks from that particular school from that particular teacher. And he does it as well as the superintendent. So parents are getting all of this from the front end communication.

Now you can do this a lot of different ways. You can do that as just a weekly email. You could do it as a video message. I've worked with schools and districts who have created their own YouTube channels and have a regular YouTube video that goes out once a week from the principal or from the superintendent. It's a real powerful tool. You email it out, you drop it on Facebook. That's where they're going to complain about your school. Go put the positives there.

you're setting clear expectations, you're celebrating what's happening in the school, you're updating people on what's going on, the more that you put that proactive communication in play, the more families hear from you, the more trust starts to grow. The more trust grows, the fewer of the reactive messages you're getting from them. Because number one, they trust you. Number two, they know that at the right time,

They'll spend a little bit of time with you, they'll run into you, they'll bump into you at the grocery store, they'll see you at the school, and they can ask their question. And it's no longer urgent. Because you're communicating proactively on a regular basis. Man, when you do that, makes a huge difference. Now, here's the thing. Those are four really, really good systems that I think you can put in play, regardless who you are.

regardless of where you are currently in your leadership journey, that will help you to not be owned by the inbox. Now I want to speak directly to the principal who sent this question. Honestly, I want to speak to every early career leader that's listening right now. Throughout my leadership coaching work, I have the opportunity to work with a lot of early career school leaders. To me, that is who

My number one person is that I want to help. If you listen to the show regularly, you've heard me say it before, I genuinely believe we're uniquely positioned to help the person we used to be. And I was that early career leader who struggled with all of these things.

One of the most common issues I hear is communication overload. It's that feeling that you have when you have to respond immediately to everything. But I want you to hear something very clearly. Struggling with this doesn't mean that you're failing. It means that you're learning the work. Leadership is different. Success isn't about solving every problem instantly.

It's about building systems that allow your school to function at a high level.

So let's wrap this up with a pep talk. I want to go back to that quote one more time. Stop sacrificing the important on the altar of the urgent.

because the urgent will always be there. There will always be another email. There will always be another issue. There will always be a situation demanding your attention. But the important work, the work of building culture, supporting your teachers, leading your school community, that's the work that truly makes a difference. So if you're feeling overwhelmed right now, take a step back, get up on the balcony,

Take a look at your systems. Ask yourself one simple question. What can I change so the important work has room to happen? See, when leaders make that shift, moving from reacting to leading, everything will begin to change. That is how we continue to build the next mile of the road to awesome.

Hey, thanks everybody for listening. I will tell you I dropped a couple of resources down in the show notes for you, including the School Leaders Weekly Planner, fantastic resource to help you block your time, be real reflective, and start to take a little more ownership of what your day looks like. As always, get out there, have a road to awesome week.