Episode 278: Compliance Can Control a Team. Alignment Can Transform One.

Darrin Peppard (00:00.834)

You know, one of the saddest things I've watched in organizations over the years is not when bad leaders fail. Honestly, most organizations eventually recognize bad leadership. What's harder to watch is when strong leaders slowly stop speaking. That is our topic today on episode 278 of the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. Folks, welcome in. As always, grateful to have you here.

Now, let me go right back to that statement. One of the most difficult things to watch is when strong leaders slowly stop speaking. Typically, that's not because they stopped caring or because they lack passion. And it certainly isn't because they gave up on kids or gave up on people or gave up on the mission. But somewhere along the way, the culture in their organization taught them

that it was safer for them to stay quiet, safer for them to stay in their lane, safer to avoid the difficult truths, and safer to focus only on what they could control. And eventually, in this type of culture, some of the strongest leaders in the organization stop contributing altogether. And it's not because they don't want to. It's because they no longer feel aligned, trusted, or safe.

to lead openly. That is what I want to talk about today. You see, recently I had a conversation with a good friend of mine, Dr. Chris Yocum. As well, Dr. Yocum shared an article that I think was spurred by the conversation he and I had in this article from the Harvard Business Review. They talked about why effective leaders sometimes get branded as problems. As I read through the article,

I found myself reflecting on something I experienced personally during my leadership journey. And the more I reflected on it, I realized I wasn't thinking about it from a place of bitterness or a place of blame. Rather, I found myself really reflecting and learning, really thinking about you, the listener, the folks that I have the distinct honor.

Darrin Peppard (03:11.822)

of coaching and supporting all over the country, all different types of leaders in all different settings. Because I think a lot of you, maybe you're living quietly through this tension right now. I shared something like this in my weekly newsletter. If you're not getting the weekly newsletter, folks, go to roadtoawesome.net. The pop-up will come up, get that weekly newsletter. It's a really, really great resource for each and every one of you as a leader.

What I put in the newsletter this week really connected to this specifically, and several of the people who received the newsletter reached back out, sent me a text message or made a phone call or sent me an email. One that I had a text message conversation with for several hours during the course of the day on Monday. And that's why I decided to make this into a special midweek podcast episode for you.

We're going to go there in just a minute, but I want to pause and take a little time out to thank the sponsor of today's episode, HeyTutor. I love that HeyTutor sponsors our episodes and makes the Leaning Into Leadership podcast possible because one of the things that I've learned over the years is that healthy organizations don't improve simply because they work harder. They improve because they become much more intentional about support.

alignment and focusing energy on the work that matters the most. That's what I love about HeyTutor because that's very much the work they are doing in schools around the country. You see, HeyTutor partners with districts to provide high dosage tutoring in both math and English language arts. And they use evidence-based systems that are designed to help students grow without placing any more pressure, any more on the plates of already overwhelmed teachers and staffs.

Their work is aligned to state standards. It's built around small group instruction and focused on helping schools create sustainable systems of support for students, both in-person and virtually. The most amazing part, HeyTutor handles all of the training, the recruiting, the hiring. So your busy leadership team doesn't have more on their plate either. If your district is exploring ways

Darrin Peppard (05:38.062)

to better student supports while remaining intentional about staff capacity and alignment, I'd encourage you to check them out. You can learn more at heytutor.com or go down to the show notes and hit the special link that will let them know you heard about them here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. Now, let's get into this conversation. And yes, today's episode might be a little bit different, but it's certainly not an episode about bad leaders. I wanna make that very clear.

This isn't about bad leaders. It's not about criticizing supervisors. And it's certainly not about pretending that every frustrated leader is automatically right. Because that isn't true either. What I want to explore today is something a little more nuanced than that. I want to talk about the difference between compliance-based leadership and alignment-based leadership. And I want to talk about what can happen inside organizations when high capacity leaders find themselves working

Insistence where trust, contribution, and alignment slowly get replaced by control, politics, and compliance. And before I go too far, I want to introduce a leadership concept that really shaped a lot of my thinking around this topic. And it comes from one of my absolute favorite leadership books. John Maxwell talks about something called the law of the lid in his book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. In fact,

The law of the lid is law number one. In simple terms, it's this. Organizations rarely rise above the leadership capacity of the people who are leading them. In other words, leadership ability becomes the lid that either expands or limits organizational growth. Now here's where it gets interesting. Sometimes inside of organizations, and I think this came back to the core of my conversation with Dr. Yocum,

You have high capacity leaders who are working underneath other leaders whose leadership lid might actually be lower than their own. Now, before anybody gets defensive, let me be real clear. This isn't about arrogance or ego or about, somebody's better than someone else. Not at all. In fact, most high lid leaders don't even recognize this dynamic at first in their organization when they are in this situation.

Darrin Peppard (08:03.051)

Because I think most of us naturally assume that people in positions of authority are strong leaders. So, as a high capacity leader, what will I do? What do most high capacity leaders usually do in that situation? Well, they align. They comply. They try to understand what the vision is. They ask questions. They support the direction. They work really hard.

and they work really hard to lead their people well, especially at first. But over time, when you find yourself in this situation, things start to feel a little bit off. And it's not usually one giant moment that makes you step back and go, my gosh, where did that come from? No, most often it's an accumulation of little things that made you just look a little different or made you

maybe replay a situation when you're driving home, staring at the windshield. It's those repeated decisions that don't feel aligned with the values of the organization or those little moments that lead to strong leaders quietly leaving. You see the conversations start to become maybe a little more political than they are purposeful.

There becomes this growing sense of compliance mattering more than contribution. And eventually, leaders might realize it's something a little deeper.

we are not aligned around what matters most as an organization. And I'll be honest with you, that's something I lived through personally. Now years ago, I worked in a district where I watched the culture slowly shift over time. Now, I think those of you who listen regularly and watch us on YouTube regularly know that I am very much a culture-driven leader.

Darrin Peppard (10:16.747)

And I worked under a handful of different really strong leaders and some who maybe weren't quite as strong. But in this particular situation, I found this culture starting to move in a direction, and again, very slowly, like I mentioned earlier, to a point where maybe we didn't notice it at first. You see, when I first stepped into leadership, I just honestly assumed

The people above me were strong leaders. I mean, after all, they were in those leadership positions. You don't get into those leadership positions without being a strong leader. And for quite some time I did exactly what I believed good leaders should do. I aligned, I supported the direction, I towed the party line, if you will. At the same time, I focused on my building. I worked to make sure we were serving our staff and our students.

at the best of our ability.

But gradually, over a period of a couple of years, some things just started to not sit right with me. Some of it was questions that were asked of me by my next line leader.

that made me question, first myself, but over time, that leader. Then I started to notice within our collective leadership team, some of the stronger leaders in the group started leaving.

Darrin Peppard (11:57.005)

I started to notice that the decisions that were being made were really disconnected from culture and people. In fact, to be honest with you, in many cases, they were 100 % budget driven.

Not that we don't need to make decisions based on budget, but rather that if I do this, no matter who the person is or how it will impact our culture, it may save some money in the budget. There started to be this growing emphasis, and never overtly, by the way. Rather quietly, there was a growing emphasis on compliance.

In fact, this is where punishment to gain compliance, in my mind, was first coined. You've heard me say it here on the show numerous times if you listen on a weekly basis. But it was during that time, there was this strong emphasis on complying, doing what you were told.

was very much a hierarchy and it was very much about control.

What I think was really interesting is that most of the really high capacity leaders, and at the time I had not read Maxwell's 21 Laws, but I would say these people were very high-lid leaders. And I knew who in the group were those high capacity, high-lid leaders. They didn't become overly combative because they were seeing the same things I was seeing.

Darrin Peppard (13:39.615)

Rather, they became quieter. They used to be the ones who spoke up regularly in our district-level meetings, but not anymore. I noticed they started just protecting their own building, protecting their own staff, and maybe even shielding people from unnecessary chaos. I know that's what I did, A lot of the leaders in our district felt isolated. Some of them, I think, believed they were being

intentionally isolated. Over time, the consequences became absolutely impossible to ignore. And the truth is I left.

Darrin Peppard (14:24.598)

During that window of time, both before and after I left, turnover in the district at all levels increased dramatically. The district started to develop quite a negative reputation, and a lot of strong leaders left, a lot of strong teachers left. And even after the top leadership level changed, I think that cultural damage has lingered because many of the

behaviors that became embedded in the organization continued to exist. Honestly, it makes me sad even today because that culture damage outlives leaders. You know, we talk about it in leadership all the time that you want, you want to put systems and processes in place that if the leader were not there can continue on. What we don't think about is

these types of situations where that cultural damage happens. And even when the leader leaves, that's going to linger and it's going to take time.

Darrin Peppard (16:01.278)

One of the biggest lessons I learned through that experience is this. Compliance-based leadership might create short-term control, but alignment-based leadership creates long-term health. Compliance-based leadership often will protect authority. It will reward silence. It prioritizes obedience. It limits healthy disagreement. And it creates rather political types of behavior.

While alignment-based leadership will feel completely different, alignment-based leadership builds trust. It invites contribution. It creates shared ownership. It clarifies your purpose. It develops people. It allows healthy tension and honest dialogue to take place. And maybe, just maybe most importantly, alignment-based leadership understands that disagreement is not.

always disrespect. After all, sometimes disagreement is truly contribution. Sometimes hard conversations are actually signs that people care deeply about the work. And looking back now, one of the biggest mistakes we made as a team was failing to intentionally align as a district leadership team. Sure, individual buildings worked really hard.

to create healthy cultures. Mine certainly did.

But there was never meaningful work done to align the larger leadership team around trust, communication, shared values, shared vision, and collective ownership of the work. We operated in silos. We were the definition of operating in silos instead of being a unified leadership culture. And I honestly believe alignment work could have changed everything. And it wouldn't necessarily have eliminated disagreement.

Darrin Peppard (18:03.69)

That's fine, healthy disagreement is important. It certainly wouldn't have made everybody think exactly the same. Again, that's not what you want in your organization, but creating that unified leadership culture would have allowed for enough trust for people to contribute honestly and move forward together. Maybe that's the encouragement I want to lead leaders with today. If you're leading inside a difficult or misaligned environment,

Don't allow yourself to become cynical. Find other high-lid leaders. Create an environment where you can protect a healthy culture. Do meaningful work locally. And build trust within your sphere of influence. Because if even the top-line leadership remains imperfect, healthy leadership can still exist inside spaces you can influence intentionally. And honestly, that's work is going to matter more than you know.

Because after all compliance, yeah, it might keep people quiet, but alignment is what helps people believe in the work all over again. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. As always, rate, review, subscribe, share this episode with somebody else who might be dealing with this high-lid working for a lower lid leader type of environment.

Get out there and have a road to awesome week.