Episode 184: The Turning Point - Why Leaders Must Take Care of Themselves

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 00:01

All right, my friends, welcome into episode 184 of the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. Today on this show, I want to share with you a deeply personal story about a moment in my life, in my leadership journey that proved to be quite pivotal, proved to be one of those moments when I look back on it and I wonder,

how I allowed myself to get to such a low point. This is a story that I have not told before on the podcast in a speaking event. I did just write a blog post about it and referenced it in the blog post. But I want to share this story with you today because it is really a story about burnout. It's a story about overlooked opportunities and

It's a story that really is about a wake-up call that reshaped how I approach leadership and how I look at self-care. Now we know that as leaders, we can't pour from an empty cup. We hear this all the time. We talk a lot now about self-care and I think that's good. I think we should be talking more and more about self-care.

. This is the last episode of: 2024

most of our school leaders are on the holiday break, whether they're completely off from work or they're in the office, maybe, you know, doing more probably in two hours than you can accomplish an entire week with everybody in the building. Either way, this is a time when as leaders, we reflect where we kind of take stock, we start to think about, you know, what is it that I want to focus on in the new year? What is it?

do some things to improve in: 2025

because of something that took place during that time. So let me just tell you the story a little bit. Maybe that will help kind of set the scene. So this actually took place during my second year as the building level principal. And when I became the principal, I moved from an assistant principal role within the same building into the principalship. In essence, that opened a chair on the leadership team.

I juggled some people around, but I wanted to have somebody on my team that I knew I could trust unequivocally. So I reached out to my best friend in the world. His name is Eric. At the time, Eric was a building level principal in Arizona. And I just told Eric, hey, I want you on my leadership team.

He had actually applied in the building a couple of years prior when I was still an assistant principal and some, things in his life had changed so that he was unable to accept the position when it was offered. So a couple of years later, here I come with, I want you on my leadership team. And he didn't bat an eyelash. It was just a few weeks later and there he was, you know, living in Wyoming, as part of the leadership team going into.

our second year together in that building, he told me that summer that the woman that he had been dating, he was going to marry. And he would be leaving at the end of that following school year. I totally understood that. I totally respected it. Honestly, I think, I think the world of her, I think she's a wonderful human being. She's great for him.

I was happy for him. He asked me to be in the wedding. Of course I'm going to stand up. My best friend, I'm going to stand up in the wedding. You know I'll be there, right? Christmas break comes around and they're getting married over Christmas break back in Arizona. And as, as those of you who have listened to the show before know this, I thought I had to be everything to everybody. I thought I had to be the superhero. So

I just went and I went and I went and I went and I went. I'm one who typically doesn't get sick unless it's a convenient time to get sick. So a Christmas break, always a convenient time to get sick. I mean, honestly, my first year as a teacher, two of my really good friends came all the way down to see me on spring break and I got sick. Couldn't get out of it. It's crazy. So here we are. It's Christmas break.

and I am just as sick as can possibly be. I'm supposed to be heading off to go be in this wedding and I am as sick as I can possibly be. I probably should have been in the hospital. I am not kidding.

I kept thinking I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. Then it was, okay, I can't drive myself down there. You know what? I'll fly down the day before the wedding. Long and the short of it, I missed my best friend's wedding because I was so sick. I was so run down. I was so worn out that I couldn't answer the bell. I was so busy pouring into everybody else that I didn't take care of myself. Because I didn't take care of myself, I now missed a very important moment.

in my best friend's life.

By the way, Eric, Sam, happy anniversary. I know we're right at that time. It's right here. That's why I'm telling the story now, because it always comes back to me, because I still carry the guilt. I know that they have forgiven me for not being there. I struggled to forgive myself, and it's because I just didn't take care of myself. I mean, for some reason, folks, we believe it's okay to just run ourselves into the ground, and we have to stop doing this.

And if you're like me here at the holiday break, this is when you're taking some stock and saying, man, I got to take better care of myself. You know, I did start to do some things to take a little bit better care of myself coming out of this moment because I missed this huge moment in my best friend's life. You know, it's a memory that I don't have standing there watching he and Sam get married because it couldn't answer the bell. You know,

Man, the regret, you know, the guilt that I feel. It became a wake-up call. It became a, Darren, you have to set time aside for yourself to keep yourself healthy. Again, we can't pour from an empty cup, and that's exactly where I had put myself.

The reality about leadership is this. For us to be the most effective leader that we can be, the most efficient leader we can be, the best leader we can be, we have to be able to be our best self. When we deprive ourselves of sleep, when we deprive ourselves of nutrition, when we deprive ourselves of mental health, positive mental health.

We hold ourselves back from being the best self we can be, being the best leader that we can be.

Now I grew up in a generation where putting yourself first is selfish. I've talked about it here I think on the show a few times before but I mean my generation you know you you're the first one in the parking lot and you're last one out. You know most of the kids in my generation, myself included, you know we were told hey if you're on time you're five minutes late. Right? I mean you've heard that before. Hell I've said it before.

But that's not putting ourselves first and that's not taking care of ourselves. I'm not saying just be willy-nilly and now just start blowing things off and show up late to things. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying what we need to do is ensure that we're taking care of ourselves. So let me share some practical changes that I made that made a difference for me. And maybe that will help spark some ideas or maybe harden in your mind ideas you already have around.

better take care of myself in: 2025

some very specific steps for me began first and foremost with my own personal health. I needed to start eating better. I barely ate breakfast. You know, maybe it was something on the way to work. Usually it wasn't. If it was, it was something that you threw in the microwave, you know, you know, some type of, you know, just real quick reheated breakfast.

Lunch typically was down in the cafeteria and I was probably eating twice as much as I needed to because I wasn't eating any breakfast.

And then dinner was just whatever, whenever, when I got home, it was super late. So number one, start thinking about the systems you have in place around, what are you doing to eat healthy? I remember many a time sitting in the cafeteria, eating my cafeteria food, watching Eric eating vegetables and hummus and thinking, why are you doing that? Well, he taking good care of himself. I was not. The second thing, what are you doing to make sure you have a release?

I started utilizing what a beautiful beautiful weight room with treadmills and all kinds of stuff completely revamped weight room at our high school and I mean it was mine for the you know for the use just go do it right I started putting time aside you know first I was doing it right after school then eventually I moved to where I was doing it before school but get in

and get some exercise for me, that was super important. So I started actually blocking that time. You know, it's interesting. I missed the wedding and it was because I was sick. However, if I had been there, fun little side note, the clothing that we had purchased the previous summer, each of us, the groomsmen, had a matching outfit. Mine didn't fit. Yeah.

I would have gotten there and my clothing would not have fit. I don't think I could have even buttoned my pants. I gained that much weight that year, folks. Yeah. my gosh. Out of control. We got to take care of ourselves, right?

Put systems in place so that you are ensuring that you're taking care of yourself first and foremost, again, for that, for that physical piece, making sure that you're a little bit more structured on your meals, making sure you're a little bit more structured on getting that physical exercise that you need. I mean, heck, every one of us now have a step counter right on our wrist, right? So just check on your steps, right? Make yourself be active. The third thing for me,

was starting to find ways to alleviate stress on the campus. again, if you're a regular listener, you know that once my coach came on board at the start of the next year, and I started working with a coach on a regular basis, I started developing much better time management habits. I started developing much better communication habits. And most importantly, I was clear about what truly mattered to me as a school leader.

You see, when all of this took place, when I missed my best friend's wedding, I had zero clarity about what even mattered to me as a school leader. It was all about survival. It was all about getting through the day. And as a result, obviously, I was burning myself out.

I think it's really important for each one of us to prioritize that self care and in doing so, number one, evaluate your priorities. Now what truly matters to you in your leadership role? Because let's be honest, leaders, you cannot do it all. And if you think you can, you're not gonna be to do it all for very long and you're not doing it well. So what do you really...

really prioritize what really matters to you and what do you need to lean into? Number one, because from your role, you are the person who needs to do it the most. And number two, what is the thing that you're leaning into that you prioritize that also feeds your soul? For me, getting in the classrooms was that thing. And when I was not taking care of myself, I wasn't getting into classrooms. I was just

dealing with peer management stuff. The second thing is to really make sure that you start to set some boundaries for yourself. I really think highly of my daughter's generation. My daughter's in early 20s and her generation is so much better than my generation at having some boundaries, at saying, nope, not gonna be at work for that. Or, hey, when you're sick,

I'm calling sick. Right? I mean, how many times did I go to work sick? All the time. Right? Because it's not convenient. I can't be sick right now. I just push that off to the side. You know? When spring break comes or when the holiday break comes, know, then I'll be as sick as can be. Because then it's okay. It's convenient.

Set some boundaries for yourself.

A few episodes ago, I talked about our new course in the principal academy, take control of your leadership. And I talked specifically about the time management piece and about how you need to be scheduling time for yourself for reflection. I think that's one of those, those boundaries that we need to have for ourself is setting the time aside to reflect on a daily basis, but then also reflect on your week. We also need to make sure that we're setting time aside.

for ourselves during the day with that absolute no interruption time, that time that strictly belongs to us. And that's when we work on our most high leverage leadership items. And we make sure the people around us know these are our top priorities and that's where we're going to spend our time. And also we know, hey, when that time window ends, we let the time window end and we move on to the next thing.

set some boundaries for the people around you, also set some boundaries for yourself. The next thing I would say is some really, really good advice. Something that really made a difference coming out of this wake up moment for me is make sure that you invest in yourself. Make sure that you are making the effort to have those people around you, mentors, coaches, professional development,

Allow yourself to continue to grow. Allow yourself to say, as a leader, I can continue to learn. You lead a learning organization, so you need to be demonstrating and modeling that as well.

of us can take as we go into: 2025

a dozen years after missing my best friend's wedding.

And you heard it earlier, I'll say it again in case he's listening and he missed it. Happy anniversary.

But I sit here a dozen years later, and I know I learned so much from that moment in time, and I got better for a while, but I know I regressed. I know there were times that I back slid. We all do that, right? We're never gonna be as good as our intentions. We're only gonna be as good as our systems allow us to be. So we need to make certain that we continue to

As I love to say, get up on the balcony, check out our systems, take a look at our priorities, and make sure we're working in the direction we want to be working, and that we're taking care of ourselves.

So again, to recap this whole episode, to put a bow on this whole episode, no pep talk this week because the whole thing essentially is a pep talk. I want you to really ask yourself, am I showing up as the best version of myself for the people that I lead?

And don't base it only on maybe your last two or three days before the break, because let's face it, that's chaos. But really think about the last month of your leadership journey. Are you showing up as the best version of yourself for the people that you lead? And if you're not, what might be one thing you could start doing today that could change that?

What might be one thing you can do starting today to change that?

Now, I will tell you that this particular story, this particular topic, I wrote a blog post on it this week. I will put that in the show notes. Go check that out. I think you'll find a little bit more insight into this topic right there.

Also, I would share with you, if you're listening to this on the 29th of December or even the 30th of December, I am doing a free webinar on December 30th at 4 p.m. Eastern Time. I'll put the link in the show notes for you to go register if you would like to, but that's at theprincipleacademy.com backslash real results. Free webinar, one hour. I'm going to talk about

tional with school leaders in: 2025

Now, if you listen to the Leaning Into Leadership podcast on a regular basis and maybe you haven't left us a review on your favorite podcasting app, I would ask that you please do that. The more of those five-star reviews that we see, number one, it's really affirming for me, for the work, the time that I put into this podcast each and every week, but it also allows for more people to discover the show and

We've been seeing really nice growth in terms of that over the last six or eight months. I'd love to see the show continue to grow and continue to make its way to the ears of other hardworking leaders who maybe just need that little bit of boost, that little bit of pep talk and that little bit of great information. I'm going to really dedicate the show back to educators.

in: 2025

Have a road to awesome week.