Episode 211: Cracking the Code on Educator Retention with Nate Eklund

Darrin Peppard (: 00:00

Hey everyone, welcome back into the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. This is episode 211 and I am Darren Peppered, leadership coach, speaker, and author, and I'm excited to bring to you another powerful conversation that will challenge your thinking and strengthen your leadership. Let me ask you a question. What are you doing to retain the incredible educators that are on your team? If the answer includes staff lunches and the occasional Spirit Day, it might be time to dig a little deeper.

In today's episode, I sit down with my longtime friend, Nate Eklund, the founder of Vital Network, to talk about how we reimagine schools not just as places of learning, but as workplaces where adults can thrive as well. And Nate has spent decades studying educator satisfaction, burnout, and retention. And he's got a message that every school and district leader needs to hear. Now, this conversation goes way beyond self-care. And we're going to talk about real systems change, why burnout is

about the workplace and not just about the person, and what you can do to lead more sustainably for yourself and for your staff. Trust me, you're going walk away from this one with fresh insight and a few mic drop moments. And hey, if this episode hits home for you and you're thinking, we need help building stronger leadership teams, maybe you just want to bring some energy and purpose to your opening day convocation, hey, I'd love to connect with you. Whether it's through coaching,

through workshops or a keynote that sets the tone for your school year, I am here to help you and your team lead with clarity and impact. And you can reach me anytime at roadtowesome.net or send me a message on your favorite platform. Now, let's jump into this conversation with my buddy, Nate Eklund.

Darrin Peppard (: 00:01

All right, my friends, welcome back into the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. Today on the show, my guest is Nate Eklund of the Vital Network. And actually Nate and I go back a ways. And what I'm most interested in with this conversation, I know there's going to be so many great pieces, is really that conversation around educator burnout, but much more at the systems level than it is around just self care.

For those of you who've been listening to the podcast for a while, for those of you who've been following me for a while, you know that a big part of why I do what I do is I want to see leaders stay in the game. I want to see leaders be successful. I want to see leaders really walk in their purpose. so when Nate and I sat down and had a conversation a couple of weeks ago about his work with the Vital Network and knowing

Nate, like I said, for a number of years, it didn't surprise me that he had moved in this direction, but wow, folks, you are in for a big treat with today's conversation. So Nate, thanks so much for joining me here on Leaning Into Leadership.

Nate (: 01:12

the pleasure is mine, Darren.

Darrin Peppard (: 01:15

Right on. on. So, Nate, let's do this real quick. Just to give folks a little bit of a baseline of who you are and kind of a, I don't know, maybe a snapshot of your journey. Let's have you zoom out a little bit and just give people a little taste of who Nate Eklund is.

Nate (: 01:34

Yeah, yeah. Boy, that's existential though, Darren, isn't it? So, yeah, my, that's right, that's right. I have, well, I've spent my whole career in education, much like you, right? And so I've...

Darrin Peppard (: 01:41

So get the big bucks, my friend.

Nate (: 01:54

and you're like a billion of living on an academic calendar. But I started my career as a high school English teacher here in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. And taught for a little over a decade. And at that point, I think school administrators probably like for most of us was next. I had kind of maxed out any and everything I could do in the building. was in a department chair and on the...

superintendent hiring committee, all the things. And I loved it. I liked the experience of having like impact and kind of thinking at scale. But I didn't burn out. I loved teaching up until the last day. I sobbed when I closed up room 213. It was terrible. But I had a really great administrator suggest that maybe administration wasn't the only option that I should.

explore a little bit of what else I could do. So I ended up getting a two year research grant that I was able to use to look at workplace conditions and burnout in education. So for two years, I had this luxurious time where I could just read and write and think and ponder. The result of that was not a PhD or an EDD, but I did write this lovely book, How Was Your Day at School?

improving dialogue about teacher job satisfaction. So all of a sudden I started to really think my whole career started to transition to thinking about schools as workplaces and how we really build these robust cultures and connections at schools. There was a brief period there of book signings and speaking and I loved that, but I also knew that it wasn't.

quite the right fit for me because I thought the work that needed to happen at schools was going to take time, was going to take attention and real rigor. So that part of my career actually transitioned then into having a 10-year consultancy working with school districts across the country, really looking at workplace environment in education. And after 10 years of that, I thought, okay, wait, the things that we're doing are working.

Nate (: 04:16

We are affecting educators' lives. We are making places better, but it's not scalable. And the profession writ large could use a little love. VITAL Network then is really an extension then of that 25-year story, right, of just sort of obsession around looking at the working environments of adults in schools. And so VITAL is a newish venture.

om graduating from college in: 1995

Darrin Peppard (: 05:08

Yeah, that's all good. That's good. There's just there's so so much in there. And man, I'm trying to decide where I want to go first with this. There's there's again, there's just so much there to dive into. I certainly want to get to the you know, the burnout piece specifically. And and one of the one of the words that you you use in there, and I think this is where I want to go. You talked about workplace environment.

And I don't think we very often think about that when we talk about a school, you know, we will talk about school culture and certainly workplace environment is a piece of that. We might talk about caseloads. might talk about class size, but workplace environment is a much more encompassing phrase. So given the, the amount of time, the effort, the research that you have done there.

Nate (: 05:43

Yeah. Yeah.

Nate (: 05:50

Mm-hmm.

Nate (: 05:56

Mm-hmm.

Nate (: 06:02

Mm-hmm.

Darrin Peppard (: 06:08

Give us the Nate Eklund's the expert in this space. Give us a good definition of workplace environment as it pertains to a school.

Nate (: 06:13

Hmm.

Nate (: 06:21

Yeah, you know, that's a great question. probably could go a lot of directions. think there's some really foundational pieces to your question and my answer. And I'll just maybe kind of touch on them and we can go deeper on them. First of all, think is, we'll start with the environment question. know, when we think about burnout,

And this is not unique to education. This is just sort of, I think, the role that work plays in our lives as humans. But when we think about burnout, we typically see it through the lens of the individual. And when we do that, then we also apply sort of logically individual responses to burnout.

It's a really well researched topic, burnout. I mean, it has traits, diminished personal accomplishment, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization. So, I mean, it's a thing that we know what it is, but generally we look at it and we say, then you should get more sleep. You should get more exercise. You should not binge watch Netflix. Usually there are all these things, right? And so the individual experiencing that gradient of burnout at any point in a week or a day or

career is generally left to think, well, this is my problem and I got to solve it. In the environments where we do recognize that maybe burnout is happening to people, then, and we still think it's an individual thing, then we might do a bunch of interventions that would treat it thusly, right? So we'd like have a staff barbecue. We would tell people to turn your computers off at four and go home or whatever. I mean, we do a number of gestures that are kind.

empathetic and logical, but it still says at the end of the day, like, you are burning out, so you need to go do something about it. Our perspective is really that burnout is a of a depleted condition that is caused by external factors that no amount of self-care could overcome. So, you you think like, if I'm a

Nate (: 08:34

fifth grade teacher and I've gotten six reading curriculums in four years and no one asked me about, I don't need more kale, right? Like I don't need to do yoga. You need to ask me for my input. I'm an expert. I think when we, and then when we think about culture too, and we wrap that as another layer into your question, we really look at school culture as though it's sort of monolithic, like it's a big thing, encompassing students, families,

Darrin Peppard (: 08:42

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nate (: 09:03

staff, the broader community, know, like, like, like, like, like, like, it's this one big thing. Well, even the word staff culture is, isn't particularly, like, dialed in enough, right? Because like at a high school, the science department might be rocking it and the math department might be strangling each other. like, it's, you know, so when we think about culture, we also can't say we're going to build a positive school culture and then just kind of wrap it up. It takes.

really some granularity, some rigor and some, and really like thoughtful strategic investment in looking at those, at the environment. we are not, know, vital, would not say it's like, for example, a wellbeing company. wouldn't be like, we don't lead workshops around resiliency training or breathing or stress reduction, but we would say, well, if you have really well-run meetings or your time is really well allocated,

or you have a voice in decision making, you those kinds of things.

Like that's culture, culture is management. so, and I've said for 20 years, nothing improves morale more than a well-run school, right? You better hire a pretty awesome juggler if you think that's gonna like, know, like solve the problem.

Darrin Peppard (: 10:24

Right.

Darrin Peppard (: 10:28

Yeah, yeah, no, I think you're so spot on right there. And you're taking my mind out on a whole bunch of different roads right there. And I guess I'm kind of curious too. So let's maybe stay on that staff culture piece. I was thinking about this, but actually I was mowing the lawn earlier today listening to a podcast and on that particular podcast, the individual was talking about how we speak.

with instead of speaking at people in order to be effective as a leader. And he made mention, I wish he would have gone further. So I'm going to hope that maybe you can take some of this and run with it. I'm curious when we think about this all encompassing culture piece, we're at a time now where maybe one of the

Nate (: 10:59

Hmm. Hmm.

Darrin Peppard (: 11:25

For one of the first times we have four, even five generations of adults working in the same building. You have 21 year olds, 22 year olds working in a building with people who were in their sixties. And there's a tremendous difference between my daughter's generation and my parents' generation. So what

Nate (: 11:42

Mm-hmm.

Nate (: 11:49

Mm-hmm.

Darrin Peppard (: 11:53

What role does that play in some of the pieces you're talking about? mean, because let's be honest, the 22 year old, the 23 year old, the 24 year old, they look at the world a little bit different. They expect things different at work than the person who, you know, started at the same place 30 years ago, and I'm going to stay in one location. So

Nate (: 12:00

Mm-hmm.

Nate (: 12:10

Mm-hmm.

Darrin Peppard (: 12:23

I hope I've done enough to set up this question. I'm curious about the multiple generations and the impact they have on burnout culture the whole bit.

Nate (: 12:24

Yeah, I mean I

Nate (: 12:33

think there's a lot wrapped up in that question. And I think there's a lot of ways you could go with it. A couple of things stand out though, excuse me, as we think about, really the role in some ways turnover and attrition and longevity play in culture. And I think some of that is around...

but kind of the unwritten rules of employment, right? I was 22 when I started teaching. I remember probably in my second week, it was still August, still warm out, I wore a pair of Birkenstocks into my classroom, no socks. And Don Wayne, the teacher next to me, he taught there probably 30 years at that point, came over and he always had mints in his pocket. So during passing time, he stood next to me as I'm out there in the hallway.

And he holds the mince out. grab one, he says, so, are those the shoes you're wearing today, Nate? And I said, today, needless to say, I did not wear open-toed, and stocks anymore that year. So part of it's like the unwritten, there's nowhere in the handbook that said that, but he held me to a certain expectation and I appreciated it. That was fine, it was good.

Darrin Peppard (: 13:46

Right.

Nate (: 13:50

So I think part of when we think about like high turnover rates in K-12 education right now, and really short 10 years, right, people leaving in three years or four years or five years, we think of that from a workforce issue, we think of it as a, I gotta get my school staffed issue. I just gotta open my building every day. And that's obviously mission critical.

But what also erodes over time though is that sense of continuity over time. And I would say one of the cool things I've noted in education, and maybe I'm being a little bit Pollyanna here, but I feel like the younger generation of teachers who are coming in, in our experience, are being listened to better. know, like in our data, we disaggregate by years of service. And what's fascinating in that, you could say, we have a professional development problem.

for example. Well, if you actually look, the teachers in their first five years maybe love their PD, and it's the mid-year career teachers who don't. And so I think we can really identify with sort of good intuition, good analogs, good ideas of analytics, even of looking at the variety of experiences people are having inside of our buildings. But I think the high turnover rates

sadden me too because we like these people we work with, right? I'm just bummed. I'm bummed that people are leaving. I have been here 20 years and I have been part of this young person, young adults early career and I'm bummed to see them go. And so I think, you when we think about turnover and retention, I don't really put retention.

in the model like you're gonna be here for 30 years. I think generationally, think it's just not true. So I think even more about like sustainability and longevity. Like if we can get people who are gonna quit at year three, stay till year seven, or quit at year five, stay till year 10, not only is their craft improving, their connection with students improving, but they're also becoming part of our, you know, part of our community and our culture. And so,

Nate (: 16:09

I think the ROI on that is like, there's lots of different roads that you can go on.

Darrin Peppard (: 16:18

You you had said something earlier and I read this. I think it might have been in our earlier conversation, but it might have been something that I read in your bio, but you had talked about, and this is kind of where I want to go next, the work of the vital network being not necessarily about just self-care.

And not just about, you know, like you mentioned, having a barbecue. You talked about it as, you know, earlier in here in the podcast, you talked about it as not being back on you, the individual. And you've talked about and I've heard you say that it's something that needs to be done at a systems level. And I know that's the work of the vital network. And so I want to kind of dig into that a little.

Nate (: 16:47

Mm-hmm.

Nate (: 16:51

Mm-hmm.

Darrin Peppard (: 17:16

bit. know primarily you work with states, so it's not like you're saying, hey, I want to work with such and such school. You are more at a larger systemic level. Like, let's get to the higher levels so we can make that systemic change. Let's talk a little bit about the work of the vital network and what you see in terms of that need for

developing systems that reduce and prevent that educator burnout.

Nate (: 17:50

Yeah, you know, it's interesting because, you know, your the question starts with the shifting from the individual to the system. And then we actually matriculate it further and say, well, when we talk about the system, it might not just be Johnson Elementary School. They exist within a district. The district exists within a community, the communities within a state. And so, you know, sort of that the nesting dolls, I think, of of influence. I just want to get clear to that, you know, you should get plenty of sleep.

Darrin Peppard (: 18:14

Yeah.

Nate (: 18:20

You should eat your vegetables and exercise. think at the end of the day, the outcome of the work needs to be increasing the statistical likelihood that the best version of yourself shows up more days than not. Right? There's grumpy Mr. Eklund and there's like fired up Mr. Eklund. And I know who I want my kids learning from and I know who my colleagues want to be around. And so I am responsible.

I have to choose apples, not apple fitters sometimes. I need to choose, you know, like, so that that's on me. And then I think there's, you know, if you think about the systems level work, then there's long field vision work too. There's career development, career pathways, there's salary and benefits. mean, there's a whole lot of around that. And I think what schools sometimes miss and what we try to add to the sort of the equation.

of thinking about retention and recruitment is to stop and look down and kind of right where you are. And so, for example, if you Darren, give me a job offer at your district and I can make $5,000 more at one district over this. I don't know. So I have two job offers. My question is gonna go back to you. What are you going to do to retain me?

What, like, if I sign with you, we should have like the high school kids putting on which hat they're, I'm coming to your district. But when you do, what are you going to do to retain me? And I want a really good answer. I don't want you to tell me about student test scores. I don't really want to hear about one-to-one technology. You can entice me with a bunch of stuff.

Darrin Peppard (: 19:59

Right, yeah.

Nate (: 20:17

What I want to know is like, what's my daily experience going to be working here? And can you prove it? You know, can you, can you show me like the conditions into which I'm walking? Because I'm going to spend more of my waking hours with you and my colleagues than I am with my own people. So like, like my, my, my wife's going to get whatever's left of me at the end of the day. And so I think the work of vital works both at the building level and then at the district level, and then increasingly regional and state levels.

To answer that question, what are you going to do to retain me? And the answers need to include things like, where's my voice in decision making? How are time and resources allocated? What investments do you make organizationally into my wellbeing relationships and connections with others? So I wanna hear like a great places to work pitch. Like I wanna hear my employment.

And then I want to go home with my wife and I want to put the job offers on the table. And I want to sit there and say, well, even let's say I could make even a guess that I might even take a job that pays me slightly less, right? Because I have proof points and confidence that my employment is going to be joyful. And so our work at Vital really works with school leaders, teacher leadership teams, and district leadership teams.

to identify those areas of identify those areas of growth and celebration, promote the great behaviors or systems that are existing over here and apply them over here, or maybe it's not working. There's also a learning network and really provide confidence that yeah, you should come work here and you should tell your friends to come work here. And it's to tell the friends part is why we don't like thinking of this work only as helping a district or a school.

because we think all ships need to rise at this point. The teacher retention and recruitment crisis is real. Right? mean, how many superintendents do you talk to, who are really struggling to stay fully staffed? yeah. So we need to keep the teachers we have, promote and develop with...

Darrin Peppard (: 22:30

Almost everyone. Almost everyone. Yeah.

Nate (: 22:41

But we also need to be able to go out to the marketplace and say, we are a great place to work, come on over. And like, how is it that we tell that story?

Darrin Peppard (: 22:51

I think that's fantastic. And it's not a perspective that most leaders will take. They are going to talk about, you know, hey, here are the results that we get. Yes, we'll talk about, you know, what's, you know, what number is going to go in the box on your paycheck, right? I mean, and we do want to know those things. That's important. I want to know what my benefits are going to be. I want to know, you know, about my health insurance.

Nate (: 23:12

For sure.

Darrin Peppard (: 23:17

And I think this actually gets to that generational question too. mean, what, what my health insurance and what my retirement looks like for somebody who's in their forties or fifties is a whole lot more important to somebody or then to somebody who's in their twenties. you know, many, many, many times I've sat, you know, at the table doing, you know, that, that offer of employment and that the 22 year old almost never did they care about what their health insurance is like, okay.

Nate (: 23:31

Yeah. Yep.

Darrin Peppard (: 23:46

whatever. Yeah, so I have insurance. I'm going to get that everywhere. You know that that doesn't concern me. But you talked about time allocation. You talked about, you know, is my voice going to be heard? That's something that I think has certainly been a shift, certainly post pandemic. But I think it was before that, where our

Nate (: 23:47

Mm-hmm.

Darrin Peppard (: 24:13

employees, our classroom teachers, even go beyond that. I work with a bunch of different districts right now and the work that they want me to do, three or four of my clients right now, their primary ask of me is to help grow leaders in non-labeled leader positions, teacher, paraprofessional, bus driver, know, classified staff.

Nate (: 24:34

Hmm.

Darrin Peppard (: 24:42

I'm seeing more and more that people do want to invest in their folks. I know, and I'm going somewhere with this, trust me. May not feel like I'm going somewhere here, but I am going somewhere here. I know you've been working with a couple of states in particular, and I won't name them. If you choose to, that's fine. What are some of the pieces that you're seeing or some of the actions maybe?

that schools and districts in those states are taking as a result of the work of Vital Network.

Nate (: 25:19

Yeah, know, we're our tip tip my cap to the state of North Dakota where we are currently doing statewide efforts. And what's really fascinating about that is, well, first of all,

It was always, it's always an opt-in proposition. So we're not like a state mandate or something. It is to garner the trust of leaders and to do high quality work. And I think that's just, you know, critical. the, but the work is, at the core of your, at the core of your question. And I think what I appreciated about sort of the statewide approach,

is that we're working with the Department of Instruction to share our data with theirs and really look at it as a whole system, looking at the role of higher ed. And so it is school by school, district by district growth, but can we actually extrapolate from the high quality work at a local level to think about how we operate at more large scale? And so it's a...

thing from direct coaching, consulting and advising with our partner districts, but it's also been able to take all of that learning and really think about, okay, well, how do we approach recruiting and retaining our young people into the profession and then keeping them while they are here for as long as we possibly can and as joyfully as we possibly can. you know, for,

for our work oftentimes can be very rootsy and very earthy and I'm proud of that. And so we think about a leader, a principal who used to drive to school dreading her faculty meetings because either she wasn't comfortable leading them or she knew everyone hated them. And so the third Tuesday of every month, which is a dark something that she wasn't looking forward to, right?

Nate (: 27:18

Can we bring that person into concert with her teacher leadership team to lead a redesign, a rethinking of that? Can we actually look at it as a design and creative opportunity? Not a problem even. Just can we, you don't like it, I don't like it, I don't feel good, you don't feel good. Can we just be honest about this and work through it? And October's meeting was maybe unsatisfying and November's meeting is satisfying.

Now I'm not suggesting that reconfiguring a faculty meeting is gonna like solve your problems. What it does do is it activates everyone within the system to not be a complainer, but to be a problem solver. And can we just be honest about it? Can we ground into it? And so I think, you know, for me, I'm now thinking, okay, well that principal, when she gets up in the morning and has her coffee and says goodbye, you know, to her family is feeling better about herself.

holding the steering wheel slightly less tight, goes out of the building, more present, available, and more herself than she was even there. So I never wanna think that there's a level of abstraction, like too small, when it comes to like rethinking how it is that we operate. The same, I think, sort of ethos applies, like rethinking, you know, big things too, PD and curricula and teaching and learning, those are complex.

But issues, those are lots of stakeholders involved, lots of state mandates, federal mandates. There are big chunky things, but it doesn't mean we can't approach them with the same kind of how might we attitude. Okay, here's the thing. How might we think about this differently together? And I think that is really important. And then to the source of the question, that means we can also then think about

how we legislate. was speaking North Dakota, we were there, I was working with a bunch of people on the Senate and a great, Senator asked a question, you know, if satisfaction and retention are so local, I'm not sure we should be passing like sort of curriculum laws here at the Capitol. I just said, yeah, maybe you shouldn't be, you know, like, thanks for, you said it, not me, man. And so I think, I think it's, I think this idea of really

Darrin Peppard (: 29:37

There you go.

Nate (: 29:45

activating and equipping people to be sort of in.

engaged in their day-to-day life and the ways that they operate. It's just really important. And so that to me is really important. I will also say to something that's really important is that we're really turning a lot of our attention to the working experience of the leaders themselves. Because as you know, right, I mean, we say, you know, nothing's more important to school culture and teacher success than the leader. And the leader reports up, reports down.

and operates too often in sort of isolation. They're in this very lonely little space. How do we turn some attention to like, what is the work environment of an administrator? What are those key intersections that matter in the lives, joy and growth of our educational leaders? Because the turnover rate and churn of administrators is outpacing that of our educators.

I mean, we're having so many administrators leaving in the first three to five years of their careers, long before they have a chance to really grow in that craft. And so I really think we have a serious conversation ahead and it's really exciting for us to be working with our partner districts to say, are the employment conditions of our leaders? How is their voice used in district decision-making? How is their time allocated? And that's, I think, the tippy point.

of a really powerful spear and we're turning a lot of energy towards that right now.

Darrin Peppard (: 31:21

Yeah, absolutely. And I think you've hit on something right there that, man, leaders, if you take anything away from this conversation, and honestly, you should take a lot away from this conversation, but this to me should be the most important takeaway. One, Nate, you're spot on. Being in a leadership role, especially being a campus leader, can be very isolating.

Nate (: 31:46

Mm-hmm.

Darrin Peppard (: 31:47

if you choose to, can be something where you dread having to make decisions, where you dread leading meetings. But when it's done right, when we really open up those channels of communication, when we stop thinking as the leader that we have to do it all, and we start listening to those around us.

I love your example of the, of the faculty meeting. And I really do, because I know there are so many, I guarantee there are a bunch of leaders right now who, when they heard that, they're like, yeah, I'm driving to mine right now and I don't want to go. And you know what? My staff doesn't want to be there either. But then we either, we do one of two things. We either quit having those meetings and then what do we hear? Well, there's no communication or

Nate (: 32:28

Yeah. Yeah.

Nate (: 32:43

Mm-hmm.

Darrin Peppard (: 32:45

We just keep doing them and everybody continues to be miserable. The big takeaway for what you said there, I think it's one of the most overlooked skills for leaders and those leaders who in those first two to three years, when you said before they can really figure it out, this is the skill that they probably don't figure out until about year two or year three. Listening is the most important skill for leaders.

Nate (: 33:03

Mm-hmm.

Darrin Peppard (: 33:13

when you do that, I think it just encompasses so much of what you've talked about on this episode from, you know, when is my voice heard as the classroom teacher to, you know, how do I collectively solve problems as a school leader and on and on and on, right? All the way to your legislative example. I think that's just such a powerful, powerful takeaway that one of the most important things we can do to improve

Nate (: 33:17

Mm-hmm.

Darrin Peppard (: 33:44

the employee experience. Yes, we got to listen. I'm curious. Go ahead.

Nate (: 33:47

Yeah. Well, and what, what, what is the, but what is the antecedent to good listening? Good questions. Right. And so I, and I think, you know, we have a, I want to make t-shirts or like the rubber bracelets or something. And I'm not totally kidding. But it'd be like IDKWDYT. I don't know.

Darrin Peppard (: 33:56

Good questioning.

Nate (: 34:16

What do you think? And I wanna, we literally sometimes rehearse this with our school leaders, like say it out loud, just like get cozy. I don't know. What do you think? And then that activates the aforementioned listening, right? And so I think part of it is a math problem, Darren, or a math reframing. If I'm a principal of a school and I have, let's say 50 staff.

400, know, 800 kids or whatever. If I get in the car every day and my lens on my role is that I'm gonna serve those 800 kids and their families, and in any way I do an end around my teaching staff, I've kind of adopted some broken algebra, right? I really drive to work every day to serve the people who serve the people.

Nate (: 35:16

And I can wrap my head around being super awesome boss for 50 people, way more than I can wrap my head around solving 800 kids problems, issues, or celebrations. And so I think when we can change the mathematics of it and make it even simpler than that, can I be in really great concert with a teacher leadership team? Can I create a really democratic system? I think a lot of

principles will say I have an open door policy and that's great but that means you could sit in your office all day with an open door. It doesn't say anyone's going to walk into it. So how do we build more reliability into it than just like being good? I most people are good, want to be liked, want to be good leaders. All VITAL is trying to do is create some protocols, some systems around that so that it's super reliable. It can outlive a leader.

by the way, if you build really good systems, right? I mean, if you have really reliable ways of gathering teacher voice, using the teacher voice, gathering principal voice, and district decision-making, and those systems exist sort of without emotion and without personality. There's sort of the machinery of good culture that also offers that longevity and sustainability, which is really mission critical.

Darrin Peppard (: 36:41

Yeah. Oh man, such, such good stuff, man. We, and we could just keep going and going and going. Unfortunately, we've, we've reached that point in the show where I'm going to ask you the same question I ask everybody here on the show. It's, typically my last question. And you've already told us so much about how you are leaning into leadership, but, maybe Nate, is there one more thing you might share as far as what you're doing to lean into leadership right now?

Nate (: 37:04

Yeah.

Nate (: 37:09

I guess so.

I'll take sort of two ideas and see if I can make a casserole of them and make it into one. I, um, that's give away my total Minnesota-ness by calling it a casserole or a hot dish. But, um.

Darrin Peppard (: 37:23

You'd already hinted at and mentioned the Twin Cities, so you're probably okay to go with the casserole. Yeah. there you go, even more.

Nate (: 37:28

Yeah, okay. All right. All right. I can use a runza reference if you want me to. you know, I think a couple of things. One is there are some there are some phrases we use when it comes to leadership that actually I think are sort of grounded in what we were talking about earlier around like burnout is like an individual problem. I think we there's some elements that are very similar in the

ways that we talk about leaders and we say that leaders in charge of school culture, leader, we're gonna do leadership development, we're read books about leadership development. I'm gonna go to seminars about leadership development. So it's really taking on this sort of pervasive sense that this one person can walk into a building, transform it, sustain it, maintain it, whatever that might be. And I think what sometimes it was lost in that is the development of the leader, like the human.

the person and being really mindful that it's not leadership isn't just about practices, right? Or like how to do this or kind of technocratic work. But what are you doing that feeds you, that sustains you, where it is that you take what you are super great at and do more of that? Take the things where you need to develop and think really strategically around that. So I think in leadership development, we sometimes feel it's almost like a franchise model. Like here's the six secret tips of leadership.

am doubtful, right? You and I are different people. Those strategies are not ubiquitous. And I think the other thing, the other piece to leaning into leadership is that, you know, this idea of servant leadership is pervasive and it should be. It is important like listening and like generosity, like being a good caretaker and steward of people and places. That's important. But I think servant leadership also, if you like,

Darrin Peppard (: 39:00

Yeah.

Nate (: 39:26

I get a little nervous when someone says, know, I really approach this as a servant leader because what I'm also listening for are there some governors on that service, right? How many people do you work with there and who say to their staffs, you know, work-life balance is really important. I want you all home. I want you off email. I want you to go home with your kids, but their car's there till nine o'clock and they're sending out 1030 emails.

And so in addition to striking a disingenuous balance with their own people, I worry about them. Servanthood maxes out. And if you are super great at your job, which most leaders are, I want you to do it for a long time. And unchecked servanthood is a little bit of a recipe for...

either a shorter tenure in your role or an unhappy life. Either one is not particularly savory. And so I think, you know, so I think if we can sort of try to tie a tidy bow around this conversation today is that when we can, you said zoom out, when we can zoom out of thinking of all of this as an individual thing that's on the teacher to do this and on the leader to do this and rather think about it as that kind of community response, environmental response, there's,

tremendous hope for our schools. And I want you to know that this sounds cool and everything. It actually works. I do have to say that. I'm not applauding vital. I'm actually applauding the people who do the work. When they ask better questions, when they create these systems of listening and caring, people's lives get better. I talked to a rural superintendent last week. He's got no one leaving. For the first time in like 10 years.

Darrin Peppard (: 41:21

Wow.

Nate (: 41:21

He's got everyone coming back. He can go into summer and he can literally assign classrooms, get, I mean, he can like just do the work because he knows everyone's coming back. And that to me is like joyful. And if he can do it, so can that person and so can that person, so can that person, so can that person. And there we go. We've cracked, we're starting to crack the code.

Darrin Peppard (: 41:44

Yeah, that's outstanding stuff man and and good for that individual for for being fully staffed not losing anyone. I think that's pretty amazing. I have I've won in particular in my head one of my Nevada clients same deal not not turning over one at all, which which is is really hard to believe right because obviously we we probably both know handfuls who are turning over

Nate (: 41:48

Yeah.

Nate (: 41:54

It is.

Darrin Peppard (: 42:13

30 and 40%. So definitely important work. Definitely a fantastic conversation. Nate, I really appreciate you joining me here on the podcast. People want to learn more about the vital network. They want to get in touch with you. What are some of the best ways for them to communicate with you?

Nate (: 42:29

Yeah. Yeah, I would head over to vitalnetwork.com and there you can get a pretty good sense of what we're up to. And then literally reaching out to me. I don't know if you can tell Darren, I really love this work. I'm really passionate about it. I love meeting with other people who are passionate about it. And I also love meeting people who are scared by the work. And I get it.

Darrin Peppard (: 42:49

Just a little bit. Yeah.

Nate (: 42:56

and let's see if we can start. so Nate at VITOnetwork.com, reach out, love to have a conversation and let's shake up the world a little bit here.

Darrin Peppard (: 43:10

Yeah, yeah, no, man. I appreciate it. I appreciate this conversation. I appreciate you. You know, I'm obviously, you we've known each other for a number of years, but this work, I was just looking back at my notes from our first conversation about about doing this podcast and I wrote on my notes and I want to share this with you. This is inspiring work. I want to see, I want to see leaders stay put. want to see educators stay put. I want to see

schools like the one you're talking about where, we don't have anybody leaving this year. I want to hear that more and more and more because this is a very important profession not to wax poetic here, but I mean, this is the profession that impacts all professions. so the work you're doing, the work that Vital Network is doing, I applaud you. appreciate you. And again, I appreciate you being here as a guest on the podcast.

Nate (: 44:08

Yeah, thanks for having me. I wish there was a 12 part series I could, we can go, yeah. thanks for the work that you do. It's all additive and it's all important. I'm super happy to be part of this community. So let's keep going.

Darrin Peppard (: 44:14

You never know, maybe. Yeah.

Darrin Peppard (: 44:24

Outstanding.

All right, everybody, fantastic conversation there with Nate Eklund. Definitely some moments in there that will make you rethink the way we look at the workplace environment. Make sure you get down there in the show notes, get connected with Nate and the work that they are doing at the Vital Network. It is absolutely fantastic work. And now it's time for a pep talk. This week on the pep talk, I want to talk about two different leadership positions. I want to talk about task-based leadership.

Darrin Peppard (: 02:17

And I want to talk about outcomes based leadership. I had a couple of wonderful conversations about a week ago with some school leaders and we were talking about those specific stances and about how sometimes as leaders we get so dialed in on just simply checking the box. So dialed in that we forget about what the grand scheme is. How many times have you been most of the way through a school year and thought

man, I had this great plan in August and it just blew up in my face. Well, the reason for that is you fall into this task-based leadership. It's very seductive, by the way. It gives us this sense of control. It gives us this feeling of production, right? But it's just reactive and it's driven by this sense of urgency rather than a sense of importance. When we focus on outcomes-based leadership, that's when things, when we dig into our clarity, that's when those things

become what we're about, what matters most, and what's really gonna make a difference in our school. It's that proactive leadership, the intentional leadership, and it's aligned with your purpose. Now, how do you do that? Let me give you a couple of tips, some things to think about. Number one, some shifts that you can make to move from task manager to outcomes leader. Number one, clarify your vision and get your core priorities in line. Make sure you are extremely clear. I know, big shock, clarity coming from me, but get clear.

Number two, set some measurable and outcome oriented goals. If you focus on those goals, it will keep you with your eye on the horizon. Number three, build some systems that are gonna help you support the work. That's where I come in. I didn't just block time for classroom visits, I scheduled them like I would a meeting with the superintendent because they're that important. And I had somebody in my corner, my secretary, helping me make sure that that got done. Number four, focus on the leading indicators.

Right? Go back and take a look at the data. Check in periodically. Make sure that you're keeping an eye on that dashboard and that you know what's going on. And then number five, make sure you're reflecting weekly and then realign and readjust as you need to go. The thing about a plan is you don't just build a plan and then a year from now say, okay, I'll make changes. No, you make adjustments as you go. And that only happens if you reflect on a weekly basis. Look, you were hired to lead outcomes.

Darrin Peppard (: 04:42

not to manage tasks. Don't forget that. I know this was a bit of a lengthy pep talk today, but I really feel passionate about it. And I think it's extremely important that as leaders, we think about those two positions. Do we want to be just a task manager or do we want to be focused on outcomes? That's what I've got for you this week, folks. Thanks so much for tuning in here to episode 211 of the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. Get out there, have a road to awesome week.