[00:00:00] Dr. Jim: Thanks for joining us today. This is your friendly neighborhood town strategy nerd, Dr. Jim. How well do you think you could play a game if you didn't know the rules, didn't know who your teammates were, and didn't know who your opponent was? Now, add in that you haven't been told what winning looks like either.
It'd be near impossible for you to win in that game, wouldn't it? Imagine being thrown into a new leadership role where you don't really know the team, the players, the opposition, and even what winning looks like. And then you're tasked with coming up with a binding and complex agreement that everyone can be happy with.
How in the world would you pull that off? That's the situation that we're going to tackle in today's conversation. Who's going to be guiding us through that conversation today We have jeff harrison who is joining us and to give you a little bit of background into his story He's entering his second year as superintendent of the brexville broadview heights city schools. The 2024 2025 school year marks his 25th year in education. And he's most recently served as superintendent. And prior to that, [00:01:00] as a high school principal, athletic director, executive director of a district sponsored community school and curriculum specialist. He began his career in education as a classroom teacher, instructing American history and AP economics.
And he's got two sons, Ty and Ryan, and has been happily married to his wife, Pamela. Jeff, welcome to the show.
[00:01:17] Jeff Harrison: Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here today.
[00:01:20] Dr. Jim: Yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation because we get to tell a messy story and not messy in the traditional sense, but in the sense that you're thrown in to the middle of a whole bunch of stuff and you have to figure out how do we make sense of this and move forward in a cohesive way.
So that's going to be an interesting story to hear about. But before we dive into that part of the conversation, I think it's important for you to share a little bit more with the listeners some of the key things about your background and experience that you feel is important. And I'm particularly interested in some of those foundational moments or lessons that you learned that help shape your leadership [00:02:00] philosophy.
[00:02:00] Jeff Harrison: Yes, I would tell you that probably my best experience professionally was when I was an athletic director. A lot of times I'll make the comment that I'm a recovering athletic director and that arena or that environment is probably the best test of your leadership capability because you're always in conflict when you're dealing with athletics.
It's not the most important thing we do as a school district. But it's by far your front porch of your school district. So you're always as an athletic director putting in long hours, but you're always right in the middle. You're between the coach and the player, the coach and the parent, and then your school district in your community.
So I would tell you the 10 years I spent as a district athletic director. Is probably where I learned, or at least was able to apply leadership lessons that I had learned along the way. And I would say, what has led to some of the success that I've had was a lot of the mentors along the way that gave me the opportunity provided me with constructive criticism, put me in positions where I could be successful, but also where I'd have some productive struggle.
So [00:03:00] through all of that, I think little did I know that those experiences along the way were preparing me for when I took my first superintendency, which was in August of 2020 in the midst of worldwide pandemic. I had a unique experience or experiences in education in my 20 some years before becoming a superintendent that I think prepared me for the arena that I was about to enter in August of 2020.
[00:03:22] Dr. Jim: There's a lot in what you just described that that caught my attention, but I wanna pull on a couple of things. You mentioned that one of the things that you felt. Prepared you well for the superintendency was your role as an athletic director and you specifically cited the fact that in that role, you're always in conflict.
And I want to dig in a little bit on that conflict concept. A lot of folks think that conflict is a bad thing. And I'd like you to share with us a little bit about how that experience as an athletic director, maybe reshaped how you view conflict in general and how it set you up for success in this role.
[00:03:59] Jeff Harrison: Yes. [00:04:00] Conflict, it could be a tricky area and it always is packed. That conflict is usually packed with a lot of emotion. And that's where a lot of the conflict would come through and come through emotions that would be displayed by the player, the parent, the coach, or whoever it was.
And I have a saying that I use all the time. It's never about what it's about. So when you walk into a situation, you have this conflict, you have this emotion, there's usually more to the story. And I think that's truly what, as a leader, you have to understand is what you're presented with in the present, Isn't always what the true issue or concern is that there's something other, something else going on behind the scenes.
And if you can keep an open mind and willingness to actively listen and really listen to understand rather than listen to respond, and that's a leadership trait that took me a long time and experience to really be able to hone. And that's at listening to understand rather than listening to respond, because Too many times in a leadership position or a position of influence, we believe, or we think, or we've been taught that we have the [00:05:00] answers and we don't always have the answers.
And if you're too quick to jump to an assumption or a belief it can lead you down the wrong path. So really listening to understand rather than listening to respond really helped me through that time, but that didn't come easy. That, that took a lot of training. That took a lot of reps. It took a lot of security on my part and not being an insecure individual.
I had to be comfortable in my skin and be comfortable, letting them know when I didn't have the right answer. Unfortunately, some of that comes with experience. And if you don't have good people around you that will help build you and create you into the leader that you are today, then that would only be stunted.
So I'm very fortunate.
[00:05:37] Dr. Jim: So one of the things that you mentioned in your answer that was interesting about listening to understand versus listening to respond is that it took you a long time to hone that skill. Was there any sort of words of advice or, pulled aside moments that really helped? Click that in your head, because that's something that, like you said, a lot of leaders struggle with is building that [00:06:00] skill.
So were there any moments that you can point to that really flip the switch for you and built in that discipline of being able to wait out and ask questions versus offer solutions
[00:06:12] Jeff Harrison: Maybe being a good husband and a good father, I have two, two young men my boys, they're 20 and 18 now, but when I was going through this development piece of professionally, they were very young and obviously having young children and being in a. A very successful marriage. You have to be patient.
But all joking aside, being patient. It's not just about being patient and just letting it go. You also have to be present in the moment. So it's a lot of these individual skills that I think as a leader you have at different times, but bringing able to bring them all together at the time and the moment that you need it, being patient, being present in the moment, actively listening.
And those things, many of us have them in pieces. And at times. But it takes a little bit of, it takes those reps to get them all firing at the same time, and I think that as I went into my superintendency in August of 2020, if I was being quite [00:07:00] honest with you, I thought professionally that maybe I would have been in the superintendency a little sooner than that.
That was my professional goal, but that was probably a little bit of my, me being naive, thinking I was ready. Because when August of 2020 rolled around, I realized, hell, this was the right time because I had the opportunity to build those skills. And if I would have been into that role, maybe even five years prior to that, I may have thought I was ready, but I don't think I would have been able to handle what we had to handle in 2020 with a worldwide pandemic.
[00:07:28] Dr. Jim: I appreciate how you tied that into how you felt those experiences prepared you to step into the superintendency role.
But before we dig into the nuts and bolts of what happened. I think it's important for you to give us a landscape of what the district looked like and what you were stepping into before we work through the controlled chaos that you needed to deal with.
[00:07:50] Jeff Harrison: Yeah. So I guess it would probably start back in the spring of 2020. When I was a high school principal, I was running a building of about 2, 500 students and about 200 staff members. [00:08:00] And, we went away for spring break with this virus that was going around and we had an idea that maybe we're going to have a two week spring break and we'd be back in school.
That one week spring break with maybe an additional week while it cured itself. Turned into the whole spring and really turned to education on its ear. And we had to pivot like never before in history. And, I believe that the educators that I was working with and the educators I was surrounded with in, in Ohio.
Did a phenomenal job of making that pivot and making the best possible situation for our students. We were doing things that we had never done before. We all learned how to use Zoom and Teams and Google had become experts overnight. And we were able to successfully do that working together as a team.
So that was the spring. And then we move into summer. And things started to feel normal again, but they really weren't, we weren't doing a lot socially. So then when we got to the fall, it was time to come back to school and a decision had to be made. Are we returning in person? Are we going to be [00:09:00] hybrid?
Are we going to be two days a week, three days a week? And that was also when I was coming into a brand new school district and inheriting a back to school plan that wasn't necessarily flushed out or ready to go, per se. Not only stepping into that new district, having to figure out how we were going to bring our students back in person, Because we all know that in person education is the best education, but then also allowing our adults and our teachers to feel comfortable back in our building again.
So it was an uncharted time, I guess is what I would say. And for probably the first two or three years of superintendent, I joke as, Hey, if I could be a superintendent during 2020, I can be a superintendent at any time just with everything that was changing around us so quickly.
[00:09:37] Dr. Jim: That's a good layout of what you were facing. And then when we spring forward from there into the actual role, so you have all of these variables, some of these decisions that A plan is in place that you didn't create. How did you tackle that as you're stepping into the role of superintendent, where you have all of these things that are in conflict or in chaos?
[00:09:58] Jeff Harrison: Yeah. So at that time, we [00:10:00] didn't have the luxury of time and to deliver it to deliberate or to really debate about what was right or what was wrong. We just had to make decisions and hope that we were making decisions of the best interest. I was fortunate to be in a community or a county in Ohio with seven other superintendents that we.
We were virtually every single day talking through what we were going to do in our individual school district. But each school district is a little bit different. Your communities are different. And in the end, we had to make decisions that were best for our community. Taking that, I had to quickly build a plan with the team, and we decided to push the start of school back by two weeks.
And we brought our teachers into our buildings two weeks early with no students because we needed the adults to feel safe and secure in the space with other people because many of them had been isolated all summer. So we needed to get them back into the buildings, set up our classrooms in our buildings to be successful in this socially distanced world that we were going to be living at that time.
And then we slowly brought our [00:11:00] students back after two weeks. And I think having that time in the building to be able to do some professional development. To be able to let them know that they were our focus and we wanted them to be safe and healthy and then bring the students in took a lot of the pressure off, but.
It wasn't done alone. It wasn't made by myself. There were many decisions I wanted to make that weren't going to be good. And luckily, I was surrounded by a lot of good people who would speak into the plan. And ultimately, we were extremely successful because the district I was in at that time, during that school year, we had our students in person more than any other school district.
And that's only because of the teamwork and the teacher's willingness to do things differently.
[00:11:37] Dr. Jim: It's interesting that you're talking about building this plan. There's a lot of interesting things about the circumstances that you're in. The fact that there isn't that listing tour that you're afforded that typically happens when you take on a new role that had to be challenging.
And then on top of it, you're building a return to school plan without really a lot of time to. Find out what's important to all the [00:12:00] different folks that are stakeholders in this process. So when I look at building a plan without enough information, there's a lot of potholes that I might fall into.
So what were the guardrails that you set up to make sure that, yeah, this plan works or this plan is the plan, but here are the contingencies that we've built into it in case something that isn't working,
[00:12:21] Jeff Harrison: yeah, you speak to a point that I'd like to make is, coming into a new school district as a new superintendent, you have these grandiose plans that I'm gonna do a listening tour and I have these coffee chats and, that opening day with their staff is your opportunity to set the tone.
I didn't get to do any of that. I just was plug and play and here I was, I think what led us to be successful was I came with an approach that I didn't have all the answers and no one person would have all the answers. So I came into the approach of this was going to be a team effort.
We're going to build this as we went, and I wanted to create a psychologically safe space where people felt they had a voice. And they wouldn't be criticized. They wouldn't be [00:13:00] ridiculed. They wouldn't be disciplined if they disagreed with the direction of the district, but they could speak into what we were doing and we had to be very nimble.
We had to be able to make changes on the fly. And sometimes in education, we're not always as nimble as we should be. And I think COVID that's probably one of the. byproducts of COVID that has been more positive is I think we are quicker to react and adjust when we need to rather than taking weeks and or months to make decisions.
But in that, you need to make sure that you have a psychologically safe space where people can feel as though they can give you input. They can be part of the process because once they are part of the process, They will believe in what we're doing. It's not about getting people to buy into what we're doing.
I want them to believe what we're doing. And when you have that belief, there's not many more things that are more powerful.
[00:13:47] Dr. Jim: So I, I get what you're saying and it makes sense, but I'm sitting back thinking about this from the employee's perspective. You're the new guy that's in the building. The old guys or gal is no longer here for some sort of [00:14:00] reason. And we're in the middle of all of this chaos. I'm just going to keep my head down and be quiet because you're saying a lot of stuff, but who knows if that's legit or not?
How did you overcome that sort of mindset or resistance where people are naturally hesitant or fearful of being that level of vulnerable with somebody that they don't know.
[00:14:20] Jeff Harrison: Throughout the interview process is what led me to believe that the environment was right for this type of leadership and this type of approach. And I guess that's why it ended up being a good match between the district and myself, because for me, that leadership approach was natural to me. A relational leader. Someone who, it's very important it was very important that I enjoy being around the people I work for and with. So they were just yearning for that and that came loud and clear through the interview process. So I did have a little bit of insight. Even though I didn't have weeks or months to visit with every single staff member, that interview committee brought that to the table during that.
So that allowed me to get off on the right foot. [00:15:00] I also was a high school principal in the district right next door. So even though I was the new guy, I'm sure that my reputation preceded myself. And there were people that were in my new district that had friends, family members, and even some of the employees that I now had were parents.
when I was a high school principal. So I had a little bit of, I guess we'd say street cred because the districts were so close. So all of those things combined allowed me to get off on a, on the right foot.
[00:15:26] Dr. Jim: Got it. So you know, it's interesting that you mentioned you got some signals on that during the interview process. Have you applied that to how you interview today when new people are coming into the district? So you're planting the seed of what is expected from a norms and behaviors perspective. So people can self select in or out based on the signals of culture that you're showing in the interview process.
[00:15:51] Jeff Harrison: Yes, the interview process to me, that's the most important thing we do as a school district is hire people to work here, and they're usually million dollar investments when you [00:16:00] think about it over this, over the span of their career, so it's something we take very seriously, and the interview process almost turns into a sales pitch from us as to here's who we are and how we operate, and they're going to hear me say, and most people Employees in my district could repeat these phrases.
It is a psychologically safe place where people can be vulnerable with one another and have a shared purpose. Ultimately, that's what it all boils down to. If we can be on the same page in those areas, we can be successful. And and that's allowing them to have a voice. And sometimes people have had experiences in districts or other jobs or with other leaders or bosses or whatever you want to refer to it as, where it isn't a psychologically safe space where I have a voice.
I might get disciplined. I might be ridiculed. I may be laughed at because I'm speaking into the environment and what's happening. That's not what I want to have because that's not how you get the best out of people.
[00:16:52] Dr. Jim: So You've laid the groundwork a little bit. You've talked about, your vision and how you like to operate. There's [00:17:00] still. The aspect of getting people bought in and moving in the right direction and, my two cents not have. I've never been a superintendent, but that's not something that you can do yourself.
So what were the things that you did to work through your leadership team and even your builder building leaders? To mobilize everybody in the organization to make the pivots that needed to be made.
[00:17:22] Jeff Harrison: Yeah. I, first, I'm going to think of it as a 10, 80, 10 rule. You have 10 percent of your employees that are going to bust through the wall. They're going to do wonderful things if you're there or not, they're just, they're the high achievers. Then you got your 80 percent that are right in the middle that needs some direction and they just need to continue to be, pushed in the right area.
Motivated. And all of that, then you have 10 percent of it that probably no matter what I do, they're not going to feel comfortable. They're not going to voice their opinion and they're just going to march to the beat of their own drum. The key is keeping that lower end of that 80 percent in a positive light and just continuing to pour into them.
But in this instance, when I was [00:18:00] there, it was very important for me to build that relationship quickly with the union leadership. The union leadership was going to be the voice for the staff, for the teaching staff at this time, the teaching staff was, if any other time in history, this was a time that they really relied upon their union to represent them because we were in unprecedented times and they wanted to make sure they were in a safe work environment and they had the tools to be able to do their job in this new.
Education that we call it. So that union leadership, that executive group of about five to six officers were ones that I spent as much time with them as I did with my central office team during this time, and I allowed them to speak into it and I would come to them and I would be completely vulnerable and say, listen, I don't know what the right answer is here, but I think between all of us, we could figure it out.
So let's give it a try. And getting them to believe that they had a voice. And get them to believe that I was listening and for them to believe that we were going to do what's in the best interest of both the staff and student is what [00:19:00] allowed us to fast forward through this difficult time.
[00:19:02] Dr. Jim: It's interesting that you're describing the conversations that you had with the union leadership, and that's. Sometimes an adversarial relationship, and you still need to find consensus and move forward.
One of the things that I'm curious about is how are those conversations different from the ones that you had with your internal building leaders and cabinet team and When you look at the differences between those two groups, what did you do to get both groups of leaders on the same page so that they can move forward together?
[00:19:33] Jeff Harrison: Yeah, that's a great point. If anything, during that time I was on an Island, as a superintendent, it's a pretty lonely position at times, but during that time, especially I was on an Island and I felt like I was on an Island. I had, to my right, I had my union and to my left, I had my own team.
But my own team didn't know me as an individual, hadn't worked with me, didn't have experience with me. So I guess what it ended up being is I almost played like a mediator type of role between these two groups of [00:20:00] individuals who had worked together for many years, both during good times and bad.
And I was able to hear both sides and then it almost made me a neutral party for a while. And that whole first year felt that way, and, when we approached the end of that first year. The joke with the union was next year, you're gonna have to own all this, because you got a whole year where you didn't have to own anything because I didn't create it.
It wasn't responsible for it. I hadn't been there. And going into year two, that was how they used to tease me. It's now you got to own everything. But being on that island and being able to see from the outside. Both kind of factions that were in the district allowed me to make sure that we were crystal clear with our communications.
Because again, a lot of conflict comes from a lack of communication and a lack of, again, as I go back to it, listening to respond rather than listening to understand. And sometimes when I was able to communicate some of the union's concerns to my team, They took it a lot better than if the union was telling them that and vice versa, other way around.
So [00:21:00] again, I was almost like a third party and I just tried to use it to our advantage.
[00:21:04] Dr. Jim: So as you were talking, I started thinking about your comment about how you felt like you were on an island and you're playing mediator. But when I think about the circumstances of what you have to coordinate, There's another element that you need to get input from and make sure that they're taking care of as well, and that's your frontline staff, and that could include educators as well as other other people across the operational side of of the district.
So how are you making sure that you had line of sight into what was important to them? And then building the case between your leadership and the unions that, Hey, this is the full picture of what we need to do. How did you navigate that?
[00:21:42] Jeff Harrison: Yeah. So that's a good point because you have your teaching staff, but then you have your support staff. And your district's not going to run unless your support staff is there and they're doing the job that they're paid to do from your bus drivers to your food service to your secretarial, you're right, they're the front lines, they're the ones answering the phones when the parents are [00:22:00] calling with questions.
Fortunately the teaching staff came or teaching union came with the mindset that. They were not only fighting for their team, but they were fighting for the support staff because they knew they couldn't do the job if the support staff wasn't provided with the tools they felt they needed.
And during that time, we didn't know what tools they needed, right? We didn't know what disinfectants we were going to use. We were buying plexiglass left and right, trying to section things off. And we didn't know how it was transmitted when COVID went first started. So a lot of their concerns were the environmental concerns.
That really no one had the answers to and we were learning together. But the T I will give credit to the teaching union. They wanted their needs taken care of, but they were very upfront that they also wanted the support staff to have a seat at the table. So when we talked about bringing students back, we talked about bus routes and how many kids were going to be on buses.
The teachers wanted to make sure that those things were taken care of because if they weren't comfortable during their job, we weren't going to get the kids to school.
[00:22:57] Dr. Jim: As you're navigating all of these [00:23:00] complexities and working across all of these stakeholder groups, there's only so much that you can control. How did you use The lack of bandwidth as an opportunity to develop the leaders across your district, to share some of the load and also get them prepared for their next leadership role in some potential future date.
[00:23:17] Jeff Harrison: As I mentioned earlier, I feel extremely fortunate to be where I am today, and I could liken it back to a handful of leaders that I came in contact with during my 20 first 20 years of my career, and they had put me in positions to be successful. They believed in me. It didn't micromanage me.
They allowed me to be successful, but they also allowed me some productive struggle. So I truly believe that my job as superintendent is to prepare my administrators for their next position. And I want to give them opportunities to shine. My building principals in my district currently know that decisions are made at their building.
They're not decisions that have to be run through me. I want them to be comfortable enough to make a decision to run their building [00:24:00] and not have to worry about what I'm going to think, what I'm going to think after the decision is made. But that takes relationship building and it takes trust. So here I didn't have a ton of time to do that.
So I had to continue to pour into them, to reassure them that I needed their help. I couldn't do it all alone. I couldn't do it then all on. I can't do it now all along. So I need strong leaders around me who are willing to do the job. And it just takes. giving them opportunities. I can't. And again, I have to delegate, early in my career as an athletic director, I felt like I had to do everything and I didn't delegate very well.
And I, and in turn, I wasn't very successful and I was burned out and on the verge of burning out. So as a leader, you got to recognize that your success and the success of the district is really dependent upon my administrative team. I call them the A team, the 80s sitcom. I call them A team, the administrative team.
And I couldn't do it without them. And they know that, and I find every opportunity to continue to highlight the great work they're doing. So just continuing to [00:25:00] lead leaders is really what my number one job is. .
[00:25:02] Dr. Jim: After talking through all of this, it seems like there's a workable framework or at least process to move forward on the school operation side of it. And how educating is going to be done once you transition to both the transition back to in person, but there's something else that that popped up to that.
You didn't account for. So tell us a little bit more about how that added more complexity into the process.
[00:25:25] Jeff Harrison: Yeah. We get kids back in our buildings and people are happy, parents are happy, kids are happy, and we're rolling right along and my treasurer comes to me and says, Hey, Jeff, by the way, we have to negotiate the teacher's contract and the support staff's contract this year. Because we were supposed to start the teachers in the spring and get it done throughout the summer.
But it got delayed because of COVID. So now, you just think you make it over Mount Everest, getting back in school in person with kids. And then all of a sudden it's time to negotiate, which isn't always the most enjoyable time. So I, and not knowing the [00:26:00] players at the table. Didn't quite know how it was going to, how it was going to unfold.
So that's what we ran into. Probably that was about October of that school year.
[00:26:08] Dr. Jim: So when you look at that, getting dropped in your lap. How did you tackle that in the midst of all this other stuff you have going on?
[00:26:14] Jeff Harrison: And first I said to myself, if I ever interview for another superintendent's job, I'm going to ask where they're at in a negotiated agreement, so I don't get surprised. We transitioned into it. We decide to start negotiations as soon as possible because again, we were.
Working on an expired agreement and it had just rolled over. So we wanted to get busy with it. But going into it, we knew there were going to be some new concerns based on the environment that we were working in with COVID at the moment. When we built the idea to negotiate, we wanted to go into it With not a traditional style of negotiating, but we went into it with a interest based bargaining, which interest based bargaining usually takes a little longer, but there's a lot of conversation that happens.
And that's what I kept reassuring the team is I wanted to have a lot of conversation during [00:27:00] negotiations because selfishly I was going to use it to better myself and better understand the district that I'm now part of.
[00:27:06] Dr. Jim: When you look at both of those things that you had to navigate the negotiation as well as the logistics of returning back to in person classroom and educating. How do you feel those two things, navigating those two things, set you up for success in future negotiations and future initiatives within the district?
[00:27:25] Jeff Harrison: Provided a lot of confidence. I felt as though when we were done, if I could survive those two environments, I don't know if it could get any worse as a superintendent navigating a worldwide pandemic for the very first time in our recent history. And then negotiating contract with when I was, the odd man out, knowing the history and the understanding of the past, getting through all of that, I felt at the end of that, that, you know what, I think I'm pretty prepared for whatever is next.
And I still feel that way today. But it. It really just goes back to those simple concepts that I believe are so true. [00:28:00] And it's being a person of integrity and being someone who is willing to listen, to understand rather than listen to respond and have to have a great deal of patience because both the return to school and the negotiation process, both of those instances took probably double the amount of time that they normally would.
And we just had to persevere through it. And there was enough uncertainty around us in the world in general, That provided us time in a room to get to know one another and really dig into the issues that for years had hampered our district. And I think when we came out of those negotiations with the teaching union, we were almost like a new district and we had a renewed energy about us.
We had a fresh start, a clean slate, whatever it was. And when negotiations. If if no one's happy then it's pretty good negotiations, in negotiations, not both sides can't get a hundred percent of what they want. So if you come out of negotiations on both sides. Feel as though they gave a little or got a little that's successful negotiations.
[00:28:57] Dr. Jim: When you think back to this entire [00:29:00] conversation that we've had, and you're building. A rough playbook of how you navigate this type of chaos or chaos in general. What are the key, three or four points or principles that other leaders need to pay attention to successfully navigate these sort of circumstances when they don't have. Any lay of the land.
[00:29:20] Jeff Harrison: Yeah. I think it goes back to some of the training I had early on with a leadership system called the R factor. And some people know it as E plus R equals O, which you're going to have events in life, you're going to have events that pop up every single day. You can't control the events, but what you can control is your response to those events.
To get the best outcome. So that's the E plus R equals. Oh, so when I walk with my leadership team, we talk about how do we control our are our responses. So events are going to come up. A teacher is not going to show up for work one day or students going to misbehave. What is our response to that event to give us the best outcome?
So if we can continue to refine our are. And our ours could be press pause. You don't [00:30:00] have to have the decision. You don't have to have the right answer right away. That pause could be three seconds, three minutes, three days or three years in some instances. So you need to be able to press pause and get your mind right as a leader or a person in a position of influence.
And you need to adjust and adapt. And during that time we were adjusting and adapting every single day. And you also have to understand that your are, your response to an event, So you have to be cognizant of the fact that however I react to the event or the situation I'm in is going to create an event for someone else.
So if I can refine my response or my R, control my R, we can get the best outcomes possible. Because again, Events are going to happen. We don't control those. We only control our response. I think that's what I've really learned over the years here of going through this experience, and what I continue to teach to my leadership team is controlling your R.
[00:30:52] Dr. Jim: Great stuff, Jeff. If people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
[00:30:57] Jeff Harrison: I'm available email, phone call. [00:31:00] I love speaking leadership. I love working with other people in the field of education and leadership in general, even outside of education, because I have so much to learn from other people as well. I would love to connect with other leaders and people with influence in other areas. Not only in education, but also in the corporate world as well, because a lot of the skills correlate and I think there's lessons to be learned in the education field from what we refer to as the real world.
[00:31:25] Dr. Jim: Awesome stuff. So I appreciate you hanging out with us, Jeff. When I think back to this conversation, there's a lot to be taken away from the discussion, but there's two elements that stood out to me that I think is worth calling out one. is something that we covered early on the show is that we can't be afraid to take on conflict.
Conflict isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's pressure that you have to deal with in order to pursue a solution. So when you're faced, when you're thrown into chaos, don't be afraid of that conflict and don't be afraid of that pressure because that's, what's [00:32:00] often going to lead to the solution in front of you.
The other thing that was important about this conversation was that we touched on it in various points where this is not something that you can navigate alone. So you need to be able to delegate and also tap some of your external resources so that you have sounding boards to identify what could be the best possible way forward.
And that was another couple of elements that I thought was really important to tease out of this conversation. So other folks know No sort of a rough game plan to move forward. So I appreciate you hanging out with us. For those of you who've been listening to this conversation, we appreciate you hanging out as well.
If you like the show, make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. If you haven't already done so, make sure you join our community. And then tune in next time where we'll have another great leader who, We'll share with us the game changing insights that helped them build a high performing team.