The Loneliness of Leadership | What Great Leaders Carry Alone – Ep 011

Hosts: Courtney Acosta & Mario Acosta 

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Episode Overview
Leadership can be incredibly lonely. Not because leaders do not work with people, but because when the final decision has to be made, the responsibility lands on one person. In this episode, Courtney and Mario unpack the emotional weight that principals, superintendents, and other leaders carry when they are forced to own mistakes they did not create, stand in front of angry communities without being able to share the full story, or absorb criticism while protecting students and staff. Drawing on stories from their years as school leaders, they explore the loneliness of public attacks, confidential personnel situations, campus crises, and social media blowback. But this episode does not stop at the problem. Courtney and Mario also offer practical strategies for surviving leadership loneliness, including building a trusted number two, forming a peer circle, seeking outside support when needed, and returning to students and great teachers to reconnect with purpose.

Big Ideas from the Conversation
Leadership is lonely because responsibility is personal. Even in collaborative cultures with strong teams, the final decision and the fallout belong to one person. Leaders often have to own mistakes they did not make. Whether it is a staff error, a community backlash, or a crisis, the leader becomes the face of the organization. Confidential situations intensify isolation. There are moments when leaders are holding information they legally or ethically cannot share, yet they still absorb the criticism that comes from the silence. Social media multiplies pressure and misinformation. In the absence of information, people create their own stories, and leaders often take the hit publicly for things outside their control. Great leaders do not survive loneliness by pretending they are fine. They survive it by building trusted support systems. A strong number two, a peer circle, and honest outside support can keep leaders from making isolated decisions or carrying the emotional load alone. The best antidote on hard days is often to reconnect with the why. Spending time with students, great teachers, and joyful parts of the campus can help leaders remember why the work matters.

Leadership Actions Recommended in This Episode
1. Build a trusted number two. Every great leader needs one person who can hear the hard stuff, challenge their thinking, keep confidence, and help sharpen tough decisions.
2. Create a leadership peer circle. Do not stay alone in the role. Build relationships with people doing the same job so you can problem solve, vent honestly, and share perspective.
3. Ask for support when the moment is bigger than you. District leaders should stand beside campus leaders during community crises, and individual leaders should seek counseling or outside support when the loneliness gets too heavy.
4. Reconnect with your why on the hardest days. When the weight of the role feels overwhelming, go find students, great teachers, and joyful learning moments that remind you why the work matters.
5. Know when to pause. Strength is not just about carrying more. Sometimes the strongest move is to stop, get perspective, and restore your own emotional and social balance before pressing on.
6. Do not let loneliness make your decisions for you. Important decisions are better when another trusted voice helps you think through nuance, consequences, and better options.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Leadership can be incredibly lonely. Not because leaders don't work with people, but because when the decision finally has to be made, the responsibility belongs to one person.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

And that's the hard part about leadership. The higher you climb in leadership, the fewer people you can actually talk to.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

I'm Courtney.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

And I'm audio.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

And this is the Ed Leadership Pair Podcast. Glad to have everyone on today.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Yeah, welcome everybody. We are gonna dive straight into the loneliness that is leadership.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Sounds like a super fun episode.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

As much fun as a few episodes back where you picked on me about my work-life belt.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Oh, well. I am wearing blue today in honor of sadness because we're talking about loneliness.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Oh, sadness and loneliness. I'm wearing blue because my wife told me to. And everyone listening knows good husbands do what they're told.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

And you look so handsome.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Oh, well, thank you. I do what you told, do what I'm told.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

That's good. Well, let's talk about loneliness and sadness.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Let's get into the words. Jump in. So I guess here's where we should start. Most people think that leadership is really about authority or influence, but the honest truth is leaders often carry so much alone. Decisions, criticism, responsibility. While there's this great power, right? It comes with this really heavy responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Yeah. And if you're a principal or a superintendent, it becomes even more real and more intensified because every decision, the buck stops with you. That's it. It's on your shoulders and you own it, no matter what it is. Let's dig in on this idea of being a final decision maker and the weight that can come with that.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

I'm going to give you an example that is so tangible from my past as a school leader in my school. Um, about 300 employees, about 180 teachers. And then when you add in the hourly employees and the counselors and the administrators, I was really close to about 300 people that I supervise. Now, on any given day, any one of those people could have made a bad decision, uh, a bad email to a parent. Let's talk about that. Teacher is frustrated, a kid messes up in class, teacher fires off some of the parent, your kid, blah, blah, blah. Now, I get the phone call. Dr. Acosta, your teacher said this, did this, didn't do this with my kid. What is wrong with you? What is wrong with your school? What is your problem? And so here I was living my best life, being a good husband at home, being a good father, dropping my kids off at elementary school, being a good principal. I might have bought coffee for my secretary, Amanda, in the morning. We're starting our day off right. And here I just get my head hammered the moment I walk in the boat the door because of somebody in my organization screwed up on. So now it doesn't matter that I didn't have anything to do with it. It doesn't matter that that wasn't my error. It's now mine to own. The responsibility of that situation is mine. It's mine to say to the parent, hey, yeah, we screwed up. We screwed up. Not, not she screwed up, not the teacher screwed up. We screwed that up. We will make sure that we get this corrected. And while I've never been a leader who would advocate throwing teachers under the bus, it's okay to own mistakes. That's not throwing your teacher under the bus to say, you know what, you're right. That didn't go as well as it should have.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Especially when it's in writing.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Yeah, especially when it's in writing. But right, we will correct that. But listen, what a lonely moment. Here I am just having a cup of coffee. I just got here and I get attacked. And you're like, gosh, I didn't, I didn't have anything to do with this. But yet it's mine to own. You have to own the good, the bad, and the ugly. It just has to land on your shoulders, and you just have to eat a little bit of poop.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Just carrying on the poop thing from last from the last episode.

SPEAKER_02 4:02

I'm not, I want to be able to use the words that I want, but uh, we get bad ratings on BuzzPrats on YouTube. So poop is what we're gonna use.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

And even worse than that is not just getting the email, but let's say a parent shows up in your office, I rate, and they are demanding to speak to you, and somehow they've gotten through the vestibule and they end up really close to your office. And it's like, I don't even know what I don't even had a second to ask the teacher what happened yet. Because let's also be honest about this. There are a million things that could have happened that set off the email that showed up in that parent's inbox. You haven't even been able to dig in on this yet, and you've got a parent in your office, yell, what are you gonna do about it? What do you well? First, I'm gonna figure out what happened because I don't I don't even know that what you're telling me is accurate or true. And so, but it does feel super lonely and isolating to be in that moment of just getting attacked and you have no idea what's happening or where it's coming from.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Yeah, and you're right. Maybe the teacher didn't do a thing wrong, but it's just that you're you're the tip of the spear, the end of the branch, right? Like it's yours, it's coming at you. It's yours to own. Yeah. And I think that's another part of it is great leaders. Um, you know, great leaders build great teams. During episode five of our podcast, we talked about not being a bottleneck as a leader and creating effective teams. So I want to go back and listeners, if you haven't heard that episode, we talk all about how to create great teams, and that applies here very importantly, because even great leaders who have created great teams, they're gonna gather input, they're gonna do a lot of listening, they're gonna have a lot of people around them helping make a decision. But guess what? At the end of all that great teamwork, and at the end of all that input, and at the end of all those collaborative sessions, guess who has to own the decision? Right. Just you, baby, just you. So that's where even great leaders with great teams and great input and all of that stuff in the end, you have to make that great decision.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Another story where that happened that is coming around again today is when we were both principals and the current administration was in office previously. And again, nothing political about this, but we had students that were wanting to activate and start to like create walkouts, opportunities for them to protest and have these walkouts. And um now, uh what was it a couple of weeks ago in the state of Texas, the governor passed a law that the school and district cannot in any way support a student walking out. And um I think when we saw our kids' school post information about, hey, we have heard that on this date and time students are scheduling a walkout. And I remember looking to you and be like, God, do you remember when that happened to us? And we had this walkout, and the kids were highly political, and parents were furious about the walkout, and we had to put a lot of precautions in place and a lot of checks in place and make sure that we did it the right way. But you get attacked as a principal, and it's like, what would you have me do?

SPEAKER_02 7:13

Yeah, that's it, that's a tough thing. There's a lot of crazy in the world. It is never appropriate for school leadership to engage in political, you know, ideology one way or the other. But the kids, right? If they start to exercise their First Amendment rights, then our job is to make sure they're darn safe. I would never let a group of children walk off my campus and not have them absolutely surrounded by people that are gonna keep them safe. It's got nothing to do with political ideology, it's got everything to do with keeping them safe. Yet you do that, and some Yahoo out there in the world is gonna attack you. Oh, you're supporting this political movement. No, I'm keeping these babies safe because that is our number one job. And again, lonely, lonely, lonely to get attacked for something which is at the core of why we lead in schools is to take care of children. And then you get attacked personally for it. Yeah. So, gosh, what a lonely feeling.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

When that email came out, I and and we saw the article that was posted about the principal in our area that had been kind of attacked for that. It was like, uh, I I wanted to send that guy an email and be like, I'm so sorry. I get it, I feel you. This is a this is a hard moment, and it's a lonely moment. It's one of those times when you just gotta stand alone and eat the crow.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

You know what we need to do is send him the podcast. Send him the podcast and say, Here you go.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

If you have a principal that you think may be lonely or a principal friend, share the podcast. You're not alone.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

You are not alone, you're not alone. Just share the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Share it.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah, sure. That brings me to another idea of times that I have felt very lonely as a principal of a school. And that was when I was holding information that I could not share with other people in the community, but it impacted a lot of other people in the community. And here's an example that came to mind. So let's say you had to put a teacher on leave for some kind of inappropriate behavior. And let's say, even more so, this teacher is also highly beloved. And this teacher is um a sponsor for one of your really great clubs or organizations or athletic groups on campus. And when you have a teacher that goes on leave for any number of days, parents start asking questions, kids start asking questions, other teachers start asking questions, and you can't say anything. If you don't have an HR team or a communications team that is that is helping you with that communication, then you start to get attacked. And it's like, why would you do this? This teacher is amazing. This teacher changed my child's life and they've been incredible and they've just been the most wonderful person ever in the world. And it's like, dude, I can't, I can't tell you why they're on leave. I can't tell you why they are not here. It could be a health issue, it could be something inappropriate, it could be something with funds or whatever. But that is a really lonely moment as well because you're holding this information back that you know you can't share. And it's like, if I could just tell them, then they would know and they would understand. But as a leader, you don't have that right to share that information with others. And that is so difficult. It's really tough.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

Part of being a leader is there's going to be times that you are holding information that only you can hold, and you're gonna have to own the fallout of it, even though, as we just said, you you did not create it. You weren't the one that was inappropriate, or you weren't the one that that did something wrong with funds or whatever wreck caused the situation, but yet now you, the leader, are the one that have to stand up and take all the the slings and the and the the metaphorical rocks to get thrown at at the at you, but just because you're the head of that organization, right? Whether you're the principal or the superintendent. Um, and so yeah, those are really, really lonely moments.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

It's tough, especially if uh, and I would say district leaders, if you're supporting principals who are going through this, how important it is for you to be there for your principals and your leaders, because it may be that their community is angry, teachers are on the campus or confused, and parents are questioning their leadership. And it is critical for you to be there for them and support them through this and make sure these leaders have the resources that they need to handle it appropriately. And I remember, in one of them, I remember standing in front of um a what at the time felt like a mob of angry parents about this teacher that was on leave. And my supervisor at the district level was standing right next to me. And I remember like turning to her, and she just was like, This is gonna be okay. This is a moment that you have to get through and it's going to be okay. Say what you gotta say. And the communications team had given me a script of talking points and what I could and could not say, and that was made clear to me, which was super helpful. And parents would fire questions, and I would just have to say, I'm I am so sorry. I cannot answer that question for you right now. But as soon as we can get you more information, I promise we will share that. And here's what that will look like.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

But having that support there of my supervisor, she was critical in that moment because it just I felt not alone. I felt really just someone was there with me taking it also. And even though she wasn't the one standing there having the meeting with the parents, she was next to me and it was helpful.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

Yeah. And we worked for some great people, and we have called them out more than once, but I think they deserve it. That that is a Becky Donald story. And we worked for a good district, like you said, the communications department, the HR department, the our leaders, they were there next to us. And so, um, again, a great example for you listeners. Um and you can hear it in our voices, the emotion. This is years later. That was a decade ago, and still I am not that old.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Stop. That was like six months ago.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

You're right, babe. It was not a decade ago.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

I don't be talking about decades.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

I am wrong.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Talking about my career in decades. I am 25.

SPEAKER_02 13:19

And that's fair. And listen, for those of you listening to the podcast on one of our uh audio platforms, whether that be Apple or Spotify or one of the others, you should migrate to YouTube just one time and you'll see that that's that's true. Courtney is this vixen, just gorgeous young lady.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Oh my god, you have to cut that out.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

So of course sitting next to her is this old guy. So I was leading a decade ago.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

This is getting real uncomfortable. We have my HR stuff. I am gonna call our HR department, which I think is our dog at this point. That's so weird.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

The HR department. Great. All right, well, then let me put us back on track. So if you'll let me, I wanna I wanna counter your story with a story. Get it. I see your story and I raise your story. Ah, so yes, one of the other struggles that that leaders face right now, and being that we have not been off the campus that long, social media is a real pain in the backside, yes, because it causes more public outcry and more misinformation. So when we say the leader has to hold that final decision, or when the leader's the leader's going to be accountable for holding on to information that cannot be out there, then on social media you get a bunch of nuts just going nuts. So I can tell you a story about where we had uh a threat on social media that someone was gonna shoot our school in a week. Like they give us a specific date and time. It's a week from now, we're coming to shoot you school. So, of course, behind the scenes, we did everything we were supposed to do. The FBI that is located in San Antonio, right? The national office was involved. Of course, our local, our local um law enforcement agents. So I had spent days and days and days along with our district leadership, right? And we had a plan and we had been into it, and they had been doing all the investigations behind the scenes with all of these FBI tools and resources, but yet you can't tell the community the whole story because it's an active ongoing legal investigation. Yeah, so if I open my big mouth, I'm going to jail, and they tell you that the officers tell you you can't say a word or we're gonna hook you up. So now here I am, the face of this big school, about 3,000 students, so a giant community. And of course, the parents are scared, they want to know what's going on. And of course, in the absence of information, people make up their own stories. So now there's a story every other second on social media about what's gonna happen at my school. And they were, of course, just attacking me for not putting out enough information, for not telling them the truth, for holding it back, for misleading them, all these things that we weren't doing. And again, credit to my school district and my boss, who was also Miss Becky Donald. They were right beside us, helping us put out whatever messaging we could legally. But I, the leader, was the one who got absolutely roasted online, in person. Parents were showing up at the school to meet with me angrily. Um, right? I was getting roasted at every turn. And again, I had nothing to do with this. I wasn't even leading the investigation at this point, right? Once law enforcement gets in there.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Well, yeah, once law enforcement's there, you're out as a principal. I mean, you're just trying to I serve at their pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Yep. Law enforcement is driving at that point. So you talk about loneliness. You're getting blasted every day on social media in the building. Your teachers are starting to get shaky because they're hearing it and seeing it. And all the while you have to own this when it's so far out of your control. So it it you talk about isolating and loneliness and feeling like goodness gracious. Now, again, district leaders, don't let your campus principal stand alone. God, that is a feeling of complete isolation when you're like, good man, I'm getting attacked. And again, I'm just sitting here trying to be a good leader and y'all come attack me. I'm trying to help.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

Right, right. I understand why people have these questions, but the frustrating thing is the stories that people start spinning and start making up. And I heard this and I heard that, and then it gets gets legs and it takes off. And that is incredibly frustrating because then that's when the real attacking starts, right? Like is when these stories start spinning off and just getting out of control.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

And probably good to finish the story by saying our school did not get harmed. So if you're waiting for the end of the story, like, oh my god, what happened? What happened? It was a false alarm, as as thank God it was not not real. It's the truth that leaders need to hear. There are gonna be parts of this job, whether you're talking about putting an employee on leave, whether you're talking about some sort of community issue, um, whether you're talking about there's gonna be a laundry list of things that can cause you to own issues that you didn't cause or you can't talk about. And yet you're gonna have to stand in that void and you're gonna have to be a strong leader, two feet on the ground, shoulders square, and just hit it head on, even though you you didn't cause it, but you're the only one who can stand there and eat a bunch of crow. Let's start to bring the episode up a little bit. Let's start talking about like what can you do? What can you do about it? And absolutely I know there's one thing that I would like you to talk about because um you had this as a leader, and I had it as a leader, and so we want to like really lean into it. But tell me why every great leader needs a trusted number two.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

Oh my gosh, it's so important. And I think I talked about this in the second episode when we were talking about books that were important to us. And I brought in Lincoln on Leadership and Find Your Grant.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

And um, if you haven't yet, go back to season one, episode two, the books that shaped us. So yeah. Courtney did talk about Lincoln on Leadership.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

One of the people that I found most supportive to me was my first associate principal that I had hired, Marie Gonzales. And she was somebody that I could trust implicitly. I knew that she had my back. She could tell me when I was being ridiculous and when I was being too much and I needed to back down on some things, or if I needed to push, it was time to push forward. I could trust her to have those conversations with me and she would be super honest. And I appreciated that. At the same time, she's probably the one person on that campus that knew the emotional toll that this role could take on me. And she became a very close friend of mine to where I would share all of that with her. And it was so important to have her to be that ear that I could bounce this, these ideas off of or my thoughts. And even, I mean, not saying she was my therapist or anything, but no, but a friend. She was a friend and she was someone I could really trust. And it just sometimes would help me level set and come back to base where it was like, okay, I got that off my chest. Now I can walk out of this office, close the door, and go do the rest of my job. But it sometimes you just need a minute. Sometimes you need a minute. There were days that I would just sit on the floor at the end of the day with God, I can't, I can't another minute of this. I can't do this. And she would let me get out my word vomit, and then I could pick myself up and kind of move on and get past it. But she was really critical in that first year of being a high school principal for me, because I just needed that extra person that was supportive in that way.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

Doing the job alone and feeling like I can't share that with somebody, I think that's the wrong way to go about it. I think great leaders survive the leadership loneliness because they build a trusted inner circle. Absolutely. One person or two people, but having that true person that could be your number two, um, the grant to your Lincoln, somebody that that you trust, somebody that you can really show the hard parts of the job to so that you can have that social emotional support. Because see, that's the thing that a principal or a superintendent or any top of the line, you know, top of that of that branch leader doesn't have. Because we've just talked about all the reasons you have to own all of this. You gotta have somebody that you can verbalize this stuff to just because you need that social emotional humanity. Yeah. Right. You need another human to take care of you just by listening sometimes. Right, right. Just letting you sit on the floor and be like, look, I'll just sit here and and and let you talk and keep this conversation in confidence and just be that you know, that support to you. So, you know, I also had a great number two. Her name is Erin Campbell, or um, very similar situation. Sure, she was somebody that we'd close the door and we'd we'd have, I'd share all the hard conversations with. We would make all the tough decisions, right? I would put the tough decisions in front of her before I made them. And see, the other thing, leaders, when it comes to this part, is having a number two is not only important for the social emotional loneliness, but it's also important for what I would call the loneliness decision-making gap. Because what we know is decisions are better when more people think about them. That's just a fact of any of any situation. The more that the more people think about a decision, the better the decision will come out. So if you're making decisions in this loneliness gap, then you're gonna miss, you're gonna miss on some. You're gonna miss things, you're gonna miss nuances, you're gonna miss perspectives. And so Aaron was not only there for me as a partner, like you described Marie to be for you, and I know Marie did the op this other thing for you too, which is sharpened your thinking.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

For sure.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

Aaron was okay, you know, she she and I had the relationship where she could say, like, yeah, that's probably not the best way to do that. And here's why. Like, she was never like, Hey, boss, you're a dumbass. Maybe she went home to her husband and said, This guy's a real dumbass. That's fine. She may have done that. But to my face, in in our respectful partnership, she would be like, Yeah, boss, I'm not sure that's the best way to do it. Here's why I would do this differently. Or have you thought about this? And I'd go, like, yeah, that's that's fair. That's fair. Sometimes I'd be hot, I'd be barking, and she'd be like, Okay, did you get it out? Now let's talk about how we're gonna do it. Right. So it's just great to have another person to share that loneliness void with so that the decisions you make are are well rounded and and and uh have another have another sharpening point on it. Um, you know, so there's a social emotional benefit to to curb the loneliness, there's uh there's a intellectual benefit so that you don't make stupid lonely decisions when you're the leader standing there in this in this loneliness void. Um, so I think that's critical. And let's talk about another strategy for leadership loneliness.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

And this one you and I are gonna take credit for together because listeners, again, we've talked about this. Courtney and I were principals at the same time in the same school district at the high school level. So there were five high school principals and then two um of our like alternative schools. So there were seven of us total. And so I remember there was a time where we were a fragmented group, kind of every principal sort of stood on their own and did their own thing. And you and I started realizing, and at the advice of some of our bosses, like, hey, dummies, you're stronger together than you are apart. Right. And so one of the strategies we would recommend for everyone listening is build a leadership peer circle. So we got every high school principal in the district together, and we started doing this great thing where we would once a month host a lunch, just the high school principals, and we'd rotate it around every campus. I love the way we used to do it. We used to call it a meeting of the five families because we were five big high schools. Well, we did do that. Yeah, we did. And we'd have a meeting and we'd do some you want to be the godfather. Well, I was one of the godfathers, you're a godmother. You see how it works?

SPEAKER_01 24:58

But a very godmother.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

We used to have these lunches in some back conference room in the back of the school where no one could find us, where there were no listening devices in the room, right? And we could close the door and eat a lunch, and it was just the high school principals, and we could just be honest with each other. This is cramp, and this is awful, and I'm struggling with this. And can you believe this parent said this to me? And is this happening to you guys? And we could just go around the circle and with everybody who was working the same job as us, we could just emote and problem solve. And how do you how did you handle this when this happened and and and that type of thing, right? And so, um, while leadership is lonely, you don't have to stay alone. There's another strategy is find a leadership peer group and then form form bonds with the people doing the same job as you, right? Pat, share those, share those stories. And one of the favorite things that we used to do, and you may have been gone by the time we started doing this, but we would spend the hour just word vomiting all the terrible things and sharing all of our struggles. And at the end of the meeting, we would vote on who had the craziest, most dysfunctional campus for that month. So we had a winner, like, oh, you're the winner this month. Yeah, we can't touch your crazy, and we'd give them, you know, a high five and buy them an extra soda on the way out and be like, look, you get the it probably probably was more like a bottle of whiskey sent to their house or like that's kind of in public schools. You can't do that at the school, but we were probably just door-dashing a bottle bottle of this. But we definitely had a who had the craziest month of all of us, and that just made you feel better, right? Even if it was you that had the craziest month, you're like, man, it was a close second. Yeah, I wasn't the only one with crazy crap.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Yeah, and people recognized it. And it it was so helpful to hear from people with more experience than me, to hear how they were handling things that had already come up. And I'm sure for somebody that I had more experience than it was good for them too, just to hear all the stories of what was happening. Or if something was like, you know, there's always things on a campus where it's it starts a daisy chain and like it may start on one campus and you're like, oh God, it's coming. Now it's coming, it's gonna come to my campus. How did you stop this? How did you get it? How did you get past it? How'd you deal with it? And sometimes it was like, man, you you're just gonna have to suck it up and let it ride. It just made you feel better because it lightened the atmosphere of these really like today, we're talking about a really heavy topic, but at the same time, you have to be able to lighten it a little bit just so you can survive it sometimes. Yeah. And so it may have been something that somebody got chewed out about, but you got to move on. Like, even if you get chewed out because some mistake is made on your campus and you have to address it, you have to be able to move on and pick yourself up and off we go because tomorrow's another day. Yep. And I think if you really get into it and and you are in a space where the loneliness is super heavy and it starts to become something more serious, then I definitely would encourage leaders to seek some outside help and support, depending on what that looks like. If that is something that um you want to seek a therapist or a counselor or some kind of other emotional support that would be who you go to, then I would encourage you to do that. But this personal support outside the job is really important. It was really nice for us because we kind of had that together.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

Yeah, we had it.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

And and could share, oh my God, this has been an absolute d mess of a of a week. And you'd be like, oh yeah, that I I heard about that. And I or that happened on our campus two years ago or whatever it was. And so that was always really nice. But I just encourage you, don't sit in the loneliness for too long. Make sure that you get out there and get some help, whatever that needs to look like.

SPEAKER_02 28:45

Yeah, and uh listeners would remind you that episode nine of our podcast was all about tips for avoiding leadership burnout. And I think that that episode would plug in well right here because when you're standing in that loneliness and you feel the weight of the world on you, uh, you want to be careful about not letting it bleed into your personal life. But at the same time, you got to take care of yourself and you can't you can't eat it all and hold it all in forever. Yeah. Um, so so I think there's a good resource there.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

Can I talk about my one favorite thing to do when you when you have a bad day, when you have a lonely day? I think, and I know you did this too, but on the hardest of days, the absolute best thing for me to do was go find the kids. Go find your debate club and watch them do the thing that they love to do that they can only do because they're at your school. Go to the basketball game and watch the kids play and just soak, soak up the fact that they love being there and doing that and they're so happy. Go find the best teacher that you can find and watch them. What did you say you had a teacher that was just shooting?

SPEAKER_02 29:52

That's teachers, shoot uh not real frogs, rubber frogs, rubber frogs. They'd shoot rubber frogs in the hallway and they were doing measurements and all that. So, yeah, that's a fun day. Hey, who's who's shooting frogs around over here? Let me go just be around kids. Yes, and and great teachers. Yeah, remind ourselves why we do what we do.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Yeah, go find that jackass, hilarious kid. They will say the funniest things, and you know they're gonna be successful in life because they could talk their way out of anything. Go find that kid and just spend some time with it. Yeah, but the best, best, best, go into one of your special education classrooms and just be there with that group of kids because their hearts are so pure and getting to be around them and see them love being at school is just it's the best. It's wonderful. So I encourage you if if you're having a real hard day, go find your best teacher, go find kids that are loving being at school, doing the thing that they're doing, and spend time with that and just remember your why.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

Yeah, I think leaders do not forget that you are a human being. And all of this weight that we carry and all of this loneliness we're talking about. I mean, I'm speaking from experience. You try and hold it, you try and be the badass, you try and say, I got it, you try and say, I'm gonna own it. It's my school, it's my organization. Just remember you are human and you will hit a breaking point. So sometimes the strongest leaders, remember, I gotta know when I gotta hit stop or pause and go seek help to bring balance back to my life to make sure that I am taken care of, right? Because leaders can only be as effective as their own internal effectiveness. If you are worn down and beat down and worn out and you've fallen apart, then you're not an effective leader, right? So strength sometimes is not just eating more crap. Strength is sometimes knowing when to press pause and then seeking that help and that outlet to bring balance back into your own uh emotional or social wellness.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Right. And leadership is lonely sometimes. Every great leader in history has carried that loneliness at some point, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 31:53

That's true. So if you're a principal or if you're a superintendent or if you're a teacher leader and this episode resonated with you, do us a favor, maybe share it with another leader. Maybe somebody in your leadership circle or your peer circle is also carrying that loneliness. Maybe say, hey, there's a couple of good leaders that are talking about how to stand in that loneliness and how to how to also have strategies to work through the loneliness. Let's bring this episode to a close by reminding our listeners to please follow us on one of our social media platforms. We have recently joined TikTok. We are on Instagram, we have a YouTube channel, and of course, we have a newsletter at our website, www.theedleadershippair.com. We're going to sign off for this episode. I'm audio.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

I'm Courtney.

SPEAKER_02 32:36

Thanks for listening.