Servant Leadership in Action: Stories from the Field | Transformational Educators Ep. 1

What if the secret to transforming a school isn’t a new program, but a new posture of leadership?

In this inaugural episode of Transformational Educators, Dr. Darrell Floyd, Superintendent of Blue Ridge ISD and former Regional Superintendent of the Year, shares how he turned around a fractured high school by building trust, empowering teachers, and focusing on what truly matters. With over four decades in education, Dr. Floyd reveals how relational leadership and practical strategy can bring struggling campuses back to life.

Whether you're a principal, aspiring leader, or district administrator, this episode will equip you with tools to lead with courage, care, and clarity.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Why relationships are the foundation of lasting campus change
• The "three R’s" of school transformation: Rigor, Relevance, Relationships
• How to start building trust as a new principal
• The importance of sitting with every staff member one-on-one
• Why it’s okay to say “I don’t know” as a leader
• How credibility is built through follow-up and follow-through
• Why empowering teacher-leaders can reshape school culture
• The 4 C’s every student needs to succeed
• Strategies to retain great teachers by improving morale
• How a struggling school went from “a 2 to a 9” in culture and climate

BEST MOMENTS

00:02:39. “This is my 40th year in public education… my 29th year as superintendent of schools.”
00:04:22. “That was Queen City High School, and I was principal there in 1992. That campus needed transformation.”
00:05:25. “Of the three R's, I would say that the relationship piece is the most important one.”
00:07:11. “She comes into my office and shuts the door and says, ‘When you're good, you're really good. But when you're not, you're not.’”
00:08:49. “My advice to young principals is to find a way to sit down with everybody one on one.”
00:10:14. “It's okay to say ‘I don't know’ when you don't know. But follow it with ‘I'll find out and get back to you.’”
00:12:22. “We want them to have good communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity.”
00:14:04. “We were able to transform that campus. The climate and morale went from about a 2 to about a 9.”

Transformational Educators | School Leadership Stories

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Transcript

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Today on the podcast. Dr. Darrell Floyd. Dr. Floyd is the superintendent of Blue Ridge, Ice-T in North Texas, where he's making a real difference by building strong cultures, strengthening relationships and mentoring the next generation of school leaders. His leadership has been recognized as a regional superintendent of the year, and he's guided multiple campuses to become award winning schools. Today, we'll explore how to rebuild culture in schools. Why relationship chips are the foundation of lasting change and practical strategies principals and superintendents can use to retain teachers and build thriving campuses. By the end of this episode, you'll walk away with proven insights to help you strengthen your leadership and positively impact your school community. Welcome to Transformational Educators, where we help school leaders create lasting change by sharing powerful real world stories of servant leadership and practical strategies for transformation. I'm your host, Matthew Flippin, president of Greystone University, where we equip school leaders to make a lasting impact. I'm really excited to get time with you, Darrell, to hear about how you've built winning cultures in some of the places you've been. But specifically, I know we're going to focus on one school. You know, one of the things I really admire about you haven't looked up your background and and knowing that you've served in education for so long is that you continue to just build great relationships everywhere, everywhere you go, your heart for kids and for those that are in hard places, shows through in your in your work. And I know that you've been celebrated as a district region super superintendent of the Year, and I know of tons of other accolades as well. But I'm just really excited that you are our first first guest today. Well, it's an honor to be your first guest. I know you've done great work in the past as well for youth. And so I certainly commend you for that. And I'm happy to be your first guest. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Darrell. Yeah. It's a pleasure. And I can tell just from the little time that we've had together, even this morning, you know, the the insights and the care that you have for the communities that you that you serve. So let's go back to when you were principal. Okay. And tell us about the school. Give us the setting for it. What was it like when you first got there? Right. Very good. So this is my 40th year in public education and a show of that. Thank you. Of that is my 29th year as superintendent of schools and I've done a little bit of everything in public education. Started out in West Texas as a teacher Coach finished my master's after I got my bachelor's at Texas Tech, right then got my masters at UK Permian Basin and then was off on my track across the state of Texas to a number of different campus level administrative positions and then into the superintendency. So as I look back on my career, I guess the last time I was campus principal would have been around 1997, somewhere in there. But as I think back on some of the important topics that I would give advice to for up and comers and and that's really the one of the reasons I do my adjunct work with universities is it's my opportunity to give back to the profession. Yes. And kind of mentor the up and coming principals and superintendents and those that are in doctoral programs as well. So tell me again, what where were you when you were that high school principal? Okay. So after I finished my master's out in Odessa, then I was assistant principal at University Middle School in Waco. I was junior high principal at Paul Hewitt, which is Consolidated District over by Mt. Pleasant, Texas. Omaha, Naples. Are the two communities. Okay? Two high school principal ships, one in Queen City's NE, just south of Texarkana. And then a second high school principal Shipp and Castleberry. I stay in the northwest corner of Fort Worth, and then I got into the superintendent. Okay, so take us. I know you have a story that you wanted to share later. Let's talk about that campus. Okay. What was that campus? What was it like when you got there? Okay. That was Queen City High School, and I was started out as principal there in 1992. And that campus needed some transformation and transformational leadership to help improve the culture and the climate and the morale and basically to bring everybody together because it had been a little bit fragmented. And so what did you see when you first got there that clued you into that? I could see the the way the students interacted with each other, the way they interacted with the faculty and staff. And I could see immediately that a lot of that needed some improvement. So I went about the business of trying working hard on developing positive relationships with students and their parents and the community members and faculty and staff so that we could focus on the three R's rigor, relevance and relationship. I know that Dr. Bill Daggett has made a whole career out of centering his work around those three R's, but I am a very strong proponent of that and I utilize that in every position I've been in since. Sure. So we and of those three R's, I would say that the relationship piece is the most important one, because until you develop that very positive student adult relationship, adult to adult relationship, then it's hard to get things done. But once you do establish that positive relationship, then you can get all kinds of positive things done that will benefit students and the community and that school district as a whole. Now, sometimes when you walk into a new situation, there's been hurt. That is cause relationships to be be broken. There's some often some mistrust among teachers and the new administrators. Did you face some of that? Yeah. The way I got at it is to designate lead teachers for each department English Mass on social Studies. And I relied heavily on those lead teachers to help guide me through what we were doing. And one of the stories I was sharing with you earlier is that, you know, here I am, that young high school principal. A lot of the teachers could have been my parents or grandparents. And so I had a lead social studies teacher. That could have been my grandmother. And I'm running around with my hair on fire 100 miles an hour. And eventually she comes into my office and shuts the door and says, you know, when you're good, you're really good. But when you're not, you're not. And then she proceeded to tell me how she thought I needed to just tap the brakes a little bit. Okay. Not work at such a frantic pace that it caused everybody else to be frantic. And we could get at this a different way and a better way. And I have remembered that for my entire career. And I can't tell you the number of times I've told that story, because it resonated with me that even when you are trying to do the right things and building culture and climate, morale and all of that and relationships, that it still is beneficial for you as a campus principal or a leader to have someone that can check you. And if you've developed that positive relationship well enough, then it gives them comfort to come in and shut the door and say, Look, we might want to do things differently. Because you had known her. How long At that point? Less than a year. Less than a year. But she felt she trusted you enough that you'd receive the feedback. And I appreciated that. They appreciated that a year later. So, yeah. So how you how did serving your people, what did that look like in that first year to build trust? My advice to young principals is to find a way to sit down with everybody one on one. And I made a point to do that with teachers, administrators, teachers and faculty and staff members very early on. Bring them in, sat around, have them tell me about themselves. I do the same thing. We share some things that are important to us, and then they talk to me about what they see as the strengths of that campus, the weaknesses of that campus. And then looking back on it 12 months from now, what would they like to see in the way of improvements and maybe a suggestion on how we can get out there now, some of them will talk about petty things and others will talk about grandiose ideas, but all of that's beneficial for a new campus principal. I think absolutely. To take time to listen to everyone. Yeah, I definitely believe that being known that we all have a desire to be known and for a leader to take the time to know us. It goes a long ways in building emotional capacity, relationship capacity, because ultimately you're going to ask them to do something new, to change something, and they've got to trust that you're doing that. You're making that ask for their good and for the and for the good of the children in Yeah. And another suggestion I would give to beginning principals or principals that are working their way through their principal share of career is that it's okay to say I don't know when I don't know. I think there some people have a mindset of when they get the principal job, they're just supposed to miraculously know all the answers and that's not the case. I've been at this for 40 years and I certainly don't. You still, the answers are rarely. No, the questions, you know, but it's okay to say, I don't know when you don't know, but then you follow that up with. But I'll find out and get back with you. And so what I suggest to students that I teach adjunct for and principal Chapin superintendent certification programs are you know, if you are not highly structured and organized and a good time manager, if you're down at the end of the hall and Ms.. Jones ask you a question you don't know the answer to, and you say, I don't know what I'll find out. And then you get back to your office and get tied up with other things and forget to research that and get back with Miss Jones. Every time you do that, it chips away at your credibility. So you got to be a good time manager, Very structured, very organized, so that you remember to research that and then get back with Miss Jones with that answer. And then when you do that, it builds your credibility as a leader. Absolutely. You've got to be trustworthy. Yeah. You know, trust is such a hard thing to build, but it is easy to destroy very easily, easier to destroy than to be like. Exactly right. So tell us a couple of the transformational strategies that you implemented at that at that campus and what the outcome was. Yeah, And these are some strategies that are used not only in the principals. Yeah, but even today in the superintendency and I mentioned the 3 hours of rigor, relevance and relationships, I mentioned that of the three relationships I think is the most important one. But the rigor piece is setting that bar high enough that it stretches students to achieve at levels they didn't even realize they could achieve themselves. And then that relevance piece is answering the age old question Why do I need to learn this and how am I ever going to use that later on? Well, that's our job as educators to explain to students why they are learning this now, but more importantly, how learning it is going to benefit them later on. So to extrapolate that a little bit further, in addition to the three R's, I've always tried to incorporate the forces and all this is research based. I won't bore you with that part, but suffice it to say that it is, and these are the skills, abilities and attributes that we know that we want our own kids to possess before they leave high school. And if it's good enough for our kids and we need to be imparting that to every one of our students, we want them to have good communication skills, good collaboration skills to be able to communicate what they want to and need to, to be able to work with others, whether it be small groups or teams or large groups. So communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity. The critical thinking piece is being able to kind of know that there are more than one way generally to get at solving a problem, but you've got to be able to communicate and collaborate with others to think critically to solve that problem and not just throw your hands up and say, I don't know the answer. I can do this. You work with others to work through to fruition. And then the last one is creativity, and that is thinking outside the box. And there are two different kinds of people. One are very linear and others are very creative, and we all have strengths and weaknesses and each of those areas. But if you're developing and building teams, it's ideal. If you can have some of each, you know, some structured folks and some creative folks. And that builds a very positive, beneficial team, even though they might be some there might be some friction between the highly organized and the highly creative. But yeah, but each can benefit from the other benefits. So what were some of the results you saw as you implemented those? We were able to transform that campus to a point where I would say the the climate and morale and the culture went from about a two to about a nine. And I was always very proud of that. Wow. And I think if you talk to some of the people that were on that campus, then they would say the same thing. We had a very positive trajectory on all of those areas and we ended up being an award winning campus back then. We had before your time probably, but we had SAS as the kind of the accolades for campuses and we were able to our ability not to top out of that. And we were very proud of what our students had accomplished. But it was all due to what we had created there and the way of doing the right things for students. While I think about a to culture, that was, as we said, having probably some turnover issues, some strife, you know, unhappy teachers don't always produce happy students are added normally that right opposite. And so getting that too and then I mean that must have impacted your turnover, your recruiting and then translated into student performance. Absolutely. And it's even more important to develop that positive culture so that we can retain the ones that we want to retain the good ones. But then we also, as you are working on on a daily basis, is to grow our own teachers. Yes. Yeah, it's really true. I mean, we really believe that the people in the building that have demonstrated the heart and grit of the paraprofessional support staff, if given the opportunity to rise up in the teacher roles, really will be outstanding. Because, you know, when we survey a room of paraprofessionals and we we ask how many of you are incredible at math, we don't get a lot of hands raised. But if I say how many of you can build a relationship with any child, they all confidently raise their hands. Well, that is a testament to because if you can build relationships as the foundation, you know, then of course you can get performance out of your kids. But culture, campus culture is the same. So if a campus leader can't build relationships or doesn't know isn't good at relationships with their staff, then they never really end up with a culture that's going to thrive. And that's really our hope. In sharing your testimony. To start with relationships, yeah, there's three R's and yeah, there's four CS, but relationships is number one, build, trusting relationship and I think there are two cars. I've seen two different kinds of campus principals. There are those that can go too far on one side of their the back slappers and the high fibers and attaboys. And then when you get down to the substance, there's not much to that. And then on the other hand, there are people that are not very good at building relationships, but are good at academics or management or whatever. But neither neither one of those far ends of the spectrum are going to be solely successful. You've got to have a mix of the two, you've got to build those positive relationships. But then when it's time to get out of the work on academics, you've got to go to work on that as well. And if you've developed that positive relationship, then it's a little easier to work on the difficult issues like that. Absolutely. But that has to come with accountability because if I don't ever hold someone accountable to the standard we've all agreed to, then the people that are meeting the standard start to mistrust me. Yeah. So I erode my relationships if I don't ultimately bring accountability. I think that's what I'm saying. And if you haven't developed that positive relationship and that culture and climate and morale, then people are going to fly out of there. And then here we go with a just a continuing retention issue and teacher turnover. AS Yeah, that is so true. That's so true. But there I really appreciate you sharing your insights. I mean, there is so much wisdom in, in this and I know if we had more time, thankfully you are teaching in at the college level and all the way up to the doctorate level. So I just applaud you for continuing to to serve. Thank you very much. Feel free to put my contact information in there and I'm happy to help anybody at any time. Fantastic. If today's conversation gave you fresh insight or inspired you to lead with purpose, please follow the show and tell a friend it helps us reach more educators who want to make a difference For more stories, resources and tools to support your leadership journey, visit Graceland Dot Edu. Until next time, keep leading with courage and care. If you want to keep learning about transformational strategies in education, click the next video.