Melissa Sadorf: We think unsustainable looks like a full calendar. So we tell ourselves, we're fine because we're still getting it all done. And that's exactly the problem. Competence, I think, is the world's biggest camouflage for burnout. People that burn out the hardest are almost never the ones that are dropping the balls all over the place. They're the people that are catching them all right up until they can't.

Burnout doesn't start when you have too much to do. It starts when everything feels equally.

Rachael Maves: Welcome to the Rachael Maves Show, the space where we dive into the topics shaping education today. From the challenges facing our schools and communities to new ideas, evolving practices, and the people driving change, we bring together voices from across education for thoughtful, honest, and engaging conversations. I'm your host, Rachael Maves, and today we bring Dr. Melissa Sadorf. Melissa has spent more than 30 years in education as a teacher, principal, superintendent, professor, consultant, and countless other roles dedicated to supporting rural schools in their communities. Today, she serves as executive director of the National Rural Education Association.

Dr. Sadorf, thank you for joining me today.

Melissa Sadorf: Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here and I'm looking forward to the. Conversation.

Rachael Maves: I am always excited to talk about rural school districts, because it really is a beast in and of itself. And I think a lot of leaders definitely can relate to feeling like they're just constantly being pulled in different directions when everything feels important. How do you decide what truly deserves your attention?

Melissa Sadorf: This is such a great question, Rachael. And I want to start by saying I don't think the word is decide, because for a long stretch of my career, I wasn't deciding anything. I was responding. And there's a difference to that. And I think that most leaders who feel underwater are not actually overcommitted. That many hat syndrome can feel like it's overcommitment, but I think that they're really they're.

Underdeighted. So everything gets the same weight, because nothing has been weighted on purpose. So what changed for me was getting honest about the fact that all of my roles, every single one of them, served exactly one purpose, and that was rural kids getting what they deserved, and that was it. That was the whole thing. That's what my association work does now. It's what teaching did.

It's what being a superintendent did. So the filter isn't. Is this important? It really is a fact that everything on a leader's desk is important to somebody. The filter has to be. Does this advance the one thing I'm actually here to do, and am I the one person that can do?

It. So really it's two questions that you have to answer. And if the answer to both of those is yes, it goes on my calendar, it gets protected, and if it's not, then I think about who can I get delegated, to who can I partner with and have it done? Or, you know, if it's no, to both of them. It doesn't matter how urgent it feels. It's somebody else's good work.

I think that rural leaders here have a genuine advantage, because I think that one of the things that we talk about when we talk about rural education is that deficit lens. And in a rural district, you can see truly the line from your decision to the. Child. There's not six layers of bureaucracy between a superintendent and a student. You know that child. You know their family.

And so I couldn't figure out what deserved my attention. They all do. But I would ask: what is the choice that student in my district is going to feel by Friday? And that cuts through a lot of the noise, and road leaders already have that kind of built in to their context. So, again, using it on purpose instead of just absorbing.

Rachael Maves: What I appreciate you saying is you really are creating the northstar, like it. This has to be the area of focus and then using that to benchmark decision-m. That also requires you to say no often or to be able to delegate. So, like, how did you find yourself as a leader over time, building that skill? What did that look like? Because that's it's not easy at all to stay disciplined in that.

Melissa Sadorf: Oh, I love that. What a great followup. So here's the piece that nobody wants to hear is that your leadership requires disappointing people deliberately sometimes. Right.

Rachael Maves: This is so true. Yes.

Melissa Sadorf: And in a rural community, you are visible everywhere. You know, grocery store, football game, church. And saying no to somebody has a face attached to So rural leaders say yes, far past the point of sustainability oftentimes, not because they're bad at boundaries, but because they're good at. Relationships. I had to learn to say,"I care about this and I'm not the right person for it, and here's who is.".

And that's not a rejection. It's a referral. And community members almost always take it well, because they understand that. We assume that they won't, but they usually

Rachael Maves: Yeah. When I first became a superintendent, I remember someone saying,: "Be prepared that 25%. Will always be frustrated with the decision that you're making. You'll never come to a point where everyone is just on board and really excited. Being able to live and manage the disappointment is part of that role, and it's a challenging role, especially when you're just getting started, I find.

Melissa Sadorf: Yeah. So true.

Rachael Maves: So how do you recognize when wearing those multiple hats has gone from manageable to unsustainable? And what do you do when you get there? Because I don't know about you, but I would find and even still I think that I have to monitor myself at this point in my career is that it is easy for things to start to pile where you're not even noticing that you have gone from really laser-like to almost like in product world now I'm learning we call it scope creep. When you find that happening, what is where do you see that tipping point? And what do you do when you get there?

Melissa Sadorf: I'll be honest with you, I've I've missed it more than. Once. And I don't think I'm alone in that. I think most leaders are watching the wrong age. I mean, we tend to watch the calendar. We think unsustainable looks like a full calendar.

So, we tell ourselves we're fine because we're still getting it all done. And that's exactly the problem. Competence, I think, is the world's biggest camouflage for burnout. And the people that burn out the hardest are almost never the ones that are dropping the balls all over the place. They're the people that are catching them all right up until they can't. So, there's three things that I look for now, after having gone through a few places where I didn't do so well finding.

It. The first is resentment. Not exhaustion, but resentment, because exhaustion is normal in this work. And you know, you can go on a vacation and it's, it's resolved. Resentment doesn't. So when I started feeling irritated at work and the work that I had personally chosen, at the opportunities that I would have been thrilled about two years earlier, that was an alarm for me, because resentment means that something is out of alignment with what I've said I valued.

The second is loss of presence. So when I was in a classroom and I was doing my walkthroughs and I was there physically but mentally I was three meetings ahead and when somebody talked to me I wasn't all there. In rural schools, presence is most of the. Job. People don't need you to be brilliant, they need you to be there. The day that I stopped being there mentally was the day that I knew, okay, something.

I need to make sure that I step back and see what's going on here. And part of that is a shrinking of joy. People do this work because they find joy in it. And I noticed that I'd stopped doing the parts of the work that I loved, because the parts that I loved were parts that had no deadline attached to them. I mean, nobody's going to email me if I skip a classroom visit. So, the classroom visits went.

First. And that's truly backwards. That's how good leaders get hollowed out. So, I think that what I did for myself that was effective for me was: I did a capacity audit. I listed every role and every recurring commitment on paper and then I put a real number next to each one. How long does this take?

Not the number I wish it was, but the number I really spent the time doing, and then I added it up. And the first time I did that, the total was I mean, it was: we don't have that many days in a week. We just don't, which strangely,. Tired now.

Rachael Maves: [speaker uncertain] Absolutely.

Melissa Sadorf: It's like, oh my gosh, no wonder. No wonder. It wasn't because I was failing. I was doing something that just was not mathematically possible. So, you know, that's where I have to make calls on each one of those commitments. Do I keep it and protect it?

Do I hand it to somebody else who's going to grow from it? And we want to make sure that we're growing leaders around us as well, and we got to give them things to do to be able to do that. Or do I just end it with a conversation with somebody and take that completely off my to-do? List? So that's really what made for me, the difference.

Rachael Maves: I think that this is so concrete and tangible because you're right, the people who burn out tend to be the ones that they are going to keep every ball in the air for as long as they can, and then it hits all of a sudden, and I don't know about you, but I remember, and even now it still kind of jumps up and bites me. I think what is wrong with me? Why can't I just push through this versus, Oh, these are my tells now that I need to actually rep, prioritize and rethink some. Things. One of the things you said around resentment for me shows up where all of a sudden my fuse gets short. Like if I the things that I would have more patience and more tolerance for, if all of a sudden I'm finding that I'm more irritable, I'm easily frustrated.

Like that, for me, is my first sign of okay, I need to take a step back and relook at things. For you, what is? What does that resentment piece look like? And is, did you put them in the order where it hits you, or is there a different order where you can usually say, "Okay, this is that first one that I can tell that this is hitting me."?

Melissa Sadorf: Yeah. No, resentment is really the first thing that I'll notice. And it's I get irritated with people. You know, I had an open door policy and I truly meant it's an open door. If you want to talk to me, come in and let's have a conversation. And when I started getting irritated that people were standing at my door, I thought, okay, why am I getting irritated?

With people that I'm I'm serving. I mean, I truly, as a leader, my job was to ensure that they had what they needed in order to do well for kids. And so that resentment means that, okay, there's something out of alignment here, because I'm saying I value their time and their commitment to coming and having a one-to-one conversation with me. And if I'm feeling irritated by them, that's a problem. I And the problem is not them. The problem is me.

I've got something that I need to take a look at.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I love that. The problem's not them. It's me. I've got something I need to look at. Here.

Yeah, that's right. So, what habits, boundaries, or systems have helped you carry multiple roles without letting any one of them consume you?

Melissa Sadorf: Yeah, I want to be careful here, because habit advice can turn into productivity theater really fast. And real, you know, role leaders have enough to do. They don't need another app or another system or another framework. So, what's actually worked for me is not a system. It's a small number of decisions that I made once so that I wouldn't have to make them again 400 times. The first one is how I treat my calendar.

And it truly is, for me, a values. Document. It's not a to-do list. So, if you want to know and you've probably heard this said before, Rachael, if you want to know what a leader actually believes in, don't read their mission statement, read their

Rachael Maves: That's right.

Melissa Sadorf: And for a long time, I said that I valued being available to everyone. I just talked about that, which sounds really, really great. And it was actually potentially a way to decide not to do something. I was avoiding deciding things. So, the important things now go on the calendar first and everything fills out around them. And that's a different way of filling your time and a different practice from putting out fires and hoping the important work finds a gap, because it never.

Does. It never finds a gap.

Rachael Maves: That's right.

Melissa Sadorf: This, the second thing that I kept as a standing personal commitment that doesn't move. It was just one thing, not five. So one thing. So it was a single recurring block that belongs to my life and not to my work, and that I have promised to another human being so that I can't renegotiate it with myself at 11:00 at night, when I know that there's a board meeting tomorrow and I still have a bunch of stuff going on. So that went on to my calendar and that was a non-negotiable. And I think that last part, that I can't renegotiate it with myself, is more important than the block.

Itself.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Sadorf: Because a boundary that you hold only in your head is a suggestion. And a boundary that somebody else is counting on is truly a boundary. And so, you know, if you discover that the week reorganizes itself around it and the world doesn't end, well, that gives you a reason to potentially protect a second one. But for me, it was ensuring that I was out of the building by five o'clock on every night. So, because I had an hour and a half that I had to drive home.

Rachael Maves: [speaker uncertain] Oh my gosh.

Melissa Sadorf: Yeah. So, I needed to be home before things were just too late to have at least some true connection time with my. Family. That was that non-negotiable for me. And then the third one took me a few years to kind of accept, negotiate with myself. And that's work life balance.

And as it's usually sold, it doesn't work in a rural community because you can't compartmentalize when your board member potentially is your neighbor and your bus driver coached your kid. So that separation model assumes an anonymity in real life. It just it's not there. It doesn't get offered. So I stopped chasing separation and went after integration instead. Which means that my roles are chosen so that they feed each other rather than competing.

What I learn leading the association shows up in my university. Classroom. What my graduate students push back on shows up in my writing. What I hear from members of our organization shows up on the podcast. So, it's one body of work wearing different clothes. And that's very different from four unrelated jobs.

And I think it's the single biggest reason that I can carry this much without it carrying me off. I stopped treating sustainability as a personal indulgence. It's a leadership.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. So, I want to come back to the work life balance in the personal life, because this one I mean, I will still say I have to be extraordinarily conscious of this one is very easy. I and I'll just speak for myself, although I do think that as educators, we have this tendency it's very easy because all of our work is so missiondriven. To feel like that is the most important thing, and then, two, to end up with so much of your identity around this, like everything then becomes about work. You know, because you and I have been at this for a long time, how did you start to separate those two and what did that look like for you, and how do you incorporate ensuring that there really is something that gives you joy and value, that isn't just work focused.

Melissa Sadorf: Yeah, that's that's a great question, Rachael. And it just was ensuring that it was number one, it was on my calendar because it had to. Be. I needed to make sure that I was going to make that commitment to myself and that people around me knew that I was making that commitment, because my secretary had access to my calendar. She could put appointments on there. But if something was a big red block, you know, do not schedule around this thing, then it stayed.

I think that what's important here is that your staff is watching how you work. And they're learning what this profession costs you.

Rachael Maves: That's right.

Melissa Sadorf: So, if you're modeling a pace that only a person with no other obligations can sustain, then you've just told every young leader in your building that there's no future here for them. Yeah. And in rural districts, where we're fighting to keep good people, it's not a wellness issue. That's a retention strategy. Yes. So really, it was me being aware that I not only am doing this because it's good for me, it's good for my family, but it's good for the people that I'm working with.

It's good for my staff that we are all on the same page when it comes to take your vacation. Days. Step away. Make sure that you're disconnecting and make sure that you're you're allowing yourself to truly dive into things that are important and meaningful to you as a person, not just as an educator, but as a person.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. A good friend of mine once said that if work is your only thing, on the days that it's great, it's great. But on the days that it's hard, then everything feels awful. Nurses, having those things that are imbalanced in your life, that because you will have hard days, you'll have those challenges, but without a being able to spread those experiences and joy in other places. And you're right, you model that as a leader for those within your organization is so critically. Important.

That would be interesting if we started teaching that just as a retention strategy. Like, exactly like you said, not as wellness, but if you want to keep your teachers, leaders, start to model this work life.

Melissa Sadorf: Yeah. And pay attention to it. Pay attention to the signs in them. Not just yourself, but to them as well.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's right. So, this is our final question, and I'm excited, Melissa, to hear kind of your thoughts for the all the leaders that are listening right now who feel stretched across way too many roles. What are the three things you would tell them? Go do this tomorrow.

Melissa Sadorf: So, three things, and all doable by next Friday. The first thing is write down the one sentence. Not your district's mission statement, but yours. The one purpose that every role you hold is supposed to serve. And if you can't write it in a sentence, that's your real problem. Finding that sentence, I think, is a high value thing that you need to spend some time on this week, because once you have it, you have a filter.

And a filter does the saying no for you. Second, do an honest hour count. So take every role, every standing commitment, real hours next to each one of those things and add it up and look at the. Number. You know, you're not going to fix it tomorrow, but you can't negotiate with a problem that you haven't made truly visible to yourself. And most leaders don't truly discover that they're not disorganized, they're over assigned, unless they do something like this.

So, and those two things require completely different solutions. We keep, as a field, we keep prescribing organization for a capacity problem, and it's not necessarily that.

Rachael Maves: That's right.

Melissa Sadorf: The third thing, I think, is protect that one thing and tell somebody, because that one block on the calendar that belongs to your life, if you say it out loud to a person who will notice if you break it, that's. Important. So have that protected time. Let somebody know what it is. Start with one. Not a whole new system, not a whole life overhaul, but just one.

And I'm going to say a fourth thing because I think it's important. And the fourth thing is not a task. It's a permission. You're allowed to stop wearing a hat that no longer belongs to you.

Rachael Maves: Oh yeah.

Melissa Sadorf: Some of us are carrying roles that we took on for a different reason, for a different season, for a version of our district or our family that doesn't exist anymore. And setting one down isn't quitting. It's an accurate response to a change. Situation. And that's what good leaders do with new.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I love that. Well, Melissa, before we sign off, where can our listeners find you and keep up with the amazing work that you're doing in leading?

Melissa Sadorf: Well, two places. The National Rural Education Association is at nrea.net and we'd love to be able to connect with you there, or they can reach me at email, Melissa. Nrea.net.

Rachael Maves: Perfect. Thank you so much for joining me today and for sharing your experience with us. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Melissa Sadorf: Yeah. Thank you, Rachael. This was a great conversation.

Rachael Maves: And for the leaders listening, who already have enough on their plates, we also want to make it a little easier to understand the story behind your data. Parsec Clarity Lite is completely free tool that we offer for you to sign up, and it gives you a way to explore how school systems are performing and compare your results with similar [music] systems. You can sign up for free at:. And, as always, thank you for joining us for another episode of the Rachael Maves Show. Be sure to follow the show so you don't miss our next conversation.

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This transcript was created from the episode's captions and lightly edited for readability. It may contain small errors; please refer to the audio for exact wording.