Union Local superintendent co-authors leadership book
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MORRISTOWN -- Union Local Superintendent Zac Shutler has teamed up with his friend, Sarasota, Florida, Booker High School Principal Jamal Crook, to co-write their debut book, “Lead the People, Change the System.”
Shutler said the book is about leading not just a school district, but leading in any capacity of life.
“We targeted the book toward school leaders, principals, superintendents and teachers. But I think anybody that opens up the book will be able to relate to the importance of leading yourself first, because so often we focus on the external goals, the trophies, the acknowledgements, the compensation that comes with success, but we forget to be a really good leader,” Shutler said. “It’s all about other people and to take care of them really well, you need to take care of yourself too. A really good leader takes care of themselves mentally and physically. They take care of themselves psychologically, so that way they can give the best to the people they’re entrusted to help.”
He added that it doesn’t matter if you’re a parent, superintendent, principal, teacher or any other leader, you must ensure you’re taking care of yourself in order to take care of others.
“There’s a great quote that I listened to about high performance. It was from Dr. Michael Gervais, who’s the high-performance psychologist for the Seattle Seahawks. He said the old-school way of thinking was that high performance begins where personal wellness ends, and if you think about that, that is the way that it used to be. If you were a great athlete it means you gave up all these other things. If you were a CEO, you gave up a structured family life, hobbies, and that’s an antiquated way of looking at things,” Shutler said. “If we want an optimized organization, we have to have leaders who take care of themselves, so they’re in the best psychological, physical and mental position to take care of other people, and that’s true in all aspects of leadership.”
He added that the book focuses on building trust, stability and realizing there’s more to life and leadership than external achievements.
“Ultimately, if you’re going to have a successful team, successful family or a successful organization, it’s about the people that you lead. It’s not about the leaders themselves, and so often that gets overlooked,” Shutler said. “That’s why we titled the book ‘Lead the People, Change the System’ because if you really want to make your family better, your community better or your school district better, it starts with taking care of the people that you lead, and just sitting back and watching them do a great job, and being perfectly comfortable with them getting the credit for the work they’re doing.”
Crook added that he and Shutler have collaborated and learned together through the years.
“What has really transpired is we’ve developed this philosophy together. We talk about the same problems so often, and our approach to the same problems has always come back to how we work with people, and from there we did a podcast, ‘Principal Soup,’ that didn’t really do so well, but from the podcast, we really solidified this framework, and that has really made all the difference,” Crook said. “I’ve learned that if you treat people like people, whatever system you’re trying to change is going to change because of how people are led, and not necessarily what you tell them to do or what you feel like you can make them do. I tell people all the time when you’re leading, you have to connect to the hearts and the minds.”
Shutler added that he believes the collaboration worked so well because it demonstrates the principles of good leadership are effective regardless of ZIP code.
He said Crook’s high school is in a larger city while Union Local is in a rural area, showcasing that regardless of where the book’s principles are implemented, they can be effective.
Shutler said the book took the duo about 18 months to complete.
“We started as a podcast. We put together a few podcasts on YouTube that did not generate a ton of listens, so we decided to pivot and we decided, you know, where could we reach a connection with an audience, and we felt like a book was the way to go, and we started taking some of our podcasts and transcribing them, creating new topics to talk and write about, and then you have all this different material,” Shutler said. “I’ve been in administration since I was 27 years old, and now I’m 46, so 20 years of administrative experience. He’s been a principal for about a decade, so you’ve got 30 years of these successes, failures and lessons.”
He added that the book is about 100 pages long, which was a decision the pair made to ensure more people would be inclined to read it.
“I think there’s some excellent stories and some analogies in there, and I think there’s a lot of things that will tug at people’s heartstrings,” Shutler said.
He added that one of his favorite stories in the book is about a previous Christmas Eve when his entire family watched old VHS tapes from his childhood.
“The whole point of the book is, you want to make things better for people around you. And ultimately, when you look around, do you have a full table? Because your organization might forget you. The awards are going to collect dust. But at the end of the day, if you can look around like we did on that Christmas Eve, and you see your wife, kids, your mom and dad, and you’re surrounded by family and you have a full table, that’s really the measurement for a successful life,” Shutler said.
“Lead the People, Change the System” is available on Amazon.