Nixa superintendent pens book on trust, leadership

Gearl Loden started writing down lessons he’d learned about how leaders build and maintain trust. It was meant for his sons.

“I wanted them to have what no one handed me, a clear way to think about trust before it is tested under pressure,” he said.

The Nixa Public Schools superintendent’s labor of love evolved into a book titled “Before It Breaks: The Seven Pillars of Trust Every Leader Must Build.”

It will be available to the public July 7. The hardcover price is nearly $35, but there are also paperback and electronic versions for less.

“What I did not expect was how much the lessons I have gathered from decades of leading organizations and walking alongside other leaders needed to be shared beyond my own family,” he wrote in the introduction. “‘Before It Breaks’ is not theory. It is a collection of practical tools and hard-earned lessons for leaders who understand that trust is not built in a crisis. It is built long before one arrives.”

In an interview, Loden said he taught many of the principles in the book during leadership workshops and found they resonated with leaders in education and many other sectors. He said they responded to his stories, which included what he learned from leadership missteps.

“The stories are real, the book is real, and you learn from your mistakes,” said Loden, 56. “People hold back sometimes for fear of making a mistake.”

Loden, founder and CEO of Loden Leadership and Consulting Group, has spent 35 years in education. He is entering his ninth year in Nixa and 18th overall as a superintendent.

He overcame speech, ADHD and dyslexia learning challenges to earn a doctorate from the University of Mississippi and start a teaching career. He was previously named Mississippi’s Superintendent of the Year and was a finalist for a national superintendent award last year, according to the website of the National Association of School Superintendents.

The book explores the seven pillars of trust – character, consistency, communication, competence, clarity and courage – and provides steps for how to rebuild when trust breaks. He trademarked a 72-hour repair protocol and 90-day trust rebuild processes.

“The foundation of everything we have is trust, and if you’re in an environment where people trust each other, you’re going to have flow, you’re going to have synergy, you’re going to have – especially in a room where you’ve got smart people – some very creative conversations,” he said. “People may look at say ‘That cabinet looks like they’re fighting,’ but they’re not. They’re having creative tension.”

Loden said even though his background is education, the lessons are transferrable to other leadership positions. He said the book is more practical than motivational.

“I wrote this book for the CEO, senior leader, superintendent, founder or executive whose decisions shape what others experience as their day, who senses that something isn’t landing the way they intend,” he wrote in the introduction. “It is for those who work harder than most people around them and still feel the weight of uncertainty in the system.”

The book includes eight signals that there is a “trust drift” in a work environment, including that fewer questions are asked in meetings and rumors spreading faster than official communication, and how to address the concerns in a straightforward manner.

He argues that leaders must create a system, or scaffolding, to maintain trust. A large section at the back of the book, and an online workbook, provide examples of challenges, a detailed framework for how to implement the concepts, and ways to check progress.

“The book is to help you be a better leader for the people around you and also to reflect back and say ‘I can still grow, I can still evolve in other areas, and I can get better, and maybe I have blind spots,’” Loden said. “It’d be an awesome tool for people to use with their teams.”