A common observation of independent school leaders goes like this: “When the head of school makes a big mistake, the board fires the head. When the board makes a big mistake, the board fires the head.”
This saying highlights the faulty reasoning behind many head dismissals. Quick leadership transitions may succeed in other industries, but they don’t usually work in the “business of relationships” that we call school. Boards that respond to a solvable problem by firing the head may believe that action is necessary and good for the school. In truth, these abrupt changes almost always hurt schools, with devastating effects on many people’s lives.
I’m not talking about the rare cases of gross negligence, incapacity, or criminal behavior that clearly justify a head’s dismissal. I’m talking about the all-too-common situation in which a head of school becomes the scapegoat for problems that could have been avoided or resolved with better communication and collaboration. In these situations, trustees often discover that a messy head transition adds complex new challenges to the issues behind the original rift between head and board. In particular, the rash decision to fire a head halts institutional momentum and generates constituent anxiety that weakens the school.
This article describes the damage that can result from abrupt or poorly managed changes in school leadership. My analysis of the circumstances behind these events includes examples from one school that closed after dismissing the head in midyear and from two others that found creative solutions to avoid an unplanned head transition. Two other points will complete the picture. I will describe a couple of trends that often create significant tension in board-head relationships. Then I will note the exceptional cases where trust in leadership is so low that an unplanned head transition is appropriate.
In general, my observations suggest that untimely leadership changes have become alarmingly common among independent schools. In the vast majority of cases, the circumstances do not merit a quick change in leaders. To make schools less vulnerable to such destructive impulses, I offer five principles of good governance that can help inoculate against this “disease.” My goal is to discourage trustees from changing horses in midstream and encourage them to place a higher value on leadership stability as they wrestle with the strategic challenges facing their school.
Planned vs. Unplanned Transitions
An orderly head of school transition, which can strengthen the institution, usually takes nine months to a year, from the initial announcement of one head leaving to the installation of a new one. Accelerating that timetable can be risky. Boards often lack the expertise and objectivity to manage a leadership transition on their own. Many schools need professional consultants to coordinate a successful head transition. The consultants will need time to work with school leaders to craft an appealing school profile/position statement, identify and recruit good candidates, whittle down the field to a short list of excellent finalists, engage in a careful process of choosing the next head, and then prepare the school for his or her arrival. A carefully planned and well-implemented transition process engages the support of all constituents to build a foundation for new leadership.
The “unplanned head transition” - mostly a euphemism for firing a head - refers to situations in which the change happens too fast, often during the academic year, and in a process that alienates major constituencies - all of whom are needed to support the school.
Many unplanned head transitions begin with a governance breakdown in one of two areas, and sometimes both. The first and most common one involves a pattern of conflict between the board chair and head of school, with a misreading of school culture or insufficient understanding of best practices. Large egos often lie at the heart of this problem. If either of those key individuals expects to lead the dance all the time, he or she will be out of step at some point, especially when strategic challenges or other circumstances require well-coordinated timing and decision making. Regarding these situations, the
NAIS Trustee Handbook tells us: “If the chair and head differ too greatly in style to be able to work together, the chair should consider resigning.” Few people outside of the board will notice or care if the chair steps down, but they may be outraged or deeply concerned if a well-respected head of school leaves abruptly.
The second governance issue that often leads to an untimely head departure involves a major breakdown in board-head relations. That partnership needs consistent care and attention in order to flourish. A vast storehouse of literature describes the essential practices of good governance. Most of them boil down to: sustaining a common sense of purpose and vision; good communication and problem solving; and clear understanding about shared decision making. Any weakness in those three areas may result in the cascading events - a series of mistakes and bad decisions - that usually precede an unplanned head transition.
Weakening Trust
The tragedy of errors described above can hurt a school in three major areas. First, it weakens trust in the school’s leadership. While the head may be the most visible leader to many constituencies, any head transition increases the visibility and importance of the board as a vital partner in leading the school. The conflict and confusion of an unplanned head transition, therefore, reduces confidence in both the board and the head.
Many in the school community will view the rift in leadership the way children view their parents’ divorce. They don’t know whom to trust or who will take care of the school community during the turmoil and beyond. In addition, when constituents observe any finger pointing and acrimony at the leadership level, they will question the school leaders’ commitment to core community values such as respect, caring, and personal responsibility.
A weakening of trust in school leadership usually elicits a fight or flight response. Some families may leave the school right away while others will apply elsewhere and tell friends they are planning to leave. News will spread among applicant parents, who may change their course as well. Teachers and staff may start looking for new jobs and talk about their searches openly with others in the community. News that one or two favorite teachers might leave can worsen the enrollment crisis, with potentially devastating effects on the budget. Major donors also hear about what’s going on and may withdraw their support.
These flight responses are troubling enough, but some community members may also fight back (even while packing their bags). For those who look for someone to blame, a board-head conflict offers many targets. Rumors fly. Alliances form. Secret meetings occur. Troops rally. Powerful individuals threaten lawsuits while others pool misinformation in parking lots and scurry around in the dark alleys of text messages, emails, and blogs. None of this is good for the school.
Threatening Stability
Second, unplanned leadership transitions often illuminate serious problems at the board level that trustees do not recognize or cannot effectively address. Changing the head of school may not resolve the board’s difficulty with establishing a common sense of purpose, good communications, and clarity about shared decision making. Given the energy a board must put into a leadership change, any precipitating issues associated with school finance, low enrollment, major policies, staffing, or program quality may go unaddressed for a year or more.
The process of firing a head usually creates tension and factions within a board. Inevitably some members will resign. Once the smoke clears, the board will need to find new members, and those recruits will need time to learn their role. Turnover in key leadership positions on the board tend to compromise its effectiveness for a while. The remaining leaders may have to address grievances and strengthen collaboration before the board functions well enough to fulfill its core responsibilities.
These transitional challenges at the board level will affect its capacity to recruit, hire, orient, and learn to collaborate with a new head of school. Promising board candidates may decline to join. Promising head candidates may look elsewhere. If the head transition happens during the school year, the trustees may have to choose between filling the vacancy quickly or appointing an interim head from within or outside the community. All these factors make it extremely difficult to reestablish leadership stability, especially during this time of fierce competition to recruit top candidates for headships.
Compromising Learning
Third, unplanned leadership transitions can also weaken the educational program, although most teachers will do everything in their power to safeguard the children and maintain a healthy educational routine.
One school offers an especially vivid example that is best described as a slow train wreck. In that unfortunate situation, the trustees dismissed the founding head of 24 years in January because of financial problems that were ultimately the board’s responsibility. The teachers’ dedication to fulfilling the school mission and taking care of students was impressive. Yet the learning environment definitely changed when half the students and faculty left by June. The school limped along for two more years under the leadership of three interim heads. It closed two and a half years after dismissing the founding head, with great disruption in the lives of faculty, students, and families.
Highly effective boards and heads consider the downstream impact of every decision by asking, “How will this action affect the students and the long-term health of the school?” Most boards that preside over an unplanned head transition fail to give enough attention to that question. The same is true of most heads that lock horns with their board. Doing what’s best for the students and the school should motivate the head and trustees to compromise where needed.
Creative Problem Solving
I have observed the boards at two independent schools pull back from an untimely head transition by making significant changes that redefined the headship as a temporary position for one more year, with specific short-term goals. That strategy bought time for addressing the underlying issues and planning an orderly leadership transition.
In one case, the head was in conflict with many trustees, particularly with the board chair, over several issues related to change management. With help from a trusted governance consultant and a former board chair, the school leaders reassigned key responsibilities to cool the immediate conflict and allow the head to complete the school year.
According to this “musical chairs solution,” the head groomed a seasoned administrator to serve as interim head the following year. The board chair stepped down for one year to lead a transition planning committee that handled negotiations to design the interim headship. The vice chair of the board also became temporary board chair, with primary responsibility for supporting the outgoing head and managing communications. These changes during the head’s last year helped set the stage for hiring the interim head long term. Responsible follow-through by all concerned saved the community from needless disruption, and the departing head found an exciting school leadership position elsewhere.
At another school, the board chair and head were a good team, but a powerful faction of renegade trustees emerged under the leadership of a major donor to demand the head’s resignation and challenge the board chair’s leadership. Strategic financial challenges made the school especially vulnerable to the potential consequences of a leadership crisis. After consulting with a couple of experienced heads in the school association, the board chair and head renewed their commitment to the school, rallied support from other trustees, isolated the renegade faction and compelled them to step down.
Three key elements helped make this strategy work. The head announced he would leave after completing the next school year. The board chair convinced her predecessor to become a trustee and assist with the head search, and, finally, these three leaders spent the year rebuilding the board with keen attention to recruitment, orientation, training, and good governance. That collaboration was so successful the school was able to recruit an excellent new leader, and the outgoing head had a great story to tell as a finalist for other headships. He became a successful head elsewhere.
We can benefit a great deal from these examples of stalwart dedication to the school mission by leaders who put aside self-interest and their own egos to design a new way of working together. They needed some help, however. In both cases, a former board chair played a key role in negotiations and in reassuring the school community about the changes taking place. Consultation with governance experts from outside the school community was crucial at key stages. In some cases, a professional mediator can also make a big difference in forging a creative solution that avoids an unplanned head transition.
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These conclusions are affirmed by others in the field, including Patrick F. Bassett, former president of NAIS. In an interview, he said, “Myopia on the part of board members, and a complete misreading of academic cultures, prevents them from seeing the public relations and staff morale disaster that a precipitous, behind-closed-doors, mid-course dismissal of the head of school inevitably produces. Whatever breakdown propels a board to move so quickly, without awareness or concern about the long-term well-being of the institution, is almost always dangerous for the school.” When it’s clear that a school does need a change in heads, Bassett added, “some mediation can produce a change in leadership on a reasonable and appropriate timetable, without all the collateral damage of a sudden and unexpected departure.”
Trend Watching
Anecdotal evidence from my conversations with other school association directors suggests that leadership changes of this kind are becoming more common nationwide, but we don’t have reliable data that distinguishes among the different kinds of head transitions. Good data would be hard to gather because many head dismissals are forced resignations achieved with the promise of severance pay and announced as amicable departures. At the risk of generalizing from a small sample, I can report that seven out of 33 independent schools in Colorado have experienced unplanned head transitions in the past six years. That high frequency has made me keenly interested in looking for patterns.
I see two trends among independent schools, and in society at large, that seem to make boards unusually quick to dismiss their head of school. First, the strategic challenges facing many independent schools create a greater sense of urgency among trustees to “do something” that will improve the school’s financial viability or address other perceived weaknesses. Often the dance of partnership with their head seems frustratingly slow. So they decide to look for a more dynamic, inspiring, or marketing-savvy head of school who will act more quickly to address these challenges.
Second, boards often import ideas from other industries where conventional wisdom favors getting a new CEO as the best way to shake up the organization and make it more competitive in a changing marketplace. On the surface this makes sense, but the “product” sold by independent schools includes the quality of relationships that families experience and the core values that mediate those relationships. These factors also help sustain the dedication of teachers, who stay partly for the quality of work relationships even though other jobs pay more. Discarding a head of school, instead of engaging constituents in a carefully managed transition process, can tear the fabric of relational trust that holds the community together.
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Exceptional Cases
Despite all I have said, there are anomalous situations in which the board may have sufficient justification for an unplanned head transition without making an attempt at creative problem solving. In these cases, the board correctly reads the school culture by recognizing that trust in the head’s leadership is extremely low, with little chance of improvement. After some attempt at conflict resolution, the trustees realize that key individuals cannot make the compromises needed for creative problem solving. Most important, the board leaders also consult legal counsel and other experts to assess risks, weigh costs and benefits, and make sure their action will serve the school well. In these situations, the school community actually welcomes the change, as long as the board demonstrates fidelity to core values by managing the transition with appropriate respect for the head’s achievements and careful planning to provide effective leadership going forward.
Lessons Learned
Five principles are worthy of careful attention to avoid the circumstances that lead to abrupt and damaging head of school transitions:
- Place high value on leadership stability in all aspects of institutional design (i.e., policies, procedures, bylaws, budget planning, strategic processes, and donor relations).
- Plan well for leadership transitions involving the head and board chair, with emphasis on fostering a strong partnership and providing sufficient continuity at both levels.
- Design effective systems for the performance evaluation of heads and trustees, with good communication to ensure strategic alignment, support shared decision making, and maintain trust in leadership.
- Whenever possible, address conflicts among leaders through creative problem solving and collaboration to sustain a culture that embraces constructive disagreement.
- Educate school heads and trustees to ensure they have the skills and understanding needed to implement the best practices noted above.
Independent schools have enough challenges these days without exacerbating them by creating unnecessary leadership instability. Proactive measures combined with prudent restraint and creative problem solving can avoid the destructive effects of most unplanned head transitions. There is almost always a better response to board-head conflict than changing horses in midstream.
Notes
1. Mimi Baer, “Conflict in Schools: Reducing Conflict and Building Community,”
Independent School, Winter 2010.
2.Rob Evans, “Why a School Doesn’t Run - or Change - Like a Business,”
Independent School, Spring 2000.