(July 1) Transitions are Hard

And other obvious but maybe not so obvious observations on transitions

First off - warm congratulations for all of you heads and senior administrators starting new positions at new schools last week. I am rooting for you!

Has it been a week?

It feels more like a month!

The next time I move, I am going to pack a suitcase, leash up the dogs and hand the key to the next occupant with best wishes. During cleaning out, discarding, donating, packing, and now, unpacking (and not the fun, “time to arrange things” unpacking phase - I’m in the “why did they use so much paper to transport these socks and what do I do with all this paper, let alone all these giant boxes? Is all this paper recyclable? Do I put it out with recycling or garbage? Why don’t moving companies all come back and take these giant boxes from my living room?” unpacking.)

Also during this phase I fully comprehended my compulsive online shopping coping mechanism to manage the pandemic/head of school stress combo platter. I think at the time every piece of cute clothing looked like it would ease my psychic pain, but I think hitting the “add to your cart” button was in reality probably all I needed. So many clothes with tags still on! Then there was the “a better bra will completely change my life” phase. Then the “a better dog harness will completely change my life” phase. And finally the “a better pair of socks will completely change my life” phase. And for that one, I had both athletic socks AND dress socks to sample! Different lengths, shades, materials, thicknesses and thinness-es. So. Many. Socks.

That were then wrapped in too much paper and transported to my new house. 

Suffice to say - as make my way, one day at a time style, through this life change, I keep thinking of a very simple thing the great longtime head of school at Walnut Hill, Stephanie Perrin, said to me as we muddled our way through a January professional development day with a bunch of grouchy low energy faculty returning from the winter break: transitions are hard. 

For a really long time, I wasn’t making a professional transition in July, or at least one that totally turned my life upside down. During my long tenure at Walnut Hill, I held a series of positions with increasing authority, and I moved campus housing six or seven times, and while these certainly had challenges and adjustments, they weren’t fundamental existential changes to the fabric of my life.

Moving to a new school to take on a leadership position July 1 is a fundamental existential change, whether it’s as a new head or a senior administrator. Faculty positions are another matter, as you’re generally coming in with a cohort towards the end of the summer where you have some form of break to readjust between jobs. Of course, moving schools in general has its existential challenges - I think in many ways it carries with it as major a culture shock as moving to a new country. But there is something about the expectation that senior admins and heads of school are responsible right up until June 30th for their current duties at one school and then wake up the next day responsible for a whole new set of things one has,, at best, only barely gotten one’s mind around at another school - that seems particularly bonkers. 

I am sure there are schools and boards of trustees who have mastered the art of on-boarding and off-boarding their new, and their exiting, heads of school and I would love to learn from you. Tell me who you are!

I felt mostly in both instances from my perspective it was the blind leading the blind in the most well meaning way. It is awkward and weird to enter the culture as the boss. It creates an instant social power vacuum for all except either the most clueless or the most socially skilled. The first night I arrived on campus, a longtime senior admin told me a group was gathering to watch the husband of a faculty member compete in a reality show but I was probably tired so he wasn’t going to invite me. That’s weird and it certainly could have been handled with more finesse. But to cut some slack - it’s a weird situation. We are in a workplace, however “familial” it is supposed to be. I was his boss. You barely know each other. There are significant stakes. My new neighbor and I are doing a similar social dance as we get to know each other and are feeling out our boundaries - hospitality vs obligation - but at least there’s no professional power dynamic involved.

And then off-boarding is also a dance. You want to be responsible and “do your job” but it’s also time for other people to weigh in on decisions that will impact them as you’ll be gone soon. I also realized I was not in crackerjack shape to make judgments when I was profoundly tired, trying to deal with managing my own emotions at my departure, as well as grappling with a total life change - and managing two parents with dementia who needed to be re-informed I was leaving my job on a regular basis. Professionally, the path of least resistance in regards to decision making starts to look incredibly appealing.

And I’ll be honest, I totally stunk at on-boarding new senior administrators July 1. Most of the time by July 1st, I was dragging myself along just to respond to email. I relied pretty much completely on the relational component, which is not exactly a system or a real orientation to the eccentricities of the specific Westover culture they were entering. And in a few cases, early on, it was “Hey, glad you’re here. Here’s your office; there’s the bathroom. I think the dining hall might have some coffee? Here are the 1,700 things we needed to get done yesterday. Let me know if you have any questions!” Thank you to those folks - you know who you are. 

I think there are many, many components that go into the complexity of successfully on-boarding heads of school and senior admins July 1. One for heads of school - at least in the boarding world - is that the job was designed for a hetero-normie pair and the wife dealt with the everything on the home front as she generally did not have a job off campus. I was my own wife. There’s a whole other post about the head of school as symbolic parent but that’s for another time. It did feel worth mentioning in this post about transitions, though, because even though I think even thirty-plus years ago, when a lot of heads already did not fall into this category, the expectations never adjusted, or they had to be pushed individually in negotiations when a head took a job (house cleaning service for the head’s house, laundry service, etc.). And again - for those boarding schools that have mastered transitioning a modern family into a headship - I’m all ears. Let’s broadcast it for the benefit of everyone else.

Another complexity lends itself to a much bigger question. The whole independent school industry runs on rituals and practices that make any one school changing its practices very difficult, as we are all interwoven. This goes from everything from the curriculum/standardized testing connection to basic graduation requirements and college admission, all the way to the cycles of hiring and transition. We have all lived through the pain of working with a faculty member or administrator whose agreement for the next year has not been renewed and we all have to make it work no matter how problematic or just downright uncomfortable it is. I’m not talking about a situation so bad it’s “escorted out to the car” time, but those bad fit situations. 

And how is someone supposed to be completely responsible for one high level set of responsibilities on one day and then completely invested in another, at another institution, the next day? There is only so much on-boarding one can do when performing a consuming job and add to that, the strong possibility that as part of this new set of responsibilities,  you and your entire family have to figure out relocating. 

But it’s how it works. 

I think there are many small ways schools and boards can make the July 1 transition better, but there are structural problems in the way of really making the onboarding experience the kind of developmental, immersive, substantial orientation that would be much more ideal to set up a new head for a long stretch of successful leadership at our schools. I think the small ways involve having an active and involved transition committee made up a few trustees, a senior admin, and other key community members that starts as soon as the new head is hired and that is as concerned - or probably more - with getting to know the head as it is with logistics or getting them an email account. It involves treating everyone like humans - the outgoing head being treated with respect and care, fostering a professional relationship between the head-elect and soon to be former head. It needs a lot of intention and attention by people passionate about the school who are not the current head or incoming head. This is all achievable if the time is made for it and the bandwidth is provided for staffing it properly.

But often the incoming people - heads or senior admins - simply don’t have the time to participate in this, because of how it works and the obligations of their current jobs. 

And then there is the need for a new head of school to hit the ground running. I know the Westover interim head of school has plenty on his plate as of July 1 and I did everything I could to set things up as best I could - but this fall’s COVID policies and procedures won’t finalize themselves and there’s a line of people with questions about the upcoming year. Plus new senior admins who need to be onboarded themselves. With all the best intentions, some things have been in a holding pattern until the new person takes the reigns. No time for thoughtful, in-depth orientation for a new head. 

NAIS’s Institute for New Heads was a wonderful experience for me but it does not address the problems I am underscoring here - how do we best set up new heads for a long tenure at a specific school with a specific culture? 

How do we make industry-wide change when we are a bunch of proud independents with different cultures, priorities and needs?

Head of school and senior administrative burnout is real, as real as faculty burnout. And if we don’t start from the beginning, with how we onboard and support these roles right from the very start, I think we as an industry are stuck in the old definition of insanity - trying the same thing and expecting a different result.

I would love to hear any thoughts in the comments!

A wonderful weekend to you all.

Julie