November is a weird month. I know I said I would start posting twice a month but it’s hard to figure out which two Fridays in November make any sense!
However, I felt motivated today to write down a few thoughts, so I figured - strike while the writing iron is hot.
I reconnected with some members of my former senior team yesterday. Before I met up, although I was looking forward to catching up as people, I was a little trepidatious about how I might feel afterwards. Would I feel left behind? Clueless? Useless? Stinging regret for my life choices? Filled with vague shame about problems I had left behind after my exit?
It turned out none of these fears came true.
One thing that was absolutely the case was that after seeing people daily for years and years, working closely, trusting each other, sharing a hundred jokes, knowing what you were all doing every weekend, and hearing news about people’s families and friends, it can feel like going cold turkey to leave a workplace. And I think for an organization’s leader and certain senior team members, there is an intimacy that is hard to completely capture when you are deeply engaged together in mission driven work.
And then, mainly, I was pretty amazed by the sheer amount we got done in the years of working together. There were entire achievements that were huge at the time but we had just forgotten about. (Anyone out there ever sell a private water company - with residential customers - to a public utility? Anyone? Buehler?) And then the pandemic was like plugging in everything at once and having the fuses go haywire - things like the water company sale just sank from view.
What this got me to contemplating was - what is the secret sauce in a powerful team that can come together and execute? And keep on executing? I think at least these three elements have to be present:
Values
At bottom, truly mission-driven people are going to execute because they can’t not execute. If you believe in what you are doing - and if the case to be made is basically to continually improve the experience of students - you will keep grappling with the interesting, people based problems in front of you to come up with new and fresh solutions.
Note: A lot of folks in mission driven orgs can appear mission-driven as people… but they aren’t. If these people are satisfied with and invested in the status quo for reasons they can articulate or, even worse, not articulate, they aren’t really mission-driven types. I would say they are mission-fulfilled people. There is nothing wrong with this. They love the mission as it is and how it is currently being executed and how it is manifesting in the culture. It suits them for a variety of reasons. They fit in; they have a home. They are serving many important purposes within your organization. An administrative team facing 21st century change can tolerate some of this but if the majority of the team, or the leader, falls into this category, nothing much is going to get done except for tinkering.
No fragile egos
Related to being mission driven, as individuals, the highest performing senior team members I can think of working with during my career were all people who were more interested in grappling with the problems in front of them than whether they were right or whether they were going to gain from it or what it was going to do for their resumes or worrying whether executing on a project was going to make people dislike them. The problem, and how to bring your talent to bear on the problem, is the important thing.
Note: No one has no ego. And having a healthy ego means having good and appropriate boundaries.
Rapport
If you share the same values, you then have a head start with rapport and chemistry. The most important aspect of rapport is building a real pleasure in problem solving together. And there can be real pleasure in debate and conflict if you all respect each other. In an ideal world, finding humor even in complicated and exhausting situations is a huge plus.
Note: Searching for rapport can lead to the slippery slope of hiring people whose profile is just like you as the leader. You need to figure out the signs to look for the ability to build rapport in the hiring process. Ready-made rapport might indicate you are too similar. Rapport between people is a skill that can be built.
In periods of relative stability, i.e. not in a pandemic, as the leader, there are many things you can do to bring out these qualities in your team. It is a lot of work, starting with hiring. Hiring does not always work out the way you think it might. Teams also wax and wane, much like people. Any team can tolerate lower functioning members at any given time and the leader needs to adjust accordingly and maybe even take definitive management steps. What this means is that the leader needs to allocate the significant time necessary to hiring, onboarding and then having purposeful meetings and retreats. And all of that is a full time job in and of itself. It was deeply frustrating to me during the pandemic to feel as if I never quite had the time and energy to put towards this attentiveness to the team that I would have preferred to give.
There has been no greater and deeper satisfaction than getting around a table with talented people, putting a meaty problem on the table, and really struggling with solutions whose implementation will positively impact kids, families, whoever your constituents are. When you have team members that have enough trust in each other to take risks, get creative, and go that extra mile, the results can be astonishing. And you have created a personal bond that will endure.
ASK A FORMER HEAD
I would LOVE to hear your questions and write some posts as answers. This follows on my video presentation for the CS&A Women’s Institute this week on salary negotiation. Part of what I tried to do there was shed some light on what is going on in the mind of the head when someone comes in to negotiate salary. I’m happy to recap that later this month in a newsletter post.
What are YOUR questions??
Questions about headship? About how to become one? Why not to become one? About how budgets are created? About how the board of trustees works? About why tuition is so high? Do heads play favorites with the faculty? What goes on in a senior admin team meeting?
Of course I can only answer from my perspective and I was head at one very specific institution with a very specific culture and assistant head at another very specific school with a very specific culture.. BUT - All schools are the same and all schools are very different, at the same time.
Email me at jfaulstich@stonycreekstrategy.com or leave a question in the Substack comment section. Anyone who emails me with a question will remain anonymous in the newsletter.
“Stony Creek Diaries” will launch next Tuesday with some thoughts about midlife transition, elderly parents, and raccoons. All TOOS subscribers will receive one in their inbox.
This preternaturally warm fall continues. Enjoy the 72 degree weather, New Englanders!
Julie