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Apologies this is a few days late!
You Are Not Alone!
I was talking to an executive coach who works with heads recently. A head told him his job felt as if it had become the equivalent of “landing jumbo jets safely in the fog.”
You are not alone if you’re a head - or a senior leader - and you’re thinking about how complicated your job has become. While there is still much joy to be found in working with kids and serving families, and while you may enjoy a good challenge or learning new skills - you’re not alone if you’re thinking I didn’t sign up for this!
Over the past week I reflected on what posts have gotten the most attention - views, new subscribers, people reaching out to me in emails - and the pattern that emerges is about coming to grips with this complex time in schools - with enrollment shifts, increasing leadership demands, making governance work and insight into how to navigate it all as a female leader.
What I expected headship to be, as someone who came up in schools starting in 1996 and became a head in 2015, and what the experience actually turned out to be was sometimes so hard to square it felt fundamentally disorienting. Of course, headship is likely always different from what you imagined when you’re actually sitting in the seat, but it was more than that. I know I’m not alone in this experience.
The seeds for a major shift were planted in the 2008 financial crisis but it took a few years for many schools to really feel that pinch. A school’s current families had figured out how to cover tuition in 2008. Tuitions were less expensive sixteen years ago. The demographic downturn hadn’t fully taken hold and tuition capable families hadn’t geographically redistributed themselves as they did during the pandemic. But the financial aid number creeps up, markets shrink gradually and then here you are in a whole new reality. So I think for heads starting out post-2008, this has been a particularly difficult period to lead - we had an idea in our heads, the goalposts kept shifting but we kept trying to adapt, or even force, strategy and tactics from pre-2008 that had worked well, into a new, shape-shifting paradigm impacted by culture, politics, technology and demographics that had all the stability of a sandcastle.
I don’t want to overly romanticize the past. Schools are full of kids trying to figure stuff out and who need support in myriad ways we aren’t always great at providing. They’re full of parents who want to see their kids happy but can’t get out of the way or who don’t have any models for good parenting. Employees are human and they have good years and bad years. Where there are people, there is conflict. Schools have always been hard to run!
But there were many underlying factors that at least made it feel, on most days, possible to deliver on the mission without having a nervous breakdown. Just one example is that you may not have been able to fill every open faculty position with a superstar experienced teacher but you could fill the position and inflation had not made a 3% annual raise seem pathetic. Falling demographics in parts of the country have caused a sea change to a school’s market, thus the great interest in what has appeared in TOOS about enrollment and marketing. A recent Boston Globe article details a steady, downward decline in Massachusetts private school enrollment so that it has decreased 49% over the past 40 years and other than at the most elite schools, this downward trajectory is projected to continue. (And at elite schools, they are reaching into the pool of the schools down the pecking order to stay robust…)
So yes, it’s hard out there, on pretty much every level.
The Top Four Topics On Your Minds
Number One - he undeniable champion, top of mind issue is…
Enrollment and marketing!
The champ: My interview with Niche’s Angela Brown about marketing is the most viewed post ever as of today!
“If we're all just looking at each other and repeating the same tactics, you're just never going to get there.”
My interview with Norwood School’s Director of Enrollment Management Alex Ragone is not far behind in terms of views!
“…is the admissions team communicating the right mission and vision of the school? And are they looking for the right people?
Five Steps to Close Enrollment Gaps came out of the gate strong back in April and has continued to accrue views and attract new subscribers all year.
“Make sure your re-enrollment process starts early and the information going out to parents is clear as to what is expected of them. Be warm and be professional. Be buttoned up. This is important and can be an easy victory for your overall enrollment picture.”
Number Two
Leading in complicated times
The champ: The First Year of Headship: Five Guiding Principles
“It is serious business to be a first time head. It’s perfectly scary and it’s impossible to earn a perfect score on every aspect of headship. But is’a also an amazing opportunity and a chance to grow and stretch and learn about yourself…”
Not far behind: Leading Change in an Unpredictable World
“If you’re a school leader right now, the chances are you are leading change at some level….Not many schools are operating on memory and autopilot right now.”
Pretty much a tie with the above post: Transitions are Hard
“Transitions are exciting… yadda yadda yadda. They are also challenging, tiring and make you use muscles you haven’t used in a while, and sometimes, haven’t used at all.”
Number Three
Governance
If it’s hard to be a school leader in such complicated times, it’s also very hard to be a board member. There is a real hunger out there for new approaches and support in how to make the governance function work. Trustees can have unrealistic expectations for a head’s and a school’s performance in a rapidly changing world, not because they are jerks but because they don’t have a clear understanding and because they are the boss and have a general sense it’s all on them if things aren’t smooth sailing, it can be hard for the head to level with them. I have questions as to how head search consultants are preparing boards as they enter a head search. Boundaries can seem obvious and clear during a training but become very blurry as events unfold and emotions rise. This stuff is complicated and often ambiguous and hard to unpack! How does a head and a board get on, and stay on, the same page?
The champ: - Governance as Stewardship
“Do you feel that your board sees its main work as “scrutinizing management”? Many conversations I’ve had over the past six months about governance end up in a resigned and defeated place - words like “broken,” “untenable,” “unsustainable” come up.”
And many inquiries about Communications Skills for Boards workshops
Number Four
The post that had the most shares and the most new subscribers this fall and the most people reach out to me to comment how it resonated…
Women and Leadership, Part One
“Are men limited by the expectation they are comfortable wielding hard power and are women limited by the belief that soft power and influence are their only viable tools?”
There are systemic issues that aren’t going away anytime soon. The patriarchy is a thing and it’s not a thing we can simply shove aside and all get on with our lives. Gender roles are baked in all over our society and in fact, even in our schools! There were men interviewed by CNN before the election who said they wouldn’t vote for a women for president because she’s “too emotional” for the job. Yes, this was a thing that was said!
There are other ways that women leaders can reflect on how they can navigate their way through all this and get clarity on what’s worth it, what’s not, and what her role is in establishing the expectations. More on that coming before next Friday in Women and Leadership, Part Two.
So here we are!
You are not alone if things seem really challenging right now.
You are not alone if you are wondering what happened to your school’s market and everyone is looking at leadership to “fix it” aka “bring back the past.”
You are not alone if the governance function feels not quite robust enough to meet the moment.
You are not alone if you feel like our longstanding societal systems and beliefs are making all the headwinds just that much harder to push through.
It’s Not Always the “Best Year Ever”
I also really wish we could let go of the “best year ever” narrative. I recently read in a retired head’s blog something to the effect that, “if a school is well run, it is fully enrolled” and it made me want to throw my laptop across the room. We can’t get away from the fact that independent schools are part of our larger system of elite institutions, I fear we are grasping onto that elite status with both hands in a way that is preventing innovation or collaboration or helping us serve the real, complicated kids who could have life changing experiences at our schools. The sense of a pecking order that is part of our independent school culture needs to go.
The more we can get real that it is hard running a thriving independent school, the more we can come to grips with what that means and how to move forward. Because right now, it is hard to run even a fully enrollment, well funded school.
The Fears That Hold Us All Back
Everyone needs to improve their fear of conflict and their fear of change and we need to talk about how the very natural fears of conflict and change hold people back. It’s not a deficiency but it also can’t be ignored and with practice, it can be reduced.
For enrollment and marketing - that means embracing who the school is today, in every way, and then telling that story in a direct and authentic way. It may also mean getting real about budget and expectations - what is a realistic enrollment number? Who can we serve and who can we not, and why - and is the “not” just opening the door to another line of questioning a school needs to explore?
For leadership and governance - it’s about establishing open and trusting dialogues and relationships between that joint leadership function and between the leadership functions and the community. The more we can surface what is being left unsaid, the questions left unasked, the unspoken but deeply cherished expectations that are not met, the more we can live in reality and not nurture a vague fantasy of “better” leaders who could effortlessly make a school thrive, bask in the adoration of community members and the vague picture of a school with wait lists and faculty who stay put for their entire career.
Probably the biggest piece of insight I can offer in general is, leaders need to say the things. You can be positive and optimistic about the future while being honest and direct about the obstacles facing the school. Figure out ways to invite people in to help provide solutions rather than just sniping from the sidelines. Wade into the stuff you’d rather avoid. Be honest that there aren’t simple answers. Give people the respect of treating them like adults rather than needing to solve everything for them.
All the cliches are true - you can’t be everything to everyone, both as a school and as a leader. There is no free lunch. The only constant is change. But we have trouble putting these things into action in school communities where sentimentality and nostalgia are often powerfully present. There’s nothing wrong with a good, long wallow in nostalgia from time to time and it feels especially pertinent to say this during the holidays. I always think I love the holidays and then I get here and feel slightly overwhelmed for the entire month of December and even though there is joy, there is also a sigh of relief on January 2. But living there is an exercise in futility and a recipe for exhaustion. You can let it go.
See you next Friday with Women and Leadership, Part Two!
Julie
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