Are you curious how your board stacks up on the crucial roles and
responsibilities of trusteeship? A
great way for trustees to find out, together, is to take a walk through Friends
Council’s or NAIS’ Principles of Good Practice.
Over the years I’ve noticed one particular principle that
often raises eyebrows, good questions, and rich insights. In the Friends Council version, it’s this
one:
The
Relationship with the Head
The
Board selects, nurtures, supports and evaluates the head. It contracts with the head and sets the
head’s compensation.
In follow-up discussions, trustees often voice a range of
surprised reactions:
·
Support
our head? No, actually, she
supports us!
·
We haven’t
thought about this before. Why is
it important?
·
This is
one of our board goals – but now we notice we don’t have a single specific
action step for doing it. Are we
providing any real support at all?
By the way, heads may be equally surprised by this
idea. One head I know recently
said, “I like the idea of support, though in my personal life I usually think
of it as help for an area of weakness.
I don’t really want that kind of attention from my board.” I loved this comment. For one thing, it made me realize that in
my time as head of school, I wanted (and most often got) just the opposite:
attention from my board in my areas of strength. This can be quite energizing, of course. And isn’t this where we’d expect to get
the most forward motion?
Frankly, surprise is understandable, especially since in
many schools governance culture has relied on having the head at the center,
motivating and empowering and sometimes even directing the board. There are many disadvantages to this
model.* Just to name two, it’s an
efficient way to prematurely wear out a head. And second, it forfeits the key opportunity of having a full
strategic partnership between board and head.
The literature on governance is very clear in pointing out
that rapid turnover in the headship is hard on schools (Bassett, 2010). Some say, in fact, that schools start
getting the best return on their investment in a head between years 8 and 15
(Littleford, 2005) and yet many heads don’t stay that long. In my own conversations with heads, one
of the reasons I most often hear is burnout at the top – caused by overwork, a feeling
that one has to carry the entire institution on one’s shoulders, and sometimes lack
of partnership with or appreciation from boards.
With these thoughts in mind, perhaps the best reasons for
nurturing and supporting your head are:
1.
To build optimal professional development into
the head’s job (in short order accruing benefit to the school)
2.
To prolong the productive span of the headship
3.
To build trust in the board-head partnership --
always important but crucial if hard decisions or big changes are ahead
4.
To enhance the joint board-head productivity
picture
What, you might ask, are some concrete ways boards have
found to nurture and support their heads?
Here’s a partial list from my recent experience, ranging from ideas that
are easily affordable to more expensive options:
·
Ask your head what he would like in terms
of support and nurturing.
·
Make time to build the relationship.
·
Do an annual evaluation of your head and then
publicly affirm the great job she’s doing, highlighting specific
accomplishments as well as your enthusiasm for future endeavors.
·
Notice the great job your head is doing and
share your appreciation directly, face-to-face.
·
Check in with your head about the number of
hours he works each week and, if the total is unsustainable, figuring out how
to reduce those hours together.
·
Develop a board culture that operates
effectively on all three levels: fiduciary, strategic, and generative.
·
Educate and re-educate board members about their
roles and boundaries.
·
Preserve the head’s capital by planning ahead
for controversial or difficult decisions; as board and head, share community splash-back
if you can.
·
Make sure your head has a well-funded budget for
her own professional development separate from the faculty development line.
·
Arrange for a partial or full sabbatical year.
*BTW, the opposite model, where the board is calling the
shots and the head isn’t fully functioning at the strategic level, doesn’t work
any better -- and may result in the same rapid turnover in the head’s office.
Littleford,
John. “The Longevity of Heads and
the Effectiveness of Schools,” Littleford and Assoc. Website, Feb. 2005.
Bassett,
Pat. “Assuring Healthy Schools,” Independent School Magazine, Summer
2010.
To hear Pat Bassett's
thoughts on this topic from a recent Trustee U video, click here.
Your thoughts? I invite you to share them, using the
comment box below.
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