Evaluating a Head of School: Guest Blogger John C. Allman

Entering my fourteenth year as a Head of School, at two different schools, I continue to find board evaluation of the Head to be a fragile process, even as I have worked with supportive, sophisticated, grounded boards members committed to advance the best interests of the institutions they serve.

Below are five fundamental perplexities that, from my perspective, can make Head of School evaluation so fragile. Please understand that these observations are not a description of the annual realities I’ve experienced at either of the schools at which I have served as Head. Rather, I offer these observations as distillations of elements I’ve noticed at various times and in various circumstances at schools where I have served as a trustee, as a part of reaccreditation teams examining board governance, and as a head.

I wish I could report that my years as Head have provided me with the wisdom to resolve these perplexities, but they have not. Perhaps what my experience has provided me is a deeper awareness of and keener sensitivity to the unsettling dynamics that can underlie head evaluation.

Intelligence Gathering
How does the board get good information about the Head of School’s performance? Can or should the board trust information provided by the Head of School? Are there reliable sources of information, independent of the Head of School?

Shared Standards
How does a board comprising diverse individuals (often 20 or more) with differing visions of effective leadership and with differing levels of familiarity with the school’s current operations arrive at a common understanding of the Head’s performance, stable enough to withstand contrary opinions expressed by various power brokers within and outside the board?

The Secret Scorecard
In the absence of clear evaluative benchmarks, Head of School evaluation can be governed by The Secret Scorecard (working in concert with the Unwritten Mission) – the varied, unspoken standards of evaluation used by individual trustees to assess performance, at times based on individual or small-group perspectives presumed to be widespread. The effect of the Secret Scorecard on the Head’s performance can be to manage and lead in response to individual trustee agendas.

Avoidable and Unavoidable Turbulence
In the process of implementing difficult improvements, how much turbulence do various trustees expect and how much will they tolerate? In such circumstances, how does the board distinguish between unavoidable turbulence and turbulence amplified by clumsy, careless, imprudent leadership?  How can a board anticipate the intensity of turbulence likely to accompany difficult change and prepare itself to withstand criticism for its support of such change and its support of the change agents involved.

Community Approval
It is the rare board that doesn’t harbor hopes that its Head will enjoy high approval ratings from various constituencies. To what extent is popularity, over time, a key benchmark for Head of School performance. If so, how ought the board evaluate the community’s satisfaction with the Head? If not, how can the board justify its support of its Head in the face of opposition from those displeased with the Head?

I share these observations primarily to see if my observations resonate with other heads, and I would welcome insights from others about ways in which they have addressed any of these challenges.

John C. Allman is Head of School at Trinity School (New York City). You can reach him at john.allman@trinityschoolnyc.org.

Comments

[Gary Gruber]

John,
Brilliant! And from my years of serving as a head of school, you are on track and on target. Trustees do not often have what I refer to as the three essentials for moving forward collectively and head evaluation is but one of the challenges. Those three ingredients are common vision, common purpose, common goals. What they need is a sense of collaboration and cohesion around what they want from a head in terms of expectations, goals and performance and then, assessment becomes a little more focused and easier. As I listened to a Board last night talk about their work together, they confirmed in large measure what you have observed and experienced above, and I was especially concerned about the lack of shared standards. So, thanks, John, for putting some light into the Board room. With your permission, I would like to share your insights with a few Boards in the process of helping them to understand why they often find themselves frustrated with the dynamics in their work as trustees.

[Ham Clark]

John you are right on target and have beautifully chronicled the issues in Head evaluation. When a Head makes the difficult major decision, will the Board stand with him/her? What are the items Board members have on their "secret scorecards?"
These questions play out differently in different schools but the Head needs to know in advance about the depth of support and what is most important to the Board. My most recent Head evaluations have been done on line through Board Source and I find these helpful in pointing me in the right direction, arriving at some median or Board scores, and in noting progress or regression on particular markers from year to year.