Almost ten years ago, in the early summer of 2002, I was sitting in my office, newly minted as Head of a PK-12 day school in Fairfield County, CT. I knew the school well, having had a previous tenure there (1983-1990). I loved the community, and I was full of the passion and energy that it would take to impact the school in all sorts of ways. I was looking forward to a meeting with a long time acquaintance later that morning; a man I had known professionally since I began my career as a teacher, 19 previous to this date. He had just stepped down from a highly successful and long-term headship, and was working on a new educational venture. He arrived, and after some introductory chat, I asked him for advice; what could he tell me that would really help as I began this voyage. He looked at me and said: “I think that the most important thing for you to understand is that by any intelligent, reasonable standard, the job you are starting is completely impossible, and it is unreasonable to expect that you will be able to do it all well. No one can.”
Obviously, this took a little wind out of my sails, but we continued, and he elaborated. He said I would be expected to be a skilled financial manager (I knew very little at the time), a savvy marketing and admission professional (I had never worked in admission), a strategic thinker that always had the big picture in mind and a detailed manager that would get to know the program at the grassroots level, a construction manager with a good sense for building design, and a leader that was both highly collaborative and extremely decisive. I would need to be an active fund-raiser, but not seem driven by fund-raising. I would be expected to be highly visible, which meant being at games, plays, Pre-K events, the Upper School Cum Laude induction, and Middle School sports awards (the list goes on forever), as well as extremely accessible, which meant being in my office for anyone (parent, student, teacher) who wanted to have a private conversation with me. My expertise in faculty evaluation and hiring (which was largely untested), would need to yield immediate results. My educational expertise would be expected to inspire and inform the work of faculty and students, and my gift for public speaking must engage crowds from every constituency ( I was pretty sure I didn’t have this gift). I would quickly understand the deep history of the school and have a sixth sense for the needs and concerns of the alumni. The Board would expect me to lead, but also meet all of their expectations. And, without fail, I should know every student, all 685 of them, by name! My friend then said he could go on, but he was betting I had the idea. I couldn’t do it!
No doubt, I was feeling a little deflated, chagrined, almost embarrassed by the youthful enthusiasm that had defined my first 2 weeks in office, but it was then that the real advice was offered: “So, Tom, if you want to be successful, the thing you have to do, above all else, is to determine your priorities. What are you going to focus on, what is going to be most important to you. You need to commit your time and your resources to that – in a relentless, and laser like manner. You are not going to please everyone, and you are going to have to let some things go, and that will irritate some people, but you are going to succeed and you will accomplish what you set out to do.” It was good advice then, and it is good advice now. It’s one of those few pearls of wisdom that you live by – that you back your heels onto when you are immobilized by the sheer volume coming at you – and you need to re-center and decide what to do next. I am better at it than I was way back then, but it is more also complicated - because I know more. This is a crazy job. It’s so crazy sometimes that often I can’t describe it to anyone that isn’t a school head. Problems are so complex that I can’t ask for advice, simply because it would take me two hours to adequately create the context for the issue that needs solving. I stay grounded by knowing what to focus on, what my priorities are, and knowing those things that might not be a priority for a given year or few years. The job is not impossible, at all, and my friend knew that. He did me a great favor that morning. In fact, it is a great job, and all those things that seemed overwhelming a decade ago seem much more understandable today, and maybe a little less overwhelming. But in order for it to be a great job, I must stay focused on making it a job that it is possible to do. And that is rooted in understanding my priorities and attending to them.
Tom Main is the Head of School at King Low Heywood Thomas in Stamford, CT. You can reach him at tmain@klht.org.
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And, dear friends, make sure that "your" priorities are at least in concert with the Board's priorities. You can help shape the Board's agenda but it's more than likely that when you arrive as a new head the trustees will already have a list of their top three or four areas that require your time, talent and attention. These days it seems to be marketing, finances (fund raising) and esprit de corps. Each of the six constituencies will want a piece of you. This is assuming you have a good team in place who are themselves skilled in their respective areas. Delegate wisely!
Posted by: Gary Gruber | 12/01/2011 at 06:42 AM