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Monthly Newsletter
October, 2010
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Greetings from Santa Fe! This month, the SFLC is pleased to  celebrate our one year anniversary. In this first year together we have experienced tremendous joy in collaborating with dynamic school leaders to create the leadership center. Our vision is to support school leaders at all points in their careers to develop their capacity to lead with clarity and confidence. In conjunction with this anniversary, we have launched our new website, which we hope will be a resource for you on leadership as we continue to add articles and other materials. We want thank Richard Kassissieh, Director of Technology at Catlin Gabel School (Portland, OR), for his time and expertise on our website project. We could not have redesigned this site without his guidance.The topic of the October SFLC Newsletter is crucial to school leaders: Boards and Governance. School leaders, primarily Heads, increasingly find themselves spending more and more time attending to their boards. With finance, fundraising, and strategic planning at the top of many Heads' priority lists, the Board of Trustees has become ever more essential to the success and sustainability of our schools. October is an especially good time of year to reflect on the present and the future of your board.
Why October? By now, you have settled into a good pace for the year. If your school has experienced a major transition in leadership - a head change, a new board chair or members, or an administrative reorganization - you have begun to see these changes take shape. If you are a head of school, you have undoubtedly set annual goals for the board. Now is the time to check in on those goals and to assess that you and the board are on track to meet them. It is also a good time for you, the board chair or the chair of your Committee on Trustees to connect with each of your board members and ask them a few questions: "Do you feel engaged in the work of the board? Why or why not?" "What parts of this role are ambiguous or challenging for you?" and "How can board meetings be engaging and productive for you?" Essentially, you should be devoting at least some time to ensuring that your present board members are actively engaged and imbued with a sense of purpose. Equally important is thinking about the future of the board. It is not too soon to be taking an inventory of your current board and thinking about what skills and expertise might be needed in the next three to five years. For example, if the school will be undergoing a campus enhancement, you might want to identify an architect, a member of a planning commission, or a real estate developer who could be a good fit for your board. Whether your current board chair is in his or her first or final year, you should be thinking about his or her successor. And if there are board members rotating off this spring at the end of their terms, it is not too early to plan how these board members will be honored for their service to the school and how they might continue to be engaged and involved even after they depart the board.The articles in this monthly newsletter address many of these topics in greater depth. Norm Colb, Head of School at Menlo School in Atherton, CA, writes about the essential partnership between the head and the board. Sandy Drew, Senior Development Consultant for Marts and Lundy, shares her insights into ensuring smooth transitions of board chairs and heads. For the aspiring heads in our audience, Tim McIntire offers an article on the importance of serving on a board; it is a sure way to demystify the board experience and to understand the commitment that board members make. Finally, Gary Gruber shares his thoughts on developing relationships with both the board chair and the board as a whole. All of these articles will also be posted on our blog on the website. We welcome your comments, your stories, and your suggestions.The SFLC team along with keynote speaker, Rick Ackerly, will be heading to Santa Fe, November 14-17 for Deciding to Lead: The Art and Experience of Leadership. We are looking forward to meeting the new cohort and reflecting and learning together. Save the date for the next seminar, March 20-23 in Santa Fe. Details and registration will be included in the November Newsletter.
See you soon in Santa Fe!
Fondly,
Gary Gruber Timothy R. McIntire Carla Silver |
The SFLC would like to thank Lake Flato Architects
for supporting the upcoming seminar Deciding to Lead: The Art and Experience of Leadership.Lake Flato's support enables the SFLC to offer seminars to school leaders who would not otherwise have the opportunity to attend.
Lake Flato: Modern Susatainable Architecture with Regional Focus
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The Essential Partnership: Nurturing the Relationship between the Board of Trustees and Head of School
by Norman Colb, Head of School
Menlo School, Atherton, CA
Member of SFLC Los Sabios
I know experienced heads who delight in talking about the burdens of the office, but in my experience serving as head is as rewarding an experience as can be imagined. I've served in this role for the better part of two decades and have never enjoyed myself so much.
 Being a successful head involves interacting effectively with various important constituencies, and most especially the faculty, the parent body, the students and members of the board of trustees. All deserve as much of the head's deft attention as possible, although this brief article focuses only on establishing a solid relationship with the board of trustees.
To begin at the beginning, a newly appointed head is virtually assured of the board's support and best wishes. Here's why: the board may well have spent tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours conducting the search, and as it moved through the process it has come to understand that a change in leadership is disruptive to the school. The board wants to put off the next search as long as possible!
But as solid as the trustees' commitment to the new head may be, their support can be surprisingly fragile or, to change metaphors, it may evaporate overnight.
There are quite a few aspects involved in ensuring the board's long-term support, but space limits me to commenting on only the following: (Click here to continue reading.)
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Transitions: Smoothing out the Ride
By Sandy Drew, Senior Development Consultant,
Marts and Lundy
Member of SFLC Los Sabios
As this issue of the Santa Fe Leadership Center's monthly newsletter reaches your "in box," the country finds itself within weeks of a transition that occurs every election season. By any standard, the run-up to November 2, 2010 has been the wildest ride in many decades. Too often transitions in our schools, if not wild, are memorably bumpy. Since we know transitions are fragile times in organizations, how can we anticipate them and smooth out the ride? 
Governance Issues. When the board chair signals the intent to step down at the end of the current school year, do the head of school and chair of the governance committee review the board roster for a likely successor and come up empty handed? If so, it is time to think differently about how new members are recruited to the board and once appointed, how they become prepared to assume leadership roles. Where transitions in board officers and committee chairs occur without drama, it is an indication of a well-managed governance process. What are the ingredients of that make it so?
Before identifying and recruiting a new trustee, the Governance Committee considers whether the potential candidate could serve as an effective committee chair, board officer and ultimately, board chair. If the answer to this question is uncertain, then the candidate can be asked to serve on a special task force or board committee in order to test his/her readiness for a more expansive role. (Click here to continue reading.)
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How Hard Can This Be? The Truth About Serving on a Board
By Timothy R. McIntire
Nothing, nothing, nothing  seems easier or more remote than the work of the Board. Good Boards are nearly invisible; their work manifesting itself in the future. Bad Boards are highly visible and leave their droppings all across otherwise beautiful institutions. What, then, is essential for school leaders who aspire to lead schools? Simple: serving on a board.
When we at the Santa Fe Leadership Center counsel current and aspiring school leaders, we hammer home with them the absolute necessity of getting experience serving on a board in order to both to be prepared to be employed by one and leading a board in the future. Too often the challenge of board membership is taken for granted. It is not easy work and the anxiety surrounding what success looks like can be extraordinarily high.
As an educational leader, where are experiences available that can be meaningful? (Click here to continue reading.)
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The Three Rs of Board & Head Success: Roles, Responsibilities and Relationships
By Gary R. Gruber
While the following observations and suggestions are among the more obvious,  they are essential for a healthy and functioning relationship in the leadership of a school. One of the critical pieces in a head of school's success is the relationship between the head and two different entities of trustees.
First and foremost is the Board Chair and Head of School relationship. These two leaders need a strong, honest, open and productive connection. I use those modifiers because I believe those characteristics help to create a picture for the rest of the school community that shows the two people who are in positions of responsible leadership working well together for the common good. They need to share the vision, values and philosophy of the school to such an extent that there is very little discrepancy when they speak about the goals and objectives of the school. This does not necessarily mean that these two people will always be in 100% agreement, but it is very important that they present a united front, whether about plans, issues, governance or any other matter that concern the trustees and other constituents.
While the Board Chair's primary responsibility is the leadership of the entire Board, he or she must also connect with the chairs of the committees and be able to encourage and support an individual trustee's participation and response to the needs of the school. Likewise, the Chair's encouragement and support of the Head of School is an essential variable in an ongoing relationship and is an extension of the Board having selected this person to be the Head. The Chair must also be comfortable in offering constructive criticism to the Head and vice-versa from Head to Chair. This is the open and honest part of this relationship that will serve it well. Regular, periodic meetings between these two people and frequent communication help to further this important relationship. (Click here to continue reading).
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| Click here to read and respond to the SFLC blog, Lead On! |
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About Us
We are excited to meet you. We are the Santa Fe Leadership Center team, Gary Gruber, Tim McIntire and Carla Silver. Click here to read more about our careers and leadership experiences.
Please visit the Santa Fe Leadership Center to learn more about our programs and our other leadership services and opportunities.
Santa Fe Leadership Center
17 Camino Redondo, Placitas, NM 87043
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