Stephanie Rogen
Plan or Strategy? (Hint: You Need Both!)
Plan or Strategy? (Hint: You Need Both!)
Stephanie Rogen
Maverick -- Who’s Your Goose?
Maverick -- Who’s Your Goose?
Stephanie Rogen
Why Do You Want a Strategic Plan?
Why Do You Want a Strategic Plan?
Sarah Goldin
Back to School: Let's Reclaim Some JOY
Back to School: Let's Reclaim Some JOY
Stephanie Rogen
Who Plays, and What to Do When You Don’t Have ...
Who Plays, and What to Do When You Don’t Have the Right Players: Part 3 of a Three Part Series

Slow Innovation: What Really Drives Value in Schools

Slow Innovation: What Really Drives Value in Schools

GLP is happy to welcome Kirk Greer as a member of the GLP team and guest blogger this summer. Kirk is currently the upper school history chair at the Latin School of Chicago and previously served as its Director of Studies and Professional Development. He is also a new board member at Baker, a progressive JK-8 independent school on Chicago's North Shore.

Earlier this week, I had the chance to share a beer (or two) with a colleague who reflected on changes he had made to his communication style with students. Having read research that detailed how vital the teacher-student relationship is to the success of students of color in predominantly white schools, my white colleague invested more time in cultivating positive affect and personalizing his communication and encouragement so that he might connect more authentically with all his students.

GLP Summer 2017 Reading List

GLP Summer 2017 Reading List

Just in time for the extended summer holiday weekend, we’re excited to share with you our summer must reads!  

We’re focused on two themes this summer: 1) understanding the rapidly changing macro-context that independent schools face and 2) how schools should prepare themselves to thrive in the face of these uncertain times and re-envision teaching and learning in response to those macro-conditions. 

School Leadership in the Time of Trump

School Leadership in the Time of Trump

During one of my last years as a headmaster, the school had an interesting topic in our usual Tuesday night speaker series, which we call The Society of Skeptics. This speaker—whose name I cannot recall—was embarked on the goal of becoming a professional golfer by fulfilling the ‘10,000 hour rule’ (the theory of mastery that Malcolm Gladwell popularized in his book The Outliers). 

Notes from The Head Search Frontier

Notes from The Head Search Frontier

At GLP, we are always interested what transitions are taking place in the independent school world, particularly as we are continuing our New Heads Leadership Lab program. 

With that slight introduction, I want to report on a recent conversation Greenwich Leadership Partners had with Jim Wickenden, the veteran president of Wickenden Associates and a seasoned expert on the leadership search environment for independent schools. Throughout the independent school world, Jim is held in high regard for the firm’s successful work and his reputation for experience and understanding of the ever-evolving issues of school leadership and governance. I first met Jim as a teacher when he came to The Taft School to scout out early aspirants for leadership. Jim’s commitment to understanding not just his business but also the independent school world was impressive, so after becoming the headmaster at Blair Academy, I made one of my first off campus trips to meet with Jim in Princeton. Going to Wickenden Associates was sort of a pilgrimage both to pay respects and to glean as much as possible about the lay of the land for independent schools in New Jersey. That early venture proved quite valuable, and from that time forward Jim and I have kept in touch.

New Year’s Resolution: Change Up Your Meetings

New Year’s Resolution: Change Up Your Meetings

When do you actually look forward to going to a meeting? One of the biggest complaints we hear from educators is that they are asked to attend too many meetings that waste their time. As facilitators of meetings, we are constantly asking ourselves: what kind of experience do we want people to have; what makes a meeting valuable, productive and enjoyable?

It occurs to me that most meetings in organizations and schools originate from a logical purpose. Most of the time, they are a forum for advancing a work project, disseminating information, discussing an issue or making decisions. So why so many disgruntled meeting goers? I’ll offer three observations for school leaders. 

Powerful Leadership Learning: Five Lessons from The New Heads Leadership Lab

As GLP enters a new year and the start of the 2017 edition of our Leadership Lab, it is a good time to report on the conclusion of our pilot Lab. In the 2016 cohort we worked intensely with first time heads as they prepared to enter headship and begin their work at school. Each new head worked individually with a GLP coach throughout last spring and summer, coming together as a group in July for an intense and productive three-day learning retreat. After returning to their schools for the opening months, supported by executive coaching, these new heads reconvened for the last formal part of the Lab with a December session in Washington, DC. During this final session, the participants gave presentations and discussed their first five months of their new headship, its challenges and joys, what worked and what is a work in progress. Going into the second half of their first year, the cohort members can continue with the coaching part of the Leadership Lab, stay in touch with each other, and will be asked for a report on this first year in June.

Takeaways from The Leadership Lab Workshop

This July GLP held its first Leadership Lab workshop, part of a comprehensive transition program to help new boarding school heads prepare for their first year of leadership. We conceived the Leadership Lab as a highly interactive, but deeply personalized entry into headship. Sensing the need for a higher level of new head preparation, we conducted qualitative research and confirmed that a bold, fresh approach---one with small cohorts, beginning preparation months before the new heads start their tenure, and continuing with one-on-one executive coaching and feedback well into their first year on the job—was justified. In fact, our research feedback from current heads confirmed that such a program was necessary.

Schools as Learning Organizations: It's All About the Connections

What happens when you bring five school teams, each comprised of board members, administrators and teachers, together for two days to design strategy for their schools? That’s the question we asked ourselves when we envisioned our Strategic Planning Institute. We had two big hypotheses to test. The first was that schools could design better strategy if they were in an environment that allowed them to support, inspire, question and challenge one another. The second was that if schools experienced this type of collaboration, and were offered helpful tools and structures for the process, they would be equipped to return to school and lead a strategic design process that was entirely their own.

The Leadership Lab for New HOS: A Transition to a Different Philosophy

Start this way. Consider that a new school leader is perceived as a bundle of experience, talent, and values who needs the right content added to prepare for the work ahead. The traditional approach would be to bring new heads together, expose them to a curriculum that is full of headship content (that is, full of what the ramp-up designers feel that new school heads should know) and get as much of that infused into the new school leaders as they start their new position. External realities, internal management, board relations, admissions, advancement, and so on creates the “exposure package” new heads are likely to need and knowledge they can use as their week together ends. This model has been the primary new head of school training model for years, and it is not without success. But is it enough?

From Here to There: A New Model for Leadership Preparation

Pinpointing exactly when being a head of school (HOS) became more complex and challenging may be a foolish pursuit, yet experienced school leaders do talk about that time. What happened? For experienced heads, there seems so much more to do, to know, to consider, to plan and prepare for. Is it any surprise then that a position that once seemed a natural step for an experienced school professional increasingly feels like a step too far? As the variety and relentless demands of the job are ever more apparent (though compensation has certainly risen), the daunting reality of being a head of school seems less an affirmation of a good career than a big personal and professional risk.