Bassett Blog 2007/11: Growing Our Own Leaders

November 1, 2007
Patrick F. Bassett

NAIS President Patrick F. Bassett

Recently, an NAIS trustee from the corporate sector (who also serves as a trustee for an independent school in the Pacific Northwest) wrote to me to observe how odd he found it that independent schools typically seek their heads from outside of their institutions. According to educational leadership consulting and head search firm Educational Directions, Inc., only around 10% of the approximately 600 head searches in the last six years have resulted in an internal candidate appointments  The corporate model, in contrast, works largely in the other direction, the typical CEO appointment being from within.

A Harvard Business Review article (Feb., 2005), "Ending the CEO Succession Crisis," confirms the observation: Two-thirds of CEOs from Fortune 1,000 companies are hired internally, the outcome of strong succession planning and effective internal leadership training as the standard for industry. Interestingly, the internal CEO appointments are about twice as likely to be successful long-term than the external appointment in the business world, largely because industry goes outside the family only when the board seeks serious change in the business's culture, operations, and results. The higher failure rate for external CEO candidates in industry is testimony to how difficult it is to change culture, operations, and results in any organization.

Ironically, in the independent school world, we do train and cultivate potential leaders in many ways. School leaders at all levels are quick to identify and mentor the next generation of leaders in our schools and to promote them to various leadership roles (task force chair, department chair, division head, and/or deanships). Likewise, schools seem willing to commit professional development funds to train potential leaders from within the ranks. Evidence of this is found in NAIS's well-subscribed summer leadership offerings: the School Leadership Institute, the Summer Diversity Institute, the Institute for Leadership in Sustainability, the Lessons in Leadership on the Battlefields of Gettysburg, etc. The NAIS Fellowship for Aspiring School Heads has also been very well supported by our schools, so we have already developed a substantial pool of potential heads who have received significant leadership training.

But our trustee's question remains: Why invest so much in training our own leaders only to ship them off to another school, rather than groom them to succeed their current heads (when the timing works) or consider them seriously when the opening develops? In fact, the deck seems stacked against internal candidates when head openings emerge. Why is this?

• Because "familiarity breeds contempt"? Is it easier to imagine an unknown will be more sympathetic to changing the course or, contrariwise, fantasize he or she will be more empathetic to the current system and staff than an insider?
• Because, in school searches, unlike CEO searches, a cast of thousands has input and clout on the outcome, and internal candidates are more likely to have burned bridges with some colleagues and inspired jealousies in others?
• Because, as our NAIS trustee thinks, the extraordinary collegiality of schools and the general resistance to managerial hierarchy, makes it tough for a peer to suddenly become the boss?
• Because the search firms consciously or unconsciously counsel against internal candidates for fear it will discourage the candidates in their pool from entering the race?
• Because “succession planning,” where one or more middle-level managers are cultivated as the “heir-apparent,” makes the current king nervous?