Helen Rankin Butler
Board Chair
Hathaway Brown School
Shaker Heights, Ohio
Photo by Billy Delfs
This is an excerpt from the NAIS Member Voices podcast.
Tell us about your role. How did you get here?
I’m the current board chair at Hathaway Brown School, and this is my second round as a trustee. I was on the board for 15 years, then had a year off before rejoining. We implemented term limits some time ago and developed a complex matrix of how we would have people roll off, and I was one of the first. Then, I came back and led the search for the new head of school, which started in January 2015.But, really, I’m a lifer at Hathaway Brown. As an HB alumna, I wanted to give back to independent schools, and after college, I became a teacher. I taught fifth grade for a few years in New York City. Following that, I was a residential camp director for 11 years.
As a young mom and an active alumna, I was eager to get back to Hathaway Brown. I think my experiences in the classroom certainly gave me a real appreciation for the daily life and complexities of a school. That, of course, was a very long time ago, and school life has only gotten more complex. Working with parents in the residential camp community—where parents have to be so trusting because they’re dropping off their 7- to 12-year-old girls for me to take care of for three or seven weeks—was a really important part of my development as a leader and ability to work with staff and young counselors and train them to be leaders and role models for girls.
How has your role on the board changed since your first round as a trustee?
We have a new leader at the school, and we’ve really been able to look outward and learn new practices. Our new head of school brings her own style and leadership skills, and we’ve changed the format of our board meetings so that we have more time for generative conversation and more strategic thinking—as opposed to a heavier emphasis per se on our fiduciary responsibilities. We have the luxury of more balance in the board in terms of our meetings and how we add value to the school—and are able to help the new head be the best leader that she can.One of my biggest roles is trustee stewardship—creating the environment and connections between trustees, building trust for honest dialogue and the exchange of ideas, and clarifying expectations. Where do board responsibilities end and where do the head’s responsibilities lie? There’s also a lot of coordination with committee chairs and task force leaders, looking at the important work that we can do that match Hathaway Brown’s priorities.
We want trustees to have information to help make decisions, and we also want our conversations to be confidential. So, I think a lot about elevating the mindset of confidentiality among trustees, making sure that’s something that we’re talking about with regularity. And there’s the occasional challenge of guiding a trustee back from overstepping into the more management issues that are the head’s role.
What does leadership mean to you?
It really means working with a group of people with a variety of perspectives, and for Hathaway Brown to really protect the mission of the school and think about its future and operate in, what I would say comes from the book Governance as Leadership¸ the three modes of leadership: fiduciary, strategic, and generative.The school motto is “We learn not for school but for life,” and that is very much my personal motto. So I challenge myself to keep learning and tackle things that have an edge of uncomfortableness, that are new and different, and I hope as a leader I can continue to hear feedback and grow and become a stronger leader for school.
What’s your communication style?
I prefer talking live with people as opposed to batting back lots of emails. But I do find that occasionally with the head of school, it’s quickest and most efficient to send a short email, or we exchange text messages when there’s something that I just need to know about. It’s not a conversation. It’s just information for me to have. But I feel as though in stewarding trustees that I do better, and I think they get more out of a conversation or a meeting than just an email.What keeps you up at night?
The boundaries between the role of the board and the role of the head of school—I think it’s a constant conversation. We’ve done a lot of work in small discussion groups with our trustees. And that seems to be a constant theme, just making sure that we’re continuing to offer opportunities where trustees can hone their trustee skills and that lens of thinking when they come into our meetings.One particular challenge that we’re beginning to see at Hathaway Brown: We implemented earlier term limits, and one thing that we have to be particularly mindful of is making sure that we’re getting newer trustees up-to-speed as quickly as possible and ready for leadership positions, so that we really are working with those term limits and not extending them for committee chairs and vital roles all the time.
What pieces of advice have really stuck with you?
To think carefully about what’s really the issue at hand and focus on the issue—not so much the incident—especially when you’re managing a problem or a crisis in school.That’s an area where I’ve been able to reach out to trustee friends or board chairs in other cities and ask how they’ve managed things and thinking ahead to some crisis management which was a focus for me at the NAIS annual conference this past spring. It was really good to talk with other people and think about if you had this kind of issue how would you communicate with your faculty and staff? How would you communicate with your trustees? What were the different layers that you would think about?
Board Chair Helen Rankin Butler, with Head of School Mary Frances Bisselle. Photo by Billy Delfs
What’s your best advice for navigating the head-board relationship?
My advice would be to really work on developing that partnership. Our head and I attended the NAIS Leadership Through Partnership Institute, which was very valuable, and I would recommend that kind of work at the start of a partnership. For new board chairs, attending some of the conferences and hearing advice and counsel from other experts in the field expands their thinking. Of course, you need the luxury of time to get away from your other professional life and home, but it’s well worth it if it’s possible.
Where do you turn to for inspiration?
I reach out to trustees and friends in other cities, just casually. Have you thought about this? Is your board talking about this at all? What’s your experience? The head of school and I talk a lot about those, and it’s been terrific to tap into some of her network of other heads of school. She could follow up and ask questions, or sometimes she’ll send me an introduction and I’ll connect with them.What’s the moment you’re most proud of?
A new head of school is, in many ways, a landmark moment for an institution. I’m really proud and honored to help serve the school at this time in its history.What are you reading at the moment?
I find that a regular reading of some governance material is honestly inspirational as I think about planning for this upcoming school year. So that’s pretty much top of mind, along with a little family time before I take my kids to college.What’s one thing about you that few people know?
I really love to cook, have people over, sit at the table, and talk about interesting things. I enjoy the eating just as much, I have to say.If you had one more hour in your day, what would you do with it?
I would read more nonfiction. I’m reading The Madonna of the Mountain, set during World War II. But I just keep a little note on my phone of all the titles I aspire to read when I head to some beach someday with a big stack of books. And no to-do list.Listen to the full interview with Helen Rankin Butler on the NAIS Member Voices podcast. Download it now at iTunes, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Stitcher, or GooglePlay. Rate, review, and subscribe to a new episode each month.
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