This is an excerpt from the NAIS Member Voices podcast.Tell us about your role. How did you get here?
When I first started at Andrews Osborne Academy (OH) in 2014, I was more of a provocateur and change agent. I came in about seven years after the school had merged (combining a coed primary and middle school with an all-girls’ middle and upper school). Those first five or six years after the merger were spent getting the trains to run on time, which is what was needed. But then it came time to develop an identity. The school needed to figure out who and what it was. And that’s where my role began—to get us clear about who we are. My role has changed over time to be more of a facilitator and a leader.I’m happier in this leader and facilitator role because it allows me to go more behind the scenes and to have the story not be about what I’m doing, thinking, or saying, but supporting the efforts of everybody around me to instantiate the identity that we are collectively owning.
What’s your leadership style?
I don’t have much of an investment in who gets the right answer. I just want to make sure we do what’s right. It’s not my way or the highway. In fact, my way is always informed by smart people around me. I learned long ago that I’m not smart enough to know the right answer all the time or even most of the time. It’s easy to get my ear, and [then] hard to stop [me] once I think it’s time for us to go forward. It’s not so much consensus as a leadership style as it is a need to hear everybody’s input and opinion and then go forward. That said, once we do move forward, it’s full stop. I’ve always been a change agent, and you don’t make change by waffling.What do you like most about your job?
A lot of heads probably say this, but I have the best job in the world. I look forward to coming to campus every day. The best parts [are] creating new platforms and programs that will enable the school to be even more successful in preparing students for college and professional life. [I enjoy the] ability to create new paradigms, to outline and operationalize new programs, to build a better mousetrap—I love that about my job. I like acting as a mentor or a guide to faculty and staff. I like that when I go away on fundraising or recruiting trips, the students notice that I have been gone and they come into my office and ask me about [my] trip.What’s the first thing you do when you get to campus every day?
I’ll usually get here around 7:30 or so, and I like to start the day in the dining room because that’s where the boarders are, so I go in there, say hello to the kids, see what we have for breakfast that day, maybe have breakfast there. Then I often stand outside for lower school drop-off or something else that brings me into contact with kids.The end of the day for me [involves] exercise. I’ll go down to our cardio room and work out for a half hour or so. And that’s just something I have to do to take care of myself, but it’s also a chance to form some unique relationships. There are always four or five kids in there, and it forges a totally different kind of relationship with them—I’m in a T-shirt and shorts rather than a coat and tie.
What’s on your desk right now?
I’m teaching a course next semester on detective fiction so I’m trying to decide which of three Sherlock Holmes books, which of two Dashiell Hammett books, and which of two Raymond Chandler books I should pick for the class. I’ve also got some letters to sign from annual fund gifts, board presentations from our admissions department to look through, and finance committee docs from a meeting this morning. A little bit of everything.What advice or lessons learned have really stuck with you over the years?
One of my mentors, Alice Price, once told me that 10-percent change is as difficult as 60-percent change, so if you’re going to make change go big—but don’t be wrong. Both parts of that advice are important. People resist change. They resist small change and big change in the same way—to the same degree, frankly. There are risks involved in all change. The only difference between big change and small change is that if you’re wrong on the small change, you won’t get fired. Leaders have to be risk-takers and understand that no institution likes to change. So, first, figure out what a better future looks like and don’t be afraid to go big.Another life lesson that was passed on to me that still resonates: Try every day to listen more than you speak. I’ve yet to do that, but I start every day saying today is going to be the day that I listen more than I speak.
What’s surprised you recently?
It seems to me that every time you think you know where something is going, it doesn’t. In today’s world, the unknown and ambiguity is so much more prevalent than it was 50 years ago that our need to prepare students to navigate an ambiguous world has never been greater.In my own life when big changes come up that I wasn’t expecting, I have to be able to navigate the ambiguity of that moment. We were at a point last year with the finance committee and the board where we were pretty sure we were going to make some big decisions that would impact how the school was capitalized. And then a major shake-up came within the board itself. I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t anticipate it, and the ramifications of it were significant. And you have to know how to recognize you’re in a moment—that you’ve gone from the clear to the ambiguous—and shift modes of thinking and modes of acting.
The time to make change is not when everything is shifting around you. It’s when one or two things are shifting around you. When change happens, recognize that it is impacting your normal decision-making, recognize that there’s a time to allow the ambiguity to resonate and not try to solve it right away, to allow it to be, and then work toward the new known. Sometimes the new known looks just like the old known; sometimes it looks quite different.
What keeps you up at night?
Practically speaking, finances. Education has always had a sort of precarious financial model. We charge roughly 75 percent of what our product costs to produce and then ask people to give us the remaining 25 percent. But as the economy has emerged from a decade-long spiral, I think the fragility of that model has been exposed. And with the competition coming from other learning platforms—some public, some private—it’s further challenged traditional independent school models. I worry about our financial infrastructure—how are we going to keep this going?On a different level, I worry about a growing xenophobia in our country. The America I grew up with seems to be overshadowed and not by more or even equally noble ideals but rather by decidedly lesser ideals—selfish ideals. I worry about the impact that it will have on our schools. I worry about the deterioration of the moral fiber it promises for future generations.
What are you reading/watching/listening to currently?
I’m a bit of a Supreme Court junkie, so I’m reading a couple different lesser-known works on the history of the Supreme Court. I’m also reading a book by Yuval Noah Harari called Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. It’s pretty interesting to think about humans as a species always having been this rapacious consumer of our environment. And to think about what enabled us to become organized into a society, what enabled us to ascend the food chain.What’s one thing about you that few people know?
My dream job is to be the play-by-play broadcaster for the Baltimore Orioles. I grew up in Baltimore. And I’ve been a lifelong baseball fan, lifelong Orioles fan, and while the color guy is usually somebody who has played the game, the play-by-play guy is somebody who knows the game well enough to let people know what’s going on in the field. And if I could get paid to talk, watch baseball, and watch the Baltimore Orioles, I don’t know how there could be a better job than that.If you had one more hour in your day what would you do with it?
I would exercise. And I mean that metaphorically. I would do something to take care of myself. Work is never-ending; it’ll consume you. It has consumed me many times. So, if I could get the 25th hour, I would not try to put one more work-related thing in it. I would take the opportunity to take care of my body or my soul—something that would make me feel better.Listen to the full interview with Larry Goodman on the NAIS Member Voices podcast. Download it now at iTunes, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Stitcher, or GooglePlay. Hear a new episode each month by subscribing.
If you or someone you know would like to be part of Member Voices, drop us a line at [email protected].