NAIS - Leadership for the Right Reasons

I first met Dr. Edward (Ned) Hallowell at the NAIS Institute for New Heads in July of 1991. I distinctly remember him, standing in front of my cohort of new school heads, wearing an open-collared shirt, red suspenders, and khaki pants, and acting rather shy. He offered a soft apology for the fact that he had ADD, and then proceeded to read from a script — and kept on reading for a full 45 minutes. Initially, I thought, “I’ve gotta listen to this guy read from a paper? For this I came to the touted Institute for New Heads?” But after five minutes, I found myself enthralled. His paper, on the phenomenon of transference, was remarkably eloquent and insightful. I became an instant fan — and have continued to follow his work over the past 20 years, a writing career that has produced an impressive 19 published books to date — including Driven to Distraction, Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness, and Crazy Busy. Two more books are due out within the coming year, including Shine, which explores using brain science to bring the best from people especially as seen from a manager’s viewpoint.

Hallowell — a psychiatrist, author, and speaker with a deep interest in education — devotes much of his time to his three Hallowell Centers in Massachusetts and New York, where he helps children and adults with ADD and other learning disorders learn to lead healthy and happy lives. Because of his interest in education, he has also dedicated a great deal of his time to working with independent school educators. Indeed, his lifetime involvement in independent schools — as a student, teacher, parent, and consultant — has given him a perspective on schools and school leaders unlike any other.

I had a chance to catch up with Hallowell this past spring to talk with him about his career, work, and views on the future of leadership in schools.

Peters: In less than 20 years you have written 19 books, from Finding the Heart of the Child, co-written with psychologist Michael Thompson, to your soon-to-be-published Shine. What has caused you to be so prolific?

Hallowell: It really wasn’t until I got married that I started writing books. I had always loved to write and had been an aspiring writer before I went to medical school, but I had never gotten around to actually doing it seriously. I think, initially, the energy that I now put into books I had previously put into dating women! Then, when I got married, that energy found a new outlet in writing. My wife, Sue, understands this and always wants to know that the next book is cooking.

Peters: When you and I first met in July of 1991, you spoke to my cohort of new school heads at the NAIS Institute for New Heads. Was that your first foray into working with independent school heads?

Hallowell: I grew up with independent schools. My first consulting job was when I was doing my training in child psychiatry in 1983 and went to help out at The Fessenden School (Massachusetts). That was when I first started as a professional working with independent schools.

Peters: What changes do you see in the leadership role of heads and school administrators over the past 20-plus years?

Hallowell: I think the consumerist ethic has intimidated heads too much. I think independent schools are intimidated by economic realities and by trustees who treat schools as if they were corporations. I always say to heads, “Please tell your faculty members that they are as expert in their field as doctors are in their field, or financial advisors or CEOs are in theirs. Tell them, ‘Stand tall. Lay claim to your expertise. You are the experts on education.’ ” I also advise heads not to let their schools be run as if they were mere training grounds for getting students into Yale, Harvard, or Princeton. Don’t let the tail wag the dog.

The honest ones will say, “Yeah, but if I do that, our admissions numbers will go down. The consumer wants us to publish our SAT scores and brag about Ivy League admissions.” And then I respond, “Well, you’ve got to educate your consumer.”

If parents say, “For the tuition we’re paying you, we expect admission to Yale, Harvard, or Princeton for our child,” your response should be, “For the tuition you are paying us, you deserve the truth.”

Peters: The theme of the 2011 NAIS Annual Conference, “Monumental Opportunities: Advancing Our Public Purpose,” will look at our independent school roots and how they can advance a public purpose. How do you see independent school leaders stepping up to this challenge?

Hallowell: Independent schools, even though a tiny fraction of the population in this country attends them, are the best hope for generating the educational reform we need. Public schools are too mired in bureaucracy and politics to make the changes they need to make quickly. I think private schools have the independence to lead quality reform. But we have to continue to insist on the best education. We know the elements of the best education: inductive discussion, the Socratic method, discovery, and play. We know that. We also know that people learn best experientially, asking questions, and discovering for themselves. Now, we have to implement such education and stop running pressure cooker, memorize-and-forget curricula.

Can we stand up for what we know works best? Can we lead the way? Honestly, when I travel the country and give talks, few people disagree with what I have to say. And yet, schools often fail to practice what they preach and turn out students who don’t want to learn and discover, but rather just play the system to their own advantage. We are not doing the job we should be doing in independent schools of implementing what we know works best and trumpeting it for all to hear. We kind of mutter it and put it in a mission statement. We should be much louder.

Peters: Has the head’s relationship with the board of trustees changed?

Hallowell: I think trustees are turning over heads too rapidly. Trustees often do not understand schools, education, and children. They often don’t listen closely to the head. They sometimes treat the head as a hired hand, and say, “Make your quarterly numbers and if not, you’re out the door.” Again, I think the head has to stand up before he or she gets hired and say, “This is who I am. And if you don’t want that, then don’t hire me. I don’t want to come in and leave after a couple of years.” I can understand that trustees are volunteering their time, and that they want to be heard, but I think they need to be better educated about children and learning.

Peters: In my own school governance work and in my work with heads and boards over the years, I have found that 30 percent of a head’s time should be devoted to the board. Assuming that this is accurate, do you feel that this amount of time commitment has changed over the past 20 years?

Hallowell: Oh, yes. I don’t think that heads used to have to manage the boards the way they do now. These days, trustees are very active. Heads have to manage all of their egos. It is great if your trustees are involved in a constructive way, but often trustees are meddling in areas where they shouldn’t. They ought to hire a head they trust and let him or her do his or her job. I think it is too bad that a head of school has to spend 30 percent of his time managing trustees. I guess the days of trustees leaving heads alone are over.

Peters: You say this with a lot of conviction. What experience leads you to feel this passionately about the direction of independent schools?

Hallowell: It comes originally from my years as a student, from knowing what worked in the schools I attended and from seeing how good it can be when the school is given autonomy. The education I received at Phillips Exeter Academy (New Hampshire) was just the most phenomenal education. People tend to think of Exeter as traditional and conservative. It really isn’t. Its Harkness method of teaching is a radical invention. It’s kind of Montessori-ish, really. Kids sit at an oval table and they teach each other and they discover together. I come at the question of quality education from the perspective of someone who has experienced some of the best of what independent schools have to offer.

And as a consultant, I’ve seen heads get beaten up unfairly. It’s a waste of talent. Not to mention that these heads tend to be, with some exceptions, incredibly good people. They are very mission-driven. They are people we can really admire. The turnover should not happen at the rate it does. We really need to educate trustees and help them realize that they are there primarily to help the head, not judge the head.

Also, my wife, Sue, is chair of the board of trustees at a pre-K through eighth grade school, so I get a bird’s-eye view of at least one trustee in action. Sue is very active in the life of the school. She thinks it is especially important that trustees work to make an independent school education affordable for as many people as possible, not just for the affluent. She also feels that trustees need to be active in governance and in supporting the head. Much of her work is devoted to working with the trustees and trying to build consensus in a group that is highly independent minded. She loves the school and gives what amounts to full-time hours, of course for no pay. If schools can find trustees like her, then those schools will be enriched enormously. A good trustee is worth her or his weight in diamonds!

Peters: In Drive, bestselling author Daniel Pink argues that the old motivation system — reward and punishment or a carrot-and-stick approach — needs to be replaced with a new system, one that uses autonomy, mastery, and purpose as the motivators. Do you see the latter as a viable way for today’s independent school leaders to motivate their school communities?

Hallowell: Absolutely. That’s what the best schools have been doing all along. At Exeter, I got motivated to become a writer by a teacher who challenged me to write a novel in 12th grade. I said, “I can’t write a novel.” But he got more out of me than I thought I had to offer. By the end of the year, I had written a novel that won the Senior English Prize. As a result, I fell in love with writing. It has everything to do with taking on a challenge. It’s all about autonomy and mastery. It’s about the joy of doing it. Independent schools have a powerful opportunity to bring this message to young people.

Peters: In your new book, Shine, you offer good advice to “people managers,” very similar to Pink’s. If there were three takeaways you could offer from Shine, what would they be?

Hallowell: One — and above all — understand the connection between emotion and performance. People perform at their peak level when they are in a positive frame of mind. That may seem obvious, but managers tend to overlook this. You excel when you are in a positive frame of mind. Emotion really is the on-off switch for learning, as my friend Pricilla Vail used to say.

Two, understand the phenomenal power of human connection, the

phenomenal power of a relationship. Happy people, successful people, and peak performers will always cite a mentor, be it a grandfather, a teammate, a teacher, or a coach — some human connection — in their success. Many managers forget this; they are so agenda-driven that they don’t create the circumstances that will allow for peak performance.

Three, understand the profound importance of play. Play is imaginative engagement with a task. You want to engage people so that they interact with a task, so that they can bring their whole selves to a task. They use what is uniquely human — namely, imagination. It is the doorway to what Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (noted expert on happiness and creativity) calls “flow” — a state in which people are peak performers.

Peters: What are your thoughts on the fact that something like 70 percent of the current heads — the baby-boomer heads of school — will retire during the next 10 years?

Hallowell: I hope and pray that the important part of the legacy of independent schools does not get lost. I hope these baby-boomer heads will pass along the best part of it. I hope we’re not giving way to a new season of consumer-driven schools. I hope heads will treasure wisdom.

Peters: How can we prepare our next generation of independent school leaders for this dramatic exodus of experienced heads of our 1,400 schools?

Hallowell: I think it is a matter of exhorting them to tell the truth and to be bold — make sure they know what works best and then act on what they know. We do know that discovery, induction, discussion, connection, and play are what make for the best learning. Make sure that they will stand up with this knowledge and say, “This is what we do; this is what we believe in; this is what works best. If you don’t like it, then go somewhere else.” Independent schools need to lay claim to the expertise they’ve gained. You don’t tell a heart surgeon how you want him to do heart surgery, and yet we have consumerist parents and trustees telling teachers and heads how to teach children. It’s wrong and it produces bad results. It’s just that simple.

Peters: Let’s say I am in your office, and I am looking for advice on running my school. Are there one or two nuggets that you would offer no matter what my school issues are?

Hallowell: Probably the number one nugget would be: Never worry alone. Heads who get into trouble worry alone. It is inevitable that you will be faced with going up against crisis after crisis. You want to have reliable people that you worry with. When you worry alone, that’s when you make mistakes, that’s when you get depressed, that’s when you act impulsively, and that’s when you get isolated.

Number two would be: Don’t forget why you got into this profession in the first place. Maintain your connection with kids. It’s easy to forget, and you become just another bureaucrat. Go into the classroom and read aloud, coach a sport, or teach a class. However you do it, spend time with the kids.

Number three — even though you only asked for two — would be: Make sure you have a life outside of school. Make sure you have some place to go that has nothing to do with school, particularly in boarding schools.

Peters: What advice might you give to an aspiring independent school administrator or head of school?

Hallowell: We need you desperately. It’s a great job. You have a chance to profoundly influence people. If you feel called to be a head of school, go for it. But remember T. S. Elliot’s great line, “The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.” The wrong reason to be a head is for the ego trip. The best heads are like the best CEOs. They’re serving others. It is — and always will be — a service job.