Leadership Trends 2024-2025: Trend #5

By Tim Bentum  |  April 28th

This month we are sharing the fifth of five Leadership Trends for 2024-2025. These trends are being released once per month in the Edvance Notice between December and April.

As a quick reminder, these five broad Christian school leadership trends were generated based out of two days of discussion, debate, learning, reflection and engagement between the Edvance Directors and Cohort Leaders in August of 2024. Here are a few caveats that will help you read these trends with an eye towards leading more effectively in the current school year for the flourishing of your Christian school community:

The goal of these trends is to equip school leaders and boards with information and relevant discussion topics that may be useful around a board or leadership table. They are not ‘prescriptive’, in the sense that Edvance endorses the trend or its resultant factors. Rather, the trends are more ‘descriptive’, creating space for dialogue and debate. In addition, these trends are inherently broad and general and do not apply equally, or perhaps at all, to each Christian school communities. However, at the very least, these trends may create an opportunity for learning, growth and empathy in and between school communities who may be wrestling with similar issues.

Although the trends may at times be challenging to read, each entry ends with some concrete steps that school leaders and boards can take to move forward in a hopeful, God-honouring manner in the face of challenge.

Happy Reading!

Trend #5: Leader/Board Relationship Navigation

Context: Perhaps one of the most prominent points of tension in some Christian schools is the relationship between principals and boards. Tension between the board and leader can spill out into the wider school community and cause hurt and confusion. With trust in institutions and leaders already historically low (see last month’s leadership trend), it is perhaps not surprising that some boards and leaders have also locked horns on complex situations.

Whereas a decade or more ago, the role of the principal may have been largely perceived as a ‘lead teacher’ type of role, today that leadership role has morphed and grown exponentially. With this change in the scope of the school leader role, one of the biggest areas of confusion continues to be the relationship of the board and the leader. Who should be doing what? What exactly is a COO (Chief Operating Officer)? How much and where should the board get involved in operational matters? What should a board meeting be primarily focused on? Who drives the agenda at the board meeting? How does someone become a board member? The list of questions and potential tension points between boards and leaders is long.

Issue in Brief: All of the questions outlined above may seem like interesting theoretical exercises, but of course we know that the answers to these questions have real human impacts. For example, if a board determines that the school must take a particular stance on a theological or social issue, but the leader doesn’t see things quite the same way, how is the stalemate or difference in perspectives dealt with in a way that is both God-honouring and also takes into account multiple angles and even interpretations of a life of faith?

Boards often find themselves caught in the crossfire between segments of their community who would like (or demand) to have things a certain way, while balancing completely different educational or budgetary needs that the wider community may not be aware of. Equally, leaders may find themselves caught in the middle when the predominant ethos of the board would like to move in a certain direction, but the leader is aware that significant portions of the staff do not see things the same way.

The downstream effect of these kinds of tensions mean that governance processes, bylaws, and membership involvement have been challenged in recent years in ways that the original school founders would have likely never predicted. Even with all of these tensions, it remains the case that the relationship between the board and the leader is one of the most important relationships in the school community. Ensuring that this vital relationship remains healthy is of utmost importance.

Steps to Consider:

1. Leaders Must Lead – As noted in an earlier leadership trend, there is no part of the school that a leader should not feel responsible for and that also includes the board. Board members are fundamentally volunteers – people who have an admirable passion for the institution but are not employed by the institution and as such have an intentionally limited viewpoint. Conversely, leaders and leadership teams are paid to be at the school each day and to understand and direct the daily operations of the school in a way that a board member never could in a volunteer capacity. The leader is still ultimately accountable to the board, thus making this a potentially tricky, but ideally symbiotic relationship. The fundamental posture should be one in which the leader is actively leading the board with helpful and forward-looking information, while the board is actively holding the leader accountable to the overall big-picture mission, vision, and direction of the school. Perhaps another way to think about it, is that the board’s primary concern should be children yet unborn, while the leader’s primary concern is the children currently in the building.
2. Get Clear on Governance Committees – Recent years have raised questions about governance committees that were previously never envisioned. Who qualifies to be on the board, how they are elected, how they are vetted, how they are on-boarded, and many other related questions are all very important for school leaders and boards to get clear about before there is a significant issue at the school.
3. Focus on the Future – In general, board meetings should be focused on the future. If you want a helpful target, use the 80/20 rule. About 80% of your time (and agenda) should be focused on things that are coming up that require clarification, feedback, strategic planning, or perhaps approval or discussion. If possible, use about 20% of a board meeting to discuss and celebrate the past and/or to deal with present issues. This ratio will not always work depending on the types of situations that a board and leader are dealing with, but at the very least it is a worthwhile target to keep in mind, perhaps as a trend over the course of a school year.
4. Go To Breakfast – It is imperative that boards and principals are on the same page about the implementation of the strategic direction of the school. Each board meeting and board meeting agenda should be co-designed by the board and the leader to reflect a symbiotic working relationship. The best way to accomplish this is for the board chair (or potentially the board executive team) to meet with the leader well in advance of each board meeting to ensure that the agenda is co-created, to catch missing pieces, and to place the focus on the future so that everyone is on the same page about strategic priorities on a monthly basis. Naturally, this could be accomplished in different settings than a restaurant at 7am, but there are additional benefits to breaking bread together! The point remains that good planning between the board chair and the principal goes a long way towards getting ahead of potential issues that may arise at each board meeting.