One More Reason Why Leadership Matters

On-site this week for the NAIS Aspiring Heads Leadership Institute in Atlanta and grappling with the big questions of leading and following in academia. Leadership matters, always, but perhaps a bit more so in educational institutions. A transferential relationship forms at the schoolhouse door (whether kindergarten or university) wherein we or our parents trust that the people in charge know what they are doing. Psychological rich and potentially incendiary, this transference heightens the importance of leaders and leading in ways that many who aspire to the role find uncomfortable.

Like ministers, priests, rabbis, physicians, psychologists and more, school leaders are canvases onto which constituents paint their own images reflecting their own hopes, dreams and paranoias. Aspiring and would-be leaders ignore this at their peril.

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