Vicious or Virtuous?

As we work with heads and boards to strengthen their partnership to lead schools, one of the most common and destructive dynamics we encounter mirrors one we used to see when we were psychotherapists in clinical practice. Partners often fall into a vicious cycle of inquisition and avoidance when bad news would otherwise be on the table. School heads and their teams mirror this by trying mightily to put the best face on negative enrollment, attrition, or academic results numbers. Board members then, detect the defensiveness and begin digging deeper. Once revealed, the bad news seems to confirm some board members' suspicions: management is keeping us from knowing the facts.

The problem in the above is that school managers get exactly what they don’t want—more questions and greater scrutiny—while board members feel righteous in asking for more and more data. Hence, the vicious cycle.

The alternative is a virtuous cycle where “a chain of events [unfolds] in which one desirable occurrence leads to another which further promotes the first occurrence and so on resulting in a continuous process of improvement.” To move in the virtuous direction requires a commitment by management to share the good and the bad, along with a commitment by governors to not “kill the messenger.” Governance and management need to be on the same side in dealing with situations revealed by challenging data.