During my career in independent schools, I have been incredibly fortunate to work alongside three heads of school who have placed a high value on our communication team and strategy. Each has invited me to the table alongside the Board of Trustees as we, collectively, seek to develop a strategic direction, and then execute it from a communications standpoint.

What I have witnessed is the importance of building significant trust over time among the highest level of leadership including the Board of Trustees, the CEO (Head of School) level, and the communications team. With significant trust capital established among the leadership of a school, when challenging situations arise, we can focus on supporting the community through the crisis and not on seeking alignment in response. It can be easy to take this trust for granted in a small independent school setting where we feel that we know each other from living and working alongside each other, but a foundation of trust with the Communications Team is absolutely essential for a CEO and Board of Trustees to most effectively do their work of leading an organization.
When a CEO, Executive Director, or Head of School steps into their role, or a transition takes place in the leadership of the Communications Team or Board of Trustees, leaders must carve out intentional time to develop a relationship with this small core group. While the CEO makes the ultimate call for strategic direction of the school, the intersection of the Board of Trustees (governing the CEO/Head of School) and the Communications Team (articulating that strategy to the external world) must be aligned in that vision. This alignment, perhaps even more so than the individuals occupying each seat, is pivotal to successful leadership of a school, and this alignment starts with valuing individual relationships.
Absent an intentional space for honest, strategic alignment conversations to take place, decisions are left to individuals, and fragmentation in strategy occurs. The structure we have evolved at Proctor Academy ensures that we have a Board Committee (Institutional Advancement) where our big picture strategy is discussed across the Board and internal School Leadership regularly. This committee is less about specific messaging, but about 30,000 foot alignment, and so while this does not always help us in the immediate crisis moment, it allows us to ensure we are aligned, gives us space to build relationships across the Board and internal leadership, and sets the stage for the more acute conversations around specific messaging alignment.
Additionally, we have worked to develop an internal dashboard for the Administration and Board (and is open to the entire employee community, including our Communications Team) that documents progress toward all of our strategic goals and objectives on a quarterly basis. Again, the mere existence of this dashboard does not necessarily help with specific messaging for the school, but it provides valuable, tactical insights to both the Communications Team and the Board of Trustees related to how we are running the school. This transparency of leadership creates another intentional space where our collective investment in our shared goals and the execution of those goals. When we spend time reading and interacting with our shared dashboard, answering questions, and creating transparency in our work, we build alignment and practical trust across the triangle of leadership, communications, and the Board.
As organizational leaders, we must invite our Communications Team into the strategic conversation, if even just as listeners, if we expect deep alignment in our messaging and our institutional goals. Part 2 of this blog will look at the essential role a school’s communications efforts play in building trust capital prior to a crisis event.
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