Most long-term, highly valued, and respected school heads step down mainly of their own volition. They give their boards a time line with no rush to launch a search and find a capable successor.

However, the search is only the beginning. Long-term heads leave behind some great legacies but also unresolved issues, some challenging personalities on the staff, and some unintended traps into which any new head can fall.

A search is exciting and represents a new chapter in the history of a school, but the transition is crucial.  Most boards are tired and relieved after the search and not processing the reality that the transition will take up to five years.  Few boards form a small transition committee that helps the head in his or her first year to avoid the pitfalls that might otherwise make for a short tenure for the new head.

Some boards with departing long-term heads realize too late that they should have hired an internal or external interim head for a year or two to allow the head’s legacies and weaknesses to emerge and become clear. An interim head can address impending areas of concern so that the next head is not the “sacrificial lamb” or the “middle man” with a tenure of 3 to 5 years or less.

Most schools with long term heads simply cannot contemplate an interim experience unless forced into it unexpectedly. Boards often feel that appointing an interim represents maintaining the status quo versus helping the school to innovate and compete effectively in the local market.

Without the interim, the risks for the new head are significant and surprisingly not obvious to all: such as inheriting a leadership team that is fully committed to the prior head; and having an unsuccessful inside candidate(s) for the job remain on the staff. If at least one inside popular candidate did not get the job, then the first misstep or apparent mistake that the new head makes may cause faculty, staff and parents to rally to the administrator who did not get the nod but now looks better in comparison.

Other risks relate to board turnover and succession. If the search chair or the board chair leaves the board too soon, or if members of the search committee leave the board in the first three years after the new head arrives, then few board members remember why the head was chosen in the first place.

New heads should never be pushed into making politically risky moves too quickly. These include launching a strategic planning process in the first year, changing curriculum, academic policies, or the administrative structure, or forcing out one or more key players on the faculty or staff.

Constituents, especially teachers, are very sensitive to the fact that outsiders do not own political capital, do not know the culture, history, or politics of the school, and start with almost no good will. One teacher told this Consultant when a new head fired a popular teacher: “I like our new head and am beginning to trust him, but firing someone without us knowing the real reason jeopardizes that initial trust. However, for me, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, for now.” That was a rational response by a wise teacher.

The statistics for head turnover are very high, more so since the pandemic. Most heads are fired in their first 5 years, and the average tenure of heads in the US is now below 5 years, in Canada below 4 years and among international schools below 3 years. The reasons for this are almost always the loss of board institutional memory or the implementation of change that the culture resents.

More than 90% of the time, independent and international schools hire outsiders, and most of them are fired or, for political reasons, move on within the first 3 to 5 years. Only 10% of schools choose insiders, but only about 10% of them are “fired.” That is because they know the people, politics, and pitfalls.

To ensure a successful transition from a long-term head to a new head, the lessons outlined above might be not only useful but crucial in ensuring the board does not need to enter a new search very quickly after the prior one. More important than this, however, is that search is followed by a good transition, and if done well that leads to a strong succession, i.e., the next head may stay and be an effective leader for the long term. The long term is more than 5 years. While the 15, 20, 25, and 30-year heads are increasingly rare, their legacies are most likely the ones that will last.