Monday, February 24, 2003. Jessie-Lea Abbott, Bodie Brizendene, Burch Ford, Joan Lonergan, "How to Encourage Leadership and What are the Barriers"

MS. LEE: Please take your seats so we can go ahead and begin. Our panel today is a panel of our own, and the moderator is going to be Jessie-Lea Abbott, from Katherine Delmar Burke, and we are taking up really where Tasha left off, because what the panel is going to discuss is how we encourage leadership and what are the barriers to it. So with that, I'll turn it over to Jessie-Lea.

MS. ABBOTT: Thank you. It was so wonderful this morning, I almost feel as if there's nothing left for us to say, but we will have plenty to say.

I'm going to begin with just a quick overview to remind those of you who were not here last year, that one of the questions that kept bubbling up was this question of who is the next generation? Who are the people in the next generation of school leaders? And particularly who are the women and what is our role, what can we do to help identify them, mentor them, and give them reason to believe that this is a manageable, exciting, wonderful profession?

And so that was the context in which we framed this program. Inadvertently, because JoAnn Deak's plane collapsed and she couldn't get here, in changing the order of the program, we have actually emphasized something earlier in the design, which is using ourselves as resources.

Again, a theme in the conversations that I had with conference participants last year was that among us we have a wealth of information and experience, and in order to move from theory to action plans, one of the most effective things might be to share more of the information we have among ourselves to address exactly these issues.

So this conference has been planned to look at women in leadership roles from various perspectives, external as well as the internal, and this is one of the internals. Actually, it's a little bit of a blend.

On our panel we have Burch Ford, from Miss Porter's in Connecticut, who's going to talk a little bit about the career seminar for women, the NAPSG-sponsored women's administrative training program.

Bodie Brizendene from Marin Academy in California, who's going to talk about other kinds of mentoring and mentoring programs that she has experienced and come across that seem to be effective.

Mary Burke, from the Whitfield School in Missouri, is going to expand that conversation. Bodie is going to be talking a little bit about her own school and other programs, and Mary, I believe, is going to be talking mostly about some of the programs in her own school.

And then Joan Lonergan, from Castilleja in California, is going to take us from those realms into the large question of: What are the obstacles? What are the barriers? Why is it that with all this information and wisdom that we have, that we still find people like Tasha saying that -- I can't quote her exactly. What was her comment? When someone asked her, "Where will you be in ten years, will you be a head of school," "No way."

We need to begin to look at the ways that we can help people say yes, absolutely. This is something that's quite viable.

So before we begin, I'm going to ask you to spend a moment simply thinking and jot down two thoughts on those little yellow file cards that you happen to have. You do not have to hand them in, so you don't have to put any identifying features on them. These are thought points for you to return to later on.

Here are the two questions. First, an example of the best mentoring experience or program that you know about or have participated in to help inspire leadership from the ranks, leadership in education from the ranks.

And the second question is: One obstacle or barrier of which you are aware that inhibits that inspiration, that makes it difficult to inspire people to these leadership positions.

One of the things that I did not say is that our intent is to hold questions and discussion until each of the panelists has made their brief presentation. I hadn't thought of this earlier, but if you have a question for one person in particular, you could jot that down. You will have a chance to return to it, because we're hoping that this will generate a very active discussion among all of us. So thank you very much, and I'm now going to hand the mike to Burch.

MS. FORD: Thank you. Good morning. What I'm going to talk about is something that the wisdom of this group came up with almost 20 years ago at the February conference in Mobile in 1984. And at that time there were a number of members of NAPSG who were commenting on and were concerned about the paucity of women heads among independent schools. And they had a fall meeting at Dobbs and came up with the idea of this administrative leadership conference, which was launched at Garrison Forest in June of 1985. Actually, I attended that as did some other people in this room.

After that, this conference was given on an annual basis at Garrison for a number of years and then became a biennial conference moving to Dobbs, and for the last four years it's been at Miss Porter's in Farmington.

I think it's been an enormously successful program and I want to just tell you a little bit about it, because I think it addresses all the issues that we've been thinking about and concerned with now almost 20 years later.

First of all, the faculty of this conference are all women heads of school. The conference originally was a week long in June, and now it's about three days long over the Columbus Day weekend in the fall.

The purpose of the program is really to invite women in independent schools who may think that they are ready for a headship, who may have no idea but are just intrigued by the idea of a headship, and so they want to learn a little bit more about it. Or it may be that it's just been suggested by somebody in their school that they might want to attend.

Normally, it's been about 30 women each time. The program's goals really are to expose, to inspire, and to excite all of these young women about the possibility of running a school.

Let me just run through the program to tell you a little bit about it. The first thing that we do is to cover a number of aspects of headship, and we also have a lot of time to talk about what our own experiences are, and some individual one-on-one counseling.

We start with a presentation by one of the members of the faculty on leadership styles, a little bit about women in authority, and most recently the question about sexual orientation in headships has come up. So that was something that we also talked about and something that I think consultants and headhunters also have on their minds.

Next we have a presentation on the search process and on boards of trustees. And incidentally, each faculty member gives the presentation, the other faculty members weigh in, because, of course, all of our experiences are all so different, which makes it such a rich discussion. And then there's an opportunity, obviously, for the participants to have questions and answers and to talk about their observations from however close or however distant they are from any one of these issues.

The next thing we talk about is organizing an administrative team in the context of a school culture and how important it is to understand that culture before trying to organize the administrative team. I think we all know that we inherit those administrative teams often, and that can be as challenging as anything else.

The next thing that we talk about is reading and crafting budgets. Finance, investment. Again, all the things that everyone in this room has to deal with but generally has not much exposure to prior to our jobs; and then related development and fundraising.

At that point -- and by now it's towards the end of the second day -- we then have individual mentoring conferences and try to make as many of us on the faculty as possible available to as many members of the participating group, where we look at resumes, where we hear about what people have done so far, what they're interested in doing, and how near or far they may be from becoming a head of school.

That evening, the second night, we do something that I think is tremendously important and invariably is the most popular part of the program. Each one of us on the faculty talks about our own professional and personal journey and how we came to be heads of school, what all the pieces were.

No two stories are remotely alike. I think it comes as an enormous relief to all the members of the participating group, because I think often people have an idea from a distance, as do we all, about things about which we don't know very much, that there is this one way to do it right. And if nothing else, that particular part of the program dispels that myth.

I think that the other thing that is enormously enjoyable for all of us who participate in it is the tremendous candor, confusion, enormous humor, and also real affection for the work that comes across in all of those stories. We all love stories in any case, and this is literally a story-telling part of this program, and one that I think the women who are there really love.

The other thing that is clear about everyone's experience is that in becoming a head of school for every person, it was a leap of faith, and I'm sure that's probably true for every one of you all, as is true of probably all the important decisions that we make in our lives.

The next day we have a presentation on balancing the multiple constituents that all of you deal with: Faculty, students, trustees, parents, alumni, members of the community, friends of the school, and how all those things can be taken into account as we move from day to day, often reacting. We love to think about the fact that we do lots of reflection, but as has been already stated, often our energy is in dealing with things that no one could ever have prepared us for. And so those are some of the stories that we tell as well.

The other part of that -- which, again, never gets enough attention in our lives -- is how we also fold into the constituencies of our own families, which often we forget to mention until the end.

Then the last presentation is on strategic planning, and before everyone goes, there's another mentoring session. What we try to do is bring into focus the major aspects of our jobs, many of which could be learned on the job, but it's also to put it into a real, personal, individual context, again, that everyone in the group participates in.

I'd like to ask of this group, any of you who have been on the faculty for the administrative seminar, if you would stand up.

That just gives you a sample.

It's a great group. It's great fun, and we'll come back to that.

In terms of the participants, the women who come to this come from all over the country, although, naturally, predominantly from the East Coast, but also from the West Coast, from Canada. Some of them are assistant heads of schools and thinking immediately about the possibility of becoming a head of school. Some are department heads, some are division heads. Some are not in major administrative positions at all, but cover some range of administrative experience. Sometimes they are school counselors, sometimes they're admissions directors, sometimes development directors, sometimes athletic directors, but it covers an entire range.

Some think they're ready to be heads of school and after the mentoring session they think maybe there are other things they want to do before being part of a search. Some have no idea that, in fact, they really probably are quite ready to become a candidate.

One of the things that has been a filtering for the people who really are ready is that all of us, all of you, are called fairly regularly by consultants who are trying to expand their candidate pools, and it gives those of us on the faculty for this seminar an opportunity to identify some people who really are absolutely wonderful but had not yet necessarily identified themselves as ready to start thinking about this.

One of the things that I think is so important and that was also referred to in Tasha's remarks is that it's really important for a number of young women to start thinking of the possibility and start seeing themselves or to start considering their leadership potential. Because until that happens, I think it's really hard for them to start to put themselves out there.

In the 1985 seminar, when the faculty in that group started to tell their own stories, I was struck by the number of women there who had not really had a plan to become a head of school, but someone had said to them, "You know, you really ought to think about doing this. I think you'd be very good." And then they began do see themselves that way, and then pursued that path.

Of the people who have participated in this program, 26 are now currently heads of school which I think speaks to the efficacy of it, and I will say that the reviews that we get are always absolute raves, which is very satisfying because we all believe so much what it is that we're doing that it's very rewarding to hear that kind of a response.

Again, I would love to ask any women in the audience today, any of you in this group who have participated in the seminar, if you all would stand up, just to get a view.

Clearly, not all the sitting heads are here, but in any case, that gives you some idea.

We identified this need 20 years ago. It's an ongoing need. What I think is particularly exciting is that this past year it was very clear that the desire has also increased enormously; in fact, doubled from the usual. Generally, before the conference by the end of the school year preceding the seminar in the fall, we have a number of registrants but it's not full, by any means, and doesn't become full until probably the last week before the program. This year it was full by the end of the school year. By the beginning of the fall, because it was Columbus Day weekend and it's in New England, every hotel and everyplace to stay is pretty full. We were able to get ten more beds, so we had 40 registrants and we had 20 people on the waiting list, which was virtually double the usual amount of interest. I think that's really exciting because it certainly speaks well of the group that may be following behind all of us, which certainly we're all very interested in cultivating.

So as a result of that, in the council's meeting yesterday the decision was made that we will have a seminar this year. What we did in the last seminar was to consider whether or not this, instead of being every other year, should now become every year, and also if it should be bicoastal, if it should be in other locations than the eastern part of the United States, even though that's where the majority of the candidates for this seminar come from.

Anyway, Pam Clark, bless her heart, has agreed to be the host for next fall at St. Paul Academy & Summit School in St. Paul, so keep your eyes peeled for that mailing when it comes to you, because it will be one more opportunity for the young women in all of your schools to take advantage of this program.

When Tasha said this morning, "Show us what's great about the job," I thought that was really important, because that certainly is one of the things that we all try to do in this seminar. I know that everyone in the room tries to do it because we wouldn't be doing this work if we didn't really believe in it.

But in thinking about leadership, I just want to read a quote that some of you probably have heard, and I really love it. It's something that somebody gave to me when I was at Milton, so it's something that Bart Giamatti said when he was the president of Yale. And of course, he was talking about being a university president, but it's clearly about leadership. He said, "Being president of a university is no way for an adult to make a living, which is why so few adults actually attempt to do it. It's to hold a mid-19th-century ecclesiastical position on top of a late-20th-century corporation. But there are those lucid moments, those crystalline experiences, those Joycean epiphanies, that reveal the numinous beyond and lay bare the essence of it all. I have had those moments. They were all moments of profound and brilliant failure. But string those glistening moments of defeat into a strand, and you have the pearls of an administrative career."

I think that leadership, as you all know, is striking the balance between what to conserve and what to change and the wisdom to know the difference. As I was thinking that, of course, I was thinking about the 12 steps and a few other things. And we know that we don't always get it right, but what I think is really important is something that we're always telling our students, and that is, one of the important things about education is learning from your mistakes. I certainly think it's God's work. I know that everybody else does, and in spite of those glistening moments of defeat, I don't think there's any better job, and I think that's something that we all need to keep telling those who work with us. Thank you.

And now Bodie will take us to the next step.

MS. BRIZENDENE: When Jessie-Lea asked me to come and speak today, I thought about many of the same stories that Tasha shared, and I thought about what I would use to craft my little bit of words to you today. So of course, I put it in a little an alliterative form, and I'm thinking of modeling, mentoring, and making possible. I know that my own earlier English teacher mentors at the Bryn Mawr School would remind me that that structure is not exactly parallel, but I would get extra credit for the alliteration.

Some things in life only happen once, and where you begin your career, that first moment that you step into a school and you begin to do your work, is never ever recaptured again. And echoing Dr. Bowman's words and her point last night, would I not have started at the Bryn Mawr School, all girls, all women administrators, I am quite certain that my path would have been different, and perhaps I might not be here today speaking to you.

I'll never forget the day I was hired and Lila Lohr, then brand-new middle school head, herself a mother, new on the job, interviewed me, Brand-spanking-new English teacher with great ideals and no experience. I was also a mother of two young children, one just a year and a half old.

I went into her office and she handed me the schedule for the day. I had child care for about two and a half hours, and I was going to be there for about five and a half hours. So of course, I thought very much that I looked like the wonderful metaphor we use about the duck on the top of the water. Calm. All my Baldwin manners came into play. All the sense of composure, and underneath the duck legs were swimming fiercely. And I asked Lila, looking at her, if I could use her phone, and she knew. She just knew.

She left the office. I used the phone. I got child care covered, bit by bit. I had to use the phone two more times during the interview.

And the fact that she understood that, and herself as a model, is a lasting memory of making sure that we do offer that opportunity for a career and a life.

What I saw at Bryn Mawr School was compassionate, vibrant leadership, exciting educational energy, and I wanted to be part of it. I was deeply attracted to it. It looked ordinary, it looked purposeful, and it looked available. That attraction today is very important for us to give to other young leaders, especially given the landscape. The paucity of candidates for headship, women and people of color in particular, is outstanding and astonishing and alarming.

Blair Stambaugh and I in 1996 were on a panel where we talked about this very thing. We were reporting on Jan Scott's Klingenstein research about why there were not enough women heads, and Jan's research brought her to two pivotal points that we focused that workshop upon. One was that women were three times more likely to self--select out of a headship process than a man, and five times more ready than a man to say, "I don't know," if someone asks you if you want to be a head.

The accounting for this, the calculus for this, fell into three pivotal reasons. One was relocation. Family relocation, children in schools, husbands with careers.

The second one was support systems. Husbands, for many long, long years, had a cottage industry of support. The family went with them. And women were not sure about that support, so they would select out of the process.

And the last one, perhaps the most interesting and the one that still holds a certain irony of leadership now, they were fearful that they could not be as a man in leadership. They couldn't act like a man. And there were questions about style and power and authority, evocative, if you will, of Peggy McIntosh's wonderful and timeless article, "Feeling like a fraud." We need, as educators, to let leaders know that not being the expert perhaps is the best medium for leadership.

I'm not sure there has been a lot of change since 1996. I studied with Peggy McIntosh 20 years ago, and she used to say, "Remember, it's going to take 100 years." So I'm encouraged that we're down to 80, but we're not done yet.

The other part of this: Making possible. There are three programs I want to highlight. Three ideas, really. One is a new idea that is in its third year called the Bay Area Teachers' Development Collaborative and I have information about all three of these programs on the table to the right here. There should be enough for many of you to get copies. Again, this is a program in its third year. Jessie-Lea and I serve on the board. It was an idea spearheaded by a wonderful educator in San Francisco, Janet McGarvey, who works at Hamlin School, all girls, collaborative.

We brought heads of school together to say, what do we need for our teachers and administrators in this area for us? So we put together this collaborative, and the dues are nominal and very important. They, of course, are nonprofit, and we barely scrape even at the end. But they are $1,000 for schools, 250 enrollment or less, and $2000 for larger. And we designed summer programs, summer institutes where we do Project Zero. Last year we focused on children's development. This year the summer program will work on service learning. And we focus now increasingly on administrative leadership.

We started a program in its first year, which we open hope will continue year after year called the New Administrators' Program. It's a full-year program where we start off with the summer workshop for any newly appointed administrator and we give them a mentor, someone who is already a senior administrator at another school, and they work with their partners for the entire year.

Again, "partnership" here is the key word, and the opportunity to see leadership at its best we think is encouraging more people and more young people to pursue these jobs.

The second thing is that we can do a good job taking care of ourselves as leaders. To be good mentors and to model great and good practices, we need to make sure that we continue to be learners in leadership on our own. There are two things I would like to highlight on that. The Bay Area schools -- and Joan and I are in the same group -- work with a facilitator by the name of Debbie Freed, and she meets monthly with us. It's a three-hour session. And we talk about the trials and tribulations and the joys of being the head of school. These meetings, where you know that you can absolutely come together as a group of like people and leaders to be able to explore your own questions, are critical.

Debbie is putting together a series of summer retreats in California -- information, again, to my right here -- and she's doing this for seasoned and new heads of school, and it's called "Making Meaning Out of my Life and Leadership." There are a series is about five of them, and again, I encourage you to consider working with her in this level of coming together to improve our own leadership.

And then finally, something that I have stumbled upon -- it certainly wasn't something that I found through any wisdom of my own, but I love that it's happened -- is that I actually work with a leadership coach. It's a corporate model and came to me from a former board chair. The woman I work with is Penny Carter, and she works with an organization called Turning Points. Again, the model is corporate, but the interest is very much a two-way street.

She is interested in schools as interesting organizational institutions. We're a little different from the corporate world. I am interested in having her evaluate and work with me on my own leadership skills. The key here is that this has also worked its way into the senior administrative team, and she is now coaching or has coached the development director, the business manager, and the athletic director. Our language and our meetings have changed substantially from this work that we've been doing with Penny. We as a team more often talk now about our own leadership and about not only the "what," because you know that that takes up a lot of time, but the "how," and I see future leadership right there every Thursday afternoon at the table.

There is an expense to it, but because we are such an interesting entity for this group, she gives us a 40 percent discount and it's probably the best professional development funds that you can spend. So I encourage you to do that, too.

I want to end with a story. I love to tell stories. This is a story about my second year at Bryn Mawr School. I had just turned 30, and Barbara Chase, who thought I was in my 20s -- which was good -- came to me and said, "Would you like to be on a panel at NAIS?"

Well, I wasn't even sure what NAIS was. But again, because of the encouragements of leadership at that place, I said, "Yes, I would love to be on this panel."

The panel was three generations of women educators talking about their lives. I had no idea that I would be with Blair Stambaugh and Anne Healey, both long-term wonderful heads, mistresses of metaphor, and I was a young brand-new teacher.

Well, of course, I realized suddenly that I was with the gods and I needed to have an infusion of ambrosia very quickly to be able to hold my own, but the truth of it was, that wasn't true. They took me under their wing, we met two times for lunch. I was in awe of their leadership, their history, their lives.

We did a wonderful conference. I learned a thousand things, and it was that kind of mentoring and watching that helped me be here today.

There is a funny part to that story. I spoke last, because we went chronologically. So as they spoke, I got more and more nervous. I did this little thing -- I don't know if you all do this -- where I thought, Okay, Bodie, if you can pour yourself a glass of water and drink it without shaking and smile, you will be okay.

So I did one. And I thought, Okay, Bodie, if you can pour yourself another glass of water and drink it and smile and not be nervous, you will be fine.

So I continued to do this. I spoke. I was relieved. At the end of this NAIS presentation, my uncle, who's also a head of a school, came up to me and said, "Congratulations. I bet you learned a lot."

And I said, "I learned tons."

And he said, "Such as not drinking a pitcher of water before you have to speak?"

Humor, too, is important.

DR. BURKE: Well, as you notice, I'm not pouring any water.

Whitfield School is a co-educational secondary school for grades six through twelve, 450 students. In 1984 we embarked upon the great vision of cognitive learning theory and constructivism, joined the Coalition of Central Schools in 1986, and for almost the last 20 years have worked to implement this new approach to teaching and learning.

The good news is that we have really come a long way and the culture has become very strong and very integrated. The bad news is that it is a very difficult culture to enter. And the ramifications of that have been that while we have been able to attract young dynamic teachers who are coming out of education schools basically trained in these approaches, it has been very, very difficult for us to bring in experienced people.

I could give you a litany of some of the disappointments. One of the most recent was a wonderful traditional teacher who had been 20 years in a fabulous independent school who wanted to be part of our school culture, who came in and had a difficult time giving up that AP approach, and it wasn't six weeks before the phone calls were coming in from board members, from teachers, and from our kids. She wasn't a Whitfield teacher. I can guarantee you that none of us can really define what a Whitfield teacher is, but everybody in our school seems to know right when there isn't a Whitefield teacher. The learning curve is nonexistent. And it's a problem for us.

So this year my executive team, which is made up pretty traditionally of the development director, the admissions director, et cetera, got together to discuss this problem.

Now, recognizing how big a problem this was when my admissions director retired after ten years, I thought, How am I ever going to find someone who can market this school from the outside? And I have no one inside who can do that.

So we asked the college counselor to now become the admissions/college counselor. She brings them in, she gets them out. And she's very proud. The Petty School has adopted this model. We don't think it's from us, but nonetheless.

So we talked a lot about what we should do, because our culture is young. One of my most mature teachers is now 40 years old. Also, just to give a perspective, the board that I have is also a young entrepreneurial board. The new head of brewing and technology for all of Anheuser-Busch is the vice president of our board, and he said, "You know, here's your problem. You can hire the best brewmaster from Heineken, but if you bring him to AB, he's not going to want to make Budweiser."

And so given that metaphor, we began to look at what kind of ways could we think out of the box. This summer we identified three dynamic potential stars: A 26-year-old who is the department chairman of the history department, a 30-year-old, and a 34-year-old, both of whom were deans.

I brought each of these individuals into my office. I looked them in the eye and said essentially, "Look. I don't have a new job for any of you. I don't have a new job for you. But I believe that you can be a significant leader in our school. And I want you to come onto our executive team. I want you to take on some new responsibilities, I want to put you on our board and we'll see what happens."

So the three people came on the executive team, and then I took them to the first board meeting and my Swiss board chairman asked each of them to please reflect upon the opening of the school year. And each one, with passion and intellect, spoke about their perception of that year. And the board chairman said, "And I would like you to be on our board from now on."

The goal for us was to give these stars opportunities to learn more about schools. We actually put two of them into the admissions office, which required that we move someone out of the admissions office into the dean's office. The teacher actually stayed where she was. But our real goal was to begin to evolve a culture of new leadership.

Perhaps the unexpected benefit for me was what I really didn't anticipate. I was so into how high-quality these individuals were that I never really thought about the fact that I had put a teacher on the executive team and on the board of directors, and it was fascinating when, all of a sudden, faculty members came up to me in the hall to thank me for this wisdom of finally putting a faculty member on the Board. And in my too-often-honest way I had to explain that I was glad about that, but you know, the real goal had been just to identify some people we thought could take on leadership.

However, on the flip side of it, because the teacher is not there as an advocate for faculty but has become really part of our executive team, she has gently and objectively pointed out pitfalls along the way that have really helped us, I think, to make some better decisions than we might have.

We are really early in this process, and when I look out at all of you, it's always an awkward feeling to sit and talk about our schools when I know how much experience is in this room. But we are seeing some real benefits, and I'm already seeing some new individuals that we are kind of trying to bring up through the ranks. So anyway, that's our story, and stay tuned.

MS. LONERGAN: Thank you. I'm not going to start with a lot of water, but I'm here because of a glass of wine with Jessie-Lea. And my part of this is a little more ambiguous than the previous speakers.

But it was over a glass of wine, looking over the bay from Jessie-Lea's kitchen, after she had just had a massage and it made a lot of sense. So in the bright light of day, after two cups of coffee, I'm not sure. But I am going to go forward with this.

What I would like to first say is, speaking to Tasha's comments about why do we do this work, and why would anyone want to do it, I'm sure you, like me, have heard many people in your administration or in your faculty say, "No way would I ever want to be a head of school."

I think it's important to look at the reasons why people say that, and I know we all have many of them, and you have all written down at least one. But for myself, I just made a list of some of the things that I'm sure are offputting to those around me. This is my tenth year. I heard Evy say that she had gained 22 pounds in 22 years. I have to admit I have gained 18 in nine years. So I'm going to work on the other side of that now.

But a lot of that is just, I think, the emotional pressure and the amount of time we spend seated at our desks, and the other things we're not doing in our lives because we are heads of school. And a direct result of that is, of course, my wardrobe is quite familiar and becoming more and more limited as the pounds go on. So I'm concerned a little bit about that.

I also have had two divorces. I think our private lives, our personal lives, are greatly impacted because of the amount of time we spend on the job. I often spend 12 hour days at Castilleja. I know that's part of my success there, but I know it's part of my downfall personally in that job.

I think many heads have a martyr complex that, well, no one else will do it; I will. And I often jokingly describe my job as what no one else can do or no one else wants to do. I think we have to be cognizant of the fact that we tend to take on everything that needs to be done.

The other thing that I would like to point out is that when we spend those hours on the job, too many of those hours are spent behind a desk and they're not with kids, they're not with our faculty. Too many of those hours are spent on the phone with board members or with parents. They are tough hours and they are very challenging hours. And they do protect. We are the firewall for everybody else, but they do take a toll on us.

I also want to mention the number of meetings that we go to, and the expectations of us that we or others take away from those meetings. I remember very vividly a couple of months ago, a meeting with my board chair first thing in the morning, of course, at 7:00 a.m., which would accommodate his schedule, not knowing I had a 7:30 meeting that night with parents. But I started at 7:00 a.m. until 9:00 for two hours and I ended up with three pages of notes of things that I was to follow up on, his vision and big ideas, small ideas, many, many questions.

And I got a call in the afternoon about well, have I had any great ideas, how have I progressed on that list. Oh, dear. I said, "Well, there have been a few other things I have been doing today, but I'll get back to you on some of those later."

I think there's a tyranny of rising expectations that we are all vulnerable to, that when we've been in a headship for a long time I think we can all say with pride the changes in our institutions that have improved and what we have done. But for everyone that's coming into that institution, every parent, every board member, every faculty member, every student, that institution is the way it is, not the way it was, and you're looking forward. And so they are expecting change, and even though you think it's pretty perfect compared to the way it was ten years ago, they have a lot of ideas of how it can be better.

So it never stops in terms of those expectations of others, and the expectations appear to be everywhere, at every assembly, at every game, at every event, on campus or off. There are multiple constituencies that you deal with and the expectations for that school, the traditions, the changes, the number of people who have very different ideas about that how the school should be, the amount of listening that you do, the amount of counseling that you do with all of those different constituencies.

And there is also, I think, an expectation that we raise a tremendous amount of money. I know from my faculty and perhaps from many of yours there's an association of that with some great compromise of your values that you are now associated with filthy lucre in some way and that you cater to the wealthy and that you have a double standard in the way that you deal with people, and in spite of all that money is doing for the faculty, for the curriculum, for the students, for the facilities and the resources of the school, there is something not right about raising it.

So why would you take that job? Well, I think one of the things that I remember most fondly about taking this job is the New Heads Conference and how important that was. It gave me a window on the opportunity and the potential of my future and what I could do.

I remember hearing Helen Marter talk about her first year, coming back to that conference and talking about the challenges and the highs of being a head of school, and realizing that for the first time in my life I could act on my own ideas, that I indeed was in charge, and that I would rise and fall with those ideas, but I had an opportunity to explore them. I also learned the hard way, I think, that you couldn't act on every good idea, that you had to leave a few of them go, and I think that is something that we all deal with.

The other thing that I think is so important is the idea of being the leader of the vision of the school and being able to change the course of a school and to enhance it and to help everybody in the organization reach their own potential. I think that there is something so inspiring and awesome about that opportunity that we have to be leaders in the lives of others and to help them to realize the best within themselves.

I think that one of the things that we tend not to talk about very much are the benefits and the compensation. Compensation for heads and the leadership of school has changed dramatically, and I think that that is something that does not trickle down. The fact that heads could be making five to ten times what a starting teacher is making is something that is not very well known, and I think people ought to know that although the job is challenging, it also is rewarding in the ways that a lot of people who are making decisions about an administrator role need to know.

I think that there are lots of things that we could be doing to model a healthier and more attractive lifestyle and work style in our jobs, and I hope that that's something that we can talk about as a group. Maybe in the question session people will bring up some of the things that they are doing successfully to make the job more appealing to those they're working with.

I think it's really important to be bringing people along and exposing them to administration in ways that are positive. I'm not sure we're always doing that. One of the things that I read recently that I'd like to share with you is from James Watson, who with Francis Crick, as you might remember, solved the structure of DNA. This was in Time Magazine, and he mentioned in a conversation why they saw the structure of DNA before anyone else. I read it and I thought, My goodness. This is why we're all heads and this is what makes us good heads. This is what he was saying. "First, we thought it was the most important problem around." I think we all feel we're doing incredibly important work and that we make a difference, and we do.

Number two, it helps to have someone else to take over the thinking when you get frustrated. I think it's so important that we work together, that we are collaborative, that we have teams, that we have other administrators that we can count on.

Three, we're willing to ask for help and talk to our competitors. "If you're the brightest person in the room, you're in trouble."

Bodie mentioned the monthly group that we have. That is such a source of support and information and wisdom, I think, and I go back to that group at the New Heads so often. Al Adams was one of the teachers at that group. Al and I are on the phone probably once a month over something, and he's always there for me, and I hope I'm at a point in my career where I can be there for him occasionally.

Four, "You have to be obsessive." And I think we are. It's the most important work I do. I put it before everything else I do, and I love what I do. I am passionate about what I do.

And then finally, number five, "Both Francis and I knew we would have careers even if it failed, so we weren't desperate. Hence, we were willing to trust that an idea that was only 90 percent certain was worth taking a chance on."

I don't know how many times you have met your Waterloo, when you have said, "This is so important to me that I'm willing to risk the job, I'm willing to lose this career over this particular point."

I have had a couple of them. And I think that sense of integrity about the work that we do and knowing that at times we have to stand up and be counted for what is right and knowing that it's all right to fail, it's all right to disappoint, but it's most important to be true to ourselves in these jobs, keeps us going. I hope that we can talk about some of the issues that keep you in your jobs and inspire others in your organizations to aspire to your job.

MS. ABBOTT: Thank you. Thank you all.

You have done a lot of listening. As we move into the next portion, which is the discussion free-for-all, let me take stock quickly and ask any of you who already have a question or an observation to raise your hand. Okay. A few. I'm going ask you to hold it, because there are only three, and ask all of you to do the following.

Simply where you are sitting, find four or five other people with whom you'll discuss your reactions to the panel and the comments that you wrote on your cards before we began. Your job is to look for patterns and look for themes within your group, both in terms of understandings of what kind of mentoring, what kind of inspiration we can give to the rising leaders in education, in particular of women, and looking at one theme of obstacles within your group and beginning to work on solutions.

And then we will do some sharing of that information and give people a chance to ask questions. Here's what I would urge you, or here's the context. I think that one of the hardest things for us to do in a professional setting -- not in a personal setting, but in a professional setting -- is to face obstacles. We are quite skillful at telling the good news, and I think it's important. There's much to celebrate in everything that we do. And in the privacy of our homes and in smaller personal groups, we talk a lot about the stresses of the job and how difficult it is to convince other people to come and do what we're doing.

My hope is that with a group like this, we can come up with some very concrete examples of the power that we have to be change agents to develop programs and do the kind of mentoring that is encouraging to younger people to come and take our places, and to take a clear look at some of the mixed messages that we give or some of the truths that really are very disheartening to people thinking about doing this work.

So let's spend five minutes doing this. Please write down at least two things, a pattern that your group identifies with the mentoring that works and a pattern that you have identified with what isn't working and what we might do about it, and then we will go back to discussion. Thank you.

(A recess was taken.)

MS. ABBOTT: Thank you very much. And now if at least one person in each group can hear me and signal to the others in your group, you can keep your chairs where they are and hold your conversations, hold your thoughts. We're getting there. Thank you.

Now, I'm calling this a free-for-all, but of course, that's not exactly what I mean. I would love you to take turns speaking. So would Mary. And Carol has a mike, and we have another mike over there, so please, again, use the microphones.

Here are your options. Any of you are more than welcome -- in fact, urged, invited -- to talk about the truths that you unearthed in your small discussions here, and this is a wonderful moment for people who have questions and comments about the panels and the panel information to come forward. So let's see hands.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: I thought in our group that the option that I noticed in my own people is that they have families and husbands who don't want to move, so I thought this would be a great obstacle. It's not the case at all in our group, and in fact, the obstacles that were identified were, do I have the skills to do the things that my head is doing that are not delegated to me? How I do get that experience?

And they were not the things that are insolvable, in a sense, and I thought that was very promising, because there are examples that you have given us in systems, what you're trying to do in your school that I think we can learn from and put in place to help people identify the fact that they do have the skills. Even though they're not going to build a board before they have get the job, they have to the skills to do those things.

MS. ABBOTT: Wonderful. Thank you.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: We talked about the unrelentingness of the job and the lack of a private life and how sometimes women heads are expected to be not only the head of a school but the wife of a head. And I think one thing we hit on was that we need to educate board chairs and boards about what the real nature of the job is, and help them to see that it's important to have scheduled vacation times and sabbaticals, smaller patches of time to get away, to regroup and reenergize. So I thought that was important to share.

MS. ABBOTT: Great. Let's have some more. These are good.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: I think a lot of the publicity about head searches does us a great disservice. I think the New York Times article about how impossible the job is and the list of things every head is expected to do is not accurate. I read down that list and I said, "There must be something wrong with me. I don't do two-thirds of these things."

I mean, I went to a meeting on bond issues. I talked about the school, and then when the financial part came up, my eyes glazed over and the treasurer of the school took over.

I think those articles do a great disservice. I also think we get in meetings like this and talk to people in our schools about the time problem. Well, I noticed my brother, a lawyer, has a time problem, and I think the young investment bankers have a time problem, and I would argue that at our schools it's probably easier to manage those time problems than it is if you're an investment banker or a lawyer.

I think we should be very aggressive in pointing that out to young people coming on.

Thirdly, I think it's very important to have on the board at least one other educator and also someone who takes as her or his responsibility pastoral concerns of the head and his family, who can then talk, trustee to trustee, about whether the house works, what the pressures are on family and how the board can better respond to those.

MS. ABBOTT: I'm curious. Thank you. Of the sitting heads, would you raise your hand if you feel able to express personal needs to your board president? Great.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: We started out discussing boards of trustees and the expectations they have. I'd had too many boards of trustees over the years, but one of the people in our group commented that consultants make a huge difference, that having a male consultant work with you for part of the time, there were certain questions that were indicated, "No, you shouldn't ask that of a board," and then when it came to asking questions about child care, our female consultant said, "Indeed you should and be sure you do."

So I think the work of women consultants -- and there are a number of them here in the room -- have certainly helped the process over the years.

MS. ABBOTT: Great.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: I was blessed in 1996 to be told by my board president in the year I became a head that they were reserving a spot on the trustee group for an educator, and that it would be my decision to decide who that was. It was one of the greatest gifts that my board of trustees gave me. And as a result -- I wasn't sure who it would be -- I waited for a couple of years, but I began with Barbara Chase, and then Archer Harman, and now Earl Ball, and in the course of the times they have served on my board there have been one of those E.F. Hutton moments probably two or three times a year, where all of the heads in the room look down the table to Earl or to Barbara or to Archer, and in almost every instance, I am breathing enormous sighs of relief that they're sitting there, and they gather the perspectives that they bring to the job to that board table.

If any of you have not had a chance to do it, I encourage you to do it. In each of the cases, they were one step removed from Wilmington, Delaware, a little outside the ranks, didn't have that sort of closeness that often gets in there. But I just can't commend it to you enough. They have just been wonderful.

MS. ABBOTT: Thank you. And I'm going to add a footnote. I had forgotten this, but this is along the effective mentoring line. The schools I have run have also had the practice of having educators on the board. Normally those have been other heads of schools, and a little bit removed, as you're describing. But from time to time we have also had middle-level administrators on the board from other schools, the aspiring rising leaders, and that has been wonderful, both for the perspective that they bring to our school and for that chance to be exposed to some of the inner workings of school governance that the teacher or the division head is not necessarily going to be exposed to. Thank you.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: The wisdom from this group is simply that there is no greater gift, I think, that a head can give to an aspiring leader than encouragement, and what we talked about is that in each of our stories, it's someone who personally recruited and encouraged us to think this way, and followed up, in some cases, by the NAPSG seminar.

I think it's simple wisdom, but the more we pay attention to that, the development of our own people and encouragement of leadership. And the other piece was that a decision like this is a family decision, and the encouragement of the family rather than the tension and stress that can be created plays a huge role, as well.

MS. ABBOTT: Great.

MS. UNDERWOOD: This kind of dovetails with what Sue said, because I was thinking earlier about our first presentation, and how do you get someone to go into teaching and the questions that came from the audience, you did, as your generation from Yale was doing these, too, et cetera, Susan Ward Johnson and the people at Harvard and other people.

It really shows that the people who will go into teaching now may only be thinking about doing it for two or three years, and one of the things that will hook them to stay is if you have give them in their mid-20s or mid-30s, whenever they're entering, a leadership chance early on to run a small piece of the program, like Bodie's chance to go and be on the panel with Blair and Anne Healey. That can make a real difference in having them stay, rather than be short-termers.

And it ties into that opportunity, I think, so beautifully. So to me, that's what I take out of these two sessions today. You have to find the opportunities, bring these people to these teams early, and give them a chance to do well, to make them stay, be there to pick them up.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: One of the things that was consistent in our group and echoes again is the encouragement of other people to seek leadership roles and responsibilities. And clearly, I look at Aggie Underwood, not only in choosing me at Garrison Forest in 1980, but also encouraging me all along, even after she had gone on to other duties and responsibilities.

So I think identify who those key people are and follow them around, mentor them, be willing and open to that possibility over the years.

The other thing that I think is really important as a school head who is in the end of my fifth year of a commuter marriage -- it does have its challenges. I have an extraordinarily supportive husband, but I also am grateful and I hope that consultants will help to encourage boards to recognize that there are untraditional marriages that can present to students and other families other possibilities for how life might work.

I thank Joyce McCray because I have a feeling in a community like Harpeth Hall, that people might have been hesitant about that. But it can work very successfully. And I'm thankful to my husband, because he does a lot. He's my wonderful wife.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: We had a lot of the same comments from our group about someone selecting us for leadership, usually a school head who identified us as people who could take on additional responsibilities.

But a thread that came through our group was that a lot of us never thought about being heads until we had gained some experience and some responsibilities, and it made me think that maybe when we hear so many people say, "Oh, I wouldn't want your job," or, "I don't want to be a head of school," maybe it's just that we need to give them the opportunities to lead, and as they have different leadership opportunities, a thought will emerge that, you know what, I really can do this job. It looks like it would be fun and exciting.

MS. ABBOTT: One more.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: I'm a new head and I have very young children, and I'll tell you truthfully that, in fact, I find that my board is more likely to give me a break or at least to agree to some limits on my evening work because my children are so young. In fact, it's a burden. We have help. But I find that also I think everybody in the community acknowledges that my role as a mother is more important than any other role.

I also want to take this time to follow up on what Bill Polk was saying. Can I just for a minute point out how many of us in this room have worked for Bill Polk? And I'm looking up at the dias.

I just don't want to let the moment go by without acknowledging Bill Polk and thanking him and looking around at all of his children who are leading schools.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: Now, Bill, congratulations. He's an icon for all of us.

I wanted to make a practical financial comment, because I have to. I think we can help young heads successfully negotiate contracts if we can give them the confidence to say what they really need. I think you have to look into your heart and say, "Gosh, what is it that will make this job doable for me?"

When I came to Garrison, I had a child under a year old, and Joan and Lorraine did most of the work, but I sat with the board and said, "If you want me to come, I have to go home at 4:00. I'll come back after he goes to bed, I'll do all these things, but I have to be able to go home at 4:00. That's really important to me."

And there were a couple of other things like that. Now, you can ask Martha if I still go home at 4:00, which I do, and do the treadmill and come back, but it was a pattern that served me well in my work over all these years. So I would encourage us to encourage our young colleagues to really think in a negotiated way contractually about, what do I need to make this job something that I can do?

MS. ABBOTT: I'm going to remind us all, too, that that mirrors what Tasha said about her approaching the interview at Brearley and basically saying, "I am me. This is what you get."

And it reflects on the career seminar message that many participants say that there's an importance in the power of seeing that there are so many different ways to do this and so many different paths, and that being true to yourself and having the guts to ask for what you need, knowing that it may be the deal-breaker, I think, is something that we cannot emphasize enough. Thank you. One more?

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: Just a comment about taking care of ourselves. Back in the early 1980s, I had the misfortune to write an article in response to the death of Ed Potter, a colleague of mine, and good friend at the Peddie School. At that point I realized that we take on responsibility and have a feeling that we need to take care of everybody else, but in doing that, sometimes we don't take care of ourselves, and people we really love and care about, our own family and children.

When I saw Ed's wife and children there with him gone, we do need to do that. We do need to take care of ourselves and we can't feel guilty about that. And I told my own faculty, "Some days you'll see me not coming in here until 9:00, and you have to understand that I'm taking care of myself so I can take care of you and my other responsibilities here at the school, but I'm going to get a workout, because if I'm physically fit and mentally prepared, I'm going to be able to do a lot better job as head of school if I do that rather than coming in here and being seen at 7:30 or 8:00 on a particular day."

So I actually schedule into my day that kind of meeting with myself, if you will. So I'm on the bike path or on the treadmill, whatever it takes, but taking that time now helps a great deal and, I feel, allows me to do a better job as head of school.

So the message is: Take care of yourself and take care of your loved ones because if you don't, you won't be as effective as you need to be. Thank you.

MS. ABBOTT: That's a perfect segue into what we're going to do next. However, before you leave, I am going to do what I call a Liza. Are you ready?

Tomorrow, there are many among you who by 11:00 will think, I have done it. I have heard enough. I can't be in that room anymore, I'm ready to play.

And I'm going to watch and make sure that as many of you as possible actually do come back here. Tomorrow's program has turned out to be, I think, phenomenal. We're going to begin with Peggy Orenstein and she will address, in a way, the flip side of this, particularly the women, the female side, women who try to do it all.

She's an engaging speaker. I'm sure there will be some humor in it, and her speech will be followed by one bit of hilarity, and some somber. The hilarity, in fact, is going to be improvisational dancing. You may not know that you have been chosen to do this, but you will find out. And when we finish with that, we are going to conclude with sort of a pulling-together of all of the pieces, touching on any of the residual thoughts and questions and observations we have about what we've done, and particularly adding in Peggy's talk, and moving forward to some of the questions that many of you have been asking each other, which is, is there a life after headship, and what can we do during our headships to be preparing and thinking about what might the next chapter be?

It's a little different from where we've begun the conference, but it might quite a wonderful way to end it. So please, be here at 9:00 and at 11:00, and in the meantime, enjoy your afternoon and your dinner. Thank you.