The Private School Leader Podcast

A 2016 Harvard Business Review study found that 58% of employees reported they would trust a stranger more than their own boss.  Yikes! Just let that sink in for a minute. More than half of American employees say that they trust a complete stranger more than they trust their own boss. This isn’t a “trust gap” , this is more like a “trust Grand Canyon!” We all want to build trust with our teac...

I would like to ask you three questions: Are you 100% satisfied with the culture at your school? Can you envision the culture that you want? Do you know how to make your vision a reality? As private school leaders, most of us have various parts of our school culture that we want to improve. Perhaps, you want your teachers to have higher morale and actually enjoy spending time together. Maybe you w...

I want you to use your imagination. You and two colleagues from your school are going to an educational conference in another city. You decide to go a day early and visit two private schools in that area. In the morning, you visit a big school with a beautiful campus, strong academics, 20 sports teams and cutting-edge technology in every classroom. It seems like an amazing school, but within ten m...

At my local Walmart, the same thing happens every year, during the week after the 4th of July. They start putting out all of the “Back To School” items in their seasonal section.  Just a week before, this section was filled with beach towels, flip-flops and sunscreen and now it is full of notebooks, folders and pencil cases. I don’t know about you, but I usually spend the rest of July activel...

I want you to use your imagination. Pretend you are at school. For the entire morning, you are wearing glasses that make everything very blurry.  Around noon, someone hands you glasses with a perfect prescription and you can see everything SUPER clearly. I am guessing that the second half of your day will go much better than the first half. Private school leaders have a big problem when it co...

When I was a little kid, I was obsessed with the Indy 500.  Why? Well, my Grandma lived one hour south of Indianapolis and my great Uncle Harry actually helped build the engine for one of the race cars back in the 1930’s. The winner of the very first Indy 500 was Ray Harroun, way back in 1911. At that time, race cars had a driver that faced forward and a mechanic that faced backwards. The mec...

My daughter is a birdkeeper at the Jacksonville Zoo. She gets to work with some pretty amazing birds and do some really cool things. One day, a few months ago, I got a text from her along with three pictures of her and three other keepers wrestling/relocating an alligator! I’m pretty sure that’s NOT her area… I want you to imagine that you are visiting a zoo with your family: Look to the left and...

I want you to think back to your first job. Was it McDonald’s or another fast food place? Maybe it was as a cashier at a grocery store or babysitting or camp counselor or washing cars at a car dealership. Now, I want you to think about your first boss. Was that boss grumpy, short-tempered and kind of mean? Or was that boss kind, encouraging and patient? We have all had a lot of bosses in our lives...

In July of 2021, the summer Olympics were taking place in Tokyo, one year after being cancelled by the COVID-19 pandemic. You may remember that Simone Biles withdrew from the gymnastics competition citing mental health issues, especially anxiety.  Her openness about her mental health struggles brought a lot of media attention and other athletes and entertainers felt more comfortable talking a...

Back in October of 2023, I recorded Episode 53 of this podcast: “5 Powerful Leadership Lessons From Atomic Habits”. Since then, that episode has become one of the most downloaded episodes in the history of the podcast. The popularity of that episode has nothing to do with me and everything to do with James Clear’s amazing book. Atomic Habits is the best-selling non-fiction book of all time with ov...

One of the most famous opening lines in classic literature is, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Do you remember the book?  If you guessed A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, then you were probably paying attention during your Middle School Language Arts class. As you read this, your school year is winding down and your summer plans are on the near horizon. Summer ca...

“My son doesn’t lie.” “My daughter would never do that.” “My child has gotten straight A’s since Kindergarten, so if he got a C it is clearly a problem with the teacher.” “He’s only acting this way because he is bored.” It is so frustrating when a parent gets out their “blamethrower” and blames the teacher, the test, the principal, the classmates, and says that the rules in the handbook are too st...

Whenever the word “emergency” is in the title of something, you probably hope that you don’t ever need to use it. Emergency Room. Emergency Exit. Emergency Fund. Emergency Brake. I hope that you have never had to pull the emergency brake while driving because that means you’ve tried everything else to stop your car. Your emergency brake is always your last resort. Your body also has an “emergency...

Has this ever happened to you? You are sitting at your desk and a teacher appears at your door. The teacher asks, “Do you have a minute?” The teacher is very upset and they start ranting about another teacher at your school and they proceed to tell you why they are so annoyed and frustrated. That teacher wants you to immediately be as upset as they are. That teacher wants you to stop what you are...

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average age of a Head of School in America is 52 years old. That means a lot of private school leaders have parents in their 70’s and 80’s. My mom was 86 when she passed in 2013. My dad was 92 when he passed in 2021. Both of my parents needed a lot of care in the years before they passed and my siblings and I carried a complex mix of s...

During the early 1990’s, I coached boys varsity basketball at the school that I led. At the time, we didn’t have a full-size Gym on campus, so we rented a Gym that was a 15 minute drive from our school. One Friday night, after the last game, we were all filing out of the Gym and I noticed one of the referees standing on the sidewalk and he looked really upset. I said, “Is everything OK?” The refer...

For 33 years, I did the same thing almost every day. I came home from school and immediately started venting to my wife about my day as a private school leader. I am ashamed to say, it wasn’t until after I retired, that I stopped to think about how doing that every day made my wife feel. All those years of me venting and complaining and all those years of her listening and trying to make me feel b...

When I was a kid, I learned the following poem: 30 days has September, April, June and November. All the rest have 31, except for February, it’s the one Which only has 28 days clear, And 29 in each Leap Year. Unfortunately, there is a big fat lie hiding in this poem. May actually has 100 days. Well, at least it feels that way in our private schools with all of the: banquets, ceremonies, dances, co...

I want to know if any of these statements describe a typical day at school for you: You run around putting out fires, playing “Whack-A-Mole” with your hair on fire. You finally get back to your office and sit down at your desk, but you don’t know what to do next. So, you stare blankly at your computer screen for a while and then you start checking emails. When you look at your “to do list” you imm...

Where I live, we get to experience all four seasons. Right now the first signs of spring are popping up all around me. We have some very distinct seasons at our private schools: Back To School Season Countdown to Winter Break The 100 Days of May We also have another season at our schools in late March and early April. It’s my least favorite season of the year. I refer to it as "Tough Conversation...

I want you to picture a bright pink elephant riding a unicycle. Now, I want you to stop thinking about it. Just stop. Don’t think about it anymore. That worked about as well as you trying not to think about that upset parent that is living rent-free in your head. You know which parent I’m talking about. They are not just visiting your house. They backed the U-Haul up to your house and moved all of...

Has this ever happened to you? You’re having a nice weekend, hanging out with friends and family. You are getting some things done around the house and running some errands On Sunday (late afternoon, early evening) you start to feel weird, you feel off. Your stomach feels off, you feel a little anxious, stressed, maybe you have a headache, You might even feel irritable and restless. Unfortunately,...

I am a huge fan of 80’s movies. Some of my favorites are Rocky 4, Back To The Future, Ghostbusters, Die Hard, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Top Gun. However, I am not a fan of scary movies. In fact, two of my least favorite words are “jump scare” From 2008-2012, the 5 movies in the Twilight franchise grossed more than $1.3 billion. I didn’t want to, but I went with my wife to every single one of th...

You have probably heard the saying, “No two days the same".  This is an accurate description of your job as a private school leader. I used to say to my family, “I go to school to see what’s going to happen” .  While our days are very unpredictable, I have found that some days during the school year are actually very predictable. For example: Best Day: The day of the 8th Grade vs. Facult...

I want to tell you something about myself. I am not a fan of social media. Now, don’t get me wrong, I can definitely zone out while scrolling through reels on Instagram. The algorithm will always keep sending me videos of dachshunds, basketball highlights, drone shots of the boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ and clips of my favorite stand up comedians: Nate Bargatze, Sebastian Maniscalco and Jim Gaffiga...