Patrick Bassett, KNFP-7, President, NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools)
This article was originally published in the August 2003 issue of the KFLA Newsletter.
How have you, though your leadership, made a difference in one of your communities?
A key Kellogg lesson is to think globally, act locally, and I have attempted to do just that. Much of our work at NAIS is to assemble research and conduct environmental scanning to assess what’s happening in the world of education and consider scenarios for the future. We assemble braintrusts to debate and deliberate and publish monographs on our website and conduct institutes based on the results. We know what good leadership and governance looks like and publish Principles of Good Practice to set standards. But ideas don’t stick without personal contact, so we travel to cities all over the country and world to assemble leadership and engage in conversation about change to improve our educational system, to model best practices, and to find ways to manifest the public purpose of private education. On the immediate local level, I tutor weekly at a charter school in downtown DC.
What sustains you in your practice of leadership and your commitment to change?
In most organizations, especially schools, change agents are almost always punished. Yet the change agenda is so critical to the life and growth of organizations that to avoid the responsibility of leadership to support and initiate change is not to lead at all. What sustains me is the ability to transcend the niceness of consensus at times to build coalitions of the willing to take on the challenges that need addressing. I am reminded often of the Kellogg seminar on cycles of change and the predictable stages of resistance and mourning that accompany change. I remind myself often of the Margaret Mead observation, Never underestimate the power of a handful of individuals to change the world. After all, it’s the only thing that ever does.
How do you practice good self-care?
Exercise vigorously early every morning. Call the grandchildren every other day.
If you had to give an aspiring leader one piece of advke, what would it be?
Funny you should ask, since just this evening I gave an opening address to the latest group of new school heads at the Institute for New Heads. My main advice was this: new leaders fear they do not have the technical skills (fundraising, finance, planning, etc.) to do the job, that they are impostors waiting to be found out to be wanting. In fact, leaders are seldom chosen for a set of technical skills but rather for who they are. Leaders learn the technical skills as they go, on the job. What makes leaders successful is the ability to capture and convey the essence of their organization’s mission in a handful of compelling stories and to emanate and perpetuate the positive values (and ameliorate the negative ones) of their organization’s culture.
Are you a better leader than you were five years ago? How do you know?
Yes, because I’ve discovered that the essence of leadership is to surround oneself with extraordinary people, to set the highest standards and expectations for the organization’s success, and then create the environment where talented staff have the freedom and confidence to do dramatic things. We know leadership is working by the extraordinary output of products and services the various teams at NAIS have produced, by remarkable growth and positive feedback in our membership, and by financial success that far outdistances anything achieved in the past.
How do you lead through a crisis?
Nothing makes a crisis so much as seeing it as one. Having the plan in place for addressing extraordinary circumstances and knowing the right folks to bring on board for counsel allows a leader and his or her organization to address the vicissitudes that present themselves in as routine and confident a matter as possible. Projecting that modality reassures everyone and moderates the amplitude of the wave.