Services
Head of School Coaching
Head of school coaching is a standing, confidential call with someone who has sat in the chair, plus the phone number for the bad days. At True North, I am that call for heads of school and principals. I sat in that chair for eleven years and spent fifty years around it, and being a head of school is the loneliest job in education. You are supposed to know every answer, be the smartest person in the room, and never be out of control, and the truth is all three will fail you, usually in the same week. Leading a school can be lonely. I offer an experienced listening ear and thoughtful support for the decisions you face. This page is what that actually looks like.
Fifty years in education. Six turnarounds.
Quick Facts
- Who it is for:
- Sitting heads, new heads in their first two years, and leaders a board is preparing for the chair.
- The three questions every head asks:
- How do I get out of this? How do I develop myself? Do I even want to do this?
- The loneliness triad:
- Know every answer, be the smartest in the room, never lose control. All three fail. Then what?
- The sanity order:
- God, family, job. Intact, no matter what.
- The daily rule:
- Find the frogs on the calendar, swallow them, and do not let them steal the rest of the day.
- The format:
- A standing call with someone who has sat in the chair, plus the phone number for the bad days.
The Three Questions Every Head Actually Asks
After fifty years, school leaders keep bringing me the same three questions, in roughly this order. How do I get out of this, where "this" is the mess of the month: a board fight, a staffing hole, a family on the warpath. How do I develop myself and get better, because nobody above a head is coaching them. And, quietly, usually late in the conversation: do I even want to do this? It is hard. It does not pay that well.
All three deserve real answers, and the third one deserves the most honest answer, because a head running on fumes leaks it into every hallway. Coaching is the room where those questions get asked out loud without consequences, which is exactly why heads do not ask them anywhere else.
There is a fourth question underneath the three, and it is Biblical: who is my second? When one stumbles, there needs to be another right there; that is not a leadership tip, it is Scripture, and heads are the least likely people in the building to have arranged it for themselves. Everyone in a school has somebody above them who is supposed to care how they are doing. The head has a board, which evaluates the head as one of its Three Roles. Evaluation is not care. Coaching is the arranged second.
Why Is the Job So Lonely?
Because the confidentiality runs one direction. A head carries things that cannot be shared with the staff, cannot be shared with the board in real time, and should not all be brought home. There were weeks I told my wife she could not come on campus yet, and I could not tell her why. That is the chair. You own certain things alone.
And the expectations never blink. Everybody watches every move. If you are grumpy on a Tuesday, the whole building knows by Wednesday. A first-year head should hear it straight: you are going to be disliked, you are going to have weeks you do not want to go in, and you are going to go in anyway, because everybody is watching how you carry it. Buckle up. It is survivable, and it is a lot more survivable with somebody in your corner who has carried it.
If you are carrying it alone right now, Ask Paul Your Hardest Question. That is what the call is for.
What Nobody Tells a New Head
That it is not one thing; it is everything. Nobody warns a new head that a single Tuesday will hold forty-five different matters, a marketing meeting into an admissions meeting into a development meeting into operations, then classrooms, then carpool, then the inbox that waited all day. The job is not hard because any piece is hard. It is hard because all the pieces arrive at once, forever.
And nobody tells you the arithmetic of being liked. I used to say that on a good day, only 20 percent of the people hate me, and on a bad day, only 20 percent of them like me. Both days, you keep doing the right thing, because doing what is easy to stay alive is a slope that never ends, and everyone in the building can tell which head they have. The percentages change with the seasons. The requirement never does. If you are doing the right thing, you can survive the math, and coaching exists partly to remind you which thing that is when the 20 percent day arrives.
What Are the Frogs?
Every head's calendar has frogs on it: the meetings you dread, the conversations you would pay to skip. You are going to swallow them; that is the job. The rule is about the rest of the day. Do not focus on the frogs. They are coming either way, and if you let them steal the joy from the other eight hours, they got you twice.
For contrast, here is what a good day in the chair looks like, because coaching is also about building more of these: devotions first, then coffee with whoever on the leadership team wants to drop in, then carpool, opening doors and greeting kids by name. Back for the meetings, marketing into admissions into development into operations, then out walking classrooms until the day is toasted, then the desk work nobody can do while people are around. A head who still gets days like that is running the job. A head who cannot remember one is being run by it, and that difference is diagnosable.
The companion habit: when the knock comes while you are neck deep in something, smile before you turn. The person walking in has a real need, and they will read your face in half a second: received, or rejected. It takes practice. And when you get stopped six times crossing campus, do not promise "I'll take care of it" six times; say "I hear you, and this matters. Send it to me in a text or an email so it does not get lost." You just turned six hallway promises you would forget into six things that actually get handled.
If the frogs are eating your whole week, Talk Through Your Calendar With Paul.
What Only the Head Can Decide
Three decisions never delegate, no matter how good the team is. What the school is actually about, Christ or an agenda, because left unanswered, everyone answers it for themselves. Who sits on the leadership team, because the head lives or dies by it. And which problem parents get the head's own chair, because some conversations are the office's to have and no one else's.
Everything below those three runs on the 90/70 Rule: score the person you would hand it to, not yourself. At 90 percent, delegate. At 70 with the right intent, let them go. With the wrong intent, hold on. Below 70, it is still yours. The discipline is scoring both the capability and the intent with your brain, not your heart. I once handed a role to a good man I knew was below the line; I knew the mistake right away, but my heart had broken for the guy and rode right over my brain, and taking the role back broke his heart too. Coaching includes being the person who checks your delegation math before it costs you both.
How Does a Head Stay Sane?
God, family, job. In that order, intact, no matter what. If you have problems at home, fix them at home; do not pour yourself into work like a workaholic and call it dedication. If you are running dry on faith, go see a pastor; it is Biblical, because when one stumbles, there needs to be a second one right there. If you have problems with the job, talk about them out loud with somebody safe.
And observe the four-in-the-morning rule: nothing keeps me up at night about schools anymore, because I learned that at night I can't do squat. Nothing can be fixed at four in the morning, except you get more tired. The job will still be there at seven, and so will the school. Heads who keep the order and keep the sleep outlast every crisis; heads who invert it become the crisis. Half of coaching is holding a leader to this paragraph when the season is trying to repeal it.
What Coaching With Paul Looks Like
A standing call, weekly or biweekly, with somebody who has sat in the chair and has no agenda in your building. We work the current mess, we develop you on purpose instead of by accident, and we keep the sanity order intact. Between calls, you get the phone number, because the frogs do not schedule themselves.
The style is blunt and it is kind, at the same time. I have been hired and I have been fired. I have been on top of the mountain and underneath it. Very little you bring me will be something I have not lived or watched up close, and I will tell you the truth about it either way, including when the truth is that you are the problem this month. Every head is, eventually. The ones who hear it early stay heads.
Why a standing call instead of call-me-when-it-burns? Because the burns are symptoms and the standing rhythm treats causes. A head who talks through the calendar's frogs on Monday swallows them better on Wednesday. A delegation decision checked before it is made costs a conversation; checked after, it costs a person. And the loneliness compounds in silence, which means the schedule itself, the fact that Thursday is coming and somebody safe will ask how you actually are, is doing half the work before a word is said. If that is the piece missing from your week, Request a Conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a head of school coach do?
Gives the head a confidential, experienced corner: a standing call to work current problems, deliberate development, and a steadying voice for crisis weeks. The value is a coach who has sat in the chair, so nothing needs translating and nothing shocks them.
Who should get head of school coaching?
Sitting heads and principals carrying a hard season, new heads in their first two years, and internal leaders a board is preparing for the chair. Boards fund it because it is far cheaper than a head transition; a supported head stays and grows, and head turnover shows up in the Three Numbers fast.
How is coaching different from consulting?
Consulting fixes the school; coaching builds the leader. In a turnaround they run together, but coaching is personal: your decisions, your development, your sanity. When the problem is bigger than the chair, turnaround consulting for the whole school is the right tool. A head can be coached through a turnaround, but coaching alone will not fix a school whose numbers are broken.
Is coaching confidential from the board?
The working sessions are, and that is what makes them useful; a head cannot think out loud into a performance review. Where a board sponsors coaching, everyone agrees up front on what gets shared: growth themes, not transcripts. Request a Conversation to talk through how that gets set up.
How do I know if I need this?
If you have asked any of the three questions this month, how do I get out of this, how do I get better, do I even want this, you already know. The heads who reach out early get coaching; the ones who wait get a transition.
Next step
You Cannot Quit, So Get a Corner
One of the few rules I hold in education is you can't quit, because I never will; don't quit on me and I won't quit on you. But not quitting alone is just endurance. Not quitting with a corner is a career. Get the corner.
A first call with me covers three things: the question you are actually carrying this month, what the chair is costing you right now, and whether coaching is the right fit or the problem needs school-level work instead.
