How Paul Works

A board has three jobs.

• Guard the mission, vision, and values.

• Encourage and evaluate the head of school.

• Own fiduciary responsibility.

That is the whole list. Everything else is meddling.

Bad boards meddle constantly, and it always starts the same way: I'm not telling you what to do, but. Meetings without the head in secret. Listening to parent complaints instead of routing them. Loving the gossip. I train new trustees in pairs, each with a mentor, and every one of them hears the same speech: the second you put on this role, people will think you have power and can get an agenda done. Do not do that. Keep your decisions in the boardroom. I have watched boards that ignored these three roles cost their schools dearly; one cost a school roughly 40 percent of its enrollment. Here is how I build and train boards.

Money problems do not cause your problems. They reveal them. That is the single most useful sentence I can give a struggling school, because it points the repair at the right target.

Here is the sequence I have watched at school after school. The mission drifts, or the leadership falters. Faculty feel it first, and the good ones start leaving. Families feel the turnover and the drift, and they start leaving too. Enrollment falls, and now the budget has a hole in it. By the time the board sees the money problem, it is the fourth domino, not the first. So when a board tells me they have a money problem, I ask about the first three dominoes.

If you have terrible attrition, look at the faculty attrition first, because you are probably going to find a mission problem underneath it. It is the head, or the faculty, or the way the school tells its story, and that is what is driving families out. That creates your money problem. It is not the other way around. You created your money problem. The good news hiding in that hard sentence: what you created, you can fix. Schools that treat the budget hole as the disease cut their way into a death spiral. Schools that treat it as the symptom fix the real thing, and the money follows the trust. It always does; the Turlock Christian School case study shows it. This is the first conversation in every school turnaround.

If your budget hole has a first domino you cannot name yet, that is a good first call. Find Your School's First Domino With Paul

Delegation is a bet on capability and intent, and here is how I place it. Score the person you would hand it to, not yourself. At 90 percent, delegate and get out of the way. At 70 percent with the right intent, let them go: give them the ownership and stay close. The last 20 percent grows in the doing, and it only grows in hands that are actually holding the thing. With the wrong intent, hold on to it, because capability without the right heart does not close a gap; it widens one. Below 70, it is still yours.

The guardrail matters more than the numbers. The capability and the intent both get scored by your brain, not your heart. I once handed a role to a good man who I knew was below the line. I knew I had made a mistake right away, but my heart had broken for the guy, and my heart rode right over my brain. I had to take the role back, and that broke his heart. You are not doing anybody a favor by giving them something your heart says they can handle but your brain says they cannot. This rule sits at the center of my head of school coaching, and the long version is in the 90/70 Rule article.

Holding a role you should have handed off, or wondering if you handed one off too soon? Talk Through Delegation With Paul

The seven above carry most engagements. The rest of Paul's named rules show up where they are needed.

The Emmaus Walk.

For leaders in the season when the story looks over. The disciples walked away from Jerusalem certain it was finished, and could not see the story still unfolding around them. When you think nothing is happening, it is. When you want to cut something because it looks dead on your timeline, don't. It is not your timeline.

Roots and Nutrients.

What a head owes teachers. The head is the roots; the teachers do the work. Provide the nutrients: encouragement, appreciation, room to grow. Good teachers die from micromanagement and boxes, not from hard work. There are no boxes for teachers. This drives my hiring and staff culture work.

Purpose and Calm.

From the coaching years. With a clear purpose and a calm nature, people will succeed beyond their wildest dreams, and yours. If you are doing it for you, quit.

Equal, Not Same.

For managing people wired differently. A coach is not an art teacher and an elementary teacher is not a calculus teacher. Treat them equally, never the same. Meet each one where they are.

Rope-a-Dope.

For the loud, angry meeting. Do not argue. Listen, let them punch themselves out, and be willing to be the bad guy. By the time someone is in your office, you have done the homework anyway.

The Ask.

Development done plainly. Do the setup, then ask the question straight and let it sit. And remember whose donors they are: not yours. God's. See fundraising and development.

God, Family, Job.

In that order, for staying sane in the chair. Problems at home get fixed at home. Problems of faith go to a pastor. Problems with the job get talked about out loud, and nothing gets fixed at four in the morning.

Want to know which of these your school needs first? Ask Paul Your Hardest Question.