Unique Characteristics of Exemplary Jewish Day School/Yeshiva Leadership

In my former capacity as head of school, principal and now executive coach and day school consultant, I am often asked to describe the characteristics of an outstanding or exemplary head of school or day school principal.

Although there are a wide variety of responses to this important query, the answer is not a “one-size fits all”.

More often than not, our Jewish day school and yeshiva community confuse management skills with leadership skills. But demonstrated exemplary leadership goes far beyond the limitation of only ensuring that the trains are “running on time”.

Being an exemplary day school or yeshiva educational leader requires a skill set which transcends scholarship, knowledge, experience or expertise. Although these attributes and characteristics are essential, exemplary leadership also demands a mindset, personality, demeanor and insight into human nature and a sensitivity which transcends the need to embrace empathy, middot tovot and menchlichkeit.

Definition:

Head of school excellence is an executive leadership responsibility for establishing, monitoring and scaling the highest academic and operational standards across one or multiple campuses.

As opposed to focusing only on daily administrative details like a traditional principal, this role centers on broad strategic developments, curricular frameworks and alignment, data-driven student performance and the professional coaching of teachers.

Today, the head of school plays a critical role in driving school excellence by serving as the primary visionary, cultural leader, and strategic anchor of an educational institution.

Achieving excellence as a head of school requires balancing community engagement, staff empowerment and the establishment of rigorous academic norms and standards.

Head of School Leadership Characteristics   

Instead of managing just the day-to-day logistics of a single building, the head of school focuses on macro-level strategic planning, cultivating a uniform culture of peak performance and standardizing best practices.

In addition, the exemplary head of school creates and fosters a healthy community culture and manages strategic operations to ensure that students and teachers and staff reach their fullest potential.

The “Four Pillars”

There are essentially four “pillars” of school leadership excellence.

They include: strategic alignment, community engagement, holistic support systems and collaborative teaching teams.

In addition, the top attributes of exceptional school leaders are radical transparency – fostering an atmosphere of trust by keeping families, staff and students actively informed; data-informed guidance by using student achievement and performance metrics to differential teacher support and eliminate localized learning barriers; people investment by cultivating leadership pathways for staff through focused mentoring and targeted professional development; and embracing fallibility by demonstrating humility through learning openly from mistakes in order to model resilience for the students.

The Jewish Component of Exemplary School Leadership

When identifying the Jewish characteristics of exemplary school leadership, there are several significant attributes which are very evident.

They include displaying middot tovot, developing and implementing policy decisions which are embedded and anchored in Jewish values and dass torah, modeling value-based behavior as Torah observance individuals, acting in accordance with Kiddush HaShem and modeling derech eretz to students, parents, teachers and members of the community.

In addition, exemplary Jewish school leaders engage in their own Torah learning obligations and scholarship in order to help inform others understand and appreciate the profound centrality and critical importance of Torah study, learning and scholarship.

Finally, expressions of love, passion and affinity for eretz yisrael, medinat yisrael and am yisrael are critical dimensions of a head of school’s role and value proposition.

As we know, head of school leadership from a Jewish perspective is deeply anchored in service, humility, modesty, and moral responsibility rather than autocratic power. As such, the professional Jewish school leader acts as an empowering teacher and as a servant of the community.

When directing a day school or yeshiva, the exemplary leader views and demonstrates the highest form of leadership. This requires helping faculty and students see, think and adapt in new ways rather than issuing top down directives or commands.

The Empowerment Model

One of the most critical attributes of a high performing head of school is recognizing that no one person can lead alone and that sharing responsibility with other staff and faculty and actively mentoring and training others to lead becomes paramount.

Empowering teachers transforms them from mere instructors into autonomous leaders who deeply impact student academic, social and emotion growth and success. True empowerment therefore requires shifting from rigid, top down control to a school culture of deep trust, professional respect and shared decision-making.

This “empowerment model” also guarantees that there is leadership continuity and sustainability and helps ensure leadership succession in the event the head of school moves on. Finally, it offers faculty and staff the opportunity to share in the success, growth and development of the school through real-time hands-on leadership responsibility and obligations.

Identifying, Creating and Sustaining Exemplary School Leadership

As indicated, educational leadership does not happen in a vacuum. As such, every Jewish day school or yeshiva Board endeavors to identify and hire the most outstanding person to lead their school. But, as we know, reality dictates that this is not always feasible. To be sure, professional day school and yeshiva leaders are just not sitting around ready to be engaged or hired. They are in all probability already engaged by a school and are committed to their positions.

Engaging Leadership

The characteristics and attributes of exemplary school leadership as just indicated may appear to be simple and straightforward. This may be true. But it does not necessarily suggest that there are a pool of such leaders just ready and willing to be hired and engaged.

There are essentially three approaches (and possibly more) in order to identify and engage exemplary day school and yeshiva leaders.

One approach is by conducting an extensive and comprehensive search. The other approach is by engaging the current head of school in a comprehensive and extensive in-service coaching and training program. The third approach, which is usually the most common, is to search for a new head of school with the understanding that he/she will require extensive coaching, mentor and guidance in specifics areas.

The slight advantage in pursuing the third approach is that the professional is already somewhat familiar with the culture of the school. This reduces the learning curve and hopefully, the training experience.

A Word of Advice and Caution

Every day school and yeshiva wants to hire and engage the most qualified and outstanding person for the job.

Searching and engaging for a day school and yeshiva head of school is always challenging at best. It can be extremely stressful for the school faculty, board and school community; or, it can be a surprisingly smooth straightforward process.

Critical to the success of this challenge is for the school search process to identify those leadership characteristics and attributes that represent the highest priority for the school. Once this leadership baseline is established, the search process takes on a new, exciting and important dimension. By the same token, if a school does not engage in this process, educational excellence and exemplary school leadership will be very difficult if not impossible to achieve.

Finally, the day school and yeshiva that continuously and passionately strives for educational excellence and exemplary chinuch will in all probability achieve it over a period of time.

This institutional aspiration will however require high levels of motivation, laser-sharp insight, a clear vision and unswerving perseverance. But above all, it requires a willingness to accept failure, learn from that failure and then immediately move forward to succeed.

Friends….remember, there are very few if any excellent day schools that are lead by poor or mediocre leaders. But, there are many poor institutions that are led by less than average leaders who lack leadership skills.

This differentiation should be obvious and straight-forward.