Leadership Trends 2024-2025: Trend #4
By Tim Bentum | March 24th
This month we are sharing the fourth of five Leadership Trends for 2024-2025. These trends are being released once per month in the Edvance Notice between December and April.
As a quick reminder, these five broad Christian school leadership trends were generated based out of two days of discussion, debate, learning, reflection and engagement between the Edvance Directors and Cohort Leaders in August of 2024. Here are a few caveats that will help you read these trends with an eye towards leading more effectively in the current school year towards the flourishing of your Christian school community:
The goal of these trends is to equip school leaders and boards with information and relevant discussion topics that may be useful around a board or leadership table. They are not ‘prescriptive’, in the sense that Edvance endorses the trend or its resultant factors. Rather, the trends are more ‘descriptive’, creating space for dialogue and debate. In addition, these trends are inherently broad and general and do not apply equally, or perhaps at all, to each Christian school community. However, at the very least, these trends may create an opportunity for learning, growth and empathy in and between school communities who may be wrestling with similar issues.
Although the trends may at times be challenging to read, each entry ends with some concrete steps that school leaders and boards can take to move forward in a hopeful, God-honouring manner in the face of challenge.
Happy Reading!
Trend #4: Institutional Trust
Context: There are numerous studies and metrics available that study trust in institutions. Governments traditionally rank very low in these studies, but community organizations like schools and churches have recently found themselves ranking low as well. Unfortunately, Christian schools are not immune to this societal trend. Compared to several years or decades ago, and for a variety of reasons that may not be within your control as a school leader, the reality is that people naturally trust your institution less today.
Some of this loss of trust, for example, stems from wider societal issues that you have had limited control over, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the loss of trust may be due to things that your school has had some influence over, such as your policies and procedures related to sexuality and gender. Complicating things further is the reality that modern, western humans spend increasing amounts of time on their phones. It is becoming clearer that our phone-based existence creates unimaginable efficiency and access, while also allowing a small group of companies to control vast amounts of information via human-designed algorithms. As outlined in the popular documentary drama The Social Dilemma (2020), these algorithms are at least in part designed to divide and create outrage because divisive and anger-inducing news is more easily monetized than happy and positive news.
What all of this adds up to for Christian school leaders is that dealing with a crisis today will often be more complex than facing that same crisis a decade ago, due to the inherent lower levels of trust capital available in our communities.
Issue in Brief: Since leaders and institutions may have lower trust capital in today’s cultural environment, the need for due diligence and thoughtful, wise, team-based decision-making processes is heightened. Ethical, legal, and complex challenges are more frequently a part of an average school leader’s life today than they were a few decades ago.
Leaders themselves are more frequent targets for individualized criticism and even open personal attacks because, for better or worse, they are the face of the institution. For example, in stressful situations in which a leader and/or a board simply cannot release all relevant details to the staff or the community, there may be a quicker move towards the presumption of a ‘hidden agenda’. In these cases, leaders may often feel isolated being the face of the institution. This trend has caused many Christian school staff members to re-consider whether they would like to be involved in leadership of a Christian school at all. This in turn creates a lack of emerging leaders for the future in some school communities.
Steps to Consider: Here are three practical ideas for boards and leaders to consider in an environment of lower community trust in institutions:
- Embrace Calling – If it wasn’t clear before, it certainly is now: leadership is more a calling than a prestigious position. Leadership of a Christian school is highly complex, challenging, deeply rewarding but at times, crushing. Having said this, a leadership calling from our Creator was never meant to be the equivalent of a pleasant journey or a painless process towards a desired destination. A leadership calling will invariably involve both challenge and turmoil, but also profound gifts of purpose and contribution. Leaders need to have their eyes wide open to both sides of this equation, committing their work every day to God, the sustainer of our life and purpose.
- Legal/Ethical Responsibilities – Leading a Christian school carries with it significant legal and ethical responsibilities that were, perhaps, not as well understood or appreciated in the earlier years of the Christian school movement. Leaders and boards would do well to carefully consider their trustee obligations and to keep their legal obligations as stewards of the institution front of mind. Equally, leaders should be aware of their own legal rights and responsibilities as an employer and as an employee. For example, although Christian schools may have been hesitant to pay for legal advice at one time, the reality today is that good legal advice will be required in a Christian school from time to time, and schools should budget for this.
- Wholistic Leadership Accountability – School leaders must understand that they are responsible for the entirety of the organizational aspects of the school. This is different than saying that they must be directly involved in managing every aspect of the organization. It is also different than saying that the board has no role to play in the direction of the school or that the leader is not somehow ultimately accountable to the board. However, leaders must embody the mindset of ensuring that all aspects of the school run well, with accountability ultimately landing on their desk for all school operations. If there is a particular part of the organization that the leader does not deem to be their direct responsibility, there is a good chance that this area will eventually create havoc in the institution. Both Boards and leaders need to have a clear understanding of good governance and what good delegation and accountability look like.