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Education Events

Helping Heads of School Lead Change through Uncertainty

Last month, our Director of Strategic Development, Samantha Gayfer, was invited to Thailand to present at the East Asia Regional Council of Schools (EARCOS) Annual Heads’ Institute. The event brought together around 175 Heads of School from across Southeast Asia for two days of collaborative learning.

As a co-facilitator of the event with Rami Madani, Head of the International School of Kuala Lumpur, Samantha worked alongside a diverse group of participants from different countries; notably, the group comprised around 50% women, including the first-ever Filipina Head of School within EARCOS. On day one, Rami guided them through developing a Context-Based Leadership Framework that would empower them with ideas and tools to adapt their leadership strategies to their unique environments.

Students at an institution

On day two, Samantha shared transition models and theories to support the action plans and pathways the participants had identified the day before. Anchored in appreciation and respect for each school’s and country’s context, Samantha’s session incorporated information gathering and sharing as well as collaborative discussions and exemplars to help participants investigate their unique relationship and capacity for influence.

Samantha explored three main elements of change, providing tools to transition insights into structured, context-appropriate policies and approaches:

  1. Community Readiness: Gauging how community preparedness compares to internal and external expectations can help address topics like DEI, SEL, AI, and polarizing global issues. Samantha discussed how shifting trust and communication can impact reception to new or changing ideas.
  2. Policy Development: Samantha outlined how student-centric, mission-forward approaches to policy design can support schools across the day-to-day administration and crisis management continuum. The session explored the impact of policy rooted in colonialism versus context, using examples of hiring practices, advancement, and community conduct.
  3. Implementation: Acknowledging our entry into the era of the outrage algorithm, Samantha talked about the role conflict hooks unconsciously play in HOS-stakeholder interactions and the steps leaders can take to mitigate them.

In the session, Samantha shared a change readiness assessment tool that she developed specifically for the conference. It was designed to help heads of school navigate some of the tensions between themselves and their boards, or themselves and their teams, and evaluate whether their organization has the capacity resources and desire to implement the changes they’re considering. The tool was met with great excitement from the participants.

Samantha also highlighted the importance of aligning purpose, policy, and practice and ensuring that policy development is informed by the unique cultural, social, and economic contexts of the school community. One example that she shared was around regional differences regarding approaches to advancement and fundraising. Many schools use an American curriculum and, as a result, may have imported Western-centric processes or epistemologies—which can sometimes fall flat in the context of an Asian country or culture. Samantha described how upstream policy design and contextual assessment of existing policy can help leaders ensure their policies are being used as tools for both change support and crisis prevention.

Finally, Samantha explored the outrage algorithm—how digital platforms spread emotionally provoking content because it tends to drive clicks—and how it shapes the dynamic between heads of school and their communities. She offered a strategic toolkit to help navigate this, including ways to recognize and name these dynamics through the lens of “conflict hooks,” as well as to help manage and mitigate them.

All in all, it was a pleasure to engage with this diverse group of leaders and offer them support in navigating the specific challenges they face across a multitude of mandates and contexts. We came away both inspired and energized by the work they’re doing and the impact they’re making in their communities.

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