Making the Case for Balanced Leadership

On titles, maintenance, improvement, and time horizons

The Brief Case 📚→💼→📈→📊

Modern finance views stocks mostly as a set of correlations to the market and other factors; if you just buy some big stocks, most of what you are getting is the market return, and anyone can get the market return cheaply by buying an index fund. It’s not impressive to buy stocks that go up when the market goes up; what’s impressive is to find sources of return that are independent of the market.

~Matt Levine writing about Warren Buffett.

Leadership is behavior and need not be correlated to a title. A Director of Enrollment who regularly straightens up a hallway where prospective families tour demonstrates the same level of leadership as the faculty member who quietly maintains a school garden without being asked. Likewise, we have known Heads of School who not only expressed gratitude while in their roles, but also continue to write letters expressing gratitude for community members long after they have left their Head of School post.

So what good is a leadership title? What’s a leadership title for? And why would you want one?