Forming a search committee

Composition

• Seven to eleven members is a workable size: large enough to represent the school, small enough to decide.
• Trustees usually hold a majority. Add perspectives the board lacks, such as faculty or administrative leaders, chosen for judgment rather than constituency.
• Every member must be able to attend the interviews. A member who misses the semifinalist round cannot credibly vote in the final one.
• Avoid appointing anyone who is weighing a candidacy, related to a likely candidate, or openly campaigning for a particular outcome.
• Think about who the committee will be read as representing. A committee with no faculty voice will be questioned, however good its judgment.

Choosing the chair

• Choose someone who has the board's confidence, the time to lead, and the discipline to keep the process confidential.
• The chair's job is to make sure the committee reaches a decision it can defend, not to have the strongest view in the room.
• The board chair and the committee chair are often different people, deliberately. One protects the process; the other protects the board's authority over the appointment.
• A chair who cannot manage a dominant trustee will lose the committee's quieter members, who are frequently the better judges.

The committee's charge

• Put it in writing: the committee recommends, the full board appoints.
• Agree on confidentiality before the first meeting, including what can be shared with the community and when.
• Set expectations for attendance, especially at semifinalist and finalist interviews.
• State whether the committee may return to the board with more than one name, or is expected to recommend one.
• Agree what happens if the committee cannot reach consensus, before it is tested.
• Set an end date for the committee. Search committees that linger start governing.

Agree the criteria before you see a single name

• Write down what the next Head must be able to do, drawn from where the school actually stands rather than from the last Head's strengths and weaknesses.
• Separate the requirements from the preferences. Committees that skip this step rediscover the difference while a strong candidate is waiting.
• Use the same written criteria for every candidate, so the discussion stays about the school rather than about who interviewed most warmly.
• Decide early how the committee will handle disagreement about a candidate: a structured conversation against the criteria, not a show of hands.
• Expect the criteria to be tested by the first excellent candidate who does not meet one of them. That is the moment the written list earns its keep.

The meetings the committee will actually hold

Confidentiality, in practice

• Sitting Heads apply on the understanding that their current school will not hear about it. One breach ends a candidacy and reaches other candidates quickly.
• Agree where materials live and who can open them. Personal email threads are where searches leak.
• Decide in advance what the community will be told at each stage, so silence reads as process rather than as trouble.
• Brief every committee member on what they may say to a colleague, a parent or a spouse. Most leaks are careless rather than deliberate.
• Decide before the finalist stage whether names become public. Open finalist visits cost you some of the strongest sitting Heads; closed visits cost you some community buy-in. Choose deliberately rather than by default.

When people ask for a seat

• They will, and the request is usually reasonable. The answer is a process that consults widely, not a committee that seats everyone.
• Offer real input instead: listening sessions, a survey that is actually read, and constituent meetings with finalists.
• Tell people what the committee will do with what they say, and then do it. Consultation that disappears is worse than none.
• Be clear that no constituency holds a veto, and say so at the start rather than when it is being exercised.

What the board keeps for itself

• The appointment, the compensation and the contract.
• The budget for the search and the transition.
• The decision to pause, restart or extend the search if the pool is not right.
• The evaluation framework the new Head will be held to, which is easier to agree now than in their first year.