One capability virtually all schools could deepen is organizational adaptability. As many schools are now in the midst of searching for new senior leadership team members, evaluating whether a candidate has experience and comfort with change is important.
Here are some questions that may help you evaluate candidates on this front:
- Tell me about a time when you needed to lead through significant ambiguity. What did uncertainty teach you about yourself as a leader?
- Describe a situation where you had to help your community hold two seemingly contradictory truths. Walk us through your approach and what you learned.
- Share an example of when data or feedback led you to significantly alter or abandon a plan you were invested in. What was your process for changing course?
- How do you determine the right pace for change? Give us a specific example where you had to carefully calibrate the speed of implementation.
- Tell me about a pilot program that failed. What did you learn, and how did that learning inform your next steps?
- Describe a time when you had to build support for an unconventional idea. What resistance did you encounter, and how did you address it?
- When have you been wrong about something important? How did you recognize it, and what did you do next
- What's the most significant cognitive bias you've had to overcome as a leader? How does this awareness impact your decision-making now?
- Tell me about a time when you had to maintain community trust while navigating a complex situation you couldn't fully explain.
- How do you determine which stakeholder voices need to be included in a decision-making process? Give an example where this approach proved crucial.
- Tell me about a change initiative where you realized midway that your initial approach wasn't working. How did you course-correct?
- What's the most significant resistance you've encountered to a change you believed in? Walk us through how you responded.
- Describe a time when you inherited a change process that was already underway. How did you evaluate its effectiveness and decide what to maintain or adjust?
- How do you gauge when a school is experiencing change fatigue? Give a specific example of how you've addressed this.
- Describe a situation where you recognized that a department or team's resistance to change actually highlighted important considerations you'd missed.