There are often comparisons made between the quality of leadership in the public sector versus the private sector. After over 30 years in leadership roles, both public and private, I assert that private sector leaders have it pretty soft compared to public school leaders.
Even more: private sector leaders wouldn’t last a day in the shoes of a public school leader.
As a teacher, my work ethic of self-sacrifice and going beyond the call of duty was recognized by fellow educators and administration. In addition to coaching two varsity sports, I taught five classes with an average of over 40 students per class. On most Sundays I corrected essays from each of them. A fellow teacher had a different approach: come totally unprepared and use the class as an impromptu stage to crack jokes and entertain the students, demanding nothing from them and taking none of their work home. His custom was to arrive at school as late as possible every day and try to beat the kids out to the parking lot at the last bell.
Though today’s evaluation bar is much higher for educators, the evaluation system in those days essentially considered a teacher acceptable if they had a pulse and could keep students relatively quiet. Merit pay did not exist. If you showed up for work most days and didn’t commit a criminal act, you were permitted to keep your job. The extensive work and diligence of teachers such as I were not recognized.
In my frustration and disappointment, I quit the public sector and went into the private sector, where I believed my work quality would be more scrutinized and high expectations demanded of me.
Of course, one of the key distinguishing factors in the private sector is that everyone is an adult. In my career prior to becoming a teacher I had had business management experience, so I transitioned into a job where I was in charge of four departments in a company that had almost 7,000 employees in 29 locations. Due to a new and innovative pay structure my departments were piloting, they were the highest-paid employees in the organization. The top leadership were watching our every move, expecting me to lead these high-performers to great heights of success. There was a lot of pressure on all of us to perform, especially me. I welcomed that pressure.
My people skills and dedication to excellence had found a home in an environment where I could have been fired at a moment’s notice. My work ethic, honesty, fairness and drive were admired by my team members and management alike. I asserted myself appropriately and respectfully. We operated with the Management By Objectives (MBO) system and I earned top marks in my performance reviews. Things were going well, and I was told by leadership I had a strong future with the company. My skill set was finally being recognized and rewarded while I worked with the pressure of being dismissed for any cause and at any moment.
Of course I had to assert my leadership on occasion. For example, when one of my departments received fewer items in a shipment than I thought we deserved, I called the buyer in the central office and objected, strongly letting them know that I expected it to not happen again. I also told them that I was reporting it to my immediate supervisor since we had committed to making the pilot system work. A couple of days after I had this fairly heated interchange, my immediate supervisor summoned me into her office. Thinking I was going to be reprimanded for locking horns with the buyer, I was congratulated: she told me that she was going to recommend my promotion to the central office.
During a period when I was in the private sector, my wife and I had our first child. My priorities shifted. I found that I was working when other people were off and I realized that my work ethic of long hours needed to be adjusted. I also missed my work with young people because I knew my work with them was indeed making a long-term impact. In the private sector, what difference did it really make if my team had more sales this month or the next? However, I was also concerned that a return to education—in the public sector—would lead to the same frustrations that caused me to escape to the private sector in the first place.
It occurred to me that perhaps I could incorporate my work with my fundamental need to “make a difference” with young people—but on a different platform. I decided to become a school leader and actually ensure that teachers who did as little as possible, never got a chance to get in front of a classroom and waste the students’ time with their miserable performance. I had proven to myself and others that I knew how to lead adults, so why not do that in a public enterprise environment?
One of the many things I learned from my private industry colleagues was how they had significant control over their schedules. For example, they could actually take an hour-long lunch if they chose to do so at a predetermined place and time. They planned meetings and events weeks and months in advance that actually occurred as they had planned them, often beginning their workday one or two hours after I did and ending their workday long before I ended mine. They had no volleyball games or chorus concerts to supervise and were never accosted in the parking lot by a stakeholder (e.g., a parent), upset about something that occurred in their neighborhood. Without hundreds of children to steward, their work was comparatively predictable, devoid of dealing with the volatility of children and their parents.
They could concentrate on planning and executing their duties with fewer roadblocks and deviations than I faced. In short, they usually had the luxury of proacting (anticipating actions with forethought and planning) instead of reacting (making split-second decisions and trajectory shifts based on situations that suddenly present themselves). The result was that they were regularly in a position to execute strategies in a planned timeframe while I, as a public sector leader, could only occasionally be proactive. On top of that, as a school principal I had longer hours and greater stress due to variables beyond my control.
As the principal of a large, inner-city school, relentless pressure is common. Even though children attend a K-12 school only10% of their lives from birth to age18, popular belief pegs that percentage at a much higher number.
State laws support the notion that public school principals should know better than John Q. Citizen, so the states’ codes of conduct for a public school principal discourage imperfection. If a school principal gets in a shouting match in the parking lot of a shopping center on weekend, they may have sanctions imposed on them by the local school board, especially if it is filmed by someone with a cell phone and widely shared on social media. Cursing and lost tempers will always be trouble for a school principal, but would mean little if that principal managed a tire store instead.
Unlike leaders in the private sector, public leaders live under 24-7 scrutiny. Anything short of perfect behavior at any time in any place on any day is perceived as a failure—which could result in a formal sanction from a state board. Such a sanction could in turn result in the suspension or withdrawal of the leader’s license which means loss of income or job entirely. A public leader can be officially sanctioned while on their free time away from the workplace, one of many reasons my colleagues in private industry would never be a public sector leader.
In my many conversations with my private industry colleagues, we would share and compare our typical days, triumphs and challenges. As we shared anecdotes, they would tell me, “You couldn’t pay me enough to do your job.” Yet they valued people who did my work in the public sector while admitting that they had neither the patience nor the skills to deal with the uncontrollable variables, such as volatile children, demanding parents, and sweeping policy shifts. Those that were parents also pointed out that they wouldn’t want to interact with themselves when they were upset about some aspect of their child’s school.
For several years, there was a formal program where private sector leaders were encouraged to shadow us public school leaders. We public enterprise folks were also encouraged to reverse the shadowing of our private enterprise colleagues. Given my experience and my relationships, I jumped at the chance, along with a number of fellow school principals. The result: we public school principals felt that our private sector counterparts had it pretty cushy while we worked longer days with greater pressure and less compensation. Our private sector friends did not disagree with that assessment. Further, they had their opinions confirmed: they wouldn’t choose to spend a day doing what we public sector people did.
The many conversations that resulted from our shadowing experience also revealed that the skills set required to succeed in our jobs were almost identical. Many of our private sector colleagues even suggested that we would do very well in the private sector if we ever decided to take the leap. The leader exchange program could be very constructive on a larger scale. Based on private conversations with private sector leaders, my impression is that they continue to perceive that public sector leaders are less qualified than they even though there is little evidence to support this view.
They wouldn’t last a day in the shoes of a public school principal.
©️Copyright by David Samore. This excerpt is from True Leadership: The 10 Universal Laws (2024), by David Samore, Ed.D. Excerpts in part or whole may not be used without the expressed permission of David Samore.
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