Invigorating principal/assistant principal relationships

My principal and I often tell people “We have trouble seeing eye to eye.” A former Bostonian with a punchy East Coast temper, Mark Barry stands at 5-foot-2 and is typically clad in outdoor gear. As one of his assistant principals, I tower over him at 6 feet, my Minnesota Nice demeanor in dissonance with my conspicuous full-sleeve tattoos. Indeed we are a sight to behold!

This inability to see eye to eye may be an accurate portrayal of our physical presence, but it could not be a more inaccurate description of our professional relationship. Through intentionally cultivated behaviors, we have developed a model of professional practice that not only nourishes our interpersonal relationship, but also exemplifies an embodied form of positive and productive leadership.

To exist as an embodied leader in public education is to live with a presence, magnetism, and hopeful inspiration that integrates our heads and hearts. As Forbes writer Ginny Whitelaw (2020) explains, a leadership style that dissociates head from heart, talk from walk, and action from a felt sense of its consequences is “wholly inadequate for dealing with the wicked issues we face.” Our embodied presence — in which we are fully ourselves — is a key foundation for the principal/assistant principal relationship. For this reason, our administrative team leans wholly into professional practices that nourish our relationships as principal and assistant principals. These practices fall into three domains: intellectual work, communicative collaboration, and inspiration seeking. The combination enables us to embrace our whole selves, as colleagues and educational leaders.