Higher Performance Insights | THE HUMAN QUESTION

November 18, 2025
higher performance insights

Are Your People Line Items Or Someone's Precious Child?


Do this math: 500 staff × 2,080 hours/year = 1,040,000 hours of someone's precious child's life you're stewarding annually.

Not "FTEs." Not "human capital." Someone's daughter. Someone's son.


73% of superintendents and presidents in our 987-team study can't name ONE person whose actual life—marriage, parenting, mental health—improved because they work there.


That silence? That's the question costing you everything that matters.


Fair warning: This newsletter will take 8 minutes to read. That's 8 minutes you could spend on:


  • Prepping for tomorrow's board presentation about declining enrollment
  • Responding to the parent/trustee who emailed your personal cell (again)
  • Explaining to your spouse why you missed another dinner
  • Doom-scrolling LinkedIn wondering if other educational leaders feel this lonely


But if you're a superintendent or campus president whose talented cabinet produces mediocre results while everyone's exhausted...


If you've ever gone home wondering whether you're breaking people to hit state accountability metrics or enrollment targets...


If you've ever felt the loneliness of being the only person who sees the pattern while your board asks, "Why can't we just do what that other district/institution does?"...


This might be the most important 8 minutes of your week.


Your call.


[Still here? Let's go.]


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🧮 THE STEWARDSHIP CALCULATOR


Calculate your responsibility right now:


_____ (your staff count) × 2,080 hours/year = ________ hours


That's how many hours you're responsible for someone's precious child each year.


That's not a budget line. That's someone's daughter going through a divorce while trying to manage 45 teachers or 85 faculty members.


That's someone's son missing his kid's baseball game—again—because you scheduled another "urgent alignment meeting."

Screenshot this calculation, fill in your numbers, and post it with your biggest realization. Tag DR. JOE HILL so I can see what you're discovering.


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LET'S TALK ABOUT THIS LIKE ADULTS WHO KNOW THE INDUSTRIAL MODEL BROKE PEOPLE BY DESIGN


Here's the pattern nobody discusses at AASA or NASPA conferences (because dismantling 150 years of industrial-era thinking doesn't fit on a PowerPoint):


Monday, 6:45 AM:


You're in your car in the parking lot, finishing the "quick alignment call" with your Director of Curriculum or Dean of Liberal Arts before the day starts.


You need their proposal ready for Thursday's board meeting because the trustees are asking questions about reading scores or retention rates. Again.


You communicate urgency—not with hostility, just with that edge that says, "I need this yesterday because the board won't accept 'we're working on it.'"


Monday, 5:45 PM:


They walk through their door. Their spouse sees "the person I chose to build a life with." Their middle schooler or college-age kid needs help with homework or life advice.


But the stress you created at 6:45 AM? It's sitting at their dinner table at 5:45 PM.


Monday, 7:15 PM:


Their kid asks for help. But your curriculum director is mentally still in that car, calculating how to defend her timeline while managing 8 principals who all interpret "district curriculum" differently.


Your dean is mentally still in that parking lot, calculating how to explain to 85 faculty why their departments matter when majors are declining.


They snap at their kid.


Not because they're bad parents. Because you never realized that superintendent and presidential urgency doesn't stay in the parking lot—it goes home with everyone in your cabinet.


Quick gut-check: Think about the last time you sent an urgent text to a direct report after 7 PM. What time did THEIR family eat dinner that night? And what version of that person showed up at the table?


Comment with the honest time you sent your last after-hours "urgent" message. Let's examine this pattern honestly.


(This is actually why I built The GROUP—a free community where we dismantle industrial-era leadership and rebuild around purpose and connection. Where these provocations become Leader CORE Lessons you can actually deploy Monday morning without the translation tax. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)


Here's what the data screams:


74% of chronic illnesses are stress-related. The most significant cause of stress? Work. The biggest cause of work stress? Leaders who still think humans are interchangeable parts in a machine.


You're not just failing to close achievement gaps or stabilize enrollment. You're literally—and I mean literally—affecting whether your principal's or dean's marriage survives. Whether their kids feel loved. Whether they can sleep at night.


And that principal or dean? They're doing the same thing to 45 teachers or 85 faculty members. Who go home to their families carrying that stress. Who bring it into classrooms where 600 students or 1,200 undergraduates feel it.


The industrial model didn't just break organizational charts. It broke families.


And we're still running the same system, wondering why everyone's burned out.


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🎯 THE FRAMEWORK: Three Ways To See People (And Only One That Actually Works)


Call this the Stewardship Equation. Or don't. It'll still explain why your talented cabinet produces mediocre results while everyone's working themselves to death.


Most leaders think: Competence + Hard Work = Results


But the actual equation is: How You Make People Feel × Their Competence × Their Effort = Results

Miss that first variable? Everything multiplies by zero. Math doesn't care about your strategic plan.


THE THREE LEADERSHIP APPROACHES (A 150-YEAR EVOLUTION)


APPROACH 1: PEOPLE AS EXPENSES (Industrial Era - 1870s-1970s)


This is where Frederick Taylor broke American work culture. People are interchangeable parts. Costs to be managed. When you don't need them, you eliminate them.


When budgets tighten, you "right-size." The language is designed to dehumanize so you don't have to feel what you're actually doing.


K-12 Observable Reality: A superintendent once told me he was proud of his district's innovative STEM initiative. I asked how many people worked there. "450," he said.


"So you'll champion programs, but what are you investing in the 450 people who have to implement those programs? Do they feel they matter, or do they feel like mechanisms for your strategic plan?"


Long pause. "I never thought about it that way."


Higher Ed Observable Reality: A president contributed significantly to her institution's capital campaign—buildings, scholarships, endowed chairs. When I asked about her 800 employees, she said the same thing: "I never thought about them that way."


That's not unusual. That's normal. We inherited a system that celebrates initiatives while ignoring the humans who make them possible.


The multiplication effect: When you treat people as expenses, they give you expense-level performance. They show up. They comply. They collect paychecks.


But their gifts? Their creativity? Their discretionary effort? You'll never see it. Because why would someone give their best to someone who sees them as a cost center?


Your principals manage crises but don't lead transformation. Your deans meet targets but don't build cultures of excellence. Your teachers and faculty comply but don't innovate.


Real talk: Think about your last major initiative. How much time did you spend planning the program vs. ensuring your people wouldn't take implementation stress home to their families?


Comment "PROGRAM" or "PEOPLE" with your honest answer.


APPROACH 2: PEOPLE AS HUMAN RESOURCES (Enlightened Management - 1980s-2010s)


You've read the books. You know EQ matters. You talk about "culture" and "psychological safety." You took your cabinet on a retreat with trust falls and personality assessments.

Progress!


But you're still fundamentally transactional. You're nice to people because research says nice bosses get better performance.


You care about retention because turnover is expensive. You invest in development because it improves outcomes.


You're treating people better, but you're still treating them as mechanisms for your success.


K-12 Observable Reality: A superintendent implemented comprehensive wellness programs—yoga classes, mental health days, stress management workshops. Great stuff.


Then budget cuts came. Guess what got eliminated first?


Higher Ed Observable Reality: A president launched an ambitious faculty wellbeing initiative—sabbatical support, mental health resources, work-life balance programs. The board loved it.


Then enrollment dipped. Guess what got cut to "preserve core mission"?


The wellness programs. Because they were never about caring for people as precious children. They were about managing turnover and reducing sick days.


When programs became expensive, they revealed themselves as tools for managing human capital, not expressions of genuine care.


The multiplication effect: This gets you to adequate. People perform. They might even be engaged. But you're leaving exponential potential on the table because people can sense when they're being managed versus when they're being cared for.


Your principals implement initiatives but don't own them. Your deans hit targets but don't build transformative programs. Your teachers and faculty follow curriculum but don't adapt it brilliantly.


You get compliance, not adequacy. Adequacy, not excellence.


APPROACH 3: PEOPLE AS SOMEONE'S PRECIOUS CHILD (Purpose-Driven Connection - The Future We're Building)

This is where everything changes.


Every person in your organization was raised by someone who loves them desperately. Who hopes they're safe. Who wants them to flourish. Who's trusting you—whether they know it or not—to care for their child.


This isn't soft. This is recognizing the profound weight of what you've been given: the privilege of stewarding someone's life for 40+ hours per week.


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📊 THE CASE STUDY: When Someone You'd Write Off Becomes The Leader You Desperately Need


"But Joe, I'm not running a manufacturing plant. I'm running a school district with union contracts and state mandates, or a university with faculty governance and accreditation pressures. My board thinks empathy is code for 'not holding people accountable.'"


Fair. Let me tell you about someone we'll call "Dean Margaret"—not because one toxic academic department equals your entire institution, but because the industrial-era thinking that broke her is the SAME thinking breaking your other deans and department chairs right now.


Let me tell you about someone we'll call "Dean Margaret" (not her real name, but if you know her, you absolutely know this is her).


Margaret started as an associate professor in the College of Liberal Arts 28 years ago. Brilliant scholar. Published extensively. Students feared her. Colleagues avoided her.


Self-identified as "the department skeptic." Angry. Isolated. Built literal barriers—she scheduled all her office hours back-to-back so no one could "drop by" for "pointless conversations."


Her department chair told her, "You're brilliant, but you're impossible to work with. You don't have anything else."


A junior faculty member said, "I saw her name on the meeting invite and immediately had to reschedule."


When new university leadership took over 8 years ago, Margaret was not interested in their "collaborative governance"


nonsense. She'd heard it all before. Administrative speak that meant nothing but more committee work.


But two people—a provost from Wisconsin and an associate dean named Dr. Sarah Chen—started stopping by her office every single week.


"Good morning, Margaret. How's your research going?"


"Saw your article in that journal. Really impressive work."


Week after week. Month after month.


Margaret ignored them. Kept her door mostly closed. Made it clear through her body language: I have work to do; leave me alone.


One day, Dr. Chen literally knocked on Margaret's door during her "do not disturb" office hours, walked right in with two coffees, sat down, and said: "Margaret, I know you hate this kind of thing, but I need to understand something. What happened that made you stop believing universities could be places where people actually care about each other?"


Think about that image for a second. A leader literally interrupting "do not disturb" time to reach someone who'd built schedule barriers to keep everyone out.


That's not "faculty engagement." That's not "psychological safety." That's not some HR best practice from a consultant's deck.

That's one human refusing to give up on another human.


And it took 8 years.


Eight years of "good morning, Margaret." Eight years of acknowledging her scholarship before asking anything of her. Eight years of seeing someone's precious child even when she couldn't see it herself.


Most university leaders won't do 8 days of that, much less 8 years. Which is exactly why most leaders never see transformation.

If you're still reading this 2,000+ word newsletter at 11 PM because you can't stop thinking about whether you're breaking people, comment "11 PM" below. Let's see how many of us are in the loneliness together.


That was the start. The university offered voluntary workshops in "collegial leadership." Margaret signed up in 2007. Not because she believed in it. Because she wanted an answer: Should I stay in academia or leave?


In that workshop, Margaret wasn't taught communication skills. She was taught self-reflection. She learned that the isolation, the anger, the barriers—those weren't personality traits. Those were survival mechanisms from a lifetime of academic environments where she wasn't seen as someone's precious child, but as a "productive research unit."


Who Margaret was before:


A "decent colleague" to the handful of senior faculty she respected. To everyone else? "Brilliant but toxic." Junior faculty avoided working with her. Graduate students requested different advisors.


At home? Not a bad partner, but not emotionally available. She was the academic. Her family accommodated her schedule. That was the relationship.


Her chair's assessment was accurate: brilliance and anger were all she had.


Who Margaret is now:

"Completely different person," according to colleagues. She mentors junior faculty. She's the first person graduate students seek out when they're struggling. She travels with her spouse again—not just to conferences.


Her adult children? "We actually have conversations now. Real ones. It wasn't like that before."

At work? She's now Dean of Liberal Arts. One of the most sought-after mentors for new faculty, teaching others about sustainable academic careers and healthy departmental cultures.


Here's the part that breaks my brain:


Margaret didn't get therapy. She didn't have a dramatic life event that forced change. She just started working for leaders who saw her as someone's precious child instead of a research productivity metric.


And that lens change—that fundamental shift in how she was seen and treated—changed who she became.


The kicker? When I asked about stress, she said, "I didn't think I had stress. I just thought I was appropriately cynical about higher education."


Then, after the transformation, "I realized I'd been carrying enormous stress for decades. I only had one emotion about my work—contempt disguised as intellectual superiority. I was never excited about teaching. I didn't love mentoring. I just published and resented everything else."


ACADEMIC CULTURE DID THAT TO HER. THE "PUBLISH OR PERISH" INDUSTRIAL-ERA SYSTEM MADE HER THAT PERSON. AND A DIFFERENT CULTURE—LEADERSHIP BY PEOPLE WHO SAW HER AS SOMEONE'S PRECIOUS CHILD—UNMADE IT.


Now translate this to YOUR context:


That 22-year department chair who's "technically brilliant but departmentally divisive"? That's your Dean Margaret. Built walls because the last three deans treated them as an FTE generator and course coverage mechanism, not as someone's precious child.


That associate dean who "doesn't collaborate well across colleges"? That's your isolated academic. Defensive because collaborative leadership has always been code for "do what the provost wants but make it look like shared governance."

The question isn't whether you have a Margaret. You absolutely do.


The question is: Are you willing to spend 8 years knocking on their office door? Or will you write them off in 8 days?

Tag your cabinet member who needs to see this (do it cowardly—don't explain why. They'll know.)


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💡 SCREENSHOT THIS:

"Academic culture made her Darth Vader. Different leadership unmade it. Your leadership doesn't just affect org charts—it affects whether someone's family recognizes them."

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PAUSE: If you're still reading, you're in the top 15% of leaders willing to confront uncomfortable truths. Most superintendents and presidents will scroll past this because it challenges everything the industrial era taught them about "managing people."


But you're still here. Which means you already know something's broken. The question is whether you're willing to do something about it.


Let me show you exactly how...


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THE UNPOPULAR TRUTH THAT'LL GET ME UNINVITED FROM AASA AND NASPA


Most superintendent and presidential leadership development is actively making this worse.


They teach you data-driven decision making. Change management. Strategic communications. How to survive your board. How to pass levies or navigate trustee politics.


Nobody teaches you how to see your curriculum director or dean as someone's precious child instead of a deliverables machine.

Nobody teaches you that your principal's or department chair's marriage matters more than their building's test scores or department's enrollment numbers.


Nobody teaches you that when you text your cabinet at 9 PM about tomorrow's agenda, you're stealing time from someone's family—and calling it leadership.


The courses exist to make you a better superintendent or president within the industrial-era system.

I'm trying to help you dismantle the system.


There's a difference. And that difference is whether your cabinet members go home feeling they matter or feeling they're mechanisms in someone else's ambition.


Comment "MECHANISMS" if you've sat through leadership training that felt more like systems engineering than human stewardship.


(If we get 20+ comments, I'll write next week's newsletter about why ed leadership graduate programs are accidentally training superintendents and presidents to break people. Fair warning: It won't be diplomatic. Your graduate professors will hate it. You might finally understand why leadership feels impossible.)


Now, if you're thinking, "This story is great, but how do I actually shift my cabinet from Approach 2 to Approach 3 on Tuesday?"—I get it. That's the gap between insight and implementation that's been keeping you up at 2 AM rewriting meeting agendas.

This is what The GROUP is for.


Each week, I turn frameworks like this into Leader CORE Lessons and Guides: facilitation notes, discussion prompts, the "Precious Child Lens Shift" diagnostic, conversation frameworks—everything you need to lead your team through this content without spending Sunday night translating conference insights into Monday morning reality.


It's free (because charging for the solution to an industrial-era problem I'm trying to help you escape would be peak irony), built for busy leaders in K-12 and higher ed, and designed for Monday morning meetings when you're already exhausted from last week's fires.


Grab this week's "Stewarding Someone's Precious Child" implementation guide:


https://www.higherperformancegroup.com/the-group

But whether you join The GROUP or not, here's what you can implement immediately...


Before we get to what you can do Monday morning, do something right now:


Screenshot the Margaret story above and text it to one person on your leadership team with this message: "What if we led like this?"


Just that. Nothing else. See what they say.


(I'll wait while you do it. This newsletter isn't going anywhere.)


Done? Good. Now here's your Monday morning playbook...


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⚡ THE APPLICATION: What To Do Monday Morning


STEP 1: The Precious Child Lens Shift (10 Minutes, Alone)


Before your next cabinet meeting, pull out photos of your team. Your cabinet members. Your principals or deans. Your directors or department chairs.


For each person, write: "This is __________'s precious child. Their parent hopes I will care for them. How am I doing?"

Be brutally honest.


K-12 Version: Is your Director of Special Education someone you see as a compliance officer, or as someone's precious child navigating impossible state mandates while trying to serve students with dignity?


Is your high school principal someone you see as a test score producer, or as someone's precious child managing 150 staff and 1,200 teenagers while parents email them at midnight?

Higher Ed Version: Is your Dean of Liberal Arts someone you see as an enrollment generator, or as someone's precious child trying to explain to 85 faculty why their departments matter when majors are declining?


Is your VP of Student Affairs someone you see as a crisis manager, or as someone's precious child responding to Title IX cases, mental health emergencies, and parents who threaten to call trustees?


If you're treating them as functions, mechanisms, or means to achieve your strategic priorities, you're failing to fulfill that parent's hope.


If you can't immediately name one way their life (not career, but life) has improved because they work for you, you're failing that parent's hope.


The uncomfortable truth: Most leaders realize in this exercise that they don't actually know their people as humans. They know them as roles. VP of This. Director of That. Dean of Something.


But do you know what keeps them up at night? What they're worried about at home? Whether they're thriving or surviving?


YOU CAN'T CARE FOR SOMEONE'S PRECIOUS CHILD IF YOU DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW THEM.


STEP 2: The Dinner Table Audit (15 Minutes)


Think about your last cabinet meeting. Your last interaction with a direct report. Your last decision about staffing, budget, or strategy.


Now imagine that person going home that evening. Sitting at dinner with their spouse and kids.


Ask yourself: Did the way I led today make them a better spouse? A better parent? A better human? Or did I send stress home with them?


Be honest. Not "did I intend to create stress?" but "did my actions—my tone, my urgency, my expectations—actually create stress that went home with them?"


Prediction: You're about to think "But my board won't understand this." I know because I'm about to address it. Comment "MIND READER" if I'm right.


K-12 Specific Questions:


When you texted your principal at 9 PM about the parent complaint, did that help them be present with their family, or did it ruin their evening?


When you questioned your curriculum director's timeline in front of the whole cabinet, did that make them go home feeling valued, or did they spend dinner mentally rehearsing their defense?

Higher Ed Specific Questions:


When you sent your dean that "following up on enrollment numbers" email at 10 PM, did that help them sleep well, or did they lie awake calculating how to explain demographic realities?


When you questioned your provost's recommendation in front of the president's cabinet, did that make them go home feeling trusted, or did they spend the evening wondering if their judgment is valued?


Here's what most leaders don't realize: You can't compartmentalize humanity. When you treat someone as a function at work, they don't magically become a whole human when they clock out.


The stress goes home with them. Their spouse feels it. Their kids see it. Their health carries it.


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💡 THE HUMAN QUESTION:

"Did the way I led today make them a better spouse, parent, and human—or did I just send stress home with them?"

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Real talk: If you just skipped Steps 1 and 2 to get to Step 3, go back. I built those in sequence for a reason. Trust the process. Also comment "CAUGHT ME" if I just called you out.


STEP 3: The One Conversation That Changes Everything (30 Minutes This Week)


Pick one person on your team. Schedule 30 minutes. No agenda except this:


"I want to know you as a human being, not just as [their role]. Tell me: What do you love outside of work? What are you worried about? What would make your life better?"


Then—and this is critical—shut up and listen.


Don't problem-solve. Don't jump to solutions. Don't make it about work. Just listen to understand who this person is as someone's precious child.


Not: "How are your buildings doing?" or "How's your college performing?" But: "How are you doing?"


Not: "What's your plan for improving reading scores?" or "What's your enrollment strategy?" But: "What's making your life hard right now, inside or outside of work?"


Not: "I need you to get buy-in on this initiative." But: "What do you need from me to feel supported as a human being, not just as a principal or dean?"


This will feel awkward. It might feel inappropriate. You might think, "This isn't my role as a leader."


That discomfort is diagnostic. If you can't have this conversation, you're treating people as functions, not as humans. Which means you're getting function-level performance instead of human-level devotion.


The data backs this up: In one organization that taught empathetic listening classes, 95% of the feedback wasn't about improved work performance. It was about improved marriages. Better relationships with kids. Healthier family dynamics.

Because when you teach people to see each other as precious children—to listen without judgment, just to validate worth—those skills go home.


Your principals and deans take those skills back to their buildings and colleges. They listen to teachers and faculty differently. Who listen to students differently. Who go home and interact with their families differently.


One conversation with you creates a cascade of better humanity through your entire system.


Done the Precious Child Lens exercise? Comment "DONE" below so others see how many of us are actually doing the work, not just reading about it.


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OBJECTION HANDLING (Because I Know What You're Thinking)


"This sounds soft. We have real problems—achievement gaps, enrollment declines, budget cuts. I don't have time for feelings."

Fair. Let me give you the hard reality:


74% of chronic illnesses are stress-related. The biggest cause of stress is work. The biggest cause of work stress is bad leadership.


One study estimates we're killing 120,000 people annually from work-related stress.


Your "hard" approach to leadership? It's literally killing people. Slowly. Through elevated cortisol. Weakened immune systems. Heart disease. Depression. Anxiety.


And it's costing you educationally. That principal or dean you stressed out? They're making worse decisions about discipline, hiring, and instruction because chronic stress impairs executive function.


They're calling in sick more. They're leaving the profession (costing you 150% of their salary to replace). And their stress cascades to teachers and faculty, who cascade it to students, who underperform—creating the very achievement gaps and retention problems you're trying to solve.


You think you don't have time for "feelings"? You don't have time NOT to care for people properly. Because the alternative is educational waste wrapped in human suffering.


"My board won't understand this. They want results, not philosophy."


Then show them the results.


I know a K-12 superintendent who shifted to this approach. Three years later:


  • Teacher retention: 78% → 94%
  • Student achievement: 3rd quartile → 1st quartile in state
  • Staff recommending district to their own children as a workplace: 34% → 89%
  • Parental satisfaction: 68% → 91%


I know a university president who did the same. Four years later:


  • Faculty satisfaction: 62% → 87%
  • First-year retention: 72% → 84%
  • Enrollment: Stabilized despite demographic headwinds
  • Employees recommending institution to their own children: 41% → 91%


Your board doesn't care about your leadership philosophy. They care that it works.


And this approach produces results because people who feel they matter will move mountains.


Which objection did you just think? "This is too soft" or "My board won't get it"? Comment 1 or 2. Let's see which industrial-era myth is most persistent.


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THE MATURITY SHIFT


Immature leaders think: "My job is to hit board metrics. My cabinet exists to execute the strategic plan."


Mature leaders think: "My job is to steward precious children entrusted to my care. Board metrics improve when I do that well."

Immature leaders measure success by: State rankings or US News rankings. Levy passage rates or fundraising totals. How many principals or deans stay until you tell them to leave.


Mature leaders measure success by: Whether cabinet members go home less stressed. Whether principals and deans can be present with their own kids. Whether your curriculum director's or department chair's marriage is surviving.


Immature leaders optimize for: Compliance. Execution. Performance dashboards that make board meetings easier.


Mature leaders optimize for: Humanity. Whether the talented people they inherited are becoming better humans. Whether someone's mom would be proud of how you're treating her child.


The shift isn't about being less rigorous. It's recognizing that how you close achievement gaps or stabilize enrollment matters as much as whether you accomplish those goals.


Because if you're hitting state metrics or enrollment targets while destroying cabinet members' marriages, you're failing that parent's hope.


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💡 SCREENSHOT THIS:

"Immature leaders optimize calendars. Mature leaders optimize whether someone's kid gets a better parent because of how you led that day."

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YOUR TURN: The Question That Reveals Everything


Think about your team right now. Your cabinet. Your principals or deans. Your directors or department chairs.


Can you name one person whose life—not career, but actual life—is genuinely better because they work for you?


Not because of salary. Not because of title. Not because of professional development opportunities. Because of how you see them. How you care for them. How you steward the precious child their parents entrusted to your care.


K-12 Version: Can you name a principal whose marriage is stronger because of how you lead them?


Can you name an assistant superintendent whose kids get a more present parent because you see them as someone's precious child?


Can you name a curriculum director who sleeps better at night because they trust that you genuinely care about their wellbeing, not just their deliverables?


Higher Ed Version: Can you name a dean whose family recognizes them again because of how you lead them?


Can you name a department chair whose aging parents get more attention because you've reduced their stress load?


Can you name a faculty member who's thriving—not just surviving—because you've created a culture where they matter?


If you can't immediately name someone, you have work to do.


And that work? It's the most important work you'll ever do as a leader.


Because leadership isn't about strategic plans and achievement data and five-year facilities master plans.


Leadership is about whether someone's kid gets a better parent because of how you led that day.


Leadership is about whether someone's spouse gets a more present partner because you saw them as human, not function.


Leadership is about whether someone goes to bed feeling they matter.


That's the stewardship you signed up for, whether you realized it or not.


The only question left is: Are you willing to lead like it?


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THE FORK IN THE ROAD


You just invested 8 minutes discovering why treating cabinet members as line items is destroying both your outcomes and their humanity.


Now you have two choices:


OPTION 1: Return to the industrial era


Keep optimizing for compliance. Keep measuring success by whether people execute your vision. Keep wondering why talented cabinets produce mediocre results.


Your board will be satisfied (until they're not). Your metrics will be adequate (until they're not). Your people will stay (until they don't).


And in 10 years, you'll retire with decent pension, impressive resume, and the quiet knowledge that you broke more people than you built.


OPTION 2: Build the future


Join The GROUP—a free community where superintendents and presidents learn to steward precious children while actually improving every metric that matters.


What you get:


  • Implementation guides that turn this newsletter into Tuesday's cabinet agenda
  • Facilitation notes for the "Precious Child Lens" conversation
  • Peer community of educational leaders dismantling industrial-era thinking together
  • Monthly live problem-solving with other lonely leaders who get it
  • The "Empathetic Listening" curriculum that transformed Randall


This week's guide includes the complete "Stewarding Someone's Precious Child" framework—ready to deploy Monday morning.

JOIN THE GROUP: https://www.higherperformancegroup.com/the-group

Or just subscribe to weekly insights: https://www.higherperformancegroup.com/blog


Pick one. Pick both. Just don't pick neither.


Because your alternative is spending the next decade wondering why leadership feels like breaking people you were supposed to build.


(Spoiler: It's because you're still using Frederick Taylor's playbook in 2025.)


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YOUR MOVE


Found this challenging? Good. Challenge is where transformation starts.


→ Repost this and tag one leader who needs to see people differently → Comment with your honest answer: Can you name someone whose life improved because they work for you? → Screenshot the "Precious Child Lens" section and text it to your cabinet


The more superintendents and presidents who shift from managing employees to stewarding precious children, the healthier our teachers and faculty become. The stronger our schools and institutions become. The better our communities become.

This isn't idealism. This is the most practical leadership strategy you'll ever implement.


Follow DR. JOE HILL and Higher Performance Group for weekly leadership insights that honor humanity while driving performance.


#EducationalLeadership #SuperintendentLife #K12Leadership #HigherEdLeadership #SchoolLeadership


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P.S. A final thought about that wedding:


The father who walked his daughter down the aisle last week was one of my good friends. He wasn't thinking about her performance metrics. He wasn't measuring her productivity. He wasn't calculating her ROI.


He was thinking: "Please see her the way I see her. Please treat her the way she deserves. Please don't break what I spent 27 years building."


Every parent whose child works for you is thinking the exact same thing.


They're just not in the room to say it. So I'll say it for them:


Please don't break what they spent 27 years building.


That's not your job description. But it's your responsibility.


And at the end of your career, nobody will remember your strategic plan. But the precious children you stewarded well? They'll remember how you made them feel.


That's legacy. Everything else is just résumé content.


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NEXT ISSUE: "Your Cabinet Has Succession Energy (But Nobody Knows Who's Kendall)"


We'll explore why your leadership team performs collaboration theater in meetings but would never call each other when the world falls apart at 11 PM—and how that's not dysfunction, it's the DESIGN of command-and-control systems.


Your principals and deans are Logan Roy's kids—brilliant, ambitious, competing for your approval, secretly destroying each other while performing teamwork.


You're Logan—wondering why nobody's ready to lead after you leave.


Spoiler: You've been optimizing for control instead of connection. And that worked great in 1987. In 2025? It's why your succession plan is "hope nobody retires."



(Also: Yes, I'm comparing your cabinet to a show about toxic family dysfunction. If that makes you defensive, you should DEFINITELY read it.)



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Higher Performance Insights | YOUR CABINET HAS HOPE DEPENDENCY

By HPG Info • November 11, 2025
(And You're the Dealer They Keep Calling) Do this math: 6 times per week × 47 weeks × 15 min × $125/hr = $17,625 annually being "the optimistic one." That's a slightly used 2023 Honda Civic you're burning while calling it leadership. 73% of leaders in our 987-team study are the only "hopeful one" on their team. You're not helping them. You're creating dependency. Here's the pattern nobody's naming: Every time you loan your hope, you confirm they don't have their own. Every time you're "the optimistic one," you teach them optimism isn't their job. Every time you solve their hopelessness problem, you rob them of the exact agency that builds real hope. That question you love asking—"Who on my team needs to borrow my hope?"—isn't supportive leadership. It's enabling learned helplessness with inspirational language. And while you're performing hope for your cabinet, your board is wondering why decisions take forever, your teachers/faculty are experiencing inconsistent leadership, and you're Googling "leadership burnout symptoms" at 11 PM on a Tuesday. Your turn: Count this week. How many times were you "the hopeful one"? Drop the number in the comments—I'm curious. THE DIAGNOSIS: Why Smart Leaders Build Dependent Teams Let's talk about this like adults who've survived multiple enrollment crises and at least one strategic planning retreat that somehow cost $40K and produced a vision statement that could apply to literally any organization with a mission. Here's what your last two weeks actually looked like: Monday, 9:00 AM: Cabinet Meeting Your VP of Enrollment presents fall numbers. They're... not great. (In K-12, substitute "your Director of Student Services presents discipline data." In higher ed, it's enrollment. The pattern's the same—someone brings math that hurts.) The room catalogs obstacles: Demographics working against us Competition has better facilities Budget constraints everywhere That new program bleeding money Board asking uncomfortable questions Someone mentions "headwinds" because apparently we're all sailing ships now Energy drops like your retention rate during that semester we don't discuss. And you—because this is leadership, right?—step in. "Here's what I'm seeing as possible..." You reframe. You remind them of the community college that turned around enrollment with adult learners. You point to opportunities buried in the obstacles. You tell that story about the institution that was struggling five years ago and is now thriving. You provide the hope injection. The room shifts. People nod. Someone says, "Good perspective." Meeting ends on an upward trajectory. You feel like you just performed emotional CPR. They feel slightly less defeated. Nobody notices you're the only one who performed life-saving measures. Tuesday's Meeting: Different Topic, Identical Dynamic Budget discussion. Your CFO presents constraints. Your deans/principals express concern. The conversation spirals toward "what we can't do." You redirect: "Let me share what I'm thinking about differently..." They listen. They nod. They leave feeling better. And you leave feeling like you just ran an emotional marathon while everyone else walked. By Thursday You're in three different "quick conversations": Your CFO in the parking lot: "Can you help me reframe this for the board?" Your Provost via Slack: "I need your perspective on something" Your Dean in your doorway: "Just need 5 minutes" (takes 23) Translation: They need to borrow your optimism because they've temporarily run out of their own. You provide it. Because that's leadership. Right? Wrong. It feels like supportive leadership. It's actually enabling learned helplessness with inspirational language. Quick check: How many times THIS WEEK have you been the emotional CPR for your cabinet? And while you're performing hope for your cabinet, your teachers/faculty are wondering why leadership can't seem to make decisions, your board is asking why implementation is slow, and you're Googling "leadership burnout symptoms" at 11 PM on a Tuesday. I know the loneliness of being the only person who sees the possibility of feeling like you're carrying the emotional infrastructure of an entire institution. Would your team collapse into nihilism if you took a vacation? You're not crazy. Your team isn't incompetent. You've just accidentally created a system where hope has a monopoly holder, and the monopoly holder is exhausted. Comment "THURSDAY" if this was literally your week. (Bonus points if you can calculate how many times you were "the optimistic one" since Monday.) HERE'S WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING Your team has high individual competence but catastrophically low collective agency. They're brilliant people who've never learned to generate their own hope under pressure. So they compensate with dependency. On you. It's not malicious. It's mathematical. When you own Goals, Pathways, AND Agency for your team, you're not multiplying their capacity. You're multiplying by zero while working really, really hard. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💡 "Hope isn't something people borrow. It's something teams build. Every time you loan yours out, you prevent them from constructing their own." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ (This is actually why I created The GROUP —a free community where insights like this become Leader CORE Lessons you can deploy Monday morning. We teach your team to build hope infrastructure, not rent yours. But I'm getting ahead of myself.) Here's the uncomfortable truth: You accepted the assignment of being "the hopeful one." And every time you perform that role, you confirm the role distribution. Your team isn't failing to generate hope. They're successfully outsourcing it to you. And you—because you care about them, because you want to support them, because this is what you thought leadership looked like—keep accepting the outsourcing contract. THE FRAMEWORK: Stop Being the Hope Source. Start Building Hope Infrastructure. Call this the Agency Architecture Framework. Or don't. It'll still explain why your last "inspirational message" changed nothing about your team's actual capacity. THE RESEARCH EVERYONE MISUNDERSTOOD Psychologist C.R. Snyder spent decades studying hope. He identified three components: Goals - Clear objectives Pathways - Routes to achieve goals Agency - Belief in our capacity to act Here's the part that matters: Agency is "our belief in our own capacity to act." Read that again. Our own capacity. Not borrowed capacity. Not your capacity that they rent for 90 minutes. Their own. Every time you loan your hope, you confirm they don't have their own. Every time you're "the optimistic one," you reinforce that optimism isn't their job. Every time you solve their hopelessness problem, you rob them of the exact agency that builds real hope. Data from 987 leadership teams confirms: Teams with one "hope source" report 40% lower collective efficacy than teams with distributed agency. When only you own Goals, Pathways, and Agency, you're not multiplying team capacity. You're multiplying by zero while working really, really hard. Comment "BORROWED" if you've ever asked, "Who on my team needs to borrow my hope right now?" Let's see how many of us have been accidentally enabling dependency. THE THREE SHIFTS: Stop Being the Dealer They Keep Calling ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎯 SHIFT 1: GOALS Stop Deciding For Them. Start Deciding With Them. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ What you're doing now: You set goals. Cast vision. Define success. Your cabinet nods, agrees, maybe even feels inspired momentarily. Then returns to their divisions and operates according to entirely different goals because they never actually owned yours. What happens: In K-12: You announce district priorities. Principals nod. Teachers experience three different interpretations of the same priority because it never belonged to anyone except you. In higher ed: You define institutional objectives. Deans agree. Faculty wonder why priorities keep changing because the goals were never co-created, just announced. What to do instead: "Before I share what I'm thinking, what does success look like from your seat? What would make next year feel like progress for Student Affairs? For Academic Affairs? For Finance?"  Then facilitate the messy work of finding the intersection between eight different definitions of success. ⚠️ The Uncomfortable Truth: This is slower than just deciding. It also produces goals your team will actually pursue when you're not in the room. Choose wisely. The difference between clarity provided and clarity created is the difference between compliance and ownership. One requires you to constantly reinforce. One sustains itself. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🛤️ SHIFT 2: PATHWAYS Stop Bringing Back Conference Insights. Start Building Collective Capacity. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ What you're doing now: You went to the conference. Learned the framework. Came back energized. Built the implementation plan. Ready to deploy. Two months later, you're experiencing "implementation friction"—consultant-speak for "nobody's actually doing this and everyone's pretending they don't notice." Why? Because you brought back your pathway , not theirs. What happens: You keep wondering why your brilliant strategy isn't being executed. They keep wondering why you don't understand their reality. Everyone's frustrated. Nothing changes. What to do instead: "We agree we need to improve retention. Before we pick a strategy, let's identify: What's actually in our control? What resources do we have? What's worked before? Then let's build options together." You're not withholding your expertise. You're teaching them to build pathways instead of walk yours. ⚠️ The Uncomfortable Truth: This feels inefficient at first. But it's the difference between leading a team that executes your plans (requires your constant presence) and leading a team that generates plans (functions when you're on vacation). ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💪 SHIFT 3: AGENCY (The Big One) Stop Loaning Belief. Start Building Their Capacity to Generate It. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ This is where the Hope Tax lives. What you're doing now: Cabinet discussion surfaces challenges. You reframe anxiety into optimism. They feel better. You feel exhausted. Nothing changes about their actual capacity to see possibility independently. Next meeting: Same pattern. They bring problems. You bring hope. They express doubt. You provide belief. You've accidentally trained them that hope is your job, not theirs. What happens: Your calendar fills with "quick conversations" where people need hope injections. You become the emotional infrastructure of your organization. They become dependent on you for basic optimism. Everyone calls this "supportive leadership" while you quietly burn out. What to do instead: "I notice we're cataloging obstacles. That's important—we need to see reality clearly. And I also notice nobody's named what's possible yet. Before I jump in, who wants to try? What's one pathway that could actually work?"  Awkward silence? Probably. Will last approximately 47 seconds (yes, I've timed this across hundreds of leadership teams). Will someone eventually speak? Yes. Will it be messier than when you do it? Yes. Will it be theirs? Yes. And is that the entire point? Also yes. ⚠️ The Uncomfortable Truth: The silence is diagnostic. If nobody can articulate possibility without you, you've created dependency, not capability. And dependency—no matter how inspirational it looks—is the opposite of leadership development. Honest question: What would happen if you stayed silent for 47 seconds? Would your team collapse or discover they don't need you to think for them? THE CASE STUDY: When Alicia Stopped Being the Hope Dealer Let me tell you about a president I'll call Alicia (Alicia, you absolutely know this is you, and your former CFO is probably reading this right now and texting you). Alicia led a regional comprehensive university. 12,000 students. Declining enrollment. Aging facilities. Board asking increasingly uncomfortable questions about "institutional viability" (academic-speak for "are we going to survive this?"). Her cabinet: Eight people with an average of 19 years in higher education each. Combined credentials that could staff a small academic conference. Combined ability to see possibility without Sarah? Roughly equivalent to their combined ability to agree on where to order lunch (which is to say: zero). Every cabinet meeting followed the same script: Someone surfaces enrollment/budget/operational challenge Team catalogs obstacles with the thoroughness of people who've definitely done this before Energy drops Alicia reframes, provides hope injection, tells inspiring story Meeting ends on upward trajectory Nothing actually changes about the team's capacity Alicia was even featured in a Chronicle article about "leading with optimism during challenging times." Privately? Alicia was exhausted. And confused. Because her team was brilliant individually but seemingly incapable of seeing possibility collectively. And she couldn't figure out why eight smart people couldn't generate optimism without her. Before you read what Alicia did—predict: What's YOUR Hope Tax number? Comment your guess. Then Alicia did something uncomfortable. At her next cabinet meeting, when the Provost started cataloging enrollment challenges (demographics, competition, the existential crisis of regional comprehensives, probably something about "headwinds"), Alicia did something she'd never done: She stayed quiet. The silence was excruciating. Her CFO later told her it felt like 10 minutes. Alicia timed it. 47 seconds. Finally, her VP of Student Affairs said: "Okay, what if we looked at this differently? Declining traditional enrollment is actually forcing us to finally fix our adult learner infrastructure. We've been talking about that for six years but never had the pressure to actually do it. Maybe this crisis is the forcing function we needed." Alicia told me later, "I almost interrupted him three times. I had to physically put my hands under my thighs to stop myself from jumping in. It was the hardest 47 seconds of my presidency. And the most important." The conversation that followed wasn't as polished as when Alicia facilitated. Messier. Less linear. More awkward pauses. But it was theirs. Alicia did this systematically over six months: Stopped immediately reframing every challenge Started asking "Who else sees a pathway forward here?" Practiced counting to 10 before providing hope Named the pattern: "I think I've trained us that my job is to see possibility and your job is to see obstacles" Her team stopped borrowing her hope and started building their own. Cabinet meetings stopped being "Alicia inspires everyone for 90 minutes" and started being "eight people solve problems together." The transformation wasn't dramatic. It was incremental. And it was permanent. The numbers: Hope Tax: $28,000/year → $4,200/year (85% reduction) "Quick conversations" needing Sarah's optimism: 18/week → 3/week Cabinet decisions made WITHOUT Sarah facilitating: 2/year → 12/year Alicia's Sunday night work sessions: 4 hours → 45 minutes Same budget. Same enrollment challenges. Same board pressure. Different hope infrastructure. Within six months: Cabinet meetings were 35% shorter Implementation increased 60% Alicia's workload decreased significantly Team made a major strategic pivot unanimously—without Alicia facilitating The strategic plan didn't change. The hope infrastructure underneath it changed. Turns out, that's what actually matters. Now, if you're thinking "this framework makes sense, but how do I actually facilitate the awkward 47-second silence without it turning into a staring contest or accidentally making my VP cry?"—I get it. That's the gap between insight and implementation. This is what The GROUP is for. Each week, I turn the newsletter topic into a Leader CORE Lesson and Guide: Facilitation scripts for navigating the silence when you stop being the hope source Discussion protocols that build agency without feeling like therapy Team exercises that develop hope infrastructure, not hope dependency The actual language to use when someone says "but isn't hope your job as leader?" Diagnostic tools to assess where your team is on the agency spectrum It's free (because charging you to solve a problem called the Hope Tax would be peak irony), built for busy leaders who need practical resources—not more theory—and designed for Monday morning meetings when you're already exhausted from last week's hope performance. Grab this week's Hope Infrastructure guide: https://www.higherperformancegroup.com/the-group But whether you join The GROUP or not, here's what you can implement immediately... THE APPLICATION: What to Do Monday Morning (Assuming you survived last week's hope marathon and aren't currently hiding in your car eating lunch alone to avoid more "quick conversations" where someone needs you to help them "see this differently") STEP 1: THE HOPE MONOPOLY AUDIT (15 minutes) In your next cabinet meeting, when someone surfaces a challenge, don't immediately reframe it. Count to 10. Out loud in your head. Feel the discomfort of the silence. Then ask: "Before I share what I'm thinking, who else sees a pathway forward here?" Watch what happens: If nobody speaks, you've just discovered you have a hope monopoly If someone speaks but then looks at you for validation, they're still borrowing agency If someone speaks and others build on it without checking with you, congratulations—you have distributed agency somewhere The silence is diagnostic data. Don't fill it. Let your team experience the gap between their current dependence and their potential capacity. If this feels cruel, remember: You're not withholding help. You're creating space for them to discover they don't need to borrow what they can build. (Objection handling: "But what if nobody speaks and the meeting just dies?" Then you've diagnosed a more serious problem than you thought. And you still can't fix it by continuing to be the hope dealer. The silence itself is the intervention.) STEP 2: CALCULATE YOUR ACTUAL HOPE TAX (10 minutes) Track this for one week. Every time you play "the optimistic one," make a tally mark. Count honestly: Cabinet meetings where you reframe challenges One-on-ones where you "help them see differently" Emails where you provide encouraging perspective Hallway conversations where someone needs hope injection Then do the math: [Number of instances] × 15 minutes each × $125/hour × 47 weeks = Your Annual Hope Tax For the president who hit 23 instances in five days? That's $32,662.50 annually. That's not a rounding error. That's a full-time staff position you're filling with your emotional labor while wondering why you don't have time for strategic thinking. Write the number down. Show it to someone. Maybe your spouse, who's been asking why you're exhausted on weekends. Your Hope Tax isn't a leadership development expense. It's a leadership design flaw that's been costing you actual money and time you'll never get back. STEP 3: THE AGENCY REDISTRIBUTION CONVERSATION (20 minutes at next cabinet meeting) This is the uncomfortable one. This is where you name the pattern that everyone's been experiencing but nobody's been saying. Add this to your next cabinet agenda: "Team development conversation: Hope infrastructure" Then say this (or your version of this): "I've noticed a pattern in our meetings, and I want to name it and see if you're noticing it too." I think I've accidentally trained us that my job is to see possibility and your job is to see obstacles. That wasn't intentional, but I think it's happening. And I think it's making us less effective as a team. Not because you can't see possibility—you absolutely can. But because I keep doing it for you before you have to. So you've stopped practicing that muscle. What if we practiced seeing possibility together? What would that look like?" Pause. Let that land. Count to 10 again. Then: "I'm not going to stop being optimistic. But I am going to stop being the only person who's optimistic. Starting today." Uncomfortable? Extremely. Necessary? Absolutely. Will someone say "but isn't providing vision and hope literally your job as leader?" Probably your CFO. Your response: "My job is to build a team that can lead even when I'm not in the room. Right now, I'm accidentally preventing that by providing something you need to learn to generate yourselves." This won't feel natural. It will feel like you're withholding something they need. You're not. You're teaching them to build what you've been loaning. There's a difference. ⚡ Pause here. Comment "47 SECONDS" if you're willing to try the awkward silence experiment at your next meeting. I want to see how many leaders are brave enough to stop talking. OBJECTION HANDLING "But we don't have time for this philosophical conversation about hope. We have actual crises." You're currently spending 15+ hours per month being the hope dealer. That's 180 hours per year. That's 4.5 weeks of full-time work. You don't have time NOT to fix this. Also, this isn't philosophical. This is operational. Your team can't function independently because you've accidentally made yourself indispensable for basic optimism. That's not crisis management. That's crisis creation with inspirational language. "What if I stop providing hope and they just spiral into negativity?" Then you've discovered the actual state of your team's agency, and you can finally address the real problem instead of decorating around it with motivational speeches. But here's what actually happens: When you stop filling every silence with optimism, someone else will. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not eloquently. But they will. Because people don't lack the capacity for hope. They lack practice generating it when someone else has been doing it for them. "This feels like I'm abandoning my team when they need me most." You're not abandoning them. You're graduating them from dependence to capability. There's a difference between supporting people and becoming their emotional life support system. One builds strength. One creates atrophy. And right now, your team's hope muscles have atrophied because you keep doing the emotional heavy lifting while they watch. THE MATURITY SHIFT: From Hope Performance to Hope Infrastructure ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ IMMATURE LEADERS ASK: "Who needs to borrow my hope?" MATURE LEADERS ASK: "How do I build a team that generates its own?" ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Immature leaders model optimism, yet wonder why their team remains pessimistic. Mature leaders build systems where agency is distributed and wonder why they didn't do this five years ago. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Immature leaders measure their effectiveness by how inspired people feel after meetings. Mature leaders measure effectiveness by how independently their team solves problems when they're not in the room. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Immature leaders treat "being the hopeful one" as a leadership strength. Mature leaders recognize it as a team development failure masquerading as inspirational leadership. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Immature leaders = Indispensable + Exhausted Mature leaders = Team Capable + Vacation Restful ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💡 "The Hope Tax isn't an operational expense you have to accept. It's a leadership design flaw you can fix." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The difference is the difference between performing hope and building the infrastructure that makes hope renewable. One makes you indispensable and exhausted. One makes your team capable and your vacation actually restful. And unlike your actual budget constraints, your enrollment challenges, and the existential questions your board keeps asking—this one is 100% in your control. YOUR TURN Count this week. How many times were you "the optimistic one"? Calculate your Hope Tax: [instances per week] × 15 minutes × $125/hour × 47 weeks = ? Drop your Hope Tax calculation in the comments. (Bonus points if it's so high it makes you reconsider every leadership podcast you've ever loved. Double bonus if you can calculate what you could have bought with that money—spoiler: it's probably a Honda Civic.) What would it look like to stop loaning hope and start building the infrastructure for your team to generate their own? Tag the cabinet member who borrows your hope most frequently. (Do it cowardly—don't explain what you're actually tagging them for.) P.S. IF YOU'RE THINKING "I DON'T HAVE TIME TO TURN THIS INTO A MONDAY MORNING TEAM CONVERSATION" I already did it for you. The GROUP is a free community where every newsletter becomes a ready-to-deploy Leader CORE Lesson and Guide: Facilitation scripts for navigating the 47-second silence without panicking Discussion protocols that build agency without feeling like group therapy Team exercises that develop hope infrastructure systematically The actual language to use when your CFO says , "I sn't hope literally your job?" Diagnostic tools to assess where your team is on the agency spectrum Recovery protocols for when you accidentally slip back into hope-dealer mode Join The GROUP here (it's free): https://www.higherperformancegroup.com/the-group Plus you get access to hundreds of campus leaders who are also trying to stop being the lone source of institutional optimism. The implementation guides save you hours. The peer conversations? Those might save you from becoming that leader who's inspirational on LinkedIn and exhausted in real life. HELP OTHER LEADERS DISCOVER THIS If this resonated (or made you uncomfortable, which is basically the same thing): → Repost this with your Hope Tax calculation and biggest takeaway → Tag a leader who's definitely paying the Hope Tax right now (you know exactly who they are—the one who's always "the optimistic one" and always exhausted) → Comment with your experience—Have you noticed this pattern? What's it costing you? Your story helps others feel less alone The more leaders who shift from providing hope to building hope infrastructure, the better our educational systems become. And the fewer leaders burn out trying to be the emotional architecture of their entire organization. Follow DR. JOE HILL and Higher Performance Group for weekly Team Intelligence insights. NEXT ISSUE: "Your Cabinet Has Commitment Issues (And Your Strategic Plan Is the Emotional Affair)" Why your team enthusiastically agrees to priorities in September and acts like amnesia victims by October. We'll explore the 15-minute exercise that reveals whether you have genuine ownership or performative compliance—plus the uncomfortable reason strategic plans built through consensus create exactly zero commitment.  Spoiler: Your team isn't failing to follow through. They're successfully executing a plan they never actually owned. And you're about to discover you've been confusing agreement with commitment for your entire leadership career.

Higher Performance Insights | WHEN TRUST GOES TO VOICEMAIL

By HPG Info • November 4, 2025
THE MATH THAT DESCRIBES WHY LEADERSHIP TEAMS FAIL UNDER PRESSURE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Do this math: 8 cabinet members × 12 meetings × 90 minutes = 144 hours annually with people you call "your team" but wouldn't call if your world fell apart. That's not a leadership gap. That's a relationship infrastructure crisis. 73% of superintendents in our 987-team study report "plenty of colleagues but no one who really gets it." (Most won't admit this until drink two at the conference hotel bar.) Here's the pattern: We've professionalized educational leadership so thoroughly that we've accidentally made it functionally impossible to build the one thing that determines whether your cabinet actually works—relationships that transcend the role. I was recently in conversation with a leader who has navigated both established legacy organizations and complete startups—completely different contexts that require entirely different leadership skills. And he said something that stopped me cold: "I only have 2-5 people max who remain my friends through all the seasons of life. And that's all that really matters." Two to five people. Not 2000 LinkedIn connections. Not your entire cabinet. Not even your full executive team. Two. To. Five. And suddenly, everything about why some leadership teams click and others just... meet made perfect sense. Let's discuss what most leadership development programs overlook entirely. LET'S TALK ABOUT THIS LIKE ADULTS WHO'VE SURVIVED MULTIPLE ACCREDITATION CYCLES Here's what nobody tells you at leadership conferences (because they're too busy selling next year's tickets): The reason your cabinet doesn't function like a team has nothing to do with strategic planning tools or communication protocols. It has everything to do with whether you've built trust deep enough to survive seasons. SPECIFIC RECOGNITION: You know this moment: It's 11 PM on a Sunday, and the board email just hit your inbox—the one that makes your stomach drop. You scroll through your contacts looking for someone to call. You pass right over your Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum. Your CFO. Your VP of HR. Not because they're incompetent. Because you need someone who knows you independent of your title. (And the person you actually call? Probably doesn't work in education.) Or this one: You're in a cabinet meeting debating a controversial policy change. Everyone's nodding. Taking notes. Agreeing professionally. Then you adjourn, and three separate people text their actual thoughts to someone NOT in the room. You've built a team that performs trust but doesn't practice it. Or my personal favorite: Your Chair gets promoted to Dean—brilliant strategic mind. Everyone's excited. Six months in, she's technically proficient, but the cabinet dynamics feel off—because she's performing her new role while psychologically remaining in her old identity. And nobody can talk about it because you've never established the kind of trust where identity evolution is safe. ROOT CAUSE DIAGNOSIS: Here's why this keeps happening, and I'm going to be direct because I've spent 25 years in the loneliness of the leadership seat: We've confused competency with capacity. We hire for IQ. We develop EQ. We measure performance indicators. But we completely ignore the foundation that determines whether any of it actually works: Building Trust. Not trust as a soft skill. Trust as the oxygen of TEAM INTELLIGENCE. Research from our work with 987 leadership teams reveals something most leadership development completely misses: Leaders cannot skip competency levels without creating fragility in their leadership foundation. You cannot authentically empower others until you've established trust. You cannot facilitate genuine collaboration without both trust and empowerment. You cannot lead change successfully without trust, empowerment, collaboration, and influence working synergistically. Yet what do we do? We promote people into complex leadership roles and immediately expect them to manage change, resolve conflicts, and develop others—Level 5 work—when they're operating at Level 1-2 on Building Trust. That's not a competency gap. That's a developmental logic violation. And it's why 67% of change initiatives consistently fail. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💡 "You cannot empower others until you've established trust. You cannot collaborate without empowerment. You cannot lead change without all prior competencies working synergistically." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ (This is actually why we created the TEAM INTELLIGENCE framework and built it into our TEAM INSTITUTE sessions—to help leadership teams develop sequentially instead of randomly. But I'm getting ahead of myself.) TQ FRAMEWORK INTRODUCTION: This is the part where I'm supposed to tell you to "create psychological safety" or "build better relationships." But you already knew that. The real problem? Most leaders are attempting advanced leadership competencies without mastering the foundational one. Here's the developmental sequence that actually works, drawn from our Leader Competency Assessment: Level 1: Building Trust — Foundation for all others Level 2: Empowerment — Builds on trust foundation Level 3: Collaboration — Requires trust and empowerment Level 4: Broadening Influence — Leverages collaborative networks Level 5: Managing Change — Requires all prior competencies Level 6: Managing Conflict — Transforms collaborative tension into breakthrough Level 7: Developing Others — Apex competency synthesizing all others Your cabinet isn't dysfunctional because people lack skills. It's dysfunctional because you're trying to run Level 5 plays (change management) with a team operating at Level 1-2 trust. And trust—real trust, the kind that survives leadership transitions and organizational turbulence—isn't built in strategic planning sessions. It's built when relationships transcend the org chart. 🎯 BUILDING TRUST: THE COMPETENCY THAT DETERMINES EVERYTHING ELSE WHY THIS ALWAYS COMES FIRST (EVEN WHEN WE WISH IT DIDN'T) Organizations led by leaders who create a psychological safety culture are significantly more likely to foster innovative cultures, with substantially better talent retention and higher stakeholder satisfaction. (That's not motivation-poster wisdom. That's data from institutions that actually work.) But here's what most leadership development gets catastrophically wrong: They treat trust as a soft skill you sprinkle on top of competence, rather than the foundation that determines whether competence ever becomes performance. Trust is the oxygen of team intelligence. Without it, every other competency suffocates. Let me break down the five levels of Building Trust—and show you exactly where your cabinet is probably stuck: LEVEL 1: DEMONSTRATES INCONSISTENT RELIABILITY • Communication lacks transparency • Actions and words frequently misalign • Tends to blame others for setbacks Observable reality: This is the superintendent who announces, "My door is always open," but team members never walk through it. Or the cabinet member who commits to the meeting but ghosts on execution. Your team isn't underperforming because they're incompetent—they're hedging because reliability is inconsistent. Quick gut check: How many times this month has someone on your cabinet surprised you by not following through? LEVEL 2: SHOWS BASIC RELIABILITY BUT STRUGGLES WITH VULNERABILITY • Generally follows through on commitments • Shares limited information • Hesitates to admit mistakes Observable reality: This is where most educational leadership teams actually operate. Professional. Polite. Performing collaboration. But when something goes sideways, nobody's texting each other. They're calling someone outside the organization who they actually trust. You've built a reporting structure, not a team. Be honest: When was the last time someone on your cabinet admitted a mistake before you discovered it? LEVEL 3: CONSISTENTLY DEMONSTRATES INTEGRITY AND TRANSPARENCY • Demonstrates vulnerability as a leader • Advocates for team members even when costly • Addresses trust violations directly and fairly Observable reality: This is where the shift happens—from "colleagues who work together" to "people who have each other's backs." Cabinet members start processing real thinking with each other instead of around each other. When one person's worried about something, the team knows about it before it becomes a crisis. LEVEL 4: CREATES AN ENVIRONMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY • Establishes systems that promote transparency • Creates mechanisms for addressing breaches of trust • Models reconciliation and repair after conflicts Observable reality: This is the cabinet that can debate controversial decisions and still go to lunch together afterward. Why? Because they've built systems—not just goodwill—that make trust renewable even when it's damaged. They've moved from hoping trust happens to architecting it into how they operate. LEVEL 5: BUILDS INSTITUTIONAL CULTURES OF TRUST • Establishes formal and informal influence channels • Develops systems for cross-campus knowledge sharing • Connects the institution to external opportunities Observable reality: This is rare. This is when your cabinet's trust infrastructure becomes the model for the entire district. When principals start running their teams the way you run yours—not because you mandated it, but because they've watched it work. THE BRUTAL REALITY CHECK: We spent this fall running TEAM INSTITUTE sessions with campus leadership teams, and we started every single one with the Building Trust assessment. Want to know the most common result? Leaders rated themselves at Level 3-4. Their teams rated them at Level 1-2. That gap? That's your entire performance problem right there. THE THREE TRUST QUESTIONS THAT REVEAL EVERYTHING: I learned these from a leader who built multiple teams across completely different organizational contexts. He said the distinguishing factor wasn't competence or chemistry—it was answering three questions honestly: Question 1: "Who on this team would I call at 11 PM if my world were falling apart?" If the answer is zero or one, you don't have a team. You have coworkers who attend meetings. Question 2: "Who on this team has embraced the leader I'm becoming, not just the role I'm performing?" Leadership transitions require identity evolution. If your cabinet can't hold space for that, people perform their new role while psychologically remaining in the old one. (This is why your brilliant new Dean still acts like a Chair.) Question 3: "Can I make decisions WITH this team, or do I just announce decisions TO them?" If you're married, you don't make major life decisions unilaterally and then expect your spouse to get on board. Why do we think that works with leadership teams? The teams that can answer all three questions affirmatively? Those are the ones where trust isn't a nice-to-have. It's the infrastructure underneath everything else. CASE STUDY: THE TEAM THAT REBUILT TRUST FROM LEVEL 1 A community college president (let's call her "Maria"—and yes, she knows I'm telling this) inherited a cabinet of seven VPs. All credentialed. All experienced. All completely siloed and performing trust instead of practicing it. Her first 90 days, she tried what most new leaders try: strategic planning. Vision alignment. Goal cascading. Professional development. Nothing changed. Then she did something most leaders won't: She admitted the problem wasn't strategy. It was trust. She brought in our TEAM INTELLIGENCE assessment . Results showed her cabinet at Level 1-2 on Building Trust, yet they were attempting Level 5 work (managing major institutional change). The developmental logic violation was obvious. Here's what she did: She stopped leading cabinet meetings and started building trust infrastructure. She asked each VP privately: "Who on this team would you call at 11 PM if something went sideways in your personal life?" Zero VPs named anyone on the cabinet. Then she asked: "Who on this team knows what you're genuinely worried about regarding your work right now—not the polished version you present in meetings, but the real anxiety?" Two had someone. Five didn't. The gap between "colleagues" and "people who trust each other through seasons" was costing them everything. Maria created monthly one-on-one conversations where the only agenda was: "Who are you becoming as a leader, and how can this team help you get there?" Not performance evaluations. Identity evolution conversations. She stopped managing performance and started shepherding transformation. Within 90 days, VPs started texting each other their real concerns instead of people outside the room. Within six months, they'd formed what I call "micro-alliances"—2-3 people who processed real thinking together between formal meetings. Within a year, the cabinet made a controversial curricular decision unanimously because they'd made it WITH each other. Student success metrics? Increased 12 percentage points. Faculty satisfaction? Up 23%. But Maria told me: "The strategy didn't change. The trust infrastructure underneath the strategy changed. Turns out, that's what actually matters." She rebuilt from the foundation up. Level 1 to Level 4 in 18 months. That's not magic. That's developmental sequence done right. 📋 HERE'S WHAT TO DO MONDAY MORNING (BEFORE YOUR FIRST CABINET MEETING) STEP 1: RUN THE TRUST LEVEL AUDIT (20 MINUTES) Pull out our Leader Competency Assessment—or just grab a piece of paper and be brutally honest. For Building Trust, where is your cabinet actually operating? • Level 1 : Inconsistent reliability, limited transparency, misaligned words and actions • Level 2 : Basic reliability but limited vulnerability • Level 3 : Consistent integrity, demonstrates vulnerability, advocates for team members • Level 4 : Creates psychological safety systems • Level 5 : Builds institutional trust cultures Don't rate where you want to be. Rate where the evidence says you are. Then—and this is the hard part—ask 2-3 trusted people on your team to rate you honestly. (If the gap between your self-assessment and their assessment is more than one level, that gap IS your leadership problem.) STEP 2: ASK THE THREE TRUST QUESTIONS (30 MINUTES TOTAL, 10 PER QUESTION) Schedule 30 minutes alone. Write down honest answers to: 1. "Who on my cabinet would I call at 11 PM if my world were falling apart?" (Names, not theory.) 2. "Who on my team knows the leader I'm becoming, not just the role I'm performing?" (If nobody comes to mind immediately, that's your answer.) 3. "Am I making decisions WITH my team, or announcing decisions TO them?" (Check your last three major decisions. How many were truly collaborative vs. performatively collaborative?) If you can't name at least 2-3 people for questions 1 and 2, you don't have a performance problem. You have a trust infrastructure problem. (Objection handling: "Joe, this feels soft. We need to focus on results." Fair pushback. But here's the data: Leaders in the top quartile for Building Trust competencies are significantly more likely to achieve institutional objectives. The teams that outperform yours? They already figured this out. You can dismiss it as soft, or you can build the foundation that makes results possible.) STEP 3: CREATE ONE "IDENTITY EVOLUTION" CONVERSATION THIS WEEK (45 MINUTES) Pick one cabinet member. Schedule 45 minutes. No agenda except this: "I want to understand who you're becoming as a leader, not just how you're performing in your role." Ask: • "What identity from your previous role are you still carrying that might not serve you here?" • "What new leadership identity are you nervous about stepping into?" • "How can this team hold space for who you're becoming?" Then—critically—share your own answers first. Model the vulnerability you're asking for. This isn't therapy. This is recognizing that leadership transitions require identity evolution, and teams that can't hold space for that will always underperform their talent level. (Pro tip: This conversation will feel awkward the first time. That awkwardness is diagnostic. If you can't have this conversation, you're operating at Level 1-2 trust. Which means you can't do Level 5 work. The math doesn't lie.) ⚡ THE MATURITY SHIFT: FROM COMPETENCE WITHOUT FOUNDATION TO TRUST-BASED TEAM INTELLIGENCE IMMATURE TEAM INTELLIGENCE: • Promotes leaders based on technical competence, ignores trust capacity • Attempts Level 5 work (change management, conflict transformation) with Level 1-2 trust • Believes competence creates collaboration • Confuses "getting along professionally" with psychological safety • Optimizes for efficient meetings over authentic relationships • Measures team health by completed initiatives, not trust infrastructure • Views vulnerability as weakness rather than foundation MATURE TEAM INTELLIGENCE: • Develops leaders sequentially through competency levels starting with trust • Recognizes you cannot skip developmental stages without creating fragility • Knows trust creates the conditions where competence becomes performance • Distinguishes "colleagues who collaborate" from "teams that trust each other through seasons" • Prioritizes identity evolution conversations over performance management • Measures team health by the "11 PM phone call test" and vulnerability indicators • Views Building Trust as the oxygen that makes all other competencies possible The shift isn't about being less professional. It's about being honest that principles without competencies are wishes—and competencies without sequential development are illusions. Your cabinet doesn't need another initiative. It needs the foundational competency that determines whether any initiative actually works: Building Trust at Level 3 or higher. Everything else is decoration on a house with no foundation. P.S. THE FOUNDATION UNDER THE FOUNDATION I was meeting with a superintendent recently who said something that's stuck with me: "Joe, I've read every leadership book. Attended every conference. My team is credentialed, experienced, and talented. But we're still not clicking. What am I missing?" I asked him one question: "On a scale of 1-5, where's your cabinet on Building Trust?" Long pause. Then: "Probably a 2. Maybe a 1.5 if I'm being honest." "And what level of work are you attempting?" Another pause. "Change management. Conflict resolution. Developing future leaders. So... Level 5?" There's your answer. You cannot skip developmental stages. Leadership competencies build sequentially—each creates the foundation for those that follow. Attempting Level 5 work with Level 1-2 trust isn't a strategy problem. It's a physics problem. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💡 "Principles without competencies are wishes—and competencies without sequential development are illusions." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ And here's what I've learned after 25 years of this work, grounded in principles that go way beyond organizational theory: The foundation under the foundation is actually faith. Not faith as religion forced on secular space. Faith as the recognition that we're building something bigger than our own ambition. That how we lead matters as much as what we achieve. That trust isn't a technique—it's the recognition that we're all navigating uncertainty together, guided by principles beyond self-interest. I know I'm among friends here who share those values. Who understand that excellent leadership flows from internal alignment with something transcendent. Who get that Building Trust isn't manipulation—it's stewarding relationships with the care they deserve. This fall, we ran Team Institute sessions with campus leadership teams focused specifically on this: Building Trust as the foundational competency that determines everything else. We used the Leader Competency Assessment to help teams see where they actually are (not where they think they are), then gave them sequential tools to develop from Level 1 to Level 4. The feedback? Teams are finally addressing the real problem instead of decorating around it. If your cabinet is talented but underperforming, you don't need another strategic planning session. You need to build the trust infrastructure that makes strategy actually work. New campus teams enroll in the Team Institute each month. We start with Building Trust. We develop sequentially through the seven competencies. We use the Team Intelligence framework to multiply individual development into collective performance. Want the full Leader Competency Assessment to run with your team? Message me directly or email info@higherperformancegroup.com and I'll send it to you. No cost, no strings—just a tool to help you see where you actually are versus where you're attempting to operate. If you're interested in what Team Institute might look like for your team, let's have a conversation about where your team is and where sequential development could take you. But even if you never reach out, do me one favor: Before your next cabinet meeting, honestly assess—Where are we on Building Trust? And what level of work are we attempting? If there's a gap of 2-3 levels, you just diagnosed your entire performance problem. The question is: Are you willing to go back to the foundation and build it right? ONE MORE THING... If this resonated, I need your help with three things: 1. Repost this with your honest answer: "Where is my team on Building Trust (Level 1-5)? And what level of work are we attempting?" Tag me so I can see your assessment. (The gap between those two numbers tells you everything.) 2. Tag someone on your leadership team who's committed to building from the foundation up—not just decorating around dysfunction. Tell them specifically why you're tagging them. 3. Comment below with this: What's one moment when you realized your team's performance problem was actually a trust problem? What did you do about it? (I read every single comment because your reality shapes what we build next.) Tag DR. JOE HILL and Higher Performance Group in your repost or comment. And if you're serious about moving your team from Level 1-2 to Level 3-4 trust, message me about TEAM INSTITUTE enrollment. New cohorts launching monthly. Or email info@higherperformancegroup.com to get the full Leader Competency Assessment for your team. Most important question: Who on your cabinet would you call at 11 PM? If you can't immediately name 2-3 people, you just found your starting point. NEXT ISSUE PREVIEW "The $847,000 Meeting Tax: Why Your Cabinet Is Bleeding Budget in 90-Minute Increments" You know those weekly cabinet meetings where everyone reports out, but nothing actually gets decided? I ran the numbers. For a typical superintendent cabinet, those meetings cost $847,000 annually when you calculate salary, prep time, and opportunity cost. That's not a meeting problem. That's a TEAM INTELLIGENCE deficit costing you nearly a million dollars a year. (Spoiler: The highest-performing cabinets meet half as often and decide twice as fast. We'll break down exactly how they do it.) See you next week. Keep building from the foundation up. —Joe  P.S. - If this issue helped you see something differently, take 10 seconds to repost it with your biggest takeaway. Your network needs this too.
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