Special Edition: Peer-2-Peer Leadership Roundtable Recap

The Builder posture toward disruption — straight from the leaders living it.

The loneliest job in American education is an absolute privilege... Said very few superintendents, college presidents, VPs, or provosts.

On April 1, eight of them found that room of agreement.

 A 2025 National Superintendent of the Year. A president rebuilding a community college that guidance counselors told students to avoid. A rural Minnesota superintendent who started teaching kindergartners to code because his state ranked 50th nationally in computer science. A Chicago-area superintendent building partnerships with the private schools his system was architecturally designed to compete against.

Sixty minutes. No presentations. No panels. No consultant with a slide deck and a solution.

Just the conversation most of them cannot have inside their own institutions — because inside their own institutions, the people in the room report to them.

"The pain of this office is a privilege. The reason we bring people into this space is to keep us all propped up, because it's so very important. And it gets pretty lonely in that space — you can't talk about some of the things you're dealing with."

— DR. JOE HILL, Host & Founder, Higher Performance Group

Here is what they said. And what it demands of your cabinet Monday morning.

THE DIAGNOSIS

You've Been Treating a Structural Problem Like a Personnel Problem

Three numbers opened the session. Not for drama. As ground truth.

• 1.7 million students lost from higher education since 2010.
• 1.2 million students lost from K–12 public schools since 2019.
• $248 billion in global e-learning market growing at 14.2% annually — most of it flowing toward providers who are not you.

Then the line most leadership conferences spend three days dancing around:

Students and families are not rejecting education. They are rejecting institutional education that has failed to keep pace.

The leaders in that room didn't push back. They exhaled. Because they'd been carrying that sentence alone.

The instinct when outcomes disappoint is to look at people. Who isn't executing? Who needs to be moved? Our research across 987 leadership teams says that's the wrong question:

Most underperformance in educational institutions is not a talent failure. It is a structural failure wearing a talent problem's clothes.

The meeting culture that trained your cabinet to manage the temperature instead of the truth. The planning process that produces alignment in October and confusion in March. The decision architecture that routes everything through the leader instead of building collective judgment.

None of that shows up in a performance review. All of it shows up in your outcomes.

(This is the specific gap THE TEAM INSTITUTE closes — not by optimizing individuals, but by building the collective architecture that allows your best people to actually build. More on that in a moment.)

THE FRAMEWORK

The Builder Matrix: Which Room Is Your Cabinet Living In?

Dr. Hill opened the session with a diagnostic frame that participants returned to throughout the conversation. In any institution navigating disruption, four behavioral types emerge — and they are not personality traits. They are responses to the structural conditions you have built.

• Builders advance the mission, navigate structural friction, and pay clarity costs others won't. They name what's broken in the room where it's produced.
• Dreamers are aspirationally aligned and inconsistently present. They describe the future beautifully. Their follow-through is conditional.
• Climbers contribute strategically to their own advancement. Not malicious — misaligned. They are excellent readers of what the system rewards and respond accordingly.
• Coasters occupy resources without returning them. They exited emotionally long before they exit physically. Most institutions have more of these than they know — because the system stopped demanding otherwise.

The institutions losing students fastest are not the ones with the worst people. They are the ones with the worst structural conditions for their best people.

In a volatile, brittle, rapidly shifting environment — a system optimized for Coasters is not just inefficient. It is existentially dangerous. And the Builders inside it are quietly calculating whether the cost of staying is still worth paying.

If you recognize your cabinet in the Builder Matrix — and you suspect the weight is sitting in the wrong quadrants — that's the conversation THE TEAM INSTITUTE was built for. Eight months. Sequential development. The structural conditions that allow Builders to build and stop converting Dreamers into Coasters by accident. Whether you work with us or not, here's what the eight leaders in that room figured out.

WHAT THE BUILDERS SAID

Theme One: Engagement Is the Diagnostic — and Most Institutions Are Reading It Wrong

The word that surfaced most consistently was engagement — not as aspiration, but as a measurable gap between what educators believe is happening and what students actually experience.

"We did a survey — we asked principals, teachers, and students about engagement. Principals and teachers rated it very high. Students rated it very low. That was a real aha for us."

— Dr. Rick Surrency, Superintendent, Putnam County Schools, Florida · 2025 National Superintendent of the Year

This is not a Putnam County problem. The gap between administrator belief and student experience is not a communication failure — it is a structural one. Dreamers respond to that survey by improving the narrative. Builders redesign the experience.

Dr. Dana Monogue connected the engagement failure directly to structural irrelevance: most of what students are asked to do has no visible connection to their lives or the economy they're entering.

"I'm on a personal mission to completely transform the American high school experience. It's just archaic. There are many great models across the country, and I'm trying to learn from as many as possible."

— Dr. Dana Monogue, Superintendent, Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District, Wisconsin

Dr. Christine Mangino named the same gap from higher education — and named the specific humans producing it.

"I don't think guidance counselors in high schools respect community colleges. The things our students were told by their guidance counselors as they were applying to us are horrifyingly painful. It is not okay."

— Dr. Christine Mangino, President, Queensborough Community College, New York

Theme Two: The K–12 and Higher Education Silo Is the Most Expensive Wall Nobody Maps

The most consequential silo in American education doesn't appear on any institution's org chart.

It exists between institutions — K–12 and higher education serving the same students with funding formulas that reward separation.

"The system has been set up against us to partner with charter, private, independent, religious, micro, home, virtual, and community college. Part of it goes to the entire system of segregated practices that have been codified since 1975."

— Dr. Michael Lubelfeld, Superintendent, North Shore School District 112, Illinois

Dr. Monogue named the most actionable move in the room: taking sophomore students and staff together to the local community college. Not students alone. Staff. "We need to equip not just our counselors but our teachers" — because teachers shape what students believe is possible after graduation, and most of them have never set foot on a community college campus.

Theme Three: AI Is Not a Future Conversation

Several participants described AI integration already operational. The range was instructive — from kindergarten coding pipelines in rural Minnesota to AI certification programs launched through a single university partnership in Florida.

"We start in kindergarten. We've worked with Jump to create an innovation hub at our middle-senior high school. What we're doing is helping bridge opportunities so that what kids learn in coding applies to something real."

— Liam Dawson, Superintendent, St. James Public Schools, Minnesota

"We partnered with Columbia University. A professor taught our students about AI at no charge. The teacher eventually became certified in AI. From that teacher, five more became certified. From those teachers, students became certified."

— Dr. Rick Surrency, Superintendent, Putnam County Schools, Florida

The pattern: Builders find the one person who multiplies. One relationship, scaled. AI integration is a partnership decision, not a curriculum decision. Districts moving fastest have cross-sector relationships already in place. Those without them move at the speed of procurement. That is not fast enough.

Theme Four: Vouchers and Choice Are Not a Future Threat. They Are a Present Design Brief.

"Out of 10,000 students, over the last several years, we've lost about 900 kids. They are taking their money with them, right out of our budget. We've closed five schools. Every single superintendent in Florida is dealing with this."

— Dr. Rick Surrency, Superintendent, Putnam County Schools, Florida

"The Alpha School opening in Chicago may not be an existential threat to the public school system. I don't need to judge its merits. What I need to ask is: is there something they're doing that I should be doing? And if so, what's stopping me?"

— Dr. Michael Lubelfeld, Superintendent, North Shore School District 112, Illinois

Dr. Dr. Nathan S. Schilling, CSBO, whose pre-K–8 Illinois district is structurally separated from the local high school district, named what that wall actually looks like at the student level:

"The eighth-to-ninth grade transition in my district happens across a district boundary, not just a building. That means multiple walls, each one adding friction — and none of them appearing on any single institution's org chart." — Dr. Nathan Schilling, Superintendent, Lansing School District 158, Illinois

That's not a communication problem between buildings. It's a design problem between systems — and no single leader owns it, which means no single leader fixes it.

The Builder response is not to lobby against choice. It is to build something families choose. Your institution is a brand that either generates word of mouth or doesn't. Act accordingly.

Theme Five: Teaching People to Teach Is the Faculty Development Gap Nobody Advertises

"Faculty are often hired on their scholarship, not necessarily on their teaching. We've invested in the Association of College and University Educators. We've had 400 faculty — full time and part time — go through that program. It's been transformational."

— Dr. Catherine Wehlburg, Ph.D., President, Athens State University, Alabama

Athens State's prior learning assessment system gives students credit for verifiable industry credentials. The principle: don't make people sit in a class learning something they already know how to do. The compliance resistance to that idea is enormous. Wehlburg built it anyway.

THE PATTERN

What Builders Do Differently

Across five themes and sixty minutes, a behavioral pattern emerged. The distinction between the Builders in this room and Dreamers describing similar goals was not aspiration. It was action architecture:

1. They cross the wall rather than study it. Surrency partnered with Columbia. Monogue brought teachers to college campuses. Wehlburg built prior learning assessment inside a compliance architecture designed to prevent it. Lubelfeld is building bridges to institutions his system was designed to compete against.
2. They measure what students experience — not what administrators believe. The engagement survey that revealed the gap between teacher perception and student reality is the example. Dreamers believe their read is accurate. Builders go find out.
3. They use enrollment loss as design data. Closing five schools is painful. Closing five schools and restructuring to improve the student experience is a Builder move. The loss is the input, not the verdict.
4. They name the constraint out loud. Mangino named the transfer credit wall in a room of K–12 leaders who had no idea it existed. Most leaders describe symptoms. Builders name the structural source — in the room where it's produced.
5. They find the one person who multiplies. Surrency's AI teacher certified other teachers. Dawson's Jump partnership produced an innovation hub. One relationship, scaled intentionally. This is not luck. It is a resource allocation strategy.
6. They give students real work with real consequences. Not engagement activities. Structural signals about who the work is actually for.

MONDAY MORNING

Three Moves. This Week.

One: Run the Builder Matrix Audit on Your Cabinet

Twenty minutes. Alone. Before the week finds you.

For each cabinet member: where are they operating right now — and is that a reflection of who they are, or a reflection of what your system has been rewarding?

Then ask the harder version: which quadrant are you occupying as the leader? The quadrant you operate from sets the ceiling for every quadrant on your team. A Climber at the top produces a cabinet of strategic Climbers. A Builder at the top creates structural permission for Builders to surface.

Two: Name One Structural Condition — Not One Person — That Is Producing Your Worst Outcome

In your next cabinet meeting. Not "we need better execution." Something specific and structural. The meeting format that routes every decision through you and trains your team not to think collectively. The planning process that produces alignment in October and confusion in March.

When a leader names a structural problem instead of a personnel problem, two things happen: the people quietly blaming themselves exhale — and the people benefiting from the dysfunction get uncomfortable. Both reactions are data.

Three: Find Your Builders and Tell Them What You See

This week. Individually. Not in a group setting.

Builders stay when they believe the cost of staying is worth paying. They leave when they conclude the structural friction is permanent, and nobody with authority sees what they see.

You don't need a program to keep your Builders. You need fifteen minutes, their name, and the specific thing you watched them do that mattered. That conversation may be the highest-ROI investment you make this month.

THE MATURITY SHIFT

Immature leaders think: "If I had better people, I'd have better outcomes." Mature leaders think: "If I had a better system, I'd know which people were actually Builders — and I'd have stopped converting them into Dreamers years ago."

Immature leaders run personnel strategies on structural problems. They move the Climbers up, wait the Coasters out, and wonder why the Builders keep leaving.

Mature leaders understand that the quadrant distribution in their cabinet is a mirror of the system they've built — and changing the distribution starts with changing the architecture, not the org chart.

The 987 leadership teams in our research who moved from 60% capacity to 90% didn't get there by finding better people. They got there by building the structural conditions that allowed the people they already had to operate as Builders. TQ = IQ × EQ × PQ. When the architecture collapses the PQ dimension toward zero, the equation collapses — regardless of how talented the individuals are.

Your turn: which quadrant is your cabinet's center of gravity right now? One word. Drop it in the comments.

Not as a verdict on your people. As a starting point for the structural conversation that changes it. Tag a Builder on your team — someone you've watched pay clarity costs nobody asked them to pay. They deserve to know you noticed.

 THE TEAM INSTITUTE

The Builder Matrix tells you where the weight is sitting. It doesn't tell you how to move it.

That is the work of THE TEAM INSTITUTE. Eight months. Sequential development. Not individual optimization — collective architecture. The trust infrastructure that makes it safe to operate as a Builder. The shared language that makes structural problems nameable in the room where they're produced. The accountability framework that turns insight into institutional change rather than parking-lot conversation.

From our research across 987 leadership teams: 3x performance improvement. 29% higher engagement. 27% better organizational outcomes. Zero burnout increase.

One requirement: full cabinet participation. You cannot build a Builder's architecture with half a cabinet in the room.

Schedule a consultation: https://www.higherperformancegroup.com/team-institute#

JOIN THE NEXT ROUNDTABLE · JUNE 3, 2026

You Were Never Meant to Figure This Out Alone.

Here is what the April 1 session was not:

• It was not a conference. Nobody had a keynote.
• It was not a workshop. Nobody had a workbook.
• It was not a webinar. Nobody was selling the next program.

Here is what it was: senior educational leaders who lead districts of 600 students and colleges of 11,000, from Montana to New York to Florida, sitting in the same room long enough to stop performing and start talking.

They surfaced things they cannot name inside their own institutions — because inside their own institutions, the people in the room report to them. The enrollment losses. The faculty dynamics. The board pressure. The cabinet that has learned to give them the version of reality that doesn't cost anything.

Sixty minutes later, they left with commitments. Not aspirational ones — specific, named, accountable ones.

June 3, 2026 · 10:30 AM CST · 60 Minutes · No cost to attend

Topic: Unbuilding the Silos — From Program-Centered Institutions to Partnership-Driven Ecosystems

If you are a superintendent, president, provost, or cabinet-level leader who is tired of being the smartest person in a room full of people who report to you — this is the room you have been looking for.

Reserve your seat: higherperformancegroup.com/p2p-page

FOUND VALUE IN THIS?

Help other educational leaders find it:

1. Repost with your answer to the Builder Matrix question: which quadrant is your cabinet's center of gravity right now? Real answers from real leaders are more useful than any framework.
2. Tag a Builder — someone you've watched stay in the work when the structural friction made leaving the easier choice. Name them specifically. They deserve to hear it publicly.
3. Comment with one structural condition — not one person — that you are done letting produce the outcomes it has been producing.

The more educational leaders who move from personnel strategies to structural ones, the better our institutions become.

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