Even though many consultants and schools wait to bring a Head-elect’s spouse to campus as the sole nominee, it’s a risky and suboptimal idea. I strongly recommend bringing three candidates to campus as finalists and — equally importantly — bringing their spouses with them.
Let me explain.
If you wait to bring a Head-elect’s spouse to campus, there are three potential outcomes:
- In Option A, the spouse loves it. Great outcome. Money saved. Time saved. Fantastic news. The problem is, it usually doesn’t work that way.
- In Option B, the very likely option in my experience, the spouse feels pressured to accept the inevitable. Not a great outcome. Community gets the hire. Head-elect is dealing with trouble at home from before the announcement. Distracted headship and short tenure are almost guaranteed.
- In Option C, which is not infrequent, either, the spouse vetoes the move. This is the worst outcome. The community knows you had a preferred Head-elect. They know the community didn’t get its first choice. The community knows the spouse vetoed the move. The school gets — at best — to say that it got its second-choice candidate, and that’s if the second-choice’s spouse agrees! It’s not a great starting posture for an incoming Head to have been the public second choice.
Inviting the spouses costs money and is more logistically complex, but it also allows for important conversations to happen in private and ahead of time.
- In private: Each evening after dinner and periodically throughout interview days, Candidate and Spouse have an opportunity to debrief about their impressions. By the time the visit ends, Spouse has had a real change to see the community, and Candidate very likely has a sense of Spouse’s support for a potential move.
- Ahead of time: The last meeting of an on-site visit is when Candidate meets with the board president and the search-committee chair for a concluding coffee. During this coffee, Board President and Committee Chair have to ask Candidate, “Is this a job you would take if it were offered to you? Is your spouse on board?” The answers should guide the committee and board accordingly.
There are some additional benefits to this strategy, as well:
- Spouse gets a chance to evaluate the community more earnestly without public pressure to agree to move to the community. Because Candidate can back out of the process for any reason, Spouse will not be publicly blamed for a lack of fit. That “plausible deniability” is good for Spouse, good for Candidate, and good for the school.
- The community gets to know Spouse as part of the interview process. While the community is not evaluating Spouse the same way the community is evaluating Candidate, a Spouse who fits in the community helps the Head be successful.
Yes, there is additional expense and complexity to bringing spouses to campus for finalist visits. But the benefits vastly outweigh the risks.