Insights on Conflict, Leadership, and Governance
Practical perspectives for leaders navigating high-stakes situations. These pieces draw from three decades of experience in public school governance, executive leadership, and conflict mediation.
The Work of Repair: What Governance Recovery Actually Requires
Repair is different from resolution. It requires acknowledgment, structural change, time, and a way to measure whether the relationship is recovering.
Policy vs. Practice: Where Governance Actually Breaks Down
A policy manual is a record of what the board intended, not a description of what the board actually does. Mixing those up is where the trouble starts.
The August Reset:
There's a conversation that almost never happens in education governance, and it's not the one you'd guess. It happens between the board chair and the superintendent, sometime before September, with enough time and enough honesty to actually talk through what the year looked like.
Bruce publishes regularly on conflict, leadership, and governance through the Conflict in Plain English series on Substack. Subscribe below to receive new pieces directly.