Drawn to a career in education by his passion for reading and studying literature when he was a student, the end of the current 2023 academic year closes the book on 39  years in education for Dr. Paul Barker, President of Our Lady of Good Counsel High School. 

This interview is the second in a three-part series which explores what he was like as a student, how he became a school leader, and what his plans include for a peaceful retirement in his home country, New Zealand. 

His leadership and legacy at GC

Q: I’d love to hear more about your concept of leadership. What does it mean, to you, to be a good leader? What do you consider your personal strength as a leader?

A: I think the thing I learned early on is there’s the way I would do something and there’s the way another person would do something. And in a lot of instances, there’s no one right way. You know, in something as complex as a school with 1,400 human beings in it every day, people are unique. It’s not always simple. 

Part of leading is to be able to have your people be clear about what it is we are trying to do and where we’re trying to get to. But how do we get there? If this is your area of responsibility, I’m here to help you. If you need advice, you want to bounce ideas off me, okay, but the way you want to do it is the way we’re going to do it. You have to trust your people because there’s nothing worse than people coming and asking you to tell them how to do it. Cause then, what’s their ownership? If it’s difficult and you tell them to do it this way, and they do it, and it’s a horrible experience, people resent that. They’re unhappy with it. I think if you have talented people, you let them do their jobs. 

I’m also a big fan of whatever you reinforce, that’s what tends to happen, so try to reinforce the good things you want to happen. Praise them. Right. I think, basically, my leadership philosophy is to encourage people, give them opportunities and get out of their ways. I would say that on those occasions when I’ve been unhappy with the way something has played out, it’s quite often because I stuck my stupid foot into it and didn’t let the person responsible handle it. 

I mean, there are occasions when people screw it up royally, but, in general, people don’t come to work with good intentions. Few people say, gee, let me think: how can I do a lousy job today? How can I be really terrible today? Everybody derives satisfaction and a sense of themselves from doing the best they can, and you have to believe in your people. Keep people efficient.

I don’t want it to come across to you that whatever is kind of the philosophy. There are times like when I came here and started at Good Counsel twelve years ago. You know, it’s a good sort of guiding principle to say, you’re just going to observe, you’ve got to learn the school, you’re not going to change anything directly or drastically in your first year. 

Q: What was the biggest difference and or adjustment when you moved from a principal role at John Carroll to a presidential role at Good Counsel?

A: Well the jobs weren’t really terribly different. Most of my time at John Carroll, I was there ten years, I was the principal, but that wasn’t the president. I did both jobs. I was the head of school as I am here. In some ways [the biggest difference is] having a much bigger team than I had at John Carroll. You know, there were more people to help get the job done. OLGCHS was a new community. It’s a different culture at the school. John Carroll was different, so I had to learn my way, uh, who the players are or learning families. It takes about three years to recognize people in the parking lot and know who they are. There’s just one of you and there’s 1,250 families. Just getting to know who other people are, that’s always the hardest thing. Getting your feet under you in a new community takes time. Think of your fundamental principles — about how you want to talk to people, how to treat people, because those things maybe don’t change so much. 

I like to use the term head of school. I think that’s just a good overall title for it. I mean, Catholic Schools came up with this title of President, and I think because it’s not really found outside of Catholic high schools, it’s a bit puzzling to some people. Over time I’ve become more fond of Head of School, but the title here is, for better or worse, President. 

Q: What do you consider your greatest accomplishment or legacy as you close out your career and time at GC?

A: Well, I think it’s pretty clear that the Performing Arts Center is it. When I came in here, I didn’t know enough. It was my first meeting with any group of parents before school started and Dr. Slocum said they would have this meeting. And I got in front of those people and I said we’ll get the Performing Arts Center built. Sandra, Bill, and I think Dr. Slocum rolled his eyes at the back of the room. Like, I’ve heard this before — but we got it done! 

We started fundraising for that. Maybe in my second year we got it done. It’s a great, beautiful space. Very helpful to the school. And that’s going to be here, I hope, fifty years from now or more. That’s the accomplishment. 

But there are a lot of other things [I’m proud of too]. I think we’ve done some good work looking after our employees. I think we’ve introduced programs like STEM for students that weren’t here before. And they are great successes. 

Um, I can probably come up with a laundry list, but, I [keep coming back to the performing arts]. It was easy to make the argument that the new campus was  complete except for an auditorium. This is a school that’s always been pretty proud of what we put on the stage. We have talented, brilliantly talented, teachers and talented students. It was a matter of basic fairness to all students in the school, that all should have a space to highlight their talents. It was an easy sell to make when asking for donations. I mean, we had meetings in people’s homes where we invited potential donors and we’d have a quartet or something. We’d have people sing or they’d play an instrument and it’s like, yeah, this is part of a well-rounded Good Counsel education. It worked. [The Performing Arts Center] is used a lot now, too. 

Q: Could you describe the biggest obstacle you’ve faced as a leader at Good Counsel and how you navigated the situation? 

A: We’re a big community, right? 1,250 students are not all going to think the same and  if you roughly double that number, in terms of parent community, tens of thousands of opinions [to consider]. There’s not one sort of thought about doing things. And change is hard, or you choose a particular path [as a leader] and it is not going to be met with universal acclaim. Some people are going to be annoyed. And some are concerned with who’s getting the best of it. [For example,] there are times when people say, oh, you just don’t care about sports, or you’re spending all this money on the arts. It’s like, I’m just trying to have a school that’s good for everybody in it. 

Depending on how worked up those who don’t agree with you are, that can be pretty exhausting. When they get fired up — 

By and large, people see what’s good for our students is good for Good Counsel, not a whole lot of difficulty. It gets harder to balance stuff, though, as you offer more programs and things because you might focus more into one area than the other. I understand that frustration a lot.

Q: How has the role of GC President changed you as a person outside and in your personal life?

A: What a good question. Um, these roles of principal, head of school, president, really any of the senior roles [in an organization] are pretty demanding. They don’t always leave a lot of room for things beyond the job, so, I’m conscious that my outside-of-GC-life is maybe not as broad as some other folks’. I’m either just too tired to do anything, or, sometimes when you’re the head of an organization, you want to be friendly with everybody but it’s not always easy to cultivate those friendships without [perception issues]. Are these special people? Are these the insiders, you know, or are there his favorites? That kind of thing. But I don’t think these issues are unique to me or to Good Counsel. They are something lots of leaders have to deal with.