Required Skills

What We’re Looking For

• We are seeking experienced principals and superintendents who care passionately about supporting the next generation of school leaders and are looking for a challenge.
• An entrepreneurial mindset
• You enjoy a challenge and relish the opportunity to effectively build your own business, bringing Spark programs to your state’s school leaders. You probably already have a track record of developing new initiatives and leading change.
• A passion for leadership development
• You have had a long-standing interest in building leadership capability. You may have been involved in coaching, mentoring or facilitating professional development programs – in your school, your school district or in partnership with your local university or professional association.
• A self-aware leader
• We believe strongly in practicing what we preach! You will have built your own skills and capabilities as a leader over the years and be able to articulate the journey you’ve been on.
• A self-starter
• You don’t need a strong level of direction or a team behind you and you enjoy working independently.
• An ability to win business
• You are an effective communicator and are comfortable with reaching out to schools and education colleagues, following up with them if they don’t come back to you, and encouraging them to commit to piloting programs (rather than prevaricating!).
• A strong network of contacts with local schools
• You have had a successful career as a school principal/ superintendent, be well respected among peer principals and have developed a strong network of contacts beyond your school. You probably have been active in your local professional association, school district and/or university school of education.
• Flexibility and a positive attitude
• The Spark partner role is a new one. You will be a pioneer! This is exciting but it will call on you to be flexible, adaptable and able to take a mature approach to handling any difficulties encountered along the way. The communication channels with our Director of Education in Australia will need to stay open at all times!

Are we the right match for you?

We believe that the Spark Partner role is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pioneer a new approach to supporting school leaders to be their best- but it’s not the right role for everyone!

This may not be the right job for you if…

• You need income right now. We anticipate that this Fall will see you busy in conversations with education leaders across your State. You may not secure any program income until early 2020 and then it could be a slow build. These are the risks of being an entrepreneur. You will need an alternative source of income (pension, partner’s salary etc.) in the meantime.

• You thrive on working in a team every day. If you are the kind of person who loves daily contact with work colleagues, you may find this role too isolated. You need to be comfortable with working alone, probably from your home office, having conversations with local schools and school districts, and reaching out to other Spark partners and the Director of Education (Rosie, based in Australia) for support as needed.

• You loathe the sales process. We can’t have an impact if you don’t land programs and win work. Many of us in Spark don’t see ourselves as salespeople, we believe that our role is to build leadership capability in schools. But there is no doubt that we need to use sales skills to work with schools to find solutions that meet their needs and then encourage them to bite the bullet and invest in a Spark program. You will find yourself needing to reach out to new contacts, chase people you’ve had conversations with and convert their interest into action.

• You believe that only education professionals can support education leaders. We believe that the quality of our coaches is fundamental to the success of our programs. We hold the highest standards for coaches – new coaches must be professionally accredited, have 100+ hours of coaching training and 250+ hours of coaching experience. Very few education professionals meet these criteria. We use the same coaches on our corporate programs and on our Spark programs and brief them to understand the education context. The strong positive feedback from our programs supports this approach; 97% of our participants would recommend Spark to others.

• You are completely tied to office hours. Your day-to-day work will involve reaching out to schools during the daytime, but your induction, training and regular management support will involve our Global Director of Education, Rosie, who is based in Sydney Australia. This inevitably means being prepared to attend occasional twilight sessions over the summer months (e.g. 5-7pm) if you are on Eastern time.

• You can’t commit for the long term. Our content is complex and takes months of training and induction. It will then take time for you to reach out to your contacts and build interest in Spark programs. If your timeframe is 12-18 months then you will be frustrated. We are looking for people to commit to partnering with us for at least 2-3 years.