Is Leadership a Scam?

In November 2024, Joshua Gibbs woke me from my dogmatic leadership slumber in a CiRCE article entitled, “Leadership is a Scam.” He crystallized some thoughts that I had years ago when I read Education and the Cult of Efficiency: A Study of the Social Forces That Have Shaped the Administration of the Public Schools. As a result of his provocative article, I hibernated my LinkedIn account and adjusted my reading diet for 2025. Gibbs’ article and Callahan’s book alert the Classical movement to a subtle danger that administrators and trustees should acknowledge as the movement grows in popularity. The subtle danger is that trustees and headmasters may become merely pragmatic business managers and lose the Classical vision. Gibbs’ critique hits the bullseye in alerting the movement to this real danger. At other points in his article, more conversation is needed to apply the educational philosophy of the classroom to the boardroom. More needs to be said on the topic of training the movement’s leadership. If anything that is large is a scam, we’d also need to label church, politics, and medicine as scams. More distinctions are needed. In this article, I offer two pieces of context on Gibbs’ critiques and then propose five miscellanies on Classical Christian leadership.

The Somewhat-Likeable Jeremiads of Joshua Gibbs 

First, you need to see that "Leadership is a Scam" is a jeremiad-like genre of article that Gibbs regularly posts on Circe. Let me first say that I really like listening to Joshua Gibbs and reading his books, especially Love What Lasts. I find him to be less an irenic consolidator/synthesizer and more of a likeable yet cynical reformer. Here are three examples of ‘Gibbs the Reformer’ poking and provoking the Classical bear. For example, in “What Classical Teachers Want from Administrators,” Gibbs writes, “As Classical education grows, and as a few headmaster salaries approach pediatrician salaries, administrators need to remember that their schools ride on the backs of thirty-something dads who have burned through their savings accounts to supplement the $38k they make every year teaching Plato.” In “For All The Teachers Who Have Grown Cynical About Classical Christian Education,” Gibbs comments, “Classical schools are graduating students who ‘know how to think’ and love Drake and Taylor Swift.” In “Against Servant Leadership,” Gibbs writes, “​​While I am all in favor of serving others, the expression ‘servant leadership’ is passive-aggressive virtue signaling which coyly suggests there’s something broken in the classic understanding of ‘leadership’ that can be fixed with the help of egalitarian philosophy and LinkedIn business jargon.” In the past, Gibbs was critical of athletics, integrating history with literature, and many other topics. But lately, his entertaining jeremiads on the Circe blog are aimed at leadership. Is he saying the quiet part out loud or is he missing the mark in his thoughts about leadership training? I think he’s furthering an important conversation that needs to be had as the movement expands.  

What Gibbs Gets Right in “Leadership is a Scam”

Second, to put "Leadership is a Scam" in a nutshell, Gibbs laments that Classical headmasters have been infected with the trendy, multi-billion dollar intellectual discipline known as Leadership Studies. According to Gibbs, the ones who are supposed to be the K-12 intellectual leaders are now participating in the mainstream faddish bravado. Because I am a Head of School, wrote a book entitled Growing a Classical School, and have participated in lots of leadership training, I was initially defensive toward his thesis. I especially was not receptive to Gibbs saying many Classical headmasters and trustees don’t have a Classical bone in their bodies! Gibbs is implying that the leaders of the movement are being subtly shaped by contemporary social forces and would quickly abandon Classical education under the right conditions. Gibbs also points out how Classical school leaders like to strike fashionable poses on LinkedIn to signal their leadership virtue. He even goes so far as to compare Leadership Studies to Queer Studies and Feminist Studies. Ultimately, Gibbs is right to call out the bravado that can allure and distract an institutional leader in the fast-growing Classical schooling movement. In fact, I decided to hibernate my LinkedIn account and also have shifted my own reading away from frothy practical leadership to more great books like The Aeneid that I only partially understand at this stage in my journey. Schools are not platforms for administrators in the same way that churches are not platforms for pastors.  

Some Miscellanies on Classical Christian Leadership 

While I affirm the general direction of Gibbs’ critique, I don’t think the answer to becoming a better administrator is just reading the great books and dismissing all applied studies directed at administrators. Reading great books is necessary but likely not sufficient, because administrators and trustees need strong foundations as well as contextual applications to be effective. Administration is a gift that needs to be cultivated. Gibbs lodged some good critiques but the conversation needs to keep going about how Classical deans, principals, headmasters, and trustees should be trained. Everyone in authority within our schools is going to be trained and mentored in some fashion; it is just a matter of which pathway that they are incentivized to choose. Gibbs has disincentivized modern leadership studies, but we do not need to throw the baby out with the bath water.  To further the conversation about a positive vision of Classical Christian school leadership, here is a series of five miscellanies.

#1 Ministerial, not Magisterial, Authority

In Classical Christian administration, we reject authoritarian views (all order with no freedom) as well as anarchy (all freedom with no order). We affirm the exercise of ministerial authority which is to realize that your judgements are not absolute but have a specified and limited jurisdiction. Ministerial authority is especially true for independent schools that are not connected to a church and serve in loco parentis. No dean is able to exercise the divine right of kings. We do not lead parents the same way that we lead children, because parents are an appointed sphere of sovereignty for the rearing of children that is, under God’s sovereign care, complementary to both the church and the state and the academy. Alongside the primary institutions of the church and the state and the family live our very specialized academies that should come alongside and strengthen the others. Jonathan Leeman’s book Authority illustrates this well when he demonstrates that a husband with his wife should not wield his authority like a police officer or a military commander. The K-12 environment is fairly nurturing and authorities in the school should work with the gentle grain of the context as much as is possible. 

#2 What You Lead Must Dictate How You Lead

I have led in positions in church, athletics and school but have not held authority in politics, construction or entertainment. While I am sure there is a degree of transfer, I do not have the content knowledge or technical skills to set standards and be worthy of imitation in politics, construction or entertainment. In the same way that classical education is more than a method, holding authority within a classical school is more than a set of abstract principles and generic techniques. We should have some classical bones in our body to be in authority. In “Leadership is a Scam,” Gibbs cites Hillsdale alumni Clifford Humphrey who recaptures a vision for statesmanship that is much needed for leaders today. Humphrey defines leadership as “compelling human excellence” and describes a leader as “a roadmap for others to read in order to understand the standard for human excellence in a given area.” Being a ‘roadmap for others’ should entail that those in authority possess mastery of at least something in academics (e.g. pedagogy, curriculum, specialized content knowledge) or organizational expertise (e.g. law, finance, marketing, philanthropy). An authority sets standards and imposes consequences and should be apt to teach in a specific area of the school’s life. 

#3 Every Executive a Generalist First and a Specialist Second

This phrase, popularized by Mortimer Adler, means that our headmasters and board chairmen should have broad foundational knowledge and wisdom that could be applied in a variety of different areas. Some people who were average athletes make for excellent coaches. The same could be said of teachers who become administrators. Gibbs is mostly right in saying, “What school communities need from administrators is courage, wisdom, strength, honesty, justice, and eloquence, not amoral ‘leadership skills.’ We need good men who stand up to bullies, bribes, dolts, arrogant rookies, and the followers of fashionable ethics.” My one qualification is that it is entirely possible to be courageous with strong convictions yet incompetent in the key skills of organizing resources, setting agendas, crafting calendars, and deciding policies, which are requisite to private school leadership. Rather than complete dismissal of ‘leadership skills,’ I’d rather see us adopt a qualified appreciation and opt for resources that have deeper roots within the tradition. In many ways, Gibbs’ critique is a critique of the way in which pragmatism, positivism, and progressivism have displaced the perennialism (the pursuit of enduring truths) of worthy leaders in previous generations.   

#4 The Equality of All Believers 

The Reformation in many ways was a crisis about authority, namely the authority of the Scriptures and the authority of the Church. One consequence of the Reformation was the crystallization of the priesthood of the saints, or the equality of all believers. Luther tore down the secular-sacred divide and demonstrated that all Christians have direct access to God through Christ. A Christian peasant does not need a priest to mediate his access to God. Despite distinctions in specific roles and offices, each believer has a calling from God and direct access to God. Because we are all members of one body, we cannot say that we do not need each other. The hand cannot say to the eye, “I do not need you.” One thing that this could mean is that those in authority should learn to be consultative rather than consensus-based. We can listen to people and get input without getting steered. Nobody likes a headmaster that can be manipulated by philanthropic dollars and no headmaster likes frenetic trustees that are swayed by frustrated parents. We need to receive people’s pressure and chaos and return to them a sense of calm and stability. For me, the priesthood of all believers is a reminder to make it safe for people to give me critical feedback and share their ideas. Each person is important and has value within a Classical school community. 

#5 Define and Defend a Vision of Classical

J. Gresham Machen is well-known for his century-old work, Christianity and Liberalism. Machen had a strong background in the Classics and was also deeply committed to teaching theology. He founded Westminster Seminary in Pennsylvania. What I appreciate about Machen is that he was precise, pastoral, and passionate as a leader. He delighted in the truth but was able to define terms and defend truth with precision. Defining Classical education seems to be something that the leaders of the Classical movement can do better and better. This will look different in various contexts, because the movement is more like a vineyard (which reflects regional conditions with soil and climate) and less like a one-size-fits-all Diet Coke factory. Each school will have general principles in common but the specific applications will vary. For example, I would not want to be part of a Classical school that held to Tracy Lee Simmons’ view of Classical as the ultimate paradigm. For Simmons, Classical is less about Lewis and Shakespeare and more about immersion in the literature and languages of Greece and Rome. Others will be more democratic (Adler), others more Platonic (Hicks), and still others more Reformed (Wilson). Real differences exist between the various expressions of Classical education in America, and it’s okay to choose one. In this movement, there are many rooms. Pick one and don’t taunt people in the hallway who have not yet chosen one or have otherwise chosen one different than you. As B.B. Warfield noted, we should keep low walls between ourselves and our neighbors so we can reach across and shake hands. 

One of the best ways to disrupt and diminish the Classical schooling movement is to disqualify the leadership and turn school communities against their leaders. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but it seems that Gibbs is simply asking the movement’s leaders to avoid pursuing the contemporary leadership fads (like he did here in 2019). His article serves as a warning of an error to avoid and an opportunity to embrace better training aimed at recovering an ancient tradition of education. Let’s ditch the posturing and the pragmatism and the progressivism and embrace a principled, perennialist approach. The leadership training of the Classical movement may currently be one of the lower floors, but the ceilings are high, because the resources and examples within the tradition are deep.  

So is leadership a scam? No, we’re just scratching the surface of what the recovery will look like for the movement’s trustees, deans, and headmasters. Let’s keep going so that we can set up a meaningful platform for our teachers to do what they do best.