The purpose of this mixed methods study was to add to the growing research about the experiences of charter school leaders and take a close look at the key traits related to charter school leadership. The significant threat of closure, and the high levels of autonomy of a charter school leader, place their role to be akin to that of a CEO who must be concerned with keeping a business afloat and customers, in this case families and students, satisfied. Therefore, current charter school leaders were surveyed and asked to describe both the importance and their level of confidence in regard to 30 traits of successful CEOs. The results indicated that charter leaders found the traits of respect, developing people, integrity, and others as, respectively, the most important traits in their role. Among those traits, the ones that were rated with lowest confidence included holding people accountable and developing people, respectively. Overall, the information from the survey results aligned well with what was found from the analysis of the three interviews of the three charter school leaders that followed. The findings are indicative of the need to place extra attention on the role and understanding of human resources and the need to put in place processes or systems that will allow a charter leader to coach members of their team, as well as hold them accountable. In addition, the qualitative findings from the interviews brought forth five additional key ideas for charter leaders to consider.
