I frequently Zoom with a friend, CJ, on the East Coast. Our conversations are always stimulating, never boring. We both graduated from the same small-town Midwestern high school back in the 60s but, interestingly, it is only in the past couple of years that our relationship has deepened. Last year, during my trip back to rural Northern Wisconsin for our sixtieth-class reunion, she was one of just a couple individuals with whom I was eagerly anticipating some one-on-one time.
We are both academics, but because we spent almost six decades leading quite different lives, with only infrequent contact, we continue to learn more about each other with every interaction. During our last call, I mentioned that throughout most of my professional life I had occupied leadership positions. She hesitated, then interrupted with a simple but provocative question: “What is leadership?”
(For her own reasons, she’d been ruminating on this question for a while, and was interested in my take.)
I do not recall precisely how I answered. That probably means my response was not especially coherent. You might expect someone who spent decades in higher education administration, earned a doctorate in the field, worked as an academic dean, and has written extensively about leadership in these pages to have a polished definition ready for immediate deployment. I did not; I mostly rambled.
Since then, the question has stayed with me. So I’m here to ramble yet again and to report that with more than twenty years of writing here in Musings, all signs seem to point, consistently, toward the same idea: leadership begins with trust.
A title may give someone authority to make decisions, approve budgets, evaluate employees, or call a staff meeting. It does not guarantee, however, that anyone will have trust in the person exercising that authority. Positional power can produce compliance, at least for a while, but compliance and followership are not the same thing.
When I first became an interim academic dean, I had never been a dean, department chair, or even a full-time faculty member. At my first divisional meeting, I told the story of my personal journey and shared the values I was bringing to the position. I believed that people needed to know the person asking for their confidence.
That experience helped convince me that authenticity is central to leadership. By authenticity, I do not mean turning every meeting into a confessional. I mean allowing people to see an alignment among one’s values, words, decisions, and behavior. That alignment is also how I understand integrity. It becomes most visible when remaining true to one’s values is inconvenient or risky. When words and actions match, people do not have to search constantly for hidden motives. A basis for trust has been established.
Leadership also depends upon listening. “Leaders,” so-called, often “listen” just long enough to formulate an answer or defend a decision. Genuine, active listening accepts that someone else may know something important, including something the leader would prefer not to hear. It communicates respect and makes an organization more intelligent. When people expect dismissal or retaliation, they remain silent, and the person naming a problem can become the problem.
Listening cannot necessarily tell a leader exactly what to do, however. My doctoral mentor, Thomas Schwandt, helped me approach the uncertainty that remains. He asked questions that slowed thinking down: What does this mean? Whose voices are absent? Given what we know, what should we do now? His questions taught me to examine both values and assumptions, mine and others, before acting. They also encouraged humility, since a sincere conviction can still be wrong.
Those habits shaped how I understood authority long before I became a college dean. Earlier, while I was working for the Oregon University System, one of our university presidents described my style as that of a “servant leader.” I had not consciously adopted the term, but I recognized myself in it. I had always believed that leadership was less about exercising power over people than using whatever authority I possessed on their behalf. I often told colleagues that whatever power came with my position amounted, in practice, to the power to persuade. The president had given a name to the way I was already trying to lead.
I have also always thought of myself as a consensus builder. That did not mean requiring unanimity or waiting until every objection disappeared. It meant bringing people into the process, finding common ground, and building enough shared ownership to move forward. Consensus was not an escape from leadership. It was one way of exercising it.
Together, these descriptions explain why I regard administration as a calling to service. A college exists to educate students and serve a larger public good. Administrators temporarily hold responsibility for a mission that will continue after they depart.
Service does not mean passivity, though, and listening does not eliminate the obligation to decide. Participation makes decisions more informed and legitimate, but responsibility cannot be distributed so broadly that no one remains accountable. Presidents must lead, boards must govern, and administrators must sometimes choose among competing interests.
A responsible leader invites the knowledge of those affected, communicates the reasons for change, makes the necessary judgment, and accepts accountability for what follows. Collaboration is not unanimous agreement, but neither is it a ceremonial conversation held after the real decision has already been made.
My recent writing about Lane Community College has tested these convictions from a different vantage point. As a retired administrator and community member, I have sometimes called for decisive action, including the resignation of a trustee and the nonrenewal of a presidential contract. That might appear inconsistent with my emphasis on collaboration, but listening is not leadership’s final act. A process that produces no accountability can become another form of avoidance.
All of this brings me back to CJ’s initial question. So this is my response today: Leadership means accepting responsibility for the well-being of people and the institutions they share. It means earning trust rather than relying on position, listening especially when the message is uncomfortable, inviting others into the work, acting when action becomes necessary, and accepting the consequences.
Perhaps that university president had already supplied the shortest answer. Leadership is service. A title may identify who occupies the office, but it tells us little about whether leadership is occurring there. What matters is what a person does with the trust.
Soundtrack Suggestion
He roller-coaster, he got early warning He got muddy water, he one mojo filter He say, “One and one and one is three” Got to be good-looking, ‘cause he’s so hard to see
