What is Leadership?

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 wander 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. What is leadership, anyway? So this is my response today: Leadership is accepting responsibility for the well-being of people and the institutions they share. It is earning trust rather than relying on position, it is listening especially even when the message is uncomfortable, it means inviting others into the work, and it is acting when action becomes necessary.

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.

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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

Come together
Right now
Over me

(“Come Together” — Beatles)

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The Weight of Books

I am in the process of getting rid of my book collection, and the experience has brought on a more profound sense of loss than I expected. I am not simply disposing of things I no longer need. As I remove the books from my shelves, I sometimes feel that I am losing pieces of myself.

Not long ago, I wrote about how my world is shrinking: fewer places to go, fewer things to do, fewer miles I can walk. I am even physically shorter. Now I am pondering another kind of shrinking as I continue to reduce the number of possessions I own.

I live in a 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom upstairs apartment in Eugene, and everything I have, except my car, fits inside it. That was not true when I lived down in Marin County before I retired. In addition to all the things in my apartment, I rented a storage room for stuff I no longer used but was reluctant to discard. One summer, perhaps around 2011, I decided to empty it and lighten my load. I did not finish the project that summer, but I continued working on it during weekends and time off. By the summer of 2014, after many, many trips to Goodwill, the recycling center, and the dump, the storage room was empty. It was then that I moved back to Eugene, bringing only what would fit into my current apartment.

As I approach my eightieth year, I have come to truly appreciate the wisdom of this undertaking. I now practice downsizing as a lifestyle not a project; I try to dispose of one old item for every new one I bring home. This has worked reasonably well, except when it comes to books. I have been a reader and collector for most of my life, although I do not acquire rare books or valuable first editions. Whenever I wanted to read a book, or was just interested in one, I simply bought it. Eventually, it joined the steadily growing number in my bookcases.

As a preteen and teenager, I read a great deal of science fiction. I spent summer days reading indoors while my mother implored me to go outside and play. Most of those early books have disappeared, but I still own a few paperbacks from high school, including the copy of George Orwell’s 1984 that was assigned reading.

As just mentioned, not all my former collections have survived. During my early days in graduate school, I owned what amounted to a rather ambitious chemistry library, but those books also disappeared gradually over many moves. Giving them up was an earlier version of what I am doing now, although I do not remember experiencing quite the same sense of loss.

The books that remained reflect the changing interests and circumstances of my life. They included contemporary novels and biographies; and more books about photography, counseling, psychology, self-help, spirituality, travel, and health; and a collection about Watergate that began with All the President’s Men. My later doctoral work added books on higher education, qualitative research, American Studies, organizational culture, the history and philosophy of science, and epistemology.

Most of the physical weight I have lugged from city to city has been books. I have packed them, hauled them up and down stairs, and transported them from one home to another. For years, I accepted this as a routine part of life. Now I am considering a move into a senior residential community, where I will likely live in a one-bedroom or studio apartment. I cannot take all these books with me, and storing them makes little sense. The practical conclusion is clear, but carrying it out has been painful. I now buy books on Kindle, allowing me to continue reading without refilling the shelves I am trying to empty.

During the past few months, I have disposed of perhaps 300 to 400 books, still less than half my collection. I have sold roughly equal numbers to a local used bookstore and a buyer in Illinois. When I visit the bookstore, I take three banker’s boxes, each containing ten to twelve books. One box is about as much as I can safely carry down my stairs, so I take them down and lift them into and out of my car one at a time. I often have to bring some books back home.

The Illinois buyer has an app that lets me scan the barcodes on newer books and learn immediately whether it will accept them. Many older paperbacks have no barcodes, reminding me how long they have been with me. Each shipping box contains only ten to twelve books because I must carry it downstairs and into the FedEx store. Eventually, in the not too distant future, I will have sold everything anyone is willing to buy. I will have to donate them.

I understand the practical reasons for doing this. By disposing of them, it is my hope that at least some will find their way to new readers. Still, none of that eases my sense of loss. Together, these books form a record of my life: what I was curious about, what I studied, what work I did, what illnesses worried me, and what questions I hoped to answer. Some remind me of who I once was; others, of who I was trying to become.

That is why this feels so different from emptying a storage room. When I gave away unused household objects, I felt I was disposing of mere possessions. When I give away my books, I feel I am severing the physical and emotional attachments to different periods of my life.

For now, I plan to keep two shelves of books, about six linear feet. They are signed by their authors, written by people I know, or connected in some way to the core of my being. My will contains instructions for their eventual donation. I am not saving them forever, only admitting that I am not ready to part with them right now.

Perhaps that is all I can do. I can reduce the collection one manageable box at a time, knowing that every book will eventually leave my possession. (Or perhaps, more accurately, I will leave them.) For now, the only choice left is which pieces of my life I can let go of today and which I need to keep a little longer.

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Soundtrack Suggestion

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
It’s based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job
So I wanna be a paperback writer
Paperback writer

(“Paperback Writer” — Beatles)

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My Own Clock

For most of my adult life, I believed I was a morning person. Whether I was working as a chemist in my twenties, attending graduate school in counseling in my thirties, teaching while completing my Ph.D. at Indiana University in my forties, or later serving as a college administrator, I was typically up and at ’em by 5:30 a.m. I assumed that was simply who I was: an early riser, a morning person. It has taken retirement to make me question whether the clock I lived by for so long was ever really my own.

As I look back, I recognize that my sleep pattern was among many rituals which remained remarkably consistent throughout my professional life. For example, I often stopped for breakfast on the way to work before arriving at an office that was mostly empty. How I valued that quiet first hour. The phone wasn’t ringing. Meetings hadn’t begun. No one was standing in the doorway with an urgent question. It gave me time to get oriented before the demands of the day took over.

I recall that during my years at IU, associate instructors could request the sections we wanted to teach. I always chose the 8:00 a.m. classes. Most of my graduate-student peers preferred something later, and undergraduates weren’t especially enthusiastic about early mornings either (an obvious understatement). That suited me just fine. I loved beginning the day before campus had fully awakened.

Then there was another idiosyncratic practice of mine. For years, on the left side of my desk, I kept a stack of papers. The issues demanding the most immediate attention were always on top. I continually shuffled them, working my way down as the day allowed. Those near the bottom sometimes waited for days or even weeks. More than once, a problem resolved itself before I ever reached it. (That strategy, in itself, continues to serve as a valuable personal and professional axiom: not every problem requires immediate action, and some require no action at all.) Like my early mornings, that stack became part of the architecture of my days.

Of course, there were occasional outside interruptions to my rhythms. Beginning in the late 1990s, an enlarged prostate led to increasingly problematic sleep. Four or five trips to the bathroom each night became routine. A TURP (the “roto-rooter” prostate surgery) procedure in 2011 helped enormously, but years of interrupted sleep had trained my body to wake repeatedly. Even after this medical issue improved, the habit of frequent awakenings lingered. But throughout it all, I remained an early riser.

Ultimately, retirement had its impact on my lifestyle. While there was no conscious decision to sleep in later, there simply was no longer a reason to get up before dawn. Without really intending it, I began getting up a little later. And then later.

Today I’m usually asleep by 10:00 and awake around 7:30, about two hours more sleep than during most of my working life. At age seventy-nine, I now sleep considerably more than I once did. That surprised me because I’d always heard that older adults need less sleep. Curious, I did a little reading and discovered the research isn’t nearly as settled as the popular wisdom suggests.

While I was at IU, one of my closest friends seemed to function quite well on four or five hours of sleep each night, but I always needed much more. We were both a little skeptical of the other’s sleeping habits. I couldn’t imagine getting by on so little sleep, and he probably thought I was a slacker. Looking back, I guess each of us believed our own rhythms to be the “normal” ones.

What has stayed with me, though, isn’t the research itself or the sleeping habits of others. Rather, different questions altogether poke through. If my body now prefers a schedule so unlike the one I had followed through most of my adult life, what’s changed? Has retirement simply given me permission to sleep more? Or had I spent decades assuming that my work schedule reflected my natural rhythm when, in fact, I had gradually adapted myself to the rhythms of the institutions where I worked?

For more than half a century, my life was organized around the schedules of schools, colleges, and universities. Over time, those rhythms became so familiar that I stopped noticing they belonged to the institutions where I worked. I experienced them as my own. I believed I was someone who naturally woke at 5:30 every morning. Maybe I was. Or maybe I had simply spent decades living by rhythms that were never entirely mine?

Interestingly, although I sleep longer now, I still keep a pile of papers on the left side of my desk. Today’s stack has little to do with budgets, personnel issues, or committee meetings, though. Instead, it contains notes for upcoming doctor appointments, insurance forms, and, at the moment, a draft of my will waiting to be finalized and signed.

I suppose that’s what retirement has given me. Not simply more time, but a different relationship to time. For most of my adult life, my days began because they had to. Today they begin when I’m ready. Whether that means I truly need more sleep or have finally been allowed to get the sleep I’ve always needed, I don’t know. But after all these years, I’m no longer quite so certain that I ever really understood my own clock.

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Soundtrack Suggestion

Time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side, yes it is

Now you all were saying that you want to be free
But you’ll come runnin’ back (I said you would baby)
You’ll come runnin’ back (like I told you so many times before)
You’ll come runnin’ back to me, yeah

Time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side, yes it is

(“Time Is On My Side” — Rolling Stones)

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The Observer is Always in the Story

On Memoir, Memory, and the Limits of Objectivity

Not long ago, I reviewed Lauren Kessler’s Everything Changes Everything, her memoir of walking the Camino Francés, the ancient 500-mile pilgrimage that begins in the south of France, crosses northern Spain, and concludes at Santiago de Compostela. Kessler undertook the journey after losing both her husband and her daughter within the span of eight months. My review was later published in the Eugene Weekly (still in existence after 44 years as an actual print newspaper!).

Now, about four months after the book’s publication, Kessler has posted an essay on her Substack titled “The Facts of Memory.” In it, she reflects on the challenges of writing a memoir, a genre that differs from the nonfiction books that established her reputation. As a journalist and nonfiction writer, she has spent her career pursuing facts, verifying accounts, and trying to get the story right. Memoir, however, asks something different of a writer.

The essay explores the uneasy relationship between memory and accuracy. Kessler describes the steps she took to check her recollections against documents, conversations, and other sources, while also acknowledging the unavoidable role of memory in shaping any personal narrative. Reading it, I was struck by her wrestling with questions that have occupied researchers, historians, and writers for a very long time. She invited readers to respond, and I found myself wanting to join the conversation. Here is what I wrote…

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Hi Lauren,

This essay resonated with me, though perhaps not in exactly the way you intended.

My academic training was in qualitative and interpretive research. For my doctoral dissertation, I spent several years studying the social world of a college fraternity, conducting interviews, reviewing documents, attending events, and attempting to understand how members made meaning of their experiences. Early in that work, I abandoned the idea that I could somehow stand outside the story as a detached observer. I brought my own history, assumptions, and experiences to the project, and the best I could do was acknowledge them and make them visible to readers.

Because of that background, I really loved reading this discussion of memoir and nonfiction. We both seem to agree that all accounts of human experience are filtered through the observer. Where you see a tension between memoir and nonfiction, though, I tend to see a continuum. Even the most conscientious reporter or researcher makes choices about what to notice, what to include, what to emphasize, and what meaning to draw from the material. Those choices are never entirely objective.

In fact, one of the things I noted in my review of Everything Changes Everything was that I experienced it not only as a memoir but almost as a form of ethnography. You were documenting a journey, certainly, but you were also observing and interpreting a social and emotional world. The subject happened to be grief rather than a culture or community, but the process, and result, felt surprisingly familiar.

Where I think your essay raises an important point is in distinguishing between subjectivity and memory. Subjectivity does not trouble me very much. Memory, well, is an entirely more complicated matter. Human beings reconstruct the past rather than retrieve it intact, and I understand why that creates discomfort for anyone whose professional life has been grounded in nonfiction reporting.

Still, as a reader, what I ultimately trusted in your book was not the impossibility of perfect recall but the honesty and integrity of the effort. Without even much caring, I imagined that you were doing exactly what you describe in your author’s note: consulting documents, checking memories, talking with others, and rendering events as faithfully as possible.

Perhaps that is why I was struck by this essay as sounding almost apologetic. To me, the power of your memoir lies not in overcoming subjectivity but in embracing it. The book succeeds because it offers a deeply observed and thoughtfully interpreted account of lived experience. I don’t see that as a weakness of memoir. I see it as one of its greatest strengths.

Thanks for giving us all something to think about!

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LCC Board of Education Testimony — June 3, 2026

Here are my remarks made before the Lane Community College Board of Education on June 3, 2026

Chair Folnagy, members of the Board, President Bulger, President Olson: good evening. My name is Jim Arnold and you now know me as a member of the Budget Committee. Thank you, Trustee Rust, for your nomination and your support.

I sent you all an email about this earlier today, so you may be aware that I published a Guest Column in the Lookout inspired by our recent Budget Committee deliberations. Specifically, the catalyst was last week’s discussion about tuition and whether or not to revisit an earlier Board decision.

I wrote the article for a number of reasons. Partly, I wanted to provide some historical context. Many Oregonians, especially younger ones, have little or no awareness of Measure 5 or the profound effect it has had on the funding of public education. Many of the budget pressures we discuss today did not just suddenly appear. They are connected to decisions that were made decades ago.

And I wanted to step back and look at another large issue, for I believe that discussions about tuition are never really just about percentages. Beneath them is a more fundamental question about who benefits from higher education and who should bear the costs.

But also let me mention something else that stayed with me after last Wednesday’s meeting, which was not so much the outcome as the process.

Students came forward and spoke about the impact tuition has had on their lives. Committee members asked questions. Different viewpoints were expressed. People disagreed. Then the committee voted.

Now, that may not sound all that remarkable, but I think it is worth acknowledging. Public institutions are supposed to create space for such conversations. The process does not guarantee agreement, but it does give us an opportunity to surface often unspoken assumptions.

Having spent much of my life in higher education, I can remember a time when the public discussion was framed somewhat differently than it is today. Back in my early days, students certainly benefited from earning degrees and improving their career opportunities, but there was a widespread understanding that society benefited as well.

Over time, as we all know, more and more of the cost of instruction has shifted to students and their families. That shift did not originate at Lane Community College nor with this Board.

Understanding how we arrived here may not solve our budget challenges, but it can help us have a more informed conversation about them.

Thank you.

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