Leaders with empathy, creativity, and backbone
When Cathy N. Davidson in a Chronicle letter to College Presidents wrote about the need for moral leadership among College Presidents, one of the points about her eloquent letter that struck me as inspiring was her plea to Presidents to actually be leaders.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a leader as the person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country. To actually lead a group, organization, or country, a leader would fundamentally need to have the backbone to stand up for the human beings that make up her or his group, organization, or country, and adequately represent the issues and concerns of her or his constituents.
Now for universities and colleges, one would assume that the key stakeholders are its students, faculty, and staff. Therefore, it seems to be common sensical that leaders would be responsive to these internal stakeholders. And yet somehow, these internal stakeholders seem to be often relegated to the background in decisions such as the ones that were taken on the Davis campus. As college and university presidents are increasingly required to be responsive to corporate-speak on college and university campuses, our students who logically are also our key stakeholders (using the market speak that academic institutions have increasingly taken up), have been put in the backburner. Responding to these key stakeholders, our customer base, would also mean that we pay serious attention to the issues that are brought up by this customer base.
Leadership decisions are strategic decisions. When the decision to deploy police on peaceful protestors was taken on the Davis campus, that too was a strategic decision. What is chilling however about this decision was the use of police power as a strategic response to student protest on issues that have emerged as core issues in contemporary academe. In responding to protestors with police action, the message that Professor Katehi sent out to her key internal stakeholders, the students at UC Davis, is that she is not interested in representing their concerns and issues. Even further perhaps, in her response, she raises questions about her competence to be a leader who can effectively communicate with her students.
Even further, as I have watched videos of Professor Katehi's response to the events, I have been struck by her inability to defend her strategic decision to her key stakeholders, her students. Instead, she made the choice to shift the blame on the specific police officers on duty. At an organizational level, if she was unable to lead the responses of police officers after having authorized the use of the police on the protestors, that too is a failure of her leadership and not simply of the police officers involved in the incident. To state that she was not aware of what was going on at the site of police action is also an incompetent response that begs to question her leadership capability as the head of the organization.
In the now famed walk to the car as students silently sit in protest, Professor Katehi is unable to engage the students. Her responses are staged or mediated or planned. Have our universities and colleges grown so big and our leaders grown so distant that they can't simply participate in open dialogues that are not planned or mediated through writers and public relations officers?
In accounts offered for her response, I have heard colleagues speculate about the pressure she might have felt from trustees. And yet that is precisely the point where Professor Katehi could have demonstrated her leadership, by taking ownership of her powerful role in representing her stakeholders. By having a backbone that stood up to her trustees, she would have done her job as a leader in representing her key stakeholders. As our universities are increasingly strapped financially and are therefore challenged to configure alternative solutions for how they organize themselves, the challenge for leadership is to have the capacity to stand up to the increasing corporatization of our campuses and to engage with various stakeholders in exploring alternative rationalities of organizing.
For Professor Katehi to actually lead, she would need to show her key stakeholders that she has the empathy to understand their concerns, the ability to respond to these concerns, and the backbone to stand up for them as their representative.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a leader as the person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country. To actually lead a group, organization, or country, a leader would fundamentally need to have the backbone to stand up for the human beings that make up her or his group, organization, or country, and adequately represent the issues and concerns of her or his constituents.
Now for universities and colleges, one would assume that the key stakeholders are its students, faculty, and staff. Therefore, it seems to be common sensical that leaders would be responsive to these internal stakeholders. And yet somehow, these internal stakeholders seem to be often relegated to the background in decisions such as the ones that were taken on the Davis campus. As college and university presidents are increasingly required to be responsive to corporate-speak on college and university campuses, our students who logically are also our key stakeholders (using the market speak that academic institutions have increasingly taken up), have been put in the backburner. Responding to these key stakeholders, our customer base, would also mean that we pay serious attention to the issues that are brought up by this customer base.
Leadership decisions are strategic decisions. When the decision to deploy police on peaceful protestors was taken on the Davis campus, that too was a strategic decision. What is chilling however about this decision was the use of police power as a strategic response to student protest on issues that have emerged as core issues in contemporary academe. In responding to protestors with police action, the message that Professor Katehi sent out to her key internal stakeholders, the students at UC Davis, is that she is not interested in representing their concerns and issues. Even further perhaps, in her response, she raises questions about her competence to be a leader who can effectively communicate with her students.
Even further, as I have watched videos of Professor Katehi's response to the events, I have been struck by her inability to defend her strategic decision to her key stakeholders, her students. Instead, she made the choice to shift the blame on the specific police officers on duty. At an organizational level, if she was unable to lead the responses of police officers after having authorized the use of the police on the protestors, that too is a failure of her leadership and not simply of the police officers involved in the incident. To state that she was not aware of what was going on at the site of police action is also an incompetent response that begs to question her leadership capability as the head of the organization.
In the now famed walk to the car as students silently sit in protest, Professor Katehi is unable to engage the students. Her responses are staged or mediated or planned. Have our universities and colleges grown so big and our leaders grown so distant that they can't simply participate in open dialogues that are not planned or mediated through writers and public relations officers?
In accounts offered for her response, I have heard colleagues speculate about the pressure she might have felt from trustees. And yet that is precisely the point where Professor Katehi could have demonstrated her leadership, by taking ownership of her powerful role in representing her stakeholders. By having a backbone that stood up to her trustees, she would have done her job as a leader in representing her key stakeholders. As our universities are increasingly strapped financially and are therefore challenged to configure alternative solutions for how they organize themselves, the challenge for leadership is to have the capacity to stand up to the increasing corporatization of our campuses and to engage with various stakeholders in exploring alternative rationalities of organizing.
For Professor Katehi to actually lead, she would need to show her key stakeholders that she has the empathy to understand their concerns, the ability to respond to these concerns, and the backbone to stand up for them as their representative.
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