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LEADERSHIP LEGENDS AND LESSONS

Serving as president of Valencia College for the past
16 years, how would you describe your leadership style
and how has it evolved?
I seldom think in terms of style, like a role to be assumed or a
cloak to put on. I want to be authentic – all of myself all of the
time. And I want to serve. Although the term is over-used, the
notion of a servant leader, as coined and described by Robert
Greenleaf, still calls out to me, in part because it isn’t just about
a style. Greenleaf’s idea of a servant leader spoke to both deep
character and to a mission in the world. Tis is a worthy aspiration.
Why is “building leadership capacity” in our organizations
so important?
Leadership is hardly ever required in circumstances that are
intimately scaled and inherently simple. But this isn’t the
organizational world we have inherited. Our organizations are
increasing in scale and complexity, in ambiguity and power. If
our organizations are to humanize rather than dehumanize the
very people we were created to serve, and if they are to thrive and
evolve with their scale and complexity, leadership is indispensable.
In today’s global environment, how do we keep people
engaged and motivated in our organizations?
Tis is an interesting question. Ofen when this language is
used, what it really means is how can we keep people under our
manipulation, producing the results we most want to see. Te
Great Lie in current management practice asserts that if we can
just get the right metrics and align incentives to them, all will
be well. It is generally a horrendous failure. People see through
this and, over time, will not be manipulated so easily. What we
should seek is to create work environments where people can
do their best work, make their best contribution. Tis usually
means dealing them into the power equation – that is, creating
genuine collaboration. I think collaborative design is the
discipline with the most promise for this kind of leadership.
Education is a global enterprise. With that in mind, what
would you list as the primary struggles and/or common issues
for post-secondary leaders?
I suppose most would put resources in the list. But I think not.
Resource challenges are a symptom of other, more essential
issues. Te top two on my list would be the “ecosystems
challenge” and the “institutional challenge.” Te frst refers to
the fact that we are embedded in a thickly webbed education
ecosystem that is poorly coupled. Te engine that drives K-12
curriculum, for example, is completely unconnected – one
might even say unhinged – from the higher education system
and its expectations of a college-ready student. Similarly,
the values and incentives that shape university culture and
behavior have very little to do with attention to the experiences
of students as learners and tend to throw up barriers to post-
traditional students, especially transfers. Te second challenge
is shared by every modern, scaled, servant institution. Tey
seem almost destined as they grow and mature to treat the very
people they were established to serve as numbers, sources of
revenue, check marks, the magnetic strip on the back of a card.

8 LEADERSHIP Vol. 23.1 Spring/Summer 2017

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