Peter M. Rojcewicz, PhD October 1, 2014
I support a distributed model of leadership as a collective intelligence that invites constituents to lead from their respective positions, regardless of official status. A conventional model of heroic leadership that empowers but one person/party in ways that colleagues cannot bring different or new information forward is ineffective. I encourage faculty/staff to advise, mentor, and instruct one other, as acts of daily leadership, collegiality, and ethic of caring as a response to the question: “Who are we going to be at work?” Leadership in that form humanizes what is a high-stakes, end of year performance assessment and encourages sustainable self-improvement slowly over time.
Self-regulation is essential to multiple forms of leadership in the context of shared governance. Successful leadership results from what we do and how we do it, but also from tracking the impact our intentions and attention have on organizational relationships and outcomes. Leadership at all levels must be engaged in ongoing reflective practice, listening, and interior growth, tracking the effectiveness of how we show up in the job, aligning our personal development missions with the institutional mission. Successful shared governance presupposes a relational sense of self, and since one’s work is fundamentally with others the quality of one’s work is based on ideas and projects we create together.
By engaging in cross-functional relationship building, I learn of strengths and aspirations of others, aligning them to strategic priorities and advocating their resourcing. To support faculty and staff development and retention and maintain a continuity of effective governance, I strive to build leadership and talent engines, matching human capacities to opportunities, present and emerging. Not to be aware of the inventory of people’s abilities and skills jeopardizes workforce health and institutional effectiveness. I support a meritocracy of ideas with the charge that everyone at the table comes as active participants, assuming responsibility for value creation and direction setting.
(To be continued)