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The Leadership Crisis

A Message for College and University Faculty

INTRODUCTION

In the eight years since I wrote the following essay on “The Leadership Crisis,” I have moved into a more meditative life with greater concern for the forces and influences that either nurture or depress the human spirit. And I have come to see the conditions that raise or lower the quality of life in colleges and universities as not materially different from those that operate in other institutions: governments, hospitals, churches, schools, businesses, philanthropies. Therefore, what I first addressed to colleges and universities and published in an academic journal, now seems to me to be much more widely relevant. And what is being said today in the flood of literature about how to lead in business seems equally applicable in the academic world.

Most important, as I noted in the earlier essay, “an indispensable condition for the persuasive power (of leaders) to be effective is that the institution is living out a great dream. … Institutions function better when the idea, the dream, is to the fore, and the person, the leader is seen as servant of the idea. It is not ‘I,’ the ultimate leader, that is moving this institution to greatness; it is the dream, the great idea. ‘I’ am subordinate to the idea. ‘I’ am servant of the idea along with everyone else who is involved in the effort. … It is the idea that unites people in the common effort, not the charisma of the leader. … Far too many of our contemporary institutions do not have an adequate dream, an imaginative concept that will raise people’s sights close to where they have the potential to be. … that has the energy to lift people out of their moribund ways to a level of being and relating from which the future can be faced with more hope than most of us can summon today.” That was the way I saw the crisis of leadership eight years ago: the need to produce in more of our institutions the overarching dream that will have this energy.

I am indebted to Peter Senge for the idea of a “shared vision,” for the importance of the individual, regardless of status, to claim the dream as one’s own. A condition for such a shared dream to prevail may be wide participation in the evolution of the vision, especially if it is an old institution that has lost a great dream it once had and wants to get a new one.

What goes on in the participative process? Let me speculate: those who are the best dreamers and most adept at articulating dreams will periodically “test the waters.” Those who have the gift of leading will periodically say, “Let’s get together and talk about this.” Those who have the gift of statesmanship will listen carefully to all of this and search for the ideas and the language that will be the basis for consensus.

What evolves from this process, in which the key leader may take a hand, may not emerge as a written statement one can hang on the wall. It may best exist as an oral tradition that is continually reexamined, modified, or given new emphasis. In a well-led institution, there will always be a consensual tradition that most will summon in answer to the question, “What are we about?”

What I identified as a crisis of leadership in colleges and universities eight years ago, after considerable involvement with academic institutions, I now see as a symptom of the failure of faculties to accept that the price of freedom everywhere—in their case academic freedom—is responsibility, the obligation to be constantly alert to opportunities to make one’s share in forming the dream one lives by a real and meaningful thing, an obligation that persists as long as one has the wits to participate.

Top leaders in all institutions have the opportunity to reduce the sense of crisis in our times by helping everyone involved to understand the responsibility that freedom entails, and to create an atmosphere in which consensual dreams can emerge that have the power to guide purpose and decision in way that makes for greatness.

A critical aspect of leadership, whether in a university in which a substantial piece of the power to govern has been ceded to faculties, or in business in which, structurally at least, all the ultimate power usually resides with the chief executive, or something in between, is this: Can the key leader accept that optimal performance rests, among other things, on the existence of a powerful shared vision that evolves through wide participation to which the key leader contributes, but which the use of authority cannot shape? And can that key leader be persuasive enough that responsibility for generating and maintaining that vision is widely accepted as a serious obligation?

The ambiguity in this process may be that the effective key leader may never talk explicitly about vision or its generation. The process may be much too subtle for that. The generation of a shared vision may be one of those wonderful things that just happens when genuine respect for persons, for all persons, is consistently manifested. Within the climate of that pervasive attitude, and in the normal course of decision making, the first response of both the key leader and all subordinate leaders may be the simple question, “What are we trying to do?”—Robert K. Greenleaf, 1986

The leadership crisis of our times is without precedent.

People have been poorly served by their leaders before; but in the past 100 years, we have moved from a society comprised largely of artisans and farmers with a few merchants and professionals, and with small government, to widespread involvement with a vast array of institutions—often large, complex, powerful, impersonal, not always competent, sometimes corrupt. Nothing like it before has happened in our history. This recent experience with institutions may have brought a new awareness of serious deficiencies in the quality of our common life that are clearly traceable to leadership failures. Some of these lacks have become so painful to bear that leadership crisis is an apt term to describe an important aspect of our present condition. Why are we in this dilemma, and what can we do about it? From the perspective of my experience, in these few pages I will suggest some tentative answers to these questions. And I will continue to search.

NEGLECT OF PREPARATION FOR LEADERSHIP

Colleges and universities assumed a unique place in American culture early in this century when, with the growing percentage of college-age young people enrolled, public service was added to the traditional roles of teaching, learning, and scholarship. Now that nearly 50 percent of college-age young people are on campus, the presence of a pervasive crisis of leadership raises the question about the impact of higher education. The traditional civilization-building role of the universities is as important as it ever was. But is it being sustained adequately in these times? The tradition seems not to have been adapted to carry all of the obligations that contemporary universities, with their massive influence, may be expected to assume—including explicit preparation for leadership. (Please note that I have not said “training” for leadership. “Preparation” is a much more subtle process.)

In the turbulent 1960s, the charge was made that universities were effectively administering an “anti-leadership” vaccine to their students. Now, with declining enrollment and new financial urgencies, I sense that, from within universities, the fragility that they demonstrated in themselves in the 1960s is seen as an attribute of society at large. Appreciated, but perhaps not clearly understood, is weakness of leadership as an underlying cause. And there is concern about this condition. There are evidences of hunger for leadership that is denied by a seeming unwillingness of faculties to respond to such leadership as they have. If these are correct surmises, why then is there not a vigorous stirring in the universities to bring their great civilizing tradition to bear on this problem? It may be that the crisis of leadership in society at large is also the universities’ own crisis. It is a baffling enigma to those who make the effort to interest universities in preparation for leadership. Yet I believe there is a reasonable basis for it. Let me speculate on what I think it is.

THE NEW AWARENESS OF POWER

Since World War II, there has evolved a new sensitivity to the issue of power, particularly coercive power—its abuses and legitimate uses. Along with this new concern about power, perhaps because of it, has come a fresh critical judgment of our many institutions, all of which wield power, whether they are governmental or voluntary, for profit or not for profit.

I am a nonacademic who has made a few soundings within universities. My estimate of the perception of the typical faculty member, as she or he looks out from academe on the world of institutions, is as follows: Valuable and necessary as these institutions are—businesses, churches, schools, governments, hospitals, social agencies (they are all we have)—the whole gamut of them is seen as not serving well. Slavish adherence in these institutions to rigid hierarchical structures is viewed as an anachronism and a destroyer of values in the leaders that emerge. Some of these institutions are seen as mechanisms for manipulation and exploitation. Many who work for them are regarded as diminished and used up. And there is the suspicion that the root cause is low-grade top leadership: inept, not knowing, not caring, and, above all, the abuse and misuse of power. What makes it a crisis is that the fault is seen in an abstraction called the “system.” Leader and follower are both victims of the use of power in the “system.” There is no evident handle on the problem.

If, from within the university, one looks out on a scene as just described, including the university itself in that scene; if, accurate or not, that is the perception, would not a sensitive academic person be likely to hesitate to venture into leadership preparation for such a society? There is little in the background of a scholar that would give the average teacher a reasoned basis for reacting to that perception; nor is it likely that, in the prevailing structure of university leadership, there would be respected advice that would be persuasive in changing either that perception or the reaction to it.

If, as I believe, a concern about power, including the ramifications of power within the university itself, is the barrier that blocks universities from accepting an explicit obligation for preparing leaders, is it possible to reach an understanding of power that will help universities see their way around the barriers that now restrain them? Let me suggest an approach to that question.

THREE KINDS OF POWER

As a basis for sorting out what people do when they undertake to lead, let us consider three dimensions of power. These are not sharply delineated from one another by external markings. The distinctions exist more in the attitudes and values of wielders of power.

Coercive Power

Coercive power exists because certain people are granted (or assume) sanctions to impose their wills on others. These sanctions may be overt, as when one may be penalized or punished if one does not comply; or the sanctions may be covert and subtle, if one’s weaknesses and sentiments are exploited and thus pressure is applied. The power to coerce has a long history of use. But now, with constantly expanding government, the domination of the social structure by institutions—especially large ones—the expansion of techniques of surveillance, the proliferation of weapons of destruction, the growth in sophistication of methods of crime and oppression, and the bewildering complexity of life in which it is more and more difficult for people to gauge where their interests lie; with all of these we seem more vulnerable to coercion than we once were.

Another complication is that some coercion is masked behind ideal aims and is employed by people who are highly civilized and are motivated for noble ends.

Universities are involved in the use of coercive power in their role of “credentialing” (Thomas Jefferson, founder of the University of Virginia, would not allow degrees to be granted as long as he was Rector—on the ground that degrees are pretentious.) When universities were small and were concerned largely with esoteric scholarship, degrees were a relatively harmless honorific. But now that universities are huge and degrees are so often, by law or custom, the ticket of admission to a “good” job—the means for upgrading oneself in society—the university holds, and uses, great coercive power. Even when it is sensitively and benignly used, it is still coercive power; and having that power has the same liabilities to corrupting influences as would any other kind of coercive power.

One of the problems of the use of coercive power by the more civilized people, even though for noble ends, is that, when conditions are right, the use of that power may cause destructive violence to be unleashed in the less civilized, sometimes on a disastrous scale. It may be plausibly argued that, although the Vietnam war and the civil rights crisis were seen as the proximate causes of the student disorders in the late 1960s, one of the ultimate causes may have been the universities’ own long-standing use of coercive power.

Is there a moral principle here: when coercive power is used in any form and for any purpose, does not the user of that power bear some responsibility for what may be inevitable harmful effects, including the unleashing of violence? If coercive power is used (and I do not foresee a utopian society in which it will not be used), do not the users of that power have the obligation to be aware of the potential danger and prepare a meliorative strategy that minimizes the damage to the social fabric?

Coercive power is more pervasive than most are aware of, and its consequences are traceable to evils that we ordinarily do not connect with it.

Manipulative Power

I see manipulation as distinct from coercion because it rests more on plausible rationalizations than on the threat of sanctions or on pressure. People are manipulated, I believe, when they are guided by plausible rationalizations into beliefs or actions that they do not fully understand. By this definition, some manipulation by leaders is unavoidable because some who follow are not capable of understanding or will not make the effort to understand. But not all manipulation by leaders can be justified on these grounds. The heart of the problem, I believe, is that effective leaders, those who are better than most in charting the path ahead, who willingly take the risks and expend the energy that leadership requires—those people are apt to be highly intuitive. Thus leaders themselves, in their conscious rationalizations, may not fully understand why they chose a given path. Yet our culture requires that leaders produce plausible explanations for the directions they choose to take. These rationalizations are useful because they permit—after the fact—the test of conscious logic that “makes sense” to leader and follower. But the understanding required by the follower, if she or he is not to be manipulated, is not necessarily contained in this rationalization that makes sense. Because we live in a world that pretends a higher validity to conscious rational thinking in human affairs than is warranted by the facts of our existence, and because many sensitive people “know” this, manipulation hangs as a cloud over the relationship between leader and led almost everywhere, and is the subject of much pejorative comment.

Can this cloud be dispelled? Not easily. But something can be done about it if both leaders and followers are constantly aware of the presence of this murkiness, and if they accept that dispelling it requires a determined effort by both of them. Within this framework of awareness, what would the effort be, what would they try to do? The essence of leadership, I believe, is that the leader makes the effort first. The leader takes the first step in the belief that, if it provides a clear demonstration of the intent to build a more honest relationship, followers will respond.

I suggest that the leader try persuasion!

Persuasion as Power

Unfortunately there is ambiguity in the word persuasion. One of the dictionaries I consulted, in a series of definitions, gives three that do not imply coercion. A fourth implies coercion. And the fifth states flatly, “to bring a desired action or condition by force.” I prefer to use the word persuasion for a process that does not allow either coercion or manipulation in any form. One is persuaded, I believe, upon arrival at a feeling of rightness about a belief or action through one’s own intuitive sense. One takes an intuitive step, from the closest approximation to the certainty to be reached by conscious logic (sometimes not very close), to that state in which one may say with conviction, “This is where I stand.” The act of persuasion, as I limit the definition, would help order the logic and favor the intuitive step. And this takes time! The one being persuaded must take that intuitive step alone, untrammeled by coercion or stratagems. Both leader and follower respect the autonomy and integrity of the other and each allows and encourages the other to find his or her own intuitive confirmation of the rightness of the belief or action. If this relationship prevails whenever it is possible, then, when a quick action is required, one supported by the skimpiest of rationalizations, it will be accepted with the assurance that at some future time there will be the opportunity for intuitive mutuality to be reestablished. A leader who practices persuasion whenever possible sets a model that, in time, will encourage followers to deal with the leader by persuasion. Power is generated in this relationship because it admits of mutual criticism, spirited arguments can occur, and it does not depend on artful stratagems.

This poses a problem for conventional organization structures in which those “at the top” hold coercive power and, because of their superior informational sources, are in a good position to manipulate. Such persons should take note that those who are seen as holding coercive power, even though they use it sparingly, are somewhat disqualified to persuade. “Where is the hidden agenda?” is often the unasked question. Since in our imperfect society it is difficult to conceive of a functioning organization in which there is not an ultimate locus of coercive power, two suggestions are made so that unqualified persuasive power can make its contribution.

The first is that every institution should harbor able persuaders who know their way around, who are dedicated servants of the institution, whose judgment and integrity are respected, who do not manipulate, who hold no coercive power, and who, without the formal assurances that faculty members usually have, feel free and secure. Those who hold the ultimate power will accept that these nonpowerful persuaders can accomplish things for the good of the institution that the powerful cannot command. Therefore, the powerful will permit radical criticism to be made. Every institution that wants the benefits that only persuasion can accomplish needs to support such persons on its staff, because the value of coercive power is inverse to its use.

My second suggestion is that an indispensable condition for persuasive power to be effective is that the institution is living out a great dream. I speak with some conviction on this because, near the end of my career, I was party to an unsuccessful effort to persuade the top command where I worked that a new goal was needed. The great dream on which the institution was built had lost its force and, as seems the plight of so many contemporary institutions, ours was in the mood of struggling to survive.

Those in command where I worked were honest, able, dedicated, and caring—like so many who head other institutions with which I am familiar. But they were not guided by a great dream, not a dream that was shared by those who followed them. The idea that inspires and unifies was muted. Leaders were seen, too much, as self-symbols; they did not come through as servants of the dream. Consequently, there was not enough trust in the institution by any of its constituencies.

Great institutions are a fusion of great ideas and great people. Neither will suffice without the other.

NEW DREAMS ARE NEEDED

Where would the leader of an institution get the idea that a dream is needed? How would he or she learn what it would serve? Where, in all of our vast communication, educational, and religious resources is the suggestion being made?

Regardless of the stress of circumstance, institutions function better when the idea, the dream, is to the fore, and the person, the leader, is seen as servant of the idea. It is not “I,” the ultimate leader, that is moving this institution to greatness; it is the dream, the great idea. “I” am subordinate to the idea; “I” am servant of the idea along with everyone else who is involved in the effort. As the ancient Taoist proclaimed, “When the leader leads well, the people will say, ‘We did it ourselves.’” The leader leads well when leadership is, and is seen as, serving the dream and searching for a better one. Dreams should be articulated by whomever is the ablest dreamer, and leaders should always be open to persuasion by dreamers. It is the idea that unites people in the common effort, not the charisma of the leader. It is the communicated faith of the leader in the dream that enlists dedicated support needed to move people toward accomplishment of the dream. Far too many of our contemporary institutions do not have an adequate dream, an imaginative concept that will raise people’s sights close to what they have the potential to be.

If the dream has the quality of greatness, it not only provides the overarching vision for the undertaking; it also penetrates deeply into the psyches of all who are drawn to it and savor its beauty, its rightness, and its wisdom. The test of greatness in a dream is that it has the energy to lift people out of their moribund ways to a level of being and relating from which the future can be faced with more hope than most of us can summon today. Persuasion, as an art of leadership, is tenable because of the persuasive power in the dream itself.

A GREAT DREAM FOR A UNIVERSITY

Just from reading the newspapers, one would question whether universities have an adequate dream for these times, one in which the roles of teaching and learning, scholarship, and public service are inseparable. And the great dream that might be theirs seems remote indeed. In the context of the subject “the crisis of leadership,” what evidence supports this assertion?

It is specious, I believe, to argue as some do, that general education nurtures leadership and prepares people for discriminating followership. Quite the reverse may be true. How else, in view of the massive level of higher education, would one explain either the leadership crisis in which we are now enmeshed or the gross misjudgments in selecting whose leadership to follow that has characterized recent years?

Then, if, as I have suggested, the university degree has become the ticket of admission to better jobs, these tickets are being issued to at least twice as many as there are jobs that warrant preparation.

Perhaps more serious, academic higher education is not suited to everybody. Informed guesses on how many will profit by such education run as low as 15 percent. If this, or anything close to it, is a fair judgment, with nearly 50 percent of the college age population enrolled, what is the effect on the leadership potential of the other 35 percent—those who should receive some other kind of education?

A determined effort to educate minority peoples has been made. One effect on the black community has been to give favored job treatment to those who make it through a university—to the disadvantage of the large numbers of less educated whose dependence on welfare has increased and who may have been deprived of their indigenous leadership.

These evidences of an inadequate dream in universities are cited not to censure them—they are doing as well in their obligations as are other institutions that serve us. But, as I see it, they hold the key to recovering us from the leadership crisis. Therefore, universities merit priority in concern about this problem.

I submit that universities are in urgent need of a great new dream. No small dream will suffice. How will they find that dream and unite to bring it to reality? Who will lead them to it?

A BASIS FOR HOPE

One would hope that university administrators would give that leadership; the signals are clear enough that they should. But faculties have held too much power too long, and administrators are too much caught up in the common mores of our institutional life. They need an infusion of leadership vision as much as others do. Then, pressed as most of them are by financial urgencies and by the intractable nature (as they see it) of faculties, it is not likely that the initiative to redirect universities to a new role of nurturing leadership will come from administrators, even though they might thereby establish their own leadership in a healthy way and make financing easier.

Neither private nor public funding sources for university programs appear eager to initiate new concerns for the preparation of leaders. Like the universities, they, too, seem caught up in the crisis of leadership. Ours may be said to be the age of the anti-leader.

Where, then, will the initiative come from? Is there no hope that a resource equal to the need will emerge? Yes, there is hope. Hope lies in the great strength of the academic tradition (which some see as its most troublesome aspect): academic freedom and tenure.

The transforming movement will arise, I believe, from the source it usually comes from in a crisis: from a saving remnant. At first, from a few faculty members who act alone, within the scope of autonomy they now have, finding their own way to be effective, using some of their own free time, and, in some cases, putting in a little money. A few such far-seeing faculty members may start the transforming movement without the support of their culture, possibly incurring some opposition from it. This is characteristic of saving remnants. They are not usually empowered, approved, or well financed.

The teachers who make up this saving remnant will come to one understanding in common: they will have a clear sense of how institutions change, prudently. They will accept that change takes place slowly as a result of diligent work to acquire competence to lead. Revolutionary ideas do not change institutions. People change them by taking the risks to serve and lead, and by the sustained painstaking care that institution building requires.

I know of a few teachers who have taken such initiative to prepare their students to lead and to deal with the realities of institutional life. I had the good fortune to have had one of those teachers in college over 50 years ago. Advice from him set the direction of my career to find my own way as a building and meliorating influence within institutional structures. The most open course I can see for meeting the leadership crisis in the next generation (too late for this one; we will have to muddle along as best we can) is to encourage a few faculty members to move on their own, without the support of their institutions, and to start now on the preparation of the next generation of leaders.

If one in one thousand among the half-million or so faculty members in our country will move on this now (not an unrealistic expectation if there were a way to alert them to the opportunity) the 500, on their own and without anybody’s help, could produce a flowering of talent in the next generation that would make a golden age of leadership. I am absolutely certain of it. I am so certain that I have written a guide to encourage their venturing as lone unsupported individuals, and, perhaps, to point a way. It is called Teacher as Servant, a Parable. [Available through the Greenleaf Center.]

If the one in one thousand will respond to this encouragement,

If they will articulate persuasively what they are doing,

If, having established that students will respond, they take further steps to educate university trustees and persuade them to accept a more affirmative institution-building role for themselves,

If trustees will then install and guide administrators who are prepared to be, and disposed to be, effective leaders-by-persuasion, and

If those administrators will gather the help of all constituencies of the university to establish means for explicit preparation for both leading and following, by persuasion,

then, someday, someplace, a design for a new contemporary university may emerge, wholly as a result of persuasion. In the course of this evolution, that university’s goals, program, leadership, and governance may be reexamined, not so much in the light of tradition of what universities have been, but, rather, in recognition of the obligation that has been assumed because of access to several formative years of half the population.

The leadership crisis in society at large will begin to be meliorated when one university, in its new awareness of its obligations and opportunities, moves into, and then resolves, its own crisis of leadership, and emerges with a great new dream.

When, in the persuasive atmosphere of that dream, the trustees and administrators lead by persuasion, and faculties, students, and staff respond with persuasion, that university will regenerate, in the late 20th century, the civilizing influence that universities once had and move to the center of our institutional life as a bastion of strength in what may prove to be a gathering storm.