In a recent article on “Leadership Coaching in Higher Education: The Time is Now!” by Beth Weinstock she quotes the following:
“Higher education is up against the same challenges that face other business endeavors; it needs to cut corners, do more with less, have faculty and administrators play double roles, attend to greater numbers of students, adjust to long distance learning strategies, and at the same time, hope to increase endowments. These complex challenges call for leadership development at the tippy top — college chancellors, provosts, and deans, but also at the level of department chairs, committee heads, and administrative offices.”
Whether you are a higher education institution in a traditional college or university or a career college, you will face the same challenge when it comes to the need for leadership training for individuals to advance and handle the current trends in the educational circle.
In my 30 plus years of working in an educational environment from the instructor, to admissions, to career services, to the academic dean, to financial aid and ultimately as the Executive Director/President leadership training and coaching was always a part of my default training that ultimately positioned me for success in those roles. Most organizations look at “Leadership Coaching/Training” as an extra if we have the budget for it, and I have always put it as the priority in my career path. What I know for sure is that if you know how to lead in whatever role you are in, you will be in a position to figure out how to manage the ever changing environment that will be before you. What people fail to understand is that a true knowledge of what “Leadership” is, positions a person to tackle ANYTHING THAT COMES THERE WAY.
As best put by Stephen R. Covey in the following quote:
Quote from Stephen R. Covey:
EFFICIENT MANAGEMENT WITHOUT effective leadership is, as one individual has phrased it, “like straightening deck chairs on the Titanic.”
Brene Browne put it best in her book “Daring Greatly” by stating a Leader is “Anyone who holds her – himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes”
If we have never been responsible for holding people accountable for finding the potential in people and processes, it will be difficult if not impossible to know how to implement and manage it in others. Even though we may have been successful at implementing it ourselves in our respective roles it doesn’t position us to know how to develop and nurture those qualities in others, and that is what is being asked of those who are being promoted to those leadership positions within higher education institutions.
Leadership is a behavior that can be achieved in all of us with the proper direction and coaching along the way.
