Some main HE leader's features

Recently I had an opportunity to meet and talk to one person, whom I consider as a good example of higher education leader. The features that she described in her personality, like team working, collegiality, being good psychologist, and being competent in field of expertise are very important qualities for successful leading and managing people in higher education context in my opinion.

 

One of her main attributes is to perceive herself leading and working with a team as integral part of it. Rost expresses this idea as: “Leadership is not the work of single person, rather it can be explained and defined as a ‘collaborative endeavor’ among group of people” (as cited in Scott, Coates & Anderson, 2008, p. 2). In other words, you will never succeed more than if you would work with your team together. This feature is very important in any organizational context, regardless of size, format, structure, and universities are not the exclusion from this rule. 

Another attribute is that she always tries to make all important decisions in agreement with every member of her team. I think this feature is very important because it allows the best qualities and qualifications of the teammates work to benefit the team, whole organisation and the team leader. Here I recall the theory of organisation’ collegial model described by Bush (2011), where he consider the collegiality in decision-making process as important instrument for successful leadership.  This approach in working with people is very important in higher education context because naturally the universities’ staff members are very diverse so that clear understanding and agreement on goals to be achieved is a basis for successful leading.   

 Being a good leader means also being a good psychologist, which is next important attribute of the leader.  She builds the relations with colleagues based on respect, fairness and honesty.  Even if one colleague made a mistake she will never blame him/her. Instead, she will try to fix the mistake together and then discuss the reason and the way to avoid the same situation next time. By this, I would like to outline that personal attitude and way of communication play a crucial role for your colleagues to feel that they are treated with respect. The leader should not give vent to emotions, be intelligent, and polite.

Finally, she is very competent in her field. Knowing your job very well is a key feature which attracts the like-minded people and gets them engaged in ideas you are implementing and leading. It is very important in higher education context because academics always respect expertise and professionalism and will not follow somebody who does not know its field of expertise. 

In conclusion, I think we learn better on the real examples, when complex theoretical concepts become closer and easier to understand. In this sense my personal conclusion is that your success depends on the success of your team, and vice versa, if your team will not succeed you will not either. Other important qualities are collegiality, competency and good understanding of people psychology.

References

Bush, T. (2011). Collegial models. In Theories of educational leadership and management (pp. 72-98).  London, UK: Sage.

Scott, G., Coates, H., & Anderson, M. (2008). Understanding academic leadership. In Learning leaders in times of change: Academic leadership capabilities for Australian higher education (pp. 1-27). New South Wales, AU: University of Western Sydney.