We’ll explore the leadership skills that reside in a person’s interior landscape, the qualities that that are critical for mentoring new leaders and facilitating the propagation of leadership across the organization.

1. Describe, from a personal perspective, the challenges and opportunities facing leaders in today’s higher education marketplace.

2. Understand, personalize and describe the best practice/next practice dual agenda prescribed by Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky.

3. Describe the importance of distributed leadership in a best/next organization.

4. Identify the interior qualities a leader needs to successfully propagate leadership in a best/next organization.

5. Identify the personal habits and behaviors that facilitate reflection, mindfulness and discernment.

Objectives for today’s session

The Changing Landscape of Higher Education by David J. Staley and Dennis A. Trinkle

“The landscape of higher education—the growing variety of higher education institutions, the cultural environment, the competitive ecosystem—is changing rapidly and disruptively. The higher education landscape is metaphorically crossed with fault lines, those fissures in the landscape creating potential areas of dramatic change, and is as "seismic" as it has been in decades.”

Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow and Marty Linsky

“Leadership will require new skills tailored to an environment of urgency, high stakes, and uncertainty.”

“Leaders today face two competing demands. They must execute in order to meet today’s challenges. And they must adapt what and how things get done in order to thrive in tomorrow’s world. They must develop next practices while excelling at today’s best practices.”

From Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis “Individual executives just don’t have the personal capacity to sense and make sense of all the change swirling around them. They need to distribute leadership responsibility, replacing hierarchy and formal authority with organizational bandwidth, which draws on collective intelligence.”

Leaders should strive to successfully integrate a best/next approach into their work culture.

Assure quality Foster innovation Generate leadership

Chris Lowney, Heroic Leadership: “Everyone leads, and everyone is leading all the time."

Success in a best/next organizational environment requires a sophisticated leadership style, one that promotes and supports leadership as a shared competency

Situational leadership Adaptive leadership

• Emphasizing relationship behavior over task behavior

• Developing employee readiness, an employee’s ability to take responsibility for directing their own behavior

• “… we need a different idea of leadership that promotes our adaptive capacities, rather than inappropriate expectations of authority.” Ronald Heifitz,

• The balcony and the dance floor metaphor: observing patterns and people simultaneously

Developing leaders at every level, creating opportunities for self-directed excellence and a culture of innovation.

An organic and sensitized approach as opposed to a rigid change management framework—more intuition, less dogma.

What skills does a leader need to successfully propagate leadership in a best/next organization?

Emotional intelligence(from What Makes a Leader? by Daniel Goleman)

Self-awareness, empathy , social skills

Discernment

• The ability to see and understand people, things, or situations clearly and intelligently.

• The quality of being able to grasp and comprehend what is obscure.

“The Ignatian method of discernment can be described as a constant interplay between experience, reflection, decision and action.“ -- Ignatian Spirituality, Loyola Press

Contemplatives in action

Mindfulness • Maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings,

bodily sensations, and surrounding environment.• Paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment

and non-judgmentally.

Develop and nurture interior leadership skillsCreate opportunities for reflection, introspection and review.

“We are unable to grow toward greater understanding of our true nature unless we take the time to examine and reflect upon our life.” -- Robert Gerzon

How Leaders Become Self-Aware by Anthony Tjan, HBR blog“It is self-awareness that allows the best business-builders to walk the tightrope of leadership: projecting conviction while simultaneously remaining humble enough to be open to new ideas and opposing opinions.”

“And this is what leadership is also about: being comfortable with oneself, being able to develop a sense of interiority, of inner depth and complexity that leads to self reflection and self respect.” –Clemons Sedak