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9 Tips to be a Better Leader - Leadership and Management Skills and Qualities

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Far from simply setting up student schedules and administering placement and academic evaluation tests, school counselors are leaders who can have a huge impact on the acceleration and the enhancement of learning. They must possess the ability to negotiate, persuade others their ideas are worthwhile, and collaborate with principals and other school officials.

School counselors have many responsibilities, including counseling students, working with teachers and parents, referring students to outside agencies, participating in student welfare and learning support communities, and evaluating and improving their own school counseling program.

Listening

First and foremost, a school counselor needs to be a good listener. Often, they have several students they work with and may get very few chances to converse with them in a one on one setting. "The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood," said Ralph G. Nichols. "The best way to understand people is to listen to them."

To listen effectively, counselors must be fully in the moment, not thinking of their "to do" list but rather giving their full attention to the issue at hand. Reflecting back to the person, your perception of what they said helps show understanding, and lets them make corrections. The counselor must also keep an open mind, being careful not to make any judgments until they have heard the entire story. ¹

Being Empathetic

Often a part of listening, putting themselves in the shoes of the person speaking, whether that is a student or another school official, helps counselors truly understand the underlying issues.

"Without the ability to understand what the student is experiencing, a counselor cannot truly do an effective job," says Helen A. Hatridge, past president of the Missouri School Counselor Association. "Empathy leads to good listening and a better ability to help the client come up with solutions. It also helps the student feel more comfortable and willing to open up to a counselor." ²

To be more empathetic, it is essential for a counselor to put aside their viewpoint. At the same time, they need to validate the student's viewpoint, which does not always mean agreement. Instead it means acknowledging their right to have an opinion, and that they have valid reasons for it. Asking how that person thinks a situation should be handled or what they would do opens up an even deeper understanding. ³

Building Relationship

It takes time for a counselor to build a relationship with any student or even their peers. However, through listening and being empathetic, that process can be accelerated.

To feel free to talk to a counselor, a student must often "break the ice," and needs to feel trust, comfort, and acceptance. Students need to accept that the counselor is a professional caregiver, and someone they can turn to without fear of judgement.

A counselor who develops this trusting relationship with students can get a lot more done, An understanding of the kid culture and what they care about can go a long way toward providing that environment of trust and understanding.

Performing Assessments

Assessment skills are essential for any school counselor in a number of areas. From academic and skills assessment to personality testing and career advisement, the ability to discern the intersection of talent and desire is essential to offering good counsel.

Assessment also includes determining if a student has special needs and interpreting test and non-test data to decide where the student should be placed, and what programs will most benefit them.

Regardless of the reason for assessment, the steps often include, but are not limited to the following:

Choosing what tests should be administered and when.

Scheduling, preparing, and administering tests.

Scoring tests or sending them out to be scored.

Advising students, teachers, parents, and other staff on test score interpretation.

Evaluating the testing process, results, and subsequent recommendations.⁴

Assessments involve some testing but must also be combined with listening, empathy, and the relationship that has been built to determine how testing outcomes relate to personality, desires, and the goals of the student.

Coordinating Efforts and Activities

Efforts and activities can fall into a couple of different categories. A counselor will have to coordinate Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) for students, and other student specific plans as well. Along with coordinating individual student plans and interacting with teachers and other school officials, the school counselor often coordinates other activities and projects as well.

In many cases, the school counselor is in charge of parent newsletters, school announcements, managing social media accounts, and other community outreach and event planning efforts.

The ability to coordinate and manage these efforts and activities requires strong leadership and organizational skills. Teaching these skills to students by allowing them to take responsibility for their own educational goals and other efforts enables a counselor to show leadership by example.

Exercising Authority

In order to be able to implement programs, direct student activities and coordinate tasks, a counselor must exercise a certain amount of authority.

This means first of all that the counselor must be granted the authority to handle certain tasks by other school officials such as principals and administrators. The more their authority is validated by their actions, the more the counselor will be perceived as a leader by parents and students alike.

Secondly, the school counselor must be willing to wield the authority they have been granted, taking charge of tasks and situations, setting expectations, and holding those responsible to deadlines.

The counselor must also know in any given situation when to cross the line from friend to professional. If a student is being abusive or abused, a more professional response is ethically and legally mandated. It is the counselor's obligation to take charge and follow through, ensuring that student safety comes first.

Being Flexible

If one thing is certain in the field of education, it is that things will change. Interruptions, schedule changes, new programs, and new responsibilities all interrupt a counselor's daily routine.

Student needs and the needs of the school overall often take priority over scheduled meetings. Parent phone calls, staff concerns, talks in classrooms, and unexpected counseling needs can all be disruptive.

A successful counselor should:

Leave gaps in their day for unscheduled needs.

Use good time management techniques.

Set reasonable boundaries. Know what is worthy of an interruption, and what can wait.

Communicate clearly. Inform students, parents, and faculty of schedules and boundaries.

By remaining flexible, a counselor can better manage the stress inherent in the job and be more responsive when needs arise unexpectedly.

Having a Sense of Humor

Being able to see things from the side of humor has a number of advantages. It lets students see that the counselor is human and can not only laugh at situations but laugh at themselves as well.

This is frequently one of the biggest assets in building student trust and developing a relationship with them. It is often how those students relate to adults, whether through jokes or humorous anecdotes that illustrate a point the counselor is trying to get across.

Humor is also a stress reliever. Being able to see the humorous side of interruptions and other daily situations allows a counselor to relax and keep anxiety from taking over many scenarios.

It takes a combination of many leadership traits to make a school counselor effective. They must use listening skills and offer empathy in order to build relationships. A counselor must also perform assessments and coordinate activities and educational efforts. These duties mean they must remain flexible and exercise authority when appropriate.

Not one of these traits alone is enough, and no one is equally adept in all of them. They are taught and can be learned in a Master of Arts in Counseling with an emphasis in school counseling like the one offered by Wake Forest University. This graduate degree will prepare you for a career as a school counselor in almost any setting.
Sources: 1 2 3 ⁴ American Counseling Association, Assessment Skills for School Counselors Mind Tools, Empathy at Work Education World, School Counselors Reflective On What Makes Them Effective Fast Company, 5 Ways To Improve Your Listening Skills

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Leadership Traits Every Counselor Should Have

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Far from simply setting up student schedules and administering placement and academic evaluation tests, school counselors are leaders who can have a huge impact on the acceleration and the enhancement of learning. They must possess the ability to negotiate, persuade others their ideas are worthwhile, and collaborate with principals and other school officials.

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As summer draws to a close, maybe your summer reading list still needs a little work. Or maybe you think of fall as the perfect time to recharge your brain, just like you did when you were a full-time student. Either way, this collection of books won't let you down: Get ready to broaden your mind and expand your leadership skill set.

We're talking about leading teams and individuals, analyzing technology and trends with a critical eye, and applying your emotional intelligence. EQ skills have never been in higher demand, thanks to the popularity of cross-functional teams and agile methodologies. Let's dig into 10 books that will help you build competency in these areas:

By: Chip and Dan Heath

Book description: While human lives are endlessly variable, our most memorable positive moments are dominated by four elements: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. If we embrace these elements, we can conjure more moments that matter. Many of the defining moments in our lives are the result of accident or luck - but why would we leave our most meaningful, memorable moments to chance when we can create them? The Power of Moments shows us how to be the author of richer experiences.

Why you should read it: "If life is a series of moments, the Heath brothers have transformed how I plan to spend mine," writes author Adam Grant in his review of this book. This book explores not only the why behind some of the most meaningful moments of our lives, but also the how. In doing so, the authors provide a recipe for companies to cook up their own powerful moments to engage employees and win over customers.

By: Whitney Johnson

Book description: What's the secret to having an engaged and productive team? It's having a plan for developing all employees - no matter where they are on their personal learning curves. Better morale and higher performance happen through learning, argues Whitney Johnson. The best bosses know this, and they know how to make it happen by thoughtfully designing people's jobs around the skills they have today as well as the skills they'll need to be even more valuable tomorrow. In this book, Johnson explains how to become one of those bosses and how to build your A-team.

Why you should read it: Johnson has had a front-row seat to what makes employees tick after spending more than 20 years coaching, investing, and consulting. With no end in sight to the struggles of finding top technical talent, you can't afford to lose the talent you already have. This book will help you be a better leader and build a team that thrives despite continuous change.

By: Tim Ferriss

Book description: We all need mentors, particularly when the odds seem stacked against us. To find his own, four-time #1 best-selling author Tim Ferriss tracked down more than 100 eclectic experts to help him, and you, navigate life. Through short, action-packed profiles, he shares their secrets for success, happiness, meaning, and more. No matter the challenge or opportunity, something in these pages can help.

Why you should read it: One of Fast Company's "Most Innovative Business People," Ferriss offers lessons and life advice on a variety of topics from a wide range of experts and celebrities. Leaders will find tidbits that they can apply to their careers - like how to say no, and how to see obstacles as opportunities. As one reviewer said, "Take notes, because you'll want to revisit these nuggets of wisdom often."
[ Are you getting the most from mentoring? Read also : 7 habits of highly effective mentors. ]
By: Daniel H. Pink

Book description (via Amazon): Drawing on a rich trove of research from psychology, biology, and economics, Pink reveals how best to live, work, and succeed. In "When," Pink distills cutting-edge research and data on timing and synthesizes them into a fascinating, readable narrative packed with irresistible stories and practical takeaways that give readers compelling insights into how we can live richer, more engaged lives.

Why you should read it: We all know the saying "timing is everything." In this book, Pink dives into the science behind this idea and explores why there truly is a good time and a bad time for everything - from when to make big life decisions, to when to hold the most productive meetings, to when to have your morning cup of coffee.

By: Emily Chang

Book description (via Amazon): In this powerful exposé, Bloomberg TV journalist Emily Chang reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures despite decades of companies claiming the moral high ground (Don't Be Evil! Connect the World!) - and how women are finally starting to speak out and fight back.

Why you should read it: Peter Weis, CIO of Matson Navigation says, "I'm not just a CIO. I'm also a father of two daughters, one of whom works in Silicon Valley, and I've been in enough meetings with start-ups and venture capitalists to see the male-dominated culture first-hand. This important book provides an unflinching view into this systemic failure but also provides hope for a brighter, more inclusive future for women in technology. It's a must read for any technology leader who seeks to be a change agent. Both business and society overall will benefit as this new future unfolds."

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10 must-read books for leaders: Expand your mind

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As summer draws to a close, maybe your summer reading list still needs a little work. Or maybe you think of fall as the perfect time to recharge your brain, just like you did when you were a full-time student.

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Interview with Education Leaders - Tony Chambers

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"Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare The truth thou hast, that all may share. Be bold. Proclaim it everywhere. They only live who dare."

To be effective and inspiring as a leader, you must do what Voltaire describes in this quatrain. Developing a Personal Leadership Philosophy (PLP) will empower you to declare YOUR truth and stand tall within it, to operate from a position of strength that ennobles you.

It is a common practice in all branches of the U.S. armed services for top-ranking officials to develop and declare their philosophy of leadership. The leadership program at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania includes an advanced course called "The Philosophy of Leadership." A prerequisite to that class is called "The Philosophy of Command." In other words, what seems like a long article here is just the starting point - you could take intensive classes about this very subject.

Before sharing and modeling your own PLP, you'll first need to do some of the work done in those classes to consider and craft a meaningful and genuine philosophy. This article will walk you through the steps needed. For more support, you can also use the samples and info on this resource page.

First, a definition of this thing called leadership philosophy. Philosophy is defined as:

Your personal foundation or belief in human nature.

A particular system of thought.

A system of principles for guidance.

An activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other.

Love of wisdom

From these definitions, you can extract some important ideas about the PLP you'll construct:

Philosophy is personal. There is no right or wrong.

Philosophy is something you choose. You can make a choice that is deliberate, intentional, based on reflection and determinations. Or, if you don't do that, you can have an accidental philosophy... one that is vague and unclear to others and, quite possibly, vague and unclear to even you.

Philosophy is meant as a foundation. Getting a solid core means you have clarity to guide decisions and a focus for sorting out all the competing inputs you get in a given day.

Here's one description of what it means to have a PLP. Please note the bolded verbs - we'll be using them as the five action steps in building your PLP.

"Successful Leaders know their Personal Leadership Philosophy (PLP) andcommunicate it by living it passionately every day in all they say and do. They have taken the time todetermine who they are, their values and priorities. Theyknow their course and haveset their internal compass, which gives them greater self-knowledge, greater self-confidence, and improved effectiveness as a leader. This is accomplished bywriting a Personal Leadership Philosophy, which states the core values you live by, what you expect of your people, what they can expect of you, and how you will evaluate performance. "

- Ed Ruggerio, The Leader's Compass: A Personal Leadership Philosophy Is Your Key to Success

The action words in bold type are the steps we are going to follow so that you can craft your philosophy and effectively communicate it to others.
STEP 1:
...They have taken the time to who they are, their values and priorities...

Don't jump ahead. Until you work through these questions and have absolute resolve about your own values and priorities, you cannot develop a meaningful PLP. This is the most important step in our process. Take your time in reflecting on these questions:

What do you truly believe?

Which values do you refuse to compromise?

How comfortable are you with who you are?

What causes you to have these core values?

What is the single most important thing to you?

STEP 2:
...This is accomplished by a Personal Leadership Philosophy, which states the core values you live by, what you expect of your people, what they can expect of you, and how you will evaluate performance.

No short-cutting on this step either. These are the benefits of putting your PLP in writing:

Putting it in writing provides clarity, objectivity.

Putting it in writing implies you are serious.

Putting it in writing makes a commitment.

Putting it in writing keeps it consistent.

Putting it in writing causes you to self-reflect, to be sure you mean what you say.

Putting it in writing makes you accountable.

Putting it in writing makes it easier to share.

These benefits are primarily for you. It's you initially who needs clarity, commitment, consistency and accountability. Also, the process of putting something in writing forces us to take a step back and evaluate it more objectively. This leadership philosophy isn't something you want to do with emotion alone - you want thought and analysis to go into it, too. Writing it down will help it to be more balanced.
STEP 3:
Successful Leaders their Personal Leadership Philosophy (PLP) and communicate it by living it passionately everyday in all they say and do. They have taken the time to determine who they are, their values and priorities. They their course...

Isn't this interesting? After all this reflection and writing, there is a wholly separate step related now to KNOWING your own personal leadership philosophy. Don't gloss over this!

You have to know your own PLP so well that you live and breathe it. If it is to guide your actions and provide examples to others of who you are and what you stand for, then you need to be intimately familiar with your PLP. This can't be an occasional thing that you bring out when it suits you... It needs to be a constant expression.

When you know your leadership philosophy, you also know your course of action. It's this knowledge that guides your decisions and choices.

These are the outcomes of knowing, in your bones, what you believe in and what you stand for:

Authenticity

Credibility

Consistency

Confidence

Believability

Trustworthiness

Clarity

Self-Assuredness

Determination

STEP 4:
...have their internal compass, which gives them greater self-knowledge, greater self-confidence, and improved effectiveness as a leader...

Once you determine, write down and get to know your own PLP, you can set yourself to live by it.

When you've done that, it's just as powerful as it sounds - imagine that you are no longer going to get lost in the woods and that you will always be able to find and navigate by a bright north star. Think of the confidence you'll project when you know exactly where you are going and no doubts about how you are going to get there. Others will notice, be inspired by this and be more willing and eager to follow you. And you will have fewer qualms about leading them.

What would it be like for you to have this level of clarity and confidence? You'll have:

Discernment (to uncover what you already know).

Clarity that points toward your truth.

Assurance that you won't get lost at crossroads.

An abiding ability to find your way.

Persistent confidence.

Inspiring effectiveness that others will want to follow.

Clear direction.

STEP 5:
...communicate it by living it passionately every day in all they say and do...

The first four steps helped you to craft your leadership philosophy. This step is equally important. But before you communicate your PLP, you must first take those set up steps so that you don't begin communicating before you are clear and certain in what you stand for. Your PLP isn't something that should change very often, so give it time to take shape and get it to a point where you can live with it for a good long time.

Our description is pretty clear in saying that the way you communicate your PLP is by living it passionately every day in all you say and do. That's a very high standard. But that's what it takes to be credible as a leader.

It all starts with getting clarity, first, for yourself so you can later communicate with clarity, conviction and credibility to others.
About the Author: Deb Calvert has worked as a Corporate Director in a Fortune 500 company and as a consultant, coach and trainer to nearly 400 businesses of all sizes. Deb is a certified executive coach, and a Top 50 Sales Influencer. She is Certified Master with The Leadership Challenge conducting workshops and coaching to help liberate the leader in everyone.

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5 Steps to Craft Your Own Personal Leadership Philosophy

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"Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare The truth thou hast, that all may share. Be bold.

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When Kathleen Yosko, now CEO of Northwestern Medicine's Marianjoy Rehabilitation Center, began her first job as a hospital president, there was no onboarding process planned, and no one to welcome her. Thinking it was a mistake, Yosko called her headquarters for advice. They told her, "Just do whatever a president does."

Fortunately, Yosko was a seasoned leader and she intuited where to start. But for many others, our first forays into leadership felt much like Yosko's first day: knowing how to start was not obvious. In many companies, individuals are promoted because of their technical skill - they are gifted engineers, accountants, or marketers - but that does not mean they are prepared for leadership. Leadership is a skill that can be learned, but it takes intentionality.

In the past half century, the study of leadership has grown, offering many new theories and frameworks for exploring what it means to be a leader, and how to do leadership well. In this article, we outline five current leadership theories, and offer resources and suggestions for integrating the theories into your own leadership practice. We will explore:

1. Transformational Leadership

2. Leader-Member Exchange Theory

3. Adaptive Leadership

4. Strengths-Based Leadership

5. Servant Leadership

But First, A Quick Review of Leadership History

Before we begin, we need to put leadership theory and practice in the context of history, to understand how the field of study has evolved. The earliest theories of leadership were the Great Man Theories, which emerged in the late 1800s. (Perhaps you can see one primary fault with these theories, just from their name: they assumed only half the world's population could even be considered for leadership.) The Great Man concept evolved into trait-based theories of leadership, which defined leadership by a leader's characteristics, most of which were considered innate. You were either lucky enough to be born with them, or you weren't. (Starting, first, with a Y chromosome.) For many of us, our first understanding of leadership may have aligned with these theories: leaders were often men with dominant personalities. We still see this theory at play unconsciously today, when someone is overlooked for a leadership role because of a quiet personality.

In the middle of the last century, the study of leadership shifted from the study of traits to the study of behaviors: not who the leader is but what the leader does. This allowed for an understanding that leadership could be developed in others. The most prominent leadership theories today build on this understanding, and begin to integrate the perspective of followers and the contextual circumstances in which leaders and followers interact. As business, and our understanding of human nature, grows more complex, leadership theories and frameworks should evolve to accommodate the new contexts and understandings.

Defining Leadership

Before we unpack contemporary theories of leadership, we need to define the term itself. Leadership theory scholar Dr. Peter Northouse defines leadership as "a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal." This definition makes clear that leadership is not a trait or behavior, and it is not a position. You are not made a leader by your job title, you are made a leader by your influence.

Finally, contemporary theories of leadership wrestle with the motivations of leaders: can you be a leader if your goal is selfish or even malicious? The classic question is, "Was Adolf Hitler a leader?" Theories of leadership must wrestle with the moral implications of a leader's motivations. As you'll see in several of the theories below, many theories would answer the question of Hitler with a firm no: Hitler was a dictator, but not a leader. He had positional authority, but did not show true leadership.

To begin our exploration of leadership theories, let's start with one of the most researched and referenced today, transformational leadership.

Transformational Leadership

The concepts of transformational leadership were brought to prominence by political sociologist James MacGregor Burns, in the late 1970s. Burns identified two types of leadership,

Transactional: where a leader influences others by what they offer in exchange, the transaction;

Transformational: where a leader connects with followers in such a way that it raises the level of motivation and morality.

Those two words - motivation and morality - are important, as it demands that transformational leaders be committed to a collective good. This may be a societal good, such as starting a community center or improving air quality, or a more personalized good, such as helping direct reports reach their own potential.

Activating transformational leadership:

If Kathleen Yosko, the hospital CEO who was thrown into leadership with little direction, wanted to employ transformational leadership strategies in her work, she might start with four factors researchers find present in transformational leaders. Northouse (2016) outlines these factors, which can serve as a starting place for test driving transformational leadership:

1. Idealized influence, or charisma: Transformational leaders have an uncanny ability to make you want to follow the vision they establish.

2. Inspirational motivation: Communication is a vehicle of inspiration for transformational leaders; they use words to encourage others and inspire action.

3. Intellectual stimulation: Transformational leaders stretch others to think more deeply, challenge assumptions, and innovate.

4. Individualized concern: Finally, while focused on the common good, transformational leaders show care and concern for individuals.

Leader-Member Exchange Theory

The concept of individualized concern has some carry-over to our second theory, Leader-Member Exchange Theory (LMX). To understand this theory, you only need to think back to junior high: almost every student could be divided into two categories, popular or unpopular.

LMX theory explains that in any group or organization, there are in-group members and out-group members. In-group members work well with the leader, have a personality that fits with the leader's, and are often willing to take on extra tasks or responsibilities. Out-group members are less compatible with the leader; they may hold dissenting opinions, have clashing personalities, or be less willing to take on extra assignments. Not surprisingly, in-group members are more likely to earn promotions; out-group members are more likely to leave.

Activating LMX theory:

For followers, applying the concepts of LMX theory is easy: align yourself with the leader, take on extra tasks, and expect positive results. For leaders, LMX offers a greater challenge, because making your team as productive as possible will mean finding ways to turn out-group members into in-group members. Individualized concern, the final factor of transformational leadership, may offer one path to converting out-group members.

Additionally, LMX theory has important implications for improving diversity and inclusion. If minorities, women, or people with disabilities routinely identify as out-group members, the leader should ask the question, "What is required to be an in-group member here, and are we creating unintentional barriers for others?"

More on Leadership Theory

Continue learning about leadership theory in the next article in this series, where we'll discuss Adaptive Leadership, Strengths Based Leadership, and Servant Leadership, along with the usefulness of leadership theories. >> Read more in part 2 of this series.

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Amber Johnson is the Center's Chief Communications Officer and Senior Research Associate; she is also a doctoral student in the Center's Ph.D./D.B.A. Program in Values-Driven Leadership.

Want more on Leadership Theory? Find an interview on why leadership theory matters, at this link.

Reference:

Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice (7 th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishers, Inc.

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5 Leadership Theories & How to Apply Them

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When Kathleen Yosko, now CEO of Northwestern Medicine's Marianjoy Rehabilitation Center, began her first job as a hospital president, there was no onboarding process planned, and no one to welcome her. Thinking it was a mistake, Yosko called her headquarters for advice. They told her, "Just do whatever a president does."

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Reframing Academic Leadership / Edition 1

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"Colleges and universities constitute a special type oforganization; and their complex mission, dynamics, personnelstructures, and values require a distinct set...

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Addressing Declining College Enrollment Rates

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Addressing Declining College Enrollment Rates

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DELAWARE, Ohio - Behind the deceptive quiet of a small college campus in the summer, things are buzzing at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Faculty at the 175-year-old liberal-arts school, which has about 1,700 undergraduates, are preparing new majors in high-demand fields including data analytics and computational neuroscience. Admissions officers are back from scouting out prospective students in China, India and Pakistan. Recruiters have been on the road closer to home, too, in Cleveland and Chicago. In the athletics department, work is under way to add two sports and a marching band.

More money has been put into financial aid, the process of transferring to the college is being streamlined, and the ink is still wet on contracts with Carnegie-Mellon University and a medical school to speed Ohio Wesleyan students more quickly to graduate degrees. The number of internships is being expanded, along with short-term study-abroad opportunities. The university is considering freezing, lowering or slowing the rate of increase of its tuition and fees, which are now $44,690.

All of these changes are a response to a crisis few outside higher education even know exists: a sharp drop in the number of customers bound for small private, nonprofit colleges like this in particular, and also some public universities and other higher-education institutions.

A dip in the birth rate means there are fewer 18- to 24-year olds leaving high schools, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. This has coincided with an even more precipitous decline in the number of students older than 24, who experts say have been drawn back into the workforce as the economy improves, dragging down enrollment at community colleges and private, for-profit universities that provide mid-career education.

Related: With consumers pushing back against increased tuition, colleges seek new revenue

The result is that the number of students in colleges and universities has now dropped for five straight years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, which tracks this - and this year is the worst so far, with 81,000 fewer high school graduates nationwide heading to places like Ohio Wesleyan, whose entering freshman class is down 9 percent from last year.

How dramatic is the falloff? There were just over 18 million students enrolled in higher education nationally in the semester just ended - 2.4 million fewer than there were in the fall of 2011, the most recent peak, the National Student Clearinghouse reports.

"That's unprecedented in the history of as long as data has been kept on higher education," said Kevin Crockett, senior executive at the enrollment-management consulting firm Ruffalo Noel Levitz.

There's no upswing likely until 2023, and even then the recovery will be slow, projects the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. When it comes, it will be comprised largely of low-income, first-generation-in-college racial and ethnic minorities. These are the kinds of students institutions have generally proven poor at enrolling, and who will arrive with a far greater need for financial aid and expensive support.

"I have not met a president who isn't saying this is really tough," said David Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, who was just back from meeting about it with members in Minnesota and was off for more talks on the same subject in Michigan and Virginia. "There's a different consciousness than I have seen in the quarter of a century that I've been involved with this. Everybody understands the demographics and, more than any time I've seen, that it cannot be business as usual."

Related: Is the college degree outdated?

At a time when shifts in the number of tuition-paying students can make or break a university or college budget, 58 percent of chief business officers said their institutions have seen a decline in the number of undergraduates since 2013, according to a survey released in May by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, or NACUBO.

Every dorm room that's not sold and every empty seat in the classroom, that's a loss of revenue," said Crockett.

Yet more than 400 campuses still had openings for freshmen and transfer students in the fall as of May 1, the traditional end of the admission period, according to the National Association for College Admissions Counseling.

The rising cost of tuition also seems to be taking a toll; 68 percent of chief business officers of colleges and universities said in the NACUBO survey that price sensitivity was eating away at enrollment, and 57 percent blamed competition from the likes of software coding boot camps.

Admissions departments have been responding by showering applicants with discounts. Small private, nonprofit colleges and universities this year gave back, in the form of financial aid, an average of 51 cents of every dollar they collected from tuition. That's up from an average of 38 cents a decade ago - good news for students and their families, but a dangerous trend for colleges whose annual increases in revenue are failing even to keep pace with inflation.

This year is the worst so far in a long slump in the number of high school grads, with 81,000 fewer nationwide.

Cutting the price has been the first impulse of many universities and colleges. Concordia University in Minnesota slashed its tuition by 34 percent in 2013, and enrollment rose. The University of Maine, in a state whose number of high school grads has fallen 9 percent since 2011, offered admission to students from elsewhere at the same in-state price they would have paid to attend their home flagships; that has attracted more than 1,000 new students for the semester that begins this fall, from all of the other New England states plus California, Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. *

But there's a limit to how many students some colleges want to recruit from the South and West, where the enrollment drop is less pronounced. More of them than ever are nonwhite and low-income. "That puts particular challenges on institutions that have relied on students who come from more advantaged families, who have parents who went to college, and who can afford more of the tuition bill without big discounts," said Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

More of these new students are the first in their families to go to college, have attended rural or urban public high schools that may poorly prepare them, and require financial aid.

Related: As graduates obsess about jobs, colleges cut spending on career services

Lowering the cost, too, is not enough, said Emily Coleman, senior vice president of Maguire Associates, another higher-ed consulting firm. "They have to deal with the bigger issue, which is how do we make this a place that people feel is worth paying for." (Those big discounts may not even always work; 58 percent of institutions that rely on them saw no gain in enrollment, and in some cases a loss, the NACUBO survey found.)

Coleman, Crockett and other experts counsel better tailoring academic offerings to student and workforce demand and adding inducements that have proven popular, such as internship opportunities and affordable study abroad. They use terms such as "brand awareness" and "aligning offerings to market needs."

Ohio Wesleyan is a case study for this. It's in the dead center of the region where the declines are among the worst - the number of high school graduates in Ohio, from which it gets more than half of its students, has fallen 8 percent since 2011 - and the college is responding with a singular sense of urgency.

"Ground Zero turns out pretty much to be Delaware, Ohio, in the heart of Ohio," where the college is located, said Warren, a former president of Ohio Wesleyan. "To their credit, they're looking it straight in the eye and dealing with it."

To see what appeals most to students, Ohio Wesleyan studies data about the 15 percent of admitted applicants who choose to enroll - and those who don't.

Among other things, this revealed that one group of prospects attracted to the college was dropping faster than others: males. That's a reason Ohio Wesleyan is adding more sports and making room on junior-varsity teams.

The data also showed that students wanted internships and international study. Both have been expanded. Visitors are invited to use a high-tech interactive touchscreen in one newly renovated building to see the places around the world where undergraduates are studying and serving in internships, from San Francisco investment firms to the Mayo Clinic.

Related: Placement rates, other data colleges provide consumers are often alternative facts

The college also uses labor statistics to see what fields are in greatest demand, then tailors new programs to this. "It doesn't do us any good to add a new major if they can't get a job," said Susan Dileno, vice president for enrollment.

"We live in a really consumer-driven society, and to be honest a college is an investment," said Ohio Wesleyan's president, Rock Jones. "Families are much more discerning, and they approach it as consumers. That's a cultural shift to which the campus has to respond."

One of the greatest challenges, as at other places, has been to get buy-in from the faculty, who have to approve new academic offerings. Ohio Wesleyan invited faculty on the curriculum committee to meet with the financial-aid committee, giving them a sense of how serious the problems were and asking them for help in coming up with majors that might attract more students.

This doesn't always work. One faculty member suggested a new major in sacred music, for example. "Some faculty have a very clear understanding of the issues," Jones said wryly. "Others, less so."

There are early, albeit modest, indications this is working. Dileno said the new majors attracted about 10 additional students this year, out of the roughly 440 freshmen the university typically enrolls.

There's another important sign of change, said Crockett: growing recognition of the problem.

He tells of speaking about the enrollment crisis to faculty and administrators at a private college.

"And a guy comes up to me afterward who had been scowling at me the whole time," Crockett recalled. "And he said, 'I'm a chemist and I focus on my discipline and I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea what the industry I work in was going through.'"

*An earlier version of this story misidentified this institution as Concordia College.
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher-education newsletter.
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Universities and colleges struggle to stem big drops in enrollment - The Hechinger Report

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DELAWARE, Ohio - Behind the deceptive quiet of a small college campus in the summer, things are buzzing at Ohio Wesleyan University. Faculty at the 175-year-old liberal-arts school, which has about 1,700 undergraduates, are preparing new majors in high-demand fields including data analytics and computational neuroscience.

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Key highlights

The role of the college president has no analog in the modern business world.

It is accountable to a dizzying array of stakeholders and constituents, on campus (students, faculty, and administrative staff) and off; parents who are hyperinvolved in every aspect of their child's experience; community leaders seeking to influence the university's role in town; alumni who want to maintain the experience they had as students; and, in the case of public institutions, political leaders who demand greater accountability even in the face of dwindling state support.

The job requires administrative and financial acumen, fundraising ability, and political deftness. Presidents must be accessible and responsive but also measured and restrained in an era driven by 24/7 news coverage and the inflammatory nature of social media. They often need to balance the pressures of society to improve the "return on investment" of education at their institution as well as manage the pressure from community and political leaders around critical issues such as sexual assault and legalized guns on campus. Presidents must chart a difficult path with their academic deans, providing incentives for individual schools to excel and grow while fostering collaboration and cooperation with each other to drive the overall health of the academy.

The range of leadership skills with which they surround themselves is vast-athletics, academics, finances, marketing, fundraising, and research to name just a few, all housed within a model of shared governance that could drive almost any traditional business leader to distraction.

In this look at the college president, we examine what it's taken to be effective and excel in the role today, and how the dynamics of higher education in America are driving a new set of skills and capabilities for tomorrow's leaders. Deloitte's Center for Higher Education Excellence, working in partnership with Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities, conducted this study through a combination of an extensive survey, in-depth interviews, and the first-ever analysis of presidential CVs. Among the highlights of our findings:

Varied pathways. While the provost's office has long been the most frequent stopover point on the way to the presidency, the paths prospective presidents now take are becoming more complex, fragmented, and overlapping. Academic deans are increasingly moving right to the top job and bypassing the provost's office altogether. This is particularly the case at small colleges, where the institution as a whole is akin to the dean's job at a large university.

A new role for the provost. The provost is no longer simply regarded as the No. 2 person on campus. Rather, today's provosts often have a set of skills that complement the president, rather than replicate them. The shift in responsibilities means that the provost's role might not always be the best preparation for the presidency, especially if the provost is involved primarily with academic affairs and internal issues.

President as fundraiser-in-chief. Fundraising is essential from a president's first day in office, according to the survey, and only grows in importance over time in the position. But that doesn't mean presidents are ready and willing to take on fundraising tasks. Despite the attention given to this issue over the past several years, preparing presidents to cultivate donors hasn't improved much, if at all.

A need for formal leadership development. Investments in leadership often lag behind their importance to presidents. While nearly two-thirds of presidents surveyed said they had coaches or mentors to help them prepare for the role, only one-third indicated that they still receive coaching to succeed in the job. Presidents identified leadership development as the second most important professional training opportunity needed on the job (after fundraising).

Emphasis on short-term wins at the cost of long-term planning. There is increasing pressure on presidents to look for quick wins. As a result, many are looking for the proverbial low-hanging fruit on their campuses where they can show fast results, not only for their own boards but also for search committees for their next job.

Even without the pressures bearing down right now on higher education, many college presidents are likely in the final years of their tenure, given the demographics of those currently in the top job. A wave of departures is expected to come among presidents over the next few years. Where their successors will come from remains a key question for governing boards and other key stakeholders on campuses. What follows is a primer to help leaders recognize the challenges they may face and how to potentially rethink leadership for higher education in the 21st century.

Introduction

While college presidents these days are often compared to corporate CEOs, for much of the early years of American higher education they were often seen as little more than an extension of the faculty. Most presidents were clergymen who regularly taught classes, rarely traveled far from the campus, and even prided themselves on knowing every student by name.

At the turn of the 20th century, the college presidency started to take on an expanded role, as institutions increased their academic offerings. Out went the ministers as presidents and in came more professional administrators. When John H. Finley was announced as president of City College of New York in 1903, he received a letter from the University of Chicago's president assuring him that while "there are plenty of men to be professors; there are only a few to be presidents of colleges and universities."

By the 1930s, a book about college presidents described the job as "the business manager of a great plant, a lobbyist often at the general assembly of the state... and a peripatetic raiser of funds." The decades after World War II-with the arrival of Baby Boomers to campuses and new federal spending with the onset of the Cold War-marked a new role for presidents as dominant figures in higher education's expansion. Indeed, during this era two giants of the college presidency rose to power-the University of California's Clark Kerr and the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh of Notre Dame.

The economic slowdown of the mid-1970s, and the resulting cuts in federal and state higher-education spending, meant that college governing boards started to look for leaders who could be better fiscal managers and, increasingly, fundraisers. In 1976, Kerr would describe presidents hired in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s as "kind of out of date," adding the presidential type now needed was a "a kind of super-accountant."

It was in these waning years of the 20th century that the college presidency began to turn into more of a profession sought by academics who switched jobs every few years and navigated through campus bureaucracies to better learn how to run complex institutions. Searches for presidents grew longer and more extensive and were managed by executive search firms that increasingly focused solely on higher education.

In 1986, the American Council on Education (ACE) published its first study of the college president. It found that campus leaders were mostly white males in their early fifties. Four in ten presidents at the time were in their forties, and most came to the position through the provost's office.

In subsequent surveys since then, ACE found that little has changed about the people holding the top job on campuses-except they are graying and not staying in the role as long. Nearly six in ten presidents are in their sixties and their average tenure in the job is seven years, down from eight and a half years a decade ago.

A pipeline running dry

What's worrisome about these trends is that the traditional pipeline to the job risks running dry in the decade ahead, as the enormous demographic and financial challenges facing institutions intensify. Not only are presidents aging, but public flameouts are ending their tenures early. Several presidents have faced high-profile ousters in recent years.

Where their successors will come from is more of an open question among search committees than ever before. While the provost's office remains the most common launching pad for presidencies, there is evidence from surveys of sitting provosts that many no longer aspire to the top job, nor in some instances have the broad set of skills necessary for the changing demands of the role.

Much like at the turn of the 20th century and then again in the 1970s, the college presidency today is in a state of change. As institutions look to hire the next generation of leaders, what skill sets should they be looking for? Where will presidents come from in the future? What training will they need to succeed and thrive in the top job?

This report aims to answer those questions and more with the results of a groundbreaking study on the future of the college presidency. In 2016, Deloitte's Center for Higher Education Excellence and Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities embarked on nearly a year of research that included a survey of more than 150 current four-year college and university presidents, in-depth interviews with two dozen presidents and trustees, and data mined from more than 800 CVs of sitting presidents of four-year colleges to get a better sense of their career paths.

Our hope is that this study informs planning for trustees and college executives as they grapple with the coming leadership changes and provides a roadmap for how higher education can better prepare and select its next generation of presidents.

The changing presidency

A hundred years ago, the college presidency was described by academics as a "club" in which members had a similar pedigree and recognized the problems each other was dealing with on their campuses.

The modern college presidency lacks any sort of cohesion.

Our study found that fewer college leaders arrive at the top post in the same way as in the past or agree on the issues that face their campuses. How presidents define their role largely depends on the type of institution where they serve (research university vs. liberal arts college or public vs. private), how long they've been in the job, and the route they took to get there.

While the provost's office has long been the most frequent stopover point on the way to the presidency, the paths prospective presidents now take are becoming more complex, fragmented, and overlapping. Two primary developments seem to be responsible for these varied routes:

1. Academic deans are increasingly moving right to the top job and bypassing the provost's office altogether. This is particularly the case at small colleges, where the institution as a whole is akin to the dean's job at a large university. Deans these days are essentially mini-presidents and are seen as academic entrepreneurs on campuses with decentralized budgeting models. What's more, they frequently work with advisory boards and are prodigious fundraisers who oversee thousands of students.

The president of a small, liberal arts college told us that the route from dean to president is a recognition that higher education's often lengthy and sluggish climb to the top of the organization doesn't work for a new generation of leaders.

"Highly creative people need faster paths, or they are going to go elsewhere to find them," the president said. "It is difficult to speed up the traditional route. We need to find ways to promote people more quickly, and need quicker paths to the presidency than provost."

Of the presidents in our CV analysis who never served as a provost, two-thirds lead institutions with fewer than 5,000 students (see figure 1). Those who went right from dean to president are newer to the job than those who were provosts first, indicating that this pathway is likely a more recent trend.

There is also a significant gender gap between the traditional provost pathway and the fast track from dean (see figure 2). It's much more common for women to stop at the provost's office on their way to the presidency. According to our study, three times as many men as women went right to the presidency from the dean's office.

2. The provost is no longer simply regarded as the No. 2 person on campus. Rather, today's provosts often have a set of skills that complement the president, rather than replicate them. There is a "bit of separation occurring between the provost and the president," a trustee at a large public research university told us. The provost is focused "inward and down," working with faculty and students on the academic experience. Meanwhile, the president is looking "up and out," focused on relations with the governing board, the public, alumni, and in many cases, political leaders.

This external focus is a critical role for a contemporary president to play in a day and age when social media can turn a minor dustup into a national story and impact an institution's brand almost overnight. The "president owns the brand and the larger experience of 'the university,'" the trustee said.

The shift in responsibilities means that the provost's role might not always be the best preparation for the presidency, especially if the provost is involved primarily with academic affairs and internal issues. In our survey, presidents told us that being an "academic and intellectual leader" ranked last among a set of skills and behaviors most needed when they assumed office. At the top of the list: strategist, communicator, and storyteller (see figure 3).

"Universities have big goals and big aspirations, but can be very linear places with very incremental strategic plans," said the president of a large, public land-grant university. "They need nonlinear planning and a strategy mind-set to reach big goals."

The way presidents view the skills required for the job differs depending on how long they've been in the role.

In general, veteran presidents surveyed tend to think of higher education as a collegial, intellectual community where they are the academic leader. New presidents, meanwhile, see themselves through a financial and operational lens and as a leader who needs to get things done despite the collaborative nature of campuses-a CEO role, not in the top-down sense, but rather a general manager surrounded by a skilled executive team.

These often opposing opinions of the campus leadership role influence the competencies presidents think are required for the job and who they believe will fill their offices in the future. Presidents in the job for more than 15 years value academic and intellectual skills and consider the provost as their likely successor; presidents with less than a decade of experience say financial and operational acumen is most important and say the person next in line for the role will most likely come from the private sector (see figure 4).

President as chief fundraiser

Where there is agreement among presidents-no matter the size of the institution or their tenure in the position-is on the outsized role fundraising plays in their job and how many of them still feel unprepared for it. Clark Kerr first recognized the need for the president to be chief fundraiser in the 1970s, when state and federal support for higher education began to wane. The trends Kerr identified have only accelerated since then, and, in many ways, have been made worse by the flatlining of wages in the United States that have made it difficult for even middle-class families to afford rising tuition prices.

Presidents told us in our survey that "fundraising/alumni relations/donor relations" and "strategic planning" rank as the most important responsibilities in their day-to-day job (see figure 5). Fundraising, in particular, is essential from a president's first day in office, according to the survey, and only grows in importance over time in the position.

But that doesn't mean presidents are ready and willing to take on fundraising tasks. Past surveys of presidents dating back more than a decade have diagnosed the gap between the importance of fundraising in the top job and the lack of training for it. The results of our survey show that despite the attention given to this issue over the past several years, preparing presidents to cultivate donors hasn't improved much, if at all.

Indeed, in our survey a wide gap existed between the perceived importance of fundraising to a president's professional development and the ability of the campus executive to provide oversight of fundraising. When asked in the survey to gauge their preparedness to provide oversight on a range of campus issues, presidents ranked fundraising and alumni/donor relations sixth out of ten-below strategic planning, community relations, and budgeting. No wonder presidents said fundraising was the most important skill needed for their professional development (see figure 6).

Preparing for the presidency

Unlike chief executives of Fortune 500 companies who tend to go to business school and are groomed by organizations for the top role, historically being a college president has involved mostly on-the-job training. When institutions were smaller and less complex, presidents could easily move up from the faculty to lead the campus with little instruction. But today's challenging higher-education environment requires leaders who are adept at navigating various stakeholder groups through a period of rapid change.

Survey of university presidents

Deloitte's Center for Higher Education Excellence sent a survey via email to 1,031 presidents of four-year colleges and universities. Completed responses were collected from 165 presidents, yielding a 16 percent response rate. Respondents represented 112 private institutions and 51 public institutions. This interactive graphic depicts some of the insights gleaned from Deloitte's analysis of the survey data, and allows users to explore and create their own customized views.

Even so, no formal training regimen exists to prepare for the presidency. Our survey found that investments in leadership often lag behind their importance to presidents. While nearly two-thirds of presidents in the survey said they had coaches or mentors to help them prepare for the role, only one-third indicated that they still receive coaching to succeed in the job.

Presidents surveyed identified leadership development as the second most important professional training opportunity needed on the job (after fundraising). "Leadership development is stigmatized in higher education," the president of a public university told us. "There is knowledge out there that can help people become better leaders, but it's vilified among faculty members who don't understand it."

Compare the attitudes toward leadership development in higher education to the corporate world, where, in a survey of 10,000 HR and business leaders by Deloitte, 78 percent identified leadership development as the top issue for companies around the world. Some 84 percent of global organizations offer formal learning programs for leadership development, and US companies spend more than $31 billion on leadership development programs annually. According to Deloitte's research, leading organizations invest significantly in leadership development by:

Employing a leadership strategy aligned with the vision and objectives of the business

Leveraging a data-driven, evidence-based approach to identify leadership potential

Providing intensive coaching and continuous development experiences at all levels of the organization

By taking these steps, organizations are able to reap the following benefits:

Clear articulation of the experiences, exposures, expertise, and expectations of effective leaders

Earlier identification of high-potential talent for development and selection

Measurable returns on investment spent developing high-potential talent

Companies that demonstrate the highest maturity level in leadership development are 10 times more likely to be highly effective at identifying effective leaders than other organizations. High-maturity organizations approach succession management at multiple layers of the organization, not just the top, and approach succession as a continuous process rather than an activity or event.

Throughout our interviews with presidents, they often reminded us that the leadership track in higher education is too often seen as a step back from the primary goal in academia: teaching and research. "Colleges are among the few places where taking a leadership position is tantamount to going over to the dark side," the president of a private research university told us.

Future challenges for campus leaders

Presidents are in the midst of a period of rapid change with new challenges coming from nearly every corner of campus. Institutions are welcoming student bodies that are more racially and ethnically diverse than any cohort of students higher education has previously served, and many are arriving with enormous financial need. Technology is transforming how prospective students evaluate and select an institution, how they interact with their peers and faculty, and how faculty provide instruction. Globalization and automation are prompting debates about the very nature of what students need to learn to compete in a new economy.

Many presidents may be in crisis mode or know their next misstep might lead to the end of their tenure. The increased professionalization of the presidency could also mean that many executives expect to lead multiple institutions by the end of their careers.

The ever-changing demands on college presidents and the ambitions of the men and women holding the job are beginning to shift our understanding of the elements necessary to have exceptional chief executives. Our research uncovered four key challenges in play between higher-education institutions and their top leaders that often turn into barriers to successful presidencies:

Short-term thinking. In our interviews, we found increasing pressure on presidents to look for quick wins. As a result, many are looking for the proverbial low-hanging fruit on their campuses where they can show fast results, not only for their own boards but also for search committees for their next job.

"Presidents approach their job with the expectation that they'll be judged on what they can finish," said the president of a private university. "They think, 'I'll only be here five years, so I should only focus on what I can do in that time before I move on.' They run their schools like pseudo-corporations. It's short-term thinking. You might satisfy the immediate issue of the day, but this is unsustainable as a model."

This short-term thinking surfaces in a variety of ways, including academic programming tied to the current job market; technology purchases that simply patch rather than solve problems; enrollment plans that ignore demographic shifts among students; fundraising that focuses on immediate dollars rather than building a pipeline for future commitments; and strategic plans that are completely rewritten each time a new president is installed.

"Presidents need courage to make bets on the long term, while telling the short-term story that creates ongoing support they need," said the president of a public land-grant university.

Bad fits. The revolving door among presidents means that colleges and universities are looking for presidents more often. In this war for talent, search committees often have outsized ambitions about what they want in their next president, and this lack of alignment tends to lead to bad fits with hires who last only a few years on the job.

A trustee at a private institution that recently hired a president said that while the pool of candidates was "generally good," he was "surprised that not everybody had all the experiences we were looking for. We did have a few presidents in the pool, but not as many as I thought we would. We thought we would see more wanting to move up the scale. What we had were lots looking at this opportunity as their first-time position."

Often the market of available candidates is unable to support the aspirations of the search committee or the institution is looking for the wrong kind of president for its most pressing problems.

The president of a private university told us he recently received a call from a search committee looking to hire a president who would turn the university into a national brand. "I know the last president was fired," the president said. "The individual really sold the opportunity. Selectivity and tuition discount rates were suboptimal for what they wanted to do. He should not have been speaking about his institution in the way he was."

One attribute of effective presidents is that they are in sync with the DNA of their institutions. But the career climbers among academic administrators too often apply for presidencies at a range of disparate institutions with varying missions and needs because they simply want to be a president somewhere.

A longtime president of a large public university told us that he always wanted to lead a land-grant institution but that many of his counterparts lack a guiding ideology about the mission of their campuses. "That's how you end up with bad fits-a private university provost becomes president at a public land-grant, for example," the president said. "Even if you're a wonderful person and an accomplished leader, if you're a bad fit, you won't be successful."

This is particularly relevant to search committees looking for nontraditional candidates who often don't have experience working in higher education. In our survey, sitting presidents overwhelmingly agreed that campus chiefs need to have previous academic experience. Only 14 percent said private sector or business candidates would be the right fit for their institutions. As one president of a private university told us, the most successful presidents "have a profound respect and belief in the very idea of the university."

"If you come in with the mind-set that they need to be disrupted, it won't work," this president explained. "We are limited by the kind of institutions that we are. We have a thousand-year trajectory that we have to look at, while always acknowledging that there is new technology and new approaches to what we do."

Good presidents vs. great presidents. Institutions are increasingly looking for transformational leaders to either take a campus to "the next level" or fix long-standing problems. Great leaders are often described as powerful, stimulating, and exciting. They energize campuses with inspiring narratives. But that doesn't mean they need to be dominant leaders with the loudest voice, said one president at a public university.

"I personally admire administrators who are deft, who have the ability to handle a problem without broadcasting it to the world that they have a problem and how they are handling it," they observed. "The best presidents solve the problems that no one ever sees."

The question for presidents and boards is how fast leaders should move on an agenda. "Academics has a natural 'constrainer' feature built in-peer review, shared governance," said the president of a public land-grant university. "Presidents have to know this and be able to successfully navigate with and against it."

Various stakeholder groups also have strong opinions about what a new president should do the first day on the job. Presidents are hired in part on the vision and ideas they articulated during the interview process, but then they arrive on a campus that already has projects and plans in progress. The newly installed leader and the board "need to do a careful dance" about priorities, a relatively new president at a small liberal arts college told us. "Boards do a president a real disservice when they hand over strategic plans to be executed. Presidents are not CEOs, their power is more diffused, and they have to get buy-in."

Great presidents usually spend time setting the groundwork for change before turning into a more disruptive force. Other times presidents need to stabilize the programs or finances before moving on to tackle strategic issues.

Both approaches call for leaders who can stay long enough to have multiple phases to their presidencies. John DeGioia, the president of Georgetown University, is an example of a leader who spent his first years in office balancing the university's books. DeGioia then turned in recent years to extending the institution's international reach and global brand while overseeing a $1.67 billion capital campaign.

"I was in a turnaround, but once things started getting better, expectations changed," he said. "Presidents need to resist the urge to rush. It is very hard to guide these places through the disruptions."

According to the president of a large public university, this ability to shift between short-term demands and long-term strategy separates great presidents from good presidents: "Pressure is often focused on achieving short-term goals-good presidents achieve these goals-great presidents find ways to build long-term capacity and success in the institution."

The search process. Our interviews generated plenty of criticism about the search process for presidents, and whether the system as currently designed produces the best candidates.

For one, boards and search committees often look for new presidents in response to a controversy stirring on campus or to find a leader with a contrasting style to the one being replaced. A president who works in a large state university system told us that an uptick in student activism recently has meant that leaders with backgrounds in student and legal affairs are popular picks right now, "even though the situation campuses are facing is a narrow aspect of the president's job, and may be temporary."

Second, search committees are, at times, designed to fail. In an effort to give everyone a voice in the process, committees usually include a mix of diverse constituencies-faculty members, students, and trustees. While the group might come to an agreement in drafting a prospectus about what it wants in the next president, many times people on the committee end up evaluating candidates through their own position in the institution's structure. So committees cast a wide net for candidates, even embracing nontraditional applicants, but in the end compromise on the least offensive hire.

Third, few people on the search committee understand the job they are trying to fill. "This is one of my particular beefs about the search process," the president of a large public university told us. "They conjure up what they think are the most important qualities, and that's why candidates probably all end up looking identical after a while."

The next generation college presidency

Even without the pressures bearing down right now on higher education, many college presidents are likely in the final years of their tenure given the demographics of those in the top job. A wave of departures is expected to come among presidents over the next few years.

Where their successors will come from remains a key question for governing boards and other key stakeholders on campuses. Presidential transitions, especially if they occur frequently, tend to stunt the growth of an institution. Searches typically take six months or longer; once new presidents arrive, they go on "listening tours" for their first year; and then they embark on a lengthy strategic-planning process. By then, 18 to 24 months would have passed since the president started.

In the absence of succession planning in higher education, it's unlikely that the search process will change much in the years ahead. But based on our research, here are five strategies and approaches that can help improve the pipeline to the presidency and can give the next generation of campus leaders the opportunity for effective tenures:

1. Develop intentional training and leadership development opportunities aimed at prospective college presidents. Many leaders in higher education no longer have the time to learn on the job or become adequately trained within the narrow scope of senior-level positions that historically have led to the presidency. Rather, they should consider professional development opportunities that give them the big-picture view of the institution, its various functions and academic disciplines, as well as higher education as an industry. Such programs could evolve at the campus level, like those that have been developed at Georgia State, University of Michigan, and Arizona State (see case studies), or could be national in scope, such as the Aspen Presidential Fellowship for Community College Excellence or the Arizona State-Georgetown University Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership.

2. Align short-term tactics and long-term strategies. There are few incentives to encourage leaders to experiment with new ideas and models for the future. Too many governing boards and presidents are worried about the near term and thus focus on quick wins that might result in a publicity spike or help in the rankings. Higher education is a long game; the most fundamental role presidents play is unlocking the capacity of the institution to support its mission and the community members engaged in its work. Boards should set clear long-range goals for presidents and evaluate them not only on their annual performance, but also how well they are progressing toward the more distant horizon.

3. Gain a better understanding of the role of presidents among search committees and set up a transition team to onboard the president. The group responsible for hiring presidents often lacks deep understanding of the job. The panels should include sitting presidents or former chief executives who can provide the best perspective to the search committee members on the skills and competencies needed in the role. Search committees should also avoid ending their work once the president is hired. Presidents need assistance in the transition to the role, and search committees should be reconstituted into a transition committee or a transition coach should be hired to help the new president build momentum for the first few months in office.

Talent factory: University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
A key line in Michigan's famous fight song, "Hail to the Victors," is "the leaders and best." The university has long thought of itself as rising to challenges, "willing to be out there when others aren't," said Mary Sue Coleman, Michigan's president from 2002 to 2014. During Coleman's tenure, the university defended the use of affirmative action in its admissions policies before the US Supreme Court and entered into a groundbreaking partnership with Google to digitize the print collection of the university library.

The "unique combination" of tackling grand challenges and the decentralized nature of Michigan, with 19 schools, some the size of entire institutions, tends to develop leaders for other colleges and universities, Coleman said. "Our deans had to be entrepreneurs and raise money," she said.

Although Michigan is among the top universities when it comes to its administrators going elsewhere to become college presidents, Coleman said the university was never intentional about training its leaders. Michigan does have informal leadership programs for department chairs and deans, where they learn about the particulars of university finances and fundraising, among other subjects.

Coleman said those meetings were useful for administrators, but she is skeptical about building more deliberate pathways to the presidency. "I think people need to demonstrate their leadership," she said. "It's up to the president and provost to look deep in organizations for people showing leadership ability and give them the opportunities to shine."

4. Develop a willingness to look beyond traditional backgrounds. Search committees pay lip service to nontraditional candidates, but rarely take the risk of actually hiring them. What's more, academic leaders typically bristle at the prospect of a new president who comes from a nontraditional background. Given the diverse set of skills needed to run institutions these days and with provosts increasingly saying they don't want to be presidents, search committees may have little choice but to consider candidates from nontraditional backgrounds. But not hailing from academe doesn't mean candidates are intellectual lightweights or can't adjust to the norms of the academy. After all, intellectuals don't end up just in academia. Being transparent and following a well-publicized process in the search to gain buy-in from stakeholders can be critical to gaining acceptance of these new leaders.

Talent factory: Georgia State University
In recent years, Georgia State University has received plenty of attention for how its innovations around student advising and financial aid have produced big gains in the university's retention and graduation rates. Georgia State was named one of the most innovative universities by US News & World Report. Its president, Mark Becker, was singled out as one of the 10 most innovative college presidents by Washington Monthly. And it's a founding member of the University Innovation Alliance.

Such accolades have drawn the attention of other institutions looking for leaders. "They're attracted to candidates from here because of our accomplishments," Becker said. "The publicity has also improved the pools of candidates for administrative positions at Georgia State."

The university also follows a more deliberate path to preparing future leaders. Each month during the academic year, the university hosts a series of gatherings for department chairs and deans about university operations-everything from budgeting to leadership. "We realized we didn't have a lot of bench strength and the only way we'd get it is to develop it," Becker said.

Becker said higher education has a sufficient amount of talent waiting in the wings to fill its leadership void. More faculty members should be encouraged to take on administrative roles, he said, since their pathways tend to be flat unless they assume different tasks. "A lot of people have success in academe but they get bored and stuck in a rut," Becker said. "They have the skills to succeed in administration and there's a broader set of careers out there for them."

5. Build relationships with various stakeholders both on- and off-campus. Presidents are hired by a board and report to a board, but when on campus, most of the interaction presidents have is with faculty and students. The latter group, in particular, is gaining influence on campuses, and presidents would be wise to pay attention to the rising activism among their ranks. The presidency has largely become an external job, and as a result, presidents spend their time increasingly off campus. College leaders should spend more time on campus engaging with faculty members and students and weaving themselves into the fabric of the institution they represent on a daily basis.

There is no doubt the life of the college president and the pathway to the top job have evolved greatly over the last century. Further changes can be expected, if not predicted.

"There is no prototype of a president going forward," a president of a public land-grant university told us. "Presidents need the skill sets of a politician, an academic, and an entrepreneur. This used to be a reflective life, but now you have to drive so many airplanes, and all at once."

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​The dynamics of higher education in America today are driving the demand for a new set of skills and capabilities for tomorrow's leaders. Learn how the role of college president is being transformed, the reasons behind these changes, and what the future implications may be for universities.

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Article on Leadership in Higher Education

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Article on Leadership in Higher Education

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Economic pressures, digital disruption, and rising job complexity are prompting universities to seek more "outsider" leaders for their top jobs.

Higher education in the United States is a big industry-more than $500 billion in annual expenditures-and it's under some big-time pressure as well. Colleges and universities are being squeezed by rising costs, buffeted by increasingly activist stakeholders, struggling to keep up with the effects of digitization on traditional educational models, and facing off against new competitors, such as MOOCs (massive open online courses). Competition for students is so fierce that many universities must rely heavily on student-aid "discounts" to keep dorms and classrooms filled. Demographic change, meantime, demands the continuous reassessment of student-customers and their needs.

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This litany of disruption should sound familiar to people in private industry, where corporate boards often respond by seeking nontraditional leaders-those outside a company's industry-who have different sets of skills and who can bring fresh approaches to problems.

Do business leaders have any business leading universities? Anecdotally, at least, it seems that colleges and universities are turning to the for-profit sector for an injection of nontraditional leadership. Just to name three recent examples: Janet Napolitano, former secretary of homeland security, was named president of the University of California system in 2013. Clayton Rose, a former vice chairman at JPMorgan Chase was appointed president of Bowdoin College in 2015. And in 2016, South Carolina State University appointed James Clark, a retired AT&T executive, as president.

Yet research on the scope of these leadership changes and the reasons behind them remains spotty. I've had the opportunity to observe the phenomenon from both sides of the desk, as it were-first as a McKinsey senior partner and now as the dean of the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. To gain additional insights into higher education's leadership transition, I dug into the data and conducted interviews with leading search firms, which have become ubiquitous in presidential-succession processes.

Learning innovation in the digital age

More outsiders than ever

My research reveals that there is discord on the definition of a nontraditional leader and that, no matter what the definition, the sheer number of nontraditional leaders is significant and growing (Exhibit 1). Nontraditional leaders by my definition-those who have not, at some point in their careers, come through the full-time tenured-faculty track-now represent fully a third of the presidential population. They could become the majority of leaders of liberal-arts colleges within another decade or so, if present trends hold.

Nontraditional leaders are not uniformly distributed

It is also clear that the proportion of nontraditional presidents is not uniform across universities. Search-firm executives interviewed indicated that institutions facing a crisis or with less risk-averse boards tend to look for nontraditional leaders. The data further suggest that schools with a higher-than-average proportion of nontraditional leaders tend to be smaller (in students and staff), less well-resourced (in endowment per student), on the East Coast of the United States, and religiously affiliated.

Institutions at the top of popular lists, such as US News & World Report's Best Colleges ranking, are far less likely to appoint nontraditional leaders than lower-ranked institutions-16 percent nontraditional presidents for the top quintile of colleges against 44 percent for the bottom two quintiles (Exhibit 2). That said, there are still significant numbers of nontraditional presidents in the least likely segments: those that include the highest ranked, most selective, and richly endowed schools. Among them are stalwarts such as Bates, Bowdoin, Carleton, and Colby colleges.

Looking ahead

Are nontraditional leaders more successful? The data fall silent on this question because answering it requires defining and measuring success. A few markers, however, suggest that nontraditional leaders are holding their own. For example, institutions are more likely to hire a nontraditional president following a traditional president than the reverse. Nontraditional presidents also tend to have longer tenures: their median is 6.9 years versus 4.6 years for traditional presidents.

Executive-search professionals had much to say about the trends underlying the growing number and apparent success of nontraditional leaders. On the leadership "supply side," there has been a dramatic decline, over the past few decades, in the number of tenure-track professors in the United States (Exhibit 3). Then there's the job itself: just as in the corporate world, it has changed, with leaders now required to take on many external-facing duties that extend beyond fund-raising and maintaining good town-gown relations. Understanding academic norms and culture remains essential, but intense public scrutiny brought on by 24/7 social media, shifting government regulations, and declining state funding for public universities are all placing a premium on better management, so many talented traditional leaders no longer want the job. Universities have become much more complex businesses, as well. Many large research institutions, for example, have hospital systems that account for as much as half of their revenue and employment.

While these trends show no signs of reversing, they won't stop talented tenure-track professors from continuing to reach the top. The forces at work do mean, though, that colleges and universities will need to be managed and led more like the large, complex organizations they are. The debate will rightfully shift from whether the next president should be traditional or nontraditional to what challenges the leader needs to address. Over time, search committees will increasingly consider outsiders, many of them from business. And to the extent that they are successful, the door will open wider for more of them.

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This article is based on research that appears in the author's recent book, Higher Calling: The Rise of Nontraditional Leaders in Academia (University of Virginia Press, September 2017).

About the author(s)

Scott C. Beardsley is the dean and Charles C. Abbott Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. He is an alumnus of McKinsey's Brussels office, where he was a senior partner until 2015.

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Shaking up the leadership model in higher education

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Economic pressures, digital disruption, and rising job complexity are prompting universities to seek more "outsider" leaders for their top jobs. Higher education in the United States is a big industry-more than $500 billion in annual expenditures-and it's under some big-time pressure as well.

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NISCE interviews William Bryan, Ph.D., Center for Secondary Redesign at INSPIRE 2014

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Bill Bryan talks about the importance of leadership in education as an enabler to positive student outcomes.

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Leadership Values: Who are you as a leader?

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http://www.businesscoach.com Figure out what your core non-negotiable values are. Who are you as a leader? Does your team understand the values that are most important to you?

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New school leadership | Donte Quinine | TEDxWenatchee

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Counselors as Educational Leaders Article

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Counselors as Educational Leaders Article

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School counselors have become an indispensable part of today's school environment. They assume a that are essential in helping students manage their mental health and perform at the highest caliber in order to prepare them for an increasingly competitive job market. variety of roles

A focus on student success and higher education is becoming increasingly important. As technology advances, a growing number of low-skill jobs are being mechanized or outsourced, meaning that the remaining jobs will require new competencies that are learned at college and trade school. ¹

Clearly, the demands of life beyond high school are in flux. As such, educational leaders are needed to rise to the challenge in order to help lead systemic change in schools.

According to The Education Trust, school counselors are uniquely positioned to lead during this transitional time in ways that teachers and administrators cannot. ¹

"Teachers are responsible for teaching subject matter to the students assigned to them. Principals and assistant principals are responsible for managing the budget, assuring a safe learning environment, making the buses run on time, and supporting the instructional and co-curricular programs," researchers Peggy Laturno Hines and Richard W. Lemons write. "Given the design and demands of their jobs, neither teachers nor school administrators are in a position to easily spot, much less change, the alarming mismatch between the demands of the outside world and the trajectories of individual students." ¹

School counselors pick up where administrators and teachers can not. Not only are school counselors responsible for each student in the schools they work for, but they also have the unique opportunity to shape each individual's educational trajectory.

In most schools, counselors manage course assignments for students, ensuring that students earn the required number of credits to graduate from high school. They are also privy to information such as test scores, enrollment patterns, and attendance rates. With this knowledge they can best determine which students are on a solid path to success, and which need additional resources in order to be successful.

Using this data, good counselors can also see how their institutions contribute to the success and/or failure of certain individuals or demographics, and work to improve policies in order to help each student reach their full potential. ¹

Counselors can also lead their schools in creating a "college-going culture" where all students are required to take college and career-readiness courses regardless of their plans after graduation.

"We promote a college-going culture and help students create a roadmap toward graduation filled with rigorous courses," notes Caron Cox, a counselor at one such school who has adopted a college-going culture. "All of our students are in college and career-readiness courses. Even if the students are struggling, we know they'll be more successful in college because they will have been exposed to the material and be better prepared when they leave Elmont." ¹

Other school counselors have made a difference in college readiness by changing their school standards to be more rigorous than in years previous.

Counselors in Bryant High School of the Mobile County Public School system in Alabama recently did just that after noticing that their students didn't seem to be graduating with the mathematics skills necessary to succeed in a college environment.

According to researchers Laturno Hines and Lemons, "They tracked [the problem] back to the school's policy of giving credit for Algebra IA and IB as well as Geometry A and B, which allowed students to complete the four-credit math graduation requirement by the end of their sophomore year." In essence, students who didn't wish to take math as juniors and seniors weren't required to. Sensing a problem, counselors in that school district advocated to change the graduation requirements for future students, ensuring they would have a proper education in mathematics before enrolling in college. The results have been wildly successful.

"Mobile is the only large district in Alabama to make AYP this year and one of the big reasons is what school counselors did," Deputy Superintendent Martha Peek said. "There has been this tendency to put students in low-level courses and just herd them through. You know we can't do that anymore. We've got to ramp up to the Common Core national standards. School counselors, you are the best to spread the word." ¹

These success stories show the kind of potential school counselors have to be agents of change and ensure student success. Through advocacy, thorough use of data, and rapport with administration and students, counselors can easily define pain points and work on new policies to help students become college ready.

In many school districts throughout the United States, this isn't the case, however. In fact, many counselors face a number challenges that can prevent them from advocating and leading in ways that are the best for their students.

Counseling Programs May Not Train Counselors to Properly Lead Change

In years previous, counselors have been trained to be practitioners of mental health and advocates for their students, and as such, not necessarily viewed as traditional leaders in the school environment.

Before, counselors were educated in a model that primarily focused on mental health training, but that has significantly changed. Over the course of the past two to three decades, many counseling programs have adapted their curriculum to better help their students as they become leaders and advocates for systemic change in the school system. ²

Today, counseling programs function on a model that defines the role of the school counselor as "A profession that focuses on. . .reducing the effect of environmental and institutional barriers that impede student academic success. The profession fosters conditions that ensure educational equity, access, and academic success for all students K-12." ²

This shift in focus allows counselors to be better prepared to face some of the most complex challenges facing today's student populations.

Principals and Administration May Not See the Need for School Counselors

In most school settings, counselors report directly to principals or administration, meaning that principals have a lot of say when it comes to a counselor's day-to-day activities. While principals have mastered the administrative capacities of their position, many are still unsure of the best practices for hiring, developing, and evaluating school counselors.. In an ideal school environment, school counselors and administrators work closely together in order to achieve student success.

As a result, many principals don't recognize the essential value that counselors offer to the educational experience for their students. Counselors are often spread thin performing non-counseling duties, from standardized-test coordination, to student discipline, and even substitute teaching. These barriers can prevent counselors from properly taking over leadership roles in the schools that they work for.

In order for counselors to become leaders in the education sphere, principals must understand the critical link between school counselors and college and career-readiness

A recent North Carolina State University study evaluated the relationships between principals and school counselors at high schools that won or were runners up in the College Board's Inspiration Awards. These schools, which were highly diverse, and in areas of high-poverty, had substantially increased student achievement, AP and honors class participation, test scores, and college acceptance and enrollment.

What did these schools have in common?

Their administrators and school counselors shared a core belief that all students could attend college, worked together and maintained responsibility for providing an environment where college-readiness was possible, and collaborated so that the entire school community, working together, reached its goals. is a stepping stone into a career path that helps students achieve their full potential. ³

Now more than ever, educators are in agreement about the goals of K-12 education, which is to prepare all students for college and career. In fact, 46 states have implemented a common curriculum which prioritizes "college-and-career-ready" standards. But the presence of these new standards won't ensure that students will thrive in higher education or in the workforce.

As key members of the educational team, counselors will have to develop the necessary leadership skills in order to help transform today's secondary schools. By providing counselors with the time, resources, and training necessary, students will reap the benefits of an educational system that was designed for their individual success.

For those interested in leading and making a difference in today's secondary schools, Wake Forest University Online

¹ http://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Poised_To_Lead_0.pdf
² http://jsc.montana.edu/articles/v5n19.pdf

³ http://www.academia.edu/5151304/Increasing_college_placement_rates_of_low_income_students

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Student success has become a major focus in today's schools. Counselors perform a necessary role in ensuring a bright future for today's students