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Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Leadership

By Carolyn de la Pena and David Theo Goldberg


Leadership is

--a commitment to the public good 
--an ethic of service in principles and actions
--care for the institution, students, staff, and faculty first
--building effective relationships with one's peers
--making wise judgments mindful of the balance of constituencies one represents
--getting things done quietly and effectively
--behaving in a manner that engenders trust from colleagues
--articulating a comprehensive and compelling institutional vision
--enabling others to contribute effectively and to realize their capacities in support of the common good
--serving as role models for others in the service of the institution and society

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

appallingly benign, apt only for corporate coffee mugs - what is this post doing here?

jane said...

Leadership is...the problem.

I mean this in a thoroughgoingly non-flippant way.

anonstaff said...

The higher ups preach it endlessly to lower level staff, but they don't play it themselves. And then wonder why morale is so very low.

Anonymous said...

Is this what our leadership wants us to get printed on our "successories"?

I second and third anonymouses regarding this post.

cloudminder said...

here are two old posts from a couple of blogs that I follow- they are what came to mind when I read the de la Pena/Goldberg post earlier this week:

The Leadership Racket

Typing Your Workplace Culture

Anonymous said...

Okay, away from the "leadership" hallmark card bullshit: let's hear from faculty in English or History at Davis or LA or Irvine or Berkeley. Do they feel that the warm and fuzzy feelings expressed by Goldberg and Pena are enacted? Is the UCHRI showing such leadership?

More importantly, let's talk about scholarship, not leadership. Universities primarily produce scholarship, at all levels from undergraduates to Nobel Prizes. This may to some under-educated politicians and administrators sound less sexy than leadership. But in actual fact, scholarship is the exciting and unique proposition. Scholarship is what brought you computing and the internet. Let's hear it for scholarship about vitamins and songs, about telemedicine and water policy, about solar energy and poetry, about rockets and theater, about demographic statistics and the law.

From a distance at least, it seems to me that any self-serving leadership kumbaya is covering up for the fact that UC "leadership" has forgotten about how best to foster scholarship. It seems that readers of this blog should labor to return UC to that primary mission.

Anonymous said...

Hm... I wonder whether faculty members in English or History at Davis or LA, or Berkeley or Irvine, feel that the two authors are going to walk the talk with their own warm and fuzzy message. Is this the kind of "leadership" from the UCHRI? Kind of doubt it, myself.

But let's forget about the hallmark card bullshit about leadership: let's remember that that the primary role of a university is scholarship. How does the UC foster scholarship? How do Goldberg and Pena advance and support scholarship, here on this blog, with that weird post?

dr_k said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

only people who have respect for their followers can be leaders

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