These days, effective college presidents require a wide-ranging suite of interpersonal skills, such as the ability to build trust with constituencies and communicate effectively, according to new research. Given the inevitable fires they’ll have to put out, they must also have the resilience to deal with adversity.
The research, in many ways, confirms much of the current dialogue about the challenges facing campus leaders: They are beset by competing demands from various groups, such as alumni, faculty, and students; under pressure to quickly solve enormous administrative and financial problems; and fearful that any pronouncement or action could swiftly spark internet outrage and reputational damage.
The job of college president has always been difficult, but those conditions have raised the stakes for the current crop of leaders, said Kevin McClure, an associate professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and one of the study’s co-authors.
The study summarized survey responses of more than 700 college leaders and four focus groups of 14 presidents. While the study didn’t break out responses by institutional type, respondents included more than 100 leaders from members of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and 253 leaders who are members of the Council of Independent Colleges.
The survey asked participants to rate the importance of skills and knowledge in four areas: leadership qualities, institutional management, policies and practices, and larger higher-ed trends that could be taught in leadership programs.
Through open-ended comments on the survey and in the focus groups, the researchers found that building a reliable leadership team was crucial for presidents, as were a constellation of personal qualities like “emotional intelligence” and “leading with courage.”
“One of the most frequent codes for open-ended comments on the survey was humility, appearing in 37 separate comments,” the researchers wrote. “Comments spoke to the importance of admitting mistakes, apologizing, and praising others while not expecting to receive credit for successes.”
Jorge Burmicky, an assistant professor of higher education leadership and policy studies at Howard University, and the other co-author, said the results also capture the humanity of the presidency and how painful and lonely it can be. That helps explain why the average tenure of the presidency has continued to decline, he said.
Although still rated highly by a majority of respondents, abilities like using data for decision-making and skill in managing institutional resources were not as widely embraced.
Jim Wohlpart, president of Central Washington University, who participated in a focus group, said the results don’t discount the importance of more technical skills and knowledge, such as understanding athletics, enrollment management, and institutional finances.
But leadership qualities have become more important because of increased demands and the uncertainty of the job, Wohlpart said.
“I go day-to-day, week-to-week not knowing what issue I’m going to face,” said Wohlpart, who began as president in June 2021. “The predictability is gone.”
Wohlpart blames the difficult environment on the public’s declining faith in higher education and the barrage of negative political rhetoric about colleges.
“There has been a pretty concerted effort to denigrate higher education, and that effort has not been based on factual evidence,” he said. “It’s based on misplaced values.” The widespread campaign to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on campuses is one result of those attacks, Wohlpart said.
Despite that trend, presidents who are women or people of color placed more importance on nearly every leadership trait and knowledge area, the study found, but especially on things that promoted consideration of different perspectives.
“Women were much more likely than men to indicate that demonstrating a commitment to equity-mindedness and weighing the consequences of decisions on different groups are very relevant,” the researchers wrote. Presidents from racial-minority groups, they added, “were more likely than white presidents to indicate help-seeking and recognizing how emotions impact other people as very relevant.”
The disparities don’t mean that white men didn’t find these practices important, the study said, “simply that a smaller percentage of men marked them as very relevant.”
Burmicky, the Howard researcher, said presidents who are women and people of color could be more sensitive to those qualities because they have experienced leadership that has excluded them.
White men, however, have not been challenged in the same way, Burmicky said. “If you’ve never been questioned about your credentials, you don’t have any sensitivity to that.”
The results of the study are important not just to encourage current leaders to focus on these qualities, researchers said, but to build better leadership-training programs and also to inform boards going through the presidential-search process.
The research was sponsored by Academic Search, a firm that aids colleges in leadership searches as well as executive coaching, and a subsidiary of the American Academic Leadership Institute, a nonprofit group that provides training and support to college presidents.
Shawn M. Hartman, senior vice president and chief operating officer of Academic Search, said his organization hopes to continue to collect data over time and see how it changes, so that aspiring leaders can adapt to evolving conditions.
Search processes could also be improved by informing boards about what’s really important when choosing a president, Hartman said, and how to support senior administrators if things go wrong, as they inevitably do.
“The process tends to reward the best game-show host,” Hartman said, “not necessarily the best candidate.”
