Finding Your Voice: Thoughts for New Presidents
Campus leaders bring to their responsibilities the knowledge, skills, and values developed earlier in their careers. Each new position or fresh setting brings another opportunity...
By Rebecca Sherrick, PhD
Campus leaders bring to their responsibilities the knowledge, skills, and values developed earlier in their careers. Each new position or fresh setting brings another opportunity for growth, for honing tools vital to successful leadership. Today, as institutional leaders grapple with increasingly complicated issues, among the most important of these tools is “the leader’s voice,” the messaging and presence used to communicate goals and inspire support.
Although effective communication has always been important, it may be even more so now. Higher education leaders rally followership from different, and often competing, constituencies. Last year’s contentious Congressional hearings were a powerful reminder of the profound impact such divisions may have on presidents and the organizations they lead. The narrative that follows explores the concept of the leader’s voice and turns next to a discussion of strategies to consider.
The Leader’s Voice
Books, journals, curricula, podcasts, and websites are filled with counsel on the leader’s voice, a process that unfolds over a lifetime in leadership. Voice is not the same as a brand. Neither is it about adopting a persona or playing a role. Instead, it is about authenticity. An effective voice flows from the deep values, identity, and experiences of the leader and resonates with listeners and followers for similar reasons. Such a communication process is relational.
This is not new. In higher education, leadership frequently has been more about encouraging collaboration than about exercising formal power. Success in such settings relies upon persuading potential followers to embrace the vision set forth by the leader and to work together to accomplish shared goals. As colleges and universities grapple with increasingly divisive and complicated issues, organizational unity becomes an even more valuable asset.
Examples to Consider
This isn’t easy work. Like many a new president, I began the start of my tenure with a clear agenda in mind – only to discard or postpone my plans to address immediate priorities, including a large operating deficit and consternation within the campus community about a merger just completed. I also began to meet with alumni. As different as the recently-merged colleges were in the minds of current staff and faculty, the stories recalled by their graduates were similar.
This one remains my favorite: A graduate from the 1950s recalled arriving on an empty campus with a single suitcase. He’d been on a hot bus for hours and then walked across town to find the college. Eventually he discovered a white-haired man unpacking boxes in the basement of the dining hall. The two began to work together on the project, tossing cans of food back and forth to one another. They finished quickly. Then the older man invited the younger to join his family for dinner. It was only as they left the campus that the student realized his new friend was president of the college.
Again and again, I heard similar accounts about the generous impact faculty and staff had on the lives of students. They echoed my own dedication to servant leadership and became the parables I invoked to discuss shared values as I developed my own leadership voice.
As this example suggests, the process of developing a leadership voice may begin at the intersection of individual and community values. In the 1950s, University of California educator Clark Kerr discovered this early in his presidency when he refused to dismiss faculty members who declined to sign McCarthy Era loyalty oaths. His voice was grounded in the deep belief that higher education best serves democracy when ideas flow freely on campus.
Jill Ker Conway, the first female president of Smith College, and Freeman A. Hrabowski, former president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, drew comparisons between their own experiences and those of their students to develop powerful leadership voices. For them identity and life experiences were the starting point for development of the leadership voices that echoed far beyond the boundaries of the campuses they served.
Conclusion: Getting Started
Kerr, Conway, and Hrabowski all were known as successful leaders whose voices distinguished their institutions from the many others in higher education. Crucial to their success was the capacity to rally support for the visions they advocated. As you begin your own effort to develop a distinctive leadership voice, think about taking these steps:
- Reflect First. Begin by clarifying why you want to serve as a president. For example, are there values you hope to champion? A cause you want to advocate for such as free inquiry? Or do you want to ensure that the opportunities you enjoyed are available to others?
- Listen Carefully. As you probe your own motivations, listen closely to your new colleagues. Are there stories that they repeat often? Memorable moments that continue to resonate in the community? Or perhaps there are words that people repeat again and again in their descriptions of the institution.
- Weave. Our thesis is that a powerful leadership voice begins at the intersection of individual and community values, beliefs, and experiences. As you contemplate your own reflections and those of others, are you able to weave a tapestry that is strong, resilient, and distinctive? Now take the risk of sharing your thinking with a trusted confidante or two. Audition and then rehearse.
As you pursue these strategies, remember that you may want to use different words or images to communicate a consistent message to a particular stakeholder group. The core message should remain constant and consistent, but different language is acceptable.
Give yourself time to launch this developmental process. In many ways, it is the work of a professional lifetime, the very essence of vocation. Today, when so many of higher education’s traditions are questioned, your voice will do more than establish rapport. It will help create the clarity of purpose necessary for your college or university to continue to fulfill its mission.
