Fast Company, Taylor, William C. The Leader of the Future, June 1999.

In 1989, I attended a Leadership Educators Retreat with Robert Terry at the Humphrey Institute. Since then I have watched the leadership and citizenship movements and how that may affect our work in community and education.

This article highlights Harvards Ronald Heifetz views on leadership. I see parallels with the active citizenship movement. Heifetz sees the new role of leadership to help people face reality and to mobilize them to make change. The first step is to help people see the reality, which he refers to as vision.

Heifetz sees conflict as the primary engine of creativity and innovation. He believes people need to talk and debate with each other to find the passion and energy to create new options. He thinks people should make a decision and change that decision if its not working.

Listening is highlighted as an essential skill of good leaders. People must want to listen and do so with curiosity and empathy. Good listeners listen to the tone and intensity of conversation to find out what is really important to people.

Another skills of a good leader is to bring attention to important issues rather than to themselves. Effective leaders need to ripen an issue (or have someone else ripen the issue) so people give attention to it.

I talked to two co-workers in the leadership specialization about the views mentioned in the article. Both people asked for the URL for Fast Company. Co-workers agreed with the points mentioned. We had quite a discussion about the longevity of leaders. Especially in small communities where leaders report burn out or difficulty keeping the issue separate from the person.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

Answers

Melissa Persing,

Good observations. Leadership is a topic worthy of research. You may have read the works of Bensimon, Neumann and Birnbaum - "Making Sense of Administrative Leadership: The 'L' Word in Higher Education".

-- Anonymous, October 01, 1999