If You Are The “Boss,” How Do You Lead?

I use the word “boss” in a broad sense, as referring to anyone who has one or more persons who work under his/her leadership.

My passionate belief about what I believe to be the primary skill needed to be an effective “boss” is deeply informed by the following foundational teaching from Parker Palmer, a renowned sociologist committed to a Quaker expression of the Christian faith.

Jesus exercises the only kind of leadership that can evoke authentic community – leadership that risks failure (and even crucifixion) by making space for other people to act. When a leader takes up all the space and preempts all the action, he or she may make something happen, but that something is not community. Nor is it abundance, because the leader is only one person, and one person’s resources invariably run out. But when a leader is willing to trust the abundance that people have and can generate together, willing to take the risk of inviting people to share from that abundance, then and only then may true community emerge.  (FN # 1)

In my own words, Palmer points us to the glaring weakness of the “Command-and-Control” model for leadership (I am the boss; so here is what I want you to do); which is that the result has the potential to be only as good as the giftedness of “the boss.”

In sharp contrast, Palmer embraces a collaborative model for leadership, for which there is the potential for the final result to reflect the combined giftedness of “the boss” and those he/she supervises. In addition, it is only this type of collaborative leadership that has the potential to foster “genuine community.”

My past experience of being the “boss” consisted of positions of academic leadership at three Christian liberal arts colleges: Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPAA) at Northwestern College in Iowa (NWC) from 1980 to 1988; VPAA at Messiah College (PA) from 1988 to 1993; and Founding Director of the Center for Christian Studies (Now named the Center for Faith and Inquiry) at Gordon College (MA) from 1994 to 2003. What follows is based on my experiences in these three positions as an academic administrator. However, I believe that my reflections will be applicable to any position of leadership as a “boss.”

I arrived at my collaborative model for leadership in an unusual way. My first few days as VPAA at NWC were miserable. I spent them reading over the voluminous files left to me by my predecessor, which I found painfully boring and unhelpful. So, a new idea occurred to me. I should meet face-to-face with each of my faculty members, in their offices, with the following agenda. I first asked each faculty member to share with me their dreams for the future of NWC and their dreams for their own growth as teachers, both in the classroom and as scholars addressing the larger academy. I just listened carefully, making mental and written notes. I then shared with each of them my VISION, followed by my promising each one of them that in my role as the “boss,” I would seek for ways for us to pursue our respective dreams together; hoping to uncover a good bit of “common ground.”

In words most relevant to the content of this Musing, I was building a significant level of mutual understanding and mutual trust needed for us to work together toward the accomplishment of shared elements of our respective VISIONS. I now believe that building such mutual understanding and mutual trust is the primary exemplification of what it means to “respect” one another.

This does not eliminate the fact that the “buck stopped with me” as the “boss.” For example, when changes needed to be made in policies for my faculty, I, as VPAA, was ultimately responsible for sending my recommendation to the President or Board of Trustees. However, whatever the policy issue (e.g., criteria for faculty promotion in rank or the granting of tenure), I handed over the assignment to an appropriate faculty committee (in the example just cited, the Faculty Status Committee). But, in doing so, I always got “my oar in the water” (A phrase dreamt up by some of my faculty) by adding to my assignment statement, saying something like “Here is my initial idea as to what the new policy might be. But my idea is only something for you to consider. It is your responsibility now to come back to me with your “best” recommendation which I will seriously consider before I send my final recommendation to the President or Board of Trustees.”

The faculty often came back with a wise recommendation that was better than my initial idea. What we all discovered though this collaborative approach to leadership was an exemplification of the advice given by Parker Palmer, in that my final recommendation reflected the giftedness of everyone (the “boss” and his “followers”) and a strong sense of community emerged.

This musing merely introduces the ideal, in my opinion, of a collaborative approach to leadership. It does not address questions the reader may have about some implementation details. For those readers interested in a more in-depth analysis, look for my next Musing (titled “The Dangers of Top-Down Leadership and the Benefits of Collaborative Leadership”); especially directed to those current faculty who erroneously think that being an effective teacher will necessarily lead to becoming an effective academic administrator. 

 1: Parker J. Palmer, the Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring. New York: Harper Collins, 1991, p. 138, which I quote on pp.47-48 of my book Let’s Talk.