Kimberly Meints

School of Educational Foundations, Leadership and Aviation, Oklahoma State University

HESA 5813: Leadership Theory and Ethical Decision Making

Dr. Tami Moore

December 12, 2022

Personal Theory of Leadership

Throughout this course, my classmates, professor, and I have explored a wide variety of leadership theories as we have considered our own experiences and understanding of the topic. As we have gained more knowledge and language to consider the foundations, assumptions, and values of these theories, our professor has also challenged us to develop a personal theory of leadership. Our textbook (Dugan, 2017) also introduced us to several techniques for approaching these theories that can help us identify ideological norms and hegemonic ideals that we often subconsciously enact, even as they perpetuate inequality among our community.

By acknowledging and naming these processes using the tools of deconstruction, and by imagining new methods of enacting disruptive practices using the tools of reconstruction, we can work together to solve the systemic issues that plague our society. These critical perspectives are important to me, personally, as I believe that all people are valuable and should be treated in an equitable way, even as I acknowledge that this reality is not reflected in our current culture. I also see how past injustice has compounded to create vastly unequal outcomes in education, income, housing, health, politics, and nearly every other arena. Within my sphere of influence, I want to create positive change as I continue to listen and learn. The critical perspectives we learned this semester prompt me to slow down and ask myself “What is not being said here? What is assumed?” This can lead me to see old systems in new ways and work together with my community to enact change.

Dugan (2017) presented several narratives from a diverse group of leaders who shared their experiences with us. While there were lessons to be learned from all of them, two of the leaders stood out to me. Mary F. Morten described coming back to serve an organization that she founded (pp. 147-149). I was inspired by her advice that leaders must know when to step up and lead, as well as when to step back and make space for someone else. As a white woman who in many ways reflects the dominant culture, I do see opportunities to both step up and step back. Part of Morten’s advice regarding stepping back is to help develop a pipeline of leaders and to seek out the voices that are missing in the conversation (pp. 255-256). Elsewhere, Cindi H. Love highlighted the importance of graciousness as a skill of leadership (pp. 114-115). As someone also raised in the South, her words gave me permission early in the semester to be myself as a leader. Community is particularly important to me, and kindness, generosity, and other related practices that reflect the respect that I believe each person is due. I could not be a leader if it meant leaving those values behind. Love made it clear that we must be true to ourselves in order to engage meaningfully with others. Looking back over my life, I can see the influences that shaped my values as an adult.

Personal Leadership Narrative

Story of Self

I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in the mid-80s. My grandparents lived five minutes down the road. Since my dad worked in their home office, my brother, sister, and I saw Mimi and Poppa nearly every day. I did not go to weekly daycare until I was three years old because there was always an adult available to take care of me. Even when my mom went back to teach full-time when I was 5, we spent several hours each week at my grandparents’ house. I did not realize just how much support Mimi and Poppa provided my parents in childcare alone until I became a parent myself.

When I was 11, we moved 30 minutes down the road to Clinton. We were part of the white flight movement out of Jackson. The “tri-county area” was home to several colleges and universities, including Mississippi College in Clinton itself, and children of professors from all of these institutions settled in Clinton for the excellent public school system. It was the same district my grandmothers had attended as girls. The other result of our move was that my parents set up a home office in our new house in anticipation of my grandparents’ retirement. I always had access to computers, printers, copy machines, fax machines, and other office equipment. Technology was always close at hand for schoolwork, entertainment, and personal projects. “Office work” always felt like a community space, as my siblings and I worked alongside our parents on our class projects and papers.

In college, I went to the state university and eventually changed my major to Communication, with an emphasis in Public Relations. A major aspect of PR is relating to your publics, and the first step is to identify who those publics are. This shifted my perspective about how organizations function as I realized that business decisions cannot be justified by the bottom line, but by the people those decisions impact. Initially I understood this to mean customers, investors, government bodies, and the general public, but as I entered the workforce, I began to see how integral employees are to the entire business process.

After my junior year, I married my college sweetheart and graduated the following December. Since my husband still had one semester to go, I looked for a job locally. This job search was at the end of 2008, right at the beginning of the Great Recession. All through school, my friends and I been told by our teachers how smart we were and about all the dazzling possibilities we should expect. I was extremely disappointed to find the job market in Starkville very limited. I ended up accepting the only offer I received. I would not have characterized myself as entitled, as I had worked hard, but I was completely unaware of my own privilege and how that had shaped my expectations.

The job was a glorified student worker position. I entered data from college fair interest cards for the Office of Admissions & Scholarships at Mississippi State University for six months, then scanned documents for the Office of Student Financial Aid for six months. Taking that job was a humbling experience for me because it did not feel necessary to hold a bachelor’s degree to complete the daily job duties. However, my familiarity with computers made the job itself easy, and I wanted to get through my stacks faster and with fewer errors. I tried to learn about the why’s and how’s of the departments, and I asked a lot of questions. I had a fantastic supervisor who noticed my interest and enthusiasm and invested in me as an employee. Through this period, I gained a new appreciation for self-led learning, using data to inform decision-making, and the ability to improve the working environment by implementing technology.

One other encounter at this job had a long-term impact on me: I attended a college fair with two African American coworkers at a very rural high school. I had never spent time in an environment like this. My task there was to assess the possibility of swiping students’ driver’s licenses instead of having them fill out paper cards. However, only one student at the fair had a license. The recruiters told me that most kids drove without a license, as it was difficult and expensive for them to get one. The repercussions of wealth disparity, and the resulting unequal racial impacts, really started to sink in for me on that trip. I started to notice how racial and income differences played out in education, as well as other spheres.

In 2012, when my husband and I arrived in Stillwater, Oklahoma for his Ph.D. program, I, again, took the only offer I received. It would be a year before I realized that my position was not just to act as “back-up” for all of the support staff; I was their supervisor! I was at least 30 years junior to all of my staff, and the lessons in humility from my previous positions helped me quickly learn my new duties as well as how to navigate a complicated university structure from my subordinates. Once again, I fell back on my technology skills to help us document and improve our processes and become more efficient. This allowed us to train new employees effectively once my staff began to retire.

My coworker and I both became pregnant in 2015 with due dates just two weeks apart. We both intended to continue working after our babies were born, so we decided to “tag-team” our investigations into everything from leave policies to daycares. We were often frustrated by the lack of clear guidance, particularly in university policy, and sometimes we were even given conflicting information. It was during this time that I started to see the need to support new parents at Oklahoma State University, but as the mother of a newborn myself, there was not much time to pursue this. When my son was about a year old, I started to gather my notes into a centralized document in anticipation of future children. As my son grew older, I found coworkers coming to me first to ask about what they should expect during their pregnancies. I was able to share my document, which they accepted with gratitude. However, this reinforced to me how wrong it is for individual employees to only receive support if they know the right people. In a unique situation like pregnancy, many new parents do not even know what questions to ask.

After six years at Oklahoma State University, I wanted to expand my responsibilities, so I joined Staff Advisory Council (SAC). I wanted to see how I might join with others to address a variety of staff concerns. I volunteered to sit on the Rules, Policies, and Procedures Committee. Over time, I was able to chair this committee and develop friendships with staff in Human Resources. I tried to find opportunities to work with HR to support pregnant parents, such as developing a brochure, but I soon realized two things. First, there were so many caregivers on campus who need support in addition to the pregnant ones. Second, many of the concerns of caregivers affect non-caregivers as well. Therefore, I have tried to educate myself in the needs of caregivers of all types. Through my role on SAC, I have pushed to improve the leave policy to be more inclusive of the variety of ways that staff care for one another, and to be more explicit in how we care for our own mental health.

I also decided that I could best help caregivers and staff members by pursuing my master’s degree in Educational Leadership Studies. I plan to create a Canvas community for caregivers as my Creative Component. Working with SAC helped me to see myself as part of the bigger picture on campus and instilled a desire in me to implement changes and resources that could help more people now and in the future.

Story of Us

This year, I also joined the Staff Advisory Council (SAC) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee. This is the newest committee for SAC, as we voted to incorporate it in June 2021. The Chair, Cara, took time in our first two meetings to discuss where the group came from and what work they did last year, since all of the other members are new to the team. First, they completed an informal survey of other DEI groups on campus to find out what others were working on. The SAC committee did not want to do parallel work without involving the others or start a project that another group had nearly finished. Two things became apparent after this survey. One was that many of these groups did not have an end goal or clear purpose. The other was that no one was focusing specifically on parent needs on campus (although the Women’s Faculty Council has done some work to support faculty mothers, particularly through the pandemic). So, while none of the members last year were parents, they chose to take on that population as their focus. This was partly due to a feeling that the “Cowboy Family” was leaving some of its members behind when they started families of their own. It was also an acknowledgement that by taking care of the families of our staff members, we could encourage those staff to stay longer and more easily recruit their family members as students in the future. In short, they felt that the university could do a better job supporting our community.

In December of 2021, SAC held our Distinguished Service Awards banquet, and I happened to sit next to Cara. I had recently chosen the project for my Creative Component for my master’s degree, and I wanted to recruit the help of her committee. I did not know much about what they had been learning, so I was taking a shot in the dark. I explained to Cara my idea to create a Canvas community for caregivers on campus, including faculty, students, and staff, but I was concerned about what would happen to it once I graduated. The world is unpredictable, and I did not want my efforts to go to waste if I won the lottery or took a job at another institution. I needed a long-term commitment from an entity on campus that would last longer than any individual employee. After hearing my pitch, she got really excited and told me that it was exactly something her committee would want to do, as it aligned with the goals and purpose they had set for themselves.

I met with the entire committee in February 2022 and suggested to them for a “short term win,” something that they could point to as evidence of their work and proof of concept that our DEI Committee was needed among so many others. By June, the project’s first phase was complete. They had gotten several “Inclusive Resources” added to the public campus map, including All-User Restrooms, Diaper Changing Stations, and Lactation Rooms. In the future, we hope to identify areas where additional resources can be installed. Another significant effect of this project was that others have joined in, and the Pete’s (Food) Pantry Network and Red Pantry locations have been added here as well. This effort, conducted only at my suggestion, showed me that I was partnering with people who took these concerns seriously and that we would be a positive force for change.

To further support staff parents specifically, the SAC DEI Committee is also advocating for changes to university policy that we hope will have improve the lives of all staff on campus, either directly or indirectly through improved work environments. Of course, policy is written by Human Resources and approved by administration and the Regents, so we expect that road to be longer and more difficult, as each group has competing priorities, such as budget, culture, and fairness. However, that was a reason for identifying these “easy wins” along the way, to encourage us and build support and momentum as we prepare for the long-term. Another easy win this year, possibly in response to our pressure for paid parental leave, is the introduction of short-term disability insurance during Open Enrollment for the first time in at least ten years, as long as I have been at OSU.

As the time for Distinguished Service Award nominations has come back around, the DEI Committee is assisting in the planning process to help make it more equitable, both in submitting and collecting nominations as well as evaluating them. This is a good example of how the DEI Committee acts as a support unit for the rest of the Council as well as an independent entity. Overall, it is our commitment to community that defines us.

Story of Now

With the rising cost of living, staff working in higher ed are facing difficulty paying their bills. The impending enrollment cliff also has many academic leaders worried for the future, trying to figure out how to maintain the infrastructure and services that we currently provide, which may have implications for staffing. Declining financial support from the state government is held in tension against the desire to keep tuition reasonable and fulfill OSU’s commitment to its land-grand mission. Rather than face increasing uncertainty, many people are seeking alternative employment in the private sector. These pressures are reflected at OSU in the high number of job postings that remain open and the number of vacancies that are not even posted. While we have become experts at “doing more with less,” every employee has a personal limit of what they can produce, and we are facing a staff shortage that could snowball beyond anything we have seen before.

However, there is still an image of higher ed in the collective imagination of the enviable working conditions of the past, even if those conditions were never as rosy for women and people of color as we would have wanted. We can advocate for policy decisions that make OSU a preferred employer again, and this time do it in a way that is equitable for all and tailored to this modern era of diverse families and flexible arrangements. I think back to the support my parents received by living close to family, and how frequently this scenario is unachievable in academia. So many of our staff have relocated away from their families of origin in order to pursue education or job opportunities. Universities have an important obligation to fill in the gaps created within the distinctive communities that they build based on their employment methods.

Through our work on the Staff Advisory Council Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, we can develop creative and impactful solutions to some of the most pressing difficulties our staff are currently experiencing, from recruitment through retirement. In order to ensure that we are identifying problems and creating solutions that are truly meaningful, we will need to partner with other individuals and groups across campus, such as staff affinity organizations. There is also opportunity to look at survey and institutional data to obtain a more complete picture of the current state of the campus. This might include campus climate and exit surveys. It will be pivotal to the success of our efforts that we ensure that staff voices are truly reflected in the process as we seek to support our community.

A Personal Theory of Leadership for Now

Management vs Leadership

One topic of discussion this semester has been the difference between management and leadership. While I could say more, a clear distinction for me is that management has some coercive element to it, while leadership reflects a free and willing relationship among people. Management has the authority to wield punitive consequences against those who do not comply with instructions, such as denying a raise or a committee assignment. Leadership, though, engenders loyalty through trust. Group members must believe that collective goals are achievable and that those who enact leadership do not have ulterior motives. As a parent, I do not think that any person will act solely in one mode or the other, but I do think that every leader will lean toward one side or another. A leader is someone who enables or promotes problem-solving for systemic issues identified and addressed with one or more others.

Considering this distinction, it is vital to me that my personal theory of leadership place ethical treatment of others as the central premise. In this course, we learned about the “tools of deconstruction” which can be used to critically evaluate existing theories, structures, and processes to identify ways that inequality is embedded and replicated. The “tools of reconstruction” offer opportunities for these theories to be changed, or new ones developed, in a way that acknowledges and works against the assumed cultural norms that prioritize some people and experiences over others.

Creating My Personal Theory

In order to incorporate these ethical values, I chose the Relational Leadership Model (“RLM,” Dugan, 2017, pp. 236-241) to act as the core tenant of my personal theory of leadership. At the center of the model is “purpose,” which I believe can help clarify the reason why leadership is needed. Surrounding the purpose, though, are three key components that true leadership will allow the community or group to influence: inclusive, empowering, and ethical practices. These practices are also embedded within the process of accomplishing these co-created goals. One weakness of this model is that the RLM does not offer as many areas to develop capacity for an individual leader. Since not only do I want to improve that in myself, but I also want to empower and mentor future leaders, I felt that there was an opportunity to modify this theory.

One tool of deconstruction is identifying the “flow of power,” or those power dynamics that are in play in all relationships. As a leader or mentor, I must acknowledge the power that I wield and how it can potentially be used for harm. One method to mitigate damage is to implement the tool of reconstruction, “cultivating agency,” thoughtfully and intentionally, which can lead me to support the power and agency of others. To accomplish this, I decided to nest the RLM in the center of the Connective Leadership Model (“CLM,” Dugan, 2017, pp. 228-236). This model presents three behavioral sets that help me conceptualize how to perform leadership in inclusive, empowering, and ethical ways. I appreciate the focus on personal excellence (direct set) and on helping and mentoring others (relational set). However, I find a lot of value in the instrumental set, which offers methods for navigating the tension that can arise when people have genuine disagreements. These interactions must be expected when a diverse group of individuals come together. Addressing differences of opinion in open, honest, and respectful ways is vital to reject “willful blindness” (another tool of deconstruction) and embrace “disrupting normativity” (a tool of reconstruction). I believe it can also lead to “building interest convergence” (reconstruction) if all members of a group feel that they can trust one another. Including the RLM within the CLM also addresses a weakness in the latter regarding who gets to decide what ethical behavior is, by allowing the group to co-create the purpose.

Lastly, I wanted to identify specific practices to support the CLM’s behavioral sets (and within those, the nine achieving styles). I looked to the Leadership Challenge Model (“LCM,” Dugan, 2017, pp. 90-94). I paired each of the LCM’s exemplary practices with one to three of the CLM’s achieving styles (see Figure 1). I appreciated the specific suggestions that reflect the mentoring aspect of leadership that I seek to embody as well as my desire to investigate processes to determine how they can be improved. Altogether, I call my personal leadership theory the “Relational-Connective-Challenge Leadership Model.”

Applying My Personal Theory

Another distinction made between management and leadership is the focus on technical problems versus soft skills. I have noticed in my experience how often technical problems do not usually have only technical solutions. There is often an element of persuasion required to convince people to do something in a new way. Sometimes it is necessary to bring in new people to assist who are not familiar with the process, either to implement a one-time solution or to become a regular part of the process. There are many instances when others do not even see the problem. In each of these scenarios, it is essential to communicate well, to be persistent, and to look for opportunities to work together to meet the needs of all. Generating buy-in is necessary whether the group is formal or informal if solutions are going to make a long-term difference.

As I seek to support caregivers and staff at Oklahoma State University, this model will help me think through ways to generate support for the work of the Staff Advisory Council’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. This will require we to strengthen and expand my personal network. Within the committee itself, these practices will help us navigate the tension of opposing viewpoints as we seek solutions to problems that can meet the needs of a changing workforce, as we become more inclusive. This will also guide us as we meet the challenges of the future, both technical and social. Implementing these supports in a university environment also gives us the opportunity to educate students on practices that they can take with them as they leave the university and enter broader society.

Conclusion

While I would have identified ethics and trust as central to my view of myself as a leader prior to this course, I now have a better understanding of ways to enact those values. I am also better equipped to critically interrogate the assumptions I make about how leadership functions. As I anticipate furthering my career within higher education, I hope to apply these techniques as I advocate for—and with—staff and students.

I have always sought to balance the theoretical with the practical in my life. I think that my personal theory of leadership, or the Relational-Connective-Challenge Leadership Model reflects that tendency. I wanted to incorporate over-arching ideals that would guide application. This theory offers guiding principles for enacting leadership while also helping to identify areas of growth and specific behaviors to reach collective goals. These practices help me explore and uphold the value of community, which has shaped so much of my personal journey.

References

Dugan, J. (2017). Leadership theory: Cultivating critical perspectives. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley.