Towards a Justice-oriented Transformational Leadership: An Educational Leadership Platform
Institutions of higher education in America are historical establishments whose role in shaping the country can be traced to the nascent years of the Colonial Era (Thelin, 2004). Throughout history, the predominant voices in the country have fluctuated between viewing the purpose of higher education as a public versus a private good (Moore, 2014). For instance, as early as the early 19th century, higher education was viewed to serve a public good, whereas in the 21st century this status is being questioned. It is critical to understand the important role that such predominant voices play in the perceived functions and benefits of higher education.
With the establishment of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, the federal government of the United States began to influence higher education (Mumper et al., 2016). When the purpose of higher education is viewed as a private good that only furthers individual interests and as not contributing to the society at-large, federal, state, and local funding resources are redirected to other investments. This is reflected in the downward trend in state and local funding over the span of 20 years contributing from a half to a third in institutional funds (Institute of Higher Education Policy, 2005). Without consistent and reliable funding sources, other constituents such as the administrators of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and donors become critical external influences in the decision-making and functioning of higher education institutions. Such private funding is hard to regulate and has the tendency to perpetuate hegemonic norms that only serve to support narrow interests. In contrast, federal funding, including need-based grants such as the Pell Grant, would provide access to students from low socio-economic and historically marginalized backgrounds. This illustrates the ways in which the perception of higher education’s purpose held by policy makers can affect federal funding. Misplaced policy emphases based on a skewed perception of the purpose of higher education, specifically public land-grant institutions, inevitably result in inequitable access to higher education, furthering the belief of higher education’s private good for privileged individuals with capital.
This educational leadership platform presents the greater purpose of higher education as a public good, with a focus on increasing access for all, equitably. An understanding of higher education as a public good in society will guide my practices as a professional in higher education, informed by my core values as a leader. Becoming a successful leader in higher education warrants a critical self-reflection on the ways in which my leader behaviors and actions can be scaled up to widen access equitably across the entire university, as well and across universities within America.
Higher Education as a Public Good
The Institute for Higher Education Policy (2005) reported consistent findings in studies that have “shown that going to college has broad and quantifiable national impacts, from higher salaries to improved health to increased volunteerism to a reduced reliance on welfare and other social support programs” (Institute of Higher Education Policy, 2005, p. 3). In another report, IHEP policy analysts categorized the longstanding, debated benefits of higher education as a public and private good in relation with social and economic implications of these benefits (Institute of Higher Education Policy, 1998). Labaree (1997) pointed to the liberal democratic society in which higher education is embedded, as the reason for such fluctuations in the purpose of higher education.
Goals of Higher Education
The tension in higher education’s purpose, according to Labaree (1997), stems from its pursuit towards goals of political equality and social equality. The three main goals in this pursuit are democratic equality, social efficiency, and social mobility and one’s goals will vary based on their social location (Labaree, 1997). The democratic equality goal sets the purpose of higher education as a public good to prepare students for their political roles as active citizens in the nation (Labaree, 1997). The social efficiency goal aligns the purpose of higher education with preparing the future workforce. This is viewed as a public good in service of the private sector (Labaree, 1997). The social mobility goal purports that higher education serves to provide individuals with an advantage in social competition for career success; a private good staging higher education as useful only to those seeking individual growth opportunities (Labaree, 1997). The author argues that “the social mobility goal has emerged as the most influential factor in American education” (Labaree, 1997, p. 43) and has resulted in public education being perceived as a private good. Such perceptions have detrimental effects on obtaining government funding for state institutions, which inadvertently increases social stratification and prevents institutions from widening access and engaging in their purpose of the public good. Higher education institutions must look to their communities to widen access and engage in the public good.
Engaging in the Public Good
Collaborative engagement between members of the university and their immediate community as a process to develop communities, instead of engagement being the goal in and of itself, will allow higher education institutions to serve their public-good purpose (Moore, 2014). Democratizing higher education and providing access to everyone within the community requires considering the geographic location, “the history, culture, and socio-economics of a physical location, as well as the interactions of people in that place,” of the community (Moore, 2014, p. 12). Understanding the ways in which social and geographic locations affect members of the community, and working towards developing their relational power will in turn increase representation of their issues within higher education (Moore, 2014).
To serve this purpose of higher education as a public good, and to better achieve Oklahoma State University’s (OSU) diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, it is important to be able to identify the power structures within the university that shape students’ college experiences. Understanding the inequities that may result from these structures requires applying a critical lens to various aspects that influence decision-making by higher education leaders and administrators. Therefore, it is vital for a leader to recognize and identify structures in the environment that may benefit some but not all students and colleagues before attempting to reconstruct them in more equitable ways.
Accordingly, as an aspiring leader in higher education it is crucial for me to explore my positionality. The core values of a leader are informed by their motivation and strengths. Engaging in these core values consistently, across situations and with awareness of my positionality, I reflect on the ways in which I can effect change in the morale within the Office of Undergraduate Admissions (UADM) within OSU. Finally, I present an analysis of the power I hold within my position as an Evaluator and my intentions of utilizing this power with my leader behaviors to change the morale in our office, my community. This will involve moving from a model of equality to equity in order to increase productivity and further democratic practices in our admissions processes.
Leadership Platform
The key tenets that define my leadership values reflect my motivation, powered by my strengths. Understanding my motivation for equity in higher education will help me act consistently, through my core leadership values across situations and over time. To effectively change power structures in higher education, I must use my strengths to identify and address them in my environment.
Motivation
Due to the extremely high levels of competition and limited availability of access to colleges, in India, where I went to high school, high school sophomore grades decide the academic future of students. If the grades earned by the students in the national standardized exams are in the 90th percentile, the students would have access to coursework in the sciences that will set them up for success in the STEM programs. However, if these grades fall below the 90th percentile, the only major choices available to these students are in the arts. I belonged to the latter category and completed my high school with a focus on accounting, commerce, and business mathematics. I then pursued a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology. After two years, I transferred to Illinois State University where, irrespective of my high school scores, in the United States, I was given the opportunity to take physiology, and psychopharmacology courses. I was excited by the course content and gained research experience in behavior neuroscience before successfully completing my undergraduate degree. Had I not transferred to an American public university to pursue my interests when I did, I may never have had the critical experiences that shaped my development in college. These days, I reflect on the ways in which access to higher education in America is limited to those who have economic and social capital, leaving behind marginalized communities and systemically disadvantaging them. Before deconstructing structures in higher education that marginalize some populations of students and reconstructing them equitably, I analyze my strengths that form the basis of my leader behaviors.
Strengths
My top five strengths as identified by Clifton Strengths (CliftonStrengths | Gallup, n.d.) are relator, responsibility, arranger, restorative, and individualization, and they influence my leader behaviors. As a relator, I work towards understanding the sensitivities of my colleagues, their goals, and motivation. This allows me to build genuine relationships and trust. This trustworthiness paired with a high moral, and ethical standard for myself can be seen through my responsibility. It empowers me to be a valuable resource for my co-workers. Being an arranger, I can engage with others’ points of view while remaining flexible to arrive at an optimal solution to any crisis. By utilizing my restorative strength intentionally, I can improve my problem-solving approach. As a leader, I am perceptive of the relationship dynamics among colleagues and work to diffuse issues by presenting alternate perspectives or clearing misunderstandings before situations escalate. Given my individualization strength, I can find the best in each person and this informs my interactions with others and the ways in which I navigate difficult situations. Honing in on my strengths will allow me to utilize my assets as I engage in leader behaviors in the domain of executing and relationship-building (Dugan, 2017)
Dugan (2017), in his discussion on the weaknesses of a strength-based approach, however, highlights the issues of context in which leadership is being enacted. To elaborate, while I may think of myself as leading when I enact these strengths, based on the situation and frequency of my actions, others may not see them as leader behaviors, and instead—based on their own stocks of knowledge—perceive these actions as negative or detrimental to an initiative. For instance, my top five strengths may be viewed as cliquish, over-committed, constantly rearranging, problem-focused and nosy. Therefore, to increase the transferability and malleability of my leader behaviors across situations, I delineate these behaviors to identify my people-first approach to goal attainment and advancement of my team and myself.
Leader Behavior and Characteristics
Drawing from my experiences as a manager in retail as well as my current position within UADM in a non-supervisory role, I have been and continue to be someone who looks to effect change in inequitable systems. I work to consistently develop those around me by recognizing their contributions and challenging and supporting them through my interactions with them. I take pride in encouraging others to act by actively mentoring, advising, coaching, and providing constructive criticism. Being optimistic, and having the flexibility to work within groups, while being aware of the emotions and perceptions of others and myself within the groups across different situations has developed my emotional intelligence. In my role as an evaluator, I strive to develop the new employees by teaching them to troubleshoot issues on their own and provide them with resources to be self-sufficient. I invest time in helping some of my colleagues process their emotions by providing alternate perspectives or sides to the story as they navigate some of the issues they encounter personally, and professionally. I also recognize and acknowledge team members including leaders when they extend themselves beyond their job requirements. In each of these interactions, my focus is always on maintaining a positive atmosphere for all of us to work together as a community and limit the escalation of misunderstandings.
I also take initiative and envision possibilities beyond what is in place (Dugan, 2017). This is illustrated by my current efforts to incorporate Boyte’s (2008) citizen professional philosophy in addressing morale issues among our staff at UADM who feel overworked and under appreciated. We have different teams with different needs and a “one-size-fits-all” style of leadership has resulted in many of our employees quitting, burning out, and feeling demoralized in their primary task of recruitment and customer service. Within my role, I continue to address these morale issues by highlighting specifics at our Staff Enrichment Team (SET) meetings. This team, comprised of representatives from all the units within our office, serves to bring up issues within our teams that need to be addressed across the office. Until now, the response from the leadership to most issues raised by the representatives is one of rejecting possible solutions. This recurring theme of rejection, based on the notion of equality, has demoralized those few team members who are consistently focused on improving morale and enriching the lives of their colleagues. If we present a united front of our primary needs and changes that we wish to implement that will be equitable, but not an equal one-size-fits-all approach, we may have more success in increasing morale across the units within our office. This situation aligns with my leader behavior of creating a positive environment where everyone can thrive. I expect for these changes to move us as an organization beyond the current equality-based leadership style to one that focuses on equitable solutions for work-life balance, reward mechanisms, and support structures tailored to the different needs of members within the different units within admissions.
Justice-oriented Transformational Leadership
Leadership does not occur in a vacuum. To create a justice-oriented change within higher education, it is critical to reflect on the ways in which engaging in leader behaviors affects others with a consideration of the role of power within such contexts. Through the work in the Leadership Theory course including the thinking papers, and deconstructing and reconstructing leadership theories, I have recognized and come to understand power and its role in creating social change. Working on the leader profile, as I delved into President Barack Obama’s leadership style during his days as a community organizer, I recognized the ways in which he utilized his transformational leadership style in justice-oriented ways. As a transformational leader, he was aware of the power he had to transform communities. However, he was also perceptive of the fact that the power and authority to choose the type of transformation a community pursued would belong to him. This would allow the type of transformation pursued to be susceptible to meta-themes of critical social theory such as perpetuating dominant hegemonic norms informed by his social location and stocks of knowledge (Dugan, 2017). To address this, Obama has worked in communities to develop everyday citizens’ collective agency to identify those things they wish to transform within their communities.
Ospina et al. (2012) stress the importance of harnessing the power of those in socially unjust circumstances so that they may participate and alter their own circumstances. Obama, as a justice-oriented transformational leader, engaged in leader behaviors informed by his core values and transformational leader characteristics. In addition, he engaged in leadership drivers such as a value for social justice, critical reflection on assumptions, redressing systemic inequities, and creating shared visions of justice. When leaders engage in these drivers consistently, informed by core values and practices, they help build collective power among members of the organization. Collective power allows members within communities to leverage such power to create long-term sustainable social change. Similarly, changing the morale in our office by creating equitable policies and procedures will require the involvement of the staff members and the leaders within our leadership.
My people-first leadership style directed with my core values and informed by my strengths alone is susceptible to the critical meta-themes mentioned previously. To be successful in my endeavor of creating equitable structures within UADM to increase staff morale, and create long-term changes to our policies and procedures, I will also need to use a justice-oriented transformational style of leadership. Therefore, to engage in my leader behaviors, informed by my core values, I must work to increase collective agency within the staff. Helping staff members identify their own power within the organization, and the ways in which they can leverage that collective power to create the changes they seek within our organization’s culture will support my core values. To do this successfully and sustainably over the long-term, I draw from Georgianna Reyes, the assistant vice president for mission and values at DePaul University in Chicago as an inspiration.
“I’ve learned how to temper myself in ways that will allow me to be heard as well as engage in the struggle over the long haul. I can have a powerful message. I can know and understand better than everybody else. But, if nobody is listening, it’s not going to have an impact. And, if I’m going to be a voice for somebody who is not at the table, who wasn’t even invited to the table, then I need to be heard, and my objective needs to be bringing those voices to the table until they are there to represent themselves (as cited in Dugan, 2017, p. 328).”
I am inspired by Reyes’ willingness to, as she says, “temper” herself. This quote reminds me that my anger and frustrations about systemic inequities need to be tempered in an effort to effect long-term social change. It is especially crucial, in my effort to be heard and to be able to bring others to the table.
Developing the skills to apply critical perspectives to leadership theories and thereby inform/alter leader behaviors towards a justice orientation therefore requires the ability to develop collective agency among others and the ability to become more impactful as a leader. Creating an equitable culture within higher education requires engaging in multiple critical reflections within universities and their administration. Any efforts to be diverse and inclusive will be perfunctory unless the culture and motivation for equitable outcomes is the priority of every leader within these institutions. Higher morale within UADM would translate to happier employees, and happier employees are more likely to be successful in recruiting and retaining students and meeting OSU’s enrollment and retention goals.
Students of color, first-generation, and those with low socio-economic backgrounds especially tend to face power structures in higher education that block access to an education to further themselves. As I pursue an advanced degree in Higher Education Leadership Studies and continue to develop myself as a leader within my career in higher education, this Educational Leadership Platform, a self-reflective statement of my core values, will inform my actions as a leader. I intend for this platform to also serve as a reminder of my primary motivation for working in higher education —to make access to higher education more equitable for all and to do so by harnessing the collective agency of members in our campus community.
In conclusion, I recognize that change takes time, but it must start somewhere to gain momentum. I wish to be that change initiator in my office. If we are successful in creating a positive community of employees that can work cohesively together, we will exude that as we recruit students to join our university. When prospective students and families work with OSU counselors and admissions staff who are happy and friendly, they will see the culture of our office as reflective of the “Cowboy Family” organizational saga. Over time, such changes towards a justice-oriented transformational leadership style will speak for itself through goal attainment and enrollment successes. Other divisions within OSU such as the Office of Student Financial Aid could also implement and see such results changing the culture across campus one office at a time. Such a culture change that focuses on equity for its employees as well as its students will truly live up to its core values of diversity and inclusion.
References
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Ospina, S. M., Foldy, E. G., El Hadidy, W., Dodge, J., Hofmann-Pinilla, A., & Su, C. (2012). Social change leadership as relational leadership. In Advancing relational leadership research: A dialogue among perspectives (pp. 255–302). IAP Information Age Publishing.
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