Abstract
Despite their best intentions, most department chairs soon find their days filled with handling complaints, solving problems and putting out fires (one hopes only in a metaphorical sense). Yet so much more is possible in academic leadership today. Borrowing from approaches like positive psychology and organizational behavior, Positive Academic Leadership creates a framework for changing the entire dynamic of an academic department.
This workshop is highly interactive with numerous exercises, role-plays, breakout discussions and departmental inventories. It will introduce the concept of positive academic leadership from a number of different perspectives. First, it will explore why academic leaders today so often revert to crisis management as their default leadership style even when other approaches would be more effective. Second, it will consider why the distinctive organizational culture of higher education calls for different models of leadership than those found in other environments. Third, it will explain how even slight changes in perspective and rhetoric can produce significant, lasting changes.
Positive Academic Leadership thus takes a systems approach to working with an academic department. The workshop guides participants in methods of seeing their departments in new ways, developing innovative recognition and reward strategies to encourage more constructive behavior, creating a philosophy of academic leadership that can help guide future planning and improve the tenor of departmental meetings.
Keywords
academic leadership, positive psychology, organizational behavior
Recommended Citation
Buller, Dr. Jeffrey L. (2015). "Positive Academic Leadership: How to Stop Putting Out Fires and Start Making a Difference," Academic Chairpersons Conference Proceedings. https://newprairiepress.org/accp/2015/Plenary/5
Positive Academic Leadership: How to Stop Putting Out Fires and Start Making a Difference
Despite their best intentions, most department chairs soon find their days filled with handling complaints, solving problems and putting out fires (one hopes only in a metaphorical sense). Yet so much more is possible in academic leadership today. Borrowing from approaches like positive psychology and organizational behavior, Positive Academic Leadership creates a framework for changing the entire dynamic of an academic department.
This workshop is highly interactive with numerous exercises, role-plays, breakout discussions and departmental inventories. It will introduce the concept of positive academic leadership from a number of different perspectives. First, it will explore why academic leaders today so often revert to crisis management as their default leadership style even when other approaches would be more effective. Second, it will consider why the distinctive organizational culture of higher education calls for different models of leadership than those found in other environments. Third, it will explain how even slight changes in perspective and rhetoric can produce significant, lasting changes.
Positive Academic Leadership thus takes a systems approach to working with an academic department. The workshop guides participants in methods of seeing their departments in new ways, developing innovative recognition and reward strategies to encourage more constructive behavior, creating a philosophy of academic leadership that can help guide future planning and improve the tenor of departmental meetings.
