All of Us, Not Some of Us: An Effective Leadership Strategy

The chair of the board of trustees at Roosevelt University, a leader who I admired and respected and with whom I worked in tandem for thirteen years, used to say when complex issues were under discussion that “none of us is as smart as all of us.” I doubt that he explicitly was thinking of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) as a value system per se. A practical man, he always wanted to be certain that everyone’s voices and opinions were heard on all issues so that collectively we would benefit from the cumulative wisdom, insights, and experience of all the talented and successful people on our board.

But I think that he was on to something in the DEI space.

Recently I have been thinking about his wise counsel in the context of leadership development generally and more specifically in my work with the American Council on Education Fellows Program. As the student bodies of our institutions become more diverse overall, though unevenly across sectors, the current demographics of the country as a whole make it inevitable that this trend will continue and maybe even accelerate.

This set me to thinking about how to address a fundamental challenge in leadership development. How do current leaders assure that a greater and greater proportion of these diverse student bodies seek to develop careers in higher education generally and that those with the talent and the disposition to do so pursue careers in leadership roles in our institutions? Or, as some would say, how do we assure that the people who work in and lead our colleges and universities are as diverse as the students they will be responsible for educating?

This is not a new issue, but it is increasingly an urgent one.

I’ve been hanging out for a long time now, observing and thinking about the uneven march of history in our times. These reflections and the experiences that sparked and sustained them over nearly eight decades continue to shape how I think about issues as they move into an uncertain and unknowable future.

I remember as a pre-teenager going out at night to observe in the Miami skies the passage of Sputnik over our heads. Two consequences of that achievement in space were important to the development of higher education over the next decade or so. The first was the need for more scientists and engineers than the then landscape of institutions could produce. In Florida in those days, for instance, if you wanted to go to a public institution, you had two choices: the University of Florida and Florida State University. Accordingly, the 1960s witnessed a startling growth both of new institutions and student body size, expanding a trend begun in the previous decade.

The other major change of those times was in funding students to go to graduate school. The focus of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA, 1956) may have been on the STEM disciplines, but with the rapid growth both in the size and number of colleges and universities, some of that support had to go to preparing people to be faculty members in the social sciences and humanities in those very institutions. Thus, I went to graduate school to study British 18^th Century History on an NDEA Fellowship.

I mention all of this not for the purpose of relating my own personal story, which is well known, at least in some quarters, but to make the point that when faced with a serious challenge to America’s future, leaders at all levels and of all political views came together to create pathways for students like me to contribute to the overall effort.

It seems to me that we are now at a juncture in our history where the lessons of those days apply directly to DEI leadership development imperatives going forward.

How are we to do this work? I’ve written elsewhere about the current leadership development programs in colleges and universities. These range from on-campus programs at many (maybe even most) institutions to those sponsored by the national higher education associations. They even are a primary rationale for the creation of new associations such as the LGBTQ Leaders (formerly Presidents) in Higher Education that have as an explicit goal to promote DEI for their members.

These programs collectively will help chip away at the current profile of campus faculties and senior leaders at the level of dean and above. But the progress will be slow, uneven, and incremental. The decennial ACE survey of presidents is proof, as if mere observation isn’t sufficient, that while there has been change, it hasn’t been as transformative as some of us had hoped.

What to do? I think that those of us who believe in the importance of attaining the goal of greater diversity in the leadership of colleges and universities have an obligation to make it a personal mission to actively identify potential leaders, invest resources in their career development, and (this is key) give them opportunities to develop their leadership skills by hiring them and promoting them through the ranks.

It has long been my view that leadership development, overall and especially of individuals from underrepresented groups, is one important measure of leadership effectiveness for senior administrators. Deans should be held accountable for recruiting and retaining a more diverse faculty, provosts should be held accountable for assuring that deans are well supported in that endeavor, and presidents should be held accountable for the diversity of the senior leadership team.

My chair intuitively knew that if those around the table were not as diverse as the students we served, then because of their absence, those who were there would be less smart and less effective than the group would otherwise be. None of us, after all, is as smart as all of us, provided that all of us means ALL of us.