Personal-best leadership experiences all begin with a challenge, a novel or difficult situation that requires a departure from the norm. Exemplary leaders don’t back away. In fact, they see these circumstances as opportunities to shake things up (or perhaps just corral the energy that already exists). They rise above the chaos and uncertainty to take the lead in changing the way things get done. Leaders turn the workplace into a learning laboratory. They question processes, s

A famous but possibly apocryphal tale about Albert Einstein is that he dreamed up the theory of relativity when riding his bicycle. Warren Buffett is on record as saying that he reads for six hours per day and has very few scheduled meetings. Both of these examples stand in stark contrast to the ways in which most leaders use their time. Many are slaves to email (one CEO only half-jokingly defines his job as “answering 2,000 emails a day”) and have much of the remainder of th

Anyone involved with higher education can enumerate problems that will need solutions well before we get to “tomorrow’s world”. While it is probably safe to say that many of the future challenges will be similar to those we face today, the scope of current challenges may be far different from future emerging trends and needs. For example, it is a safe bet that financing higher education will probably continue to be a major challenge in the future. Similarly, emerging leader

When it comes to the subject of genuine, substantive change, higher education is a paradox. On the one hand, we work in a field in which we constantly develop new ideas, solutions, and practices within our own fields. We advocate for change and, when the data contradict our current beliefs or models, we change our ideas. Basically we’re in the progress business. On the other hand, we - faculty and administrators alike - find it far more difficult to change our practices and b

A discussion between the Chair Academy Executive Director Rose Marie Sloan and Clifton L. Taulbert, global speaker, author, entrepreneur, and businessman. Clifton L. Taulbert, perhaps best known throughout the post-secondary landscape as the author of Eight Habits of the Heart, began learning his own leadership lessons as a child in the Mississippi Delta. Throughout his life his lessons have been many and varied but they were all rooted in the value of community. The connecti

Learning to be a leader is like learning to be a great athlete, musician or artist. It’s a capability that develops over time, through trial and error, hard work, and practice. Leadership is learned by doing, not simply by taking notes in a classroom. -Stanford Graduate School of Business Are you a leader? If so, when did you become a leader? It’s probably hard to pinpoint a specific date or time when you identified yourself as a leader. Learning to lead takes time, practice,

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both. – James A. Michener Balance vs. Integration Do you live your life like a series of concurrent