Fostering Leadership

Posted on Dec. 1, 1994

Twenty years ago it was my privilege to serve as the staff director for the Democratic Class of the 94th Congress, the so-called “Watergate Class.” These 75 new members of Congress came to Washington fiercely committed to congressional reform. Quickly working with others, they managed to end the seniority system in the selection of House committee chairmen and brought more democratic rules to the House of Representatives. Now, 20 years later, very few remain in the Congress and fewer still are in public life.

It is hard to pick up a newspaper or a news magazine without reading about the growing public disenchantment with Congress and with public officials generally. Pervasive cynicism appears to reflect our attitude toward elected officials as well as the institutions we have elected them to lead.

A friend of mine who now is a national news magazine columnist once commented that “to run for Congress is to perform an unnatural act. You have to say goodbye to your family, mortgage everything you own, borrow money from friends and solicit funds from strangers, have every thought or deed you’ve ever committed or considered subjected to intense public scrutiny, be presumed guilty until you demonstrate your innocence, and your reward, should you be elected, is that you get to do it all over again in two years.”

You might understandably ask what this has to do with our University. My fear is that growing public cynicism about public officials is so pervasive that it may be very difficult for any president or chancellor of a major research university such as our own to be successful or to be perceived as successful.

We seem to have a great ambivalence about leadership. Recently I attended a week-long leadership development program under the auspices of the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro. While we spent considerable time learning more about ourselves and our respective leadership styles, we also discussed various philosophies and tools of leadership. While it is clear that leaders need followers, there is an instinctive tendency among us to on the one hand crave leadership and at the same time be resentful of it. As individuals we pride ourselves on our independence and at the same time bemoan the absence of visionary leaders. We fail to fully understand how complex things have become and how challenging it is to lead, particularly with increasing competition and growing tension about the uncertainty ahead.

If Carolina is to continue to have strong administrative leadership, it is important that each of us helps to create the culture that encourages that leadership. We must avoid the continued balkanization of our campus and recognize that our strength comes from pulling together. We must work endlessly to ensure that the whole of the University is greater than the sum of its parts.

There is growing evidence that the media play an important role in shaping our attitudes toward public officials. We seem to suggest to the media that we delight in the exposure and exploitation of individuals’ imperfections. We seem to suggest that we do not want leaders to be too revered or revered for too long. We find it difficult to accept the fact that none of us is perfect.

We should not be alarmed when our public officials — who are, after all, a reflection of us — demonstrate their imperfections.

In reflecting upon this year’s elections and looking ahead to the new year and a new Carolina administration, let us each individually and all of us together vow to create a more hospitable environment in which to foster effective leadership. Our University has been uniquely blessed with thoughtful, hard-working, effective senior administrative leaders for more than two centuries. If Carolina is to continue to prosper, we need to attract and sustain such leadership. While our readers do not individually have the authority to select Carolina’s next chancellor, each of us has the opportunity to ensure that our new chancellor is welcomed into an environment that encourages leadership, patiently allows leadership to develop and forgives when, in these challenging times of growing complexity and increasing competition, leaders reveal their imperfections.

 

Yours at Carolina,

 

 

 

Douglas S. Dibbert ’70