The Long View

A friend of mine, who has recently accepted the presidency of a college, writes me asking, What do faculty want in a president?

What faculty want in a president is . . .

–Someone who sees, acknowledges, embraces, and celebrates the best within the culture and history of the college, and who is willing to nurture that.
–Someone who remembers that presidents come and go (with astonishing frequency and rapidity), but faculty remain (or endure). It is more their college than yours, so don’t think you can remake it in your image and likeness.
–Someone who is presidential (i.e. presents the public face of the college in a way that they can be proud of) but who still has the common touch (i.e. who is not imperious). A president of my acquaintance, for example, insists on being addressed as “Dr. ____” even by his vice presidents in cabinet meetings.
–Someone who knows their names and knows what they do.
–Someone who manages by wandering around (rather than wandering by managing around), who regularly walks the campus, who walks down hallways and pokes his nose in offices.
–Someone who makes modest promises and delivers extravagant results (not the other way around).
–Someone who doesn’t have to have all the answers, who can admit when he or she has made a mistake.
–Someone who demonstrates a tireless commitment to the faculty and to the college (rather than a tiresome commitment to his or her own career). I admire ambition, but personal ambition is secondary. A president should be a steward rather than an opportunist.
–Someone who sweats the small stuff, extends the common courtesies, attends to the thoughtful personal communication. A president of my acquaintance, for example, never extends the courtesy of acknowledging receipt of invitations to campus events, much less of responding to them whether or not he can attend. Never say, “I’ll try to be there”; either you will be there or you will not be there, and if you can’t be there, explain why you can’t.
–Someone who is more like a pastor than like a manager, and who is, following the biblical injunction, “strong, loving, and wise” (2 Timothy 1).
–Someone who understands that being a president is an opportunity to give back to academia all that you have received from it.
–Someone who has the courage to ask faculty for a frank assessment of how he or she is doing, and then has the heroism to listen and to modify behavior accordingly.
–Someone who hasn’t forgotten the lessons of kindergarten: Tell the truth, share, play well with others.”