Emerging Definitions of Leadership in Higher Education Article Review

The article by Eddy and VanDerLinden (2006) looks at how alternative definitions of leadership are replacing traditional leadership concepts. Specifically, the authors assess emerging definitions of leadership in terms of how community college administrators self-identify as leaders. Using a survey method to collect data, the researchers asked respondents to identify their definition of leadership. The purpose was to see if they viewed leadership in terms of their position at the college or in terms of other variables.

The researchers noted that, traditionally, these colleges have been described as bureaucratic in nature, with positional leadership serving as the main type, but today administrators in these colleges self-identify using a variety of different leadership ideas. These leaders are in fact thinking more complexly about leadership instead of linking leadership to position or to a single characteristic. The authors make the point that it is important to nurture these alternative definitions of leadership by providing additional leadership development and training opportunities.

However, Eddy and VanDerLinden (2006) also show that a large percentage of community college administrators still see themselves as having their leadership tied to their position or role within the college. The authors note that the encouraging finding is that for half of the respondents they did use different terms and variables to define their sense of leadership, instead of just referring to their position in the college as being the source of definition for leadership.

The researchers sampled 682 respondents across a variety of position codes for the survey, so the sample size was large enough and generally representative of the population that the…

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…about leadership is necessarily better or worse than others. The primary important factor in leadership is the ability to build strong relationships with others because without these there will be no way to earn the trust and respect of followers. But, again, how those relationships are defined will depend upon the setting, the leader and the followers. Obviously, it will be different for an Army sergeant than it will be for a member of a Congress. The study by Eddy and VanDerLinden (2006) at least makes it clear that critical thinking about leadership is taking place among roughly half of today’s community college administrators, which is a sign that leadership is not being taken for granted. As I move forward with my doctoral research, I am to explore ideas in leadership in much the same…