Larry D. Lauer

Over the years I have come to think that effective leadership, like teaching, involves enabling others to experience the personal fulfillment of developing and using their special talents. You give them challenging assignments and then share your “lessons learned” to help them develop. You then channel that talent toward achieving more focused personal, career, and institutional goals.

In the years I served as vice-chancellor at TCU I had periodic thoughts that this is what I was actually doing… conducting staff meeting as if my staff members were students in a class. But when I had these thoughts I also thought: What could they be thinking? Should coming to weekly staff meetings be so much like coming to class?

A typical staff meeting would begin with planning and implementation reports from staff members, all of whom were hired for their special talents and potential to develop them. I and others would follow with suggestions based on our current professional reading, past experiences, and lessons learned. Most suggestions would focus on enhancing the effectiveness of these already impressive and creative people. Then periodically we would review our overall institutional goals and discuss how each person’s creative initiatives were helping to advance those goals. Interestingly enough, the format of the graduate class I was teaching was surprisingly similar.

I look back now and find that I feel perfectly comfortable with this analogy. However, I do admit that  when I finally described this thinking to my staff, the surprised look on their faces clearly said back to me: “What the hell are you talking about ?

So I guess they didn’t get it. But even so, I must say I still like the analogy!