Leadership Theory Handbook for College Professors

Introduction and Purpose of the Handbook

This is a guidebook on the leadership of learning and teaching for college professors. Specialist skills are required in this area to embrace the emerging teaching and learning methodologies. Some of these emerging trends include being familiar with effective methods of teaching, assessment, and application of relevant technologies for effective curriculum delivery, as well as developing management and leadership competence.

This handbook is written to meet the broadly accepted need for supporting the development of professional competencies and tools for leaders at the individual level. The initial part explores the primary leadership aspects and functions that examine what successful leaders do to encourage excellence in teaching and learning. The second part offers a brief account of background ideas on leadership theories that drive the handbook's themes.

The guide also addresses the main audience — college professors, including those charged with teaching and governance — and explores the following areas:

• Strategic leadership: a clear institutional vision of how students learn and how to realize that vision.
• Robust leadership: the inspiration that trainers must espouse in order to provide the best possible student experience.
• An encouraging perspective on teaching at the university level, grounded in evidence of effective options.

Qualities and Functions of Leadership

A leader is a person with qualities of leadership — the skills and knowledge to steer a group toward achieving specific objectives voluntarily. This section examines the functions and qualities of a leader. Character and personality cannot be overlooked in matters of leadership. The following are seven outstanding leadership qualities:

1. Must be enthusiastic.
2. Must have integrity.
3. Must be fair: impartiality is critical.
4. Should elicit toughness: must demand and insist on high standards.
5. Should also be warm: must show concern for others.
6. Must be humble: should have good listening skills and keep their ego in check.
7. Should be confident: pushes forward where certain, acknowledges where others help — devoid of arrogance.

Functions of Leadership

Three variables exist in leadership: (1) aspects of character and personality, (2) the situation, which is partly constant, and (3) the group, including followers, values, and needs. This section of the handbook examines the functions of leadership in relation to workgroup needs. There are three overlapping needs:

1. Task needs: based on achieving a common task.
2. Team maintenance needs: enabling the team to cohere and stay together.
3. Individual needs: the needs that individuals bring with them into the group.

Based on these three needs, people expect their leaders to help them accomplish a common mission, build synergies within the group, and respond to individual needs. Tasks call for organizations or groups to form because no single individual can accomplish them alone. Pressure builds to achieve task completion in order to avert frustration when team members are impeded.

The need for team maintenance exists because promoting, creating, and retaining organizational cohesiveness is important as a matter of unity. Individual needs can be divided into two categories — material (e.g., salary) and psychological — and include a sense of accomplishment, recognition, the deeper urge to give and receive in a working situation, and status (Thomas, 2020).

The overlap among task, team, and individual needs reveals the following:

• Task achievement satisfies individuals and builds the team.
• When team maintenance is lacking, task performance is impaired and individual satisfaction decreases.
• When individual needs are unmet, cohesiveness suffers and task performance is also impaired.

To accomplish a common mission, leaders must maintain teamwork and meet the needs of individuals. The key leadership functions — that is, what a leader does — are:

1. Task definition
2. Planning
3. Briefing others
4. Controlling
5. Evaluating
6. Encouraging and motivating
7. Organizing
8. Leading by example

These functions require high-level skills to be executed effectively. Some leadership qualities also carry functional value and can be termed leadership traits or characteristics. The table below summarizes these by need area (Thomas, 2020):

In exercising their functions, leaders should also demonstrate the following attributes:

1. Influence on the group: producing willingness in a group to achieve a goal.
2. Command: being decisive.
3. Calmness: remaining calm and focused under turmoil.
4. Judgment: organizing resources and information in a way that helps achieve results easily and quickly.
5. Application: showing sustained effort and dependability to accomplish tasks and achieve goals.

Leadership Skills and Core Functions

This section examines in detail the eight leadership functions introduced above. For a broader academic context on leadership skills development, see the Wikipedia overview of leadership.

1. Task Definition

A task is a job lined up for accomplishment. Workers in organizations must understand it through an objective that is clear, time-limited, challenging, concrete, realistic, and capable of evaluation.

2. Planning

Planning is an organizational activity that involves searching for options. It is best done through open brainstorming with others. Planning addresses questions related to what, why, how, and when.

3. Briefing

Giving instructions to a team is a primary function of leadership, usually performed in person. Briefings provide an opportunity to create a conducive atmosphere, promote teamwork, and know and motivate every individual.

4. Controlling

Excellent leaders achieve optimal outcomes with minimal resource input. To effectively control others, a leader must first demonstrate self-control. It should also be noted that becoming angry is legitimate when circumstances call for it; such a reaction can be helpful in certain situations.

5. Evaluating

Leaders should demonstrate aptness at situation assessment, team performance evaluation, and individual training and appraisal, as well as sound judgment. In consequence assessment, a leader should foresee the results of an action based on financial, technical, and human considerations, and ask pointed questions intended to confirm those consequences.

6. Motivating

Six principles help leaders motivate others: (1) choose motivated people, (2) show motivation yourself, (3) remember that progress motivates, (4) recognize achievement, (5) set targets that are both challenging and realistic, and (6) provide fair rewards.

7. Organizing

Effective leaders are organized — as can be seen in how they work and manage their affairs. They cultivate effective teamwork, direct organizational systems and structures that inform team operations, and reorganize when necessary to achieve results. Change leadership calls for both power and leadership skills.

8. Setting an Example

"Leadership is example." A leader needs to act out what they say. The way a leader acts and speaks is always analyzed and interpreted by those they lead. Since examples influence others, it is essential that a leader sets a good one.