Andrea Madeleine Medina Medina-1

Com & Effective Leadership

13 February 2014
Article Abstract
Leadership in higher education is an area of study that is gradually growing steam as a
necessary subject of interest for universities to incorporate into their curriculum. There has been
much research put into understanding how universities cultivate a sense of leadership within
their students, and how these institutions implement their own sense of leadership among their
respective faculty and staff. The Importance of Leadership Development Within Higher
Education, an article published in the popular journal Contemporary Readings in Law and
Social Justice, directly calls for the importance of looking at the promotion of diversity in
academic leadership, the various trends in leadership in higher education, and the need for
change in educational leadership preparation (Nica, 2013, p. 189).
Author Elvira Nica first discusses the direct impact ill-prepared students have in real
world circumstances. She gives the example of how recent job candidates have been critiqued as
being insufficient in leadership attributes during interviews for managerial positions. She puts
these results all on the inadequacies of leadership development within institutions of higher
education, and argues that injustices are being done to the students who leave these organizations
ill-equipped to enter the workplace.
Nica continues by analyzing the various forms of leadership that directly influence, and
who are indirectly responsible for, these ill-prepared students within the higher education
system; from professors, to administration, and most importantly to heads of departments (or as
she likes to call them HODs). She states that successful school leaders influence student
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achievement through their influence on staff and the organizations they run (Nica, 2013, p.
190). She considers true leadership to be more of an influential process that requires
innovation and input from all of its contributing members, students included. She also states that
in order to promote diversity in academic leadership, the institution must be a microcosm of
the total society (Nica, 2013, p. 190). Nica sees diversity as a huge factor in the overall success
of effective leadership and leadership development in higher education.
A final topic of interest the author discusses is the way in which individual leaders can be
formed or developed within an institution. Nica describes a number of life stages that one may
undergo to affect their leadership style, such as critical life experiences and various role models
that have impacted how an individual learns to lead. She continues by describing that learning
how to lead is purely contextual and is a product of practice. Another interesting component
she talks about has to do with roles and role expectations within the organization, and well as
communication norms of past leaders and the general organizational climate.
The article is specifically relevant to this course in the areas of leadership in
organizations, leader and leadership development, and leadership and diversity. Institutions of
higher education are merely complex organizations. Nica touches on the organizational structure
of institutional hierarchy, and the importance of cultivating cultures of strong leadership that are
essentially rooted from the academic department heads. Looking at higher education as an
organization puts into perspective the need for effective leaders in our classrooms and
administrative roles, which plays into how educators facilitate leadership development. Higher
education is where students that are going to run future businesses and organizations go to
become competent leaders in their fields. What this article proposes is the need to thus equip
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students with leadership education and tangible skills to be able to do so. The article also relates
to leadership in diversity. As mentioned earlier, managing diversity and understanding cultural
differences are huge elements of successful leadership in higher education. The more exposure
students have to diversity in higher education, the more adaptable and collaborative these leaders
will be when they enter their respective work environments.
The strengths of this article include the call for change, and overall push for awareness of
the need to incorporate leadership development into higher education curriculum. The article is
very clear about the importance of emphasizing such education, and lays out the major
components of effective leadership such as diversity in representation, various leadership roles
and their influences on the greater hierarchy, and the ways in which leadership can be developed
within individuals. The insightfulness presented by Nica in unraveling the call for change is
skillfully done, and is exciting for those who wish to see leadership become a more prevalent
topic of interest across all subjects in academia. The weaknesses of the article deal with the lack
of solution-based proposals to change the current trends that seem to be threatening the quality of
leadership in higher education. There are no qualitative results to Nicas findings that provide
concrete ways to implement leadership education into higher education. With such a direct call
to action from the article and very little strategy to work off of, it seems difficult for one person
let alone an entire institution to make any great progress in such leadership development.
I am personally inspired by this article because I have a particular belief that adequate
leadership development makes for a happier, more collaborative, and inspiring world. I feel that
the call for better leadership training in the classroom is something necessary and vital for
preparing our students to be effective and exceptional leaders in whatever they decide to do in
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life. I can agree that most academic leaders are labeled as leaders mainly on the basis that they
happen to be well-read and informed on their subject matter. Being an expert on a particular
subject is extremely different from being a leader of a department or subject, and I sometimes
feel that higher education confuses the two. Leadership is developed with individuals who model
the way, and actively challenge others to become their best selves and stray away from their
comfort zones. If a student goes through their entire experience in higher education without
feeling like a leader of some sort, higher education is failing society. Higher education is the
primary channel through which our world leaders are born. That is why I agree with the author in
championing how vital it is for these institutions to prioritize adequate leadership education for
all students in all subject areas.












Citation
Nica, Elvira. (2013). The Importance of Leadership Development Within Higher Education.
Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice, 5(2), 189-194. Retrieved from
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=64c2ba58-a343-417e-b022-
1786049e509d%40sessionmgr4002&vid=4&hid=4107