Open Leadership

Charlene Li (2010) establishes the standard for Open Leadership in her book of that title. Often, leaders look to see how they can communicate simply within the organization rather than how to communicate beyond the organization. In Higher Education, we often look at a chain of communication from senior leadership through administrative channels to faculty and staff, and then a relay from faculty and staff to students. What is often forgotten is the communication, particularly with the opportunities that exist via social technologies available today, should also occur from leadership directly out to both students and stakeholders of all forms. According to Li, open leadership focuses on developing authenticity and transparency to build actual relationships. These relationships are to encourage an environment of engagement with authentic “truth sharing.” Such an environment fosters the sharing of vision as well as participation in it. The key element here is that the open leader believes in the leadership ability of all individuals and is willing to share leadership roles. The open leader writes the rules for risk taking rather than avoiding them.

The differentiation from traditional academic leadership is obvious. Often leadership in higher education structures are the antithesis of these practices. Post-secondary institutions often have fixed leadership styles, limited in their functioning with limited opportunities for participating in leadership. (see OPEN COMMUNICATION and OPEN GOVERNANCE below). The School for Graduate Studies, as part of its transformation with new program development, has used such as an opportunity to create new leadership opportunities for faculty and staff to participate in leadership roles. There has been the opportunity both to create and develop new programs as well as opportunities to play leadership roles in those programs. Faculty roles such as Program Chairs and Coordinators as well as staff positions such as directors have been created to allow leadership and participatory opportunities. This has involved a great deal of risk taking. Some opportunities have worked, others have not worked, but a significant characteristic of open leadership is being aware of, open to and prepared for initiatives not succeeding, as well as knowing how far the organization can absorb risk.

On the review page of the book on Amazon (2011), Li attached the following chart to clarify the primary direction of her work:

The importance of Li’s work is that it provides the vehicle through which the changes in Higher Education need to be made. Leadership functions on modeling of desired behaviors. Just as I release this work under a creative commons by-license, as a leader in a Higher Education institution, I have to ensure that I follow the principles of Open Leadership as means of making openness a practice throughout the organization.