250 Strategic Leadership
also help people to develop new ways of thinking by encouraging reflection on
hidden assumptions, values, and familiar ways of doing things. Effective lead-
ers of change listen to those involved in the process and learn from dissenting
views. They also are sensitive to issues of collaborative process, create a sense
of urgency for change, and communicate widely about the issues (Eckel, Green,
and Hill 2001). They root their exercise of authority in a process of relational
leadership.
In an illuminating subsequent study, Taking the Reins, Eckel and Kezar (2003)
describe how six of the twenty-six American Council on Education institutions
reached the level of what they call transforming change, change that was perva-
sive, deep, and intentional and altered the culture of the institution over time.
The book presents five basic characteristics that seem essential to transforma-
tion: “(1) senior administrative support, (2) collaborative leadership, (3) flexible
vision, (4) staff development, (5) visible action” (Eckel and Kezar 2003, 78).
Note the prominence on this list of factors that we have identified as critical
to strategic leadership, especially the motifs of action, collaboration, vision, and
senior administrative support. In addition to these, the authors analyzed other
interlocking characteristics in the decision-making culture of the institutions that
contributed to transforming change. Perhaps the key element is the way partici-
pants found new ways of constructing meaning about change, or what we have
often called sense making.
Although the Change reports and Taking the Reins use different language than
ours, their findings parallel precisely many of the components of integral and
integrated strategic leadership. This conclusion hinges on understanding strat-
egy comprehensively, not as a method to change a program’s market position.
Although interactive leadership is recognized, what seems less central in their
accounts is a systematic description of the possibilities of leadership as an engag-
ing reciprocal process that can mobilize commitment to enact strategic change.
The effectiveness of those who hold positions of authority is essential, but more
is required to create a leadership method that can be embedded in the institu-
tion and is not only activated when change is required. The ultimate goal is to
implement leadership as a system of interaction that is framed by an integrative
discipline and collaborative process of strategic decision making.
Strategic leadership can serve as a vehicle for effecting change in institutions
of higher education, both through its content and its methods. It can be the miss-
ing link between proposals that involve change and their enactment. It makes
intentional change a function of strategic change and thereby builds the change
agenda into the leadership process through which an institution designs its future
in a challenging world. If, for example, assessment is to improve the quality of
student learning, leadership has to be embedded in organizational processes and
relationships to achieve and sustain the change. A faculty will dismiss out of hand
all the alluring models of assessment at other institutions unless they are part of
a decision-making process that relates to the values, beliefs, and circumstances of
their own institution.