Most organizational theorists use the athletic team as a metaphor for the effective work group - specific players motivated to give their best performance in pursuit of a common goal. This book offers a different model, focusing instead on the complex ways that members of a leadership team interact, wield power, use language and create meaning. The authors describe the team as a culture and argue that effective team leadership depends on expecting, understanding and appreciating the differences among individuals. Based on interviews with members of administrative teams on 15 campuses - including research universities, public colleges, private colleges and community colleges - the book examines teamwork as an essentially human activity. It considers how and why people on leadership teams think and act as they do, how they learn and communicate (or neglect to do so), and how they bring their deepest values, beliefs and aspirations into play in the conduct of administrative work. The authors describe how administrative leaders shape and maintain effective teams, and how the teams address diversity and conflict. Emphasizing the importance of inclusiveness, the authors identify a number of hidden dynamics related to gender, race and power inequity. The book contains a number of quotes from team participants.

This book should be read by every college president, administrator, and academic leader. It challenges the assumptions about current hierarchical leadership and successfully reinforces team processes and collaborative leadership. -- Paul A. Elsner, Chancellor, Maricopa Community Colleges This excellent book is rare in its focus on leadership groups in higher education. The conceptual lens and illuminating examples should be useful both to those who study higher education and to those who 'practice' higher education leadership. -- Judith Dozier Hackman, Associate Dean, Yale College

About the Author
Anna Neumann is a professor of higher education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and coauthor of Redesigning Collegiate Leadership: Teams and Teamwork in Higher Education, also published by Johns Hopkins. She is the winner of the American Educational Research Association's 2010 Exemplary Research Award and was recently named President-Elect of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE).

Reviews
Any president, team leader, or team builder can glean a sizable amount of wisdom from Redesigning Collegiate Leadership... The authors provide experiential knowledge on how to build and evaluate a 'real,' complex team. -- Toni Murdock Alliance Reading this work becomes a personal as well as intellectual journey of reflecting on who we are and what we might wish to become as collaborative leaders and team builders. An important journey for any administrator in American higher education today. NASPA Journal



Book Information
ISBN 9780801849565
Author Estela Mara Bensimon
Format Paperback
Page Count 200
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 340g