From Rachel Toor
Greetings from D.C., where it's French toast weather. When it snows in places unaccustomed to the white stuff, grocery stores run out of bread, milk, and eggs.
In addition to attending the AAC&U meeting and hanging out in the IHE office with editorial staff and a few presidents who came to call, I got to attend a dinner for aspiring presidents.
What I heard from smart, savvy, well-qualified women of color who are looking to take the next step did not surprise me, especially since they'd all just read the three pieces from current presidents in the previous issue of The Sandbox.
Could I do this job? Do I even want to be a president? What will it cost me?
Current provosts and VPs said what they'd learned in the last six months showed them how little they knew about boards. Sure, they'd prepared reports and given presentations to their university's trustees, and they know what it's like to deal with people who are experts in everything (um, faculty), but board culture is a black box.
Happy boards are all alike, and each unhappy board is unhappy in its own way. And in similar ways. How does a new president know if people who seem so nice during the hiring process are actually going to have their back? How long before a Pritzker call comes?
How do you learn about this?
Some books you put on display in the office to be seen behind you on your Zoom screen. Yes, I too have a pristine copy of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker on my shelves, though I actually read—and loved—his memoir Working.
And then there are books you devour on your device or purchase as copies “for a friend” who is, you know, living with irritable bowel syndrome or erectile dysfunction.
I’d be surprised to find Presidencies Derailed: Why University Leaders Fall and How to Prevent It by Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, Gerald B. Kauvar, and E. Grady Bogue proudly displayed on leaders’ fancy office coffee tables. And not just because it’s 10 years old.
Every current and former president I’ve spoken to says it’s important to know yourself, to understand your style of leadership, play to your strengths, have a team who can shore up your weaknesses, and trust your gut. Got it.
And yet many smart, excellent leaders have found themselves out of a job.
Sometimes presidents get fired because they screwed up. Some failed to read the room and irredeemably pissed off faculty. (Though Doug did say IHE had reined in its reporting on no confidence votes because those tantrums mean so little.) Some overspent renovating the president's house. They posted their porn. Not everyone is here, as they say, for the right reasons.
But when presidents get booted out of their offices for things that weren't their fault, often they can't even tell the whole story. You can't tell a board looking to hire you that your previous board was a bunch of meddling idiots. Even if they were. Or that scandals that happened long before you arrived finally came to light and that your job, to save the institution, was to take the fall.
No matter what the real story is, the public shaming on traditional and social media can be devastating.
When it comes to leaders who have been taken down by scandal, I get to hear more than I can share. Much more. That keeps me from rushing to judgment each time I read an account of another president who's gone down. When I read the news, I know reporters often aren't getting the whole story, and even if they are, they can't publish it.
I also know that not every president is as pure as the freshly fallen snow that creates a French toast frenzy.
We need a pipeline of good leaders and we need boards who understand what their role is. What we don't need is a body count that keeps growing.
If you have ideas about how to fix this problem, contact me. If you're a current president who has a great board, I want to hear about it. What makes it work? If you know trustees who have been able to help their colleagues understand good board hygiene, send them to me.
Oh, and if you want a more contemporary prop to showcase behind your Zooming face, buy and devour Jonathan Eig's wonderful new biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose long history of plagiarism, starting at an early age, did nothing to hinder his ability to do good work or tarnish his legacy.
