How did the leadership program begin?

The leadership program has been evolving since 1997 and it’s beginning was truly a humble one. It was May of that year and I remember sitting in my office finishing up some paperwork on a late Friday afternoon when my Supervisor knocked on the door (I was then a Collegium member). In a few short words, he explained that Berea College had been given a grant from the Mellon Foundation for leadership training initiatives across campus and he and the Vice President of Labor and Student Life thought that I would be a good person to coordinate this effort for the student life area. I was somewhat hesitant at the opportunity especially when I found out that the summer pilot program they wanted me to create would need to start in early June. I had one short month to get my act together. Being the over-ambitious person that I am, I threw myself into the task of figuring out what Leadership is, who leaders are, how they should act, how people are made into leaders…From the beginning, I knew that I did not want to let a pre-packaged leadership development course be my guide. I wanted to start from scratch, literally. In the next few weeks, I spent many hours in bookstores and libraries reading everything I could get my hands on that was even remotely related to Leadership. I would spend one week in the business/organizational behavior section, one week in the human development section, another week in the philosophy section and so on. Little by little, I was forming a concept of how to train people to be leaders. What I discovered changed my life. I began to see concrete results in my own life once I began applying the theoretical concepts I was learning, concepts about emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, personal reflection, to name a few. I was truly amazed at the things I discovered through biographies of great leaders, training tools, case studies, and a spectrum of philosophies and pedagogy. I felt like a powerful human being for the first time in my life in the sense that I discovered how to design my own life experience and how to use my past, present and future to live the life I had always imagined was possible. That initial discovery birthed my passion for leadership training. Seeing others experience a similar process continues to fuel my enthusiasm. Leadership training for me remains constantly new and challenging as I see things through the eyes of others that I was blind to and as my own understanding of how people work expands and evolves.

My first group of students was really pivotal in helping me design leadership training. Because I was learning along side them, I was able to experience for the first time, how activities would play out, what effect certain texts would have, and how to meet my participants on their level and proceed from there. I had originally named the course, The Search for Excellence, but somewhere in the middle of that first summer, the four students renamed the course, The Journey to Excellence, which they deemed to reflect much more accurately the nature of their own leadership training experience. I have had distinctly different experiences with each summer group and each group and individual has pushed me to a higher level of understanding and learning. The moments of catharsis that we all experienced are too numerous to count.

I feel very strongly that theoretical concepts of leadership training must be accompanied by a “laboratory” experience for participants. We have used first year student registration and orientation events, presentations to faculty/staff, residence hall staff training planning, and myriad other projects and avenues of campus service delivery. These events became the moment of truth for participants to practice their conception of leadership and then assess whether or not the theory actually makes sense in practice. To rely on the examination of theoretical conundrums is simply not enough. I have tried to be very careful not to promote any one practice of leadership training principles. I have presented many different approaches and many different kinds of training tools with the understanding that my participants will be more versatile and open if they have experienced multiple interpretations of leadership. Using one tool or approach cannot hope to resonate with the multiple realities in our lives.

Thus, the materials that I have gathered over the past few years represent a spectrum of ideas about how to become a better human being, which is, after all, what leadership development is.

There are a few things that do remain consistent in the leadership training program. The most important is the progression from self-introspection, to teamwork, to leading teams, to the world beyond. I do not mean this to be a formula but my experience has taught me that human beings need to reckon with themselves (their own history, patterns, choices) before learning how to create, sustain and lead a team. Finally, examining the world beyond themselves and their team enables them to understand the global impact of their choices. This learning progression has been very successful with a wide variation of activities occurring in each section depending on the level of experience of the participants.

The Journey to Excellence has, in so many ways, been my personal journey toward being a leader who is response-able in both my personal and work life. The process of innovation IS struggling, listening, arguing, supporting, leading, being led by, watching, and interacting with my students and colleagues toward a common goal with change being implicit. I have learned that most people don’t resist change, they resist BEING changed; we often times overlook the value of small changes we are able to affect and waste our time looking for the earthquakes. I have been able to build partnerships with many community members based on something we all want—to help our students succeed and to have become better at what we do in the process. I have learned to share successes quickly and turn failures into an opportunity to see the problem differently. This process has gifted me with myriad lessons, for example:

• Students become better leaders when their exposure to leadership theories is accompanied by a guided opportunity to practically apply what they believe to be implicitly true.
• Students become better leaders when they can experience the outcome of their personal paradigms in an environment where they are guided, nurtured, and challenged to move beyond mediocrity.
• Students become better leaders when they can SEE the merit of excellent leadership and how it might be lived well.
• Students become better leaders when they learn how to cultivate their own “teacher/learner” relationships. These relationships rely on mutual feedback characterized by balanced criticism and praise with both individuals existing on the same playing field.
• Regardless of the theoretical bent of any particular diagnostic tool in leadership training, students can learn to become excellent leaders through the following developmental progression: personal introspection, working in teams, leading teams, and community building.

Perhaps the most powerful lesson I have learned is that what I DO is always going to be more powerful and lasting than what I SAY. My challenge is the knowledge that I am becoming a certain kind of human being through the choices I make every day. Our work is no greater and no less than a product of the person we are. If there is anything I would like to leave you with, it is that this program is NOT a panacea, or a formula, or a blueprint. It is a foundation for a way of life. It is not just acquiring a new set of skills and abilities but the full circle development of our total self. If you build yourself, you will build your community, and your community will build the world.

How does this program fit into the larger mission of Berea College?

Berea College embraces at its foundation a unique mission to provide a high quality education to students with limited economic resources and continues its historic commitments to focus on the Appalachian region, to explore its non-sectarian Christian roots, to support interracial education, and to confirm the equality of men and women. Students participate in leadership training as an integrated part of their college experience whether through a class, labor position, as a residence hall tenant, or as a member of a student organization. There are no fees for materials or trips. Program participants examine concepts and practices of leadership and community development within the context of the campus environment and seek to explore ways in which the Berea College commitments can be realized.

Berea College was founded by abolitionists in the mid-1860’s who were inspired by the vision of a unique American institution. This same vision remains woven through the tapestry of the Eight Great Commitments that guide the College community life. In addition to the Commitments, Berea seeks to be and become an integrated and continuous learning institution where students, faculty, and staff actively engage in intellectual growth and personal and skill development. As a guide to becoming a fully integrated learning community, Berea College has adopted four sets of common learning goals for all members of the community. These goals serve as guides for divisions, departments, and programs such as The Journey to Excellence to focus their resources and implementation plans. They also represent an application of the Great Commitments within the context of our contemporary world. The four pairs of goals seek to:

1. Develop the critical intellectual ability to address complex problems from multiple perspectives and nurture moral growth with a commitment to service;
2. Understand the relationship between humans and the natural world and consider both the benefits and limitations of science and technology;
3. Explore our individual roots and our shared American culture and know and respect cultures from around the world;
4. Educate students, faculty, and staff to be creative, independent thinkers; and encourage collaboration and teamwork in learning and working.

The four-paired learning goals have been at the heart of our effort in the Leadership program to transform the words of the document into a living language.

Some examples are:

1. Critical thinking: participants learn to reflect deeply through self-introspection; struggle with perspectives different from their own in group dialogue; practice 360-degree performance feedback, and work towards a holistic life-application of their learning.
2. Environment: participants practice responsibility by creating and coordinating a residence hall recycling project; practice stewardship through beautification projects in the Berea area, and experience the effects of technology by creating a leadership course web page.
3. Global world: participants learn to build community in a diverse work and hall environment; a greater understanding of how to navigate our pluralistic community is gleaned through the exploration of various cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
4. Balancing individual and community: participants learn, through everyday practice, while coordinating numerous projects and aiding in student service delivery, the art of collaboration, cooperation, and teamwork and the challenge of not sacrificing personal integrity for group norms and aims.

What is the purpose of this program?

The Journey to Excellence is a learning-centered leadership program focused on participants discovering their potential and then creating environments wherein they and others can do their best work. The program was originally created in 1997 to prepare students for leadership roles and responsibilities with the aim of achieving individual and community excellence, both at Berea College and beyond. The program has since expanded to include opportunities for faculty and staff to participate in professional skill training workshops or in combination with student groups. The fundamental assertion of this program is that all people have the capacity to become better leaders, and essentially better community members, through a process-oriented approach that is guided, mentored, collaborative, non-formulaic, and non-prescriptive.

What needs and challenges does this program address? Whom does it serve?

The Journey to Excellence serves a very direct need in the Berea College Labor program. All students are required to work at least 10 hours per week to pay for their room and board and other incidental costs. Students are given the opportunity to take on high levels of responsibility and interdependence and run many labor departments on campus. For example, the Student Life Department takes on this challenge in its student leadership positions in the residence halls. The leadership program trains these student staff members to work as leadership and community building teams responsible for being on the “front lines” of teaching and learning: conflict resolution, crisis management, community codes, civic responsibility, creative problem solving, etc. In effect, this leadership program serves any student who wishes to take on a leadership role on campus with a majority of attention being currently directed to the residence halls. This program accepts students at their starting point without elitist claims to a magical leadership transformation. Participants have repeatedly said about the program that they not only learned how to be leaders but also how to be better participants in community endeavors.
The program also serves a direct need in the Labor area where professional staff members serve as supervisors for students in their labor position. These professional staff members guide the learning, development and effectiveness of their student employees. The leadership program provides supervisors with opportunities for skill development, access to material resources and consultation on various issues of leadership and team development within their labor department.

What have been program results?

Prior to the start of the program, students were being given high levels of responsibility as leaders in the Labor Program and in clubs and organizations often without matching training and preparatory experience. Of course, many students and professional staff had skills and abilities to accomplish tasks but still lacked a formal and established leadership training resource. At the start of the program, we accepted the challenge of learning to lead ourselves before leading others and transforming what we often intuitively knew to be true into how we actually lived our lives before, during, and after work. The aim of the program became to create a working mission, guided by right action, with our success being measured along the way by feedback from our peers, students, and colleagues.

The results of the program are extremely diverse and far-reaching. It has become evident that our campus culture is slowly changing from one of distinct divides between teachers and learners to one of shared teaching and learning roles. Each group of students who have participated in some facet of this program has been able to adapt the program to the needs and realities of their own environment. One student, who is now leading a leadership initiative at another institution, collected input from his residents and created a mission statement for the entire residence hall. Another student, as the Campus Activities Board Director, redesigned her team’s model of service to students and succeeded in rekindling their motivation. Yet another student, as president of Student Government Association, gained the confidence to confront his peers and help them work through serious conflicts that were preventing them from really hearing what their fellow student constituents were saying. Two students, who participated in the summer course, were hired back by Berea as professional staff after they graduated as a direct result of their growth and development through the leadership program and their ability to train others. Another important result has been the change in the nature of relationships between professional staff and students. The leadership program has continuously challenged its participants to level the playing field, tear down limiting hierarchical thinking, and become proficient at giving and receiving feedback and building trust through positive change. This program has resulted in students who are more confident in their ability to make connections between learning and doing, create relationships that are transformational rather than transactional, make connections between their in-classroom and out-of-classroom learning, and see the broader meaning of community interdependence.

Some results of the program were unanticipated. In fact, this is where some of the best stories lie. Early on, the summer course was named The Search for Excellence. About two months into the program, participants insisted on changing the name to The Journey to Excellence to reflect their intuitive belief that leadership was manifesting itself as a journey that never ends wherein one must constantly re-examine the compass and be willing to obtain a new map. This story illustrates the unanticipated results that students, through their unique insights and experiences, are constantly redefining the outcome and even the focus of the course to match their needs and abilities. The students’ amazement at their own ability to unearth their true potential through the self-introspective aspect of the course was certainly unanticipated. In fact, it became evident that these students were aspiring to remain at Berea College as professional staff to affect the same kind of changes they had experienced through the leadership course. It was also unanticipated that students would be able to transfer so many skills to areas of their lives other than the Labor Program. One student became recognized as an outstanding nursing major because she learned to help her class work through conflicts experienced on their clinical practicum sites.

As the coordinator of this course, I have been transformed, humbled, and amazed at the opportunity to realize my personal goals and to see my students to the same—I continue to be amazed at these daily-unanticipated outcomes. The ripple effect has been extraordinary.

How does this program make a difference in the lives of people?

For the participants, the program has been an opportunity to re-invent themselves: to become the people of excellence that we all are capable of being. For the communities in which these participants live and work, the difference has been in student teams and groups wherein the status quo is challenged, even small groups of committed individuals can make change, and the principles that we live by are more than just words on a page.

One student says, “I now have confidence in most of the things I do in my life. That’s a big change in my life. I changed my perspective from ‘I can do this’, to ‘I will do this and do an excellent job at it as well.’ I now feel that I can go into any situation and have a very positive impact on it. I don’t feel as if I’m better than other people; I just feel that if I have the knowledge and ability to help, then it is my responsibility to do what I can.” This student is now working at a government agency.

Another student and now educator at another college says, “I wanted to write and let you know how much I’ve come to appreciate the leadership program and all the things we did that summer. That experience not only helped me prepare for one of the committees I serve on but for the Higher Education profession in general. Last semester, I wrote a mission statement for our committee and helped develop the leadership model that we use for the different leadership development programs that come out of our department. I hope the Berea College leadership program is going to continue for years to come.”