Analysis of the leadership of UW -Stout in winning the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in education

The purpose of this study was to develop a set of guidelines, based on the experiences of the University of Wisconsin-Stout\u27s leaders, that other higher education institutions may find to be meaningful and significant should they decide to implement the Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award process. Data for this study were collected using a three-part multi-method approach, which included Bass and Avolio\u27s (1994) Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ, face-to-face interviews, and internal documents. The ten leadership guidelines revealed from the data were as follows: (1) Develop a mission and vision that is widely understood and sincerely believed in by everyone in the entire institution. (2) Develop shared leadership processes that involve all stakeholders and effectively allow for shared decision making and involvement in the creation of strategic initiatives. (3) Find a way to spark motivated and energetic participation in shared leadership by all stakeholders of the college. (4) Hire or develop a chancellor who is personable, visible, accessible and energetically involved in moving the college forward toward its mission and vision. (5) Hire or develop leaders who exhibit the most effective full range leadership behaviors. These behaviors include transformational behaviors, the high-end transactional behavior of contingent reward and leadership outcome behaviors. (6) Develop ways to effectively and consistently communicate among all stakeholder groups in all areas of the college. (7) Focus on making data driven decisions. Develop processes for collecting measurable data across all areas of the college that will be analyzed and used to make decisions. (8) Regularly organize and schedule team and relationship building activities among leaders. (9) Look for and take every opportunity to recognize and reward individuals or groups for both work-related and personal accomplishments. (10) Develop a long-term college-wide commitment to adopting the Baldrige process and remain faithful and persistent in your quest for continuous improvement. In addition to developing the ten guidelines, the study also discovered that UW-Stout\u27s leadership truly followed the MBNQA education criteria for performance excellence