Presidential Leadership Styles Relevant to the Group Situations in Community College Boards of Trustees and Administrative Cabinets.

Presidents of community colleges must lead, interact with, and influence, their Boards of Trustees and Administrative Cabinets. Whether a president can be equally effective and derive equal satisfaction from his or her interactions with these two groups depends upon the match of presidential leadership style with the needs and desires of the two major governance groups as reflected in differing group leadership situations. The leadership style-situation match of community college presidents, with their Boards and Cabinets was investigated using the Fiedler Contingency Model of leadership effectiveness. Extensive interviews with seven representative community college presidents from a major State community college system followed by an in-depth survey of Board and Cabinet members provided empirical data concerning presidential leadership styles and characteristics of leader-group relations, task structure and presidential position power. Analysis of data culminating in points of central tendency provided a frame of reference for conclusions about presidential/board/cabinet relationships. In general, presidents displayed leadership styles favoring moderate task/job orientation with only one president portraying highly human relations oriented leadership style. The moderate task/job style, while effective with both groups, appeared to be most compatible with Trustees. Cabinets seemed to prefer an even higher degree of task/job orientation. Leadership situations among Boards showed greater diversity in the "favorable/unfavorable" dimensions than was characteristic of Cabinets. Cabinet leadership situations tended to be more favorable toward presidents. In terms of the Contingency Model, task oriented leaders are most effective where the leadership situation is either highly favorable or unfavorable. This relationship was confirmed in the study. The narrow range of leadership style-situation difference may be partially accounted for by the institutional relationships in the State. Institutional settings might be the subject of future research. A comparison of directly and indirectly expressed presidential satisfaction with apparent presidential effectiveness showed that satisfaction tended to be understated as related to effectiveness. Adjustments to group leadership situations and to a lesser extent leadership style offer ways to improving leadership effectiveness and satisfaction.Ph.D.Community college educationUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/159745/1/8402289.pd